A Letter to the Politbureau Members with a Draft Decision for the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) and the Council of Labour and Defence on the Question of Rutgers' Proposals
In my opinion, Rutgers’ proposals cannot be accepted now in their present form. But I should like to try a thing like this: to make him modify the group (Rutgers + Heywood + Calvert). And modify the financial terms, too. We could decide this way:
while rejecting the proposals of Comrade Rutgers in their present form, i.e., the motion of Comrade Bogdanov and the members of the S.E.C. Presidium who voted with him,
the C.C. (and then the C.L.D. in administrative order) expresses an earnest wish that Comrade Rutgers’ group should not regard this refusal as a final one and should revise their proposals on the following lines: α) modification of the group, the main group of sponsors, by adding to it 5-8 prominent representatives of the American labour union movement or other labour organisations; β) reducing our Government’s expenses to the sum of $300,000 maximum; ’) cutting and specifying our expenses in the event of the agreement being cancelled.[1]
Lenin
[1] Lenin’s proposals formed the basis of the Politbureau’s decision of October 15, 1921, concerning the proposals of S. Rutgers, and the Council of Labour and Defence decision of October 17, 1921, “On the Terms of an Agreement with the Rutgers Group”.