4 *594

REMARK ON THE DRAFT DIRECTIVE OF THE CC RCP(b), WRITTEN BY J. V. STALIN

26 July 1920

I am for immediate dispatch, as an indisputable matter.

Lenin

STALIN'S DRAFT

TO ALL PARTY ORGANISATIONS

(circular)

According to our information, a group of experienced, desperate cut-throat generals has gathered around Wrangel, who will stop at nothing.

Wrangel's soldiers are splendidly welded into units, fight desperately, and prefer suicide to surrender.

Technically, Wrangel's troops are better supplied than ours; the delivery of tanks, armoured cars, aircraft, ammunition, and uniforms from the West continues to this day, despite England's declaration about stopping deliveries.

The weakness of our troops fighting against Wrangel consists in the fact that: firstly, they are diluted with prisoners of war, former Denikin men, who often go over to the enemy side, and secondly, they receive from the centre neither groups nor individual volunteers or mobilised Communists.

It is necessary to purge these troops of former prisoners of war and regularly supply them with large contingents of volunteers or mobilised Communists, in order to create a turning point in them and give them the opportunity to defeat the most ferocious enemy.

The Crimea must be returned to Russia at all costs, for otherwise the Ukraine and the Caucasus will always be threatened by the enemies of Soviet Russia.

The CC obliges you to intensify mass agitation in the spirit of this circular letter and immediately organise the dispatch to the Crimean front of Communist and non-party volunteers.

CC RCP(b)

Printed from a typewritten copy.

1920

538