The front-line zone in the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic has grown enormously over recent weeks and changed with extraordinary rapidity. This is a harbinger or concomitant of the decisive moment of war, the approach of its resolution.

On the one hand, the enormous front-line zone in the Urals region and on the Urals has become our front-line zone by virtue of the victories of the Red Army and the disintegration of Kolchak, the growth of revolution in Kolchakite territory. On the other hand, an even larger front-line zone has become such near Petrograd and in the south by virtue of our losses, by virtue of the enemy's tremendous approach to Petrograd and invasion from the south onto Ukraine and central Russia.

Work in the front-line zone acquires especially critical importance.

In the Urals region, where the Red Army is rapidly advancing, among workers in the army, commissars, members of the political department, and so forth, and then among local workers and peasants there naturally arises a desire to settle in the newly conquered territory for creative Soviet work—a desire all the more natural the greater the exhaustion from war, the heavier the picture of destruction wrought by Kolchak. But there is nothing more dangerous than fulfilling this desire. It threatens to weaken the offensive, to cause its delay, to increase the chances that Kolchak will yet recover. This would be nothing less than a direct crime against the revolution.

Under no circumstances whatsoever must a single superfluous worker be taken from the eastern army for local work![2] The offensive must not be weakened under any circumstances! The sole chance for complete victory lies in the total participation of the Urals region and Urals population, which has experienced the horrors of Kolchak's "democracy," in the continuation of the offensive into Siberia until complete victory of the revolution in Siberia.

Let construction in the Urals region and on the Urals be delayed; let it proceed more weakly with purely local, young, inexperienced, weak forces. We shall not perish from this. We shall perish from a weakening of the offensive on the Urals and Siberia. We must strengthen this offensive with the forces of workers rising up on the Urals, with the forces of Urals region peasants, who have now learned on their own hides what the "constituent assembly" promises of Menshevik Maisky and Socialist-Revolutionary Chernov amount to and what these promises actually mean in reality—that is, Kolchak.

To weaken the offensive on the Urals and Siberia would mean to be a traitor to the revolution, a traitor to the cause of liberation of workers and peasants from the yoke of Kolchak.

One must remember in working in the front-line zone, just liberated, that the fundamental task there is to win the confidence not only of workers but also of peasants in Soviet power, to explain to them in deed the essence of Soviet power as the power of workers and peasants, immediately to take the correct course assimilated by the party on the basis of accounting for twenty months of work. We must not repeat on the Urals the mistakes that were sometimes permitted in Great Russia and which we are rapidly unlearning.

In the front-line zone near Petrograd and in that enormous front-line zone that has expanded so swiftly and so ominously on Ukraine and in the south, everything and everyone must be transferred to a military footing; all work, all efforts, all thoughts must be entirely subordinated to war and war alone. Otherwise it is impossible to repel Denikin's invasion. This is clear. And this must be clearly understood and fully put into practice.

Incidentally: A distinguishing feature of the Denikin army is an abundance of officer corps and Cossacks. This is the element which, lacking mass forces behind it, is extraordinarily capable of rapid raids, of adventures, of desperate enterprises for the purpose of sowing panic, for the purpose of destruction for destruction's sake.

In the struggle against such an enemy, military discipline and military vigilance, brought to the highest degree, are necessary. To overlook or to become confused means to lose everything. Every responsible party or Soviet worker must take this into account.

Military discipline in military affairs and in all matters!

Military vigilance and strictness, firm insistence on all precautionary measures!