V. I. Lenin

To the Society of Friends of Soviet Russia

(In the United States)[1]


Written: 20 October 1922
First Published: Pravda No. 240, October 24, 1922; Published according to the Pravda text
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, page 380
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


October 20, 1922

Dear Comrades,

I have just verified by special inquiry to the Perm Gubernia Executive Committee the extremely favourable information that was published in our newspapers about the work of the members of your Society, headed by Harold Ware, with the tractor team at the Toikino State Farm, Perm Gubernia.

In spite of the immense difficulties, particularly in view of the extreme remoteness of that locality from the centre, and also the devastation caused by Kolehak during the Civil War, you have achieved successes that must be regarded as truly outstanding.

I hasten to express to you my profound gratitude and to ask you to publish this in your Society’s journal, and, if possible, in the general press of the United States.

I am sending a recommendation to the Presidium of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee that it should recognise this state farm as a model farm, and render it special and extraordinary assistance in building and also in supplying petrol, metal, and other materials neces-sary for a repair shop.

Once again on behalf of our Republic I express to you our profound gratitude, and ask you to bear in mind that no form of assistance is as timely and as important for us as that which you are rendering.

Lenin, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars


Endnotes

[1] The Friends of Soviet Russia (in the United States) was founded in June 1921. It had over 200 local organisations, each of which had an Executive Committee or Committee of Action, which was directly linked up with the Society’s National Executive. The National Executive and the Consultative Committee directed all organisational and propaganda work and also concentrated all cash donations into a single fund. The aim of the Society was to help the workers and peasants of Soviet Russia, tell the people of the U.S.A. the truth about Soviet Russia and secure the lifting of the U.S. economic blockade of Russia.

In May 1922, the Society sent to Russia a tractor team, which began working at the Toikino State Farm, Sarapul Uyezd, Perm Gubernia, on July 17. The team did much to raise production at the state farm and to show the peasants the advantages of large-scale farming with machines.

On Lenin’s recommendation, Toikino was recognised as a mod-el farm by the Presidium of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee on November 9, 1922.

Lenin’s letter was translated into English and printed on November 15, 1922 in the magazine Soviet Russia, which was published in New York by Russian workers’ organisations in the U.S.A.