Mass arrests of party, Soviet, economic and military workers caused tremendous harm to our country and to the cause of socialist advancement.
Mass repressions had a negative influence on the moral-political condition of the party, created a situation of uncertainty, contributed to the spreading of unhealthy suspicion, and sowed distrust among Communists. All sorts of slanderers and careerists were active.
Resolutions of the January plenum of the Central Committee, All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), in 1938 had brought some measure of improvement to the party organizations. However, widespread repression also existed in 1938.[1]
Only because our party has at its disposal such great moral-political strength was it possible for it to survive the difficult events in 1937-1938 and to educate new cadres. There is, however, no doubt that our march forward toward socialism and toward the preparation of the country's defense would have been much more successful were it not for the tremendous loss in the cadres suffered as a result of the baseless and false mass repressions in 1937–1938.
We are justly accusing Yezhov for the degenerate practices of 1937. But we have to answer these questions:
Could Yezhov have arrested Kossior, for instance, without the knowledge of Stalin? Was there an exchange of opinions or a Political Bureau decision concerning this?
No, there was not, as there was none regarding other cases of this type.
Could Yezhov have decided such important matters as the fate of such eminent party figures?
No, it would be a display of naiveté to consider this the work of Yezhov alone. It is clear that these matters were decided by Stalin, and that without his orders and his sanction Yezhov could not have done this.
We have examined the cases and have rehabilitated Kossior, Rudzutak, Postyshev, Kosarev and others. For what causes were they arrested and sentenced? The review of evidence shows that there was no reason for this. They, like many others, were arrested without the prosecutor's knowledge.
In such a situation, there is no need for any sanction, for what sort of a sanction could there be when Stalin decided everything? He was the chief
- ↑ Khrushchev gives a completely incorrect appraisal of the decisions adopted by the January 1938 Central Committee plenum. The published version of one resolution did contain criticism of several incorrect expulsions from the Party, but the criticism was curious: The plenum found that Party organizations had been guilty of expelling people on false denunciations "by masked two-facers," but that the NKVD organs led by Yezhov had exposed these criminal attempts and, after rehabilitating the innocent victims, punished the culprits. In other words, this was a resolution which praised the Yezhov purge. Khrushchev had to falsify his account because it was at this plenum that he himself was first elected a candidate member of the Politburo.
