V. I.   Lenin

Memo to V. M. Molotov for the Politbureau of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) with Draft Decisions


Published: First published in 1959 in Lenin Miscellany XXXVI. Printed from the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 42, pages 386b-387a.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala and D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2003). 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.
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To Comrade Molotov for the Politbureau

In view of the utter inadequacy (or reticence?) of the report in Pravda on 3.1.1922 concerning the suicide of Oldenborger and the investigations into this case

I propose the following decision for the Politbureau:

1) that the Moscow Soviet be asked to apply to the Presidium of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee in order to have all those persons mentioned in the commission’s findings brought to trial;

2) that the Presidium of the A.C.E.C. be asked to grant this request immediately and

3) —to give this wide publicity in the whole Soviet press;

4) that the People’s Commissariat for Justice be directed (under the personal responsibility of Comrade Kursky and an appointed public prosecutor) to handle this case skilfully, impressively and with special care;

5) that the Orgbureau be directed to set up a special Party Court to try the whole communist group of the Water- works. (Some to be expelled from the Party for good or for a time, some to be severely reprimanded, depending on the measure of their guilt.) The trial to be held in an impressive public manner.

+ 6) that Izvestia and Pravda be instructed to highlight this outrageous affair in a number of strong articles.

4.1.1922

Lenin

Another draft resolution:

All cases of the murder of engineers (and specialists) at Soviet enterprises shall be reported to the Politbureau together with the results of the investigations ((the Supreme Economic Council, the A.C.C.T.U., etc., through the C.L.D.)).[1]

P.S. This is scandalous: we should ring the tocsin.


Notes

[1] Lenin’s draft decisions were adopted by the Politbureau at its meeting on January 5, 1922.

The Oldenborger suicide case was examined by the Supreme Tribunal of the All-Russia C.E.C. on March 8-14, 1922, and the guilty parties were sentenced to various punishments.


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