Written: Written on April 24, 1919
Published:
First published in 1942 in Lenin Miscellany XXXIV.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1975,
Moscow,
Volume 44,
page 216a.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.
• README
Comrade Sklyansky,
This, by the way, is pertinent to what was decided yesterday.
It is necessary urgently, at once:
1) to draw up the text of a directive from the C.C. to all “nationals” on army unity (integration)[1] ;
2) to give it also to the press for a series of articles;
3) re universal military training (100% to be taken and not 75%[3]), prepare immediately, today, a draft decree;
4) calculate: 24,000 command personnel. At the ratio of 1 to 10 that means an army of 240,000.
Verify and take as the norm at once for the Central Board of Supply of both Russia and the Ukraine.
[1] “Draft C.C. Directives on Army Unity”. See present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 404–05.—Ed.
[2] Lenin’s directives to Sklyansky were written on a report from Commander-in-Chief Vatsetis dated April 23, 1919, concerning the military situation of the R.S.F.S.R. Vatsetis argued the necessity to unite the armed forces of the Soviet Republics and place them under a single command; he also proposed that the system of Universal Military Training should be temporarily done away with and its 24,000 instructors mobilised to strengthen the command of the reserve units on the Eastern Front.
[3] The report of Vatsetis has a postscript by Aralov, who objected to the total liquidation of the U.M.T. and proposed simply reducing it by 50 to 75 per cent.
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