Date: 1922
Source: ru:PSS/v54; en:CW/CW45

Source: PSS, Volume 54

Comrade Zinoviev!

If I understood you correctly yesterday, you are expecting me to deliver a speech at the Executive Committee Plenum on February 5, presenting a report on the united front. I must confess that I will not be able to deliver such a report.

At most, I may manage to prepare some notes on this issue—or perhaps an addendum to the main theses, which, I hope, will already have been drafted by someone else. Please send me the official resolution of the Executive Committee on this matter, along with no more than one or two articles by foreign communists on this very topic—and then I will be able to give you a definitive answer as to whether I can submit any theses at all, and if so, what kind of theses they might be. 234

Lenin

Copies

To Comrade Zinoviev

If I agreed over the phone, it was clearly because I did not adequately account for the timing of my speech or the duration of my treatment. 235 I must resolutely withdraw my consent. Please replace me

with G.V. Chicherin. January 26, 1922.

If Chicherin is unavailable, then let it be someone else—Bukharin, or whoever else might be suitable should he depart. Some preliminary conclusions regarding the New Economic Policy could probably be prepared for you in the form of a brief report, assigning the task of drafting it to someone chosen in consultation between Kamenev and myself.

Lenin

Dictated over the telephone

Based on a typewritten copy

To Comrade Zinoviev

(Copy to Comrade Kamenev)

I would like to propose that we consider appointing Comrade Pyatakov as the rapporteur for the ICICI Plenum on the question of the New Economic Policy—provided neither Trotsky nor Kamenev are willing to take on this role. Bukharin is simply unable to do so, since he must leave immediately for Germany to undergo medical treatment.

I believe that Pyatakov’s candidacy would be well suited to this task; and if you agree, I ask that you bring this proposal before the Politburo and instruct Pyatakov to draft a set of theses by the coming Sunday, drawing upon the theses I had previously submitted—and which were approved by the Central Committee for presentation at the last Congress of the Comintern. 236

Lenin

Based on a typewritten copy

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Written on January 26, 1922.

First published in 1959.

In Lenin Collection XXXVI

Printed from a typewritten copy

January 26, 1922.

Published for the first time,

Written on January 26, 1922.

Published for the first time,