Letter to L.M. Kaganovich, 17 August 1932

Source: Tom 17

Greetings, Comrade Kaganovich!

1. I am sending you Comrade Sheboldaev's memorandum. It seems to me that Comrade Sheboldaev is right, and his practical proposals should be accepted. And the sooner this is done, the better.

2. I have thought over Comrade Yakovlev's proposal on crop rotation throughout the USSR (he made it in conversation with me in Sochi) and have concluded that the proposal should be accepted. Inform Yakovlev of this.

3. Pravda is behaving stupidly and with bureaucratic blindness by not launching a broad campaign on the implementation of the law on the protection of public property. The campaign must begin immediately. It is necessary to: a) explain the meaning of the law point by point; b) criticize and expose those oblast, city, and district organizations (as well as village ones) that are trying to shelve the law and prevent its actual implementation; c) pillory those judges and prosecutors who show liberalism toward plunderers of freight, the collective farm harvest, collective farm reserves, cooperative property, state enterprise property, etc.; d) publish court sentences on such cases in a prominent place; e) correspondingly mobilize one's correspondents, instruct them, and publish their dispatches; f) praise and encourage those organizations that are conscientiously trying to implement the law, etc., etc. This campaign must be systematic and sustained. One must keep hammering systematically at the same point in order to compel our officials to turn "face toward the law" on the protection of public property.

4. For certain reasons, I have had to postpone my departure for Moscow by several days. I will communicate the reasons orally upon my arrival in Moscow.

Greetings. 17/VIII-32. I. Stalin

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Source: Stalin and Kaganovich. Correspondence. 1931-1936, pp. 285-286.

RGASPI. F. 81. Op. 3. D. 99. L. 157-160.

NOTE: From 20 August 1932, Pravda regularly published extensive compilations of materials under headings such as "Public Property Is Sacred and Inviolable," "Plunderers of Socialist Property -- Enemies of the People -- Must Be Held to Severe Account!" and so on.