We are also extremely agitated by the absence of a telegraph line{124}, for which the Germans seem to be to blame. The Kiev Rada has fallen. All power in the Ukraine is in the hands of the Soviet. The authority of the Kharkov Central Executive Committee in the Ukraine is indisputable; the Bolshevik Kotsyubinsky has been appointed commander-in-chief of the troops of the Ukrainian Republic. In Finland the cause of the bourgeois counter-revolutionaries is hopeless, the embitterment of the workers against them is incredible. On the Don, 46 Cossack regiments at a congress in the village of Kamenskaya have proclaimed themselves the government and are fighting Kaledin. Among the Petrograd workers there is a great upsurge of enthusiasm in connection with the formation of a Soviet of Workers’ Deputies in Berlin. Rumours are current that Karl Liebknecht has been released and will soon be at the head of the German government. Tomorrow at a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet the question of an address to the Berlin and Vienna Soviets of Workers has been set.

Lenin

Written on January 21 (February 3), 1918

First published in 1929 in Lenin Miscellany XI

Published according to the manuscript