June 28, 1918

You must state the complaint with complete precision against the fully concrete actions of specific individuals.**

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars
Lenin
June 29, 1918

Berlin, Russian Embassy

In accordance with a long-established plan, after prolonged preparatory work, a decree has finally been approved on June 28, which the popular masses of Russia have been awaiting with impatience and the publication of which has been delayed by circumstances beyond the control and will of Soviet power.

In accordance with this decree, all industrial and commercial-industrial enterprises of the following branches of production located within the territory of the Republic are declared the property of the Russian Socialist Soviet Federative Republic: enterprises extracting mineral fuel, iron and copper-ore, platinum-producing, tungsten-extracting, silver-lead-ore and zinc-extracting, asbestos, gold-producing, and salt-extracting enterprises; enterprises for the smelting of cast iron, iron, and copper in raw form, the obtaining of semi-finished products from them and the processing of these semi-finished products by rolling, drawing, stamping and chemical treatment, machine building, all kinds of aircraft construction, mechanical vehicle manufacturing, shipbuilding, locomotive and railroad car production, bridge construction, iron structural work; the manufacture of precision instruments, firearms, machine guns, artillery pieces and their parts, fittings, metal products; enterprises for the processing of cotton, hemp, wool, flax, silk-jute, sizing and dyeing; enterprises of the electro-technical industry; cable factories; enterprises

* Since June 20, 1918, a financial commission, in accordance with the Brest Peace Treaty, began work in Berlin. At its very first session, the German delegation presented the Russian delegation with a series of onerous demands, first and foremost a demand for immediate full payment for enterprises being nationalized in Russia after July 1, 1918, which belonged to German capitalists. The Soviet government had for a considerable time been preparing a decree on the nationalization of industrial enterprises, which was adopted on June 28, 1918, which Lenin reports in the present radiogram to the Soviet Embassy in Berlin.

The document is published according to a typewritten copy (received from TsGAOR, f. 130, op. 12, d. 103).

** In the telegram to Moscow from Rtishchevo station, an extraordinary member of the linear department chief's section and the commissar of operational service of the Ryazan-Ural Railroad complained that "dispatched members of Vikzhdor introduce the greatest confusion into the work of the railroad... From members of Vikzhdor we receive not assistance, but demoralization of our agents."