V. I.   Lenin

750

LETTER TO J. V. STALIN FOR THE POLITBUREAU OF THE R.C.P.(B.) C.C. OVER LESLIE URQUHART’S CONCESSION[1] [2]


Dictated: Dictated on September 4, 1922
Published: First published in 1945 in Lenin Miscellany XXXV. Printed from a record made by F. E. Dzerzhinsky.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1976, Moscow, Volume 45, pages 562b-563a.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
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Urquhart should be given a concession only provided we get a big loan.

All members of the Politbureau should acquaint themselves with the report of the Mikhailov Commission, which had gone out for an on-the-spot inspection of the plants to be handed over under concession to Urquhart, and which expressed a negative opinion.

Our enemies hope to see the fixed capital in our transport and industry completely ruined. It is necessary to find the resources to rehabilitate this capital by imposing taxes on all articles of consumption, raising them to the maximum on such articles as sugar and beer.

Bear in mind an internal compulsory loan and an income tax.


Notes

[1] At the top of the document Dzerzhinsky wrote: “V. I.’s directives—4.IX.” and “To Comrade Stalin”, and after the text: -3 “Correct. Dzerzhinsky.” There is also Stalin’s remark: “Comrade Lenin’s opinion.”—Ed.

[2] A reference to the talks on a concession for the working and extraction of minerals to the British industrialist and financier Leslie Urquhart, who had been. Chairman of the Russo-Asiatic Consolidated Company and an owner of large-scale mining enterprises in Russia (Kyshtym, Ridder, Tanalyk, and Ekibastuz) before the October Revolution. See also Notes 705 and 715.


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