(2) to encourage competition among central and local institutions of Soviet power (especially the Supreme Council of the National Economy [VSNKH] and regional councils of the national economy [SNKh], the Food Procurement Committee [Komprod] and Food Organizations, the Central Statistical Administration, and the Commissariat of Agriculture [Narkomzem]) in solving this task; (3) to entrust the cooperative department of the VSNKH and all institutions mentioned in § 2 with developing a program of such measures and a Form for gathering information about such measures and facts that would make it possible to develop these measures;* (4) to establish a prize for the best program of such measures, for the most practical program, for the most convenient and feasible Form and method of gathering information on this.

Lenin has in mind the note "In the Council of People's Commissars" signed "K". We present its contents: "Questions of international politics, advanced with particular insistence in recent times, could not overshadow questions of internal socialist construction, which, not pausing for a moment, despite the conditions of acute civil war, proceed in breadth and depth. At one of the recent sessions of the Council of People's Commissars [SNK], the question of cooperation was raised and subjected to discussion.

Data regarding the turnover of the union of cooperative societies establish with certainty the remarkable growth, both of workers' and of general public cooperation over the past year of Soviet construction. Thus, before 1917, the turnover of the Central Union [Centrosoyuz] was determined at 6,000 cars of goods, and in 1918 it grew to 32,000 cars; moreover, the Centrosoyuz was transferred a whole series of productive enterprises. The basic tendency that emerged in the discussion of the question concerning further policy of the workers' and peasants' government in relation to cooperation can be characterized by two propositions: first, while recognizing that the cooperative-capitalist apparatus of supply, which cooperation currently represents, especially in such centralized form as the Centrosoyuz, represents a significant plus compared to the private-capitalist apparatus, Soviet power cannot confine itself merely to maintaining such an apparatus, but must definitely transform it into a socialist apparatus of supply.

Second, on the path toward such transformation, the most important factor must be workers' cooperation. Proceeding from these fundamental propositions, the Council of People's Commissars entrusted the cooperative department of the VSNKH and the Food Procurement Committee [Komprod] with gathering, in the shortest possible time, information on the actual realization by cooperatives in practice of the basic line of Soviet policy, namely: a) not only the cooperation of the entire population, but the predominant role of the proletarian and semi-proletarian population in the conduct of cooperative activity; b) such an organization of supply and distribution that the poor (proletarians and semi-proletarians) would actually receive benefits (goods, etc.) from the surrender of all surplus grain to the state.

Among measures of a political character, the further implementation in the organization of all cooperatives of the basic requirement of the electoral rights of the Soviet constitution has been designated, and consequently the admission to the boards of cooperative societies only of persons possessing electoral rights under the fundamental law. Also placed on the agenda was the question of the organization of consumer communes" (Izvestiya VTsIK No. 24 of February 2, 1919, p. 2).