Propaganda artwork is titled <Felix Dzerzhinsky, 1877-1926. "Be Vigilant and Alert!" >

To correct the misunderstanding of what a political purge is - which is a result of the peopagandized education America feeds its citizens from cradle to grave - I am here to post excerpts of varying books from varying professional authors, historians, and journalists of varying political backgrounds on what "purging the party" actually entailed in the Soviet Union. If I run out of space in the main post, I will continue it in the comments.

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The entire membership of the Communist Party was therefore subjected to what is called a “cleansing” or “purge” in the presence of large audiences of their non-Communist fellow workers. (This is the only connection in which the Soviet people use the term “purge.” Its application by Americans to all the Soviet treason trials and in general to Soviet criminal procedure is resented by the Soviet people.) Each Communist had to relate his life history and daily activities in the presence of people who were in a position to check them. It was a brutal experience for an unpopular president of a Moscow university to explain to an examining board in the presence of his students why he merited the nation’s trust. Or for a superintendent of the large plant to expose his life history and daily activities — even to his wife’s use of one of the factory automobiles for shopping — in the presence of the plants workers, any one of whom had the right to make remarks. This was done with every Communist throughout the country; it resulted in the expulsion of large numbers from the party, and in the arrest and trial of a few.

Strong, Anna L. The Soviets Expected It. New York, New York: The Dial press, 1941, p. 136

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The purge–in Russian “chiska” (cleansing)–is a long-standing institution of the Russian Communist Party. The first one I encountered was in 1921, shortly after Lenin had introduced “NEP,” his new economic policy, which involved a temporary restoration of private trade and petty capitalism and caused much heart burning amongst his followers. In that purge nearly one-third of the total membership of the party was expelled or placed on probation. To the best of my recollection, the reasons then put forward for expulsion or probation were graft, greed, personal ambition, and “conduct unbecoming to communists,” which generally meant wine, women, and song.

Duranty, Walter. The Kremlin and the People. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 116

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Kirov’s murder brought a change, but even so the Purge that was held that winter was at first not strikingly different from earlier Purges.

Duranty, Walter. The Kremlin and the People. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 116

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The Central Committee organized a “purge” and expelled barely 170,000 members in order to improve the party quality. Stalin has frequently been held responsible for the “purge.” He was not its author. This party-cleansing was done under Lenin’s leadership. It is a process which is unique in the history of little parties. The Bolsheviks however, do not regard it as an extraordinary measure for use only in a time of crisis, but a normal feature of party procedure. It is the means of guaranteeing Bolshevik quality. To regard it as a desperate move on the part of leaders anxious to get rid of rivals is to misunderstand how profoundly the Bolshevik party differs from all others, even from the Communist Party’s of the rest of Europe.

Murphy, John Thomas. Stalin, London, John Lane, 1945, p. 144

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Lenin initiated the first great “cleansing” of the Bolshevik party just as the transition had begun from “war communism” to the new economic policy. In 1922, when, as Lenin put it, “the party had rid itself of the rascals, bureaucrats, dishonest or waivering Communists, and of Mensheviks who have re-painted their facade but who remained Mensheviks at heart,” another Congress took place; and it was this Congress which advanced Stalin to the key position of Bolshevik power. It brought him into intimate contact with every functionary of the organization, enabling him to examine their work as well as their ideas.

Murphy, John Thomas. Stalin, London, John Lane, 1945, p. 145

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The party maintains its quality by imposing a qualifying period before granting full membership, and by periodical ” cleanings” of those who fail to live up to the high standard set.

Murphy, John Thomas. Stalin, London, John Lane, 1945, p. 169

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In all fairness I must add that no small proportion of the exiles were allowed to return home and resume their jobs after the Purge had ended.

Duranty, Walter. The Kremlin and the People. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 122

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Besides examining Communists against whom definite complaints are made, the Control Commission at long intervals resorts to wholesale “purges” of the Party. In 1929 it was decided to institute such a purge, with a view to checking up on the rapid numerical growth of the Party, which has been increasing at the rate of about 200,000 a year during the last few years, and eliminating undesirable elements. It was estimated in advance that about 150,000 Communists, or 10 percent of the total membership (including the candidates) would be expelled during this process. In a purge every party member, regardless of whether any charges have been preferred against him or not, must appear before representatives of the Control Commission and satisfy them that he is a sound Communist in thought and action. In the factories non-party workers are sometimes called on to participate in the purge by offering judgment on the Communists and pointing out those who are shkurniki or people who look after their own skins, a familiar Russian characterization for careerists .

Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 68

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From time to time the party “cleans out” its membership, and this is always done an open meetings to which all workers of the given institution are invited. Each communist in the institution must give before this public an extended account of his life activities, submit to and answer all criticism, and prove before the assembled workers his fitness to remain in the “leading Party.” Members may be cleaned out not only as “hostile elements, double-dealers, violators of discipline, deganerates, career-seekers, self-seekers, morally degraded persons” but even for being merely “passive,” for having failed to keep learning and growing in knowledge and authority among the masses.

Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 31

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I have in the course of 15 years in the Soviet Union met an occasional Communist who was a grafter, and many more who were stubborn bureaucrats and unenlightened fanatics. But I have also seen how the party throws out dead wood–not always accurately–and renews itself from the working class it leads.

Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 37

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It would be a mistake to regard the 1933 chistka as having been directed solely against members of the opposition. The largest single group expelled were “passive” party members: those carried on the roles but not participating in party work. Next came violators of party discipline, bureaucrats, corrupt officials, and those who had hidden past crimes. Members of dissident groups did not even figure in the final tallies. Stalin himself characterized the purge has a measure against bureaucratism, red tape, deganerates, and careerists, “to raise the level of organizational leadership.” The vast majority of those expelled were fresh recruits who had entered the party since 1929, rather than Old Bolshevik oppositionists. Nevertheless, the 1933 purge expelled about 18 percent of the party’s members and must be seen as a hard-line policy or signal from Moscow.

Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 127

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“Not everyone who wishes can belong to the party,” said Stalin; “it is not given to everyone to brave its labors and its torments.”

Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 280

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Western students have applied the word “purge” to everything from political trials to police terror to nonpolitical expulsions from the party. The label “Great Purges,” which encompasses practically all party activities between 1933 and 1939, is an example of such broad usage. Yet the Communist Party defined and used the word quite specifically. > The term “purge” (chistka–a sweeping or cleaning) only applied to the periodic membership screenings of the ranks of the party. These membership operations were designed to weed the party of hangers-on, nonparticipants, drunken officials, and people with false identification papers, as well as ideological “enemies” or “aliens.” In the majority of purges, political crimes or deviations pertained to a minority of those expelled. No Soviet source or usage ever referred to the Ezhovshchina (the height of police arrests and terror in 1937) as a purge, and party leaders discussed that event and purges in entirely separate contexts. No political or nonpolitical trial was ever called a purge, and under no circumstances were operations, arrests, or terror involving nonparty citizens referred to as purges. A party member at the time would have been mystified by such a label.

Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 38

[Continued below]

  • Alaskaball [comrade/them]MA
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    2 years ago

    In Soviet Party history a ‘purge’ refers to a membership screening designed to rid the Party of lackadaisical, theoretically backward, ill disciplined, passive, opportunist, and so on, members. Purges were implemented either by a process of systematic expulsions organized by special ‘purge’ commissions, or by local Party leaders, in which charges were brought against unreliable members, or by a process of validation or exchange of Party cards in which members had to prove themselves. Such ‘purges’ had been a regular part of Party life since 1919. Interestingly, the Party purges of 1935 and 1937 resulted in significantly fewer expulsions than the previous four purges that had taken place in 1919, 1921, 1929, and 1933. All the purges mainly affected rank and file party members.

    Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 229

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    Communist Party membership involved both special obligations and access to special benefits such as jobs (reserved for politically reliable people), as well as a certain prestige. As a result many people secured and maintained membership in the Party for other reasons than agreement with the Party’s goals and political activism; many people even secured Party cards illlegally…. The periodic purges (1919, 1921, 1929, 1933, 1935, 1937) were all designed to deal with this problem and, in the words of Party instructions, were directed to ensure ‘iron proletarian discipline in the Party and to cleanse the Party’s ranks of all unreliable, unstable, and hanger-on elements. ‘In the 1919 ‘re-registration’ 10-15% of the Party’s total membership lost their Party cards; in the 1921 Party purge 25%; in the 1929 purge, 11% (25 percent of whom were reinstated after appeals); in the 1933 chistka 17% were expelled; in the 1935 proverka 9%; and in the famous 1937 Ezhovshchina again about 9% (the 1935 and 1937 purges were the smallest in terms of numbers affected). The decree setting up the rules of the 1933 validation of Party members specified that all Party members must present themselves before open proceedings (attended by both Party and non-Party members), give an account of the facts of their lives, explain how they fulfilled Party tasks, and discuss the efforts made to raise their ‘ideological and theoretical level.’ Each member was then questioned by the validation commissioners and by rank and file Party and non-Party members.

    Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 230

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    …The problem of inactive and irresponsible Party members, as well as the loose system of controls over membership, was largely a result of the emphasis, during the 1920s, on the recruitment of large numbers of working-class members, with little attention given to criteria other than class background. In the membership screening of 1929, 22% were expelled for ‘defects in personal conduct,’ 17% for passivity, 12% for criminal offenses (mostly involvement in petty crimes), 10% for violations of Party discipline (which includes those accused of factional activity) and 17% for being ‘alien elements’ or having lied about class background. Similarly in the 1933 chistka, in which 15% were expelled for personal deganeracy, 14% for violating Party discipline, 16% for political reasons, including concealing class background, and 18% for abuse of position. According to Rigby’s analysis of the 1933 membership screening, “… political considerations play a relatively small part in this sample of expulsions, however, and the great majority were removed either because they made unscrupulous use of their Party membership to secure personal benefits, were immoral, or undisciplined in their personal lives or at their job, or simply failed to participate in Party activities.”

    Data for the 1935 purge (which occurred immediately after the Kirov assassination) reveals that the reasons for expulsions were similar to those in the pre-1934 membership screenings; more than 20% were expelled for petty crimes or ‘moral turpitude,’ and most of the remainder for political passivity, ‘deganeracy’ or abuse of position. To quote Getty: “The information on the incidence of the proverka suggests that it was not a hysterical, political witchhunt, in which helpless rank-and-file Party members fell in droves for the slightest infraction. Rather, it seems that the proverka of 1935 was more careful, and less political, in that there is evidence of investigation and of a policy in which a consistent pattern of problems or violations was necessary for expulsion.”

    Results for one city in the Smolensk Region show that only 18% of the members against whom charges have been brought were actually expelled, and less than one-third of those formally criticized at meetings received any form of disciplinary treatment at all. The records of the Smolensk City Party Committee reveal that 7% were expelled for passivity, 21% were being petty criminals or deganerates, or corrupt; 28% for un-trustworthiness, 22% for being ‘class alien persons’ who had hidden their class origins, and only 8% for political unreliability. Undoubtedly there was a higher percentage of expulsions for political reasons in the 1937 purge owing to the hysteria engendered by the spy and ‘wrecker’ mania current at the time. Nevertheless, given the results of previous purges, especially that of 1935, there’s no doubt that the reasons for the majority of purges were not political.

    Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 231

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    IN SHORT, THE VAST MAJORITY OF THOSE WHOSE PARTY CARDS WERE WITHDRAWN BOTH IN THE PRE AND POST 1934 MEMBERSHIP SCREENINGS WERE EXPELLED NOT FOR ASSOCIATION WITH ANY POLITICAL OPPOSITION, BUT RATHER FOR BEING ‘CAREERISTS,’ ‘OPPORTUNISTS, ‘ ILL-DISCIPLINED, ‘DEGANERATES,’ POLITICALLY PASSIVE, ‘POLITICALLY ILLITERATE,’ ‘WEAK WILLED,’ AND SO ON.

    Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 232

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    A member of the Communist Party becomes such not only through his own selection, but by the approval of the working class among whom he lives and toils. Not only must he come with recommendations from older party members of from 5 to 10 years standing, recommendations taken so seriously that a member may be expelled for endorsing an unworthy candidate. Not only must he undergo a period of probation ranging from one to two years, but admission may be refused, or a member once admitted may be expelled not only by the judgment of other Communists, but in response to accusations from non-party workers as well. The list of offenses for which expulsion is possible include not merely “alien elements, double dealers, breakers of discipline, moral deganerates, careerists, self-seekers,” but even “passive elements who do not carry out their duties and who have not mastered the program, rules, and most important decisions of the party.” Steady, consistent efforts are made to improve the quality of membership and to weed out through the periodical “cleansing’s” the unfit material. It is the common requirement made of all applicants for membership in the Communist Party who may be engaged in intellectual or office work, that they spend a year or two in “social work” in some large factory, before even making their application for membership, and are judged by the workers’ view of their capacity to lead. A member who ceases to interpret and lead the workers around him, or who has merely become passive in this task, may be disciplined up to the point of rejection from the party. And this may happen not only to individual members, but to whole “city committees” if a situation develops which shows that they have failed to interpret and lead the masses…. Members of the party have their regular jobs by which they earn their living; they may be machine hands or People’s Commissars. But their unpaid job as party members takes precedence over every other work, and of all family relations. At the very least they must expect to give several evenings a week to routine “party work,” in some of the multitudinous, unexciting tasks of organizing masses in industry and government. This may be some dull job like collecting trade union duties, assembling material for a wall newspaper, checking up subscriptions to government loans; it may also include leading groups of youth or teaching classes in politics.

    Strong, Anna Louise. Dictatorship and Democracy in the Soviet Union. New York: International Pamphlets, 1934, p. 11-12

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    [At the 13th Congress of the Party in May 1924 Stalin stated] Preobrazhensky’s profound mistake is his failure to understand that the Party cannot strengthen its ranks without periodical purges of unstable elements. Comrade Lenin taught us that the Party can strengthen itself only if it steadily rids itself of the unstable elements which penetrate, and will continue to penetrate, its ranks. We would be going against Leninism if we were to repudiate Party purges in general. As for the present purge, what is wrong with it? It is said that individual mistakes have been made. Certainly they have. But has there ever been a big undertaking that was free from individual mistakes? Never. Individual mistakes may and will occur; but in the main the purge is correct. The chief thing about the purge is that it makes people of this kind feel that there exists a master, that there is the Party, which can call them to account for all sins committed against it. It seems to me absolutely necessary that this master go through the Party ranks with a broom every now and again.

    Stalin, Joseph. Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 6, p. 239-240

    • Alaskaball [comrade/them]MA
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      2 years ago

      The first of the 1930s purges, in 1933, was officially justified by the need to reduce the number of Party numbers, which had almost tripled by the often unregulated admission of new and poorly motivated members. However, the decree from the Central Committee ordering it gave a list of reprehensible offenses, allowing action to be taken against a good many officials. Alongside elements with “alien” social backgrounds, it was aimed at “double-dealers” who swore oaths of allegiance to the Party line but worked for its failure, those who broke the “iron discipline” by not carrying out their duties or discrediting the plans through calling them impossible, “renegades” who had “closed ranks with bourgeois elements” and did not struggle against embezzlers, “careerists, self-seekers and bureaucratic elements” who neglected the interests of the people and used their power to make profits, and finally “moral deganerates” who brought the party into disrepute. It was not by chance that local officials were accused of trying to sabotage the purge and save their friends. It was the so-called “passive elements,” one category the official instructions did not mention, who were purged in great numbers. Most of these were workers. This practice caught on, and the new Party rules approved by the 17th Congress added “passive elements” to the list of categories to be purged.

      Rittersporn, Gabor. Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications, 1933-1953. New York: Harwood Academic Publishers, c1991, p. 44

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      The general criteria for the purging of party members were corruption, passivity, breaches of party discipline, alcoholism, criminality and anti-Semitism. For bourgeois individuals and kulaks who hid their class origin expulsion was certain. (But not for those who had been accepted into the party and who had admitted their class background.) For the former tsarist officers who hid their past were also inevitably expelled. All those who had been expelled could in their turn appeal to the Central control commission, and then their cases were reviewed at a higher level.

      Sousa, Mario. The Class Struggle During the Thirties in the Soviet Union, 2001

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      The “purges” (in Russian, chistki or “cleansings”) were periodic attempts by the central CPSU leadership, the Central Committee and the Politburo, to find out who was in the Party, and to strengthen it organizationally. they never included imprisonment (much less executions), and only rarely resulted in many expulsions; the “purges” of the 1930s resulted in even fewer expulsions than those of the 1920s had. They were not aimed at rooting out oppositionists (supporters of Trotsky, Bukharin, or any of the other ex-opposition groupings of the 1920s), but rather at getting rid of the dissolute, drunks, careerists, and others who clearly had no place in a disciplined Communist party.

      “Cleaning House in the Bolshevik Party,” Progressive Labor Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Spring 1981), pp. 70-73.

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      [11 August 1936 memorandum from Kotelnikov to Dimitrov, Manuilsky, and Moskvin about the work of exposing “the wreckers in the ECCI,”] During the exchange of party documents, four members and three candidate members of our organization were expelled from the party. The reason for the expulsion of Gurevich, Gurianov, and Neibut was their affiliation with Trotskyism in 1923 and 1927, and [their] concealment of this during the verification of party documents. Nikolaeva [was expelled] for continuing to defend the innocence of her husband who had been arrested and sentenced to 10 years for wrecking. Candidate members: Romanov [was expelled] for being a moral removed [he was married five times] and for violating [the rules of] conspiracy; Arakcheev, for concealing from the party the fact of the arrest and exile of his father, an active SR;….

      Chase, William J., Enemies Within the Gates?, translated by Vadim A. Staklo, New Haven: Yale University Press, c2001, p. 138.