Published:
First published in part in Pravda, No. 17, January 21, 1925.
Published in full in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVIII.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1976],
Moscow,
Volume 35,
page 336.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
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• README
June 26, 1918
Also to Lashevich and other members of the C.C.
Comrade Zinoviev,
Only today we have heard at the C.C. that in Petrograd the workers wanted to reply to the murder of Volodarsky by mass terror and that you (not you personally, but the Petrograd Central Committee members, or Petrograd Committee members) restrained them.[1]
I protest most emphatically!
We are discrediting ourselves: we threaten mass terror, even in resolutions of the Soviet of Deputies, yet when it comes to action we obstruct the revolutionary initiative of the masses, a quite correct one.
This is im-poss-ible!
The terrorists will consider us old women. This is wartime above all. We must encourage the energy and mass character of the terror against the counter-revolutionaries, and particularly in Petrograd, the example of which is decisive.
P.S. Detachments and still more detachments: make use of your victory at the elections. If the Petrograders move 10–20 thousand into Tambov Gubernia, the Urals, etc., they will save both themselves and the whole revolution, completely and for certain. The harvest is a giant one, we have to hang on only a few weeks more.
[1] Volodarsky, V.—a leader of the Petrograd Bolsheviks, editor of the Petrograd newspaper Krasnaya Gazeta (Red Gazette) and member of the Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet. He was murdered on June 20, 1918 by Socialist-Revolutionaries, who in direct collusion with whiteguards and foreign interventionists adopted terroristic tactics against the Bolsheviks.
On August 30, M.S. Uritsky, Chairman of the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission, was murdered by a Socialist-Revolutionary. The same day a villainous attempt to assassinate Lenin was made by the Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist Kaplan. Lenin was gravely wounded by two poisoned bullets.
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