119. To L. B. KAMENEV

Written in April, after the 6th, 1921 · First published in 1959 in Lenin Miscellany XXXVI. Printed from the original. · page 118

Comrade Kamenev:

I send this for your information. I have not read it myself.^[1]

NB: We have been too hasty, hasty to no purpose with the law on bonuses in kind in the form of factory products for exchange.^[2] Mark my word: haste is harmful in this matter, and will lead to no good.

All possible delays and limitations of this measure could still and should be put through.

Otherwise, you will be very sorry (and you yourself, above all, because the workers will curse you for the “fraud”).

Yours,
Lenin

Notes

[1] A reference to the letter and draft decree on improving the conditions of workers and employees engaged in transport, industry and the major public enterprises, sent to Lenin by E. V. Luganovsky, head of the S.E.C.’s Construction Department.

[2] On April 7, the C.P.C. passed a decree on bonuses in kind for workers, which said: “To introduce, by way of experiment, bonuses in kind for the workers of some of the most important industries, by issuing to the workers a part of the products they manufacture for exchange for agricultural produce” (Izvestia VTsIK No. 76, April 9, 1921).