Source: Tom 18

To Comrade Beria

Comrade Beria!

Comrade Zverev reports that individual people's commissariats are unlawfully increasing the wages and salaries of their workers. This leads to a breach of state discipline in the matter of wage regulation and to unjustified expenditures of state funds.

I propose:

1. To strictly prohibit all people's commissariats and departments from increasing established wage rates without the authorization of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. 2. To bring to personal responsibility the heads of people's commissariats and departments who have violated the established procedures for wage regulation.

I. Stalin

September 12, 1946