20. TELEPHONE MESSAGE TO THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT FOR JUSTICE

Written on January 7 (20), 1918 · First published on January 8 (21), 1918, in Pravda (evening edition) No. 6. Printed from the typewritten copy. · page 54

I have just received a report that last night sailors entered the Mariinskaya hospital and killed Shingaryov and Kokoshkin. I order you immediately: first, to begin a rigorous investigation; secondly, to arrest the sailors guilty of this murder.^[1]

Lenin

Notes

[1] A. I. Shingaryov and F. F. Kokoshkin, former ministers in the bourgeois Provisional Government, were arrested after the October Revolution and confined in the Peter and Paul Fortress, whence, owing to the state of their health, they were transferred to the Mariinskaya hospital. On the night of January 6 (19), 1918, they were killed by sailors, among whom were anarchists and criminal elements, who broke into the hospital.

On Lenin’s instructions, an investigating commission Was immediately appointed. Those guilty of the murder were arrested and tried.