Written: Written on January 3 (16), 1918
Published:
First published in 1905 in Collected Works, Fifth Ed., Vol. 50.
Printed from the text of the telegraph tape.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1975,
Moscow,
Volume 44,
page 53a.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup:
D. Moros
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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Karakhan
Russian Peace Delegation
Brest-Litovsk
Copy to Supreme Commander-in-Chief Krylenko
I received your telegram concerning the report from the members of the Revolutionary Committee of the 8th Army —Kuzmin and Reizon.[2] I am passing this telegram on to the Commander-in-Chief with my advice: not to give way to the provocation of the Kiev Rada, not to trust it, and to act in an armed, organised and most resolute way against the Rumanian counter-revolutionary command, against the Kaledinites and their accomplices in the Kiev Rada.
[1] Transmitted by direct line.—Ed.
[2] Kuzmin and Reizon reported provocatory acts by the Ukrainian Central Rada and the counter-revolutionary command of the Rumanian Front aimed at demoralising and disarming the 8th Army.
The Ukrainian Central Rada—a counter-revolutionary bourgeois-nationalist organisation. After the victory of the October Revolution it proclaimed itself the supreme organ of the “ Ukrainian People’s Republic” and began an open struggle against Soviet power.
At the First All-Ukraine Congress of Soviets held in Kharkov in December 1917, the Ukraine was proclaimed a Soviet Republic. The Congress declared the power of the Central Rada overthrown. The Council of People’s Commissars of the R.S.F.S.R. recognised the Ukrainian Soviet Government as the sole legitimate government of the Ukraine. In January 1918, Soviet troops in the Ukraine launched an offensive and on January 26 ( February 8) seized Kiev and deposed the bourgeois Rada.
The Central Rada, routed and driven from the territory of the Soviet Ukraine, and having no support among the working masses, allied itself with the German imperialists in order to overthrow Soviet power and restore the bourgeois regime in the Ukraine. During the peace negotiations between the Soviet Republic and Germany, the Rada sent its delegation to Brest– Litovsk and behind the back of the Soviet delegation concluded a separate peace with Germany, by which it undertook to supply Germany with Ukrainian grain, coal and raw materials in return for military assistance in the struggle against Soviet power. In March 1918 the Rada returned to Kiev with the Austrian and German invaders and became their puppet. At the end of April the interventionists dismissed the Rada, realising that it was incapable of suppressing the revolutionary movement in the Ukraine and ensuring delivery of the required food supplies.
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