273. To LYDIA FOTIEVA[1]
1
Decrees cannot be bypassed: the mere proposal invites prosecution.
An exception, though, can be put through the Central Executive Committee, and I advise doing this.
2
One must know the law: I do not remember through whom exceptions go.
Notes
[1] Lydia Fotieva, secretary of the C.P.C., asked Lenin to take on for work in the C.P.C. Secretariat a woman recommended by the Staff Bureau of the C.P.C.’s Managing Department. V. D. Bonch-Bruyevich, head of the C.P.C.’s Managing Department, objected to the appointment on the grounds that it contravened the decree forbidding relatives to work together in the same Soviet institutions (the candidate had a sister working in the C.P.C.). Fotieva wrote to Lenin that the woman recommended “is a very valuable worker and it would be in our interests to take her on.... Could not the decree be bypassed?”