Telegram to Ryazan, December 21, 1919

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On December 21, 1919, a letter signed by Lenin was sent also to the Party Committee and Executive Committee of Tula Gubernia. It stressed the need for sending not less than 400 truckloads of potatoes to the Moscow working people within the next ten days. “On your achievements, energy and determination,” the letter stated, “depend the salvation of the working class, the consolidation of the gains of the revolution, and its farther successes and final triumph.” = (Lenin Miscellany XXIV, p. 146.)

Top priority

Telegram to be handed to the duty commissar for immediate delivery. Delivery to be confirmed to Kremlin, Moscow

3 addresses:

Gubernia Party Committee, Gubernia Executive Committee,

Gubernia Food Committee

Ryazan

Dear Comrades,

At your conference on December 19 you decided to dispatch 800 truck-loads of potatoes within ten days for Moscow workers and outlined a number of measures for carrying this out. A splendid idea, but the crux of the matter is how successfully and how quickly you will cope with the task you have set yourselves. The working class of Moscow is in the throes of starvation. Saving it means saving the revolution. The working class of Moscow has been bearing the brunt of the struggle against counter-revolution. The Red Army has defeated Kolchak and Yudenich, it is now Denikin’s turn. To enable the Red Army, with the least expenditure of time and strength, to cope with this task, which will ensure the possibility of ending the war and beginning peaceful socialist construction, the Moscow worker has had to make yet another sacrifice. He has had to provide for operational needs the transport facilities which were intended for the carriage of food to Moscow. In these conditions, it is natural that localities surrounding the centre of world revolution should come to his aid. All Party and Soviet personnel should be imbued with the idea that the provisioning of Moscow, the salvation of its working class, is their sacred revolutionary duty. On your energy and determination depend the gains of the revolution. All for food procurement, all for work to load and dispatch the trucks. The dispatch and delivery of food trains to Moscow is the care of the People’s Commissariat for Railways. Insistently demand fulfilment of this obligation from the local bodies of the Commissariat for Railways. To work, comrades! For speedy, drastic, revolutionary aid to the Moscow workers!

With communist greetings,

V. Ulyanov (Lenin)