8 September 1919

The starving North has once again entered a phase of food supply difficulties, but an even more severe, more exceptional one, unprecedented in scale. There is absolutely no bread in Moscow, Petrograd and other proletarian districts; the scanty reserves of the military units, especially of the Western Front, are running out. The menacing moment of new food supply ordeals, in the face of the enemy's latest attempts to disrupt the deep rear by taking advantage of the prevailing food supply difficulties, imperiously demands the adoption of extraordinary measures — not a single hour's delay — to bring the required quantity of bread to the centre. Immediately, with absolute priority, dispatch all the grain procured by you up to the present moment to Moscow, addressed to the People's Commissariat of Food Supply, simultaneously intensifying the rigour of applying all the measures prescribed by our telegram of 15 July No. 1104/t.

I order that during September, aside from shipments by barge under orders, the grain collection points be commanded: for every passenger or cargo-passenger steamer passing in the direction of Nizhny, automatically load, without preliminary communications, any quantity of grain available at the moment the steamer passes, addressed to Nizhny for the People's Commissariat of Food Supply.

Upon receipt of this, we order that the measures taken and the time of each shipment be reported to the People's Commissariat of Food Supply immediately by direct wire.

Chairman of the Council of Defence Lenin
People's Commissar of Food Supply Tsyurupa