Comrade Molotov!

The situation with the STO is, of course, not right. Dzerzhinsky is nervous; he is overworked. But there is no smoke without fire, of course. And the Politburo itself is in an awkward position, because it is cut off from economic affairs. Look through Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn and you will see that our funds are being distributed by Smilga and Strumilin plus Groman, while the Politburo... the Politburo is turning from a directing organ into an appellate body, into something like a "council of elders." Sometimes it is even worse -- the directing is done not by Gosplan but by the specialist "sections" of Gosplan. It is clear that Dzerzhinsky must be dissatisfied. And things, of course, cannot help but suffer from this. Apart from reorganizing the STO on the principle of personal membership with the inclusion of Politburo members, I see no other way out.

Greetings. Yours, Stalin.

Letters of I.V. Stalin to V.M. Molotov. 1925-1936. P. 36.

RGASPI. F. 558. Op. 1. D. 5388.

NOTE

On October 15, 1925, at a Politburo session, Stalin raised the question "On the Work of the Politburo and Relations between Central Institutions." To streamline the work of the central institutions of the USSR (the Council of People's Commissars, the STO, the Presidium of the CEC, Gosplan, and others) and establish full coordination between them, on the one hand, and to ensure Politburo direction of the work of these institutions, on the other, it was deemed necessary to set aside two days a month for special Politburo sessions on questions of state and, especially, economic construction. A commission was created at the session to resolve these questions.