Written: Written on May 2, 1919
Published:
First published in 1942 in Lenin Miscellany XXXIV.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1975,
Moscow,
Volume 44,
page 222c.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
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Sklyansky: this is very important; it is necessary to leave them part of the 33rd Division and immediately get Vatsetis to send an absolutely precise telegram to this effect to Astrakhan.
2/V.
[1] This was written on a telegram from K. A. Mekhonoshin, Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 11th Army, who asked that part of the 33rd Division, which was to be transferred to the Eastern Front, should be left in the Astrakhan area. Mekhonoshin reported that the transfer of the whole 33rd Division and the impossibility of a rapid formation of the 34th Division, owing to the delay in sending promised reinforcements, would compel them to stop the offensive against Kizlyar and give up the idea of capturing Guriev and Rakusha, where there was oil, and would put the fleet, which was threatened with loss of its base, in a hopeless position. “The absence of precise orders from Field Headquarters,” wrote Mekhonoshin, “puts the army in an absolutely impossible position and gives grounds for accusing us of inactivity.” Lenin made a number of underlinings and markings on Mekhonoshin’s telegram (Lenin Miscellany XXXIV, pp. 127– 28).
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