Rates of Pay for High-Ranking Officials (original) (raw)

V. I. Lenin

Rates of Pay for High-Ranking Officials

Draft Decision for the C.P.C.[1]

Written: January 2 (15), 1918
Published: First published in 1933 in Lenin Miscellany XXI. Printed from the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers,1965, Moscow,Volume 42, page 52a.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup: D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2003).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

Re Comrade Shlyapnikov’s inquiry concerning rates of pay for high ranking officials, the C.P.C.

  1. confirms that the decree establishing 500-ruble monthly salaries for members of the Council of People’s Commissars is to be interpreted as an approximate norm for top salaries and contains no prohibition to pay specialists more;

  2. calls attention once more to the fact that the decree of the C.P.C. contains a demand for revolutionary measures to be taken to reduce excessively high salaries;[2]

  3. directs all People’s Commissars immediately to report what has been done in fulfilment of this decree;

  4. directs the Commissar for Finance to submit a report as to whether resolute measures have been taken to collect income tax and eliminate evasions in the payment of this tax;

  5. directs the local Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies to take more energetic measures to collect the special tax on excessively high incomes.

Notes

[1] This motion of Lenin’s was adopted at a meeting of the C.P.C. on January 2 (15), 1918, during the discussion of an inquiry by A. G. Shlyapnikov, People’s Commissar for Labour, concerning the rates of pay for high officials of the factory managements.

[2] Lenin is referring to the decree of the C.P.C. of November 18 (December 1), 1917, on “Remuneration for People’s Commissars and High-Ranking Office Employees and Officials”. The draft of the decree was written by Lenin (see p. 37 of this volume, and Note No. 7).