V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:LS/v38
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek); AI-translated.

ORDER TO THE SECRETARY
[1 October 1920]

Telephone message No. 4341
From the Petrograd Communal Department to Comrade Lenin, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars

The decree of the Council of People's Commissars, to provide Petrograd with a 10-day supply of grain through the People's Commissariat for Food, has not been fulfilled. For September, 200 wagonloads of grain were not received, and for August, no less. Tomorrow there will be nothing to issue to the workers of Petrograd and the province. All these days we have been borrowing from the army, at the expense of cutting the Red Army soldier's rations. Now the army also has nothing. We request intervention for the urgent implementation of the Council of People's Commissars' decree and the precise fulfillment of the plans for Petrograd and the province.

Chairman of the Petrograd Commune, Kuklin

Very urgent:
for review by Comrade Bryukhanov 1.

1 On the reverse of the document there is a note from A. B. Khalatov, a member of the board of the People's Commissariat for Food of the RSFSR, stating that the chairman of the Petrograd Commune was informed by telephone about the movement of food supply trains to Petrograd: on the night of 1 October or the morning of 2 October, 1 train of 35 wagons will arrive; on 2–3 October, another 2 trains totaling 100 wagons. These trains have been placed under special monitoring and are traveling at passenger train speed. Further supply depends on the decision of the Council of Defense regarding the export of grain from Siberia and the Caucasus.

On 4 October 1920, a commission consisting of representatives from the Moscow Soviet, the Moscow Consumer Society, the People's Commissariat for Food, the People's Commissariat for Transport, and a representative of the Petrograd Soviet resolved to accelerate the movement of food supply trains for Petrograd, and to add other food trains to the Petrograd ones to ensure the city's population is supplied with products for the coming week.

On 5 October, at a meeting of the People's Commissariat for Food in the presence of a representative of the Petrograd Provincial Communal Department, a resolution was adopted on specific measures to improve the food situation in Petrograd. On the same day, at a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, Khalatov provided a statement, confirmed by official documents, on the measures taken by the People's Commissariat for Food to improve the grain situation in Petrograd and Petrograd Province.