Marx-Engels | Lenin | Stalin | Home Page
Bolshevik leadership Correspondence. 1912-1927
Collection of documents 1996.
Compiled by: A.V.Kvashonkin, L.P.Kosheleva, L.A.Rogovaya, O.V.Khlevnyuk.
Stalin CorrespondencesJ. V. Stalin - V. I. Lenin, L. D. Trotsky
June 22, 1918
T[ovari] sch Lenin! T[ovari] Trotsky!
I write briefly: time is short, busy to disgrace.
1) The food business is getting better 1 , and if you send more colored textiles and money in small denominations (no more than 500 rubles), things will go better.
2) The situation with the war on the external, and especially on the internal front, is much worse. Specialists are dead and armchair people, completely unadapted to a civil war. Meanwhile, the Cossacks are not asleep and at one fine moment they can unite with the Orenburg Cossacks, tearing off the center from the grain south. I did not want to take on any military functions, but the district headquarters itself draws me into its affairs, and I feel that it is impossible otherwise, simply impossible otherwise. Now I see that it would be useful for the cause to have a direct formal authority for me to dismiss and appoint, for example, commissars for detachments, "headquarters", etc., to be sure to attend meetings of the district headquarters and in general to represent the central military authority in the south 2. Judge for yourselves, the specialist Kovalevsky was arrested the other day by some "commissar", and Snegirev, on his trip to the front, barely escaped arrest. Or else: Zedin is an honest and devoted man, like a military commissar, but another military commissar is an incorrigible drunkard and ugly wastes state money. And so on and so forth. It is necessary to correct all such defects in an instant, but who "should" do it? It is impossible for the center to figure it out right away, and the authorized representative of the center (military) is not here. Do you know that Petrov and his entire staff for some reason left for Moscow, and his "army", in view of this, completely decomposed and opened the way for the Cossacks? Do you know that the mobilization of the Cossacks, announced by us, played a cruel joke on us, arming several thousand Cossacks, who took artillery and other equipment from the headquarters,3 Do you know that the detachments of the so-called] Don Republic 4 (among which, by the way, only 2-3% of the Cossacks) wanted to seize the Tsaritsyno artillery and then blow up the local Soviet of Deputies? All these are issues that can only be resolved on the spot.
3) Negotiations with the Germans are opening on the Rostov front 5 .
4) I receive your encrypted telegrams, but you do not give the key to the cipher. Understand that this is inconsistent with nothing.
5) Why don't you inform me about the cases?
22. VI.
Stalin 6
RTSHIDNI; F. 558. On. 1. D. 5404. L. 3. Autograph.
Notes:
1 The letter was sent from Tsaritsyn to Moscow. On May 29, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars decided to send Stalin as the general head of the "food business" to the south of Russia. Its main tasks were to collect and organize the transportation of food to the center of the country.
2 In fact, Stalin interfered in the affairs of the front without additional permission. The headquarters of the North Caucasian Military District, located in Tsaritsyn, was commanded by the former general of the tsarist army, Snesarev. Immediately after arriving in Tsaritsyn, Stalin entered into an open conflict with Snesarev, partly because of the general negative attitude towards military experts, partly considering Snesarev to be Trotsky's protege. At the insistence of Stalin, on June 23, 1918, Snesarev ordered the unification of all the Red troops on the right bank of the Don (3rd and 5th armies) under the general command of Voroshilov.
3 In March-May 1918, the Don, Kuban-Black Sea and Terek Soviet republics were formed as part of the RSFSR. At the same time, the formation of red Cossack units and formations began. On May 30, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars appealed to the Cossacks of the Don and Kuban with an appeal to take up arms to defend Soviet power. The Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of May 31, 1918 ordered the Soviets of the Cossack regions to form the Cossack units of the Red Army. By decree of the Council of People's Commissars of June 11, 1918, mobilization was announced on the territory of the Siberian and Orenburg Cossack districts.
4 The Don Soviet Republic was formed in March 1918 (decree of the regional Military Revolutionary Committee of March 23, 1918) as part of the RSFSR on the territory of the Don Army Region and a number of districts of the Yekaterinoslav province after the liberation of the region from Kaledin's troops. Center - Rostov-on-Don. After the capture of Rostov-on-Don on May 8, 1918 by German troops and White Cossacks, the government of the Don Republic moved to Tsaritsyn, and then to the village of Velikoknyazheskaya, where it continued its activities until the end of June 1918. In September 1918, by a decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the Don Republic was liquidated .
5 Negotiations on the cessation of hostilities with the Germans on the Rostov (Don) front were launched on June 17, 1918. Ordzhonikidze was delegated by Commander-in-Chief Kalnin to conduct negotiations. Referring to the violation of the demarcation line by the troops of the Red Army, the German command continued the offensive. In the face of a shortage of food, equipment and weapons, the leadership of the front was looking for ways to negotiate.
6 On the letterhead: “RSFSR. General Head of the Food Business in the South of Russia”; on the outside of the envelope there is Stalin's inscription: “T[ovari]sha to Lenin. Personally. Secret. From Stalin” (RTSKHIDNI. F. 558. On. 1. D. 5404. L. 4).