Moscow Encrypted telegram

To Trotsky. Sviyazhsk

Received your letter1. If there is a preponderance and the soldiers fight, it is necessary to take special measures against the higher command staff, whether to announce to them that the pattern of the French Revolution is conceivably applicable and to put them on trial and even to shoot both Vatsetis and the commandera near Kazan and the higher commanders2. In case of delayed and unsuccessful action [from] the reserves, many obviously energetic and fighting men from St. Petersburg and other places from the front who can prepare men should be summoned. We have a poor outfit to occupy the higher posts. Telegraph whether strong armament and strict attitude of Vatsetis.

Lenin.

Published - The Trotsky papers. 1917-1922. V. 1, p. 116-117.

Fond 2, op. 1, d. 7110 - decipherment, handwritten text.

1* The decipherment is marked: "30/8 1918 Iskazhena".

1The letter has not been found.

2The 5th Army, created by the directive of the Eastern Front Command of August 16, 1918, operated near Kazan. The commander of the 5th Army from August 16 to October 20, 1918 was P.A.Slaven, the chief of staff was A.K.Anderson. During the August offensive of the Red Army units in the Kazan area the 5th Army could not deploy active operations, and by the twentieth of August the offensive along the entire front was suspended. On August 7 Kazan was captured by White Guard and Czechoslovak troops.

The measures proposed by Lenin were carried out by Leonid Trotsky shortly after the fall of Kazan. "It was clear," recalled Trotsky, "that one agitation can not break the mood, and the situation left too little time. It was necessary to decide on severe measures. I issued an order, printed in the printing house of my train and announced in all parts of the army: "I warn: if any unit retreats unauthorized, the first to be shot will be the commissar of the unit, the second - the commander. Courageous brave soldiers will be placed in command posts. Cowards, skinners and traitors will not escape the bullet. For this I vouch in the face of the Red Army."'" Trotsky's order was carried out, and some units that left their positions were severely punished. Not only commanders and commissars, but also groups of ordinary soldiers were shot by the verdicts of field tribunals. I.I. Vatsetis was not shot. "By a combination of agitation, organization, revolutionary example and repression," Trotsky emphasized, "the necessary break was reached within a few weeks. From the shaky, unstable, crumbling masses was created a real army" (Trotsky L.D. My Life. Experience of Autobiography. Vol. 2, pp. 130 and 137). See also doc. 333.

On September 10, 1918 Kazan was liberated by units of the Red Army (5th Army).

See also: Lenin V.I. Complete Collected Works, vol. 50, с. 133.