DECISION OF THE CC OF THE TEXTILE WORKERS’ TRADE UNION

DECISION OF THE CC OF THE TEXTILE WORKERS’ TRADE UNION IN SUPPORT AND APPROVAL OF THE LETTER OF THE PRESIDIUM OF THE METALWORKERS’ CC

TO THE LEADERS OF THE “NEW OPPOSITION”**

July 23, 1927

Having heard the letter signed by Yevdokimov, Zinoviev and Trotsky, received by ordinary mail and addressed to the CC, on the question of the resolution passed by the Plenary Meeting of the Metalworkers’ CC on the international and internal situation, and having heard the reply of the metalworkers to this letter:

(1) The Presidium of the Central Committee of the All-Union Textile Workers’ Trade Union declares that it considers as a most heinous crime against the revolution and the working class the squabble started by the opposition against the Party and its attempts to draw the country into a new discussion and, thereby, divert the attention of the Party, the trade unions and the organs of Soviet power from the practical tasks linked with the immense difficulties that now face our country.

(2) The Presidium of the Central Committee declares that it fully supports the political line of the Leninist Central Committee of the CPSU(B) and that in its work it has been and shall be guided by the decisions of the Fourteenth Party Congress, the Fifteenth Party Conference and the plenary meetings of the CC.

(3) The Presidium of the Central Committee declares that hundreds of thousands of textile workers have learned to believe in and follow the leadership of the Leninist Party as a whole, and not only to believe but to understand this leadership, and that no individual high-ranking personalities, no matter how important their role has been in the past and no matter what post they held or hold, will set them against the Leninist Party and its CC.

(4) The Presidium of the Central Committee considers that revolutionary and Party discipline must be similarly binding on rank-and-file worker members of the Party and on those who strive to lead it; the decision of the Party majority must be a law for the minority in the Leninist Party. 

Persons who list their past services to the revolution and the Party and, for all that, organise a faction that circulates illegal documents among Party members and non-Party people, sponsor “petition campaigns” and “signature collections” round platforms directed against the Party CC, are the most flagrant and criminal violators of revolutionary Party discipline because their actions are, in effect, directed against the Party and aim at wrecking the colossal work that the country has accomplished under its leadership. These persons and their faction must receive the most resolute rebuff from the Party and from the organisations that have rallied round it.

(5) The Presidium of the Central Committee of the Textile Workers’ Trade Union wholly and fully associates itself with the reply of the Presidium of the Metalworkers’ CC of July 13, 1927 to the leaders of the opposition and wholly subscribes to the opinion of the metalworkers that the opposition’s accusation that they have created a precedent byshifting the inner-Party struggle to non- Party organisations is sheer hypocrisy.

(6) Those who signed the letter to the metalworkers are the initiators, organisers and ideological inspirers of the struggle being waged against the Party. They have shifted and still are shifting their criminal activities to the non-Party environment. They organised a public demonstration against the Party (at the Yaroslavl Railway Station). One of the signatories was the first to attack the Party at a non-Party meeting. Had Yevdokimov, Trotsky and Zinoviev sincerely considered the action of the metalworkers as disloyal, they would not have circulated their reply to the central committees of all the trade unions, which are non-Party organisations, but would have taken the matter to the CC and the Central Committee of the CPSU(B). The opposition is doubtlessly aware of these normal Party channels for protesting against various actions of Communist workers either in Party or non- Party organisations.

(7) We regard the opposition’s action of sending our Central Committee a copy of its letter to the metalworkers as a call to denounce the metalworkers and the line of the Party’s Leninist CC and, thereby, introduce elements of strife and struggle into the trade union movement, as an attempt to steer us to the road of struggle against the Party and its CC. To this we reply: Hands off the Party! Hands off the trade unions!

(8) In face of all the difficulties which the opposition is trying to create, the members of the Textile Workers’ Trade Union and its Central Committee and Presidium will unite more closely than ever before in support of the Leninist CC and will be able to give a worthy rebuff to anybody who seeks to split the Party, the trade unions and the working class. Like the metalworkers, the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Textile Workers’ Trade Union will use the entire force of its prestige and authority in order, as the metalworkers have put it in their letter, “to expose the defeatist ideology” if it penetrates our trade union. We shall mobilise the entire force of proletarian resistance to avert the consequences of the opposition’s disorganising policy, which is threatening the Party, the working class and the Soviet state.

(9) The Presidium of the Central Committee of the All-Union Textile Workers’ Trade Union notes the hypocritical nature of the charges made against the Metalworkers’ CC by those who undermine the strength of our CPSU(B) and support the renegades Ruth Fischer, Maslow and Urbahns, who are grinding out propaganda against the USSR and the CPSU(B).

(10) The textile workers are sickened by the systematic, annually repeated attempts of the intellectual opposition to turn the country into a debating club. They insist that the CPSU(B) and the trade unions take practical steps to carry out the assignments charted in the decisions of the Fourteenth Party Congress and the Seventh Congress of Trade Unions, because they believe that the implementation of these decisions will make it possible to foster the country’s welfare, improve the living and cultural level of the workers and strengthen the power of the workers and peasants.

Melnichansky, Chairman, Central Committee AUTWTU Smirnov, Member, Presidium of the CC Certified 

true: A. Afanasyev, Acting Secretary,

Presidium of the CC

Sovetskiye arkhivy, 1967,

No. 3, pp. 31-32