Sviyazhsk. Trotsky

The treachery at Saratov, though discovered in time, has caused hesitation, which is extremely dangerous. We consider your immediate trip there absolutely necessary, for your appearance at the front produces an effect on the soldiers and on the whole army. Let us agree [on] visiting other fronts. Reply and indicate the day of your departure, all in cipher.

Lenin.

Sverdlov.

22/8-18 г.

Published - The Trotsky papers. 1917-1922. V. 1, p. 102.

Fund 2, op. 1, d. 26159 - copy.

August 122, 1918. V.I.Lenin received by direct wire from Saratov a note from A.K.Paikes, Commissioner of the People's Commissariat for Food, and B.P.Zorin, Political Commissar of the 4th Army, which reported: "A huge conspiracy has been uncovered in the army. The conspirators intended [from] the seventeenth to the eighteenth to disarm the Ural division and arrest the army headquarters and political commissar in Urbach. The conspirators [of] the command staff: two of them have already been shot by us; the conspiracy has been liquidated.... The mood of the soldiers improved due to the seizure of the traitors. A part of the culprits fled to the Cossacks" (RCCHIDNI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 7016).

The Ural Division was formed as part of the 4th Army of the Eastern Front on July 30, 1918; until October 1918 it was called "Division of Ural regiments".

For Lenin's replies to A.K.Paikes and B.P.Zorin, see: Lenin V.I. Complete Collected Works, vol. 50, с. 165.

Commenting on the telegram of Lenin and Ya.M.Sverdlov in the book "My Life", L.D.Trotsky wrote: "I considered it absolutely impossible to leave Sviyazhsk: the departure of the train (meaning the train in which Trotsky traveled to the areas of military operations - Ed.) would have shaken the Kazan front, which was experiencing already difficult hours. Kazan was in every way more important than Saratov. Lenin and Sverdlov soon agreed to this themselves. I went to Saratov only after the return of Kazan" (Trotsky L.D. My Life. Experience of Autobiography. Vol. 2. M., 1990, p. 148).