V. I.   Lenin

582

TELEGRAM TO F. Y. KON[1]


Written: Written on May 4, 1920
Published: First published in 1965 in Collected Works, Fifth Ed., Vol. 51. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1975, Moscow, Volume 44, page 372b.
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.README


Felix Kon
Kiev
Copy to Rakovsky
Kharkov

Regarding Vinnichenko we agree in principle. Reach agreement with Rakovsky on details.[2] Report briefly on the military situation and prospects.

Lenin


Notes

[1] Transmitted by direct line.—Ed.

[2] In the manuscript of the telegram, the word “details” has been crossed out and the words “the form of Vinnichenko’s co– operation in government activities” have been written in an unknown hand.

In the spring of 1920, V. K. Vinnichenko, who was then living as an emigrant in Vienna, declared that he was breaking his connections with the Ukrainian Mensheviks and accepting the platform of the Ukrainian Communist Party. Vinnichenko requested the Government of the R.S.F.S.R. to allow him to come to the Ukraine and to give him an opportunity of actively participating in the struggle against the White Poles and Wrangel, as well as in building the Soviet Ukraine.

In view of the fact that Vinnichenko and other nationalist leaders had the backing of a considerable number of Ukrainian émigrés, and in order to win away from them elements belonging to the working people who had been misled, it was decided to draw Vinnichenko into Soviet work. The question was discussed several times in the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) and the C.C., C.P.(B.)U.

On September 6, 1920, by a decision of the Politbureau of the C.C., C.P.(B.)U. Vinnichenko was admitted to membership of the Ukrainian Communist Party and appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Ukrainian S.S.R. On the same day the Politbureau of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) passed the following decision regarding Vinnichenko: “The Politbureau takes note of Comrade Vinnichenko’s variable moods and therefore, while not objecting to his immediate admission into the Party, the Political Bureau proposes that he should not be given any post, and should first be tested in practical work.” = (Collected Works, Fifth Ed., Vol. 51, p. 424.)

In October 1920 Vinnichenko again emigrated abroad.


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