Letter To GK Ordzhonikidze
Written 2 March 1921
Editor’s note: On 16 February 1921, the Red Army invaded Georgia. The invasion had been engineered by two high ranking Soviet and party officials of Georgian origin, Stalin (Peoples’ Commissar for Nationalities and Politburo member) and Sergo Ordzhonikidze (Chief commissar of the Revolutionary War Council of the Caucasus and Chair of the Caucasian Bureau of the CC). Karl Radek opposed the decision and Trotsky, the head of the Red Army, had not been informed. Lenin was swayed by the pressure from the two Georgians, but he clearly had reservations. In this letter, written immediately after the invasion, he stresses the need to make concessions to Georgian petty-bourgeois nationalists, even to the point of reaching an agreement with Noe Zhordania, the head of the Georgian government before the invasion, and leader of the Georgian Mensheviks. He also insists on the need to create a Georgian Red Army by arming the workers and peasants (a decision which was sabotaged by Stalin), so that Soviet power would not be seen as a foreign invading force.
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Please convey to the Georgian communists, and in particular to all members of the Georgian Revolutionary Committee, my warm greetings to Soviet Georgia. My special request to them is to inform me whether or not we are in complete agreement on the following three questions:
First, immediate arming of the workers and poor peasants and formation of a strong Georgian Red Army.
Second, there is need for a special policy of concessions with regard to the Georgian intelligentsia and small merchants. It should be realised that it is not only imprudent to nationalise them, but that there is even need for certain sacrifices in order to improve their position and enable them to continue their small trade.
Third, it is of tremendous importance to devise an acceptable compromise for a bloc with Zhordania[1] or similar Georgian Mensheviks, who before the uprising had not been absolutely opposed to the idea of Soviet power in Georgia on certain terms.
Please bear in mind that Georgia’s domestic and international positions both require that her communists should avoid any mechanical copying of the Russian pattern. They must skilfully work out their own flexible tactics, based on bigger concessions to all the petty-bourgeois elements.
Endnotes
[1] Noe Zhordania was a Georgian Menshevik who joined the Social-Democratic movement in the 1890s. He would go on to become an opponent of the October Revolution.