Written: October 28/November 10, 1917
First Published: Sobranie Uzakonenii i Rasporiazhenii Rabochego i Krestianskogo Pravitelstva, 1917, No. 1, pp. 6-7.
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. 327-328.
Translated: Emanuel Aronsberg
Transcription/Markup: Zdravko Saveski
Online Version: marxists.org 2017
1. All food supplies arriving at the city, including the supplies addressed to the Army Food Supply Service, the Red Cross, and other individuals and institutions which hitherto had the right to receive and distribute supplies independently of the city--are now placed in the charge of the city government for distribution by the food-supply organization attached to the city government.
2. All individuals and institutions which hitherto had a right to receive and distribute supplies independently of the city government are under obligation to place their distribution machinery at the disposal of the city government .... and take orders from the city government.....
Note 1: In Petrograd and Moscow, all transit trade and all shipments of supplies to the front are to be controlled by the city government.
Note 2: In Petrograd the Central Executive Committee .... has a right to receive at its address at Smolny Institute the amount of supplies which the government considers necessary to satisfy the needs of specially arriving army units and other extraordinary requirements.
3. All forms of double rations or increased rations are prohibited, with the exception of those granted by the city government.....
4. The city government has a right .... to establish its supervision and control over all or some of the commercial and industrial enterprises, such as stores, restaurants, flour mills, etc ..... It has a right to sequester within the city limits every commercial and industrial enterprise connected with food supply .....
5. The city government has a right to confiscate, requisition, and sequester all private premises which it finds necessary in order to open supply stores or for any other need connected with the business of food supply. This right applies also to privately owned products, objects, instruments, means of transport, storehouses, etc.....
6. The city has a right to conscript university students and high-school seniors to work in the food-supply organization.....
7. The city government has a right to force all inhabitants of a certain house or of a group of houses to form a commune and get their supplies jointly .....
8. The city government has a right to establish a general or partial centralization of cooking .... so that hot meals will either be procured in public dining-halls or will be sent to apartments.
9. The resolutions of this decree relative to food products apply also to goods of prime necessity.
10 .....
11. Violators of this decree are liable to imprisonment for one year and ..... to the confiscation of their property .....
12. This decree applies to cities with a population of not less than ten thousand.
13. The decree goes into force by telegraph.
VLADIMIR ULIANOV (LENIN)
President of the Sovnarkom