Letter to L.M. Kaganovich, August 30, 1931

Source: Tom 17

Comrade Kaganovich!

I received your letter of August 26.

1) Why have you communicated nothing about the Polish draft pact (on non-aggression) transmitted by Patek to Litvinov? This matter is extremely important, virtually decisive (for the next two to three years) for the question of peace, and I fear that Litvinov, yielding to the pressure of so-called "public opinion," will reduce it to nothing. Give this matter serious attention; let the Politburo take it under special observation and endeavor to bring it to a conclusion by all permissible means. It would be laughable if we succumbed in this matter to the prevailing philistine "anti-Polonism," forgetting even for a moment the fundamental interests of the revolution and socialist construction.

2) How do matters stand with Mezhlauk and orders in France? Why has the matter stalled there? Why are all orders being directed to Germany and England, while no one wants to give orders to the French?

3) You have apparently yielded to pressure from the Supreme Council of the National Economy regarding cast-iron pipes, all the more so since the municipal authorities are also pressing and demanding imports. Both you and the Supreme Council are wrong, because: (a) in the CC directive on the control figures for 1932, the import figure for metal in 1931 is strictly defined, and regarding 1932 it is stated that the import figure must be less than that for 1931 -- yet the Supreme Council wants to overturn this CC decision, and you are going along with the Supreme Council; (b) arguments that payment will not have to be made this year are unconvincing, since in 1932 and 1933 our position in terms of foreign currency will be more difficult than this year (the efforts of the United States are directed at depleting our currency reserves and undermining our foreign currency position to its very foundations, and the United States is now the chief force in the financial world and our chief enemy) -- therefore, foreign currency must be conserved not only for 1931 but also for future years; (c) instead of putting pressure on its own apparatus and compelling it to smelt more pig iron, the Supreme Council is putting pressure on the state treasury (that is, on the state, that is, on the working class), forcing the working class to pay with its own foreign currency resources for the incompetence, inertia, and bureaucratism of the Supreme Council apparatus.

That is how matters stand, Comrade Kaganovich.

4) This is precisely why I believe that no concessions should be made to persons (or institutions) attempting to squander the foreign currency resources of the working class for the sake of the comfort of their own apparatus personnel.

5) The targets for drafting the second five-year plan can be formalized through the Politburo, if Gosplan or the Council of People's Commissars requires this.

6) Concessions to those who want to transport petroleum by sea would constitute a demobilization of the entire transport apparatus. Such a concession cannot be made at this time.

7) Let the Politburo and the CC Secretariat take under special and systematic observation both the People's Commissariat of Water Transport and the People's Commissariat of Transportation and compel them to work. Both commissars are captives of their own apparatus, especially Rukhimovich, whose bureaucratic self-importance is the reverse side of his backwardness and inertia when it comes to a Bolshevik approach to the work at the People's Commissariat of Transportation.

8) No law of the Central Executive Committee on the premature restoration of rights of individual former kulaks is needed. I knew it -- through this mousehole, the donkeys among the philistines and petty bourgeois would inevitably try to squeeze through. Please defer the question until the autumn.

9) I have read Bukharin's speech (the stenographic record). It is an empty, lifeless, un-Bolshevik speech. It is at the same time an inept, amateurish attempt to provide a "framework" for a platform of the former Rightists against the CC VKP on a number of economic questions and workers' supply. What a strange man this Comrade Bukharin is! Why did he need to stage this farce?

I think that the CC placed Bukharin at the head of the technical propaganda department of the Supreme Council of the National Economy not so that he might deliver speeches about technical propaganda, about the necessity of technical propaganda, but so that he might organize living and concrete technical propaganda. If he cannot fulfill this task, someone else will have to be found.

If Bukharin asks, or if the situation requires it, you may communicate this opinion of mine to Bukharin.

Well, that is enough.

I. Stalin

August 30, Sochi.

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P.S.

6) The Politburo decision on the awarding of the Order of Lenin to various persons makes a poor impression. Orders are being given out too easily. If this continues, the Order will be cheapened, and its bestowal will be stripped of all moral force. This must not be allowed under any circumstances! Tell Postyshev not to yield to pressure from grandee-bureaucrats seeking orders for their crony-bureaucrats.

7) I have not read the resolutions on wages for the metal and coal sectors. Tell Postyshev that I vote for them on trust.

I. St.

P.P.S.

Comrade Kaganovich!

1) Please wait with the new appointments for Rukhimovich, Kviring, and other People's Commissariat of Transportation officials until my arrival.

Does it not seem to you that Postnikov, Rukhimovich's closest friend and fellow bureaucrat, should also be removed -- or rather, transferred to one of the railways (say, the Moscow-Belorussian-Baltic Railway, in place of Polyudov)?

2) Sheboldaev came to see me and asked me to give him five workers from outside (the local workers, that is, the old North Caucasus officials, have settled in there and are no longer any good). I think his request should be satisfied. Kviring could be given to him for the regional planning commission, for example.

I. St.

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Source: Stalin and Kaganovich: Correspondence, 1931-1936, pp. 71-72.

RGASPI. F. 81. Op. 3. D. 99. L. 12-14.

Note: On August 23, 1931, the Polish envoy to the USSR Patek handed the deputy people's commissar of foreign affairs of the USSR Karakhan a draft non-aggression pact. The leadership of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs was skeptical about the prospects of concluding such a treaty. After the Polish Telegraph Agency reported this, on August 27 and 28 TASS reports were published in the Soviet press denying the fact that negotiations had been renewed. An analogous statement was made on August 28 by Litvinov, who was in Berlin. On August 30, after receiving Stalin's letter, the Politburo acknowledged these statements to be erroneous. Stalin returned to this question repeatedly (see: Letter to L.M. Kaganovich and Ya.E. Rudzutak, September 5, and Letter to L.M. Kaganovich, September 7). The Politburo took the question under its supervision. After lengthy negotiations, the non-aggression treaty between the USSR and Poland was signed on July 25, 1932.