Committees of the Village Poor
Committees of the Village Poor. June 11, 1918
Original Source: Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii raboche-krestian'skogo pravitel'stva, 1918, No. 43, pp. 522-24.
Volost and village committees of the poor, organized by local Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies with the participation of the (local) food departments and under the general control of the People's Commissariat of Food and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, shall be established everywhere...
Both native and newly arrived inhabitants of the village may elect and be elected to volost and village committees of the poor, with the exception of notorious kulaks... who possess grain surpluses and other food products, and owners of commercial and industrial enterprises using hired labor, etc.
Note, Peasants employing labor on farms which do not exceed the consumption standard may elect and be elected to the committees of the poor.
- The volost and village committees of the poor discharge the following duties:
a) Distribution of food, goods of prime necessity, and farming implements.
b) Assistance to local food departments in requisitioning surplus grain from kulaks and the rich.
The distribution of grain, goods of prime necessity, and farming implements must accord with the standards set up by the guberniia food departments and conform to the general plans of the People's Commissariat of Food...
For the time being and until the People's Commissar of Food makes special rulings, the basis of grain distribution shall be as follows:
a) Grain is distributed among the village poor in accordance with the established standards and free of charge, at the expense of the state. The distribution is made out of the grain surpluses which have been fully requisitioned from the kulaks and the rich in accordance with the decision of the guberniia and uyezd soviets ... and have been delivered to the state grain storehouses ...
Volost committees of the poor are to take charge of the more complicated agricultural machinery and to organize communal cultivation of the fields and harvesting for the village poor; no charge will be made for the use of such machinery in places where the volost and village committees of the poor give energetic support to the food departments in requisitioning the surplus from the kulaks and the rich.
The Soviet of People's Commissars will place at the disposal of the People's Commissariat of Food such money as may be needed from time to time to execute this decree.
Ia. Sverdlov, Chairman of the Central Executive Committee
V. Ul'ianov (Lenin), President of the Sovnarkom
Source: James Bunyan, ed., Intervention, Civil War, and Communism in Russia, April-December 1918 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1936), pp. 191.