V. I. Lenin

Organisation Of Food Detachments [1]

In view of the fact that it is too late to send a delegate from
the Commissariat for Food to the Congress, I request you to
bring the following to the attention of the Congress. Delegates
to the Congress who support the Soviet government should
remember, firstly, that the grain monopoly is being enforced
simultaneously with a monopoly on textiles and on other staple
articles of general consumption, and, second-ly, that the demand
for the abolition of the grain monopoly is a political move on
the part of counter-revolutionary strata, who are endeavouring
to wrench from the hands of the revolutionary proletariat the
system of monopoly regu-lation of prices, one of the most
important implements for the gradual transition from capitalist
exchange of commodi-ties to socialist exchange of products. Explain to the Con-gress that as a method of combating
the food shortage the abo-lition of the monopoly would be not
only useless but harmful, as is shown by the Ukraine, where
Skoropadsky has abol-ished the grain monopoly and as a result
profiteering in grain has within a few days achieved such
proportions that the Ukrainian proletariat is now suffering from
famine far more acutely than under the monopoly.

Point out that the only effective method of increasing bread
rations is contained in the decision of the Council of
People’s Commissars to requisition grain forcibly from the
kulaks and to distribute it among the poor of the cities and the
countryside. This requires that the poor shall much more rapidly
and resolutely enlist in the food army which is being created by
the People’s Commissariat for Food.

Propose that the Congress immediately start agitating among the
workers to enlist in the food army formed by the Penza Soviet of
Deputies and to abide by the following rules:

1) Every factory shall provide one person for every twenty-five
of its workers.

2) Registration of those desiring to enlist in the food army
shall be conducted by the factory committee, which shall draw up
a list of the names of those mobilised, in two copies, one of
which it shall deliver to the People’s Commis-sariat for
Food while retaining the other.

3) To the list must be attached a guarantee given by the factory
committee, or by the trade union organisation, or by a Soviet
body, or by responsible representatives of Soviet organisations,
testifying to the personal honesty and revolutionary discipline
of every candidate. Members of the food army must be selected so
that there will not in future be a single stain on the names of
those who are setting out for the villages to combat the handful
of predatory kulaks and save millions of toilers from starvation.

Comrades, workers, only if this condition is observed will it be
obvious to all that the requisition of grain from the kulaks is
not robbery but the fulfilment of a revolution-ary duty to the
worker and peasant masses who are fighting for socialism!

4) In every factory those mobilised shall elect a
rep-resentative from their midst to perform all the organisation-al measures necessary for the actual enrolment of
the can-didates of the factory as members of the food army by
the People’s Commissariat.

5) Those enrolled in the army shall receive their former pay as
well as food and equipment from the date of actual enlistment.

6) Those enrolled in the army shall give a pledge that they will
unreservedly carry out any instructions that may be given by the
People’s Commissariat for Food they detachments leave for
their place of operation, and that they will obey the commissars
of the detachments.

I am certain that if convinced socialists loyal to the October
Revolution are placed at the head of the food requisition
detachments, they will be able to organise Poor Peasants’ Committees and by their concerted action
succeed in taking grain from the kulaks even without resort to
armed force.

Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars

Lenin

June 27, 1918

Endnotes

[1] This
telegram was sent to the Second Gubernia Congress of Soviets in
Penza in reply to a letter from the Chairman of the Penn Gubernia
Soviet A. Y. Minkin. When the Congress opened on June 24, 1918, it
elected Lenin its honorary chairman.