V. I.   Lenin

Draft Decision of the Politbureau of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.)[1]


Written: Written November 27, 1920
Published: First published in 1959 in Lenin Miscellany XXXVI. Printed from the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, 2nd English Printing, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 42, page 228.
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


The Commissariat for Food to be directed, as a most important political and economic task, to regularly supply Baku with food to the extent of one hundred per cent of its requirements.

The food policy in Azerbaijan to be relaxed, namely, no grain at all to be taken from the peasants of Azerbaijan outside Mugan, and in Mugan itself with great care.

Frumkin to be directed immediately to report strict and punctilious execution of these directives twice a month to the Central Committee and the Council of Defence.[2]

A policy of utmost conciliation to be adopted towards Georgia, Armenia, Turkey and Persia, i.e., one directed most of all towards avoiding war.

We must not set ourselves the task of conducting any campaign against Georgia, or Armenia, or Persia.

The main task is to be that of guarding Azerbaijan and securing possession of the whole Caspian.

For this purpose the transference to Azerbaijan of no less than 7 divisions is to be speeded up in every possible way.

Propaganda, agitation, the development of the Committees of Poor Peasants,[3] and general Soviet activities in Azerbaijan to be stepped up in every way; for this purpose Comrade Stalin to be directed through the Orgbureau to dig up from everywhere he can the greatest possible number of Moslem Communists for work in Azerbaijan.

The Commissariat for Railways and the S.C.T.[4] to be directed to find means of transporting no less than 8 troop trains daily to Baku without affecting the supply of food to Russia,


Notes

[1] This draft, with slight amendments, was adopted at the meeting of the Politbureau on November 27, 1920.

[2] This refers to the Council of Labour and Defence. The Council of Workers’ and Peasants’ Defence was reorganised at the beginning of April 1920 and renamed the Council of Labour and Defence. Under a decision of the Eighth All-Russia Congress of Soviets in December 1920 the Council began to operate as a C.P.C. commission responsible for co-ordinating the work of all economic departments. It was abolished in. 1937.

[3] The Committees of Poor Peasants came into being in the Azerbaijan countryside after the proclamation of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. The decision calling for their organisation was adopted by the Politbureau of the CC. of the Azerbaijan Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in August 1920.

[4] S.C.T.-Supreme Council for Transport.


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