FIFTEENTH CONGRESS OF THE CPSU(B) December 2-19, 1927

Moscow, December 2-19, 1927156

From THE RESOLUTION “ON THE REPORT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE”

(Carried unanimously)

The Fifteenth Congress finds that despite the warning of the Thirteenth Congress of the Party, which took note of the “petty-bourgeois deviation” of the Trotsky group, and despite the warning of the Fifteenth All-Union Party Conference about a. “Social-Democratic deviation” united under the leadership of the Trotsky opposition, the latter continued, month in and month out, to deepen its revisionist errors and fight the CPSU(B) and the teaching of Lenin, and build up its own special party, taking the struggle outside the CPSU(B) and appealing to non-proletarian elements in the country against the dictatorship of the proletariat. The ideology of the opposition, which has openly formed a bloc with renegades to world communism (Maslow, Souvarine and Co.), has now taken final shape as Menshevism in its Trotskyite interpretation. Repudiation of the socialist nature of Soviet state enterprises, repudiation of the possibility of socialism being built successfully in our country, repudiation of the alliance of the working class with the main mass of the peasants, and repudiation of the organisational principles of Bolshevism (the policy of splitting the CPSU(B) and the Comintern) have logically brought the Trotsky-Menshevik opposition round to slandering the USSR with the allegation that it has degenerated into a Thermidorian state, to rejecting the proletarian dictatorship in the USSR and to waging a counter-revolutionary struggle against it.

As a result, the opposition has severed its ideological ties with Leninism, degenerated into a Menshevik group, taken the road of capitulation to the forces of the international and internal bourgeoisie and objectively become a third force against the proletarian dictatorship. That is why it has been given such a crushing rebuff by the entire Party membership and by the working class as a whole.

The Fifteenth Congress finds that all the decisions of the CC and CCC against the disorganising activities of the Trotskyites were correct and necessary as a minimum measure, and instructs the Central Committee to continue ensuring the Party’s Leninist unity at all costs.

Taking into account the fact that the divergences between the Party and the opposition have grown from tactical into programme disagreements, and that the Trotskyite opposition has objectively become a factor of the anti-Soviet struggle, the Fifteenth Congress proclaims affiliation to the Trotskyite opposition and the propagation of its views as incompatible with membership of the Bolshevik Party.

On behalf of the CPSU(B) and on behalf of the working class of the Soviet Union, the Fifteenth Congress expresses its firm proletarian confidence in the triumph of socialism in our country in spite of all difficulties. The historic experience of the decade of the existence of the proletarian dictatorship fully bears out the correctness of the Leninist line followed by the CPSU(B). The Fifteenth Congress instructs the CC to continue steadfastly pursuing that line, rally ever larger masses of working people in our country round the banner of socialist construction, strengthen the fraternal ties of solidarity with the proletariat of all countries and unswervingly turn the USSR into an ever more powerful outpost of the world socialist revolution.

The CPSU in Resolutions etc.,

8th Russ. ed., Vol. 8, pp. 20-21.


From THE RESOLUTION “ON THE REPORT OF THE CPSU(B) DELEGATION IN THE COMINTERN EXECUTIVE”

In view of the extremely complex tasks facing the Communist proletariat there must be absolute ideological unity and iron organisational solidarity of the Comintern ranks. The Congress places on record that the sections and the Executive Committee of the Comintern have given the CPSU(B) solid and unanimous support against the Trotskyite opposition, whose behaviour the Comintern Executive has denounced as a betrayal of communism. Having broken completely with Leninism and adopted the Menshevik-liquidationist platform, the Trotskyite opposition, which by its slander against the USSR continues to help the Soviet Union’s most bitter enemies, openly engages in the unprecedentedly brazen divisive activity and has rallied under its banner the most odious renegades and apostates—from Korsch and Ruth Fischer to Souvarine and Liebers—can no longer be tolerated in the ranks of the Comintern. The task is to purge the Comintern thoroughly of all the anticommunist elements that have rallied round the Trotskyite opposition.

Despite individual opportunist errors in a number of Communist parties, errors that are systematically rectified by the leadership of the Comintern Executive, the Bolshevisation of the Comintern sections has made further considerable progress during the past two years. The Congress expresses the confidence that the Comintern leadership will ensure the further Bolshevisation of its ranks and their further education in the spirit of genuine Leninism. In this respect the Congress considers that it is particularly important, on the one hand, to surmount parliamentary illusions and traditions and wage a determined struggle against opportunist deviations generally and, on the other, to make every effort to intensify and promote work among the masses and in the trade unions.

The largest sections of the Comintern and the Communist International as a whole have grown sufficiently strong ideologically and organisationally to give political leadership to the new upsurge of the working-class movement and direct it along the revolutionary road.

The Congress instructs the CC to give its utmost attention to the further strengthening of the Comintern, of its prestige among the proletarian masses, of its work in general and of its organisational apparatus in particular.

The CPSU in Resolutions etc.,

8th Russ. ed., Vol. 4, p. 30

ON THE OPPOSITION

Having heard the report of the commission and exhaustively studied all the documents, the Fifteenth Congress places the following on record:

1. Ideologically the opposition has moved from divergences of a tactical nature to disagreements of a programme character, revising the teaching of Lenin and lapsing into Menshevism. Repudiation of the possibility of successfully building socialism in the USSR and, consequently, of the socialist nature of our revolution; repudiation of the socialist nature of state industry; repudiation of the socialist ways of development in the countryside under the proletarian dictatorship and of the policy of alliance of the proletariat with the main mass of the peasants on the foundation of socialist construction; and, lastly, the virtual repudiation of the proletarian dictatorship in the USSR (“Thermidor”) and the accompanying capitulationism and defeatism—this entire ideological line has turned the Trotskyite opposition into a weapon of petty-bourgeois democracy in the USSR and an auxiliary detachment of international Social-Democracy abroad.

2. Tactically, having stepped up and intensified its activities against the Party, the opposition has gone beyond the limits permitted not only by the Party Rules but also by Soviet legality (illegal meetings, illegal printshops, illegal press organs, forcible seizure of premises and so forth). The climax of these anti-Soviet tactics was the transition to an open struggle against the proletarian dictatorship and the organisation of street demonstrations against the Party and the Soviet Government on November 7, 1927. The opposition’s anti-Soviet tactics abroad, linked with the propagation of slanderous charges against the USSR, have in fact brought it into the same rank with open enemies of the country of the proletarian dictatorship.

3. In questions of organisation the opposition has, on the basis of a revision of Lenin’s teaching, moved from factional activity to the formation of its own Trotskyite party. The commission has established beyond any doubt that the opposition has its own central committee, regional, gubernia, town and district centres, a secretariat, membership dues, press organs and so on. Abroad the Trotskyite party has contacted not only small factional anti-Leninist groups in the parties of the Comintern but also organisations, groups and individuals who have never belonged to the Comintern, and enemies and traitors to the communist movement who have been expelled from the Communist International Maslow, Ruth Fischer, Korsch, Souvarine, Rosmer, Roland Holst, Liebers and many others). The result of this organisational practice of the opposition is that in the USSR the opposition has established contact with non-Party bourgeois intellectuals (Shcherbakov and Co.), who are, in their turn, linked with open counter-revolutionaries, while abroad the opposition has become the object of extensive support by the bourgeoisie of all countries.

On the basis of the aforesaid, the Fifteenth Congress considers that the CC and CCC have acted correctly by expelling Trotsky and Zinoviev from the CPSU(B) on November 14, 1927, and expelling other opposition members of the CC and CCC from these bodies and bringing up the question of the 

opposition as a whole at the Congress.

In its decision on the report of the CC fire Congress declared that affiliation to the Trotskyite opposition and propagation of its views are incompatible with membership of the CPSU(B). In this 

connection the Congress considers that the opposition must disarm ideologically and organisationally, strongly condemn its views, stated above, as anti-Leninist, as Menshevik, and undertake to uphold the views and decisions of the Party, of its congresses and conferences, and of its Central Committee.

However, the opposition has rejected this demand of the Party. In a document dated December 3, 1927 and signed by 121 active members, the opposition not only refuses to abandon its Menshevik views but, on the contrary, insists on propagating them.

After the Congress had adopted its decision on the report of the Central Committee, the commission received two new documents from the opposition dated December 10, 1927. In one of them (signed by Rakovsky, Muralov and Radek) it insists not only on upholding these Menshevik views but also on propagating them. In the other document (signed by Kamenev, Bakayev, Yevdokimov and Avdeyev) it insists on retaining its Menshevik views while agreeing to stop propagating them. This defies the demand for ideological disarmament and signifies a refusal to uphold the Party’s decisions.

The Congress notes the obvious contradiction between the two opposition groups and considers that 

both statements of the opposition are totally unsatisfactory.

Proceeding from the aforesaid and taking into account the opposition’s two violations of its solemn 

pledge to renounce factional activity, the Congress decrees:

1. The expulsion from the Party of the following active members of the Trotskyite opposition:

(1) I. Avdeyev, (2) A. Alexandrov, (3) Ausem, (4) A. Batashov, (5) S. Baranov, (6) I. Bakayev, (7) Budzinskaya, (8) M. Boguslavsky, (9) Vaganyan, (10) I. Vardin, (11) I. Vrachov, (12) S. Gessen, (13) N. Gordon, (14) A. Gertik, (15) A. Guralsky, (16) Drobnis, (17) T. Dmitriyev, (18) G. Yevdokimov, (19) S. Zorin, (20) P. Zalutsky, (21) Ilyin, (22) L. Kamenev, (23) S. Kavtaradze, (24) Kaspersky, (25) M. Krasovskaya, (26) Kovalevsky, (27) A. S. Kuklin, (28) V. Kasparova, (29) Komandir, (30) Kagalin, (31) Kostritsky, (32) A. Konkova, (33) I. N. Katalynov, (34) M. Lashevich, (35) V. Levin, (36) G. Lubin, (37) P. Lelozol, (38) Lizdin, (39) G. Lobanov, (40) N. Muralov, (41) A.Minichev, (42) N. Nikolayev, (43) M. Y. Natanson, (44) Y. Pyatakov, (45) V. Ponomaryov, (46)Pitashko, (47) A. Peterson, (48) I. Paulson, (49) I. Reingold, (50) O. Ravich, (51) K. Radek, (52) H.Rakovsky, (53) Rotskan, (54) R. Rafail, (55) V. Rumyantsev, (56) G. Safarov, (57) I. Smilga, (58)Sokolov, (59) K. Solovyov, (60) L. Sosnovsky, (61) I. N. Smirnov, (62) Z. Senkov, (63) Tuzhikov,(64) F. Tartakovskaya, (65) O. Tarkhanov, (66) I. I. Tarasov, (67) Ukonen, (68) G. Fyodorov, (69) I. Fortin, (70) I. Filippov, (71) N. Kharitonov, (72) Chernov, (73) M. Shepsheleva, (74) Y. Eshba, (75)Z. I. Lilina.

2. The expulsion from the Party of the Sapronov group as being patently anti-revolutionary:

(1) N. Zavaryan, (2) B. Yemelyanov (Kalin), (3) M. N. Mino, (4) M. I. Minkov, (5) V. M. Smirnov (6) T. Kharechko, (7) V. P. Oborin, (8) S. Shraiber, (9) M. Smirnov, (10) F. I. Pilipenko,(11) E. Dune, (12) A. L. Slidovker, (13) L. Tikhonov, (14) Ustimchik, (15) Bolshakov, (16) D. I. Kirillov, (17) P. P. Mikini, (18) Pronayev, (19) V. F. Varguzov, (20) P. L. Stroganov, (21) M. S. Penko, (22) P. S. Chersanov, (23) D. G. Putilin.

3. The CC and CCC are instructed to take all steps to influence the rank-and-file members of the 

Trotskyite opposition ideologically in order to prevail upon them and, at the same time, purge the 

Party of all patently incorrigible elements of the Trotskyite opposition.

The CPSU in Resolutions etc.,

8th Russ. ed., Vol. 4, pp. 70-73