Written: March 26, 1918
First Published: Sbornik dekretov i postanovlenii po narodnomu khoziaistvu. 25 oktiabria
1917 g.-25 oktiabria 1918 g., Moscow, 1918, pp. 820-22.
Source: James Bunyan and H.H. Fisher, The Bolshevik revolution, 1917-1918: Documents and materials, Stanford University Press; London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1934, pp. 655-656.
Translated: Emanuel Aronsberg
Transcription/Markup: Zdravko Saveski
Online Version: marxists.org 2017
In view of the obvious need of preventing any further disintegration of the railway system .... [and of checking the well-meant but disastrous] .... interference of local, oblast, and central organizations in .... the management of the railways, the Soviet of People's Commissars decrees:
1. The People's Commissar of Ways and Communications is to be in control of the Commissariat of the same name .....
2. The Collegium of Ways and Communications is to consist of the .... Commissar, as chairman, and members elected by the All-Russian Congress of Railroad Workers and approved by the Soviet of People's Commissars and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In case of any disagreement between the Collegium and the Commissar, the former may appeal to the Soviet of People's Commissars and to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.
3. The Collegium .... is not to interfere .... with the regulations of the Commissar of Ways and Communications, who is given dictatorial powers in matters relating to railway transport.
4. The complicated network of organizations directing [railway] transport .... is to be simplified, and unnecessary units are to be abolished. A list of the latter is to be prepared by the People's Commissar of Ways and Communications.....
6. Each local, district, and regional railway center is to select from among its members a worker who has shown himself to be the most energetic and loyal to the Soviet regime and who understands railroad business. This worker is to be made chief executive of the given railway center and is to be responsible to the People's Commissar of Ways and Communications. Within a given traffic division this official is vested with full dictatorial powers .....
8. On those lines or in those localities where .... elected committees of railway workers, refusing to indorse the Soviet government's policy, carry on secret sabotage, the most active and revolutionary-minded railway men must organize railway military revolutionary committees which, upon [receiving] the approval of the People's Commissar of Ways and Communications, .... are to assume complete control. [Such authority] they are [then] to delegate to a single responsible individual.....
[The rest of the decree deals with arrangements for guarding the railway lines, plans for increasing the railroads' technical and administrative efficiency, and penalties to be imposed in case of failure to carry out the decree.]
Vl. ULIANOV (LENIN)
President of the Soviet of People's Commissars
A. ROGOV, V. NEVSKY
People's Commissars