Letter to V.M. Molotov, September 13, 1930 (second letter)

Source: Tom 17

Vyacheslav!

I am writing in addition to today's letter.

1) It seems to me that in the case of Ryutin, we will not be able to limit ourselves to expulsion. After some time has passed following the expulsion, he will have to be exiled somewhere far from Moscow. This counter-revolutionary scum must be fully disarmed.

2) I spoke with Ganshin. I think it is absolutely necessary for the Politburo to take up the question of petroleum in September, from the angle of increasing the number of cracking units for gasoline production. Without this, we will be stuck. To postpone it until October means to be too late.

3) For God's sake, rein in the press with its mouse-like squealing about "total breakdowns," "endless failures," "disruptions," and similar nonsense. This is a hysterical Trotskyist-Right-deviationist tone, not justified by the data and unbecoming of Bolsheviks. Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn, Pravda, Za Industrializatsiyu, and partly Izvestiya are behaving with particular shrillness. They squeal about a "decline" in tempos, about an outflow of workers, but they do not explain what is really going on. Indeed, where did this "sudden" outflow of workers to the countryside come from, this "catastrophic" labor turnover -- how is it to be explained? Could it be poor food supply? But was the supply not worse last year than this year? Why was there no such turnover, no such outflow then? Is it not obvious that the workers went to the countryside to collect the harvest, went so that the collective farms would not shortchange them in the distribution of the harvest, went to work a month or two at the collective farm in full view of everyone and thereby secure for themselves the right to their full collective-farm share? Why does nobody write about this and instead limit themselves to panicky squealing? Incidentally, the CC "Appeal" also missed this point.

Well, that is all for now. Warm regards.

13/IX-30.

I. Stalin.

Source: Letters of I.V. Stalin to V.M. Molotov. 1925-1936. Pp. 218-219.

RGASPI. F. 558. Op. 1. D. 5388.