To M. I. KALININ and L. B. KAMENEV

Kalinin informed me of the emerging idea of collecting a special levy of one pound per pud of grain harvested to aid the starving in the Volga region. I request that you inform me whether this matter has been set in motion and when you intend to bring it before the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.53 In my opinion, it is necessary to: 1) carry this out immediately, 2) with the utmost urgency, require that each district send several carloads of grain to the Volga region with the obligatory accompaniment of this grain by two or three local peasants, who must convince themselves of the scale of the disaster and report on it to their local peasants, 3) it is necessary to consider establishing something like an order or honorary cross for intensified aid to the starving in the Volga region.

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V. Ulyanov (Lenin)

Dictated by telephone
July 19, 1921

First printed in 1933 in Lenin Miscellany XXIII

Printed from the typewritten text