V. I.

Lenin

78

DRAFT OF A RADIO-TELEGRAM TO THE PEACE DELEGATION IN KURSK

In the Ukraine there has been a coup d’état. [1]

Bourgeois-landowner rule completely restored.

Rostov-on-Don taken by the
Germans. [2]

British threaten with a British and Japanese offensive.

Germans demand the seizure of Ino by the Finns and the
Murmansk railway to fight the
British. [3]

We are holding emergency meeting of C.C. of the Party on all
this. [4]

Your policy is to exert all efforts to hasten the conclusion of an armistice and peace, at the price, of course, of
new annexations.

---
Notes:
[1]
This refers to the dismissal of the Central Rada by the German
occupationists and the establishment in the Ukraine of an open
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and landowners. On April 29,
1918, at a congress of kulaks and landowners in Kiev convened
by the interventionists, General P. P. Skoropadsky, a big
Ukrainian landowner and former aide-de-camp to the Tsar, was
proclaimed Hetman of the Ukraine.

[2]
On May 6, 1918, German and whiteguard army units broke into
Rostov-on-Don and occupied the city. On May 7, it was liberated
by Soviet troops, but on May 8 it was re-occupied by German
and whiteguard troops.

[3]
Ino —a fort on the border with Finland which, with Kronstadt,
guarded the approaches to Petrograd. Under a treaty between the
R.S.F.S.R. and the Finnish Socialist Workers’ Republic, Fort
Ino was seceded to the R.S.F.S.R. for the defence of the joint
interests of the Socialist Republics. After the defeat of the
revolution in Finland, the Finnish bourgeois government with the
support of the German imperialists demanded that Fort Ino be
handed over to Finland. Before it was abandoned, the main works of the fort were blown up by order of the Commandant of the
Kronstadt fortress. In May 1918, Finnish troops occupied
Fort Ino.

[4]
An emergency meeting of the Party Central Committee on May 6,
1918, discussed the international situation of the Soviet Republic
in connection with the aggravation of relations with Germany,
who demanded that Fort Ino be handed over to bourgeois Finland,
and also in connection with the British occupation of Murmansk
and the preparations by the interventionist troops to advance
into the interior of the country. The Central Committee adopted
the decision on the international situation proposed by Lenin
(see present edition, Vol. 27, pp. 355 and 379–80).