Comrade Sailors of the Volga Flotilla!

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When I visited yesterday the headquarters of the flotilla, on the steamship Ilya Muromets, I was astonished at what I saw. There were numerous outsiders walking about on the ship, as though it were a thoroughfare, the sentries were not checking passes, and indeed there were no passes to check. Anyone who wanted could come aboard, talk about whatever he liked, and leave when he saw fit. Everything else presented the same spectacle. Nobody knew who was in command of the vessel. It was impossible to discover who was in charge of the boats that served for communication. Somebody was being sent some where as a result of an order that nobody knew anything about. The messengers left their launch somewhere or other, hoping that somebody else would bring it back. There was no organization, no sense of responsibility. On this ship which serves as the workplace of the naval staff there were numerous women and children present.

No serious, businesslike work at all can be done under these conditions. Still less is it possible to safeguard any naval secrets. While I was visiting the ship, Commissar Markin summoned the mechanic, who could not get the engine to work. ‘It’s always the same with us,’ said Commissar Markin: ‘when it’s a question of retiring, the ship’s engines work splendidly, but when we have to move up to battle stations the machinery at once goes on strike.’

Comrade sailors! This state of affairs is intolerable. Like this, the fleet has no combat-efficiency, it is not viable. And it is with good reason that everyone remarks that our new Volga flotilla works very, very slackly, lazily, without vigor and without success. When there is no proper order at the center there can be no solid, vigorous work done on the vessels, either. And yet we are waging a serious struggle, a great struggle, truly a fight to the death. If we do not take Kazan now, the enemy will take Nizhny-Novgorod from us and link up with the Anglo-French bandits on the Archangel littoral. They would then have formed a common front. Our task would then be made very much more difficult. And then, we can say without a shadow of doubt, the Germans would start to advance from the West and from the South, so as not to let the Czechoslovaks and the British and French establish a lasting front on Russian soil. We workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors of the Soviet Republic find ourselves between two fires: the British and French, with the Czechoslovak and White Guards, in the North-East, and the Germans in the West and South. Our young republic will perish between these two fires. The most savage bourgeois tyranny will reign in our towns and villages, and all the conquests won by such great sacrifices, including the lives of many sailors of the navy will be lost for decades.

Comrade sailors! I call on you all to think about the situation which now prevails in our country. If we take Kazan, we thereby break the enemy front. Simbirsk and Samara will fall by themselves. The insignificant Anglo-French expeditionary force will give us no cause for alarm. The Germans will have no reason to advance, since no new front will have been formed in Russia. All our country’s interests demand that we strain every nerve to take Kazan.

Comrade sailors! Pull yourselves together! Throw out what ever self-seekers there may be among you, sweep away slovenliness, imprecision and negligence. Everything must be put on a war footing. Do not waste a single minute. Do not retreat one inch. Seize everything possible from the enemy. Wage the struggle boldly, courageously, with the spirit of attack. Nothing venture, nothing win.

I grasp your hands fraternally, comrade sailors!

August 19, 1918