1. The Council of People's Commissars states that both the Central Committee {120} and Centrovólga are fully agreed on the necessity of nationalizing immediately and without redemption all sea and river vessels serving commercial purposes.

2. Therefore the Council of People's Commissars resolves to carry out this nationalization immediately, instructing a special commission consisting of representatives of the Naval Commissariat, two representatives from the Central Committee, two from Centrovólga and a chairman appointed by the Supreme Council of National Economy to draft the following basic principles of the decree on nationalization and to submit them to the Council of People's Commissars in two days.

3. The nationalization of the entire fleet is decreed.

4. Responsibility for maintaining order on the vessels, for their preservation and so forth is placed directly upon the ships' crews, and thereafter upon the unions of ship workers of each basin or sea.

5. The central boards of the entire nationalized fleet, temporarily, pending a congress and unification, are recognized as the Central Committee and Centrovólga. If unification is not achieved voluntarily, it will be carried out by compulsion by the Soviet power.

6. The central boards shall operate in full subordination to the local and central organs of Soviet power.

Manuscript of V. I. Lenin of the draft decree on the nationalization of the sea and river merchant fleet. – January 18 (31), 1918.