Leon Trotsky: Telegram to Lenin

[Copy. Telegram. True Copy. (File of outgoing papers for 1918) The Trotsky Papers 1917-1922, edited and annotated by Jan M. Meijer, The Hague. 1964, Vol. 2., p. 211, 213]

From: Kursk

26/XII. No. 1511

To: Kremlin, Moscow – Chairman of the Council of Defence, Lenin.

Copied to: People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs, Sklyansky.

I ask that the following questions be looked into as a matter of urgency by the Council of Defence:

1) There is a total lack of lubricants at the fronts. In some areas the machine-guns will no longer fire, and rifles are not cleaned and become unusable. There is no grease for the guns. It is essential that supplies of oil and grease be rounded up or that substitutes be provided. This question admits of no delay.

2) The position as regards hay fodder is grave. In Kursk there is no hay at all. If supplies of it are not delivered, the entire horse transport strength will within a short time be put out of action.

3) The Petrograd Military Commissar, Pozern, points out that the severe position as regards food supplies in conjunction with the extraordinary levy imposed on the families of Red Army men threatens to produce complications. He asks that the decree of the Praesidium of the Moscow Soviet on the subject of special terms for the families of Red Army men be extended to cover the northern region. I support his application as being a matter of urgency.

4) The delegate for naval supply of the Military Revolutionary Council, Vachrameyev, reports that as a result of the extreme fall-off in productivity in the factories the production of shells, guns, submarines, armoured wagons, and locomotives and the repair of rolling stock at the factories of the Navy Department is not assured. He requests a decree introducing piece-work in the factories of the Navy Department, and priority indents for wagons to transport fuel supplies to the factories of the Navy Department which are at a standstill owing to non-delivery of fuel supplies. I support the application as being an urgent one.

5) The C.-in-C. is petitioning for the release of General Staff officers Savchenko-Matsenko and Polyakov, held in the Petrograd Cheka prison, in addition to which Savchenko-Matsenko is supposedly on the verge of dying from exhaustion and has been transferred to Number 109 Reserve Field Hospital. I apply for an immediate elucidation of the grounds for the imprisonment of the above-named persons and, in the event of there being insufficient grounds, for their release.

6) I draw your attention to telegram No. 354 from the Military Revolutionary Council of the Fifth Army about the need to take immediate action to improve the freight-carrying capacity of the Volga-Bugulma railway.

7) There are no senior Party workers on the Staff of the Northern Front in Jaroslavl. The member of the Military Revolutionary Council, Pyatnitsky, is ill, and the Commissar, Turchan, is not a Party member and as a former staff captain can be used in a position of command. It is essential that at least one senior Party worker be dispatched to Jaroslavl’.

Chairman of the Military Revolutionary Council, Trotsky