V. I. Lenin

Main Propositions Of The Decree On Food
Dictatorship [1]

The draft decision to be revised in the following way:

1) delete the references to the international situation;

2) insert that after peace with the Ukraine we shall be left with only just enough grain to save us from famine;

3) insert that decisions of the dictator will be checked by his
collegium, which has the right, without holding up implementation, to appeal to the Council of People's Commissars;

4) insert that decisions which by their nature are connected
with the Commissariat for Ways of Communication or the Supreme
Economic Council are to be adopted by consultation with the
appropriate departments;

5) give a more precise legal formulation of the rights of the
Commissar for Food;

6) emphasise more strongly the basic idea of the necessity, for
salvation from famine, of conducting and carrying through a
ruthless and terrorist struggle and war against peasant or other
bourgeois elements who retain surplus grain for themselves;

7) lay down precisely that owners of grain who possess surplus
grain and do not send it to the depots and places of grain
collection will be declared enemies of the people and will be
subject to imprisonment for a term of not less than ten years,
confiscation of all their property and expulsion for ever from
the community;

8) insert an addition on the duty of working peasants who are
propertyless and do not possess surpluses to join forces for
ruthless struggle against the kulaks;

9) define precisely the relation of the delegate committees to
the gubernia food committees and the rights and duties of the
former in carrying out food work.

Endnotes

[1]
Lenin’s proposals werw endorse at a meeting of the Council
of People’s Commissars on May 8, 1918, during the discussion on the report of the People’s Commissar for
Food A. D. Tsyurupa and on the decree granting the Commissar
emergency powers. The document is an instruction to the
commission set up by the Council of People’s Commissars to
revise decree submitted by the People’s Commissariat for
Food Granting emergency powers.

Based on Lenin’s propositions, the devree was approved on
May 9, 1918 by the Council of People’s Commissars, and on
May 13, by the All-Russia C.E.C. It was published on May 14, in
Izvestia VTsIK No. 94 (see Decrees of the Soviet Government, Russian edition, Volume 2, 1959, pages
261-266).