JUNE 10, 1918.
SVERDLOV'S NOTE.
The Left SRs are insistently demanding that the discussion of the decree on the poor be postponed, even if only for one day. Tsyurupa
11 I think it is possible to agree to this, because all the same, it
NOTE TO A.D. TSURUPA
may not be possible to have the decree in print tomorrow.1
The faction has dragged on; the meeting has not even started yet. Awaiting a response.
Sverdlov.
LENIN'S REPLY.*
I promised Tsyurupa that it would be in print on Tuesday.** Decide with Tsyurupa yourselves. I do not trust the Left SRs at all now.
Lenin.
The decree on the organization and supply of the rural poor was to be discussed at a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on June 10. The meeting was opened at 11 hours 45 minutes in the evening, and at the suggestion of Ya. M. Sverdlov, the question was postponed to the next meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, scheduled for June 11, 1918.
In the summer of 1918, when Western Siberia was occupied by the Czechoslovaks, and Ukraine by the Germans, Lenin persistently and insistently worked on the question of where and how to conduct grain procurements, because the food situation in industrial centers was deteriorating with each passing day. G. A. Shlikhter in his memoirs recounts that Lenin, upon meeting him, approximately in June 1918, throws out the thought: "We need to organize a demonstrative procurement experiment, even if in one particular *uezd*, even a *volost*, and give for this the maximum of everything that is needed: money, goods, and people" (see the pamphlet by A. Shlikhter "Ilyich as I knew him." Giz of Ukraine, p. 70). In execution of this thought, Lenin, at one of the next meetings of the Council of People's Commissars, approximately in the 20s of June, writes to A. D. Tsyurupa the note printed below on the use of A. G. Shlikhter.