Ilyich listened attentively to my stories about how the peasants called on us with naive questions, how monstrously ill-informed they were in regard to the practical measures of the Soviet Government, its structure, their own rights and obligations, what ignorance there was in the countryside, how naive their illiterate letters were, letters penned for them by the village "scholars" in a clerkly flourishing hand full of curlicues, and how those free-lance scribes made them pay through the nose for those letters.
I showed the letters to Ilyich. He used to read them with interest. He advised me to give more attention to the organization of enquiry desks at our reading rooms and village recreation halls. He had experience in consultation service in exile in the village of Shushenskoye, where the peasants from the neighbouring villages used to come to him every Sunday for advice. In December 1918 he drafted rules of management for the government offices, in which he urged the setting up of similar local enquiry offices by the various government departments. "These enquiry offices must not only give the required information, both oral and in writing, but draw up applications free of charge for the illiterate and those who are unable to do so clearly," Ilyich wrote in his "Draft Rules of Management for Soviet Institutions." (Works, Vol. 28, p. 327.)
"Rules concerning the days and hours of reception should be posted up in every Soviet institution both inside and outside in a manner accessible to all without passes. The reception room should be so arranged that everyone should have free and easy access to it without passes.
"A book should be kept in every Soviet institution containing a brief record of the applicant's name, the gist of his request and to whom the matter has been directed.
"On Sundays and holidays reception hours should be observed." (Ibid.)
These draft rules were not published until 1928—ten years later, but Ilyich's directives were known to the Extra-School Department, and it was on his insistence that we began to pay greater attention to the organization of enquiry services at the reading rooms. The village librarians gained prestige as a result of this work, and in 1919 they were a definite influence in the countryside. Enquiry-desk work was linked with propaganda of the Soviet power, propaganda of the decrees issued by the Soviet Government.
Enquiry service was only one of the things Ilyich thought about. On April 12, 1919, a decree was published over the signatures of Kalinin, Lenh and Stalin, providing for the reorganization of the State Control (Stalin was then People's Commissar of State Control). This decree said:
"The old bureaucracy has been destroyed, but the bureaucrats remain. They have brought with them into the Soviet institutions the spirit of conservatism and red tapery, inefficiency and loose discipline.
"The Soviet Government declares that it will not tolerate bureaucratism in whatever form, that it will banish it from Soviet offices by determined measures.
"The Soviet Government declares that only the participation of the broad masses of the workers and peasants in the administration of the country and extensive controlovr the organs of government' will eliminate the faults in the machinery of state, will rid the Soviet institutions of the bureaucratic evil and decidedly advance the cause of socialist construction."
On May 4, 1919, a decree was issued instituting a Central Bureau of Applications under the People's Commissariat of State Control, followed on ~May 24 by a decree instituting local branches of the Central Bureau.
Ilyich urged an unremitting struggle against bureaucratism in Soviet offices.
Bureaucratism with us in Russia was held up to ridicule in the literature of the sixties, especially by the Iskra (Chernyshevsky-ist) Poets. These poets (Kurochkin, Zhulev and others) had a strong influence on our generation. They branded all the numerous manifestations of bureaucratism, red tape and corruption. Verses by the Iskra poets and all kinds of anecdotes concerning red tape were a sort of folklore of the intellectuals during the sixties. Anna Ilyinichna and I were often reminded of that literature in recent years; she had an excellent memory. That literature was very popular in the Ulyanov family. Satire had done its work at the time by enabling our generation to suck in with their mother's milk, so to speak, a healthy hatred of bureaucratism. It was Ilyich's cherished desire to wipe that blemish off the face of the Soviet land.
Ilyich himself was extraordinarily considerate towards people and the letters that he received. This is borne out by the documents published in Lenin Miscellany,;XXIV.
Ilyich received a mass of complaints and he dealt with them himself.
On February 22, 1919, he sent the following telegram to the Yaroslavl Gubennia Executive Committee:
"Soviet employee Danilov complains that the Cheka has confiscated from him three poods of flour and other products purchased during eighteen months on his work earnings for a family of four. Check most carefully. Wire me results.
"Chairman, Council of People's Commissars
Lenin"
(Lenin Miscellany, XXIV, pp. 171-72)
Another telegram to the Gubernia Executive Committee of Gherepovets ran:
"Check complaint Yefrosinia Yefimova, soldier's wife of village Novoselo, Pokrovsk Volost, Belozersk Uyezd, concerning confiscation of grain for common barn, although her husband has been prisoner of war over four years and she has family of three without a farm help. Report to me results investigation and your measures.
"Chairman, Council of People's Commissars
Lenin"
(Ibid., p. 173).
Such instances could be cited by the hundred. I refer to those kept in the Archives of the Lenin Institute, but how many more are there that have not survived! In June 1919, when I went away for a two months' trip on the Volga and the Kama on the agitation steamboat Krasnaya Zvezda, Ilyich wrote to me: "I read the letters addressed to you asking for assistance and try to do what I can about it." When a person's mind is engaged on some important problem, it is extremely difficult and exhausting for him to switch over twenty times a day to all kinds of petty affairs. The only time Ilyich could give his mind up completely to any problem was when he took walks or went out shooting. Comrades recollect how, in such cases, Ilyich would unexpectedly utter some word or phrase which showed what his mind was working on at the moment.
Recollecting how Ilyich used to deal with "trifles," some comrades say: "We did not look after him properly, he was swamped by trivial affairs; we should not have troubled him with all those piddling affairs." That may be so, but Ilyich considered that attention to trivial details was extremely important, and that only such attention could make the Soviet administrative apparatus really democratic, not in a formal way, but in a proletarian democratic way.
And, as he had previously done in the building up of the Party, when he had tried, by personal example, to teach the comrades a correct approach to the problems of agitation, propaganda and organization so did he now, as head of the Soviet state, endeavour to show how work should be carried on in the government offices, how bureaucratism in every shape and form should be banished from the machinery of the state, and that machinery brought closer to the masses. His telegram to the Novgorod Gubernia Executive Committee in June 1919 is characteristic of him:
"Apparently Bulatov has been arrested for complaining to me. I warn you that I shall have the chairmen of the gubernia executive committees, the Cheka and members of the executive committee arrested for this and see that they are shot. Why did you not answer my question immediately?
"Chairman, Council of People's Commissars
Lenin"
(Lenin Miscellany, XXIV, p. 179).
Ilyich tried to purge the machinery of the state of bureaucratism; he demanded a considerate attitude towards every person on the staff, demanded that those in charge should know their staffs, help them in their work and create the necessary facilities for efficient work. Ilyich constantly questioned me about the members of my own staff and got to know them; he advised me how to make better use of one or another worker. He constantly enquired what I was doing for them, how they were off for food, and how their children were faring. He studied the members of my staff, whelm he had never set eyes on, and I was sometimes surprised to find that he knew them better than I did.
There are numerous records showing Ilyich's solicitude for the members of his own staff.
