The shooting down of the Lena workers in April fifteen years ago was one of the bloodiest atrocities of the tsarist autocracy. The gallant fight of our comrades slain by tsarist bullets in the far-off taiga has not been forgotten by the victorious proletariat. Looking back on the path they have travelled, the workers of the Soviet Union can say: Not a single drop of the blood of the Bodaibo workers was shed in vain, for the enemies of the proletariat have received their deserts, and the proletariat has already established its victory over them. Now, delivered from tsarist and capitalist oppression, you are in a position to mine gold on the banks of the Vitim not for the enrichment of parasites, but for the enhancement of the might of your own workers’ state, the first of its kind in the world. Honour and glory to those who laid down their lives fighting for the victory of the working class! Greeting you, dear comrades, on this day of remembrance of the heroic struggle of our fallen comrades, permit me to express my confidence that you will firmly and unswervingly carry on the struggle for the full victory of socialism in our country. February 22, 1927

J. Stalin

Printed in the newspaper Lensky Shakhtyor

(Bodaibo town), No. 87,

April 17, 1927