Written: 22 November 1922
First Published: Izvestia No. 267, November 25, 1922; Published according to a typewritten copy checked and signed by Lenin
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, page 444
Translated: David Skvirsky and George Hanna
Transcription\HTML Markup:
David Walters &
R. Cymbala
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
November 22, 1922
Dear Comrades,
The primary, immediate task of the present day, and of the next few years, is systematically to reduce the size and the cost of the Soviet machinery of state by cutting down staffs, improving organisation, eliminating red tape and bureaucracy, and by reducing unproductive expenditure. In this field your union has a great deal of work before it.
Wishing the Fifth All-Russia Congress of the Soviet Employees’ Union success and fruitful work, I hope that it will especially deal with the question of the Soviet machinery of state.
V. Ulyanov (Lenin),
Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars
[1] The Fifth All-Russia Congress of the Soviet Employees' Union was held in Moscow on November 16-21, 1922. Lenin was elected an honorary delegate to the congress by the Sixth Tver Gubernia Congress of the Soviet Employees' Union. Electing Lenin its honorary chairman, the Fifth All-Russia Congress sent him a message of greetings.