Written: Written between December 21 and 28, 1917 (January 3 and 10, 1918)
Published:
Published on January 12, 1918 (December 30, 1917) in Pravda No. 226.
Printed from the telegraph form text.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 36,
page 466.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
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
Archive” as your source.
• README
Antonov, at His Staff. Kharkov
I welcome whole-heartedly your energetic activity and ruthless struggle against the Kaledinites. I entirely approve of your refusal to make concessions to the local conciliators, who, it seems, have led astray a section of the Bolsheviks. I particularly approve of and welcome the arrest of the millionaire saboteurs in the first– and second-class railway carriage.[1] I advise you to send them for six months to do forced labour in the mines. Once again I greet you for your resolution, and condemn the waverers.
[1] In response to the introduction of the 8-hour working day, Kharkov capitalists stopped paying wages to workers in time. The workers appealed to V. A. Antonov-Ovseyenko for help. When the local revolutionary committee, to which the latter applied, failed to take steps, he summoned 15 of the major capitalists to his railway car and ordered them to find 1 million rubles in cash to pay the workers. Following their refusal, they were detained and placed under arrest in a second-class carriage. They were told that unless they got the money in time, they would be sent to work in the mines. This had an effect, the money was collected and paid in, and the capitalists were released.
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