V. I. Lenin

Wireless Message Of The Council
Of People’S Commissars

October 30 (November 12), 1917


Wired: 30 October, 1917
First Published: Izvestia No. 212, 31 October, 1917. Published according to the Izvestia text.
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972, pp. 274
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov and George Hanna, Edited by George Hanna
Transcription & HTML Markup: Charles Farrell and David Walters
Online Version: Lenin Internet Archive November, 2000


 

Calling Everyone

The All-Russia Congress of Soviets has set up a new Soviet Government. Kerensky’s government has been overthrown and arrested. Kerensky has fled. All institutions are in the hands of the Soviet Government. A revolt of officer cadets who had been released on parole on October 25 broke out on October 29. The revolt was suppressed that same day. Kerensky and Savinkov, together with the officer cadets and a part of the Cossacks, have made their way by deceit to Tsarskoye Syelo. The Soviet Government has mustered forces for the suppression of the new Kornilov advance on Petrograd. The fleet, headed by the armoured battleship Republic, has been summoned to the capital. Kerensky’s officer cadets and Cossacks are wavering. Prisoners arriving from Kerensky’s camp assure us that the Cossacks have been deceived and that if they come to realise the true state of affairs they will refuse to shoot. The Soviet Government is making every effort to avert bloodshed. If bloodshed cannot be avoided and if Kerensky’s units do begin to shoot, the Soviet Government will not hesitate to suppress the new Kerensky-Kornilov campaign ruthlessly.

We announce for your information that the Congress of Soviets which has already dispersed, adopted two important decrees: (1) on the immediate transfer of all the landed estates to the peasant committees, and (2) on the proposal of a democratic peace.

Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin),
Chairman of the Soviet Government