“At the Praesidium of the Central Control Commission I recently told about my ‘last conversation with Vladimir Ilych’, not long before the second attack of his illness. I quote that narrative: «Lenin summoned me to his room in the Kremlin, spoke of the terrible growth of Bureaucratism in our Soviet apparatus and of the necessity of finding a lever with which to get at that problem. He proposed to create a special commission of the Central Committee, and invited me to take active part in the work. I answered him: “Vladimir Ilych, according to my conviction, in the present struggle with bureaucratism in the Soviet apparatus, we must not forget that there is going on, both in the provinces and in the center, a special selections of officials and specialists, party, non-party and half-party, around certain ruling party personalities and groups – in the provinces, in the districts, in the party locals and in the center – that is, the Central Committee, etc. Attacking the Soviet officials, you run into the party leader. The specialist is a member of his suite. In such circumstances I could not undertake this work”. “Vladimir Ilych reflected a moment and – here I quote him practically verbatim – said: “That is, I propose a struggle with Soviet bureaucratism, and you want to add to that the bureaucratism of the Organization Bureau of the Party’ (1). “I laughed at the unexpectedness of this, because no such finished formulation of the idea was in may head. “I answered, ‘I suppose that’s it’. “Then Vladimir Ilych said, ‘Well, all right, I propose a bloc’. “I said, ‘I’m always ready to form a bloc with a good man’. “At the end of our conversation Vladimir Ilych said that he would propose the creation by the Central Committee of a commission for the struggle with bureaucratism ‘in general’, and through that we would approach the Organization Bureau of the party. The organizational side he promised to think over ‘further’. At that we parted. I then waited two weeks for the bell to summon me, but Ilych’s health became continually worse and he soon went to bed. After that Vladimir Ilych sent me his letters on the national question through his secretary. And so that work was never carried through”. In the essence of the matter, that plan of Lenin was wholly directed against Stalin’] (pag 304-305) [(1) Stalin as General Secretary was at the head of this bureau] [Leon Trotsky, ‘The Real Situation in Russia’, London, 1928]  [Lenin-Bibliographical-Materials] [LBM*]