fallen behind at least four years in the attempt to unmask these most inexorable enemies of the people.[1]
The mass repressions at this time were made under the slogan of a fight against the Trotskyites. Did the Trotskyites at this time actually constitute such a danger to our party and to the Soviet state? We should recall that in 1927, on the eve of the 15th Party Congress, only some 4,000 votes were cast for the Trotskyite-Zinovievite opposition while there were 724,000 for the party line. During the 10 years which passed between the 15th Party Congress and the February-March Central Committee plenum, Trotskyism was completely disarmed; many former Trotskyites had changed their former views and worked in the various sectors building socialism. It is clear that in the situation of socialist victory there was no basis for mass terror in the country.
Stalin's report at the February-March Central Committee plenum in 1937, "Deficiencies of party work and methods for the liquidation of the Trotskyites and of other two-facers," contained an attempt at theoretical justification of the mass terror policy under the pretext that as we march forward toward socialism class war must allegedly sharpen. Stalin asserted that both history and Lenin taught him this.
Actually Lenin taught that the application of revolutionary violence is necessitated by the resistance of the exploiting classes, and this referred to the era when the exploiting classes existed and were powerful. As soon as the nation's political situation had improved, when in January 1920 the Red Army took Rostov and thus won a most important victory over [White commander Anton] Denikin, Lenin instructed [Cheka chief Felix] Dzerzhinsky to stop
- ↑ The so-called "February-March" Central Committee plenum of 1937 was the longest of the entire Stalin era. Officially, it lasted from February 23 to March 5, but actually the Politburo and other conferences which preceded it had begun by about February 10. The official announcement mentioned only one resolution adopted by the plenum—one dealing with Zhdanov's report on the tasks of Party organizations in connection with elections under the new Constitution. In reality, however, the work of the plenum and the pre-plenum sessions centered upon Yezhov's report on the first results of his efforts to familiarize himself with the work of the NKVD, and upon Stalin's report, "Deficiencies in Party work and methods for the liquidation of the Trotskyites and of other two-facers." Directly related to this report by Yezhov and the terrorist measures it envisaged is the death of Ordzhonikidze (February 18), who either was so harassed by Stalin and Yezhov that he committed suicide or was poisoned on Stalin's orders. The death of Ordzhonikidze, who was officially pronounced Stalin's closest friend, was not enough for the dictator: A plan to wipe out all those who failed to share liis ideas was drawn up at the plenum despite the opposition of many of the participants. Nikolai Bukharin and Alexei Rykov, over whom a particularly fierce debate raged, were expelled from the Party and turned over to the NKYD. Their trial was decided in advance, together with mass repressions against everyone whom Yezhov and his agents decided to label "masked enemies of the people."
