[5 January 1920]

We, the workers of the government factory of the Balashinskaya manufactory, Razinskaya volost, Moscow uyezd, gathered at a general meeting on 1 January 1920, to discuss the food question, since food, exclusively bread, we workers receive at intervals of 5 and 14 days and no other products. If potatoes are dispatched from the Centre, then even those sit on the rails for about a month. The general meeting resolved to ask you, Comrade Lenin, to consider our situation. We, the workers, are not asking for the impossible, but only so that it might be possible to have the strength to work, since our factory at the present time is supplied with raw materials and fuel and has been set in motion, but hunger and, together with it, typhus, which has developed, are felling the workers, rendering them inactive. ...
5 January 1920

Comrade Svidersky! Be sure to receive the comrades or ask another member of the collegium to receive them and be sure to inform me of your decision.

Lenin.