Appendix C – Lenin’s Last Letters¶
Core Argument¶
In the final months of his active political life, Lenin composed a series of letters and articles in December 1922 and January 1923 that constitute his last will and testament for the Soviet state. These writings grapple with three interconnected crises: the defence of the foreign trade monopoly, the stability of the Central Committee, and the explosive nationalities question. Lenin secured Trotsky’s agreement to defend the monopoly at the plenum, insisting that any further vacillation was impermissible and that abandoning it due to apparatus shortcomings was “throwing out the baby with the bath water.” He proposed expanding Central Committee membership to 50–100 workers from a lower stratum to improve the state apparatus and prevent splits, explicitly warning of the danger posed by the conflict between Stalin and Trotsky. Lenin described Stalin as having “unlimited authority” but lacking sufficient caution, and Trotsky as “the most capable man” but overly self-assured and administrative. He recommended removing Stalin as General Secretary in favour of a more tolerant replacement.
On the State Planning Commission (Gosplan), Lenin reversed his earlier opposition and now supported granting its decisions legislative force, arguing it must be headed by a man with scientific education and decades of practical technical experience, not primarily an administrator. The administrative element should be subsidiary to scientific expertise. On the nationalities question, Lenin declared that the “autonomisation” policy was radically wrong, as the Soviet state apparatus remained a bourgeois and tsarist hotch-potch. The formal right to secede was a dead letter against Great-Russian chauvinism. Stalin’s haste and administrative infatuation, and Dzerzhinsky’s Russified bias, played a fatal role; Ordzhonikidze’s physical violence was inexcusable. Lenin insisted that internationalism requires the oppressor nation to compensate the oppressed for past inequality, not merely formal equality. He proposed retaining the union for military and diplomatic affairs, punishing Ordzhonikidze, holding Stalin and Dzerzhinsky politically responsible, and considering restoring full independence to non-Russian People’s Commissariats in other spheres.
Lenin also proposed transforming Central Committee plenums into supreme party conferences meeting every two months, combined with an enlarged Central Control Commission of 75-100 new worker and peasant members. The Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection would be cut to 300-400 highly screened employees and merged with the CCC, reducing personal and incidental influences on the Central Committee and lowering the risk of a split. Lenin warned that the Republic’s fate depends on preventing the peasantry from being split from the working class by the Nepmen bourgeoisie. He then sent three brief letters: to Trotsky, urging him to defend the Georgian case against Stalin and Dzerzhinsky; to Stalin, demanding an apology for abusing Lenin’s wife or a break in relations; and to Georgian comrades, expressing indignation over Ordzhonikidze’s rudeness and Stalin and Dzerzhinsky’s connivance.