copy to Bazanov, copy to Kharkov, chairman of supplies of the Revolutionary Military Council Bogdatyan or Serebrovskiy, copy to Kiev, chairman of supplies of the Revolutionary Military Council Bogdatyan, copy to People's Commissar of War Podvoyskiy, Kiev, copy to Trotsky, Kamenev wherever located

A general cancellation of the mobilization of workers from the Donetsk Basin given the present situation at the front is absolutely impermissible under no circumstances. The Council of Defense takes into account the exceptional importance of the Donetsk Basin and has therefore decreed to exempt from mobilization exclusively the coal face workers—even in those enterprises which for one reason or another are not currently conducting coal extraction. The preservation of coal face workers in any case protects the coal industry from catastrophe and will make it possible, once exceptional circumstances have passed, to restore coal extraction anew. Any other exemptions from conscription are impossible.

Chairman of the Council of Defense Lenin in the journal on telegraph form

Written May 16, 1919

First published in 1925

*Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya* No. 6 (41)

Printed according to the text