J. V. Stalin


Speech Delivered at a Joint Meeting of Party and Soviet Organisations in Vyatka

January 19, 1919 (Record in the Minutes)

Source : Works, Vol. 4, November, 1917 - 1920
Publisher : Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1953
Transcription/Markup : Salil Sen for MIA, 2009
Public Domain : Marxists Internet Archive (2009). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit "Marxists Internet Archive" as your source.


As to the general situation, it should be said that for the immediate future a certain stability at the front is assured and it is just now that a Revolutionary Military Committee of the Vyatka Gubernia must be formed. If the enemy advances, he will have the aid of counter-revolutionary revolts from within, which can only be coped with by a small and mobile organization such as the Revolutionary Military Committee should be.

It is necessary at once to form a new centre, comprising representatives of:

1) The Gubernia Executive Committee;

2) The Regional Soviet;

3) The Gubernia Party Committee;

4) The Extraordinary Commission;

5) The Area Military Commissariat.

All forces and resources must be concentrated in the hands of the Vyatka Revolutionary Military Committee. However, the current work of the Soviet bodies should not be suspended; on the contrary, it must be intensified.

Similar organs must be formed in the uyezds, on the same pattern as the gubernia centre.

Given such a network of revolutionary committees, contact with the localities will be assured.

And only then shall we be ready for a new offensive.

Comrade Stalin formulated his proposal as follows:

With the object of strengthening and securing the rear and uniting the activities of all the Soviet and Party organizations of the Vyatka Gubernia, a Vyatka Revolutionary Military Committee shall be set up, the decisions of which, as the highest organ of Soviet power in the gubernia, shall be binding on the above-mentioned institutions and organizations.

First published in the newspaper Gorkovskaya Kommuna, No. 290, December 18, 1934