Written: January 26, 1921
Published:
First published in 1965 in the Fifth Russian Edition of the Collected Works, Vol. 54.
Printed from the manuscript.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
3nd English Printing,
Progress Publishers,
1977,
Moscow,
Volume 42,
pages 268b-269a.
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
To Point 3
1) The People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs to be directed to defer a break with Georgia, to systematically collect material concerning her violations of the agreement and to press our demands for transit of supplies to Armenia.
2) The Caucasian Front to be asked for information as to the state of preparedness of our available armed forces in the event of an immediate or imminent war with Georgia, this inquiry, mentioning Georgia’s growing insolence, to be drafted by a committee consisting of Comrades Trotsky, Chicherin and Stalin.
3) Directives to be issued to the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic and the Caucasian Front to be prepared for an emergency involving war with Georgia. The S.C.R.F.[1] to report as soon as possible to the Council of Labour and Defence on the possibility of increasing troop transportation to and within the Caucasus.[3]
[1] The Supreme Council for Rail Freightage under the C.P.C.—Ed.
[2] On January 26, 1921, the C.C. plenum examined the question of Georgia (this question stood third on the agenda, hence Lenin’s heading “To Point 3”). The discussion of this question followed hostile acts against the Soviet Republic by the Menshevik Government of Georgia. In violation of her agreement with the R.S.F.S.R. of May 7, 1920, Georgia put a ban on the transit of goods from the R.S.F.S.R. through her territory, among them food supplies for the famine-stricken population of Armenia. She refused to return the R.S.F.S.R. the more valuable of the Russian ships formerly held by Wrangel, which put in at Georgian ports after his defeat. She took repressive measures against members of the Russian embassy staff, insulted the national flag of the R.S. F.S. R. and provoked and encouraged counter-revolutionary acts against the Soviet authorities in the Northern Caucasus. In connection with these violations of the agreement representatives of the R.S.F.S.R. lodged repeated official protests, but the Georgian government ignored them.
[3] Lenin’s draft was incorporated without amendment in the reso-lution of the plenum, where it figures as Point “a”. Point “b” read: “The Caucasian Front to be directed to examine the question of any real guarantees (a control commission, etc.) that we could demand from the Georgian Government through diplomatic channels as a safeguard against assistance being given by Georgia to insurgents in Daghestan and Chechen” (Central Patty Archives of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC. of the C.P.S.U.).
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