I propose that you respond urgently on what measures have been adopted and are being adopted to carry out the campaign for early summer fallow plowing. In particular:

1) Have decrees been issued on this question, what is their content, and have they taken into account the necessity of considering the economic conditions of individual villages, in particular the availability of fodder land for livestock?

2) Have instructions and directives been given to workers on the ground?

3) Have leaflets, posters been issued, and have other measures of broad propaganda for early summer fallows been undertaken?

4) Have the forces of agronomists been utilized for surveying the economic conditions of villages and for propaganda on behalf of early summer fallows?

I point out that special attention must be devoted to this work, conducting it with great energy and at the same time with caution. Make use of the experience of the Tula guberniya agricultural council, which resolved to make early summer fallows obligatory for all citizens of a village if one-third of the citizens expressed themselves in favor of early summer fallows. At the same time, however, it is necessary that the consent of one-third not be forced through threats and intimidation, that this third consist of genuinely conscientious farmers, and that the decision not be implemented without the conclusion of an agronomist.

Telegraph your answers to the four questions posed to the Commissariat of Agriculture no later than April 18.

Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council Lenin*

Written April 11, 1921

First printed in 1961 "Historical Archive" No. 2

Printed from the typescript signed by