V. I.   Lenin

Draft Decision for the C.P.C. on
Potato Prices[1]


Written: August 22, 1918
Published: First published in 1933 in Lenin Miscellany XXI. Printed from the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 42, pages 106-107a.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup: D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2003). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.README


1) Introduction of fixed prices for potatoes to be postponed until 1.X.

2) The Central Statistical Board to be directed:

to immediately mobilise the entire statistical personnel for

(α) taking stock of the potato harvest;

(β) taking stock of and registering the medium and big growers of potatoes

first in the chief potato-growing gubernias around Moscow;

then in the remaining potato-growing gubernias.

The Head of the Central Statistical Board to be required not later than tomorrow, Friday, and subsequently twice a week, to report what measures have been taken.

3) The Commissariat for Food (in co-operation with the Commissariat for Internal Affairs and the Moscow Soviet) to urgently consider introducing a demand for signed vouchers (from the owner of the potatoes who has sold them) as a condition for the free transportation of the potatoes by cartage, railway and waterway.

4) The Commissariat for Food to be directed immediately to mobilise all forces for organising by 25.VIII the urgent and mass purchase of not less than 40 million poods of potatoes at market prices and their delivery to government warehouses in the capital and to military bases.

5) Workers to be enlisted for this purpose en masse through the trade unions and the Soviets of the industrial gubernias,

6) A report on the progress of this operation and on the measures for its preparation (as well as recorded information   on it) to be made tomorrow, Friday, and subsequently twice a week, by the Commissariat for Food.

7) Five hundred million rubles to be assigned to the Commissariat for Food for the potato purchasing operation.

8) Point I of this decision to be published not later than tomorrow.[2]


Notes

[1] This draft decision was adopted with slight amendments at the meeting of the C P.C. on August 22, 1918.

[2] Point I of this decision of the C.PC. was published in Izvestia on August 23, 1918.


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