V. I. Lenin

To the Society for

Technical Aid for Soviet Russia[1]


Written: 20 October 1922
First Published: Pravda No. 240, October 24, 1922; Published according to the Pravda text
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, page 381
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


October 20, 1922

Dear Comrades,

Extremely favourable information has appeared in our press about the work of members of your Society at the state farms in Kirsanov Uyezd, Tambov Gubernia, and at Mitino Station, Odessa Gubernia, and also about the work of the group of miners in the Donets Basin.

In spite of the enormous difficulties, and particularly in view of the devastation caused by the Civil War, you have achieved successes that must be regarded as outstanding.

I hasten to express to you my profound gratitude and to ask you to publish this in your Society’s journal, and, if possible, in the general press in the United States.

I am sending a recommendation to the Presidium of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee that it should recognise the most successful farms as model farms, and render them the special and extraordinary assistance necessary for the successful promotion of their work.

Once again on behalf of our Republic I express to you our profound gratitude, and ask you to bear in mind that the work you are doing to cultivate land with the aid of tractors is particularly timely and important for us.

It gives me particular satisfaction to be able to congrat-ulate you on your proposal to organise 200 agricultural communes.

Lenin,
Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars


Endnotes

[1] The Society for Technical Aid for Soviet Russia was organised by Russian ŽmigrŽs in New York in May 1919. Similar societies sprang up elsewhere in the ’U.S.A. and also in Canada. These so-cieties were founded with the active participation of Americans and Canadians. Their purpose was to help Soviet Russia restore her economy by sending skilled workers and technicians from the U.S.A. and Canada.

The work of the societies for Technical Aid for Soviet Russia and of Friends of Soviet Russia (in the United States) was evaluated by Lenin as a striking manifestation of proletarian internationalism and fraternal solidarity among working people. Lenin’s letter was translated into English and printed in December 1922 in the magazine Soviet Russia, which was published in New York by Russian workers’ organisations in the U.S.A.