Letter to L.M. Kaganovich, 26 July 1932

Source: Tom 17

Greetings, Comrade Kaganovich!

I received your letter of 24/VII.

1) If ships can be purchased with payment no earlier than 1934, then I have no objection to purchasing the ships.

2) In my letter I spoke not of purchasing non-ferrous metals, but of equipment for the production of non-ferrous metals. This, as is well known, is not the same thing. I think that in the control figures for 1933, the production of non-ferrous metals will occupy one of the first places. This is what I had in mind when speaking about equipment for non-ferrous metals.

3) I think it would be more expedient to combine in one law the question of protecting collective farm and cooperative property, as well as railway freight, with the question of protecting the collective farms themselves, i.e., of combating those elements who use violence and threats or preach the use of violence and threats against collective farmers in order to force the latter to leave the collective farm, in order to forcibly destroy the collective farm. The law could be divided into three sections, of which the first section would deal with railway and waterway freight with the corresponding penalties, the second section would deal with collective farm and cooperative property (ownership) with the corresponding penalties, and the third section would deal with protecting the collective farms themselves from violence and threats by kulak and other anti-social elements, indicating that offenses in such cases, i.e., in the latter cases, will be punished by 5 to 10 years' imprisonment followed by confinement in a concentration camp for a term of 3 years, without the right of amnesty. I think that in all these three areas one must act on the basis of the law ("the muzhik loves legality"), and not merely on the basis of OGPU practice -- while, of course, the role of the OGPU will not only not be diminished but, on the contrary, will be strengthened and "ennobled" (the organs of the OGPU will operate "on a legal basis," not "arbitrarily").

As for the struggle against profiteers and resellers, both in markets and bazaars and in the countryside, here a special law is needed (and here too it will be better to operate under the law), which, citing the previous law on collective farm trade that speaks of eradicating profiteers and speculators, would prescribe that OGPU organs exile profiteers and resellers to concentration camps for a term of 5-8 years without the right of amnesty.

Is that clear?

It is in this spirit that my proposals set forth in previous letters should be amended.

4) Outrageous things are happening with the supply of metal to the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, AMO, and the Automobile Plant. It is a disgrace that the windbags at the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry have still not managed to organize the supply. The CC should immediately take under its continuous control the plants supplying steel to STZ, AMO, and the Automobile Plant ("Krasny Oktyabr," etc.) and liquidate this breach. It is time to begin holding the management of the plants responsible for supplying steel to the automobile and tractor enterprises. If Ordzhonikidze makes a fuss, he will have to be branded as a rotten routinist, supporting the worst traditions of the right deviationists in the Commissariat.

5) I am sending you Kavtaradze's letter. I think you should summon him and help him.

Greetings!

I. Stalin

26/VII

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Source: Stalin and Kaganovich. Correspondence. 1931-1936, pp. 245-246.

RGASPI. F. 81. Op. 3. D. 100. L. 1-7.

NOTE: Stalin's proposals were implemented in the well-known law of 7 August 1932 "On the Protection of the Property of State Enterprises, Collective Farms, and Cooperatives, and the Strengthening of Public (Socialist) Property."