Tsyurupa
It is said that
1) Sverdlov’s brother<sup>2</sup> undertakes to deliver to Moscow in 7 days
tens of thousands of poods of potatoes (at a price below the ordinary Moscow one) and that the formalism
of the Commissariat
of Food
hinders this.
2) that representatives of the Soviets of Deputies request, in order to combat famine,
permission to bring in grain,
with strict observance of all
the rules and plans of the Commissariat of Food and that formalism, etc.

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<sup>1</sup> This correspondence with A. D. Tsyurupa was conducted during a session of the Council of People’s Commissars on 3 August 1918 in connection with the discussion of draft decrees worked out by the People’s Commissariat of Food according to V. I. Lenin’s theses on drawing workers’ organisations into grain procurement.
In his replies to Lenin, Tsyurupa wrote that the People’s Commissariat of Food does not regulate the matter of potato procurement and that formalism cannot have any place here, and on the question of grain transport and procurement he proposes giving independence to the Soviets of Deputies of the famine-stricken gubernias, with which all food supply officials agree.
<sup>2</sup> V. M. Sverdlov in 1918 — commissar of the Operational Administration of the People’s Commissariat of Ways of Communication.