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 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
deleted by creator