Published:
Published on May 5 (April 22), 1918 in the newspaper Shchit Naroda No. 85.
Printed from a typescript copy.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 36,
page 486.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
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
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• README
You can rest assured, comrades, that the Council of People’s Commissars will support autonomy for your territory on Soviet principles; we welcome your initiatives, and are deeply convinced that you will cover the whole territory with a network of Soviets, and will act in close contact with the Soviets already in existence.
We ask you to send the commission for the calling of a Constituent Congress of Soviets, which you have undertaken to organise, to us here in Moscow, in order to work out together the question of defining the relations between the plenipotentiary organ of your territory and the Council of People’s Commissars.
In greeting your Congress, we hope that you will be equal to the tasks imposed on it by history.
Moscow, April 22, 1918
Lenin and Stalin
[1] A reply to a telegram from the Fifth Congress of Soviets of the Turkestan Territory held in Tashkent from April 20 to May 1, 1918. The Congress sent greetings to the Council of People’s Commissars and welcomed its correct national policy. The main item on its agenda was the question of autonomy for the territory. The Congress adopted a decision to set up a commission for the convocation of a constituent congress of Soviets of the Turkestan Territory to define the frontiers and the sphere of competence of Turkestan’s autonomy.
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