Hand the telegram to the duty commissar for immediate transmission and notify
Moscow, the Kremlin of its delivery
Ryazan, 3 addresses:
To the Ryazan Provincial Party Committee, Provincial Executive Committee, Provincial Food Committee


Hand the telegram to the duty commissar for immediate transmission and notify
Moscow, the Kremlin of its delivery
Ryazan, 3 addresses:
To the Ryazan Provincial Party Committee, Provincial Executive Committee, Provincial Food Committee

Source: PSS vol. 51

Dear Comrades! At your meeting on December 19th you resolved to ship eight hundred carloads of potatoes to Moscow's workers within a ten-day period and outlined a series of measures for carrying out this task. The matter is splendid, but the entire weight of the question lies in how successfully and how quickly you will cope with the task you have set for yourselves. The working class of Moscow is suffocating from hunger. The question of its salvation is a question of the salvation of the revolution. The working class of Moscow has borne and continues to bear the main burden of the struggle against counter-revolution. The Red Army has defeated Kolchak and Yudenich; now it is Denikin's turn. In order to ensure the Red Army the possibility of dealing with this task in the shortest time and with the least expenditure of effort—a task that makes it possible to end the war and proceed to peaceful socialist construction—the Moscow worker was forced to make yet another sacrifice. He was forced to place at the disposal of operational needs the transport means that were intended for bringing food supplies to Moscow. Under these conditions, it is natural that the localities surrounding the center of world revolution must come to his aid. All party, all Soviet forces must be imbued with the thought that the provisioning of Moscow, the salvation of its working class, constitutes their most sacred revolutionary duty. The successes of the revolution depend upon your energy and decisiveness. Everything for procurement, everything for work in loading and dispatching carloads. The dispatch and delivery of food trains to Moscow is ensured by the People's Commissariat of Transportation. Insistently demand from the local organs of the Commissariat of Transportation the fulfillment of this obligation. To work, comrades! For swift, decisive revolutionary aid to Moscow's workers!

With communist greetings,

V. Ulyanov (Lenin)

Written December 21, 1919

First printed incompletely in 1953 in the book "Historical
and Local History Collection ('Scholarly Notes' No. 11)". Ryazan

Printed in full in 1957 in the book "The Struggle for the
Establishment and Strengthening of
Soviet Power in Ryazan Province (1917-1920)". Ryazan

Printed from the telegraph tape text