REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

Vadim GUZUN: The Leninist Alimentary Dictatorship - The Model For Stalinist Hungers … 235
country-side. Without it, villages cannot live. And the villagers refuse to give it for free or
for the prices fixed by the Soviets” 9 .
The tone of the collection campaign was given by Kremlin, this being one of the
regime’s priorities. V.I. Lenin’s letter towards A.D. Tsiuriupa, the Supply commissioner,
from the 5 th of August 1918, as regards the collection from the county of Eletsk, province
of Orlov, is relevant to this purpose. The administrative unit being one “wherefrom much
bread could be taken”, Lenin ordered: “To be immediately sent, with maximum rapidity,
in the county of Eletsk, all detachments of food, harvest and requisition, with the
maximum number of thrashers and equipment (if possible) for the rapid drying of the
bread etc. The task should be immediately given for the county to be cleaned of all bread
surplus. This will probably yield a few million poods of bread” 10 . On the 8 th of August,
Lenin accused the “counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie” of blocking the executive in the
fight against hunger and asked the Council of the People’s Commissars to intensify the
“merciless mass terror” against the “traitors who, through intensifying the hunger, tried to
help the foreign robbers”. . According to the founder of the Soviet State, the “heroic fight
with famine” should have contributed to the installation of the proletariat’s dictatorship,
the peasants who held some grain surplus had to be declared “people’s enemies”, arrested
and condemned, the hidden and undeclared bread – seized with no payment, the opposing
grain traders – executed on the spot if they were armed 11 .
In order to understand the peasantry’s counter-reaction, we quote the first Bolshevik
leader’s instruction towards the president of the Commissars’ Council of the Province of
Penza, the president of the Provincial Committee of RKP(b) and the president of the
Provincial Executive Committee, from the 11 th of August 1918: “Comrades, the riot of
five koulak volosts must lead to merciless suppression. This is in the interest of the entire
revolution, as the final decisive battle with the koulaks is fought. The example must be
given: 1) to be hung (necessarily hung – so that the people should see) no less than 100
known koulaks, wealthy and blood-suckers, 2) their names should be published, 3) all
their bread should be taken, 4) the hostages should be designated, according to
yesterday’s telegram. To act so that on a radius of one hundred versts, the people should
see, tremble, know, shout: the blood-sucking koulaks are strangled and will be strangled”.
The revolt that Lenin referred to was liquidated on the 12 th of August 1918. The peasants
having participated in the murder of 5 food agents and of 3 members of the local Soviet
from the village of Kucika as well as the organizers of the revolt were shot 12 .
Only in the interval July-August 1918, more than 200 uprisings were registered against
the food commandos, which searched for and qualified the hidden grain as surplus and
not as vital reserves. The confrontation between the civil population and the requisition
expeditions had reached dramatic quotas, producing victims on both sides, especially
when the alternative for the numerous families wherefrom all products were confiscated
9 V. NiŃulescu, Twenty Months in Russia and Siberia, vol. II “The Years 1918-1919. In the
Soviets’ Capital. Beliefs in Siberia” (in Romanian), Bucharest, United Romanian Publishing, pp.
64-65.
10 See the letter in I. Mintz, E. Gorodetsky, Documents on the History of the Civil War in the USSR
(in Russian), vol. I, Moscow, Politizdat Publishinhg, 1941, p. 165.
11 Ibidem, pp.165-166. See Lenin’s appeal towards the Council of the Peoples’ Commissars.
12 I.N. Amiantov, I.A. Ahapkin, V.N. Stepanov, V.I. Lenin. Unknown Documents. 1891-1922 (in
Russian), Moscow, Rosspen Publishing, 2000, pp. 246-247.