The disastrous undermining of the country’s food-supply, the serious heritage of the four years’ war, continues to extend more and more, and to be more and more acute. While the consuming provincial governments are starving, in the producing governments there are at the present moment, as before, large reserves of grain of the harvests of 1916 and 1917 not yet even threshed. This grain is in the hands of tight-fisted village dealers and profiteers, of the village bourgeoisie. Well fed and well provided for, having accumulated enormous sums of money obtained during the years of war, the village bourgeoisie remains stubbornly deaf and indifferent to the wailings of starving workmen and peasant poverty, and does not bring the grain to the collecting-points. The grain is held with the hope of compelling the government to raise repeatedly the prices of grain, at the same time that the holders sell their grain at home at fabulous prices to grain speculators.

An end must be put to this obstinacy of the greedy village grain-profiteers. The food experience of former years showed that the breaking of fixed prices and the denial of grain monopoly, while lessening the possibility of feasting for our group of capitalists, would make bread completely inaccessible to our many millions of workmen and would subject them to inevitable death from starvation.

The answer to the violence of grain-owners toward the starving poor must be violence toward the bourgeoisie.

Not a pood should remain in the hands of those holding the grain, except the quantity needed for sowing the fields and provisioning their families until the new harvest.

This policy must be put into force at once, especially since the German occupation of the Ukraine compels us to get along with grain resources which will hardly suffice for sowing and curtailed use.

Having considered the situation thus created, and taking into account that only with the most rigid calculation and equal distribution of all grain reserves can Russia pass through the food crisis, the Central Executive Committee of All Russia has decreed:

1. Confirming the fixity of the grain monopoly and fixed prices, and also the necessity of a merciless struggle with grain speculators, to compel each grain-owner to declare the surplus above what is needed to sow the fields and for personal use, according to established normal quantities, until the new harvest, and to surrender the same within a week after the publication of this decision in each village. The order of these declarations is to be determined by the People’s Food Commissioner through the local food organizations.

2. To call upon workmen and poor peasants to unite at once for a merciless struggle with grain-hoarders.

3. To declare all those who have a surplus of grain and who do not bring it to the collecting-points, and likewise those who waste grain reserves on illicit distillation of alcohol and do not bring them to the collecting-point, enemies of the people; to turn them over to the Revolutionary Tribunal, imprison them for not less than ten years, confiscate their entire property, and drive them out forever from the communes; while the distillers are, besides, to be condemned to compulsory communal work.

In case an excess of grain which was not declared for surrender, in compliance with Article I, is found in the possession of any one the grain is to be taken away from him without pay, while the sum, according to fixed prices, due for the undeclared surpluses is to be paid, one-half to the person who points out the concealed surpluses, after they have been placed at the collecting-points, and the other half to the village commune. Declarations concerning the concealed surpluses are made by the local food organizations.

Further, taking into consideration that the struggle with the food crisis demands the application of quick and decisive measures, that the more fruitful realization of these measures demands in its turn the centralization of all orders dealing with the food question in one organization, and that this organization appears to be the People’s Food Commissioner, the Central Executive Committee of All Russia hereby orders, for the more successful struggle with the food crisis, that the People’s Food Commissioner be given the following powers:

1. To publish obligatory regulations regarding the food situation, exceeding the usual limits of the People’s Food Commissioner’s competence.

2. To abrogate the orders of local food bodies and other organizations contravening the plans and actions of the People’s Commissioner.

3. To demand from institutions and organizations of all departments the carrying out of the regulations of the People’s Food Commissioner in connection with the food situation without evasions and at once.

4. To use the armed forces in case resistance is shown to the removal of food grains or other food products.

5. To dissolve or reorganize the food agencies in places where they might resist the orders of the People’s Commissioner.

6. To discharge, transfer, turn over to the Revolutionary Tribunal, or subject to arrest officials and employees of all departments and public organizations in case of interference with the orders of the People’s Commissioner.

7. To transfer the present powers, in addition to the right to subject to arrest, above, to other persons and institutions in various places, with the approval of the Council of the People’s Commissioners.

8. All understandings of the People’s Commissioner, related in character to the Department of Ways of Communication and the Supreme Council of National Economy, are to be carried through upon consultation with the corresponding departments.

9. The regulations and orders of the People’s Commissioner, issued in accordance with the present powers, are verified by his college, which has the right, without suspending their operation, of referring them to the Council of Public Commissioners.

10. The present decree becomes effective from the date of its signature and is to be put into operation by telegraph.

Published May 14, 1918.