Telegram to Anatoly Lunacharsky, May 15, 1919

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15. V. 1919

Gubernia Executive Committee

Kostroma

for Lunacharsky

I have asked the Commissariat for Food to report about relief measures.[1] I fear that the revolt in the Ukraine will hinder the administration of relief, as the situation is deteriorating.[2] Push ahead vigorously with mass migration to the Don.[3] Get in touch with Sereda.

Lenin

  1. ↑ Lunacharsky, who had been sent to Kostroma as an authorised agent of the All-Russia CEC to combat desertions, reported on the serious food situation in Kostroma and Kostroma Gubernia.
  2. ↑ This refers to the counter-revolutionary revolt of Ataman Grigoriev, which broke out at the beginning of May 1919 in the rear of the Soviet troops in the Ekaterinoslav and Kherson gubernias. The revolt directly threatened the flank and rear of the Soviet troops in the Donets Basin and the rear communications of units of the 2nd Ukrainian Army in the Crimea, and also hindered railway transport throughout the Ukraine. In the period from May 11 to 24, by simultaneous blows from the east, north and south, the troops of the Ukrainian armies routed the insurgents.
  3. ↑ On April 24, 1919, the Council of People’s Commissars adopted the decree “On Organising Migration to the Producing Gubernias and the Don Region”. The migration of peasants and workers of the northern gubernias of the RSFSR to the southern areas of the country was carried out in order to ease their plight in the matter of food supply and restore agriculture in localities which had suffered from whiteguard revolts.
    On this subject see also the telegram of May 21, 1919, signed by Lenin and S. P. Sereda, sent to the gubernia land departments in Smolensk, Tver, Moscow and Ryazan (Lenin Miscellany XXXIV, pp. 144–45).