Dictated: Dictated by phone
Published:
Printed from a typewritten copy.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1976,
Moscow,
Volume 45,
pages 601b-602a.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
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• README
Comrade Trotsky
Copy to Frumkin and Stomonyakov
Comrade Trotsky:
I have received your comments on Krestinsky’s letter and Avanesov’s plans.[2] I think that you and I are in maximum agreement, and I believe that the State Planning Commission question, as presented in this case, rules out (or postpones) any discussion on whether the State Planning Commission needs to have any administrative rights.[3]
At any rate, it is my request that at the forthcoming plenum you should undertake the defence of our common standpoint on the unquestionable need to maintain and consolidate the foreign trade monopoly. Since the preceding plenum passed a decision in this respect which runs entirely counter to the foreign trade monopoly, and since there can be no concessions on this matter, I believe, as I say in my letter to Frumkin and Stomonyakov,[1] that in the event of our defeat on this question we must refer the question to a Party Congress. This will require a brief exposition of our differences before the Party group of the forthcoming Congress of Soviets.[4] If I have time, I shall write this, and I would be very glad if you did the same. Hesitation on this question is doing us unprecedented harm, and the negative arguments boil down entirely to accusations of shortcomings in the apparatus. But our apparatus is everywhere imperfect, and to abandon the monopoly because of an imperfect apparatus would be throwing out the baby with the bath water.
13/XII–22
[1] The letter has not been found.—Ed.
[2] A reference to L. D. Trotsky’s letter of December 12, 1922.
By “Avanesov’s plans” Lenin means the “Proposals of the C.P.C. Commission of Inquiry into the Work of R.S.F.S.R. Missions Abroad on the Question of the Slate Monopoly of Foreign Trade”.
Its main conclusion was that the foreign trade monopoly must not be abolished for both economic and political reasons, “either fully or even in part” (Central Party Archives of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the C.P.S.U. Central Committee).
[3] In his letter, L. D. Trotsky wrote that there was need for a flexible regulation of foreign trade, adapted to overall economic requirements, and said he believed it was the State Planning Commission’s job to do this.
[4] A reference to the Tenth All-Russia Congress of Soviets.
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