V. I.

Lenin

486

TELEGRAM TO RYAZAN [1]

Top priority

Telegram to be handed to the duty commissar for immediate delivery. Delivery to be
confirmed to Kremlin, Moscow

3 addresses:
Gubernia Party Committee, Gubernia Executive Committee,
Gubernia Food Committee
Ryazan

Dear Comrades, At your conference on December 19 you decided to
dispatch 800 truck-loads of potatoes within ten days for
Moscow workers and outlined a number of measures for carrying
this out. A splendid idea, but the crux of the matter is
how successfully and how quickly you will cope with the task
you have set yourselves. The working class of Moscow is
in the throes of starvation. Saving it means saving the
revolution. The working class of Moscow has been bearing
the brunt of the struggle against counter-revolution. The
Red Army has defeated Kolchak and Yudenich, it is now
Denikin’s turn. To enable the Red Army, with the least expenditure of time and strength, to cope with this task,
which will ensure the possibility of ending the war and
beginning peaceful socialist construction, the Moscow worker has had to make yet another sacrifice. He has had to
provide for operational needs the transport facilities which
were intended for the carriage of food to Moscow. In these
conditions, it is natural that localities surrounding the
centre of world revolution should come to his aid. All
Party and Soviet personnel should be imbued with the idea
that the provisioning of Moscow, the salvation of its working class, is their sacred revolutionary duty. On your
energy and determination depend the gains of the revolution. All for food procurement, all for work to load and
dispatch the trucks. The dispatch and delivery of food trains to Moscow is the care of the People’s Commissariat
for Railways. Insistently demand fulfilment of this obligation from the local bodies of the Commissariat for
Railways. To work, comrades! For speedy, drastic, revolutionary aid to the Moscow workers!

With communist greetings,
V. Ulyanov (Lenin )

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Notes:
[1]
On December 21, 1919, a letter signed by Lenin was sent also
to the Party Committee and Executive Committee of Tula
Gubernia. It stressed the need for sending not less than 400
truckloads of potatoes to the Moscow working people within the next
ten days. “On your achievements, energy and determination,”
the letter stated, “depend the salvation of the working class, the
consolidation of the gains of the revolution, and its farther
successes and final triumph.” = ( Lenin Miscellany XXIV , p. 146.)