Letter to V.I. Lenin, November 13, 1922

Source: Tom 17

Top Secret.

Copy to Comrade Kamenev.

Comrade Lenin!

I consider it necessary to communicate to you certain data on two questions:

1) Today Comrade Kamenev informed me (by telephone) about the necessity of approving a contract with French merchants for the organization of a mixed company for the sale of our platinum. Under this contract, we are to provide no less than 60 poods of platinum for sale abroad to this company, while we ourselves forgo selling our platinum on the foreign market. Since this draft contract contains no elements of a "mixed" arrangement whatsoever (the platinum is entirely ours; the French have no platinum; they are simply commission agents for the sale of platinum; moreover, it must be assumed that, since platinum is practically a monopoly commodity, the French will try to sell a minimum of platinum in order to oblige American platinum sellers and give them the opportunity to sell American platinum at triple the price); since, on the contrary, the entire contract constitutes an outright mockery of Russia -- I proposed to Comrade Kamenev that he summon all supporters of the contract and discuss it with them on its merits, advising him to annul the "mixed company" contract and offer the French a certain percentage of the total platinum sales revenue as a commission. I think this question, which is being vigorously pushed by Sverdlov (a more than unreliable person), deserves attention.

2) I have received a number of statements from practitioners of the Moscow Party organization and from members of the Russian faction of the Comintern Congress about a certain awkwardness created by your interview with the correspondent of the Observer about left and right communists. The statements indicate that Comrade Lenin's interview legitimizes the existence of left communism (perhaps the Workers' Opposition) as a party-sanctioned phenomenon. The practitioners consider that now, when left communism in all its forms (including the Workers' Opposition) has been liquidated, it is dangerous and inexpedient to speak of left communism as a lawful phenomenon capable of competing with officially sanctioned Party communism, the more so since at the Eleventh Congress we established the complete unity of our Party, and the period following the Eleventh Congress speaks of the further strengthening of the Party in terms of its unity and cohesion. I think that while diplomatically the emphasis on the existence of left communism may perhaps be useful, in Party terms this emphasis leads to certain negative consequences to the detriment of the Party and to the benefit of the Workers' Opposition, creating confusion and ambiguity. It would be good in the future to correct this deficiency.

November 13, 1922.

I. Stalin.

Source: Bolshevik Leadership. Correspondence. 1912-1927, pp. 267-268.

RGASPI. F. 5. Op. 2. D. 272. L. 1.

NOTE

The Sverdlov mentioned in the document is apparently V.M. Sverdlov, a member of the RSDLP in 1902-1909, and in the 1920s deputy people's commissar of communications.