Written: Written on April 25, 1919
Published:
First published in 1942 in Lenin Miscellany XXXIV.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1976],
Moscow,
Volume 35,
page 383.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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• README
In code
Antonov, Kiev
Copy to Rakovsky, Podvoisky, Kamenev
I have received your code message, and also your scheme for dividing the Southern Front and the Ukrainian Front. For the first I thank you, for the second I rebuke you for playing at independence.[1] Send the Ukrainian units to capture Taganrog without fail, immediately and at all costs. Telegraph.
[1] Realising the tremendous significance of the struggle for the Donets coalfields, the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.) and Lenin repeatedly instructed the commanders of the Ukrainian Front and the Ukrainian Soviet Government to assist the Southern Front. But some of the military leaders of the Ukraine (N. I. Podvoisky, V. A. Antonov-Ovseyenko and others), prompted by narrow, local interests, held up the transfer of troops to the Donets sector. Antonov-Ovseyenko, Commander of the Ukrainian Front, demanded that the lines of demarcation between the Ukrainian Front and the Southern Front in the Donets Basin should be revised, and that the bulk of the forces operating in this area should be placed under his command, and refused to recognise the major importance of the Donets sector, claiming that the Ukrainian Front was confronted by more important tasks in the Western and Southern Ukraine. Lenin rejected his proposal.
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