Bolshevik Leaders correspondence

Bolshevik leadership Correspondence. 1912-1927
Collection of documents 1996.
Compiled by: A.V.Kvashonkin, L.P.Kosheleva, L.A.Rogovaya, O.V.Khlevnyuk.

No. 190

G. L. Pyatakov - F. E. Dzerzhinsky

July 14, 1925

14/VII 1925

Dear Felix Edmundovich!

After today's conversation with you, I have a great heaviness "in my soul." I do not know how to explain my good attitude towards a person, and therefore today, during a conversation with you, I was not able to express to you what I think. Coming from you, I felt very bad. Before my departure on vacation, I wanted to explain myself to you, at least in writing. If you find my "sensibility" funny, at least I'll be spared the trouble of reading it on your face.

Yesterday at the presidium, because of a trifling question, because of a question that is not worth a damn (is it necessary or not to create a sub-department in the Supreme Economic Council), a cat ran between you and me. I got excited, lost my temper, behaved tactlessly, for which I apologize to you. But it's not that. Arriving home, I was in a depressed state all evening, because it was unpleasant for me that my act had introduced, as it were, some kind of poison (although it could be, and in a small dose) into ours with you. still good relationship. This morning I tried to explain myself to you. You irritably dismissed the conversation on this subject, and I fell silent: this showed me that the dose of poison is much greater than I thought yesterday. Therefore, now I am in a disgusting state, because I understand that I am entirely and completely to blame.

Felix Edmundovich! I think that you know that I treat you not only as a boss whom I respect, not only as a senior comrade whom I reckon with more than anyone else, but also as a good comrade whom I simply comradely love. I have very few personal attachments. I have become attached to you as to a person, and that is the only reason why I easily and willingly work in the Supreme Economic Council as your direct assistant. You have probably noticed that by my very nature and past skills I have a greater inclination to work independently than to work as a deputy. Working as Rykov's deputy was a punishment for me. I work for you as a deputy easily because I treat you, I repeat, not only as a boss, but also as a close comrade. Maybe it's bad, maybe I'm misjudging your attitude towards me, but I have such an idea of you, and on the basis of this I have a very definite, good feeling in the work of "deputy". I was glad to work with you and appreciated it very much. And that is why I perceive any dissatisfaction with me or the deterioration of our comradely relations very painfully: I am afraid of being a deputy to a comrade who humanly treats me unimportantly, I am afraid of official relations with you.

Of course, even if my fears became a fact, I would not stop fulfilling my duties as best I could - but I was precisely "performing my duties", while now, working as your assistant, I work with passion, with the full tension of all my strength, both because I am sitting in my favorite business (industry), and because, despite the lack of independence of my work, I have you as my boss, that is, a comrade who, as it always seemed to me, relates to me not bad. I don’t want to leave the industry, and I’m afraid that your attitude towards me will worsen, I’m afraid because, knowing my character, I understand that two such characters as yours and mine can work together, together, side by side, one directly subordinate to the other, in such a subordination that makes his work not independent, but auxiliary,

It will be very hard for me if my fears are justified.

But I ask you, F[elix] E[dmundovich], I ask you because I don’t want there to be even a drop of falseness in our relations, if your comradely attitude towards me has really changed, free me from zamystvo. It will be very unpleasant for me, but it will be many times more unpleasant if it turns out that between me - "deputy" and you - "previous" only service relations, without personal friendship.

Once again: maybe my letter is funny. Otherwise I could not write. I wrote what I think.

Y. Pyatakov.

RTSKHIDNI. F. 76. Op. 2. D. 168. L. 6-8. Autograph.

No. 191

F. E. Dzerzhinsky to G. L. Pyatakov

July 11, 1925

14/VII-25

Dear Yuri Leonidovich!

I am very glad that you wrote me your letter before your departure, for I greatly value our joint work in raising industry, precisely as joint work, not by chance and not by party coercion, but by coordination. Therefore, yesterday's incident of ours put me in a hellish mood of annoyance and feelings of powerlessness to cope with the task. I made a mistake that I put this issue on the agenda without trying to come to an agreement with you before, so as not to give an idea and food for all sorts of ridiculous conversations and guesses - why you opposed my project and why I defended it so sharply. I was unheard of angry, for I saw that I remained in the minority. I cannot put up with this, being the chairman. My loss would have beaten me as a leader in our own apparatus. Hence this harshness in my incontinence, which I myself am not the master of, unfortunately. This morning I did not want to talk about this topic, because I was afraid that I might “flare up” with anger, which, like a physical lump, was still in me after a night that did not give me rest. And I wanted it to subside in me. You helped me with your note. I cannot imagine my work on the Supreme Economic Council without you—although we have a completely different method of approach—and not only because the interests of industry, which you know and understand incomparably better than I do, demand it, but precisely because we can work together without suppressing and not depersonalizing each other, and expressing everything frankly to oneself - with a unity that is not artificial and quite natural - of action. And if you, with your character, not suitable for a “deputy”, were still able to work so successfully for so long, it was precisely because we “agreed” on business. Yesterday's incident is disgusting because in our apparatus it will be regarded differently - and this will reduce our (VSNKh) efficiency and will undermine the apparatus with talk that we are in a struggle for power and that the configuration of the VSNKh is changing. But still, it's rubbish. I will not have any sediment, our relationship will not change, and the conversations will stop by themselves. In relation to you, I cannot have a single drop of falsehood, because I have long developed other relations with you. Come back from vacation refreshed. Your F.D.

RTSKHIDNI. F. 76. Op. 2. D. 168. L. 9. Autograph.