V. I.

Lenin

TELEGRAM TO K. M. TSINTSADZE AND S. I. KAVTARADZE [1]

21/X–22
Code

Tsintsadze and Kavtaradze, C.P.G. C.C., Tiflis
Copy to Orjonikidze, C.C. member and Orakhelashvili, Secretary of the Transcaucasian Territorial Committee

I am surprised at the indecent tone of the direct wire message signed by Tsintsadze and others, which was
handed to me for some reason by Bukharin instead of one of
the C.C. secretaries. I was sure that all the differences had
been ironed out by the C.C. Plenum resolutions with my indirect participation and with the direct participation of
Mdivani . [2] That is why I resolutely condemn the abuse
against Orjonikidze and insist that your conflict should be
referred in a decent and loyal tone for settlement by the
R.C.P. C.C. Secretariat, which has been handed your direct wire message.

Lenin

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Notes:
[1]
This telegram was sent out in connection with a conflict between
the Transcaucasian Territorial Committee of the R.C.P.(B.),
headed by G. K. Orjonikidze, and the P. G. Mdivani group in the
Communist Party of Georgia (it included K. M. Tsintsadze
and S. I. Kavtaradze, to whom Lenin’s telegram is addressed).

The Territorial Committee was conducting a fundamentally
correct line, working to bring together the Transcaucasian
Republics into the Transcaucasian Federation, and resolutely
supporting the idea of uniting all the Soviet Republic into a single
state. But Orjonikidze did not always display the necessary
flexibility and caution in pursuing the nationalities policy, allowed
some peremptory actions and haste in putting through some
measures, not, always considering the views and rights of the
Central Committee of the Georgian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
This was used by the Mdivani group, which took a basically wrong approach to the most important aspects of the Party’s
nationalities policy.

Mdivani and his supporters, constituting a majority on the
Georgian Communist Party Central Committee, virtually slowed
clown the economic and political union of the Transcaucasian
Republics, and were intent, in essence, on keeping Georgia
isolated; at first the group opposed the formation of the U.S.S.R.,
but when the October 1922 Plenum of the R.C.P.(B.) Central
Committee adopted its decision to set up the U.S.S.R., they
tried to have Georgia enter the U.S.S.R. directly instead of
through the Transcaucasian Federation, This played into the hands
of the bourgeois nationalists and the Georgian Mensheviks, and
at their congresses, conferences and meetings of Party activists,
the Georgian Communist? justly regarded this as a deviation
towards nationalism.

Tsintsadze and a number of other supporters of Mdivani addressed to the R.C.P.(B.) Central Committee a direct wire
message, in reply to which Lenin sent the telegram here
published.

[2]
A reference to the resolution on relations between the R.S.F.S.R.
and the independent republics adopted by the Plenum of the
R.C.P.(B.) Central Committee on October 6, 1922.