V. I. Lenin

Supplement To The Decree Of The Council Of People’s Commissars: “The Socialist Fatherland Is In Danger!”


Written: 21 or 22 February, 1917
First Published: Pravda, No. 293, December 22, 1927; Published according the manuscript
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 27, 1972, pp. 34-35
Translated: Clemans Dutt, Edited by Robert Daglish
Transcription\HTML Markup:Robert Cymbala and David Walters
Online Version: Lenin Internet Archive December, 2000


For correct and strict lmplementation of the Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of February 21 It is decided:

(1) Every worker, after an 8-hour working day, is obliged to work three hours daily (or 4' /2 hours daily with every third day off) on war or administrative work.

(2) Everyone belonging to the rich class or well-off groups (income not less than 500 rubles per month, or owning not less than 1,500 rubles ln cash) is obliged to provide himself immediately with a workbook, in which will be entered weekly whether he has performed his due share of war or administrative work. The entries will be made by the trade union, Soviet of Workers' Deputies or local Red Guard detachment, whichever he belongs to.

Work books for well-off persons will cost 50 rubles each.

(3) Non-workers who do not belong to the well-oft classes are also obliged to have a work book, for which they will pay five rubles (or one ruble, at cost price).

The work books of the well-off will have columns for weekly entry of income and expenditure.

Failure to possess a work book or the making of incorrect (and, still more, false) entries in it will be punished according to wartime laws.

All those who possess arms must obtain fresh permission to do so (a) from the local house committee, (b) from the bodies mentioned in item 2. Without these two permissions possession of arms is forbidden; the penalty for violating this regulation is death by shooting.

The same penalty is incurred by concealing food.

For correct organisation of food supplies all citizens are obliged to join in consumer’s co-operative societies, house.... Here the manuscript breaks off, —Ed.