24/V-19

Odessa, Executive Committee
Copy to Rakovsky, Council of People's Commissars, Kiev

The permitting of arbitrary departure of foreigners is a crime. Releasing Russians under the guise of foreigners is a counter-revolutionary act, equivalent to treason. Foreigners in general must not be released without compensation, regarding which only the central government may issue directives. Citizens of the Entente powers must not be released except through exchanges conducted by the central government. Not a single Frenchman is to be released until soldiers return from France, among whom there are many Ukrainians. Those responsible for violation of this must be subject to the strictest accountability.

Bear in mind that the Finnish government is clearly obstructing, at the instigation of the Entente, the release of Russian soldiers into Russia, therefore release not a single bourgeois, not a single person from Odessa and from Ukraine. Exceptions — Chinese workers, Persians, by directive of the center 382.

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Lenin

First published, from a typescript text amended and signed by V. I. Lenin