TELEGRAM TO ORENBURG:
To the Council of People’s Commissars and the People’s Commissariat for Food Supply of the Kirghiz (Kazakh) ASSR, to the Plenipotentiary
of the People’s Commissariat for Food Supply, T. M. Ponomarenko
[August 1921, 12th]
I am compelled to note that, from the latter half of June until the present, you have failed to achieve the diligent and complete fulfillment of the combat assignment issued by the State Control Commission on June 21, as communicated to you by the People’s Commissariat for Food Supply on June 22 under No. 79758. The current situation compels me to assume overall leadership in the execution of your combat assignment for the State Control Commission, overseeing your work at every stage on a daily basis. I hereby order that, starting August 15, regular shipments to Moscow, addressed to the People’s Commissariat for Food Supply, be maintained at no fewer than two routes per day, with each route consisting of at least thirty railcars.

The routes shall bear the designation “Council of People’s Commissars Routes,” and shall be assigned a special numbering sequence beginning with the thirty-seventh route. Within a three-day period, I require Comrade Ponomarenko to provide the following information—information that you should have consistently possessed as essential material for the overarching guidance of the State Control Commission’s combat assignment: 1) which railway section bears how much of the grain destined for the fulfillment of the combat assignment; 2) how much of the grain allocated to each section is currently en route or stationed at various stations, and at what average distance the remaining grain lies; 3) how the overland transport is progressing, what measures have been taken to maintain sufficient stock levels at the stations—measures that guarantee the immediate fulfillment of my demand for the regular dispatch of at least two routes per day; 4) whether loading has been secured through the use of labor, via wagons, and by means of grain hoppers capable of handling bulk grain—and what steps you, together with the Siberian Railway Administration,*** have undertaken.
* The final phrase was added by V. I. Lenin.
** The telegram is also signed: “Deputy People’s Commissar for Land Affairs, Iv. Teodorovich; for the People’s Commissariat for Food Supply, Frumkin; Deputy Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Unsh-Likhth.”
*** By the Siberian Railway Administration.