Closed Letter of the CC of the VKP(b) on Errors in the Consideration of Appeals by Those Expelled from the Party During the Verification and Exchange of Party Documents, June 24, 1936

To all obkoms, kraikoms, CCs of national communist parties and plenipotentiaries of the Commission of Party Control at the CC of the VKP(b) in territories, oblasts, and republics.

In the course of the verification and exchange of Party documents, all Party organizations carried out enormous work in purging the Party of alien and hostile individuals who had penetrated the ranks of the VKP(b) by deceitful means.

However, in the process of this great work to strengthen the ranks of our Party, local Party organizations committed not a few errors.

Many district Party organizations treated the question of expulsion from the Party just as thoughtlessly and without attention to each individual communist as they had once treated the admission of new members of the VKP(b), when group admissions were widely practiced without careful, individual selection of each person entering the Party.

As a result of such wholesale, mass treatment of communists, many Party organizations wrongfully expelled from the VKP(b) communists devoted to the interests of the Party, who had in no way compromised the title of Party member, but who were weakly prepared politically and insufficiently active, and not infrequently only because they were little known to the raikom, owing to its unsatisfactory work with individual communists.

Many Party workers who conducted the verification and exchange of Party documents did not understand that neither the Party Charter nor the traditions of Bolshevism require severing ideological and organizational ties with those members and candidates of the Party who, due to poor work with them, are still insufficiently active and politically prepared.

It was precisely because of this lack of understanding that in many organizations, during the verification and exchange of Party documents, numerous instances occurred of wrongful expulsions from the Party of communists on grounds of passivity, the practice of compiling lists of passive communists became widespread, special questionnaires for the passive were introduced, and so forth.

The obkoms, kraikoms, and CCs of national communist parties, instead of correcting the aforementioned errors committed by the raikoms, in many cases adopted a formal-bureaucratic approach to reviewing appeals submitted by those expelled from the Party during the verification and exchange of Party documents, thereby violating the CC VKP(b)'s instructions of January 14, 1936 on the procedure for reviewing appeals.

The CC VKP(b) has facts at its disposal testifying to the cavalier and, in a number of cases, callously bureaucratic attitude of Party organs toward the consideration of appeals from those expelled from the Party. Contrary to CC instructions, the appeals of the expelled are being reviewed extremely slowly. Many expelled individuals spend months trying to get their appeals heard. A large number of appeals were reviewed in absentia, without any verification of the appellants' claims, without ensuring that appellants had the opportunity to provide detailed explanations regarding the reasons for their expulsion from the Party.

In a number of district Party organizations, completely intolerable arbitrary treatment of those expelled from the Party was permitted. Those expelled from the Party for concealing social origin or for passivity, rather than for hostile activity against the Party and Soviet power, were automatically dismissed from their jobs, deprived of their apartments, and so on.

Thus, the Party leaders of these Party organizations, having failed to properly assimilate the Party's directives on Bolshevik vigilance, by their formal-bureaucratic attitude toward reviewing the appeals of those expelled during the verification of Party documents, played into the hands of the Party's enemies.

Such leaders, having wrongfully expelled many VKP(b) members during the verification of Party documents and having failed at that time to carry through to the end the exposure of genuine enemies of the Party — double-dealers, counter-revolutionary Trotskyites and Zinovievites (Gorky Territory, Moscow Oblast) — rested content with this, and now, during the review of appeals, resort to ostentatious false vigilance, wholesale refusal to reinstate in the ranks of the VKP(b) those wrongfully expelled from the Party during the verification and exchange of Party documents.

Attaching great importance to the matter of properly reviewing the appeals of Party members and candidates expelled from the VKP(b) during the verification and exchange of Party documents, the CC of the VKP(b) resolves:

1) To extend the deadline for completing the review of appeals to September 15, 1936, in order to ensure attentive consideration by obkoms, kraikoms, CCs of national communist parties, and plenipotentiaries of the Commission of Party Control at the CC of the VKP(b) of appeals from those expelled from the Party during the verification and exchange of Party documents.

2) Secretaries of obkoms, kraikoms, and CCs of national communist parties, and plenipotentiaries of the Commission of Party Control, must decisively correct the excesses committed during the verification and exchange of Party documents with respect to those expelled from the Party on grounds of passivity, and in the future must not allow Party organizations to classify as passive all Party members whom they do not know or who are not strong in theory.

The CC of the VKP(b) reminds all Party organizations that the decision of the December 1935 Plenum of the CC VKP(b) on the passive had in view only such Party members who do not justify the high title of communist, who accidentally ended up in the ranks of the VKP(b) during mass wholesale group recruitments to the Party, who are burdened by their membership in the VKP(b), often do not pay membership dues, and refuse to carry out any Party duties whatsoever assigned to them by Party committees.

While implementing the directives of the CC VKP(b) on maximally increasing Bolshevik vigilance, not resting for one minute on the successes achieved, Party organizations are obligated during the exchange of Party documents to fully expose and paralyze the activities of counter-revolutionary double-dealing elements from among Trotskyites, Zinovievites, and all other White Guard remnants, while at the same time approaching with Bolshevik attention and sensitivity all communists devoted to the interests of the Party who have in no way compromised the title of Party member by their membership in the VKP(b), but are insufficiently active owing to their weak political preparation or have committed accidental and insignificant offenses.

3) In order to ensure the possibility of preserving organizational and ideological ties with the Party for those communists who were expelled from the VKP(b) not for hostile activity against the Party but for passivity, insufficient political preparation, or for accidental offenses that can be corrected by their subsequent activity for the benefit of the Party — to permit obkoms, kraikoms, and CCs of national communist parties, instead of expulsion from the Party, to transfer such communists from members to candidate status, and from candidates to the status of sympathizers.

To permit raikoms and gorkoms during the exchange of Party documents, as well as when reviewing frivolous and accidental offenses by members and candidates of the Party, instead of expulsion from the Party, to transfer them from Party members to candidates, and from candidates to sympathizers, with the provision, however, that such decisions of raikoms and gorkoms be confirmed by obkoms, kraikoms, and CCs of national communist parties.

4) To obligate Party organizations, in all cases where it proves necessary in connection with expulsion from the VKP(b) to relieve a worker of his position, to effect such relief only after providing him with other work corresponding to his qualifications and training.

To obligate obkoms, kraikoms, and CCs of national communist parties, no later than one month after receiving this letter, to correct the errors committed in wrongfully dismissing from work those expelled from the VKP(b).

5) In order to prevent in the future during the exchange of Party documents wrongful expulsions from the Party on grounds of actual passivity, to consider it necessary in each individual case when a raikom deems it necessary to resort to such a measure with respect to any given Party member, to put the question before the primary Party organization to which the given communist is assigned for accounting, and in small-scale district Party organizations — before a general district meeting of Party members.

6) To obligate obkoms, kraikoms, CCs of national communist parties, and plenipotentiaries of the Commission of Party Control at the CC of the VKP(b) to hold strictly accountable those Party leaders who, during the exchange of Party documents, carelessly and without thorough verification of all materials, expel members and candidates of the VKP(b) from the Party and permit arbitrary actions toward the expelled (wrongful dismissal from work, etc.).

7) To obligate obkoms, kraikoms, and CCs of national communist parties to submit to the CC of the VKP(b) no later than July 15, 1936, a report on measures taken in connection with the present letter, and no later than October 1, 1936, a report on the results of the review of appeals of those expelled from the VKP(b).

Central Committee
of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

June 24, 1936.
No. P2933.

RGASPI. F. 558. Op. 11. D. 1085. L. 19–25.