V. I.

Lenin

Notes on Measures for Combating Famine and Stepping Up Economic Work [3]

If an area affected by crop failure and famine embraces a
territory with a population of twenty-five million, should we not, by a
number of revolutionary measures, take young men into the army from this particular area to the number of about 500,000 (or even
perhaps up to I million?).

Purpose: to help out the famine-stricken population to some extent, as
we shall feed some of them and perhaps help others by means of parcels
which the men will send home. That is one thing. Secondly: locate these
half a million in the Ukraine, where they can help to step up food supply
work, in which. they are deeply concerned, keenly aware as they are of the
injustice of the gluttony practised by the rich peasants in the
Ukraine.

The harvest in the Ukraine is estimated roughly (Rakovsky) at 550-650
million poods. Deducting

150 million poods for sowing and 300 (15 x 20 =
300) for feeding the family and the farm animals, we get a balance
(550-450=1 0 0; 650—450 = 2 0 0) at an average of about

1 5 0 million poods . If we post an army from the famine-stricken gubernias in the Ukraine
this balance (tax 4- barter + .special requisitions from the rich to help
the starving) could be collected in full.

Measures should immediately be stepped up in the famine-stricken
gubernias to collect raw materials (hides, hoofs, horns, bristles, etc.,
etc.) and it should be made a rule, incidentally, that not a pood of relief
should be rendered either for seed or food unless payment is made in one or
another form of raw materials or fallen wood fuel or similar stuff. [1]

To revive the work of the gubernia, uyezd and district economic
conferences of Petrograd, Moscow, Ivanovo-Voznesensk and a few principal
industrial centres not far from the two capital cities, could not, 2-4
top-level workers of the central departments be assigned to each of these economic conferences?
These groups of, say, four people, could work together as a team, being
selected from among the staff of one and the same central institution or
being well acquainted with each other, and they could do regular work in
these economic councils, say, an hour a day each, making 3-4 hours a day
together?

The complete or partial transfer of workers of the non-economic
commissariats to economic work could be arranged in this way: their work at
the commissariat could be shifted to the extent of three-fourths or
nine-tenths to third-rate assistants, whom they could supervise.

In Moscow (and afterwards in other places) all top-level Party workers
should be mobilised for economic work in this way:

every top-level Party worker of a non -economic commissariat takes a low-level economic job, for which purpose he joins some
factory committee (or house or block committee)—no organisation
higher titan that (in order to work at low-level)—and undertakes
to devote no less than two hours a day to this work. Priority is to be
given to the work of distributing foodstuffs, raising the level of the
economic branch concerned, and fuel supply.

It is important that each worker’s assignment should be
precisely defined.

Should we not, simultaneously with the registration of top-level Party
workers on 1.VII.1921, organise the registration of all members of the
R.C.P. in Moscow (and perhaps in Petrograd as well?)? Enlist for this the
services of the Gubernia Statistical Bureau. Obtain exact figures on the

Party. [2]