Letter to Nikolai Bryukhanov, November 6, 1922

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Comrade Bryukhanov

People’s Commissariat for Food

I have been informed that, because of the rainy summer, great quantities of grain are being delivered to the grain-collecting stations in a moist state. It is feared that it will easily heat up and lose its economic value.

Please let me know whether this is true, and whether the necessary measures have been taken to safeguard the collected grain, and also who is personally in charge of this on the all-Russia scale.

Gleb Maximilianovich informs me that a great threat to the tax in kind lies in the delayed delivery of considerable quantities of food, reaching 10,000 carloads at the points of destination—Moscow, Petrograd, Samara, Rybinsk, Yaroslavl, Kostroma and others, which is due to a shortage of storage space at the points of destination and general delays in discharging.

It looks as though no favourable results have yet been achieved by re-routing freight from one point to another, because even after re-routing to other points, the freight cars are kept under discharge for weeks, waiting for sacking and storage space.

An especially dangerous moment now seems to be coming up because the warehouses are full up.

Please let me know the present state of the unloading of grain, and the measures being taken by the People’s Commissariat for Food to accelerate it.

V. Ulyanov (Lenin)

Chairman, Council of People’s Commissars