ON THE OPPOSITION -Fifteenth Congress - Trotskyites expulsion from the Party

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