I received your note and radio message. In my view, it's not worth taking this seriously or rushing to respond. Better to wait and have a laugh about it. Today we'll send something to print for a laugh with a directive to the editors: by all means mock it (hint: aren't these the sort of reports they get from Budapest?) and then again and again call the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries scoundrels. I'll come by—we'll talk more about it then.

Your Lenin

* Central Military Accounting and Distribution Commission at the Soviet of Workers' and Peasants' Defense of Ukraine. —Ed.

** The words "Bryansk or Orel, depending on what is more convenient" in the telegram are written in V. I. Lenin's own hand. —Ed.

*** The telegram is also signed by V. A. Avanesov, chairman of the Evacuation Commission of the Defense Soviet, and by members of the commission V. G. Groman and N. B. Eismont. —Ed.

Written August 3 or 4, 1919

Published for the first time from the manuscript