Written: Written December 1, 1921
Published:
First published in 1959 in the Fifth Russian Edition of the Collected Works, Vol. 44.
Printed from the manuscript.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Second Printing,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 42,
pages 366b-367a.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup:
D. Walters
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2003).
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.
• README
1st: jurisdiction to be narrowed
2nd: right to arrest still narrower
3rd: term < 1 month
4th: more weight to courts or only through the courts
5th: name
6th: pass > radical relaxations[1] through the All-Russia Central Executive Committee.
[1] In view of the country’s transition to peaceful economic construetion, Lenin proposed the reorganisation of thd Vecheka. On December 1, 1921, the Politbureau set up a commission consisting of L. B. Kamenev, D. I. Kursky and F. E. Dzerzhinsky to go into this question within five days with a view to: “a) narrowing the jurisdiction of the Vecheka; b) narrowing its right of arrest; c) fixing a term of one month for the whole process of the law; d) giving more weight to the courts of law; e) considering the question of a change of name; I) preparing and passing through the All-Russia C.E.C. general regulations covering changes in the direction of radical relaxations” (Central Party Archives of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC. of the C.P.S.U.).
Lenin’s ideas were embodied also in the Resolution on the Vecheka passed by the Ninth All-Russia Congress of Soviets on December 27, 1921. The congress directed the Presidium of the All-Russia C. E. C. “to revise the Regulations on the Vecheka and its agencies in the direction of its reorganisation, the iiarrowing of its jurisdiction and the strengthening of the principles of revolutionary legality” (The Ninth All-Russia Congress 0/ Soviets. Verbatim. Report, 1922, p. 300). On January 23, 1922, the Politbureau examined the question of reorganising the Vecheka into the State Political Administration (Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravleniye- G. P. U.) under the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs and defined the basic tasks and functions of the G.P.U. On February 6 the Presidium of the All-Russia C.E.C. passed a decision for the reorganisation of the Vecheka (see Izvestia No. 30, February 8, 1922).
Point 3 of Lenin’s draft refers to the period in which the reorganisation was to be carried out.
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