Written: Written on August 17, 1921
Published:
First published in 1933 in Lenin Miscellany XXIII.
Printed from a typewritten copy.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1976,
Moscow,
Volume 45,
page 257b.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
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
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• README
I have read your draft decree on salt. I am surprised by the great number of points which, in my opinion, are already to be found in the legislation in force, which are an unnecessary repetition, and which do not come within the competence of the C.L.D. Unless I am mistaken, the only new and practically useful point is the prohibition of bonuses in salt. I think the draft needs to be carefully collated with the laws of the People’s Commissariat for Justice which are in force, and rewritten. I would advise that the prohibition to issue bonuses in salt should be passed through the C.L.D. as a separate decision right away.[1] What in my opinion is the main thing is not to be found in the draft at all, namely, a number of immediate practical measures for the stricter guarding of salt, in the hands of the state, and for a maximum reduction of all manner of issues of salt to industrial and office workers, urban residents and all the population in general. This last measure must be put through, at least for the current autumn and the early winter, in the harshest proportions, as otherwise we shall not get any grain from the peasants in exchange for salt.
[1] In addition and amendment of the decree of May 31, 1921, on the state monopoly for salt, the C.P.C. adopted a decision on August 23, 1921, setting out practical measures to ensure the salt monopoly and the balanced distribution of salt in the national economy. The decision was published in Izvestia VTsIK No. 194, September 2, 1921.
The All-Russia C.E.C. and C.L.D. decision prohibiting bonuses in salt, and laying down penalties for breaches of the salt monopoly, was approved on August 29, 1921, and published in Izvestia VTsIK No. 194, September 2, 1921.
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