I would urge strongly that at this congress a number of changes be made in our political structure. I want to tell you of the considerations to which I attach most importance.

At the head of the list I set an increase in the number of Central Committee members to a few dozen or even a hundred. It is my opinion that without this reform our Central Committee would be in great danger if the course of events were not quite favourable for us (and that is something we cannot count upon).

Then, I intend to propose that the congress should on certain conditions invest the decisions of the State Planning Commission with legislative force, meeting in this respect the wishes of Comrade Trotsky - to a certain extent and on certain conditions.

As for the first point, i.e., increasing the number of CC members, I think it must be done in order to raise the prestige of the CC, to do a thorough job of improving our administrative machinery, and to prevent conflicts between small sections of the CC from acquiring excessive importance for the future of the party.

It seems to me that our party has every right to demand from the working class fifty to one hundred CC members, and that it could get them from it without unduly taxing the resources of that class.

Such a reform would considerably increase the stability of our party and ease its struggle in the encirclement of hostile states, which, in my opinion, is likely to and must become much more acute in the next few years. I think that the stability of our party would gain a thousandfold by such a measure.

By stability of the CC, of which I spoke above, I mean measures against a split, as far as such measures can at all be taken. For, of course, the white guard in Russaya Mysl was right when, in the white guards’ game against Soviet Russia he banked on a split in our party, and when secondly, he banked on grave differences in our party to cause that split.
Our party relies on two classes and therefore its instability would be possible and its downfall inevitable if there were no agreement between those two classes. In that event this or that measure, and generally all talk about the stability of our CC, would be futile. No measures of any kind could prevent a split in such a case. But I hope that this is too remote a future and too improbable an event to talk about.

I have in mind stability as a guarantee against a split in the immediate future, and I intend to deal here with a few ideas concerning personal qualities.

I think that from this standpoint the prime factor in the question of stability are such members of the CC as Stalin and Trotsky. I think relations between them make up the greater part of the danger of a split, which could be avoided, and this purpose, in my opinion, would be served, among other things, by increasing the number of CC members to fifty or one hundred.

Comrade Stalin, having become general secretary, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution. Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand, as his struggle against the CC on the question of the People’s Commissariat has already proved, is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present CC, but he has displayed excessive self-assurance and shown preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work.

These two qualities of the two outstanding leaders of the present CC can inadvertently lead to a split, and if our party does not take steps to avert this, the split may come unexpectedly.

..... Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealings among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a general secretary. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, less capricious, etc. This circumstance may appear to be a negligible detail. But I think that from the standpoint of safeguards against a split and from the standpoint of what I wrote above about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky it is not a detail, or it is a detail which can assume decisive importance.

The increase in the number of CC members to fifty or even one hundred must, in my opinion, serve a double or even a treble purpose: the more members there are in the CC, the more men will be trained in CC work and the less danger there will be of a split due to some indiscretion. The enlistment of many workers to the CC will help the workers improve our administrative machinery, which is pretty bad. We inherited it, in effect, from the old regime, for it was absolutely impossible to reorganise it in such a short time, especially in conditions of war, famine, etc. That is why those “critics” who point to the defects of our administrative machinery out of mockery or malice may be calmly answered that they do not in the least understand the conditions of the revolution today. It is altogether impossible in five years to reorganise the machinery adequately, especially under the conditions in which our revolution took place. It is enough that in five years we have created a new type of state in which the workers are leading the peasants against the bourgeoisie, and in a hostile international environment this in itself is a gigantic achievement. But knowledge of this must on no account blind us to the fact that, in effect, we took over the old machinery of state from the Czar and the satisfaction of the minimum requirements against famine, all our work must be directed towards improving the administrative machinery.

I think that a few dozen workers, being members of the CC, can deal better than anybody else with checking, improving, and remodeling our state apparatus. The Workers and Peasants Inspection, on whom this function devolved at the beginning proved unable to cope with it and can be used only as an “appendage” or, on certain conditions, as an assistant to these members of the CC. In my opinion, the workers admitted to the CC should come preferably not from among those who have had long service in Soviet bodies (in this part of my letter the term workers everywhere includes peasants), because those workers have already acquired the very traditions and the very prejudices which it is desirable to combat.

The working class members of the CC must be mainly workers of a lower stratum than those promoted in the last five years to work in Soviet bodies; they must be people closer to being rank-and-file workers and peasants, who, however, do not fall into the category of direct or indirect exploiters. I think that by attending all sittings of the CC and all sittings of the Politburo, and by reading all the documents of the CC, such workers can form a staff of devoted supporters of the Soviet system, able, first, to give stability to the CC itself, and second, to work effectively on the renewal and improvement of the state apparatus.
.... [Lenin further elaborates on the need for an enlarged CC].
Lenin,
December 29, 1922.
[In the event the Tenth Congress fixed the membership of the membership of the Central Committee at 40 plus 15-20 non-voting candidate members]

To Comrade Stalin
Copy to Comrades Kamenev and Zinoviev
Dear Comrade Stalin:
You have been so rude as to summon my wife to the telephone and use bad language. Although she had told you that she was prepared to forget this, the fact nevertheless became known through her to Zinoviev and Kamenev. I have no intention of forgetting so easily what has been done against me, and it goes without saying that what has been done against my wife I consider having been done against me as well. I ask you, therefore, to think it over whether you are prepared to withdraw what you have said and to make your apologies, or whether you prefer that relations between us should be broken off.
Respectfully yours,
Lenin,
March 5, 1923.

During this same period Lenin also dictated other letters which were taken down, and smuggled out of Lenin’s room by his secretaries. These letters concerned the following struggles:
1 Supporting Trotsky’s proposal to invest the State Planning Authority with additional powers. [December 1922]
2 Opposing Stalin’s move to weaken the state monopoly on foreign trade, and authorising Trotsky to ‘stand up for my views on the foreign-trade monopoly’. [December 1922]
3 Opposing Great Russian chauvinism of Stalin in relation to his proposal for “union” of the independent republics in the Russian Federation. [December 1922]
4 Reduction of the size of the Workers and Peasants Inspection (The ‘Rabkrin’, of which Stalin was the head) [January 23, 1923]
5 Better Fewer, But Better. “everyone knows that Rabkrin does not at present enjoy the slightest authority ... nothing can be expected from this People’s Commissariat .. ” [February 7 1923]
6 Opposing Stalin’s “persecution” of the “Georgian case”. [March 5-6 1923]