The bourgeois newspapers are assiduously spreading rumours that “negotiations have started between the Rada and the Council of People’s Commissars.” Circles closely connected with the counter-revolutionaries are zealously spreading these rumours and stressing their “special” importance. Things have gone so far that many of our comrades are disposed to believe the tale about negotiations with the Kiev Rada, and many have already written to me inquiring whether it is authentic.

I publicly declare:

1) The Council of People’s Commissars is not conducting and has no intention of conducting any negotiations with the Kiev Rada. 2) The Kiev Rada has definitely linked itself with Kaledin and is conducting treasonable negotiations with the Austro-German imperialists behind the back of the peoples of Russia—and such a Rada the Council of People’s Commissars can only implacably fight until the Ukrainian Soviets are completely victorious.

3) Peace and tranquility can come to the Ukraine only as a result of the complete liquidation of the Kiev bourgeois Rada, as a result of its replacement by another, a socialist Rada of Soviets, the nucleus of which has already been formed in Kharkov.

People’s Commissar

J. Stalin

Pravda, No. 9,

January 13, 1918