Various Subjects


Order No.183

By the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic to the Red Army and the Red Navy, December 17, 1919, No.183, Moscow


Transcribed and HTML markup for the Trotsky Internet Archive by David Walters

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To be read to all companies, squadrons, task-forces, batteries and on all vessels

The Seventh All-Russia Congress of Workers, Peasants’, Red Army Men’s and Working Cossacks’ Deputies referred in terms of high praise to the heroic fight of the Red Army and the Red Navy and expressed its gratitude on behalf of the Socialist Fatherland.

At the same time, the All-Russia Congress addressed an open proposal of peace to all the bourgeois governments which are waging a cruel and dishonourable war against the Russian working people. As yet there has been no reply to this proposal. The extreme imperialists of Britain, France, Italy, Japan, America and a number of small countries have not yet finally renounced the idea and the hope of strangling workers’ and peasants’ Russia. There is wavering and dissension among the bourgeois classes. It is at present impossible to say what the immediate reply will be to the peace proposal of the Congress of Soviets. But one thing is clear: each new military success we achieve undermines the hopes of the extreme imperialists and tips the scale in favour of all those forces and parties in Europe which have understood the need to make peace.

Consequently, we have only one way forward to wage our struggle to the end. While Soviet diplomacy proposes an immediate conclusion of peace to the peoples and governments of all countries, the Red Army and the Red Navy must rout and finish off the enemies of workers’ and peasants’ Russia on all fronts.

Comrade Red Army men, commanders, commissars! Our country, all its working people, of both sexes, need peace. We shall win that peace for ourselves, at any cost. Arms in hand, we shall wrest it from our enemies. In the East we have taken Novonikolayevsk: in the South we have taken Kharkov, Poltava and Kiev. We are advancing on all fronts. Let us double and treble our efforts. Let us carry through the task to the end. May our victories prove to be the shortest and surest road to peace.

Long live the Red Army and the Red Navy!

Long live the victory of the workers’ and peasants’ arms! Long live peace and brotherhood between all peoples!


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Last updated on: 27.12.2006