Dear comrades!

You have, of course, already heard the news of the great calamity - an unprecedented famine that has struck all of the Volga region and part of the Urals. From the Astrakhan province to the Tatar Republic and Perm province, the drought has almost completely scorched both grain and grass. Millions of people - hardworking peasants and workers, millions of livestock are ready to perish and are already perishing.

ARAL SEA. BUGINSKY COUNCIL OF FISHERS AND WORKERS

Russians and Muslims, settled and nomadic - all equally face a cruel death unless their comrades - workers, laboring peasants, shepherds, and fishermen from more fortunate regions come to their aid. Of course, the Soviet power is hastening to help the starving; it has already sent them over 12 million poods of grain for winter sowing, is now sending food, organizing canteens, and so on. But all of this is not enough. The disaster is so great, and the Soviet republic is so devastated by the tsarist war and the White Guard, that with state resources, we can barely feed about 1/4 of those in need until the next harvest.

There is no hope for help from the rich capitalists either. The capitalists, who now run the strongest states in the world - such as England, America, France - have indeed declared to us that they also want to help our starving peasants, but on such terms that would mean handing over all power over our Workers' and Peasants' Republic to them. This is understandable. When has it ever been seen that a bloodsucker of the working man, a capitalist and usurer, helps him selflessly? The capitalist class has always used the hunger of the working man to enslave his body and soul. And now they want to use our famine to destroy the freedom we won with our blood, to forever take power away from the workers and peasants, and to place a tsar, landlord, master, district police chief, and official over their heads again.

The only hope for the starving in Kazan, Ufa, Samara, and Astrakhan is the great proletarian solidarity (agreement) of those like themselves, hardworking people with calloused hands, who earn their own sustenance and do not suck the blood of anyone. You, on the Aral Sea, have a good catch of fish, and you will live without great need. Allocate a part of your fish catch for the emaciated old men and women, for 8 million weakened workers, who, after all, must perform all the heavy work of cultivating the land with empty stomachs for almost a whole year, and finally, for 7,000,000 children, who are most likely to perish first.

Be generous, dear comrades, Aral fishermen and workers! You will not only be doing a deed of human conscience, but you will also strengthen the cause of the workers' revolution.

For you will show the whole world, and first of all, all the toilers, that the power of the workers' Soviet state, built on the broadest mutual aid of the proletariat from the most distant places, is invincible.

Let the entire working class rise as one to heal the grievous wound of the Volga region, and let the fertile Volga region repay us in the future years with its bread. Only in this way will we preserve the Soviet power and defend the conquered freedom against all the villainous attacks of the capitalists of the whole world.

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars

V. Ulyanov (Lenin)