by Ludo Martens
`Smirnov ... conveyed to me that Sedov wanted very much to see me ....
`I agreed to this meeting ....
`Sedov said ... that there was being formed, or already been formed ... a Trotskyite centre .... The possibility was being sounded of restoring the united organization with the Zinovievites.
`Sedov also said that he knew for a fact the Rights also, in the persons of Tomsky, Bukharin and Rykov, had not laid down their arms, that they had only quietened down temporarily, and that the necessary connections should be established with them too ....
`Sedov said that only one thing was required of me, namely that I should place as many orders as possible with two German firms, Borsig and Demag, and that he, Sedov, would arrange to receive the necessary sums from them, bearing in mind that I would not be particularly exacting as to prices. If this were deciphered it was clear that the additions to prices that would be made on the Soviet orders would pass wholly or in part into Trotsky's hands for his counter-revolutionary purposes.'
.
People's Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R. Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Centre (Moscow, 1937), pp. 21--27.
Littlepage made the following comment:
`This passage in Piatakoff's confession is a plausible explanation, in my opinion, of what was going on in Berlin in 1931, when my suspicions were roused because the Russians working with Piatakoff tried to induce me to approve the purchase of mine-hoists which were not only too expensive, but would have been useless in the mines for which they were intended. I had found it hard to believe that these men were ordinary grafters .... But they had been seasoned political conspirators before the Revolution, and had taken risks of the same degree for the sake of their so-called cause.'
.
Littlepage and Bess, op. cit. , p. 102.
Sabotage in Magnitogorsk
Another American engineer, John Scott, who worked at Magnitogorsk, recorded similar events in his book Behind the Urals. When describing the 1937 Purge, he wrote that there was serious, sometimes criminal negligence on the part of the people responsible. The machines at Magnitogorsk were deliberately sabotaged by ex-kulaks who had become workers. A bourgeois engineer, Scott analyzed the purge as follows:
`Many people in Magnitogorsk, arrested and indicted for political crimes, were just thieves, embezzlers, and bandits ....'
.
Scott, op. cit. , p. 184.
`The purge struck Magnitogorsk in 1937 with great force. Thousands were arrested ....
`The October Revolution earned the enmity of the old aristocracy, the officers of the old Czarist army and of the various White armies, State employees from pre-war days, business men of all kinds, small landlords, and kulaks. All of these people had ample reason to hate the Soviet power, for it had deprived them of something which they had before. Besides being internally dangerous, these men and women were potentially good material for clever foreign agents to work with ....
`Geographical conditions were such that no matter what kind of government was in power in the Soviet Union, poor, thickly populated countries like Japan and Italy and aggressive powers like Germany would leave no stone unturned in their attempts to infiltrate it with their agents, in order to establish their organizations and assert their influence .... These agents bred purges ....
`A large number of spies, saboteurs, and fifth-columnists were exiled or shot during the purge; but many more innocent men and women were made to suffer.'
.
Ibid. , pp. 188--189.
The trial of the Bukharinist social-democratic group
The February 1937 decision to purge
Early in 1937, a crucial meeting of the Bolshevik Party Central Committee took place. It decided that a purge was necessary and how it should be carried out. Stalin subsequently published an important document. At the time of the plenum, the police had gathered sufficient evidence to prove that Bukharin was aware of the conspiratorial activities of the anti-Party groups unmasked during the trials of Zinoviev and Pyatakov. Bukharin was confronted with these accusations during the plenum. Unlike the other groups, Bukharin's group was at the very heart of the Party and his political influence was great.
Some claim that Stalin's report sounded the signal that set off `terror' and `arbitrary criminality'. Let us look at the real contents of this document.
His first thesis claimed that lack of revolutionary vigilance and political naпvetй had spread throughout the Party. Kirov's murder was the first serious warning, from which not all the necessary conclusions had been drawn. The trial of Zinoviev and the Trotskyists revealed that these elements were ready to do anything to destroy the rйgime. However, economic successes had created within the Party a feeling of self-satisfaction and victory. Cadres had forgotten capitalist encirclement and the increasing bitterness of the class struggle at the international level. Many had become submerged by little management questions and no longer preoccupied themselves with the major lines of national and international struggle.
Stalin said:
`Comrades, from the reports and the debates on these reports heard at this Plenum it is evident that we are dealing with the following three main facts.
`First, the wrecking, diversionists and espionage work of the agents of foreign countries, among who, a rather active role was played by the Trotskyites, affected more or less all, or nearly all, our organisations --- economic, administrative and Party.
`Second, the agents of foreign countries, among them the Trotskyites, not only penetrated into our lower organisations, but also into a number of responsible positions.
`Third, some of our leading comrades, at the centre and in the districts, not only failed to discern the real face of these wreckers, diversionists, spies and assassins, but proved to be so careless, complacent and naive that not infrequently they themselves helped to promote agents of foreign powers to responsible positions.'
.
Stalin, Report and Speech in Reply to Debate at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U., p. 241.
From these remarks, Stalin drew two conclusions.
First, political credulity and naпvetй had to be eliminated and revolutionary vigilance had to be reinforced. The remnants of the defeated exploiting classes would resort to sharper forms of class struggle and would clutch at the most desperate forms of struggle as the last resort of the doomed.
.
Ibid. , p. 264.
In 1956, in his Secret Report, Khrushchev referred to this passage. He claimed that Stalin justified `mass terror' by putting forth the formulation that `as we march forward toward socialism class war must ... sharpen'.
.
Khrushchev, op. cit. , p. S24.
This is a patent falsehood. The most `intense' class struggle was the generalized civil war that drew great masses against each other, as in 1918--1920. Stalin talked about the remnants of the old classes that, in a desperate situation, would resort to the sharpest forms of struggle: attacks, assassinations, sabotage.
Stalin's second conclusion was that to reinforce vigilance, the political education of Party cadres had to be improved. He proposed a political education system of four to eight months for all cadres, from cell leaders all the way to the highest leaders.
Stalin's first report, presented on March 3, focused on the ideological struggle so that members of the Central Committee could take note of the gravity of the situation and understand the scope of subversive work that had taken place within the Party. His speech on March 5 focused on other forms of deviation, particularly leftism and bureaucracy.
Stalin began by explicitly warning against the tendency to arbitrarily extend the purge and repression.
`Does that mean that we must strike at and uproot, not only real Trotskyites, but also those who at some time or other wavered in the direction of Trotskyism and then, long ago, abandoned Trotskyism; not only those who, at some time or other, had occasion to walk down a street through w
hich some Trotskyite had passed? At all events, such voices were heard at this Plenum .... You cannot measure everyone with the same yardstick. Such a wholesale approach can only hinder the fight against the real Trotskyite wreckers and spies.'
.
Stalin, op. cit. , p. 278.
In preparation for the war, the Party certainly had to be purged of infiltrated enemies; nevertheless, Stalin warned against an arbitrary extension of the purge, which would harm the struggle against the real enemies.
The Party was not just menaced by the subversive work of infiltrated enemies, but also by serious deviations by cadres, in particular the tendency to form closed cliques of friends and to cut oneself off from militants and from the masses through bureaucratic methods.
First, Stalin attacked the `family atmosphere', in which `there can be no place for criticism of defects in the work, or for self-criticism by leaders of the work'.
.
Ibid. , p. 280.
`Most often, workers are not chosen for objective reasons, but for causal, subjective, philistine, petty-bourgeois reasons. Most often, so-called acquaintances, friends, fellow-townsmen, personally devoted people, masters in the art of praising their chiefs are chosen.'
.
Ibid. , pp. 279--280.
Finally, Stalin criticized bureaucracy, which, on certain questions, was `positively unprecedented'.
.
Ibid. , p. 296.
During investigations, many ordinary workers were excluded from the Party for `passivity'. Most of these expulsions were not justified and should have been annuled a long time ago. Yet, many leaders held a bureaucratic attitude towards these unjustly expelled Communists.
.
Ibid. , p. 294.
`(S)ome of our Party leaders suffer from a lack of concern for people, for members of the Party, for workers .... because they have no individual approach in appraising Party members and Party workers they usually act in a haphazard way .... only those who are in fact profoundly anti-Party can have such an approach to members of the Party.'
.
Ibid. , pp. 292--293.
Bureucracy also prevented Party leaders from learning from the masses. Nevertheless, to correctly lead the Party and the country, Communist leaders had to base themselves on the experiences of the masses.
Finally, bureaucracy made the control of leaders by Party masses impossible. Leaders had to report on their work at conferences and listen to criticisms from their base. During elections, several candidates had to be presented and, after a discussion of each, the vote should take place with a secret ballot.
.
Ibid. , pp. 282--283.
The Riutin affair
During 1928--1930, Bukharin was bitterly criticized for his social-democratic ideas, particularly for his opposition to the collectivization, his policy of `social peace' with the kulaks and his attempt to slow down the industrialization efforts.
Pushing even further than Bukharin, Mikhail Riutin formed an openly counter-revolutionary group in 1931--1932. Riutin, a former substitute member of the Central Committee, was Party Secretary for a Moscow district until 1932. He was surrounded by several well-known young Bukharinists, including Slepkov, Maretsky and Petrovsky.
.
Stephen F. Cohen. Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888--1938 (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), p. 343.
In 1931, Riutin wrote up a 200-page document, a real program for the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie. Here are a few passages:
`Already in 1924--1925, Stalin was planning to organize his `Eighteenth Brumaire'. Just as Louis Bonaparte swore in front of the house his faithfulness to the constitution, while at the same time preparing his proclamation as emperor .... Stalin was preparing his `bloodless' Eighteenth Brumaire by amputating one group after another .... Those who do not know how to think in a Marxist manner think that the elimination of Stalin would at the same time mean the reversal of Soviet power .... The dictatorship of the proletariat will inevitably perish because of Stalin and his clique. By eliminating Stalin, we will have many chances to save it.
`What should be done?
`The Party.
`1. Liquidate the dictatorship by Stalin and his clique.
`2. Replace the entire leadership of the Party apparatus.
`3. Immediately convoke an extraordinary congress of the Party.
`The Soviets.
`1. New elections excluding nomination.
`2. Replacing the judicial machine and introduction of a rigorous legality.
`3. Replacement and purge of the Ogpu apparatus.
`Agriculture.
`1. Dissolution of all kolkhozes created by force.
`2. Liquidation of all unprofitable sovkhozes.
`3. Immediate halt to the pillage of the peasants.
`4. Rules allowing the exploitation of land by private owners and the return of land to these owners for an extended period.'
.
Nouvelles de Moscou 21, 27 May 1990.
Riutin's `communist' program in no way differed from that of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie: liquidate the Party leadership, dismantle the state security apparatus and re-establish private farms and the kulaks. All counter-revolutionaries, from Khrushchev to Gorbachev and Yeltsin, would adhere to this program. But in 1931, Riutin, like Trotsky, was forced to hide this program in `leftist' rhetoric: he wanted the restoration of capitalism, you see, to save the dictatorship of the proletariat and to stop the counter-revolution, i.e. the `Eighteenth Brumaire' or the `Thermidor'.
During his 1938 trial, Bukharin stated that the young Bukharinists, with the accord and initiative of Slepkov, organized a conference at the end of the summer of 1932 in which Riutin's platform was approved.
`I fully agreed with this platform and I bear full responsibility for it.'
.
People's Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R. Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet ``Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites'' (Moscow, 1938), p. 390.
Bukharin's revisionism
Starting from 1931, Bukharin played a leading rфle in the Party work among intellectuals. He had great influence in the Soviet scientific community and in the Academy of Sciences.
.
Cohen, op. cit. , p. 352.
As the chief editor of the government newspaper Isvestiia, Bukharin was able to promote his political and ideological line.
.
Ibid. , p. 355.
At the Inaugural Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, Bukharin praised at length the `defiantly apolitical' Boris Pasternak.
.
Ibid. , p. 356.
Bukharin remained the idol of the rich peasants and also became the standard bearer for the technocrats. Stephen F. Cohen, author of the biography Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, claimed that Bukharin supported Stalin's leadership to better struggle against it:
`It was evident to Bukharin that the party and the country were entering a new period of uncertainty but also of possible changes in Soviet domestic and foreign policy. To participate in and influence these events, he, too, had to adhere to the facade of unanimity and uncritical acceptance of Stalin's past leadership behind which the muted struggle over the country's future course was to be waged.'
.
Ibid. , p. 354.
In 1934--1936, Bukharin often wrote about the fascist danger and about the inevitable war with Nazism. Speaking of measures that had to be taken to prepare the country for a future war, Bukharin defined a program that brought his old right-opportunist and social-democratic ideas up-to-date. He said that the `enormous discontent among the population', primarily among the peasantry, had to be eliminated. Here was the new version of his old call for reconciliaton with the kulaks --- the only really `discontent' class in the countryside, during those years. To attack the collectivization experience, Bukharin developed propaganda around the theme of `socialist humanism', where the `criterion is the freedom of maximal
development of the maximum number of people'.
.
Ibid. , p. 362.