RESOLUTION ON THE LETTER OF V. N. PODBELSKY
November 23, 1918
TO THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT FOR MILITARY AFFAIRS
It is necessary today in the Council of People’s Commissars to appoint such a centre. Submit your candidates today without fail*.
Lenin
To the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars
Herewith I deem it necessary to put squarely before you the question of the state of telegraph communications on our fronts, which is of such enormous importance in the course of the civil war.

All my efforts to achieve order in this sphere have come to nothing. I still have to deal with the utter chaos that reigns in the sphere of telegraph affairs within the Military Department. It is impossible to go on working like this any longer…

I point out to you the primary cause of the reigning chaos: in the Military Department there is absolutely no such plenipotentiary body or official who would possess the fullness of power and bear responsibility for the state of telegraph, telephone, and postal communications on the fronts. I have to deal with dozens and hundreds of institutions and individual officials, none of whom in this sphere has any definite rights and bears any definite responsibility for their actions.

Every day an enormous number of telegraph operators, mechanics, line overseers, apparatuses, wire, cells, etc. are taken from us. We are poor both in technical forces in the sphere of telegraphy and telephony, and in materials… The moment is approaching when we shall have neither one nor the other. Meanwhile, at present these resources are being squandered with intolerable criminality, are being exploited in an entirely inexpedient manner.

We see the chaos and crime reigning in this sphere, but we do not know to whom to turn for their elimination. The military authority does not submit to me, and within the department itself there is no person or institution that would have the right and be obliged to impose order in this matter.

The postal-telegraph apparatus of the Military Department has proved beneath all criticism. By the time the civil war developed, it had at its disposal neither wire, nor apparatus, nor living technical force. I do not doubt that this affair was not without treachery and sabotage. All materials and living technical force began to be provided by the Commissariat of Posts and Telegraphs. Now this resource is being squandered by the Military Department without any system. Here, too, it is entirely possible that the following criminal line is being pursued: to squander our telegraph technical forces, and then leave the front without communications.

In order to avoid reproaches of sabotage against our department, up to now I have given the front everything that was required, while simultaneously making heroic efforts to achieve the establishment of order in this sphere within the Military Department…

The only way out of the situation: immediately to create that plenipotentiary body which would have the right to dispose dictatorially in matters of telegraph, telephone, and postal communications on the fronts. It is necessary immediately to convene a conference of those representatives of the Military Department who have the right to form such a fully-empowered body.

I ask you to issue an order concerning the convening of such a conference and the invitation to it of representatives of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs.

*
By decision of the Council of People’s Commissars on November 26, 1918, the Supreme Commission for Telegraph Communications was established (protocol No. 226, point 2).