V. I.   Lenin

523

To:   S. P. SEREDA AND A. D. TSYURUPA

Published: First published in 1942 in Lenin Miscellany XXXIV. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1975, Moscow, Volume 44, pages 340^b-341^a.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
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Comrades Sereda
and Tsyurupa
Copies to the All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions
Commissariat for State Control
Commissariat for Trade
Supreme Economic Council

I draw special attention to the very sensible article “Lose No Time” by Y. Preobrazhensky in Pravda of 11.II.

It is essential to adopt his proposal^[1] and immediately 

1) draft a decree

a) on the obligatory organisation of urban farming
(in all towns);

b) on measures of stimulation and development;

c) assignments (as detailed as possible) to be given in this field for the year 1920, etc.;

2) step up purchases of seed in Denmark and abroad in general;

3) step up agitation and workers’ control over the measures in § 1.

Please send me a brief summary of what is already being done (if possible one that would be suitable also for the press—we shall publish it in Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn, if it is not possible to do so in Pravda or Izvestia).

In this connection, it is necessary to begin an intensified and more systematic struggle against suburban bag-trading by drawing urban workers into the business of keeping an account (detailed) of crops, stocks, surpluses, collection of food products in suburban districts, and helping their procurement by the Food Commissariat agencies. I request the Food Commissariat to let me know what measures are being taken.

V. Ulyanov (Lenin)
Chairman, C.P.C.

Notes

[1] The article proposed that in order to improve food supplies for the workers, use should be made of suburban land plots for developing collective market-gardening and livestock breeding, and for organising auxiliary farms.