Saratov Gubernia, Serdobsk Uyezd, Bakurskaya Volost  
To the Bakurskaya Volost Organisation of the R.C.P.  
Copy to the Saratov Gubernia Party Committee and Gubernia Executive Committee  
Dear comrades,

Comrade Turunen, secretary of your organisation, has conveyed to me in writing that you, at the request of the peasants, decided through him to bring to my attention the counter-revolutionary actions in your volost on the part of certain food supply workers who commit outrages against the propertyless, loot for personal gain, encourage moonshining, get drunk, rape women, provoke the Soviet power, and so on. You ask that these counter-revolutionary actions be liquidated from here, from Moscow. But to fight counter-revolution with all your forces on the spot is one of the principal tasks of the local Party organisations, including yours. It is your duty and obligation to achieve, through communications with the Uyezd Party Committee, and, should that fail, with the Gubernia Party Committee, the arrest and handing over to the Revolutionary Tribunal of such counter-revolutionaries and scoundrels as you report.

What have you done in this direction?

In the second part of the letter, Comrade Turunen cites your considerations that the Soviet power, in order to emerge from economic ruin, must for a certain time lean on the peasantry as on a crutch. That is absolutely correct. This is stated in our Party Programme and in the decisions of Party congresses. At the last Eighth All-Russia Congress of Soviets the question of raising agriculture was examined in great detail and thoroughly, and the congress adopted important practical decisions which you on the spot will have to carry through in life according to the instructions of the gubernia bodies.

These decisions were published in the newspapers. In addition, Comrade Turunen will bring you some supplementary

materials which he will obtain at the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture, to which he was directed by me.

With communist greetings,

Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars  
*V. Ulyanov (Lenin)*