Letter to L.M. Kaganovich, September 29, 1931

Source: Tom 17

Greetings, Comrade Kaganovich!

I received your letter.

1) Please do not tie the fate of the CC resolution on the NKPS to my return to Moscow. The main thing -- the removal of Rukhimovich and Co. from work at the NKPS -- has already been decided in advance. The rest is inessential, or not so important.

By the way: it would be good to remove Polyudov as well (head of the Belorussian Railway). He is not a worker but a crook, an anti-Party man, a toady, an ignoramus, and a lazybones. He will ruin a railway of the greatest military importance if we do not replace him with another man.

2) I have not read Demyan's poem and have no intention of reading it, since I am sure it is not worth reading. What a character: he meddles in politics, and it is precisely in politics that he flounders most of all. I am sure he could have written something stupid about "Moscow" -- he has enough impudence for it. The editor of Izvestia should be called to account first of all, and secondly Demyan (and Litvinov). Why not indeed call them to account?

Well, that is all for now. Regards!

29/IX-31

I. Stalin

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Source: Stalin and Kaganovich. Correspondence. 1931-1936, p. 122.

RGASPI F. 81. Op. 3. D. 99. L. 40.

NOTE: This concerns a poem by Demyan Bedny expressing bewilderment at the USSR's restrained position on the question of Japanese aggression in Manchuria:

"What next?

Always ready to repulse,

Moscow keeps an enigmatic silence,

And even I in such a time

Am not too generous with words."

On October 5, 1931, the CC Secretariat adopted a decision in which the editor-in-chief of Izvestia, I.M. Gronsky, was told he had made an error by publishing a poem "falsely characterizing the position of the Soviet government in the Manchurian events"; Demyan Bedny was told about "the incorrectness and political erroneousness" of his poem; Litvinov received a reprimand for having given his visa for its publication.