Written: Written on May 16, 1918
Published:
First published in 1959 in Lenin Miscellany XXXVI.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1975,
Moscow,
Volume 44,
page 88b.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.
Other Formats:
Text
• README
In my opinion, the Brest treaty cannot forbid us to
combat, pirate-insurgents (armed merchant vessels),
||
and it is
necessary to find a form for our naval forces to give an
armed rebuff to the rebels.
[1] This note to G. V. Chicherin was written following the receipt of a report that troops of the Transcaucasian bourgeois government, supported by a flotilla of armed merchant vessels, were advancing on Sukhum, creating a threat to the entire Black Sea coast. In the draft of a telegram submitted to Lenin, which was addressed to Sablin, Chief of the Naval Forces of the Black Sea Fleet, the latter was instructed to arm a number of Soviet merchant ships and send them for the defence of Sukhum.
On May 20, 1918, the Soviet Government sent a Note to the German Government protesting against the German military authorities conniving at the actions of the armed merchant ships of “the so-called Transcaucasian government, which is recognised by absolutely nobody in Transcaucasia”.
| | | | | | |