On 25 and 26 August, a meeting was held of the Party group of the Union of Soviet Writers Board which was devoted to a discussion of the sentence against the Trotskyite-Zinovievite terrorists and the article in the press signaling the lack of self-criticism in the Union of Soviet Writers.

These gatherings have great significance for the life of the Writers Union. The circumstance that the bandit Pikel was a member of the Union and that a number of double-dealers and traitors have been discovered in the Union (Serebriakov, Selivanovsky, Grudskaia, Troshchenko, Tarasov-Rodionov, et al.) has forced the Party group to take a close look at both its own work and its own ranks. The self-criticism in the Union was headed up by the board's secretary, Com. Stavsky. In the course of the discussion, a number of important facts were uncovered. In 1928, the writer Ivan Kataev (Party member since 1919) traveled to Lipetsk to see the exiled Trotskyite Voronsky and to pick up directives on the work of the literary group Crossing [Pereval].

Crossing was a literary group that formed in 1924 under the sponsorship of the literary journal Krasnaia nov', whose editor, A. Voronsky, was dismissed in 1927 as a Trotskyite. Crossing's literary position was relatively centrist; it called for greater literary “mastery” such as one found in the classics of Russian and Western literature, and decried what they saw as a lowering of standards in proletarian literature.

Kataev maintained active ties with condemned Trotskyites, rendering them financial assistance. He rendered financial aid to condemned Trotskyites Mirov and Maleev as well. The latter wrote a short book praising the executed Smirnov, who was then the director of a combine factory. The book never saw the light of day as a result of Glavlit's intervention. Kataev has consistently patronized the writer Zarudin, a Trotskyite expelled from the Party. In 1932 Iv. Kataev announced the liquidation of the literary group Crossing. In fact, the group continued to exist with Voronsky's active participation. The group has tried to obtain a publishing organ under the name “The Thirties,” right up until recently, when Ivan Kataev and Pilnyak tried persistently to obtain permission to publish a miscellany under this title. By a decision of the Party group, it was resolved to expel Ivan Kataev from the Party. At a session of the Party group, the work of magazines and the Literary Gazette were subjected to harsh criticism….

Communists' work with the unaffiliated was subjected to harsh criticism. Facts were cited: Inber is now living at the dacha of Party member Bespalov. Inber is a relative of Trotsky, his cousin's daughter. Inber gave a bad speech at a meeting of writers, and in the hallways she said she had been forced to speak. While living in the same house with her, Bespalov did nothing to prepare her speech.

The Party organization work of the Writers Union's board was subjected to harsh criticism. […]

V. Inber admitted that her speech at the meeting had been bad and said that she was Trotsky's relative and so ought to have come out especially decisively demanding the execution of the counterrevolutionary assassins.

The other writers expressed their unanimous approval of the Supreme Court's sentence.

It should be noted, however, how bad Olesha's speech was; he defended Pasternak, who in fact did not sign the demand for the execution of the counterrevolutionary terrorists, saying that Pasternak was a perfectly Soviet man but he could not sign a death sentence with his own hand. Olesha was one of those writers who had been welded together by the Trotskyite terrorist Shmidt and who had prepared the assassination attempt against Com. Voroshilov (Babel, Malyshkin, Valentin Kataev, Nikulin, and Olesha have drunk with Shmidt). Olesha drew no conclusions for himself from this fact. He tried to vindicate himself by saying that he had known nothing, that he viewed Shmidt only as a man with a heroic military past, although he himself indicated that he was sometimes amazed by the great ambition in Shmidt. […]

The writer Fedin, who was on the Union presidium, did not speak. Most of the speakers indicated that lately an improvement had been noted in the work of the Union of Soviet Writers.