Delivered: 3 December, 1918
First Published: 1931; Published
according to the manuscript; Published according to the
manuscript
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th English
Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 Volume 28, page 327
Translated: Jim Riordan
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters & Robert
Cymbala
Online Version: Lenin Internet
Archive May, 2002
On the question of using State Control for keeping check on work and improving defence capacity, the majority on the commission have voted for lightning control, that is, dispatch of groups or commissions with wide powers to check on various institutions.
We must have concrete, factual, numerical data on the forces at our disposal (Party members first, then non-Party, but absolutely honest men) for exercising genuine control. We must know the number of specialists in the various branches; the number of those experienced in administration and management.
Tasks of control are of two kinds:
the very simple task of checking on warehouses, goods, etc.;
the more difficult one of checking on the efficiency of the work; combating sabotage, completely exposing it; checking on the way the work is being organised; ensuring the greatest efficiency of work, and so on.
No. I task is to improve work in the Food and Communications Commissariats.
[1] This draft decision was submitted by Lenin on December 3, 1918, at a sitting of the commission set up by the Council of Defence (see Note 151) for the purpose of regulating the work of Soviet bodies and enhancing the country’s defence capacity. The commission’s decision on the question was based on Lenin’s draft.