V. I.

Lenin

33

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HEADQUARTERS OF THE SUPREME COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF [1]

Use all methods available to you to cancel today’s telegram on peace and general demobilisation of the armies
on all fronts. By order of
Lenin. [2]

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Notes:
[1]
Transmitted by direct line by Lenin’s secretary.— Ed .

[2]
On January 28 (February 10), 1918, at the Brest-Litovsk peace
conference—contrary to Lenin’s directive that a peace treaty
should be signed if the Germans presented an ultimatum demanding it—Trotsky declared that the Soviet Government refused
to sign a peace treaty on the terms put forward by Germany,
but that it considered the war at an end and was demobilising
the army. The same day, without informing the Central Committee
of the R.C.P.(B.) and the Council of People’s Commissars,
Trotsky sent to the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief
what was tantamount to a provocative telegram instructing him
to issue an order on the night of the same day ending the state
of war with Germany and her allies and demobilising the
Russian army. The telegram did not mention that the peace
negotiations in Brest had been broken off, the inference from its
text being that the conference had culminated in the conclusion
of peace. In the early morning on January 29 (February 11),
Supreme Commander-in-Chief N. V. Krylenko, on the basis of
Trotsky’s telegram, issued an order which announced that peace had
been concluded and called for the cessation of military operations
on all fronts and demobilisation of the army. It was in
consequence of Krylenko’s order that Lenin sent this telegram and
the one following it.