V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v50;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

June 26, 1918.

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

Comrade Zinoviev! Only today we heard at the C.C. that in Petrograd the workers wanted to respond to the murder of Volodarsky by mass terror and that you (not you personally, but the Petrograd C.C. members or P.C. members) restrained them.

I emphatically protest!

We are compromising ourselves: we threaten mass terror even in the resolutions of the Soviet, but when it comes to action, we hold back the revolutionary initiative of the masses, which is perfectly correct.

This is im-pos-si-ble!

The terrorists will consider us milksops. The time is extremely military. We must encourage the energy and mass character of terror against counter-revolutionaries, and especially in Petrograd, whose example decides.

Greetings! Lenin

P.S. Detachments and more detachments: use the victory in the re-elections. If the Petrograders move ten to twenty thousand men to the Tambov Gubernia and the Urals, etc., they will save both themselves and the whole revolution, fully and surely. The harvest is gigantic; we only have to hold out for a few weeks.