Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Notes at a Meeting of
The Commission on Cartridges^[1]

Written: December 5, 1918
Published: First published in 1942 in Lenin Miscellany XXXIV. Printed from the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 42, pages 117^b-118^a.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
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.

First meeting of the Commission on Cartridges December 5, 1918

Tula Cartridge Factory.

Measures for increasing output:

New management.

Bonuses.

Third shift (+2000 people).

Emancipation from the (Tula) labour exchange.

Extra equipment (from remaining stocks in Petrograd).

Production records and statistics: weekly.

Foreign samples.

How to muster in Russia highly skilled workers?

Inviting specialists from abroad.

Task to the Science and Technical Department

Keeping proper weekly records of production.

Cartridges per worker a day:
1916 : 240
1918 : 225

Factory’s output

maximum 1916: 35 million

1918: months XII-16-18-20
(perhaps 25-27) million

1919: I —16 —20
II —18 —25
III —20 —27
IV —22 —29
V —25 —31
VI —28 —33
VII —35

Within a month or two months introduce three shifts.

Notes

[1] On December 4, 1918, during the discussion of the question of introducing a third shift at the Tula cartridge and small arms factories, the Council of Defence set up a special commission to deal with this matter. The commission on cartridges met on December 5 and was attended y V. I. Lenin, L. B.Krasin (Chairman of the Extraordinary Commission on Red Army Supply), E. M. Sklyansky (Vice-Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic), Commander-in- Chief I. I. Vatsetis, and representatives of the Chief Artillery Board, the Tula Cartridge Factory and others-altogether 17 people. The commission passed decisions having the force of Defence Council decisions; they were based on the measures outlined by Lenin in his notes (see Lenin Miscellany XXXIV , pp. 55-57).