419. To V. M. MOLOTOV
Comrade Molotov:
The question of cancelling the C.P.C. decision of 6/IX, increasing the tax on potatoes, must be introduced in the Politbureau tomorrow (with Frumkin summoned).[2]
Lenin .
What did you agree with Stalin about Petrograd?[1]
Notes
[1] See Document 408 of this volume.—Ed.
[2] The Politbureau of the R.C.P.(B.) C.C., having discussed the matter on October 3, adopted the following decision: “To instruct Comrade Frumkin to draw up a draft resolution of the communist group of the All-Russia C.E.C. session.... To have the resolution stress the need of correcting the excessive burden laid on the peasants which was necessitated by the need to aid the starving, and also indicate measures for its correction” (Central Party Archives of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the C.P.S.U. Central Committee).
The Fourth Session of the All-Russia C.E.C., having examined the circumstances which, had forced the C.P.C. to increase the rate of substitution of potatoes for rye, decided that such an increase could only be allowed as an emergency measure and only in view of exceptional circumstances (famine), and expressed confidence that the rural population would accept the new rate of substitution as a duty to the starving (see Izvestia VTsIK No. 224, October 7, 1921).