Written: 10 November, 1917
First Published: In Izvestia
12 November 1917
No. 223. Published according to the newspaper text.
Source: Lenin’s Collected
Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972,
pp. 320
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov and George
Hanna, Edited by George Hanna
Transcription & HTML Markup: Charles
Farrell and David Walters
Online Version: Lenin Internet Archive November,
2000
The disruption of the food supply caused by war and mismanagement is being aggravated to the extreme by profiteers, marauders and their accomplices on the railways, on steamship lines, in transport offices, etc.
At a time of great national hardship, criminal plunderers are jeopardising the health and lives of millions of soldiers and workers for their own gain.
Such a state of affairs cannot be tolerated for a single day longer.
The Council of People's Commissars orders the Revolutionary Military Committee to adopt the most vigorous measures to eradicate profiteering and sabotage, concealment of supplies, the malicious delay of freight, etc.
All persons guilty of such actions are liable, by special decision of the Revolutionary Military Committee, to immediate arrest and custody. in the prisons of Kronstadt, pending their trial by revolutionary court martial.
All public organisations must be drawn into the fight against the food plunderers.
V. Ulyanov (Lenin),
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars