V. I.

Lenin

611

To:   THE FUEL DEPARTMENT OF THE MOSCOW SOVIET

16. VI. 1920

Dear Comrades, I enclose herewith the decision of the Council of Labour
and Defence of
11.VI, [1] and again specially ask you to give this question the most serious attention.

The Moscow population can and should be mobilised to a man to haul out of the forests by hand a sufficient
quantity of firewood (say, one cubic metro per adult man in
3 months—the experts can figure it out more exactly; I mention a figure as an example) to stations on the railways
and narrow-gauge lines.

Unless heroic measures are taken, I shall personally get
a decision put through the Council of Defence and the C.C.
not only for the arrest of all the persons responsible but
for their execution. Inactivity and negligence cannot be
tolerated.

With communist greetings, Lenin

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Notes:
[1]
On June 11, 1920, after hearing the report of a commission on
measures for ensuring the maximum deliveries of fuel, especially
for Moscow, the Council of Labour and Defence resolved: “To make
the Moscow Fuel Board and the People’s Commissariat for
Railways responsible for transporting within three weeks all the
firewood lying at railway stations within a 30–verst radius of
Moscow, to the amount of about 8,000 cubic sazhens.” = ( Lenin Miscellany XXXIV , p. 321.)