V. I. Lenin

Speech at a Joint Meeting of Representatives of
The All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions, The Central Committee of the Metalworkers’ Union and The Supreme Economic Council. April 11, 1918^{1}

From a Newspaper Report

Published: Izvestia No. 72 April 12, 1918. Printed from the newspaper text.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 42, page 88.2.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup: D. Walters
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) © 2003 Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.  

Comrade Lenin urged the complete nationalisation of all trustified enterprises, with the group of capitalists who sponsored the project being enlisted in the service of the state.

Notes

{1} The joint meeting was held to discuss the project for setting up a trust (“The National Company”) proposed by a group of capitalists headed by A. P. Meshchersky, Managing-Director of the “Sormovo-Kolomna” Industrial Association. The Board of the Supreme Economic Council passed a decision on April 14, 1918, to break off negotiations with Meshchersky; on April 18, the Council of People’s Commissars turned down Meshchersky’s project and decided to carry out the nationalisation of the works. A resolution in favour of nationalisation was passed also by the conference of delegates of the machine-building works held May 12-18, 1918 (see present edition, Vol. 27, pp. 388-89).