V. I.   Lenin

730

LETTER TO J. V. STALIN AND M. I. FRUMKIN AND ASSIGNMENT TO SECRETARY

Written: Written on May 15, 1922
Published: First published in 1959 in Lenin Miscellany XXXVI. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1976, Moscow, Volume 45, pages 549^b-550^a.
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 Archive” as your source. • README

Comrades Stalin and Frumkin:

I think that we should issue an official ban on all talks and conversations and Commissions, etc., on weakening the foreign trade monopoly.

I do not agree with Frumkin that state trade will always be beaten. Throughout the world it is the department stores that beat everyone else. Yet, in what way are they better than state trade?

There is need systematically to go over to bonuses for employees for turnover and profit. Unless this is done the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade (and all of us) will be a flop. Frumkin does not think about this, and that is his fault.

15/V. Lenin

Send this confidentially to Stalin and Frumkin, requesting them to return it with a couple of words of comment. See that it is returned as soon as possible (2–3 days).^[1]

15/V. Lenin

Notes

[1] This letter and also the draft decision of the Politbureau of the R.C.P.(B.) C.C. confirming the foreign trade monopoly (see present edition, Vol. 42, p. 419) were written in connection with Lenin’s receipt on May 15, 1922, of material from N. N. Krestinsky, R.S.F.S.R. Plenipotentiary Representative in Germany,