V. I.   Lenin

Draft Decision for the Politbureau of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) on
The Commander-in-Chief’s Protest Concerning the Order to the Commander of the Turkestan Front^[1]

Written: Written January 17 or 18, 1920
Published: First published in 1965 in the Fifth Russian Edition of the Collected Works, Vol. 54. Printed from the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 42, pages 159^b-160^a.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup: D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2003). 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

1) The order by Lenin and Trotsky given by telegram is found to be correct.

2) Exception taken to the form of this order is considered a case of undesirable military bureaucratism.

3) The Commander-in-Chief is to he notified that his verbal protest made through Comrade Smilga has been considered   and found incorrect. When an opinion is asked for, it should be given.

Notes

[1] This draft decision was adopted by the Politbureau of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) on January 17-18, 1920, in connection with the protest of the Commander-in-Chief concerning the telegram with Lenin’s postscript which the Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic L. D. Trotsky sent to M. V. Frunze, Commander of the Turkestan Front and G. K. Voskanov, Commander of the 4th Army, on January 17, 1920. The telegram asked for energetic steps to be taken to build the Emba Railway and rebuild the Krasny Kut-Alexandrov Gai railway to a wide gauge (see Collected Works, Vol. 51, Fifth Russian Edition, Document 207).