V. I. Lenin

Draft Decisions for the C.P.C. on
The Organisation of Food Supply^{1}

Written: January 16 (29), 1918
Published: First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVIII. Printed from the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Volume 42, page 55.2.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup: D. Walters
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) © 2003 Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
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The Council of People’s Commissars asks the Food Congress immediately, not later than tomorrow morning, to appoint at least three of the most experienced food supply workers to take part at once in the work of the existing top food supply bodies and in the discussion of the most vigorous and revolutionary steps for coping with the famine.

The Council of People’s Commissars asks the Food Congress to elect a committee to receive reports from all the groups, institutions and workers in the food business who are now in conflict, and to forward the committee’s findings to the C.P.C.

Notes

{1} These draft decisions were written by Lenin during the disussion at the meeting of the C.P.C. of the report of the presidium of the first Soviet All-Russia Food Congress, which opened in Petrograd on January 14 (27), dealing with the organisation of a single centre for handling the food problem. The resolution of the congress testified to the important progress achieved in rallying the food supply workers behind the Soviet government. At the same time the C.P.C. was informed of disagreements between the People’s Commissar for Food A. G. Schlichter, on the one hand, and the presidium of the food congress, the All-Russia Food Council (elected in November 1917 at the food congress in Moscow) and the Food Department of the Supreme Economic Council, on the other. It was in this connection that Lenin wrote his second draft. The first was adopted by the C.P.C., but the second was not included in the minutes of the meeting (see pp. 52-53 of this volume).