Published:
First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVIII.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1975,
Moscow,
Volume 44,
page 137b.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
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• README
20. VIII. 1918
Gubernia Food Committee
Tambov
In Usman Uyezd, landowners’ grain has been harvested from 7,000 dessiatines of sown area in Safonovo, Baryatino and Novo-Nikolskoye volosts, and has been delivered to the elevator. Telegraph immediately how many poods of grain there are in this elevator, whether the guard is reliable, why you are slow in dispatching grain to Moscow, who is to blame for the scandalous delay, whether there are Poor Peasants’ Committees[1] in Usman Uyezd and are they reliable.
Lenin
Chairman, Council of People’s Commissars
[1] The Poor Peasants’ Committees were instituted by a decree of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee on June 11, 1918. They played a tremendous part in the struggle against the kulaks and in consolidating Soviet power in the countryside. They carried out strict accounting and distribution of grain and agricultural implements. Already by the autumn of 1918 the Poor Peasants’ Committees, which played a historic role in the socialist revolution, had successfully solved the tasks entrusted to them. In this connection, and also in connection with the need “to complete Soviet construction by the creation of a uniform organisation of Soviets throughout the territory of the Soviet Republic”, the Extraordinary Sixth All-Russia Congress of Soviets, held in November 1918, proposed the re-election of all volost and village Soviets, putting direct responsibility for the conduct of the elections on the Poor Peasants’ Committees. In accordance with the election instructions published by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee on December 4, 1918, the Poor Peasants’ Committees were to wind up their activities after the election campaign and hand over all their funds and functions to the newly-elected Soviets.
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