V. I.

Lenin

131

TELEGRAM TO G. K. ORJONIKIDZE

According to available information, the Georgian State
Bank with full staffs of qualified employees and with deposits from foreign missions has remained in Georgia. If this is true, the Bank should be maintained as a credit
apparatus for foreign trade, and it should perhaps be turned
into a bank for the whole Transcaucasus in view of the projected economic integration of the Transcaucasian
republics.

There is fierce agitation against the R.S.F.S.R. abroad
over the Sovietisation of Georgia, especially by Martov,
Tsereteli and others. The Georgian Revolutionary Committee
must start serious counter-agitation, which should note,
first, the R.S.F.S.R.’s peace-making role, second, the active initiative by the Georgian workers, peasants and army
masses, who overthrew the Georgian bourgeois government, and, third, the role of the Azerbaijan and Armenian
Soviet governments, who gave support to the Armenian, Tatar and Georgian insurgents by way of self-defence against
the aggressive steps taken by the Georgian bourgeois government, which set up an Azerbaijan and an Armenian
bourgeois government at Tiflis for the purpose of subverting the Soviet regime in Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Make thorough collection of material against the
Menshevik Georgian government and bring it along to Moscow
for the plenary meeting.

Lenin