From Stalin to Dzerzhinsky

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

Stalin Correspondences

No. 172

F. E. Dzerzhinsky to I. V. Stalin

October 22, 1923

Copy.

TO THE SECRETARY OF THE CC RCP(b) comrade. STALIN.

One of the important factors inflating the prices of manufactured goods are malicious speculators, who have chosen as their profession to inflate prices (especially currency) and entangle trusts and co-operatives and their workers with their machinations. Especially, Moscow - the location of the main trusts, Tsentrosoyuz and Banks - attracts them with itself 1 . People come here from all over the USSR. They take over the markets, the black market. Their method of action is bribery and corruption. If you ask what they live for, they won't be able to tell you, but they live with full chic. For them, with the housing shortage in Moscow, there is always plenty of the most luxurious apartments. These are parasites, corrupters, leeches, malicious speculators - they corrupt, gradually and imperceptibly drawing in our business executives.

And when all the wrath of the Party falls upon the depraved members of the Party, these gentlemen continue to look for new victims.

My proposal is to allow the Commission on Expulsions to expand its rights of expulsion in relation to these malicious speculators - taking into consideration cases regarding these elements according to my reports, that is, the Chairman of the OGPU F. DZERZHINSKY.

I am sure that within a month we will heal Moscow of these elements and that this will undoubtedly affect the entire economic life .

22/X-23

F. DZERZHINSKY.

RTSKHIDNI. F. 76. Op. 3. D. 231. L. 2. Certified typewritten copy.

Notes:

1 . On March 28, 1923, Dzerzhinsky wrote to Yagoda about this: “On the basis of the commodity hunger, the NEP, especially in Moscow, took on the character of undisguised speculation, enrichment and arrogance that is conspicuous to everyone. This spirit of speculation has already spread to both state and [to] co-operative institutions and is drawing in an increasing number of people, including communists. This must be put to an end. I ask you to draw up a report on this subject to the Central Committee of our Party (including data on smuggling from Comrade Katsnelson), pointing out how these phenomena affect the workers, whose wages not only cannot be increased now, but are also being reduced due to the fall ruble exchange rate. At the same time, it is necessary to develop a number of measures and proposals, namely:

1. Eviction from large cities with families and districts (accurately developed plan with a list of cities and regions, with the application of a geographic map). 2. Confiscation of property and eviction from apartments. 3. Link with families to remote areas and camps - their colonization of deserted areas. Develop a plan and identify these areas. 4. Establishment and development of the law against speculation. 5. Order to the courts, etc., etc. " (RTSKHIDNI. F. 76. Op. 3. D. 231. L. 3).

2 In November 1923, the Politburo accepted Dzerzhinsky's proposals. From the end of November, a campaign began to expel from Moscow, and then from other large cities, speculators, keepers of brothels, smugglers and other "socially dangerous elements." The operation was carried out in several stages. In mid-December, the last third stage began - repressions against currency traders. In March 1924, at the suggestion of People's Commissar of Finance Sokolnikov, the Politburo instructed the OGPU to stop repressions against persons associated with the currency exchange, since these operations interfered with the Narkomfin's foreign exchange operations on the free market (Goland Yu. Currency regulation during the NEP period. M., 1993 pp. 11-12).