Written: Written on September 26, 1920
Published:
First published: the note—on January 21, 1927, in Pravda No. 17; the markings—in 1942 in Lenin Miscellany XXXIV.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1975,
Moscow,
Volume 44,
pages 437b-438a.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.
Comrade G. M. Krzhizhanovsky
Gleb Maximilianovich,
Please return this to me, after reading pp. 20–21, with a couple of words.
Yours,
Lenin
... Undoubtedly, in the early stages we, as is done nowadays in
ail Europe and America, have to pay
particular attention to the
rational utilisation of the
already existing electro-technical equipment.
|||| N.B.
At the present time,
the accelerated setting
in full motion of our
main
existing power stations,
the combined work of a group of stations,
and the rational use of the electrical networks, may have an
importance which it is difficult to overestimate.
Recently, throughout the provinces, we observe a widespread
tendency towards the construction of new small stations, particularly
in those cases where it is possible to use some kind of water power.
However vital this trend may be, we should not forget that from the
point of view of expediency in the matter of electrification only
big district power stations are
N.B.
a decisive factor....
... At present three-quarters of the work is finished, and in the middle of July we shall start on a final summary for presenting a report on the matter to the Council of People’s Commissars. Only when this work is completely finished, will I be able to give you a more concrete account of what we mean when we speak of the electrification of agriculture, industry and transport in Russia, having in view a definite sequence of works embracing, approximately, the period of the next ten years.
This is where the question arises: up to now, in all five numbers of the Bulletin, we have had only long-term “schemes” and “plans”, but nothing immediate.
What exactly (precisely) is lacking for “accelerating the setting in motion of the existing power stations”?
This is the crux. Yet there is not a word about this.
What is lacking? Workers? Skilled workers? Machinery? Metal? Fuel? Anything else?
A “plan” to obtain everything that is lacking must be drawn up and published at once.
26/IX.
[1] The note to Krzhizhanovsky was written on p. 21 of the Bulletin of the State Commission for the Electrification of Russia, No. 5, 1920.
Krzhizhanovsky returned the Bulletin to Lenin the same day with a note that the last numbers of the Bulletin were to be issued in the very near future “in each of which a plan will be given for small-scale (immediate) and large-scale electrification of the main areas”. = Simultaneously with drawing up the electrification programme, work had also been started on its implementation. In particular, Krzhizhanovsky reported that in the Central Industrial Region fairly good progress was being made in the repair and socialisation of power stations (especially near Moscow). It was necessary now, he wrote, “to link the operation of these stations with the electrification of local agriculture on a wide scale. In this regard, too, I can inform you of something of Immediate practical interest”.
Markings by Lenin occur also on p. 45 of the Bulletin, where he side-lined, underscored and marked “N.B.” the sentence “the consumption of fuel by the railways will be 2 1/2–3 times as much with steam traction as it would be with electric traction”. = ( Collected Works, Fifth Ed., Vol. 51, p. 455.)
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