Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

735

LETTER TO A. V. LUNACHARSKY AND ASSIGNMENT TO V. A. SMOLYANINOV^[1]

Published: Letter to A. V. Lunacharsky first published in 1945 in Lenin Miscellany XXXV. Assignment to V. A. Smolyaninov first published in 1965 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 54. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1976, Moscow, Volume 45, page 552^a.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
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17.V.1922

People’s Commissar for Education

I have received some information showing that the high price of books, considering our “enthusiasms” and the exaggerations of NEP, is depriving the people of useful books.

I should think it is necessary to lay down some kind of rule or pass a law on roughly these lines: specified amounts should be apportioned from local taxes to be paid to a centre for a fund to cover the cost of several thousand books (say, Skvortsov, Electrification, etc.) for distribution to all uyezd libraries.

Please discuss this and let me know your opinion.^[3]

V. Ulyanov (Lenin)
Chairman, C.P.C.

To Comrade Smolyaninov for Comrades Lunacharsky, Pokrovsky, Rykov and Tsyurupa.^[2]

Notes

[1] Over the text Lenin wrote: “See to the reply.”—Ed. —Lenin

[2] A copy of the letter was also sent to G. Y. Sokolnikov, Deputy People’s Commissar for Finance.—Ed.

[3] The question of reducing the price of literature was discussed by the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.) and Soviet government bodies.

The Agitation and Propaganda Department of the Central Committee worked out the following proposals: transfer to the major publishers (Gosizdat, Glavpolitprosvet, etc.) the necessary minimum of printing shops, lift the taxes on foreign paper for political publications, and grant a subsidy to Gosizdat, Glavpolitprosvet and the newspapers to lower the cost of political publications, which they were to expend under special C.C. control. Having examined these proposals on May 12, 1922, the C.C. Secretariat added to them a point about a rebate on the wholesale price of literature for Party organisations, and referred them to the Politbureau for approval as directives to the Soviet government organs concerned.