## QUESTIONS OF GOSPLAN

### QUESTIONS OF GOSPLAN
17 - 22 FEBRUARY 1921

In Lenin's view, the plan for electrification, approved by the Eighth Congress of Soviets, should form the basis for the restoration of the national economy. Therefore, he considered the general planning commission, which was established in February 1924, as an expanded GOELRO (State Commission for the Electrification of Russia). By the time the question of the general planning commission was discussed in the STO on February 18, 1924, Lenin had received draft theses on the methods of creating a unified economic plan from V. P. Milutin, Yu. Larin, and L. N. Kritzman. In connection with the discussion of the same issue, a debate was held at the Socialist Academy on February 17, based on a report by V. P. Milutin. On the same day, February 17, Lenin, with the participation of G. M. Krzhizhanovsky and A. I. Rykov, worked on the draft of the main point of the STO resolution on the creation of the general planning commission and a preliminary list of its members. Both these documents (see pp. 13-24) were sent to all members of the Council of Labor and Defense on the evening of February 17.

The protocol and transcript of the STO meeting held on February 18 were not kept, and no official documents from this meeting have survived. Only a few pages from a notebook (published below) have been preserved, on which Lenin recorded individual points of his opponents' arguments and a plan for his concluding remarks. As can be seen from the article "On the Unified Economic Plan," from the notes of Lenin published below, and from a letter to him by I. V. Stalin, who fully shared Vladimir Ilyich's viewpoint (see the collection "Stalin," GIZ, 1929, p. 43), the opponents objected to recognizing the GOELRO plan as the main plan for the restoration of the entire national economy and to Lenin's demand to immediately begin the practical implementation of the GOELRO plan.

On February 18, a decision on the general planning commission was not made, and the question was postponed to an emergency meeting of the STO on February 19.

In the following days, theses by I. N. Milutin (No. 57, February 19, in the article "The Problem of a Unified Economic Plan"), L. N. Kritzman (No. 38, February 20, "On the Economic Plan," an article that continued a series of articles on this topic), and Yu. Larin "Methods of Developing a Unified Economic Plan" (the same publication) appeared in "Economic Life." Finally, on February 22, Lenin's article "On the Unified Economic Plan" was published, in which he criticized the views of the aforementioned comrades (Collected Works, Vol. XXVI, p. 468). Work on the article, which began on February 19, was completed on February 21 (the emergency STO meeting scheduled for that day was canceled). The article appeared in "Pravda" (No. 59) on February 22. On the same day, the SNK approved the "Regulation on the State General Planning Commission" (see the appendix, pp. 2-3) and the list of its members proposed by Lenin.

### NOTES FROM THE MEETING OF THE COUNCIL OF LABOR AND DEFENSE
18 FEBRUARY 1921

#### RECORD OF DEBATES
Larin: "...The matter is not limited to just technology..."
Milutin: "Larin often scares (Milutin, 3; adda] v a [economic] political [Lenin never objected]"
Rykov: "There is no need to rush..." 
"Approve after the congress of electrotechnicians"
Heard that there are mistakes...
Krzhizhanovsky is not only a theoretician but also a practitioner...
...the essence of the matter is obscured...
Osinsky: Need No. 1042...
... "The task was not given to develop a State plan..."
"Not approved, but endorsed..."
I do not rely on Krzhizhanovsky. (Let an economist review it)

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