Preface

Source: Works, Vol. 4, November 1917-1920, pp. VII-XVI
Publisher: Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954
Transcription/Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2008). 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.

The Fourth Volume of J. V. Stalin’s Works contains his writings and speeches belonging to the period immediately following the October Revolution, from November 1917 to December 1920.

The works of this period deal with the consolidation of the socialist state system, the policy of the Soviet Government on the national question, the creation and strengthening of the Red Army, and military strategy and tactics in the period of foreign armed intervention and civil war.

Questions of Soviet state structure and of Soviet policy on the national question are dealt with in J. V. Stalin’s speeches at the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets, in the interview “Organization of a Russian Federal Republic,” in the “General Provisions of the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic,” and in “The October Revolution and the National Question,” “The Policy of the Soviet Government on the National Question in Russia,” and other works.

A number of the writings (“The Ukrainian Knot,” “The Don and the North Caucasus,” “Light From the East” and other articles) discuss the struggle of the peoples of the Ukraine, the Caucasus and the Baltic Region against foreign invasion and for the establishment of Soviet power.

Analyses of the situation on the civil war fronts are contained in the “Report to Comrade Lenin by the Commission of the Party Central Committee and the Council of Defence on the Reasons for the Fall of Perm in December 1918,” in the draft letter of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) entitled “To All Party Organizations,” in the articles “The Military Situation in the South” and “The Entente’s New Campaign Against Russia,” in surveys of the military situation on the Tsaritsyn, Petrograd and South-Western fronts, and in a number of letters and telegrams to V. I. Lenin.

The struggle and victory of the Soviet people in the civil war are summed up in “The Political Situation of the Republic” and “Three Years of Proletarian Dictatorship.”

Included in this volume are the article “Lenin as the Organizer and Leader of the Russian Communist Party” and the speech at the meeting called by the Moscow Committee of the R.C.P.(B.) on the occasion of Lenin’s fiftieth birthday, which paint a portrait of the great leader.

Published in this volume for the first time are: the letter to V. I. Lenin from Tsaritsyn (July 1918), the letter on the situation on the Western Front (August 1919), the memorandum and statement to the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) on the creation of fighting reserves of the Republic (August 1920), and other documents.

Numerous telegrams, letters, records of conversations over the direct wire, orders of the day and other documents relating to military operations, and congratulatory messages to individual military formations, men and commanders of the Red Army have not been included in the volume.

Dates until the adoption of the New Style calendar (up to February 14, 1918) are given in Old Style.

Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute
of the C.C., C.P.S.U.(B.)