V. I.

Lenin

DRAFT DECREE ON CONSUMERS’ COMMUNES [2]

1

PRELIMINARY THESES

The drafts put forward by the Commissariat for Food
for “supply boards”, “delegate committees”, etc., and
similarly the draft of the Supreme Economic Council for “
district economic
councils” [3] suggest the need to amalgamate
such bodies.

Preliminary theses:

( Etwa [1]

):

[

supply and marketing committees?

]

The basic unit should be consumer and producer (better
than purchasing and trading, etc.) volost societies, playing
the part both of supply committees and marketing agencies.
In case of need, volost boundaries could be made alterable.

In the towns a similar place could perhaps be taken by
block committees or committees for sections of blocks.

If we manage to set up such committees, basic units,
in the localities, the amalgamation of these committees
would provide a network capable of properly organising
the supply of the whole population with all essentials,
and of organising production on a national scale.

Possibly instead of “societies” these could be Soviets
of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, with the participation
of commercial employees, etc., etc.

Every such society or committee or Soviet (or supply
and marketing committee) would be divided up into
sections or departments, according to goods marketed and types of products supplied, for the general regulation of production
and consumption (a department for finance, or for cash

receipts and disbursements, should be attached to every
supply and marketing committee). With the right of
levying income tax and granting interest-free credits to the
poor, and also universal labour service, this might be
the basic unit of socialist society. The volost banks would
then have to be amalgamated with the state savings banks,
being transformed into a state-wide accounting department,
aggregate of the state’s receipts and disbursements accounts.

The transportation of products, and likewise their
purchase and sale, would then be permitted only from one
supply and marketing committee to another, all individual
marketing being prohibited. On certificates issued by
volost (or generally the “basic”, lowest) supply and
marketing committees, products could be sold also to individuals
from central stores, provided that these transactions are
recorded in the books of the volost or other supply and
marketing committees (except within small units, or for
trifles). No transportation of products would be permitted
without certificates from the supply and marketing
committee.

[[ BOX:

This would be the unification of the Commissariats
for Agriculture, Trade and Industry, Labour, and Food,
and the Supreme Economic Council, and the
Commissariats for Finance and Communications.

]]

||
N.B. : “Supply and marketing committees”: volost,
uyezd, gubernia and district. (σσ=the S.E.C.) Their
departments: Central Textile Board, Central Sugar Board,
Central Coal Board, etc. (σσ=the S.E.C ), Central Bank,
etc.

[

N.B. : Representatives of the Soviets of Workers’,
Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies should superintend the
well-to-do quarters in towns (or well-to-do
country-house settlements, etc.), i.e., those quarters, etc., where
the percentage of workers and peasants is lower than,
say, 60 per cent.

]

---
Notes:
[1]
Roughly.— Ed .

[2]
Draft Decree on Consumers’ Communes was written by Lenin
on December 25–28, 1917 (January 7–10, 1918), and published in
part in Sobraniye Sochineny (Collected Works) of V. I. Lenin,
Fourth Edition (see present edition, Vol. 26, pp. 416–17). It was
fiercely opposed by bourgeois co-operators. The Soviet
government believed that the bourgeois apparatus of accounting and
control should be utilised, and made some concessions to the
co-operators. Negotiations with them were conducted in March
and early April 1918. At first, the co-operators insisted on complete
independence of co-operative societies from the organs of the
Soviet power and on servicing their own members only. The draft
decree worked out in late March was adopted by the Council of
People’s Commissars on April 10, with Lenin making a number
of amendments in the draft. Clauses 11, 12 and 13 were fully
written by Lenin.

The decree was approved by the All-Russia Central Executive
Committee on April 11, 1918, and the following resolution of the
Bolshevik group was adopted: “Consumers’ co-operatives, which
cater for a sizable section of the population, have until now been
pursuing an economic policy which frequently ran counter to, or
outside, the economic policy conducted by the Soviet
government. This was due to the fact that the leadership of consumers’
co-operative societies was chiefly in the hands of the
non-labouring classes. At present, with the consolidation of the Soviet
power, consumers’ co-operatives have expressed their readiness
to work under the direct guidance and control of Soviet organs of
power. The decree on consumers’ co-operatives, worked out on
the basis of negotiations between the central co-operative
organisations and the Council of People’s Commissars, is a compromise
solution with essential shortcomings. But, considering the
organisation of the proper distribution of food and goods among
the population to be one of the most important and urgent tasks
of the present period, whose solution requires a number of socialist
measures in this sphere and the substitution of a state trade
apparatus for the private commercial apparatus, the Central

__PRINTERS_P_689_COMMENT__
44—39

Executive Committee adopts the decree on consumers’ co-operatives
as a transitional measure leading to the implementation of state
distribution of food and goods in the country” =

( Protokoly zasedany VTsIK 4-go sozyva [Minutes of the Fourth All-Russia Central
Executive Committee], Moscow, 1920, p. 104). The decree was
published over the signature of the Chairman of the Council
of People’s Commissars, Vl. I. Ulyanov (Lenin), in Pravda
No. 71, April 13 (March 31), 1918, and Izvestia No. 75, April 16
(April 3), 1918.

[3]
A reference to the directive issued by the People’s Commissariat
for Food to local Soviets on organising a food supply apparatus,
its draft for a Commissariat for Supply, and the statute of the
Supreme Economic Council on district economic councils.

Because the old food supply agencies sabotaged the decrees
of the Soviet government, the People’s Commissariat for Food
issued a directive to local Soviets on December 22, 1917 (
January 4, 1918) that they should rely on the delegate organisations
from the consuming gubernias and armies (delegates’ committees),
set up under the food supply agencies, take over the food supply
effort and organise their own food supply apparatus. At the same
time, the People’s Commissariat for Food was working out a draft
for its reorganisation into a Commissariat for Supply, which was
to take charge of supplying the population not only with
foodstuffs but other goods as well, sharply curtailing private trade in
the process. The local agencies of the Commissariat for Supply
were to be turned into supply departments under the Soviets.

On December 23, 1917 (January 5, 1918), the Supreme
Economic Council adopted the Statute of District (Regional) and Local
Economic Councils, which were to organise and regulate local
production under the guidance of the S.E.C.