Resolution of the Plenum of the CC of the VKP(b), “Lessons learned from the wrecking, diversionary, and espionage activities of the Japanese-German-Trotskyist agents.” Adopted 3 March 1937.

The Plenum of the CC of the VKP(b) believes that all the facts brought out during the course of the investigation pertaining to the cases of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center and its local supporters show that the NKVD was at least 4 years late in unmasking these vicious enemies of the people.

The traitors to the motherland—Trotskyists and other double-dealers in league with the German and Japanese counterintelligence services—succeeded in deploying their wrecking, sabotage, espionage, and terrorist activities with relative impunity. They succeeded in inflicting damage to the cause of socialist construction in many branches of industry and transport not only because of deficiencies in the work of party and economic organizations but also because of the feeble work in the organs of state security of the NKVD of the USSR.

Despite the repeated warnings of the CC of the VKP(b) concerning the total restructuring [perestroika] of chekist operations toward a more organized and more focused battle with counterrevolution (the directive of the CC of the VKP(b) and of the Council of People's Commissars [SNK] of the USSR of 8 May 1933, the secret letter by the CC of the VKP(b) concerning the lessons to be drawn from the events connected with the villainous murder of Comrade Kirov and from other events), the NKVD of the USSR did not carry out these directives of the party and government and showed itself to be incapable of unmasking the anti-Soviet Trotskyist gang in time.

As the main deficiencies in the work of state security, which have had a decisive influence on delaying the unmasking of the Trotskyist anti-Soviet organization, and which persist to this very day, we may name the following:

A) The NKVD of the USSR did not ascribe a sufficiently high priority to the work of agents. This work constitutes one of the chief levers in combating counterrevolution. Agents were recruited haphazardly and at random. As a rule, crucial districts where a network of agents ought to have been well laid out received scant attention. The network of agents was especially weak among Trotskyists, Zinovievists, and rightists, even in places of their greatest concentration. In addition, there was hardly a network of agents in any of the anti-Soviet organizations abroad, including Trotskyist organizations. The chief operational officials of the NKVD did not as a rule concern themselves with agents. Meetings with agents and the obtaining of information from them were carried out by poorly qualified low-rank officials of the NKVD.

B) In all of its operations, the NKVD of the USSR carried out an incorrect punitive policy, particularly as it pertains to Trotskyists and other enemies of the Soviet system [stroi].

An analysis of the arrests carried out in the years 1935–36 demonstrates that the main thrust of the operations of state security was directed not against organized counterrevolutionary organizations but chiefly against isolated incidents of anti-Soviet agitation, against every sort of malfeasance in office, hooliganism, ordinary crimes [bytovye prestupleniia], and so on.

Reference here is to the reluctance of local and regional NKVD chiefs to investigate or arrest members of party machines and the corresponding tendency to direct the heat toward ordinary and unprotected people.

Around 80% of those arrested and subjected to punitive measures in the years 1935–36 fall into the category of petty crimes of every sort, a category belonging essentially within the jurisdiction of the [regular] police and not that of the organs of state security.

C) Even more intolerable are the prison procedures established by the NKVD of the USSR as it pertains to Trotskyists, Zinovievists, rightists, SRs, and other thoroughly vicious enemies of Soviet power who have been convicted.

All of these enemies of the people were as a rule assigned to so-called political isolation prisons,

izoliator, special prison for political detainees—Trans.

which were placed under the command of the NKVD of the USSR. Conditions in these political isolation prisons were particularly favorable. The prisons resembled forced vacation homes more than prisons.

In these political isolation prisons, inmates were afforded the opportunity of associating closely with each other, of discussing all political matters taking place in the country, of working out plans for anti-Soviet operations to be carried out by their organizations, and of maintaining relationships with people on the outside. The convicts were granted the right to unrestricted use of literature, paper, and writing instruments, the right to receive an unlimited number of letters and telegrams, to acquire their own personal effects [inventar'] and keep them in their cells, and to receive, along with their official rations, packages from the outside in any number and containing any type of goods.

However, the dilatory character with which the anti-Soviet activities of the Trotskyist bandits were unmasked is explained not only by these general deficiencies in the work of state security but also by the concrete criminal activities of individual officials in key positions of the Cheka, and in particular by the criminal activities of Molchanov, former head of the Secret Political Section of the Chief Administration of State Security (GUGB) of the NKVD of the USSR.

This criminal activity manifested itself above all in the fact that the Secret Political Section already had in its possession, as early as the years 1932–33, all the information necessary for fully exposing the monstrous conspiracy by the Trotskyists against Soviet power. In 1932 the Secret Political Section of the Chief Administration of State Security of the NKVD had at its disposal sufficient materials submitted by agents which contained direct references to the existence of a Trotskyist center headed by I. N. Smirnov and sufficient materials concerning Smirnov's connections with Trotsky and his son Sedov and concerning the terrorist intentions of many important Trotskyists.

For details on the Trotskyist secret bloc of 1932, see J. Arch Getty, “Trotsky in Exile: The Founding of the Fourth International,” Soviet Studies, 38(1), January 1986, 24–35.

It was clear from these materials that the Trotskyist center was establishing organizational ties with local groups of Trotskyists and that it was carrying out the directive calling for the formation of a bloc with Zinovievists and rightists.

It was on the basis of these materials submitted by agents that the Trotskyist group headed by Smirnov was arrested at the beginning of 1933. Having at its disposal such materials as those submitted by agents, the investigation was afforded the full opportunity of thoroughly exposing all of the organizational ties and all of the criminal terrorist activities of the Trotskyists and Zinovievists. Nonetheless, the investigation was carried out with such criminal negligence that the principal materials of the case, supplied by agents, were not utilized. The head of the Trotskyist center, I. N. Smirnov, was interrogated only concerning his attitude toward collectivization; Safonova, a very active member of the Trotskyist center, was asked only whether she had read Trotsky's My Life; as for Ter-Vaganian, the [interrogators] were only interested in his disagreements with the party line; Pereverzev, a terrorist and an emissary of Trotsky, was never interrogated at all. As a result of conducting the investigation in such a criminal way, the accused were able to get away with mild punishment and were sent to the political isolation prisons and into exile [ssylka], where they were granted the widest opportunities for the continuation of their anti-Soviet criminal activities.

Totally without parallel is the case of a secret agent of the NKVD board for the Moscow region by the name of Z-n.

Thus abbreviated in the original—Trans.

Beginning in November 1933, agent Z-n gave warning in a number of his reports of anti-Soviet operations deployed by Trotskyists, of the existence of a leading Trotskyist center, and of the participation of Dreitser, Muralov, Piatakov, Radek, and others in the active work of the center. The materials submitted by agent Z-n speak openly of the terroristic views of Trotskyists and point to the close ties between Trotskyists [here] and abroad and to the ties between imprisoned Trotskyists and the world outside. On the basis of materials submitted by Z-n, Khrustalev and Zilberman, active Trotskyists-terrorists, were arrested. Nevertheless, Molchanov, the former head of the Secret Political Section, redirected the investigation in such a way that as a result these active Trotskyists, Khrustalev and Zilberman, were released, while agent Z-n was exiled [soslan] for 5 years on a charge of provocation. Meanwhile, in the person of Khrustalev we saw released one of the most ferocious enemies of Soviet power, the owner of an apartment that served as a secret rendezvous for the Moscow Trotskyist terrorist center, and from which Comrade Stalin's itineraries were watched and observed….

Moreover, Molchanov, being personally connected with the Trotskyist Furer, systematically told him about the secret facts available in the Secret Political Section concerning the anti-Soviet activities of the Trotskyists. As it has now been established by the investigation, Furer, acting on the direct instructions of Livshits, head of the entire Trotskyist sabotage-espionage terrorist organization in the field of transport, inquired about it from Molchanov.

These are examples of criminal activities of certain officials of the NKVD and in particular of Molchanov, former head of the Secret Political Section of the Chief Administration of State Security.

These are the main reasons why the NKVD failed to unmask in time the monstrous anti-Soviet conspiracy by Trotskyist agents of the German-Japanese counterintelligence services….

The Plenum of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) expresses its firm conviction that all chekists will thoroughly learn the lessons of mistakes connected with the unmasking of the anti-Soviet, Zinovievist, and Trotskyist conspiracy, that, as true Bolsheviks, they will correct their mistakes as soon as possible and justify in their deeds their lofty title as the leading armed detachment of the party of Lenin and Stalin.