Telegram to the Kineshma Soviet, May 24, 1918

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This document was drawn up in the People’s Commissariat for Food. At the top of the document, separated by a line, is the following inscription: “Telegram of the People’s Commissariat for Food.”

Soviet of Deputies

Kineshma

To all workers of the Kineshma district. Comrade workers, the rich in the villages of the producing gubernias are hoarding huge stocks of grain and not giving them up for the starving workers. The rich prefer to sell grain at exorbitant speculative prices, which only the city bourgeoisie can pay, but not the poor, starving population. While speculating in grain, the rich seek to speculate also in the goods they receive in exchange for grain. The city bourgeoisie is agitating for the abolition of the grain monopoly and fixed prices, and for freedom to trade in grain. The bourgeoisie is passing from agitation to provocation; it is skilfully and surreptitiously inciting the starving workers to demonstrations, disturbances and disorders, while endeavouring to seize power in its own hands. The Council of People’s Commissars is exerting every effort in the struggle to uphold the grain monopoly, in the absence of which only the bourgeoisie will prosper while the poor will be left without any grain at all. Comrade workers, do not give way to the provocation of the dark forces, do not play into the hands of the bourgeoisie and the counter– revolutionaries who want to make cat’s-paws of you and destroy all the gains of the revolution. Do not disorganise the hard work of obtaining grain for you by thoughtless actions on your part and independent exchange of goods. The Council of People’s Commissars is now exchanging goods for grain on a vast scale; it has begun requisitioning grain stocks from the village bourgeoisie by means of armed detachments. If you want to help, to co-operate with your workers’ and peasants’ government, act in an organised way: select from among you those who are most familiar with the food business for work in the Soviet food supply bodies, recruit fighting detachments of honest, incorruptible, steadfast revolutionaries, true champions of the interests of the workers and peasants. Immediately detain provocators and agents of the counter-revolution and deliver them to Moscow. Bear firmly in mind: either we extricate ourselves from all our unprecedented difficulties in an organised way, and with honour, or everything is inevitably doomed, to complete ruin. There is no other alternative. In the expectation of speedy results from these measures, the Council of People’s Commissars asks you, comrade workers, to display revolutionary self-discipline and political alertness in order to save the gains of the revolution and ensure the triumph, of the proletarian dictatorship.

V. Ulyanov (Lenin)

Chairman, Council of People’s Commissars