Letter to L.M. Kaganovich, September 12, 1931

Source: Tom 17

Greetings, Comrade Kaganovich!

I received your letter.

1) Your arguments, intended to justify the Politburo decision on steel imports, do not withstand criticism. The issue is not about calculating in monetary terms the "debt" of the state to the VSNKh officials, but rather that instead of the calculation in tons (adopted by the Politburo), they foisted upon you a calculation in monetary terms and... confused the so-called Currency Commission, the so-called Commissariat of Foreign Trade, and so on. From this whole affair with imports, at least two conclusions inevitably follow: 1) the Currency Commission is manure, not a state institution, and Rudzutak is a worthy chairman of this manure; 2) the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade does not defend the interests of the state -- it is as useful as a billy goat's milk -- and, in general, it is rotting from the root.

2) I am sending you a clipping from Izvestia about the criminally disgraceful treatment of imported metal by our economic agencies. VSNKh is trying to rob the state foreign-currency fund through metal imports, while the metal already imported for the Chelyabinsk Construction Project turns out to be ownerless, as a result of which it is being squandered and sold off practically at auction. Criminals and scoundrels! I propose: a) to bring the Izvestia article before the Politburo for discussion; b) to oblige Pravda (which is now writing all sorts of rubbish) to investigate the matter and write an editorial about the hooligan attitude of "Communists" toward the state's imported property; c) to bring the guilty to trial without fail and punish them.

3) The American writer Sinclair has, it turns out, sent a letter to Khalatov and then to Kalinin, in which he requests support for some enterprise begun by Sinclair and Eisenstein (the well-known "our" film director who fled from the USSR, a Trotskyist, if not worse). Apparently Eisenstein wants to swindle us through Sinclair. The whole affair is dishonest. I propose: a) to postpone the question until my arrival; b) to instruct Khalatov and Kalinin not to reply to Sinclair until the question is decided as a whole by the CC.

Regards.

I. Stalin.

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Source: Stalin and Kaganovich. Correspondence. 1931-1936, pp. 100-101.

RGASPI F. 81. Op. 3. D. 100. L. 112-113.

NOTE: In the summer of 1929, S. Eisenstein went abroad to the USA, and then to Mexico, where he was filming "Viva, Mexico!" with money from the American writer Upton Sinclair and his wife. Having significantly overrun Sinclair's financial resources, Eisenstein nevertheless did not complete the film and was not thinking about returning to the USSR. The American writer, unable to continue financing the enterprise and proceeding from the fact that S. Eisenstein was a well-known Soviet director, appealed to the Soviet leadership with a request to partially reimburse his costs ($25,000) so as to continue filming. For Soyuzkino and the government, under the most stringent regime of currency economy imposed by the country's forced industrialization, Sinclair's letter was a genuine surprise. In light of the complete uncertainty surrounding the director's further creative plans, not to mention doubt about his very return to the homeland, the Soviet government did not find it possible to assume the current and subsequent hard-currency costs for his film. Stalin wrote about this unambiguously in his telegram to Sinclair on November 21, 1931 (see the present volume). After disputes with Eisenstein, Sinclair denied him further assistance and kept the Mexican materials for himself. The director had no choice but to return to the USSR. Soon afterward he was the only film director elected to the First Congress of Writers, spoke at high-level conferences, and published extensively. See also: Letter to L.M. Kaganovich of June 4, 1932.