Transcript

Of a conversation between the Bureau of the VKP(b) Group of the Ya. F. Kagan-Shapshai

sic; correct spelling Kagan-Shabshai

Electrical Machine-Building Institute [GEMIKSh] and Cde. Stalin.

The conversation took place at the CC of the VKP(b) and lasted from 5:15 to 7:15.

In attendance: Cdes. K. A. Grant, Ya. F. Kagan-Shapshai, I. Birbraier, M. Birbraier and V. Zheshko from the Institute and Cde. Stalin.

Cde. Grant. Cde. Stalin, we would like to raise with you and ask you for support and assistance in settling the following two issues:

a) Regarding the Institute as such and

b) regarding our notions, which came out of the experience of this Institute and perhaps in part as well from the Western European and American experience, as to what you once formulated in the Leningrad aktiv [group of active members] as “The Task of Creating a Living Cadre of Industrialization.”

First, about the Institute. Since you probably already have general notions about our practice (as we have been told), I will take only certain specific aspects.

1) The Institute was founded by Cde. Kagan-Shapshai and a group of Communists who at the time had returned from the front and are now engineers who graduated from the institute, in 1920.

Cde. Stalin. Where is the Institute and under whose jurisdiction is it.

Cde. Grant. The Institute was initially under Glavelektro [Main Electrical Engineering Administration], then under GET [State Electrical Engineering Trust] and, finally, in 1923-24, when Glavprofobr [Main Administration of Vocational Education] and the PC of Education began to take over this whole activity, the Institute came under the jurisdiction of the PC of Education through Glavprofobr. It was then that the struggle for the Institute’s survival began. We had already covered all the branches of technical education, and partially of general education under our regime. We have a workers’ department [rabfak; an institution to prepare peasants and workers for higher education] (FOOR) [Russian abbreviation; possibly department of general education for workers] and a physics and mathematics school (secondary school); we are developing further and are advancing this work according to the prescribed principles, of which you are probably aware.

Our task here as the Institute’s party organization is to be a weapon in the party’s hands in the revolution of higher technical education and in the creation of a living cadre of industrialization.

A separate issue, which produces the greatest lack of understanding is the issue of the length of our training. With us, the program fits into two years as opposed to the actual six, and sometimes seven or eight years in normal types of VTUZes [higher technical educational institutions]. The usual situation arises here with regard to the plant, people seem to understand the aspects of streamlining, they understand that it is possible to finish the same task in two to four years and to fiddle around with it for six years, but with regard to the period at the VTUZ – here we had to fight tenaciously on the matter. We fit the same scientific-technical foundation into two years as the other VTUZes stretch out over six to eight years (a person must spend at least two years with us and may not be here for more than three years).

Incidentally, Cde. Shokhor, an official of Glavelektro, sent us an interesting memorandum a few days ago in which he estimates that out of the seven and a half years that a student spends at a VTUZ, one or two years actually is spent on cultivating and educating him to be an engineer, i.e. on training itself. This shows on one hand the waste of energy and resources in this matter and on the other points to the possibilities that are available for shortening the amount of time and training that a student spends at the VTUZ.

Specifically we are raising the question with you about us as a powerful and strong weapon in the party’s hands for the revolution throughout higher technical education and maybe general education as well.

Cde. Stalin. The task is to work well, and then we will see.

Cde. Grant. I must emphasize that the most ferocious fight against the Institute began precisely at the time that it was transferred to the jurisdiction of the PC of Education through Glavprofobr.

Cde. Stalin. How does the PC of Education treat you.

Cde. Grant. The PC of Education continuously fought us and in the most outrageous forms to boot – mostly in terms of liquidating the Institute. Recently all the officials at Glavprofobr, and mostly (believe it or not) its Communist heads, have begun as well to oppose our system of organic connection between the VTUZ and manufacturing itself.

Cde. Stalin. Can you document where they have come out and spoken out against the VTUZ’s ties with manufacturing.

Cde. Grant. Of course. We can point to the speech by Lunacharsky at the Eighth Congress of the VLKSM [Komsomol; Communist Youth League], the speech by Cde. Khodorovsky at the Central Bureau of Proletarian Students, where the latter stated that this system of “cooperative connection” between a VTUZ and manufacturing destroys VTUZes, citing the example of the Lomonosov Institute and so forth.

Allow me now to describe the following developments from the life of the Institute.

After it became clear to the PC of Education that it is hard to bring us down, it raised the issue of the Institute at a meeting of the Collegium of the PC of Education, where a decision was issued to define our Institute as a Technicum, which in effect (Cde. Kagan-Shapshai will spell this out in detail for you) boils down to the liquidation of the Institute, because it no longer can exist as a Technicum.

Then, at a conference of representatives of engineers, administrative and party officials and professional functionaries of GET, a resolution was issued to the effect that those we graduate are engineers, that the work of our engineers satisfies the electrical industry and the issue was raised with the VSNKh of transferring us to the jurisdiction of the VSNKh, because it is absolutely clear to officials of the electrical industry, as well as to us, that we will no longer be able to live and develop within the framework of the PC of Education, since the PC of Education is has absolutely deliberately taken a line of liquidating the Institute as such.

After this the electrical industry, along with the VSNKh, raised this issue with the CCC-WPI [Central Control Commission—Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate], and the latter, after a nearly six-month inquiry into the Institute and the work of its engineers in manufacturing, which was conducted by Cde. Goltsman at the request of the PC of the WPI, convened a broad conference chaired by Cde. Lebed under the CCC-WPI, consisting of all the representatives of plants with which we are connected (directors, engineers, etc.), the PC of Education and our representatives. This conference issued a resolution, the main points of which state:

I. The Institute is a VUZ [higher educational institution] and graduates engineers in electrical machine-building and

II. The PC of Education and the VSNKh of the USSR are directed to study and ascertain the possibilities of disseminating the Institute’s existing system.

Cde. Stalin. You only graduate electrical machine-building engineers.

Cde. Grant. No, installation engineers and electrical engineers as well, and altogether we graduate about 40% of everyone who goes into the electrical industry.

All electrical VTUZes, while they have a contingent of 5,000 students, graduate only 100-200 a year.

We (GEMIKSh), with an annual contingent of 330, graduate 150 a year, i.e. our annual graduating class equals % of the contingent.

This resolution of Cde. Lebed’s conference, in the form of a draft resolution of a meeting of the Collegium of the USSR PC of the WPI, was sent out to all interested parties, but was not received for final approval by the Collegium due to the extreme pressure exerted in this matter by the PC of Education.

Then a conference chaired by Cde. Sergo was held, consisting of our representatives Cde. Goltsman, Cde. Lebed and Cde. Ilin, where Cde. Sergo stated that they continue to fully support us, but a final decision on the issue should be up to the CC of the Party.

We think, Cde. Stalin, that the Central Committee, after the seven-year ordeal that the Institute has gone through, will be able finally to settle this issue in terms of a final approval of the results that Cde. Lebed’s conference under the CCC-WPI arrived at. As regards where this approval will specifically take place – in the CC of the Party, in Cde. Molotov’s Commission, in the Secretariat or in the Organizational Bureau, that is already up to you.

Now, I think, Ya. F. Kagan-Shapshai will state his views on general matters, as well as the additional aspects I have addressed, and then we can move on to conclusions of a practical nature, in which we would ask for your assistance and support.

Cde. Stalin. What are you living on financially, and how.

Cde. Grant. For the time being we are self-supporting, and in addition GET and VSNKh sometimes help us illegally and semilegally with certain small sums.

Cde. K.-Shapshai. Allow me to focus on a number of matters related to our work.

You know, of course, that in effect our higher technical school currently represents a somewhat refined and streamlined version of the old scholastic-type school. It is also clear that it does not graduate the kind of worker that our industry needs, especially in the present era of industrialization. In these matters we have taken, as you know, a completely different, a radically different path. It is no accident, by the way, that the fight against us has played out along the lines of “Not a VUZ, but a Technicum.” They agree to regard us as any kind of good Technicum, but not as a VTUZ, because if they recognized us as a VTUZ, that would mean that industry has already achieved and has found a scientific educational ideology in these matters and that today a production-oriented educational institution can be a VTUZ rather than a Technicum.

The next issue is the issue that we have created a completely new type of engineer, an “production engineer,” bred and educated in manufacturing. This, of course, does not mean, as our opponent tries to assert, that this engineer is some kind of “trained” engineer. Nothing of the kind. We must say quite responsibly that we give industry a scientifically, solidly bred and educated person, but on another, fundamentally different scientific basis.

We have mostly brought matters of mathematics and mechanics close to university-like development, because that is indeed the scientific base of an engineer working in industry, and not of an official in it.

The next factor – our opponent simply does not understand the fact that the production facility in which our student, the future engineer, works is equivalent to a scientific one first of all in the sense that it cultivates and educates along purely scientific lines as well and second in the sense that the production facility is the most powerful factor in scientific terms, the most powerful scientific laboratory, which works and cultivates the brains of the future industrial worker along scientific lines in the area that manufacturing needs.

Our opponents raise the issue of the production facility as some kind of unpleasant mediocre addition to the “lofty” theoretical functions with which the student/future engineer is engaged at a VTUZ. We, however, treat the production facility as a facility equivalent to and often even surpassing the scientific-theoretical facility and in any case as a facility that advances, directs and streamlines matters of a purely scientific-theoretical nature. That we are on the right track in this matter is proven not by scholastic debates but by the practical results of the work of our educational institutions. Up to the present time our Institute has graduated 152 people. All of them work in manufacturing as engineers. They are up to their jobs. Among them there are already chief engineers, production managers and a whole host of other engineers holding responsible positions.

True, it must be noted that the social composition of the Institute as compared with other VTUZes is somewhat worse, but at the same time the social composition of the specialists graduated by the Institute is several times better than that of other VTUZes. The proportion of our graduating engineers who are party and Komsomol members is 12% as compared with 1.2% and 1.5% of those who have graduated from other VTUZes, and the main thing, after all, is the social result, and not a pleasant picture of a good social admission.

I must also point out that it is wrong from any standpoint, and all the more so from the scientific standpoint, to raise the question of so-called “Pure Theory,” because specifically in our Russian system this “pure theory” merely means that a person, as I put it, “after learning to be a professor,” i.e. after obviously attending an educational institution, reading a number of books, then being kept by this educational institution as an adjunct lecturer, after a certain period would be called a professor and that’s all. The professor, of course, was not and is not in any relationship, if I can put it that way, with scientific and, in general, real-life matters of production of that kind. Hence the influence of such an instructor and professor on the cadres he is training is clear.

Now let me move on to the question of how the Institute itself operates. You probably know that each of our students works four days in manufacturing. Right after enrolling he is sent to a plant, where he works according to the discipline and schedule prescribed by the plant – first as a worker’s apprentice, than as a technician’s apprentice, then as an engineer’s apprentice and finally moves on to an engineer’s job. Two days a week, meanwhile, for 10-12 hours each day, the student learns theoretical disciplines at the Institute.

That is how we understand the organic connection between a VTUZ and manufacturing, and this, of course, is the Only Correct Understanding of It.

In order to ascertain how well students tolerate such a schedule, we conducted a medical examination and the results so far have shown that we have absolutely no unhealthy people, that the health of students in the upper classes is no worse than the health of students in the lower classes. Our students sleep, if I can put it this way, very well.

Therefore the point that the organic connection that we have established between schooling and manufacturing yields the best scientific and even real-life production results is proven by our experience quite clearly.

Cde. Stalin. I absolutely agree with this and there is no need to convince me.

Cde. K.-Shapshai. I know, I read with pleasure the report you delivered at the Moscow aktiv and must say that I received enormous psychological satisfaction from the fact that the leaders of the state and the party are finally arriving at the same conclusions that I have arrived at as a result of 25 years’ work in manufacturing and science.

Cde. Stalin. There is no doubt in my mind that your work and the work of the Institute are a fine revolutionary and correct initiative. We at the Plenum, while we did debate these matters, it was absolutely obvious to all of us that we will turn the whole domain of technical education toward this line of a connection with manufacturing as the principal line and that there will be VTUZes in the VSNKh, that we will firmly hold course toward an organic, continuous connection with manufacturing. This is as clear as a bottle of water. But it seems to me that you may have gone to extremes in the direction of practicalism, in the direction of a greater share of manufacturing compared with purely theoretical sciences, but I stress that if you did go to extremes, then you were right to do so, because after all you need to go against traditions that have been established for centuries. Hence the fact that the attacks on you will continue and will be launched along the lines of “you are causing harm to science for the benefit of practical work.” On the other hand, I have and I have read a lot of material by foreign experts who have worked in our country and then went back to their own countries (diaries, letters, etc.); all of them stress that theoretically (if we disregard the period of the civil war, which somewhat set us back by comparison with Western Europe) our experts seem to be no worse and often even better than the Western European ones, but at the same time they (the foreigners) simply laugh at how helpless our experts are in practical terms, how helpless they are in real-life matters and in production processes, how poorly oriented they are in them, etc.

Cde. K.-Shapshai. I must say that this theory of our experts that you referred to is not worth anything, because it applies to what I already mentioned – this theory of people who “have learned to be a professor” at educational institutions, the (scientific) value of which is at best uncertain.

Cde. Stalin. You interrupted me – I am continuing. I am astonished by the irresponsibility of our experts, even prominent ones: they change their findings two or three times apiece on various plans, a simple sense of scientific honor (once you issue a finding, you stick to it) they are lacking that sense. What do they do. Someone will make a plan, then go to another institution, a higher one, where he works as a sideline and either replaces his finding or does a “refinding,” etc.

Cde. K.-Shapshai. This irresponsibility stems from the fact that they are “God’s people.” They are completely out of touch with real-life manufacturing, they don’t know it. They are clerks, not scientists. It is also no accident that they have now raised the issue of VTUZes as “temples of science.” After all, this is downright blackmail, because VTUZes never were regarded that way anywhere. They are, if I can put it this way, “workshops of applied science.”

Cde. Stalin. Some experts have said in conversations with me that in the West and in America what is put into service and into production is not a “top engineer” but more a technician who has real knowledge of the production process.

Cde. K.-Shapshai. No, Cde. Stalin. That is not true. I am, after all, a man from the West myself and must tell you that it is engineers with top qualifications there that make up the cadre of production engineers. It is only in our country that Glavprofobr and the PC of Education divide engineers into “fully qualified” and “not fully qualified,”narrowly specialized” and other engineers. Here one can say that a production engineer is a “not narrowly specialized,” “abbreviated” engineer as “God’s people” from the PC of Education think, but scientifically even stronger by comparison with the “pure theory” of the non-production engineer.

Cde. Stalin. Yes, this is clear – the entire course of technical education and the creation of specialists for industry must be based above all on a connection with manufacturing, we have no debates about this. Under the old system specialists are created who do not want to go to the mines and do not wish to work at a plant – in production – but yours have gone and are being utilized by manufacturing, while the other VUZes don’t have this and this must be fundamentally changed.

Incidentally, how do things stand with you regarding the introduction of foreign languages.

Cde. K.-Shapshai. We look at this issue as follows: a production engineer (this is the product we put out) he functions in production, actually becoming accustomed to it, prodded by real life, will be forced to learn some foreign language, after all he must use catalogs, books in one language or another in his field, etc. Naturally, life itself will pull him to the study of a foreign language. By the way, sitting before you is one of the engineers who spent time in Germany. Before the trip their entire group studied German and I must say no one is as fluent or uses foreign languages as well as they do here.

Cde. Stalin. All the same, it is impossible to manage without introducing foreign languages into the program of the VTUZ. After all, all the technology is in English, German and French. It is necessary that every student upon leaving the VTUZ know at least one foreign language without fail. After all, you will not object to the introduction of foreign languages here.

Cde. K.-Shapshai. If you recommend it, we will, of course, do it.

Cde. Stalin. And shouldn’t you try, using your method, to organize the creation of cadres for general heavy machine building.

Cde. Grant. We have it in our plan and in the fall we are launching a mechanics and production department that is organically connected under our system with manufacturing.

Cde. Stalin. Incidentally, how do the old specialists react to the engineers you graduate in manufacturing.

Cde. Grant. At first, of course, they showed open hostility, persecuted them, took advantage of their position that the PC of Education had created for them, persecuted them in the most ferocious way, but then when they became convinced that our engineers could actually be utilized in manufacturing and perform the duties assigned them by manufacturing with full responsibility, they became accustomed to the idea that these were their successors who had come. One cannot say that they loved us, but now they have started working in harmony with us, at any rate our engineers, as the PC of Education is insisting with regard to its own engineers, have not raised and are not raising issues about “sensitivity” toward us on the part of production personnel and the old specialists. Our engineers are well aware (that is how they were bred) that production is also war, that you have to come there as fighters, not as nurses.

Cde. K.-Shapshai. At first the old specialists reacted to our engineers very savagely because, excuse my language, our people came to manufacturing as “semilegal lowlifes” with no title (which we reject in principle and which we do not give them), in addition they were trained and became engineers in two or three years rather than spending 8-15 years on this effort (the old specialists were bitterly offended by this in advance). Then they came to manufacturing either as Communists or they were young Red experts guided by Communists. The totality of these factors is what defined the particularly acerbic attitude to3ard our young engineers on the part of the old specialists. Nevertheless, the situation now seems to have been smoothed over and our young people are quietly working in harmony with the old specialists, and in particular they are working well with the foreign specialists.

Cde. Stalin. I must say that the reception that people in our country give foreign specialists is repulsive, they persecute them, do not let them work, etc.

I am proceeding with my main idea. The attacks on you will undoubtedly continue along the lines that you have damaged science for the benefit of actual manufacturing and practicalism. How are things for you regarding this matter.

Cde. M. Birbraier. You see, Cde. Stalin, the situation is that even Professor Zilev from the Commission of the State Academic Council was forced to note that we teach mathematics quantitatively and qualitatively in its full VTUZ scope, with a whole host of additions, the same goes for mechanics, but he drew a strange conclusion from this: since Prof. Cherdantsev and Bobarykov told him that this is not a VTUZ, mathematics and mechanics must be reduced quantitatively, that there will be no harm from this.

Cde. K.-Shapshai. I must say that in terms of a scientific base it is the representatives of pure science, the university professors, who treat us in a very relaxed and good way.

This happens because we have organized matters of university science mathematics and mechanics, in quantitative and qualitative terms, better than anywhere else. Here we stretch it out the utmost.

Cde. Stalin. It seems to me that the period of training of two years that you have established is a bit too short. To my mind this is too abrupt (although I understand the correctness of this abruptness – objectively you have always been forced to battle against the old system). It would not be bad to increase the period to three years.

Cde. K.-Shapshai. We agreed, after all, with the resolution of Cde. Lebed’s conference under the CCC-WPI on gradually increasing the periods of training at the Institute to three years. This does not contradict the fundamental principles of the Institute. This is, if I can put it this way, a “strategic principle.” But this feature of the short period of training has its own internal purpose, because with such a short period of training the student, the future engineer, having received the scientific principles, at the same time does not lose the taste for further work, whereas at other VTUZes the orientation is toward “learning everything,” so he naturally comes to real life without a taste for further work, yet real life demands young people with strength, with a taste and desire for further work in real life and manufacturing.

I can cite an example given to me a few days ago by the secretary of our group Cde. Grant, that we have for example a whole host of engineers who are Komsomol members (some of them hold responsible positions in manufacturing and perform their duties very well), whereas Komsomol members, as a rule, cannot come out of a regular VTUZ with its six or seven years of training simply because of their age (after age 23 he is automatically removed from the Komsomol).

Cde. Stalin. What title do you graduate your students with.

Cde. Grant. We believe that a engineer should leave us for real life without any title. We merely write that he has graduated from the Institute, has passed all the tests and can work, in our opinion, as an engineer, although our opinion, of course, is not mandatory for a plant, but thereafter manufacturing personnel themselves must qualify him as an engineer for the job he does. Therefore we interpret this factor – the engineer’s title – as with regard to a worker, as a qualification for a type of work and activity in manufacturing, not as the formal factor of a title that is the purest and also harmful vestige of feudalism. That is why we favor the abolition of a title.

Cde. K.-Shapshai. This is clear, of course. An engineer’s title must be understood as a qualification for the type of work that is being performed, not merely as the formal factor of a title.

Cde. Stalin. That is true, but still, in my view we still need titles for the time being, as a certain kind of weapon, true, a very imperfect and bad one, but still a weapon in the fight of young specialists against the old ones, so without objecting to your orientation in principle on this matter, we will still have to keep this title for the time being.

Cde. Grant. Cde. Stalin, your time is valuable to you and to us as well, let’s move on to practical conclusions.

Cde. Stalin. Let’s do that.

Cde. Grant. Cde. Stalin, we would ask for your assistance and support on the following points:

1) We would ask for help in arranging to deliver a report on the Institute at the Presidium of the VSNKh so that a decision is issued that all of the material and administrative support for the Institute that they can provide now, after the last Plenum and its decisions regarding the role of the VSNKh in the matter of technical education, is implemented by them in the form of a resolution on the Institute’s report.

Cde. Stalin. The VSNKh and industry have agreed to this.

Cde. Grant. It has already been about eight months since the electrical industry issued a resolution on our full transition to the jurisdiction of the VSNKh. The issue here is that with the transition to the jurisdiction of the VSNKh all legal and administrative matters disappear, because industry (it is fighting for this at every level) regards us as a VTUZ and our product as engineers, we would ask for your help in prodding the VSNKh a little bit, otherwise they are forced, if I can put it this way, to get involved with legal formalities and loyalty in these matters, which until the last Plenum of the CC were not under their jurisdiction.

2) We would ask you to help us to raise the issue of the Institute in all of its magnitude at Cde. Molotov’s Commission under the Politburo of the CC.

Cde. Stalin. So you already know about the existence of the Molotov Commission.

Cde. Grant. We know about it, and very well at that.

Cde. Stalin. What does that mean – to “really” raise it.

Cde. Grant. It means for our report to be raised at the Commission for a specific and sufficient period, for the co-rapporteur to be Cde. Goltsman, who for almost six months conducted a relevant study from the RCC-WPI at the request of the electrical industry, for there to be in attendance representatives of the plants with which we are connected in our work, etc., all the more so since we, the Institute’s party organization, think that a comprehensive illumination and resolution of the issue of the Institute at Cde. Molotov’s Commission would also help the party in resolving the issue of general education regarding VTUZes and VUZes.

Cde. Stalin. That is right and true.

Cde. Grant. The third aspect in which we would again ask for your help, it may seem somewhat strange to you – that is the issue of the role of our press in this whole situation.

Cde. Stalin. What do you propose here specifically.

Cde. Grant. We would like Pravda to open a special section called “Issues regarding the creation, cultivation and education of a living cadre of industrialization” and maintain this section on a priority basis with our all-around participation.

Cde. Stalin. First of all Pravda covers political issues, and second, after all, Pravda is specifically a party organ and you realize that it will be difficult for a nonparty expert to work there, because he will feel out of place there, whereas the main thing here is to recruit experts to discuss this issue, because as long as it is true that the experts know their job and Communists know it poorly or not at all, the issue cannot be framed any other way.

Maybe this issue can be covered in another organ.

Cde. Grant. I think that attention can be given to this issue in Izvestia, after all the editor there is Cde. Skvortsov-Stepanov, he is a lively fellow and is familiar with this issue, and besides, nonparty experts read Izvestia and will express themselves freely there.

Cde. Stalin. Now that is more appropriate.

Cde. Grant. Then permit us to discuss this matter at Izvestia and refer to our conversation with you.

Cde. Stalin. That’s fine.

Cde. Grant. One other point regarding the press. What would you think, Cde. Stalin, if all these issues were debated in the journal Bolshevik.

Cde. Stalin. Whom are you going to try to convince there. 70,000 Communist readers of Bolshevik. And besides, it is not clear at all to me from what standpoint you are going to frame the issue there. And which issues.

Cde. Grant. I think that the party’s program, Marx and Lenin provide more than enough material in this regard in order to open fire from this position on the PC of Education, all the more so since after the latest statements by Cde. Lunacharsky at the Eighth Congress of the VLKSM and a number of other Communist leaders of the PC of Education, that they are consciously deviating from the fundamental principles of Marxism in this matter to a position, if I can put it this way, of conscious Hairsplitting.

Cde. Stalin. Well, you know, if you are going to take what Lunacharsky said and where, even all of Russia would not be enough for that. In any case it is difficult for the time being to respond to your proposal. Write an article for Bolshevik, for Pravda, lay out concretely your general views, point to the Institute’s experiments and then already we will judge according to the concrete material.

Cde. K.-Shapshai. I think that is the right way, Cde. Stalin. The issue needs to be framed in concrete terms, then it will be easier for us to identify the people who agree with us, or at any rate will not protest against the line we have taken.

Cde. Stalin. Well, all right – we are done.

Cde. I. Birbraier. Not yet, we have not drawn a conclusion on a highly important issue – the our urgent transfer to the jurisdiction of the VSNKh.

Cde. Stalin. He (Cde. Grant) already mentioned that, and I won’t forget.

Cde. Grant. I would like to clarify where and with whom to talk about all these issues – regarding the VSNKh, for example, in terms of arranging for our report there. With whom should we talk – should it be Rukhimovich by way of Kraval.

Cde. Stalin. Yes.

Cde. Grant. So you will talk with Rukhimovich in advance.

Cde. Stalin. Yes, I will.

Cde. Grant. And regarding the Molotov Commission – who should we get in touch with.

Cde. Stalin. Speak with Molotov, I will talk with him in advance.

Cde. Grant. Allow me, Cde. Stalin to also give you some material that presents our views on all the issues related to the problem of “the living cadre of industrialization,” its cultivation and education and then material on the issue of the transfer of the VTUZ to the jurisdiction of the VSNKh, as well as our little book about the Institute that we have published.

Cde. Stalin. Give it to me, I will take a look.

Moscow. 9.5.1928.

Recorded by K. Grant. K. Grant.