10. The right is reserved to retire from the service all commanders on active service who are not elected by the soldiers to any post, and who consequently are ranked as privates. 11. All other functions beside those pertaining to the command, with the exception of posts in the economic departments, are filled by appointment of the respective elected commanders. 12. Detailed instructions regarding the elections of the commanding Staff will be published separately. _President of the Council of People’s Commissars._ VL. ULIANOV (LENIN). _People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs,_ N. KRYLENKO. _People’s Commissar for Military Affairs,_ N. PODVOISKY. _Secretary of the Council,_ N. GORBUNOV. * * * * * _On the Abolition of Classes and Titles_ 1. All classes and class divisions, all class privileges and delimitations, all class organisations and institutions and all civil ranks are abolished. 2. All classes of society (nobles, merchants, petty bourgeois, etc.), and all titles (Prince, Count and others), and all denominations of civil rank (Privy State Councillor, and others), are abolished, and there is established the general denomination of Citizen of the Russian Republic. 3. The property and institutions of the classes of nobility are transferred to the corresponding autonomous Zemstvos. 4. The property of merchant and bourgeois organisations is transferred immediately to the Municipal Self-Governments. 5. All class institutions of any sort, with their property, their rules of procedure, and their archives, are transferred to the administration of the Municipalities and Zemstvos. 6. All articles of existing laws applying to these matters are herewith repealed. 7. The present decree becomes effective on the day it is published and applied by the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. The present decree has been confirmed by the _Tsay-ee-kah_ at the meeting of November 23d, 1917, and signed by: _President of the Tsay-ee-kah,_ SVERDLOV. _President of the Council of People’s Commissars,_ VL. ULIANOV (LENIN). _Executive of the Council of People’s Commissars,_ V. BONCH-BRUEVITCH. _Secretary of the Council,_ N. GORBUNOV. * * * * * On December 3d the Council of People’s Commissars resolved “to reduce the salaries of functionaries and employees in all Government institutions and establishments, general or special, without exception.” To begin with, the Council fixed the salary of a People’s Commissar at 500 rubles per month, with 100 rubles additional for each grown member of the family incapable of work…. This was the highest salary paid to any Government official…. 4.