Written: Written on May 20, 1918
Published:
First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVIII.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1975,
Moscow,
Volume 44,
page 89.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
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1) Has your draft (on the organisation of supply commissariats) been communicated to all departments?
2) Take the floor today on a point of order about submitting it for discussion tomorrow.
3) Is there not too much bureaucratic formality in your draft? Should not a point be inserted in the decree providing for the participation of 20–50 workers (with very strict recommendations) in each of the supply commissariats in the grain-producing gubernias?[1]
1) The draft has been discussed with regional officials, and approved by Rykov and the Supreme Economic Council in the section concerning the establishment of a Commissariat for Supply ( central).
2) I will rise to a point of order.
3) The draft provides for the setting up of supply commissariats under the Soviets; the supply commissariats must not be unwieldy. A point about the participation of 20–50 workers in each commissariat of the grain-producing gubernias may be inserted, but it should be for their participation in the technical apparatus as cadres to be sent out to the volosts.
The introduction of such a number of workers in the composition of the commissariats will evoke protests in the local areas.
Not in the composition of the commissariats, of course, but as cadres of
1) agitators
2) controllers
3) executors.
[1] This refers to a draft decree for reorganising the Food Commissariat, and the local food bodies. At a meeting of the C.P.C. on May 20, 1918, A. D. Tsyurupa, on Lenin’s instructions, moved that the draft decree be submitted for discussion. The draft was discussed at meetings of the C.P.C. on May 22 and 23, and was adopted with amendments. It was decided to refer the decree to the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, where it was endorsed on May 27. It was published in Izvestia No, 109 on May 31, 1918.
Clause 3 of the decree envisaged the establishment under the local food commissariats of special detachments of workers recommended by Party and trade union organisations, formed mainly in the consuming districts. These detachments were to be at the disposal of the local food bodies and comply with their directives, and were to be employed in propaganda, organising and instructors’ work. “The most important task of the workers’ detachments,” states the decree, “should be to organise the working peasantry against the kulaks” (Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti [Decrees of the Soviet Government], Vol. II, 1959, p. 310).
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