Letter to L.M. Kaganovich, September 9, 1931

Source: Tom 17

Greetings, Comrade Kaganovich!

1) I am sending you a copy of my letter to Sergo about steel imports and everything connected with this matter. Sergo does not know that a copy has been sent to you -- I did not inform him of this, out of consideration for his pride (you know that he is foolishly proud). But you should know about this letter, which is of some interest from the standpoint of the CC and its economic policy.

2) You have probably already received a copy of my telegram to Tiflis about Transcaucasian affairs. I am sending you certain documents that served as the basis for my telegram to Tiflis. I believe that Polonskii committed a major tactless blunder by attacking the Transcaucasian Regional Committee and Yakovlev. This tactlessness needs to be rectified.

3) The resolution of the Supreme Council of the National Economy on ferrous metallurgy that has been published in the press makes a strange impression. An equally strange impression is made by the declaration in the Pravda editorial that the Supreme Council's resolution has been approved by the CC. An equally strange impression is made by the resolution of the People's Commissariat of Supply on livestock procurement, also approved by the CC. What was the purpose of this innovation? Why is all of this being approved by the CC rather than by the Council of People's Commissars? Why are they bypassing and ignoring the Council of People's Commissars? Why do they want to make the CC a participant in this wholly unjustified disregard? Moreover, what kind of approach is this -- turning the Politburo into a rubber-stamping body for the resolutions of the Supreme Council, the People's Commissariat of Supply, the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, and so on? Can these attempts to transform the CC from a directing body into an auxiliary body serving the needs of individual commissariats not be stopped?

Well, that is all for now. I shake your hand.

September 9, 1931.

I. Stalin

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Source: Stalin and Kaganovich: Correspondence, 1931-1936, pp. 92-93.

RGASPI. F. 81. Op. 3. D. 99. L. 25-26.