ABSTRACT
Executive Committee, Comrade A. Kamenskii in issue No. 281 of the central organ of our Party, Pravda. The article contains a wholesale denunciation of the use of military specialists . . . [It is true] I sent off a telegram to Comrades Lashevich and Smilga in which I drew their attention to the desertion of officers and to the total absence of any reports on this subject from the commissars concerned, who had failed to keep any check or to administer punishment, and I concluded the telegram with a phrase to the effect that commissars who let White Guard supporters slip through their hands should be shot. It stands to reason that this was not an order for the shooting of Zalutskii and Bakaev . . . It could never have occurred to me that a legend might arise out of this to the effect that only the steadfastness of Smilga had saved two of the best comrades from the shooting I had decreed for them, ‘as had happened to Panteleev’. Panteleev was shot in accordance with the court’s findings, and I had appointed the court not for the purpose of trying Panteleev – I did not know of his presence among the deserters, nor his name – but to try the deserters who had been captured aboard the steamship, and the court sentenced Panteleev to be shot along with the others. As far as I remember, there have been no other cases of commissars being shot . . .
