V. I.   Lenin

777

TELEGRAM TO K. M. TSINTSADZE AND S. I. KAVTARADZE^[1]

Published: First published in 1927 in the book, M. Kakhiani, Partiya i trotskistsko-uklonistskaya oppozitsiya v Gruzii (The Party and the Trotskyite-Deviationist Opposition in Georgia), Tiflis. Printed from a typewritten copy.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1976, Moscow, Volume 45, page 582^a.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
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Tsintsadze and Kavtaradze, C.P.G. C.C., Tiflis
Copy to Orjonikidze, C.C. member and Orakhelashvili, Secretary of the Transcaucasian Territorial Committee

I am surprised at the indecent tone of the direct wire message signed by Tsintsadze and others, which was handed to me for some reason by Bukharin instead of one of the C.C. secretaries. I was sure that all the differences had been ironed out by the C.C. Plenum resolutions with my indirect participation and with the direct participation of Mdivani.^[2] That is why I resolutely condemn the abuse against Orjonikidze and insist that your conflict should be referred in a decent and loyal tone for settlement by the R.C.P. C.C. Secretariat, which has been handed your direct wire message.

Lenin

Notes

[1] This telegram was sent out in connection with a conflict between the Transcaucasian Territorial Committee of the R.C.P.(B.), headed by G. K. Orjonikidze, and the P. G. Mdivani group in the Communist Party of Georgia (it included K. M. Tsintsadze and S. I. Kavtaradze, to whom Lenin’s telegram is addressed).

The Territorial Committee was conducting a fundamentally correct line, working to bring together the Transcaucasian Republics into the Transcaucasian Federation, and resolutely supporting the idea of uniting all the Soviet Republic into a single state. But Orjonikidze did not always display the necessary flexibility and caution in pursuing the nationalities policy, allowed some peremptory actions and haste in putting through some measures, not, always considering the views and rights of the Central Committee of the Georgian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). This was used by the Mdivani group, which took a basically wrong   approach to the most important aspects of the Party’s nationalities policy.

Mdivani and his supporters, constituting a majority on the Georgian Communist Party Central Committee, virtually slowed clown the economic and political union of the Transcaucasian Republics, and were intent, in essence, on keeping Georgia isolated; at first the group opposed the formation of the U.S.S.R., but when the October 1922 Plenum of the R.C.P.(B.) Central Committee adopted its decision to set up the U.S.S.R., they tried to have Georgia enter the U.S.S.R. directly instead of through the Transcaucasian Federation, This played into the hands of the bourgeois nationalists and the Georgian Mensheviks, and at their congresses, conferences and meetings of Party activists, the Georgian Communist? justly regarded this as a deviation towards nationalism.

Tsintsadze and a number of other supporters of Mdivani addressed to the R.C.P.(B.) Central Committee a direct wire message, in reply to which Lenin sent the telegram here published.

[2] A reference to the resolution on relations between the R.S.F.S.R. and the independent republics adopted by the Plenum of the R.C.P.(B.) Central Committee on October 6, 1922.