June 12, 1920

According to information received from the representative of the People's Commissariat for Food Supply, based on data from dispatchers, it is evident that: in May, 306 carloads of grain cargo dispatched in April–early May arrived in Petrovsk for Baku, of which 273 carloads were delivered to Baku; in the first nine days of June, 65 carloads of grain cargo arrived in Baku, and moreover several shipments passed through Georgievsk to Petrovsk. In addition to this, a dispatcher's report from June 9 establishes: pursuant to an urgent order from the People's Commissariat for Food Supply to Petrovsk for Baku, 377 carloads have already been loaded at various stations; 116 carloads arrived in Petrovsk between May 25 and June 9, with 201 carloads in transit (the latter information is incomplete).

Observing from these data that the representation of the People's Commissariat for Food Supply at the Caucasian Soviet Labor Army has taken and is taking sufficient measures to ensure the provisioning of oil workers, that any interference by other organs, such as the Sevkavrevkom, the Revolutionary Councils of armies, and their separate actions in the sphere of procurements and commodity exchange are capable only of introducing disorder into the gradually improving matter of supplying Baku and must be eliminated immediately—the Council of Labor and Defense places full responsibility for the provisioning of the oil regions of the Caucasus upon the Caucasian Soviet Labor Army, in particular upon the representative of the People's Commissariat for Food Supply, and obligates the representative of the People's Commissariat for Food Supply to report every five days to the People's Commissariat for Food Supply (with a copy to the Council of Defense) with complete data on the progress of loading, dispatch, and arrival of provisions in Baku. All other leading institutions of the Caucasus, in particular the organs and representatives of the Chief Oil Administration and Sevkavrevkom, are to act only in contact with the Caucasian Soviet Labor Army and conduct the matter of provisioning the oil workers and overseeing this work only through it.

Chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense
Lenin
June 13, 1920

1. The Central Committee of the RCP considers the principal task of the RCP in Turkestan to be the liquidation of the relations that have developed between the immigrant European population and the indigenous peoples as a result of more than fifty years of imperialist policy by Russian autocracy. These relations, during the 2½ years of Soviet power, which has been in the hands of an extraordinarily thin stratum of Russian workers heavily infected with colonialist psychology, have not only not improved, but have become even more acute thanks to peculiar "communist" actions, viewed by the enslaved indigenous population as a continuation of the actions of agents of the old tsarist power and in essence constituting such.

2. In order to liquidate the indicated relations, it is necessary to urgently adopt the following measures:

a) Confiscate from settlers in Kirghiz regions all lands designed by the Resettlement Administration or arbitrarily appropriated by settlers from the Kirghiz, leaving settlers plots equal in size to a labor holding.

—But the settlers—kulaks? Is this robbery? And to equalize their lands?