V. I.   Lenin

142

To:   N. P. BRYUKHANOV AND OTHER MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF THE FOOD COMMISSARIAT


Written: Written in August, after 8, 1918
Published: First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVIII. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1975, Moscow, Volume 44, pages 125b-126a.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
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Bryukhanov and other members of the Board
of the Food Commissariat

I gather from your note that the Food Commissariat understands and applies the decrees incorrectly.

No special desire is noticeable among the workers ...” (to join harvesting detachments).

Where are the proofs? Where is the appeal of the Food Commissariat? What is the date of it?

In which factories was it distributed? When and in how many copies?

I am afraid the Food Commissariat did none of these things (judging by Comrade Bryukhanov’s silence), but occupied itself with the devil knows what bureaucratic   red tape. For without the help of the workers the Food Commissariat is nil.

Nothing bad is to be seen from the quotation (from Nevsky’s telegram of 8. VIII), for it does not touch on the question of % of trade union members, or of the leading organisation, or of participation and harvesting (§ 7 of the decree on collective trains), i.e., the business questions are not dealt with.

What’s bad about Nevsky’s telegram besides the good? Nevsky calls on the workers: go out and help (he says nothing about conditions, but we indicated these conditions and indicated good ones). But the Food Commissariat cavils at a word (when there’s nothing to cavil at) ... and itself does nothing!

Either we rouse the mass of the workers to join in a serious movement for grain (and for crushing the kulaks)— this the Food Commissariat does not do 

or else, no Food Commissariat at all is needed.


Notes


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