Letter to Pavel Ivanovich Popov, Late December 1919

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Re Consumption by the Population of the RSFSR Before and After the October Revolution

1

Comrade Popov,

Will you please-if i is not too much trouble to you—return the enclosed table to me with your remarks:

on the basis of statistical science and its modern data on Russia

(aa) could such a table be drawn up or not (on the strength, at least, of insufficient data)?

(bb) if it could, what would be the chief corrections?

(cc) would any of your specialists undertake to draw up such a table (even if with a wider amplitude of fluctuations)?

Yours,

Lenin

2

Assuming (in a round figure, for the sake of simplification and easy memorising) that the population of the RSFSR 50 million

How do they eat? (today)	% of the population	How did they eat be-fore the war (before 1914-191 7)?
a) 10 mill, workers = 50- 60% of norm	20%	on the average, say, for 10 or 15 years before the war
b) 20 mill, poor peasants	40%	50-60% of norm
c) 15 mill. middle peasants 90-100% of norm	30%	60-70% of norm [or 90%?]
d) 4 mill. rich peasants = 120-150% of norm	8%	100% of norm 100 of norm
e) I mill, former land -owners, capitalists, high officials, etc. % of the population	2% —- 100%	150-200% of norm

The norm to be considered the amount of bread, meat, 1. milk, eggs, and so on, a person needs according to science, i.e., the norm is not the amount of calories, but the amount of food of a definite quality.

By workers is to be understood industrial workers, the non-worker urban population coming under the corresponding groups c and d.

Social types: a) proletarian and semi-proletarian urban population b) ditto-rural c) middle peasantry and generally petty-bourgeois population nearest to it d) rich peasants and urban middle bourgeoisie e) higher classes.