Written: Written on January 24, 1919
Published:
First published in 1942 in Lenin Miscellany XXXIV.
Printed from the typewritten copy.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1975,
Moscow,
Volume 44,
page 191a.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
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Trotsky, Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council
Kozlov, or present whereabouts
Wilson is proposing a truce and is calling all the governments of Russia to a conference. I am afraid he wants to secure for himself Siberia and part of the south, having no hope otherwise of keeping anything. In the light of the capture of Orenburg, Lugansk and Chertkov this circumstance compels us, in my opinion, to exert every effort to capture Rostov, Chelyabinsk and Omsk within a month. This last is in accordance with our talk. Make a special check of Vatsetis’s strategy after the capture of Orenburg and give your opinion. I think you will have to go to Wilson.[1]
[1] This refers to a proposed conference on the Princes Islands (Sea of Marmora) with the participation of representatives of all the governments existing on the territory of Russia to draw up measures for ending the Civil War. The address to the parties to the conference was drafted by Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States. The imperialists started this talk about a conference in order to halt the advance of the Red Army and, in the event of the Soviet Government refusing to participate in the conference, to put the blame on it for the continuation of hostilities. The Soviet Government unmasked the imperialists who were posing as “peace-makers”; on February 4, 1919, it issued a radio statement to the governments of Great Britain, France, Italy, the United States and Japan agreeing to participate in the conference, which it intended to use as an international platform to expose the interventionists. But no reply was forthcoming from the Entente imperialists. Denikin, Kolchak and other counter– revolutionary governments still hoped to crush the Soviet Republic by force of arms, and therefore refused to take part in the conference, which was never held.
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