To All party Organisations; Draft Letter of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.)

Stalin

July 1920

Works, Vol. 4, November, 1917 - 1920

We have information to the effect that around Wrangel have gathered a group of experienced and desperate cut-throat generals who will stop at nothing.

Wrangel's soldiers are splendidly enregimented, fight desperately and prefer suicide to surrender.

Technically, Wrangel's forces are better equipped than ours, the flow of tanks, armoured cars, aircraft, cartridges and clothing from the West is continuing to this day, despite Britain's assertion that it has been discontinued.

The weakness of our forces fighting against Wrangel lies in the fact that, firstly, they are diluted with prisoners of war, former Denikinites, who not infrequently desert to the enemy, and, secondly, they are not receiving volunteers or mobilized Communists, either in groups or singly, from the centre.

These forces must be purged of former prisoners of war and regularly supplied with large contingents of volunteers or mobilized Communists, so as to change their whole spirit and enable them to defeat the ferocious enemy.

The Crimea must be restored to Russia at all costs, otherwise the Ukraine and the Caucasus will always be menaced by Soviet Russia's enemies.

The Central Committee charges you with the duty of intensifying mass agitation on the lines of this circular letter and of immediately arranging for the regular dispatch of Communists to the Crimean Front, even at the expense of other fronts.

Written in July 1920

First published in 1945,

Notes

1.V. I. Lenin wrote on this draft letter the following minute, addressed to the Secretary of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.): "I am in favour of its immediate circulation as something indisputable." The letter was circulated to the Party organizations by the Central Committee in the latter half of July 1920.