LIVE TALKS

Moscow-Kremlin - Murmansk

Chairman of the Sovdep Yuryev: ask for Trotsky, Lenin or Stalin to the apparatus. Has our dispatch with the summons been received?

Moscow-Kremlin: The dispatch has been received, but neither Lenin nor Trotsky is present at the moment, but your dispatch has been handed over to them. We will now find out in the Council of People's Commissars.

Moscow-Kremlin: Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Lenin.

Yuryev: I am Chairman of the Murmansk Sovdep Yuryev (see note on sheet).

Lenin: The answer will come afterward. Wait for it. Here is my reply to your note. Podvoisky was there. The report was satisfactory1. Your situation must not be as bad as it seemed. As to the delimitation commission and the giving of a certain parish to the Finns, the treaty, which you obviously do not have and which was read by Mr. Podvoisky, contains a number of reservations, thanks to which you will still be able to influence2. We have no news yet.

Yuriev: When does T. Podvoisky leave for Murman? Podvoisky to Murman? Has the decree on the Extraordinary Special Commissar for Murman Affairs been issued?

Moscow-Kremlin: Lenin has already left. To the first question he said that he did not know3, and to the second he said that there was no decree4. April 4, 1918.

City of Murmansk.

Fond 2, op. 1, d. 25616 - typewritten text.

1Probably refers to the report of N.I. Podvoisky on the situation in Murmansk at a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars or directly to V.I. Lenin.

2It refers to § 15 of the treaty concluded on March 1, 1918 between the RSFSR and the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic, in which it is written: "The Russian Federative Soviet Republic alienates to the full ownership of the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic the below-defined territory, if it is agreed to by the freely polled local population. From now on the Russian-Finnish State frontier will be the line which goes from Korvatunturi, which is on the present Russian-Finnish State frontier, in a straight line to the springs of the Pechenga River (Petsamo), thence along the eastern watershed of the Pechenga River (Petsamo), through Motovsky Bay (Muotkofiord) and Rybachy Nos in a straight line to the shore of the Arctic Ocean at Zubov (Supuski)" (Decrees of Soviet power. Vol. I, p. 509).

See also doc. 123, note 3.

3According to doc. 123, N.I. Podvoisky was in Moscow on April 9, 1918 and was to have talks with Yuriev in the evening.

4The mentioned resolution was adopted at a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars on May 2, 1918 on the report of N.I.Podvoisky: "To recognize the appointment of an emergency commissar in Murmansk as absolutely necessary and to ask the commissars to hasten to identify candidates" (The Struggle for the Establishment and Consolidation of Soviet Power in Murman, p. 138).