V. I.   Lenin

Measures to Combat Famine

Written: Written late in May or early June 1918
Published: First published in 1959 in Lenin Miscellany XXXVI. Printed from the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 42, pages 94^c-95^a.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup: D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2003). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
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1. To hoard surpluses of grain and other food products at a time when the people in Petrograd, in Moscow, and in dozens of non-agricultural uyezds are not only suffering from a shortage of bread, but are cruelly starving, is an enormous crime deserving the most ruthless punishment.

2. The task of fighting famine does not only consist in pumping grain out of the grain-producing areas, but in having all grain surpluses, as well as all foodstuffs in general, delivered to and collected by the state. Unless this is done, there can be no question of any socialist reforms or of our being able to wage an effective defensive war.

3. …^[1]

Notes

[1] Here the manuscript breaks off—Ed.