Leon Trotsky: Telegram to Sverdlov

[Copy. Secret. Telegram. True Copy. File of outgoing papers for 1919 No. I, from No. 1 to No. 500, of the Field Chancery of the train of the Chairman of the RVSR) The Trotsky Papers 1917-1922, edited and annotated by Jan M. Meijer, The Hague. 1964, Vol. 2., p. 253]

11/1.19 No. 212 (Balashov)

To: Kremlin, Moscow - Chairman of the Central Executive Committee, Sverdlov.

Editorial Board of the Newspaper “Pravda”.

Editorial Board of the Newspaper Izvestia of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

On the subject of the shooting of Commissar Panteleev. In reply to the question as to where and in what circumstances the Commissar of the Second Petrograd Nomernoy Regiment, Panteleev, was executed by shooting, Comrade Slaven, formerly Army Commander and now Front Commander, states:

“Commissar Panteleev, together with the regimental commander, abandoned the position at the head of a considerable part of the strength of his regiment and later turned up on board a steamship that had been seized by the deserters in order to effect their unauthorised departure from Kazan towards Nizhni. He was shot not for his regiment having abandoned their position but for having himself abandoned the position, in company with the regiment.”

The documents on this affair are with the Political Commissar of the Fifth Army, Michailov. ^{* * * *} (Signed) Slaven.

Chairman of the Military Revolutionary Council, Trotsky