All Communists first and foremost, all who sympathize with them, all honest workers and peasants, all Soviet workers must pull themselves together in military fashion, directing the maximum of their work, their efforts and their cares toward the immediate tasks of war, toward the swift repulsion of Denikin's invasion, reducing and reorganizing, in subordination to this task, all their remaining activities.

The Soviet republic is besieged by the enemy. It must be a single military camp not in words, but in deed.

Adapt all the work of all institutions to war and reorganize it in military fashion!

Collegiality is necessary for the resolution of matters of state of workers and peasants. But any inflation of collegiality, any distortion of it leading to red tape, to irresponsibility, any transformation of collegial institutions into mere talking-shops is the gravest evil, and this evil must be put an end to at all costs, as quickly as possible, stopping at nothing.

Beyond the absolutely necessary minimum, collegiality must not extend either in respect to the number of collegial members, or in respect to the conduct of business, prohibition of "speeches," greatest speed of exchange of opinions, reducing it to briefing and to precise practical proposals.

Whenever there is presented even the slightest possibility to do so, collegiality must be reduced to the briefest discussion only of the most important questions in the least broad collegium, and the practical direction of an institution, enterprise, matter, or task must be entrusted to one comrade, known for his firmness, decisiveness, boldness, ability to conduct practical affairs, and enjoying the greatest confidence. In any case and under all without exception circumstances, collegiality must be accompanied by the most precise establishment of personal responsibility of each individual for a precisely defined matter. Irresponsibility, concealed by appeals to collegiality, is the most dangerous evil which threatens all those lacking very considerable experience in practical collegial work, and which in military matters repeatedly and inevitably leads to catastrophe, chaos, panic, polyarchy, defeat. No less a dangerous evil is organizational fussiness or organizational scheme-mongering. The reorganization of work necessary for war must in no way lead to reorganization of institutions, still less to the hasty creation of new institutions. This is absolutely impermissible; it leads only to chaos. The reorganization of work must consist in the temporary suspension of those institutions which are not absolutely necessary, or in their reduction to a certain measure. But all work in aid of the war must be conducted entirely and exclusively through the already existing military institutions, through their correction, strengthening, expansion, support. The creation of special "defense committees" or "revkoms" (revolutionary or military-revolutionary committees) is permissible only as an exception, firstly; secondly, not otherwise than with the approval of the competent military authority or the highest Soviet authority; thirdly, with mandatory fulfillment of the stated condition.