V. I.

Lenin

81

To:   A. D. TSYURUPA [1]

Comrade Tsyurupa , People’s Commissar for Food

The bearer—Andrei Vasilievich Ivanov —is a Putilov factory worker (who is well known to Shlyapnikov and has
old Party certificates dating from tsarist times).

I told him about yesterday’s decree and the decision that the Commissariat for Labour was to urgently mobilise
workers. I gave him my opinion as follows:

Unless the best workers of Petrograd build by selection
a reliable workers’ army of 20,000 people for a disciplined
and ruthless military crusade against the rural bourgeoisie
and against bribe-takers, famine and the ruin of the revolution are inevitable.

Please confirm this to the bearer and give him a brief statement that you will grant such detachments the fullest
plenary powers on precisely such conditions.

Please give him such a statement to be read in Petrograd ,
and return this letter to the bearer.

Chairman, Council of People’s Commissars

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Notes:
[1]
Lenin wrote this letter after a talk with the Chairman of the
Purchasing Commission of the Putilov (now Kirov) Works, a plater
in the boiler-shop, A. V. Ivanov, who gave a detailed description of the grave state of famine in Petrograd and told of the
situation at the works and the mood of the workers.

Lenin informed Ivanov of the decree passed at the meeting
of the Council of People’s Commissars on May 9, 1918, giving
the People’s Commissar for Food emergency powers in the
struggle against the rural bourgeoisie, who were concealing grain and
profiteering. Lenin gave Ivanov a copy of the decree so that he
could make it known to the Putilov workers.

The meeting between A. V. Ivanov and Lenin is described
in the book Vospominaniya o Vladimire Ilyiche Lenine (
Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin), Part 2, 1957, pp. 283–84.