Published:
Published in full in 1933 in Lenin Miscellany XXIII.
First published, but not in full, in 1932 in Radiofront No. 3.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1976],
Moscow,
Volume 35,
pages 519-520.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.
• README
To the People’s Commissar for Posts and Telegraphs
Typed copies to
{{
(1) addressee
(2) me
(3) N. P. Gorbunov
Comrade Dovgalevsky,
Please let me have information about the state of wireless telephony in our country.
1) Is the Central Moscow Station working? If so, how many hours a day, and over what distance in versts?
If not, what is lacking?
2) Are we manufacturing (and how many?) receivers, installations capable of voice reception from Moscow?
3) How do matters stand with loudspeakers, installations which enable a whole hall (or square) to hear Moscow?
I am very much afraid that this business has once again “gone to sleep” (in the damnable manner of the Russian Oblomovs,[1] putting everyone and everything to sleep).
It has been “promised” many times, and all time limits have long ago expired!
The importance of this affair for us (for propaganda in the East especially) is exceptional. Delay and negligence here are criminal.
All this already exists abroad; what is lacking can and must be bought. In all probability, there is criminal negligence somewhere.
V. Ulyanov (Lenin)
Chairman, Council of People’s Commissars
September 2, 1921
[1] Oblomov—landowner in Goncharov’s novel of the same name, personifying sluggishness, stagnation and inertia.
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