V. I.

Lenin

149

To:   G. Y. ZINOVIEV

June 26, 1918

Also to Lashevich and other members of the C.C.

Comrade Zinoviev, Only today we have heard at the C.C. that in Petrograd
the workers wanted to reply to the murder of Volodarsky by
mass terror and that you (not you personally, but the
Petrograd Central Committee members, or Petrograd
Committee members) restrained them. [1]

I protest most emphatically!

We are discrediting ourselves: we threaten mass terror,
even in resolutions of the Soviet of Deputies, yet when it
comes to action we obstruct the revolutionary initiative of
the masses, a quite correct one.

This is im-poss-ible !

The terrorists will consider us old women. This is wartime above all. We must encourage the energy and mass
character of the terror against the counter-revolutionaries,
and particularly in Petrograd, the example of which is decisive .

Greetings!

Lenin

P.S. Detachments and still more detachments: make use of your victory at the elections. If the Petrograders move
10–20 thousand into Tambov Gubernia, the Urals, etc., they
will save both themselves and the whole revolution, completely and for certain . The harvest is a giant one, we have to
hang on only a few weeks more.

---
Notes:
[1]
Volodarsky, V. —a leader of the Petrograd Bolsheviks, editor of
the Petrograd newspaper Krasnaya Gazeta (Red Gazette) and
member of the Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet. He was murdered on
June 20, 1918 by Socialist-Revolutionaries, who in direct collusion
with whiteguards and foreign interventionists adopted terroristic
tactics against the Bolsheviks.

On August 30, M.S. Uritsky, Chairman of the Petrograd
Extraordinary Commission, was murdered by a Socialist-Revolutionary.
The same day a villainous attempt to assassinate Lenin was made
by the Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist Kaplan. Lenin was
gravely wounded by two poisoned bullets.