Written: January 14 (27), 1918
Published:
First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVIII.
Printed from the manuscript.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
2nd English Edition,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 42,
pages 52b-53a.
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
Having decided to postpone publication of the decrees concerning the Food Council pending the food congress, and while persistently urging all food supply workers not to leave their posts and to avoid partial conflicts,
The Council of People’s Commissars directs the All Russia Food Council and the Commissariat for Food to send out more and numerically larger armed detachments as well as commissars to take the most revolutionary measures to expedite shipments, collect and store grain, etc., as well as to wage a ruthless struggle against profiteers, even to the extent of calling on the local Soviets to shoot convicted profiteers and saboteurs on the spot.
The Council of People’s Commissars decrees that rations shall not be increased and that the dispatch of through goods-trains shall be stepped up and their progress carefully controlled.
Urgent steps shall be taken to clear the Petrograd railway junction, the All-Russia Food Council to be made responsible for this work,
The All-Russia Food Council shall report daily to the G.PC. on the progress of food supply work and to submit a plan of food operations.
[1] This motion was adopted at a meeting of the C.P.C. on January 14 (27), 1918. The decree was an attempt to enlist the co-operation of the All-Russia Food Council, which set itself against the People’s Commissariat for Food and sabotaged the measures of the Soviet authorities. The first Soviet Food Congress, which opened in Petrograd on January 14 (27) and was attended by delegates to the Third All-Russia Congress of Soviets, abolished the Food Council and other organisations handling the food business, and concentrated this business in the hands of the Soviet authorities.
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