Date: 1918-08-26
Source: ru:LS/v18

IN PETER [Petrograd].1
[August 26, 1918]
Comrade Lunacharsky, your response to these questions:
Do you know how the matter of allowing 1 pood [of food] was handled in Petrograd?
1) Was it allowed?
2) When?
3) Was it implemented?
4) Was it revoked?
5) When?
LUNACHARSKY'S RESPONSE.
It was allowed by the Presidium of the Council of Commissars jointly with the Regional Comprod and then confirmed by the Petrograd Soviet in May (approximately around the 20th), and has not been revoked until now, that is, it was revoked by the decree on blocking detachments, where the norm was reduced.
In the first days, it caused a favorable political shift for us and a partial easing of the food crisis, but later the situation worsened, and now it has no significance.
Note: The note to A. V. Lunacharsky was apparently written during the meeting of the SNK [Council of People's Commissars] on August 26, 1918, during the discussion of the issue of preferential transportation of bread, proposed by the Moscow Soviet (see p. 225). A. V. Lunacharsky—after the government moved to Moscow, while being the People's Commissar of Education, remained in Petrograd for over a year.
On August 4, 1918, under the signature of L. Kamenev, a resolution of the Presidium of the Moscow Soviet of Workers' and Red Army Deputies on the preferential transportation of food products to Moscow (Izvestia of the VTsIK No. 485) was announced. On August 26, at the meeting of the SNK, a draft decree on the preferential transportation of bread (reported by L. Kamenev) was heard; on this issue, the SNK adopted the following resolution:
"The project is rejected. a) The Commissariat of Food Supply, together with the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions, is to develop the issue of preferences for the transportation of bread for soldiers' families and workers returning from vacation, and to present a project within 2 days; b) to refer the complaint of cooperatives about the fact that the workers' cooperative was not given the opportunity to buy bread according to the decree of August 8 to a commission under the SNK; c) to leave open the question of the resolution of the Moscow Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, allowing the transportation of one and a half poods of products to Moscow, and to request the Central Committee of the Party of Communists to consider it; d) to take into account the statement of A. D. Tsiurupa that the blocking detachments will freely allow workers transporting products" (protocol of the SNK No. 487, archive I. L. No. 44870).
On August [date not specified], the food supply issue was again placed on the agenda of the SNK by Lenin, but then the question was removed and transferred to the VTsIK, as evidenced by Lenin's note: "transferred to the VTsIK." While the issue was being discussed, completely...