Sheboldaev:… This has already been said by others, but I want to repeat it: We have to complete our thoroughgoing verification of all persons who are in any way whatsoever under suspicion by the party committee, by the basic party organization. Each and every suspicious person must be verified again and again. It was also correctly stated here that those who had recommended swindlers and enemies, those who protected and supported swindlers, also had to be verified. In one of the buro sessions, we had ordered the NKVD to verify all those who had recommended those who had been expelled from the party. Let's hope that only a few swindlers will turn up among them, but each of them must be verified… .

The fact that we had to a significant extent violated [party] rules, had removed, one beam at a time, the fence which had protected our party from every kind of alien element, the fact that we had impaired our organizational defense—this must be rectified immediately and in its entirety. We are dealing here with Bolshevik-Leninist-Stalinist principles pertaining to the building of our party, principles which our party had forged during its years of struggle for Bolshevism. The rules must become the foundation, the immutable law of our work pertaining to admission into the party.