We can recall, for an example, the year 1918 when the country was threatened by the attack of the imperialistic interventionists. In this situation the 7th party congress was convened in order to discuss a vitally important matter which could not be postponed - the matter of peace. In 1919, while the civil war was raging, the 8th party congress convened which adopted a new party program, decided such important matters as the relationship with the peasant masses, the organisation of the red army, the leading role of the party in the work of the soviets, the correction of the social composition of the party, and other matters. In 1920 the 9th party congress was convened which laid down guiding principles pertaining to the party's work in the sphere of economic construction. In 1921 the 10th party congress accepted Lenin's new economic policy and the historic resolution called "On Party Unity."
During Lenin's life, party congresses were convened regularly; always, when a radical turn in the development of the party and the country took place, Lenin considered it absolutely necessary that the party discuss at length all the basic matters pertaining to internal and foreign policy and to questions bearing on the development of party and government.
It is very characteristic that Lenin addressed to the party congress as the highest party organ his last articles, letters and remarks. During the period between congresses, the central committee of the party, acting as the most authoritative leading collective, meticulously observed the principles of the party and carried out its policy.
So it was during Lenin's life. Were our party's holy Leninist principles observed after the death of Vladimir Ilyich?
Whereas, during the first few years after Lenin's death, party congresses and central committee plenums took place more or less regularly, later, when Stalin began increasingly to abuse his power, these principles were brutally violated. This was especially evident during the last 15 years of his life. Was it a normal situation when over 13 years elapsed between the 18th and 19th Party Congresses, years during which our party and our country had experienced so many important events? These events demanded categorically that the party should have passed resolutions pertaining to the country's defense during the [Great] Patriotic War and to peacetime construction after the war.
Even after the end of the war a congress was not convened for over seven years. Central committee plenums were hardly ever called. It should be sufficient to mention that during all the years of the Patriotic War not a single central committee plenum took place. It is true that there was an attempt to call a central committee plenum in October 1941, when central committee members from the whole country were called to Moscow. They waited two days for the opening of the plenum, but in vain. Stalin did not even want to meet and talk to the central committee members. This fact shows how demoralised Stalin was in the first months of the war and how haughtily and disdainfully he treated the central committee members.
In practice, Stalin ignored the norms of party life and trampled on the Leninist principle of collective party leadership.
Stalin's willfulness vis-a-vis the party and its central committee became fully evident after the 17th party congress, which took place in 1934.
Having at its disposal numerous data showing brutal willfulness toward party cadres, the central committee has created a party commission under the control of the central committee's presidium. It has been charged with investigating what made possible mass repressions against the majority of the central committee members and candidates elected at the 17th congress of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks).
The commission has become acquainted with a large quantity of materials in the NKVD archives and with other documents. It has established many facts pertaining to the fabrication of cases against communists, to false accusations, [and] to glaring abuses of socialist legality, which resulted in the death of innocent people. It became apparent that many party, Soviet and economic activists who in 1937-1938 were branded "enemies" were actually never enemies, spies, wreckers, etc., but were always honest communists. They were merely stigmatised [as enemies]. Often, no longer able to bear barbaric tortures, they charged themselves (at the order of the investigative judges/falsifiers) with all kinds of grave and unlikely crimes.
The commission has presented to the central committee's presidium lengthy and documented materials pertaining to mass repressions against the delegates to the 17th party congress and against members of the central committee elected at that congress. These materials have been studied by the presidium.
It was determined that of the 139 members and candidates of the central committee who were elected at the 17th congress, 98 persons, i.e., 70 per cent, were arrested and shot (mostly in 1937-1938). (Indignation in the hall.) What was the composition of the delegates to the 17th congress? It is known that 80 per cent of the voting participants of the 17th congress joined the carty during the years of conspiracy before the revolution and during the civil war, i.e. meaning before 1921. By social origin the basic mass of the delegates to the congress were workers (60 per cent of the voting members).
For this reason, it is inconceivable that a congress so composed could have elected a central committee in which a majority [of the members] would prove to be enemies of the party. The only reasons why 70 per cent of the central committee members and candidates elected at the 17th congress were branded as enemies of the party and of the people were because honest communists were slandered, accusations against them were fabricated, and revolutionary legality was gravely undermined.
The same fate met not only central committee members but also the majority of the delegates to the 17th party congress. Of 1,966 delegates with either voting or advisory rights, 1,108 persons were arrested on charges of anti-revolutionary crimes, i.e., decidedly more than a majority. This very fact shows how absurd, wild and contrary to common sense were the charges of counterrevolutionary crimes made out, as we now see, against a majority of participants at the 17th party congress.
(Indignation in the hall.)
We should recall that the 17th party congress is known historically as the congress of victors. Delegates to the congress were active participants in the building of our socialist state; many of them suffered and fought for party interests during the pre-revolutionary years in the conspiracy and at the civil-war fronts; they fought their enemies valiantly and often nervelessly looked into the face of death.
How, then, can we believe that such people could prove to be "two-faced" and had joined the camps of the enemies of socialism during the era after the political liquidation of Zinovievites, Trotskyites and rightists and after the great accomplishments of socialist construction? This was the result of the abuse of power by Stalin, who began to use mass terror against party cadres.
What is the reason that mass repressions against activists increased more and more after the 17th party congress? It was because at that time Stalin had so elevated himself above the party and above the nation that he ceased to consider either the central committee or the party.
Stalin still reckoned with the opinion of the collective before the 17th congress. After the complete political liquidation of the Trotskyites, Zinovievites and Bukharinites, however, when the party had achieved unity, Stalin to an ever greater degree stopped considering the members of the party's central committee and even the members of the plitburo. Stalin thought that now he could decide all things alone and that all he needed were statisticians. He treated all others in such a way that they could only listen to him and praise him.
After the criminal murder of Sergey M Kirov, mass repressions and brutal acts of violation of socialist legality began. On the evening of December 1, 1934 on Stalin's initiative (without the approval of the plitburo - which was given two days later, casually), the secretary of the presidium of the central executive committee, [Abel] Yenukidze, signed the following directive:
"1. Investigative agencies are directed to speed up the cases of those accused of the preparation or execution of acts of terror.
"2. Judicial organs are directed not to hold up the execution of death sentences pertaining to crimes of this category in order to consider the possibility of pardon, because the presidium of the central executive committee of the USSR does not consider as possible the receiving of petitions of this sort.
"3. The organs of the commissariat of internal affairs [NKVD] are directed to execute the death sentences against criminals of the above-mentioned category immediately after the passage of sentences."
This directive became the basis for mass acts of abuse against socialist legality. During many of the fabricated court cases, the accused were charged with "the preparation" of terroristic acts; this deprived them of any possibility that their cases might be re-examined, even when they stated before the court that their "confessions" were secured by force, and when, in a convincing manner, they disproved the accusations against them.
It must be asserted that to this day the circumstances surrounding Kirov's murder hide many things which are inexplicable and mysterious and demand a most careful examination. There are reasons for the suspicion that the killer of Kirov, [Leonid] Nikolayev, was assisted by someone from among the people whose duty it was to protect the person of Kirov.
A month and a half before the killing, Nikolayev was arrested on the grounds of suspicious behaviour but he was released and not even searched. It is an unusually suspicious circumstance that when the Chekist assigned to protect Kirov was being brought for an interrogation, on December 2, 1934, he was killed in a car 'accident' in which no other occupants of the car were harmed. After the murder of Kirov, top functionaries of the Leningrad NKVD were given very light sentences, but in 1937 they were shot. We can assume that they were shot in order to cover up the traces of the organisers of Kirov's killing.
(Movement in the hall.)
Mass repressions grew tremendously from the end of 1936 after a telegram from Stalin and [Andrey] Zhdanov, dated from Sochi on September 25, 1936, was addressed to [Lazar] Kaganovich, [Vyacheslav] Molotov and other members of the politburo. The content of the telegram was as follows:
"We deem it absolutely necessary and urgent that comrade [Nikolay] Yezhov be nominated to the post of people's commissar for internal affairs. [Genrikh] Yagoda definitely has proven himself incapable of unmasking the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc. The OGPU is four years behind in this matter. This is noted by all party workers and by the majority of the representatives of the NKVD."
Strictly speaking, we should stress that Stalin did not meet with and, therefore, could not know the opinion of party workers.
This Stalinist formulation that the "NKVD is four years behind" in applying mass repression and that there is a necessity for "catching up" with the neglected work directly pushed the NKVD workers on the path of mass arrests and executions.
We should state that this formulation was also forced on the February-March plenary session of the central committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) in 1937. The plenary resolution approved it on the basis of Yezhov's report, lessons flowing from the harmful activity, diversion and espionage of the Japanese-German-Trotskyite agents, stating:
"The plenum of the central committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) considers that all facts revealed during the investigation into the matter of an anti-Soviet Trotskyite center and of its followers in the provinces show that the people's commissariat of Internal Affairs has fallen behind at least four years in the attempt to unmask these most inexorable enemies of the people."
The mass repressions at this time were made under the slogan of a fight against the Trotskyites. Did the Trotskyites at this time actually constitute such a danger to our party and to the Soviet state? We should recall that in 1927, on the eve of the 15th Party congress, only some 4,000 votes were cast for the Trotskyite-Zinovievite opposition while there were 724,000 for the party line. During the 10 years which passed between the 15th Party congress and the February-March central committee plenum, Trotskyism was completely disarmed. Many former Trotskyites changed their former views and worked in the various sectors building socialism. It is clear that in the situation of socialist victory there was no basis for mass terror in the country.
Stalin's report at the February-March central committee plenum in 1937, Deficiencies of party work and methods for the liquidation of the Trotskyites and of other two-facers, contained an attempt at theoretical justification of the mass terror policy under the pretext that class war must allegedly sharpen as we march forward toward socialism. Stalin asserted that both history and Lenin taught him this.
Actually Lenin taught that the application of revolutionary violence is necessitated by the resistance of the exploiting classes, and this referred to the era when the exploiting classes existed and were powerful. As soon as the nation's political situation had improved, when in January 1920 the red army took Rostov and thus won a most important victory over [General A. I. ] Denikin, Lenin instructed [Felix] Dzerzhinsky to stop mass terror and to abolish the death penalty. Lenin justified this important political move of the Soviet state in the following manner in his report at the session of the All-Union central executive committee on February 2, 1920:
"We were forced to use terror because of the terror practiced by the entente, when strong world powers threw their hordes against us, not avoiding any type of conduct. We would not have lasted two days had we not answered these attempts of officers and white guardists in a merciless fashion; this meant the use of terror, but this was forced upon us by the terrorist methods of the entente.
"But as soon as we attained a decisive victory, even before the end of the war, immediately after taking Rostov, we gave up the use of the death penalty and thus proved that we intend to execute our own program in the manner that we promised. We say that the application of violence flows out of the decision to smother the exploiters, the big landowners and the capitalists; as soon as this was accomplished we gave up the use of all extraordinary methods. We have proved this in practice."
Stalin deviated from these clear and plain precepts of Lenin. Stalin put the party and the NKVD up to the use of mass terror when the exploiting classes had been liquidated in our country and when there were no serious reasons for the use of extraordinary mass terror.
This terror was actually directed not at the remnants of the defeated exploiting classes but against the honest workers of the party and of the Soviet state; against them were made lying, slanderous and absurd accusations concerning "two-facedness," "espionage," "sabotage," preparation of fictitious "plots," etc.
At the February-March central committee plenum in 1937 many members actually questioned the rightness of the established course regarding mass repressions under the pretext of combating "two-facedness."
Comrade [Pavel] Postyshev most ably expressed these doubts. He said: "I have philosophised that the severe years of fighting have passed. Party members who have lost their backbones have broken down or have joined the camp of the enemy; healthy elements have fought for the party. These were the years of industrialisation and collectivisation. I never thought it possible that after this severe era had passed Karpov and people like him would find themselves in the camp of the enemy. Karpov was a worker in the Ukrainian central committee whom Postyshev knew well. And now, according to the testimony, it appears that Karpov was recruited in 1934 by the Trotskyites.
"I personally do not believe that in 1934 an honest party member who had trod the long road of unrelenting fight against enemies for the party and for socialism would now be in the camp of the enemies. I do not believe it ... I cannot imagine how it would be possible to travel with the party during the difficult years and then, in 1934, join the Trotskyites. It is an odd thing ..."
(Movement in the hall.)
Using Stalin's formulation, namely, that the closer we are to socialism the more enemies we will have, and using the resolution of the February-March central committee plenum passed on the basis of Yezhov's report, the provocateurs who had infiltrated the state-security organs together with conscienceless careerists began to protect with the party name the mass terror against party cadres, cadres of the Soviet state, and ordinary Soviet citizens. It should suffice to say that the number of arrests based on charges of counter-revolutionary crimes had grown ten times between 1936 and 1937.
It is known that brutal willfulness was practiced against leading party workers. The [relevant] party statute, approved at the 17th party congress, was based on Leninist principles expressed at the 10th party congress. It stated that, in order to apply an extreme method such as exclusion from the party against a central committee member, against a central committee candidate or against a member of the party control commission, "it is necessary to call a central committee plenum and to invite to the plenum all central committee candidate members and all members of the party control commission"; only if two-thirds of the members of such a general assembly of responsible party leaders found it necessary, only then could a central committee member or candidate be expelled.
The majority of those central committee's members and candidates who were elected at the 17th congress and arrested in 1937-1938 were expelled from the party illegally through brutal abuse of the party statute, because the question of their expulsion was never studied at the central committee plenum.
Now, when the cases of some of these so-called "spies" and "saboteurs" were examined, it was found that all their cases were fabricated. The confessions of guilt of many of those arrested and charged with enemy activity were gained with the help of cruel and inhuman tortures.
At the same time, Stalin, as we have been informed by members of the politburo of that time, did not show them the statements of many accused political activists when they retracted their confessions before the military tribunal and asked for an objective examination of their cases. There were many such declarations, and Stalin doubtless knew of them.
The central committee considers it absolutely necessary to inform the congress of many such fabricated "cases" against the members of the party's central committee elected at the 17th party congress.
An example of vile provocation, of odious falsification and of criminal violation of revolutionary legality is the case of the former candidate for the central committee politburo, one of the most eminent workers of the party and of the Soviet government, comrade [Robert] Eikhe, who had been a party member since 1905.
(Commotion in the hall.)
Comrade Eikhe was arrested on April 29, 1938 on the basis of slanderous materials, without the sanction of the [state] prosecutor of the USSR. This was finally received 15 months after the arrest.
The investigation of Eikhe's case was made in a manner which most brutally violated Soviet legality and was accompanied by willfulness and falsification.
Under torture, Eikhe was forced to sign a protocol of his confession prepared in advance by the investigative judges. In it, he and several other eminent party workers were accused of anti-Soviet activity.
On October 1, 1939 Eikhe sent his declaration to Stalin in which he categorically denied his guilt and asked for an examination of his case. In the declaration he wrote: "There is no more bitter misery than to sit in the jail of a government for which I have always fought."
A second declaration of Eikhe has been preserved, which he sent to Stalin on October 27, 1939. In it [Eikhe] cited facts very convincingly and countered the slanderous accusations made against him, arguing that this provocatory accusation was on one hand the work of real Trotskyites whose arrests he had sanctioned as first secretary of the West Siberian regional party committee and who conspired in order to take revenge on him, and, on the other hand, the result of the base falsification of materials by the investigative judges.
Eikhe wrote in his declaration: "... On October 25 of this year I was informed that the investigation in my case has been concluded and I was given access to the materials of this investigation. Had I been guilty of only one hundredth of the crimes with which I am charged, I would not have dared to send you this pre-execution declaration. However I have not been guilty of even one of the things with which I am charged and my heart is clean of even the shadow of baseness. I have never in my life told you a word of falsehood, and now, finding both feet in the grave, I am still not lying. My whole case is a typical example of provocation, slander and violation of the elementary basis of revolutionary legality...
"... The confessions which were made part of my file are not only absurd but contain slander toward the central committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) and toward the council of people's commissars. [This is] because correct resolutions of the central committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) and of the council of people's commissars which were not made on my initiative and [were promulgated] without my participation are presented as hostile acts of counter-revolutionary organisations made at my suggestion.
"I am now alluding to the most disgraceful part of my life and to my really grave guilt against the party and against you. This is my confession of counter-revolutionary activity ... The case is as follows: Not being able to suffer the tortures to which I was submitted by [Z] Ushakov and Nikolayev - especially by the former, who utilised the knowledge that my broken ribs have not properly mended and have caused me great pain - I have been forced to accuse myself and others.
"The majority of my confession has been suggested or dictated by Ushakov. The rest is my reconstruction of NKVD materials from Western Siberia for which I assumed all responsibility. If some part of the story which Ushakov fabricated and which I signed did not properly hang together, I was forced to sign another variation. The same thing was done to [Moisey] Rukhimovich, who was at first designated as a member of the reserve net and whose name later was removed without telling me anything about it. The same also was done with the leader of the reserve net, supposedly created by Bukharin in 1935. At first I wrote my [own] name in, and then I was instructed to insert [Valery] Mezhlauk's. There were other similar incidents.
"... I am asking and begging you that you again examine my case, and this not for the purpose of sparing me but in order to unmask the vile provocation which, like a snake, wound itself around many persons in a great degree due to my meanness and criminal slander. I have never betrayed you or the party. I know that I perish because of vile and mean work of enemies of the party and of the people, who have fabricated the provocation against me."
It would appear that such an important declaration was worth an examination by the central committee. This, however, was not done. The declaration was transmitted to Beria while the terrible maltreatment of the politburo candidate, comrade Eikhe, continued.
On February 2, 1940, Eikhe was brought before the court. Here he did not confess any guilt and said as follows: "In all the so-called confessions of mine there is not one letter written by me with the exception of my signatures under the protocols, which were forced from me. I have made my confession under pressure from the investigative judge, who from the time of my arrest tormented me. After that I began to write all this nonsense ... The most important thing for me is to tell the court, the party and Stalin that I am not guilty. I have never been guilty of any conspiracy. I will die believing in the truth of party policy as I have believed in it during my whole life."
On February 4, Eikhe was shot.
(Indignation in the hall.)
It has been definitely established now that Eikhe's case was fabricated. He has been rehabilitated posthumously.
Comrade [Yan] Rudzutak, a candidate-member of the politburo, a member of the party since 1905 who spent 10 years in a Tsarist hard-labor camp, completely retracted in court the confession forced from him. The protocol of the session of the collegium of the supreme military court contains the following statement by Rudzutak:
"... The only plea which [the defendant] places before the court is that the central committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) be informed that there is in the NKVD an as yet not liquidated center which is craftily manufacturing cases, which forces innocent persons to confess. There is no opportunity to prove one's non-participation in crimes to which the confessions of various persons testify. The investigative methods are such that they force people to lie and to slander entirely innocent persons in addition to those who already stand accused. [The defendant] asks the court that he be allowed to inform the central committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) about all this in writing. He assures the court that he personally had never any evil designs in regard to the policy of our party because he has always agreed with party policy concerning all spheres of economic and cultural activity."
This declaration of Rudzutak was ignored, despite the fact that Rudzutak was in his time the head of the central control commission - which had been called into being, in accordance with Lenin's conception, for the purpose of fighting for party unity. In this manner fell the head of this highly authoritative party organ, a victim of brutal willfulness. He was not even called before the politburo because Stalin did not want to talk to him. Sentence was pronounced on him in 20 minutes and he was shot.
(Indignation in the hall.)
After careful examination of the case in 1955, it was established that the accusation against Rudzutak was false and that it was based on slanderous materials. Rudzutak has been rehabilitated posthumously.
The way in which the former NKVD workers manufactured various fictitious "anti-Soviet centers" and "blocs" with the help of provocatory methods is seen from the confession of comrade Rozenblum, a party member since 1906, who was arrested in 1937 by the Leningrad NKVD.
During the examination in 1955 of the Komarov case, Rozenblum revealed the following fact: when Rozenblum was arrested in 1937, he was subjected to terrible torture during which he was ordered to confess false information concerning himself and other persons. He was then brought to the office of [Leonid] Zakovsky, who offered him freedom on condition that he make before the court a false confession fabricated in 1937 by the NKVD concerning "sabotage, espionage and diversion in a terroristic center in Leningrad." (Movement in the hall.) With unbelievable cynicism, Zakovsky told about the vile "mechanism" for the crafty creation of fabricated "anti-Soviet plots."
"In order to illustrate it to me," stated Rozenblum, "Zakovsky gave me several possible variants of the organisation of this center and of its branches. After he detailed the organisation to me, Zakovsky told me that the NKVD would prepare the case of this centre, remarking that the trial would be public. Before the court were to be brought 4 or 5 members of this center: [Mikhail] Chudov, [Fyodor] Ugarov, [Pyotr] Smorodin, [Boris] Pozern, Chudov's wife [Liudmilla] Shaposhnikova and others together with 2 or 3 members from the branches of this centre...
"... The case of the Leningrad center has to be built solidly, and for this reason witnesses are needed. Social origin (of course, in the past) and the party standing of the witness will play more than a small role. "'You, yourself,' said Zakovsky, 'will not need to invent anything. The NKVD will prepare for you a ready outline for every branch of the centre. You will have to study it carefully, and remember well all questions the court might ask and their answers. This case will be ready in four or five months, perhaps in half a year. During all this time you will be preparing yourself so that you will not compromise the investigation and yourself. Your future will depend on how the trial goes and on its results. If you begin to lie and to testify falsely, blame yourself. If you manage to endure it, you will save your head and we will feed and clothe you at the government's cost until your death.'"
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