Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

734

To: N. OSINSKY^[1]

Published: First published in 1965 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 54. Printed from a typewritten copy.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1976, Moscow, Volume 45, page 551^b.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.

16–V--22
Secret

Comrade Osinsky:

I think the editor of Selskokhozyaistvennaya Zhiznshould be removed, and Vainstein and Oganovsky placed under special surveillance. Such is my conclusion after reading Selskokhozyaistvennaya Zhizn No. 34 (75). Show this letter in strict secrecy to Comrades Yakovenko and Teodorovich (the latter is especially to blame) and return to me with the addition of information about the editor, A. N. Morosanov (?), and the other two in greater detail. Their record, etc., in more detail. They are probably Right-wing S.R.s to whom you three “have fallen” victim.

What measures are you three taking to prevent a repetition of this?

Lenin

Notes

[1] Written in connection with the following circumstances.

On May 6, 1922, Selskokhozyaistvennaya Zhizn, No. 34 (75), the newspaper of the People’s Commissariat for Agriculture and the Central Committee of the Land and Forest Workers’ Union, carried several articles criticising the decree of the All-Russia C.E.C. and the C.P.C., “On the Consolidated Tax in Kind on Agricultural Produce for 1922/23” dated March 17, 1922. This attitude on the part of the newspaper drew a protest from the People’s Commissariat for Food.

Having discussed on May 11, 1922, the statement by the Secretariat of the R.C.P.(B.) C.C. on the campaign being conducted by the People’s Commissariat for Agriculture for a reduction of the tax in kind, the Politbureau of the R.C.P.(B.) C.C. expressed censure of the collegium of the P.C.A., and instructed the Orgbureau of the R.C.P.(B.) Central Committee to examine the question of the editorial board’s composition and “to take steps to prevent such inadmissible editing of Selskokhozyaistvennaya Zhizn from recurring in the future” (Central Party Archives of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the C.P.S.U. Central Committee).

Selskokhozyaistvennaya Zhizn (Agricultural Life) was published in Moscow from July 18, 1921 to June 1, 1922, a total of 86 issues appearing.