The reasons for which one could be expelled in a purge varied throughout the ’20s, but there were some constant themes. One category consistently marked for expulsion was that of “class-alien,” “counter-revolutionary,” or “hostile” elements. This group of offenders included former officers (but not always soldiers) of the White Armies, “regenerate bourgeois elements,” kulaks, and other elements of the pre-revolutionary power structure. There was no official stricture against persons of bourgeois or kulak origin entering the party, as long as such origins were not kept secret. Hiding one’s origins, however, was always grounds for expulsion.
Another category for expulsion was that encompassing official misconduct or corruption. This might be phrased “acts unworthy of a party member,” “violations of party discipline,” or “self-seeking careerism” in cases of continued violations. This “abuse of position” category often included theft, embezzlement, and the like. A third group of offenses providing grounds for expulsion centered on nonparticipation or “passivity.” This group always accounted for a large percentage of those expelled in a purge, as did a fourth group–the morally corrupt. Offenses such as drunkenness, sexual crimes, and financial corruption were taken as signs of “personal corruption.”
Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 41
The largest of these operations was the 1921 purge following the Civil War, which expelled one in four party members. At no time in the 20s did an all-union purge embrace even one-half that rate of expulsion.
Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 45
If 1929 is typical of a 1920s-era purge in its causes and criteria for expulsion, then membership operations seem to have been implemented to rid the party of corrupt, inactive, undisciplined, class-alien, or criminal persons. The idea was to “clean” the party of those who were not full-time, dedicated, honest party members according to Lenin’s strict code. It was not done, at least explicitly, to rid the party of all ideological dissenters or suspected oppositionists….
Nationally, 1,530,000 members went through the 1929 purge. Of these, 170,000 (or 11 percent) were expelled. Subsequently, however, 37,000 of these expellees (22 percent of them) were reinstated into the party on appeal. In Smolensk, the figure was 43 percent restored to membership and in Voronezh 33 percent. These readmissions eventually reduced the impact of the 1929 purge from 11 to 8% nationally and comprised the greatest number of reversals for a purge to date. Subsequent clarifications show that the vast majority of those reinstated to membership had been expelled for “passivity” (nonparticipation) and that most of these were rank-and-file members of working-class origin.
Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 47
Accordingly, the party was to purge itself in 1933 of the following categories:
Class-alien, hostile elements who try to deceitfully demoralize the party
Double dealers, who deceitfully undermine party policy
Violators of discipline who fail to carry out party decisions and who are pessimistic about the “the impractibility” of party measures
Deganerates who merged with and do not struggle against kulaks, loafers, thieves, etc..
Careerists and self-seekers who are isolated from the masses and disregard the needs of people
Moral deganerates whose unseemly behavior discredit the party
These categories were slightly more ideological than those for the 1929 purge. There was more emphasis on “double dealers,” “underminers,” and “violators of discipline” who refused to “struggle against the kulak,” but the main focus of the 1933 chistka was on weeding out undesirables who had flooded the party since 1929 and not on persecuting members of the opposition, many of whose leaders remained in the party.
Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 49
The chistka of 1933 was to take place in a “comradely atmosphere,” was to tolerate no “petty and captious digging into the personal lives of people,” and was not to be used to settle personal accounts.
Local purge officials were warned not to expel large numbers of rank-and-file members on such flimsy pretexts as “passivity” or simple political illiteracy. The 1933 announcement enjoined those conducting the purge to take into account the “overall development” of the member–not to try to trick him or her with technical questions on the intricacies of the party program and not to expel loyal workers and collective farmers just because they had not had time to improve their level of ideological education. Moreover, a member found to lack sufficient political knowledge (or discipline) was to be reduced from a member to a candidate, or from a candidate member to a sympathizer, reflecting an attempt to prevent some of the abuses encountered in 1929 relating to unjustified expulsions.
Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 50
As head of the Control Commission, Yezhov now became responsible for overseeing the purges, the operations within the party to remove anyone unworthy of membership. Exactly what that phrase [purges] meant is hotly debated in the West; as noted, one point of view argues that Stalin aimed to crank up political tension and root out political opponents in 1935-36; another maintains that the purges were not largely political operations but, rather, mundane housecleaning, through which party members who had demonstrated incompetence or lack of interest in socialist affairs were removed.
Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1934-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1996, p. 28
These documents suggest that the situation was ripe for a new party purge, and this is precisely what was announced in January 1933. Member categories subject to expulsion were specified: class-alien elements and enemies, “two-faced ones”–that is, those who say they are for but are actually against the basic party line–those who openly and covertly violate strict party discipline, those who jabber about the lack of realism in prescribed party plans, careerists, self-seekers, morally depraved members, and politically ignorant members unfamiliar with party rules, regulations, and programs. In the course of the purge, 18 percent of the party’s members were expelled, and a further 15 percent left the party out of fear.
Siegelbaum and Sokolov. Stalinism As a Way of Life. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, c2000, p. 125
On the party purge–April 28, 1933
On the basis of this Comintern directive our party conducted a party re-registration in 1920, a party purge in 1921, a purge of non-production cells in 1924, a verification of village cells in 1925, and a purge in 1929-30. As is known, these purges and re-registrations reinforced the ranks of our party, improved its fighting efficiency, and intensified the feeling of responsibility of each party member for the work of the party.
The function of the party purge is to elevate the ideological level of the party members, to strengthen the party politically and organizationally, and further to intensify the confidence in the party of the millions of non-party masses.
During a purge this task is accomplished: (a) by the open and honest self-criticism of party members and members of party organizations, (b) by verifying the work of each party cell to ascertain how it has executed decisions and instructions of the party, (c) by involving the toiling non-party masses in the purge, and (d) by ridding the party of those persons who have not justified the lofty name of party member.
McNeal, Robert. Resolutions and Decisions of the CPSU–The Stalin Years: 1929-1953. Vol. 3. Toronto, Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1974, p. 125
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
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
…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
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
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
[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
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 deganerate” 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
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.
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.
[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 deganerate [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.
The Party must Purge and Struggle, Says Lenin
Under the title What Is to Be Done? Lenin included a letter from Lassalle of June 24,1852: “party struggles give a party strength and life. The best proof of the weakness of a party is its diffusness and its blurring of clear-cut differences…. A party becomes stronger by purging itself.”
Schuman, Frederick L. Soviet Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946, p. 37
After the victory of the revolution, when the Communist party had become the ruling party, the party leadership and Lenin had to acknowledge that some unwelcome elements had penetrated into the party and state apparatus. They were people who wanted to make a career via a membership in the party. At the eighth party conference in December of 1919 Lenin brought this problem up. According to Lenin “It is natural, on the one hand, that all the worst elements should cling to the ruling party merely because it is the ruling party.” For that reason it was important to evaluate the contribution of the party members. On the proposal of Lenin, the party carried out a re-registration of all party members. Every member had to answer for his actions in front of the member collective; those who were considered unreliable were excluded. That was the first purification of the party apparatus. This method, to strengthen the party by purging the opportunistic elements, was to characterise the Communist party for many years to come.
Sousa, Mario. The Class Struggle during the Thirties in the Soviet Union, 2001.
The reasons for which one could be expelled in a purge varied throughout the ’20s, but there were some constant themes. One category consistently marked for expulsion was that of “class-alien,” “counter-revolutionary,” or “hostile” elements. This group of offenders included former officers (but not always soldiers) of the White Armies, “regenerate bourgeois elements,” kulaks, and other elements of the pre-revolutionary power structure. There was no official stricture against persons of bourgeois or kulak origin entering the party, as long as such origins were not kept secret. Hiding one’s origins, however, was always grounds for expulsion. Another category for expulsion was that encompassing official misconduct or corruption. This might be phrased “acts unworthy of a party member,” “violations of party discipline,” or “self-seeking careerism” in cases of continued violations. This “abuse of position” category often included theft, embezzlement, and the like. A third group of offenses providing grounds for expulsion centered on nonparticipation or “passivity.” This group always accounted for a large percentage of those expelled in a purge, as did a fourth group–the morally corrupt. Offenses such as drunkenness, sexual crimes, and financial corruption were taken as signs of “personal corruption.”
Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 41
The largest of these operations was the 1921 purge following the Civil War, which expelled one in four party members. At no time in the 20s did an all-union purge embrace even one-half that rate of expulsion.
Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 45
If 1929 is typical of a 1920s-era purge in its causes and criteria for expulsion, then membership operations seem to have been implemented to rid the party of corrupt, inactive, undisciplined, class-alien, or criminal persons. The idea was to “clean” the party of those who were not full-time, dedicated, honest party members according to Lenin’s strict code. It was not done, at least explicitly, to rid the party of all ideological dissenters or suspected oppositionists…. Nationally, 1,530,000 members went through the 1929 purge. Of these, 170,000 (or 11 percent) were expelled. Subsequently, however, 37,000 of these expellees (22 percent of them) were reinstated into the party on appeal. In Smolensk, the figure was 43 percent restored to membership and in Voronezh 33 percent. These readmissions eventually reduced the impact of the 1929 purge from 11 to 8% nationally and comprised the greatest number of reversals for a purge to date. Subsequent clarifications show that the vast majority of those reinstated to membership had been expelled for “passivity” (nonparticipation) and that most of these were rank-and-file members of working-class origin.
Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 47
Accordingly, the party was to purge itself in 1933 of the following categories:
These categories were slightly more ideological than those for the 1929 purge. There was more emphasis on “double dealers,” “underminers,” and “violators of discipline” who refused to “struggle against the kulak,” but the main focus of the 1933 chistka was on weeding out undesirables who had flooded the party since 1929 and not on persecuting members of the opposition, many of whose leaders remained in the party.
Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 49
The chistka of 1933 was to take place in a “comradely atmosphere,” was to tolerate no “petty and captious digging into the personal lives of people,” and was not to be used to settle personal accounts. Local purge officials were warned not to expel large numbers of rank-and-file members on such flimsy pretexts as “passivity” or simple political illiteracy. The 1933 announcement enjoined those conducting the purge to take into account the “overall development” of the member–not to try to trick him or her with technical questions on the intricacies of the party program and not to expel loyal workers and collective farmers just because they had not had time to improve their level of ideological education. Moreover, a member found to lack sufficient political knowledge (or discipline) was to be reduced from a member to a candidate, or from a candidate member to a sympathizer, reflecting an attempt to prevent some of the abuses encountered in 1929 relating to unjustified expulsions.
Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 50
As head of the Control Commission, Yezhov now became responsible for overseeing the purges, the operations within the party to remove anyone unworthy of membership. Exactly what that phrase [purges] meant is hotly debated in the West; as noted, one point of view argues that Stalin aimed to crank up political tension and root out political opponents in 1935-36; another maintains that the purges were not largely political operations but, rather, mundane housecleaning, through which party members who had demonstrated incompetence or lack of interest in socialist affairs were removed.
Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1934-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1996, p. 28
These documents suggest that the situation was ripe for a new party purge, and this is precisely what was announced in January 1933. Member categories subject to expulsion were specified: class-alien elements and enemies, “two-faced ones”–that is, those who say they are for but are actually against the basic party line–those who openly and covertly violate strict party discipline, those who jabber about the lack of realism in prescribed party plans, careerists, self-seekers, morally depraved members, and politically ignorant members unfamiliar with party rules, regulations, and programs. In the course of the purge, 18 percent of the party’s members were expelled, and a further 15 percent left the party out of fear.
Siegelbaum and Sokolov. Stalinism As a Way of Life. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, c2000, p. 125
On the party purge–April 28, 1933 On the basis of this Comintern directive our party conducted a party re-registration in 1920, a party purge in 1921, a purge of non-production cells in 1924, a verification of village cells in 1925, and a purge in 1929-30. As is known, these purges and re-registrations reinforced the ranks of our party, improved its fighting efficiency, and intensified the feeling of responsibility of each party member for the work of the party. The function of the party purge is to elevate the ideological level of the party members, to strengthen the party politically and organizationally, and further to intensify the confidence in the party of the millions of non-party masses. During a purge this task is accomplished: (a) by the open and honest self-criticism of party members and members of party organizations, (b) by verifying the work of each party cell to ascertain how it has executed decisions and instructions of the party, (c) by involving the toiling non-party masses in the purge, and (d) by ridding the party of those persons who have not justified the lofty name of party member.
McNeal, Robert. Resolutions and Decisions of the CPSU–The Stalin Years: 1929-1953. Vol. 3. Toronto, Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1974, p. 125
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
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
…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
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
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
[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
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 deganerate” 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
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.
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.
[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 deganerate [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.
The Party must Purge and Struggle, Says Lenin
Under the title What Is to Be Done? Lenin included a letter from Lassalle of June 24,1852: “party struggles give a party strength and life. The best proof of the weakness of a party is its diffusness and its blurring of clear-cut differences…. A party becomes stronger by purging itself.”
Schuman, Frederick L. Soviet Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946, p. 37
After the victory of the revolution, when the Communist party had become the ruling party, the party leadership and Lenin had to acknowledge that some unwelcome elements had penetrated into the party and state apparatus. They were people who wanted to make a career via a membership in the party. At the eighth party conference in December of 1919 Lenin brought this problem up. According to Lenin “It is natural, on the one hand, that all the worst elements should cling to the ruling party merely because it is the ruling party.” For that reason it was important to evaluate the contribution of the party members. On the proposal of Lenin, the party carried out a re-registration of all party members. Every member had to answer for his actions in front of the member collective; those who were considered unreliable were excluded. That was the first purification of the party apparatus. This method, to strengthen the party by purging the opportunistic elements, was to characterise the Communist party for many years to come.
Sousa, Mario. The Class Struggle during the Thirties in the Soviet Union, 2001.
@GarbageShoot sorry for info-dumping
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