V. I.   Lenin

TELEGRAM TO L. B. KAMENEV[1]


Written: Written on May 7, 1919
Published: First published in 1925 in the journal Proletarskaya Revolutsia No. 6 (41). Printed from the decoded text on the telegraph tape.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 36, page 508.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
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.README


Rakovsky, Chairman, Council of People’s Commissars
Kiev, for Kamenev

Absolutely essential that you personally, taking along Joffe, if necessary, to help you, should not only verify and expedite but personally bring up the reinforcements to Lugansk and the Donets Basin generally, as otherwise the disaster will undoubtedly be tremendous and scarcely remediable. If you need one, take a mandate from the Kiev Council of Defence. We shall undoubtedly perish unless we clear the Donets Basin completely in a short time. Provisionally, until Rostov has been taken, we must be diplomatic with Makhno’s troops, sending Antonov there in person, and making him personally responsible for Makhno’s troops. Telegraph detailed reply.

Lenin


Notes

[1] L. B. Kamenev was then the representative of the Council of Defence at the Southern Front. Lenin sent the telegram to him in connection with the news that Lugansk had been taken by the whiteguards on May 4, 1919.


< backward   forward >
Works Index   |   Volume 36 | Collected Works   |   L.I.A. Index