Dictated by telephone: 19 November, 1921
First Published: 1945; Lenin Miscelleny XXXV Published according to the stenographers notes
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, pages 138
Translated: David Skvirsky and George Hanna
Transcription\HTML Markup:
David Walters &
R. Cymbala
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
To Zaiutsky, Solts and All Members of the Political Bureau
I would say that the facts published on the Party purge fully bear out the immense success of that measure despite the rather numerous individual mistakes. I think that the decision of the Party Conference should underline both these circumstances. I think no date should be set for a repeat purge, so as not to tie our hands in any way.
I would advise the Party Conference to pass a decision on stricter conditions for admission into the Party: a term of probation of one and a half years for a worker (regarding a person a worker if he worked at least ten years in largescale industry as an ordinary wage-worker and has now been working for not less than two or three years) and three years for everybody else.
These periods may be halved in special cases, when devotion to the Party and communist self-restraint have been proved beyond doubt and when 4/5ths of the membership in the Party bodies deciding the question are satisfied that such is the case.
The same probation period should he established for those who have been expelled from the Party under the present purge if they have not been expelled for a definite period and if they have not been expelled for shameful behavior.
Show my letter to your immediate comrades and if it won’t be any trouble, send me c/o Fotieva, your opinion in brief, even if it only underlines what you agree or disagree with in this letter.
Lenin
December 19, 1921
[1] This letter was written in connection with the drawing up of a resolution on Party purge for the 1th All-Russia Conference of he R.C.P.(B). Lenin was unable to attend the conference because of illness.