V. I.

Lenin

347

INSTRUCTION TO THE SECRETARY [2]

Telephone:

1) To
Rosta, [1] for them to send me tomorrow a written report that this has been transmitted by them to so many
newspapers, towns.

2) To Chicherin, that this should go out by radio in
German, French and English.

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Notes:
[1]
Rosta—Russian Telegraph Agency.— Ed.

[2]
On May 27, 1919, the C.P.C. heard a report by A. I. Svidersky,
a member of the Board of the People’s Commissariat for Food,
on the state of grain procurements and on plans for the food
procurement campaign before the next harvest. The Council decided
to publish Svidersky’s report in the form of an article and to
transmit abroad by radio a short communication about it with
statistical data.

Lenin’s instruction to the secretary was written on the text
of the prepared radio-information, which stressed that, in spite
of extremely adverse conditions (lack of commodities, devaluation of the currency, seizure by whiteguards of the main
grain-growing regions), procurements of grain in 1919 were proceeding
more successfully than in the previous year: the Soviet food
supply organisations collected 102 million poods of grain during the
nine months (from August 1918 to April 1919) compared with
only 28 million poods during the ten months (from November
1917 to August 1918).

Svidersky’s article “Immediate Food Prospects” was published in Izvestia for June 3 and 4, 1919.