Lenin: Stop the nervousness and fuss

[Louis N Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The point, however, is that we must put a stop to the nervousness and
fuss that have arisen with the introduction of the NEP--the desire to do
everything in a new way and to adapt everything. We now have a
number of mixed companies. True, we have only very few. There are
nine companies formed in conjunction with foreign capitalists and
sanctioned by the Commissariat of Foreign Trade. The Sokolnikov
Commission has sanctioned six and the Northern Timber Trust has
sanctioned two. Thus we now have seventeen companies with an
aggregate capital amounting to many millions, sanctioned by several
government departments (of course, there is plenty of confusion with
all these departments, so that some slip here is possible). At any rate,
we have formed companies jointly with Russian and foreign
capitalists. There are only a few of them. But this small but practical
start shows that the Communists have been judged by what they do.
They have not been judged by such high institutions as the Central
Control Commission and the All-Russia Central Executive Committee.
The Central Control Commission is a splendid institution, of course,
and we shall now give it even more power. For all that, the judgment
these institutions pass on Communists is not--just imagine--recognized
on the international market. But now that ordinary Russian and
foreign capitalists are joining the Communists in forming mixed
companies, we say, "We can do things after all; bad as it is, meager as
it is, we have got something for a start." True, it is not very much. Just
think of it: a year has passed since we declared that we would devote
all our energy (and it is said that we have a great deal of energy) to
this matter, and in this year we have managed to form only seventeen
companies.

(Lenin, from address to the 11th congress of the CP in 1922)



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