V. I.

Lenin

192

To:   V. M. MOLOTOV [1]

Comrade Molotov :

In sending you Comrade Vasilyev’s letter to me I ask you

1) either to arrange the check-up in the Orgbureau (of
the fulfilment of the C.C. assignment to put an end to
Antonov) or to have the C.C. Secretariat carry out this
checkup by studying the documents and summoning Comrade
Sklyansky and also some other person;

2) to send the enclosed secretly and personally to
Comrade Sklyansky for him to read it and return it to me,
adding (to you; a copy for me) what measures of pressure
he has taken. [2]

With communist greetings, Lenin

1/VI.1921.

---
Notes:
[1]
This was written in connection with a letter soul to Lenin on
May 12, 1921, by the Petrograd Communist worker V. A.
Vasilyev, who was military commissar of Boguchar Uyezd, Voronezh
Gubernia. He reported that some of those who had taken part
in the mutiny against the Soviet power in Boguchar Uyezd in
November 1920 had escaped and had organised a gang which was
killing Party and government workers. Vasilyev urged the need
to organise a volunteer cavalry unit to fight the bandits, and asked
for three or five motorcycles to arrange liaison.

[2]
On April 27, 1921, the Politbureau of the R.C.P.(B.) Central
Committee issued a directive to M. N. Tukhachevsky to liquidate the Antonov bands in Tambov Gubernia within a month.

On Lenin’s assignment Tukhachevsky wrote a report to the
R.C.P.(B.) Central Committee on July 16, 1921, saying that as
a result of the operations carried out from May to July, the kulak
mutiny in Tambov Gubernia had been liquidated, the Soviet
power restored everywhere and that only about 1,200 men were
left in Antonov’s bands, as compared with almost 21,000 at the
beginning of May.