[A]

[From N. I. Yezhov's report entitled “On Party Members Expelled from the Party and Their Appeals” at the Plenum of the CC of the VKP(b) of 3 June 1936, from the final printed stenographic report for broad party leadership circulation]

RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 572, ll. 67–73.

Consequently, the fact that during the verification of party documents we have expelled many embittered enemies from the party places a very heavy responsibility on party organizations as it pertains to their attitude in the future toward the expellees. We ought not to think that the enemy, who yesterday was still in the party, will rest content with being expelled from the party and quietly wait for “better times.”

We cannot, however, place the great mass of the expellees in the category of our enemies. They have never had and will never have anything in common with the enemies of our party. For the most part, these are people who have consciously concealed their past from the party or else have committed some other minor offenses

prostupki: i.e., “misdemeanors”—Trans.

that have dishonored them as party members and have placed them outside the ranks of the VKP(b). In this category of the expellees we can also include persons who have never really been members of the party. These are people who were accepted into the party on a wholesale basis during the many mass group admissions into the VKP(b) carried out by party organizations. Often they were admitted in absentia, and often they did not consider themselves party members, did not pay their membership dues, and did not carry on any party work. Finally, we may place in this category a significant number of party members who had earlier been expelled from the VKP(b), who had never turned in their party cards, and who were still registered as members on the books of party organizations.

The majority of expellees belonging to these categories cannot and shall not be reinstated into the ranks of the VKP(b). However, a part of them shall be reinstated after their appeals have been reviewed, or they may be allowed to return to the ranks of our party after amending their conduct. Meanwhile, party organizations deal indiscriminately, mechanically, with all of the expellees from this category without looking into the reasons why they were expelled from the VKP(b).

In view of all this, however, what is especially intolerable is that many of the expellees belonging to this category of former party members are automatically dismissed from their jobs, deprived of their apartments, and expelled from universities and institutes. This practice is sometimes extended to members of their families. Such facts were especially widespread during the first period of the verification. You realize that such an incorrect attitude to the expellees is dictated not by reasons of vigilance but by a striving by certain party officials to protect themselves against any eventuality. Such vigilance has nothing to do with Bolshevik vigilance and will lead to no good.

Voices: That's right!

Yezhov: Such vigilance arises from cowardice and fear of responsibility.

Voices: That's right!

Yezhov: I would like to especially single out and dwell on the matter of the so-called passive members of the party.

Out of the total number of Communists who had participated in the exchange of party documents, approximately 3.5% were not issued their party cards, and the question of their expulsion from the party has been raised. From these 3.5%, about a half fall into the category of so-called passive membership or, as they are called in many places, “ballast.”

Stalin: What percent?

Yezhov: 3.5% have not been issued party cards—out of this group half fall into the passive category.

Not an insignificant percent, as you can see. Moreover, in certain specific organizations, such as the party organizations of Ivanovo, Kursk, Saratov, the Northern Caucasus, Stalingrad, Dnepropetrovsk, and Cheliabinsk, this percentage is even somewhat higher.

Such a percentage of party members and candidate members belonging to the passive category is too high and attests to the fact that somewhere the matter of determining who belongs to the category of passive members has been handled incorrectly and formally….

[B]

[From Stalin's comments on N. I. Yezhov's report at the Plenum of the CC of the VKP(b) of 3 June 1936, from the final printed stenographic report for broad party leadership circulation]

RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 572, ll. 73–75.

Stalin: I would like to say a few things concerning certain points which in my opinion are especially important if we are to put the affairs of the party in good order and direct the regulating of party membership properly.

First of all, let me say something concerning the matter of appeals. Naturally, appeals must be handled in timely fashion, without dragging them out. They must not be put on the shelf. This goes without saying. But let me raise a question: Is it not possible for us to reinstate some or many of the appellants as candidate members? We do not allow, as you know, for a transitional category. Either you are a member of the party or you are not. Either you are nothing in the eyes of the party or you are a party member with full rights. But there is a middle ground.

Party rules do not provide direct instructions as to whether a party member who has been expelled may be brought back into the party at least as a candidate member. Such instructions are not mentioned in the party rules, but there are no prohibitions against it, either. Insofar as these party expellees cannot, as things stand, be reinstated as full members, why couldn't we reinstate some of the appellants into the party as candidate members? Why can't we do it?!

Voices: We can! We can!

Stalin: There are no prohibitions in the party rules on this account, though there are no direct instructions concerning this, either.

Voices: It is now being done.

Stalin: No, I don't think that it is being done. To this day, a certain, if I may say so, wholesale attitude toward party members has held sway among party leaders. They expel you. You appeal. If they can reinstate you as a full member of the party, fine. If they can't, then you remain outside the party. All ties with the party are severed. We have party sympathizers, party candidate members, and party members, and they are connected with each other. If party members are expelled and cannot be reinstated as full party members, then they are not reinstated as sympathizers or candidate party members. Is this practice right?

In my opinion, such a practice is not right.

For this reason, it would be a good idea if the Orgburo of the CC clarified this as soon as possible, if it explained that it doesn't follow from the party rules, from the traditions of the Bolshevik Party, that a party member who has been expelled could not be reinstated as a candidate member or a sympathizer. This, after all, will allow a man to retain certain spiritual and organizational ties with the party. This opens up real prospects for him.

Party organizations must learn well the following principle: they must establish a gradation, whereby they can determine whom to reinstate as party members—if the facts and materials available justify it—whom to reinstate as candidate members, and whom perhaps to reinstate as sympathizers, so as to give such comrades a real prospect, so as to help them rise and later become full party members.

Chairman: There is a motion on the floor, on the basis of Comrade Yezhov's report and Comrade Stalin's proposals, to instruct the Orgburo of the CC to work out draft proposals regarding the procedures for expulsion and admission to the party and regarding the review of appeals. Any objections?

Shubrikov: Comrade Stalin, 90% of all appeals have already been reviewed. Ought we then to review all appeals all over again? According to instructions issued by the CC, this work should have been completed by 20 May.

Stalin: Perhaps it was a mistake, then, to have set a deadline?

Yezhov: This is the case in your region. The decisions of the regional committee have not yet been reviewed by the Commission of Appeals of the Party Control Commission (KPK), which can rectify matters here and there.

Chairman (Molotov): There is another motion on the floor to review the matter of Comrade Yenukidze. His request to be reinstated as a party member had already been received by the CC about five months ago. At the time, as we all understand, it was too early to place this question before you.

Stalin: It would've turned out then that he had been expelled from the party at one plenum and reinstated at the next one.

Chairman: A year has passed since Comrade Yenukidze's expulsion from the party. There is a motion on the floor to submit to the Plenum of the CC the following resolution: “The plenum shall lift the ban concerning Comrade Yenukidze's [re-]admission into the party and shall leave it to the local organizations to decide this matter. Comrade Yenukidze may then submit such request for reinstatement to them.”

Voroshilov: No one will take the risk of admitting him.

A voice: We will admit him at the plenum.

Chairman: It would be too solemn an occasion for a case like this.

Stalin: It would be too solemn to admit him at the plenum. There are no grounds for doing so. In the second place, we did not contact the local organization, the Kharkov organization, where he is employed, to find out its opinion. We have a report from another organization, the Kislovodsk organization, a negative report. After his work there, he was transferred to Kharkov. We don't know how he has conducted himself there, how his work has turned out. And if the plenum lifts the ban and tells the local organization where he works that it should resolve this matter by itself, that is, whether to admit him or not, that would be quite sufficient. If he has earned the right, he will be accepted into the party.

Chairman: If he is not admitted by the local organization, then he can appeal to the CC. The resolution by the Plenum of the CC proposed here predetermines the case of Comrade Yenukidze in the affirmative with a probability of 90%.

I call for a vote: Who is for the motion that I have just read? Please raise your hands. Who is opposed? The motion is adopted.