Letter to G.K. Ordzhonikidze, September 9, 1931

Letter to G.K. Ordzhonikidze, September 9, 1931
Source: Tom 17

9/IX 31. Copy.

Hello, Sergo!

I received your letter. Zina has arrived. I suggested she move to Puzanovka, where there is much more room than at Zenzinovka, but she did not want to and stayed at Zenzinovka.

At last the Politburo has reversed its decisions on the additional import of steel. This is very good. It is time to understand that we are facing a financial and foreign-currency storm being organized by the USA against us, and against which we, Bolsheviks, are obliged to take the most severe measures. Must we find ourselves bankrupt in a year or two and thereby wreck all our economic plans, or must we prevent bankruptcy -- that is the question the Politburo was deciding when it cancelled the additional steel imports. Now, at last, one can hope that the Bolsheviks (Bol-she-viks!) will attempt (at-tempt!) to take the first (first!) step toward fulfilling the repeated decisions of the Party congresses and the Party CC on the ac-cu-mu-la-tion of foreign-currency reserves.

It is also clear that we, members of the CC in particular, must not and cannot deceive one another. It is needless to argue that the proposal for additional steel imports and so on -- without a direct and honest raising of the question of rescinding the July decision of the Politburo -- was an attempt to hoodwink the CC (Kaganovich, Rudzutak, and so on). It is easy enough for the Pyatakovs to take such a non-Bolshevik path, since Bolshevik law is not binding on them. Bolsheviks cannot take such a path -- not, at any rate, if they do not wish to turn our Bolshevik Party into a conglomerate of departmental cliques. The Politburo has brought clarity here as well.

You say: give us a way out, tell us where to get steel, wagon axles and wheels, and so on. I think that we will never find a way out and will never have a sufficient quantity of steel, axles, wheels, and the like unless we reduce the import of these items to a minimum right now, unless we organize the production of these items here at home right now, unless we put pressure on our own economic apparatus right now and compel it to carry out the CC's repeated decisions on organizing large-scale steel production at our own plants. Why is the reconstruction of the Urals steel plants proceeding with disgraceful sloppiness? Why are the military plants not being used to the full for the production of high-grade steels? Because the economic apparatus hopes for the stupidity and muddle-headedness of the CC; the economic apparatus hopes that the CC will consent to additional imports. The task is to liquidate this hope in the stupidity of the CC. Which is better: to squeeze the state foreign-currency fund, protecting the comfort of the economic apparatus, or to squeeze the economic apparatus, protecting the interests of the state? I think the latter is better than the former.

Well, that is all for now. Do not scold me for my bluntness and perhaps excessive directness. Then again, you may scold as much as you please.

Yours,
I. Stalin

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Source: Stalin and Kaganovich. Correspondence. 1931-1936, p. 711.
RGASPI F. 81. Op. 3. D. 99. L. 27-28.

NOTE: The letter was prompted by an improper Politburo decision to expand the import of metal. See also: Letter to L.M. Kaganovich, Ya.E. Rudzutak, and G.K. Ordzhonikidze of September 6, 1931.