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Order by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic and the People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs
[edit source]
The tenth of September will be a red-letter day in the history of the socialist revolution. Kazan has been wrested by units of the Fifth Army from the clutches of the White Guards and Czechoslovaks.[1] This is a turning-point. The advance of the bourgeois army has at last met with a proper rebuff. The enemy’s morale has been broken. After Kazan will come Yelaterinburg, Simbirsk, Samara and all the other towns of the Volga region, the Urals and Siberia which have temporarily been captured by the enemies of the worker masses.
Soldiers and sailors! The month of fighting before Kazan passed under my eyes. The enemy, with his officer battalions, had the clear advantage in organisation and skill. Our young units, which had never before been under fire, failed sometimes in the first days to show the necessary staunchness. Cases were seen of causeless panic and senseless retreats. But the first failures did not break our morale. The most conscious soldiers and sailors united more closely and helped to establish firm discipline in the ranks of the Fifth Army. Amid universal contempt, self-seekers were subjected to stern punishment. Commanders, commissars, soldiers, sailors, all acted as one. And, inmiediately, there was a turn. After experiencing the blows we dealt them, the Czecho-White Guards began to say: ‘These are not Red Army men, they are Germans.’ The Tsarist officers, who are used to being beaten by the Germans, now think that anyone who beats them must be a German.
Soldiers and Sailors of the Fifth Army! You have taken Kazan. It will be counted to your credit. Those units or those individuals who have especially distinguished themselves will be rewarded accordingly by the workers’ and peasants’ power.
Here I wish to proclaim, before the country and before the international proletariat: the entire Fifth Army has honorably done its duty. In the name of the Council of People’s Commissars I say ‘Thank you, comrades.’
- ↑ On September 10, by combined and co-ordinated operations of the right- and left-bank groups of the Fifth Army, part of the Second Army under Comrade Azan’s command, and the Volga Flotilla, and after heavy fighting, Kazan was taken by our forces. The rout of the Czechs before Kazan was of decisive importance for subsequent operations, not only on the middle Volga but also on the Kama, for the Second Army, which rapidly cleared the River Vyatka and began to threaten the enemy group operating in the Simbirsk Samara area. On September 12 Comrade Gaye’s Iron Division, part of Tukhachevsky’s First Army took Simbirsk, after which the whole Volga was quickly cleared of the Whites, who withdrew eastward.