V. I. Lenin

Telephone Message to the Presdium All-Russia Food Conference

July 1, 1920

Comrades, I would have liked very much to attend your meeting and say something on the main food problems on your agenda. But, unfortunately, I am unable to indulge my wish and am obliged to content myself with addressing you briefly in this telephone message. I must inform you, comrades, that the successful outcome of your work, which is extremely onerous and responsible, recently induced the Council of People's Commissars to adopt a resolution expressing satisfaction with the results achieved by the food bodies in the matter of produce procurements. It is beyond question that the food bodies have grown in organisational strength during the past two years and more. This is largely due to your efforts.

But we cannot, of course, rest content with the results achieved. The hunger front, the next in importance after the war front, is imposing a number of new tasks upon you, and unless they are accomplished it will be impossible either to go on consolidating the workers' and peasants' government or to solve the immediate and urgent problems of economic development.

I also hope that you will help our economic development by establishing proper relations with the co-operative societies on the basis of the decisions of the Party Congress, [1] so as to properly accomplish the difficult but grateful task of transforming the petty-bourgeois co-operatives into socialist co-operatives.

The successes you have already achieved in food affairs oblige you more than ever to cope with the new tasks at all costs, and thus approach a real solution of the food problem. For to whom much has been given, of him much shall be demanded; and your work has shown that you have already been given quite a lot. Permit me then, to wish you success in solving the problems on the agenda of your conference, and also in your daily work, which I am sure, when the conference is over, you will tackle on the spot with redoubled energy.

Endnotes

[1] Lenin is referring to the resolution adopted by the Ninth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) "On the Attitude to the Co-operatives" (see KPSS v rezolutsiyakh i resheniyakh syezdo v, konferentsii i plenumov TsK [ The C.P.S.U. in the Resolutions and Decisions of Its Congresses, Conferences and Plenums of the Central Committee ], Part I, 1940, pp. 340-42).