V. I.

Lenin

237

To:   THE VESYEGONSK UYEZD EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AND THE TVER GUBERNIA EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

3. I. 1919

Please discuss the question of helping the Vasyutino
Committee of the R.C.P. with timber, a financial loan and
a library for the restoration of the People’s House destroyed by fire. If help is required from the centre, notify
me simultaneously with applications to the appropriate
People’s
Commissariats. [1]

V. Ulyanov (Lenin )
Chairman, C.P.C.

---
Notes:
[1]
Written by Lenin following a conversation with F. F. Obraztsov
a peasant from Vasyutino village, Lopatinsk Volost, Vesyegonsk
Uyezd, Tver Gubernia, who had been sent to Lenin by village
Communists to solicit help in building a village People’s House
to replace one that was destroyed by fire at the end of 1917.

On January 18, 1919, after Obraztsov’s return home, the
local newspaper, Izvestia of the Vesyegonsk Soviet of Workers’,
Peasants’ and Red Army Deputies, published an article about
his reception by Lenin under the heading “A Visit to Comrade

Lenin”. In it Obraztsov related that his talk with Lenin had dealt
chiefly with the policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet
Government towards the poor and middle peasantry. In concluding the
article, Obraztsov wrote: “Comrade peasants of Vesyegonsk Uyezd!
Believe me who saw with my own eyes that there, at the top, our
common cause is being administered not by officials or bureaucrats, but by our own, ordinary comrades, who rightly call
themselves the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government. Let us hearken
to their voice. They are working for us and our children. Let us
help them with all we can in their difficult work. Then we shall
all the sooner see a golden age for us. Comrades! I hope that it is
together with you all that I say loudly: ‘Long live the leader of the
proletariat and protector of the poor, our friend and brother
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin!!!’”