## 1. Draft Decree of the Council of People's Commissars{143}

All separate apparatus serving the food organizations of individual professions, such as "Prodput'" or "Prodvoda" and the like, are invited to unite their efforts, their forces, their agents, their detachments with the general forces of the Commissariat of Food Supply. A refusal to unite forces would mean, or would have meant, a refusal to support Soviet power, a refusal to aid the common workers' and peasants' struggle against hunger. Only in the unification of forces lies salvation from hunger.

## 2. Draft Appeal to Workers and Peasants{144}

Having heard the representatives of railway organizations, organizations of water transport, representatives of workers from metallurgical factories and the trade union of railway workers—having heard the proposal of these comrades to permit their organizations, "Prodput'," "Prodvoda," and so on, independent procurements, The Council of People's Commissars urgently draws the attention of all organized, conscious, and thinking workers and laboring peasants to the glaring irrationality of such proposals. It is clear to everyone that by permitting separate independent procurements by "Prodput'," "Prodvoda," "Prodmetall," "Prodrezina," and the like, we would completely destroy all food supply work, destroy all state organization of workers and the poorest peasants, and would fully clear the road to victory for the kulaks and the Skoropadskists.

All workers and hungry peasants must understand that only through common efforts, by dispatching hundreds and thousands of the best workers into common food supply detachments, only by mobilizing united, fused, common, mass forces of workers to struggle for order, to struggle for bread, can we conquer hunger, conquer disorder, conquer speculators and kulaks.

It is insane to believe those who demand independent procurements for "Prodput'," for "Prodvoda," not thinking that in each district of non-agricultural gubernias there are tens and hundreds of thousands of hungry peasants, who have received no bread at all for months.

Is this not collapse, if we grant each district of peasants separate procurements? Is it just to give "Prodput'," as it demands, 60 million rubles for independent procurements, while not giving a dozen million to each starving district, not granting it independent procurements?

Each railway workshop, each thousand employees or water workers or factory workers must send forth a detachment of the best and most reliable people, so that through joint, common efforts they may aid the general workers' and general peasants' cause of salvation from hunger, of victory over hunger.

Separate, independent procurements—the ruin of all food supply work, the ruin of the revolution, collapse and disintegration.

The designation by each thousand employees and workers of the best and devoted people into detachments to compose a common workers' fighting force for the establishment of order, for aid in oversight, for the collection of all grain surpluses, for complete victory over speculators—only in this lies salvation.

Written May 29, 1918

First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVIII

Printed from manuscripts