of the workers, proclaim a state of siege and act with the utmost severity. The general objective is to hold Petrograd and Kiev and check the German bands at all costs. The situation is more serious than you might think. We have not the slightest doubt that the German bandits want to promenade from Petrograd to Kiev and to start peace talks in these capitals, and in them alone. I believe you have not yet annulled the treaty concluded by the old Rada with the Germans.10 If so, we think you should be in no hurry to do so.

Once again: do not lose a single moment, set to work without wasting words, and demonstrate to all that the Soviet regime is capable of defending itself. All our hope is in the workers, for the so-called army now being demobilized has proved capable only of panic and flight.

I await an immediate reply.

On behalf of the Council of People’s Commissars J. Stalin Petrograd,

February 21, 1918

First published in
Documents on the Defeat of the German

Invaders in the Ukraine, 1918,

Gospolitizdat, 1942