Published:
First published in 1932 in Lenin Miscellany XX.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1976,
Moscow,
Volume 45,
pages 156b-157a.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
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• README
26/V.1921.
Comrade Khalatov:
I must state with deep regret that there has been no improvement in the running of the Allocation Administration of the People’s Commissariat for Food.
There is the same old chaos of figures.
The raw figures have got hold of you, instead of the other way round.
You have given me a heap of figures, heaps of undigested raw material.
On the same day we have the Muscovites coming and wailing: not the slightest improvement.
I call up Bryukhanov and Svidersky. They bring along Vyshinsky. He gave these figures:
in 8 days (18–25.V) Moscow has received 165 carloads (excluding oats).
165:8==20 5/8. The Muscovites say: we’ve not been getting even 18 regularly.
Furthermore: for five days, 26–31, there will be (says Vyshinsky) 90 of grain+63 of oats. The Muscovites say: we cannot handle more than 1,000 [poods] of oats a day!!!
!!||
This means there is actually a worsening:
26–31.V
as compared with 18–25.VI!!!
!!||
A worsening instead of the improvement you promised:
there were 20 5/8 of grain,
there will be 18 of grain+1(?) of
oats (?).[2]
I repeat my request: non multa sed multum.[1] Fewer figures, but more matter.
Why not take grain alone? Only grain, without the oats. But precisely: how much Moscow is to get a day. Concentrate on that.
[2] At the Central Party Archives there is a note giving information about the actual supply of grain to the Moscow Consumers’ Cooperatives from May 18 to 25, 1921. It contains calculations, apparently made by Lenin during the report by A. Y. Vyshinsky, Chief of the Allocation Administration of the People’s Commissariat for Food, and included in this letter.
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