history essay 2

On Shortcomings of Party Work and Measures to Liquidate Trotskyist and Other Double Dealers

Report to the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), 3

March 1937

I. V. Stalin

Comrades!

From the reports and discussions that have been heard at this Plenum, it is apparent that we have

here a case with the following three basic facts.

First, the economic sabotage and diversionary-spying work of the agents of foreign governments,

in whose number Trotskyists played a fairly active role, affected to one degree or another all or almost

all of our organizations, economic as well as administrative and party.

Second, agents of foreign governments, including Trotskyists, penetrated not just lower

organizations, but even assumed some crucial posts.

Third, some of our leading comrades, in the center and periphery alike, not only failed to discern

the real face of these vermin, saboteurs, spies, and murderers, but turned out to be so carefree,

complacent, and naive that they themselves often facilitated the promotion of agents of foreign

governments to certain crucial posts.

Those are the three undeniable facts that follow naturally from the reports and discussion about

them.

I. Political Unconcern

How can we explain that our leading comrades, who have a wealth of experience of the struggle

against every type of anti-Party and anti-Soviet tendency, turned out in this case to be so naive and

blind that they failed to discern the real face of enemies of the people, failed to recognize wolves in

sheep's clothing, failed to rip their masks from them?

Is it possible to assert that the economic sabotage and diversionary-spying work of the agents of

foreign governments who operate on the territory of the USSR can somehow be unheard of and

unexpected for us? No, it is impossible to assert that. The acts of economic sabotage that have been

recorded in official documents in various sectors of the economy for the past ten years, beginning

with the period of the Shakhty Affair, speak to that.

Is it possible to assert that in the past we have not had any cautionary signals and warning signs

concerning sabotage, spying, or terrorist activity of the Trotskyist-Zinovievite agents of fascism? No,

it is impossible to assert that. Such signals there were, and Bolsheviks do not have the right to forget

about them.

The vicious murder of Comrade Kirov was the first serious warning that enemies of the people

will double-deal, and, double-dealing, they will mask themselves as Bolsheviks, as Party members, in

order to worm their way into our confidence and open a path for themselves into our organizations.

The trial of the "Leningrad Center," just like the trial of "Zinoviev-Kamenev" gave a new

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substantiation to the lessons that followed from the fact of the vicious murder of Comrade Kirov.

The trial of the "Zinoviev-Trotskyist Bloc" expanded the lessons of the previous trials,

graphically showing that Zinovievites and Trotskyists gathered around themselves all hostile

bourgeois elements, that they turned themselves into spies and diversionary-terrorist secret agents of

the German secret police, that double-dealing and masking are the Zinovievites' and Trotsyists' only

means of penetrating into our organizations, [and] that vigilance and political sagacity represent the

most reliable means for preventing this penetration and liquidating the Zinovievite-Trotskyist gang.

In its closed letter of 18 January 1935 about the matter of the vicious murder of Comrade Kirov,

the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) decisively cautioned party

organizations against political complacency and narrow-minded heedlessness. In the closed letter, it

said:

It is necessary to put an end to the opportunistic complacency that results from the

mistaken assumption that, because of the growth of our strength, the enemy for some

reason becomes tamer and more innocuous. Such an assumption is incorrect at root. It is

a vestige of the right deviation, which convinced everyone and everything that enemies

will gradually creep up to socialism, that they will become, in the end, real socialists. It is

not the business of Bolsheviks to rest on their laurels and loaf about. We do not need

complacency, but vigilance, real Bolshevik revolutionary vigilance. It is necessary to

remember that the more hopeless the enemies' situation, the more willingly will they

snatch at extreme measures as the only means available to their doomed struggle with

Soviet power. It is necessary to remember this and to be vigilant.

In its closed letter of 29 July 1936 about the matter of the spying-terrorist activity of the

Trotskyist-Zinovievite bloc, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)

again called party organizations to maximum vigilance, called up their ability to recognize enemies of

the people as well as if they were not masked. In the closed letter, it said:

It has been proven that the Trotskyist-Zinovievite fiends unite all of the most

heinous and sworn enemies of the laborers of our country - spies, provocateurs,

diversionists, white guards, kulaks and so forth - in a struggle against Soviet power. All

boundaries between these elements, on the one hand, and Trotskyists and Zinovievites, on

the other, have been obliterated. Now, all of our party organizations, all members of the

party should understand that the vigilance of communists is required in every sector and

in every situation. In our present situation, the inalienable quality of every Bolshevik

should be the ability to recognize an enemy of the party as well as if he were not masked.

In other words, there were signals and warnings.

For what were these signals and warnings sent out?

They were sent out in order to liquidate the weakness of party-organizational work and turn the

party into an invincible fortress which could not be penetrated by even a single double-dealer.

They were sent out in order to put an end to the underestimation of party-political work and to

make a decisive turn in the direction of all-encompassing strengthening of that work, in the direction

of strengthening political vigilance.

And what then?! The facts have shown that signals and warnings were perceived by our

comrades only with the utmost difficulty.

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All of the known facts from the campaign about the verification and exchange of party

documents speak beautifully to this point.

How can we explain that these cautions and signals did not achieve the necessary effect?

How can we explain that our party comrades, despite their experience of the struggle against

anti-Soviet elements, despite a whole series of cautionary signals and warning signs, turned out to be

politically short-sighted before the face of economic sabotage and the spying-diversionary work of the

enemies of the people?

Maybe our party comrades have become worse than they were before, they have become less

conscientious and disciplined? No, of course not!

Maybe they have started to degenerate? Again, no! Such a proposition is devoid of any basis.

So, what is the problem!? Whence this loafing, this unconcern, this complacency, this blindness?

The problem is that our party comrades, who are engrossed in economic campaigns and the

colossal successes on the front of economic construction, simply forgot about some very important

facts about which Bolsheviks do not have the right to forget. They forgot about one basic fact in the

area of the international situation of the USSR and did not notice two very important facts that have a

direct relation to the current vermin, spies, diversionists and murderers who cloak themselves with

party cards and mask themselves as Bolsheviks.

. . .

Published in Pravda, 29 March 1937. Reprinted in I. V. Stalin, Sochineniia, tom I (XIV), 1934-40, ed.

R. H. McNeal (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1967), 189-94. The entire speech is pp. 189-224. This

version translated by Kiril Tomoff.

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