Letter to the Tula Comrades, October 20, 1920

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Dear Comrades,

As you have set it forth, I am in agreement with you, but if you want to make use of my opinion against your “opposition”, give them both your letter to me and my reply.[1] Then they will be informed, and will be in a position to give me their version: and then I will not be informed one-sidedly.

On the substance of the matter, this briefly is my view. Until we have completely beaten Wrangel, until we have captured the entire Crimea, military tasks come first. That is absolutely unquestionable.

Furthermore, for Tula, in view of its armaments and ammunition works, it may very well be that for a certain time even after victory over Wrangel it will still be a task of first priority to go through with producing rifles and ammunition, because the Army must be made ready by the spring.

Excuse my brevity, and please inform me whether you have shown the “opposition” this letter of mine and your letter to me.

With communist greetings,

Lenin

  1. ↑ In a letter addressed to Lenin certain members of the Presidium of the Tula Gubernia Committee of the RCP(b) asked for his advice on “which of the two positions in the situation at present experienced by Soviet Russia is correct—the position giving priority to peaceful construction, or the other position giving priority to the necessity of straining every effort to solve our military problems”. = The authors of the letter expressed misgivings that shoving priority to economic and educational (asks, as certain members of the Tula Party organisation wore trying to do, would weaken effort and discipline at the Tula munitions factories.