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Lenin's Letter on the Soviet Procuracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Glenn G. Morgan
Glenn G. Morgan*
Affiliation:
San José State College
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Extract

According to Soviet writers, it was Lenin's “famous” letter to Stalin in May, 1922, which was responsible for the creation of the Soviet procuracy. This impression has grown through repeated statements so that the observer is led to believe that the form and content of the procuracy were set forth in this epistle and implemented with the passage of the first statute on the Soviet procuracy of May 28, 1922. The ineluctable conclusion reached is that the procuracy sprang fullblown from the head of Lenin. This article will seek to show to what extent this may be said to be true. It is the contention of this writer that although Lenin's letter was an exceedingly important factor in determining whether the procuracy would be resuscitated in 1922, its importance lay in the support which Lenin, the Party and government leader, gave to a faltering project and not in the weight of his arguments which merely repeated, for the most part, statements on the need for and desirability of the procuracy which had previously been made by others, notably N. V. Krylenko.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , February 1960 , pp. 10 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1960

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References

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