1) Transform the Military Commissariat into a Military-Food Commissariat – that is, concentrate 9/10 of the work of the Military Commissariat on restructuring the army for war for bread and on conducting such a war – for 3 months: June – August.

2) Declare martial law throughout the entire country for the same period.

3) Mobilize the army, setting aside its healthy units, and conscript 19-year-olds, at least in certain regions, for systematic military operations to conquer, recapture, collect and transport bread and fuel.

4) Introduce execution for indiscipline.

5) Measure the success of the detachments by the success of their work in extracting bread and by the real results of conducting the collection of grain surpluses.

6) The objectives of the military campaign should be set as:

a) collection of grain reserves for feeding the population;

b) the same – for a 3-month food supply for the war;

c) safeguarding coal reserves, collecting them, intensifying production.

7) Include in the detachments of the active army (against kulaks, etc.) from 1/3 to 1/2 (in each detachment) workers from the starving provinces and the poorest peasants from those same regions.

8) Make two instructions mandatory for each detachment:

a) an ideological-political one, on the significance of victory over hunger, over kulaks, on the dictatorship of the proletariat as the power of the toiling masses;

b) a military-organizational one, on the internal order of the detachments, on discipline, on control and written documents of control over each operation, etc.

9) Introduce collective responsibility for the entire detachment, for example, the threat of executing every tenth man – for each instance of plunder.

10) Mobilize all transport means of wealthy persons in the cities for work in transporting bread; mobilize the propertied classes for positions as clerks and administrators.

11) In the event that signs of demoralization of the detachments become threateningly frequent, withdraw, that is, rotate, the "sick" detachments after a month back to their place of origin for reporting and "treatment."

12) Proceed both in the Council of People's Commissars and in the Central Executive Committee:

(a) recognition of the country as being in a state of grave danger regarding food supplies; (b) declaration of martial law; (c) mobilization of the army, along with restructuring of the type indicated above, for a campaign for bread; (d) in each district and volost with grain surpluses, immediately compile lists of wealthy landowners (kulaks), grain traders, etc., imposing on them personal responsibility for the collection of all grain surpluses; (e) appoint in each military detachment – at least one for approximately every ten men – persons with party recommendation from the RCP and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries or from trade unions.

13) In implementing the grain monopoly, recognize as obligatory the most decisive measures of assistance to the rural poor – measures that shall not halt before any financial sacrifices – and measures for free distribution among them of a portion of the collected grain surpluses of the kulaks, along with merciless suppression of kulaks concealing grain surpluses.

Written May 26, 1918

First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVIII

Printed from the manuscript