The Military Writings of
Leon Trotsky

Volume 2, 1919

How the Revolution Armed

The Eastern Front

Kolchak’s Offensive (March-April 1919)

ORDER No.87

By the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic and People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs to the Second Army, March 26, 1919, No.87, Sarapul
[Sarapul is on the River Kama, about half-way between Kazan and Perm.]

Transcribed and HTML markup for the Trotsky Internet Archive by David Walters

* * *

Soldiers, commanders, commissars!

The White Guard regiments of the new autocrat, Kolchak, have set themselves the task of destroying your army and opening a road for themselves to Kazan.

Thereby, a great and honourable task has been entrusted to your army: to give a ruthless rebuff to the enemy of working people’s Russia, the hireling of the American capitalists. Your army has already rendered great services to the Soviet Republic. I do not doubt that, this time too, each one of you and all of you together will prove worthy of your task. All Workers’ and Peasants’ Russia looks to you with hope and confidence.

Second Army, close your ranks!

Death and destruction to the bourgeois and landlord bands!

Death and destruction to the Kolchakite autocracy.

Death and destruction to the foreign imperialists!

Long live the Red Second Army!

Long live Workers’ and Peasants’ Russia!

Last updated on: 23.12.2006