Letter from NI Yezhov to JV Stalin on the progress of the verification of party documents. July 1935

 A source: Petrov N., Jansen M. "Stalin's pet" - Nikolai Yezhov. M., 2008.S. 244-249

Archive: RGASPI. F. 671. Op. 1.D. 28.L. 174-183. Copy.

July 1935

Comrade Stalin!

So far, everything is fine with health.

I would like to take this opportunity to inform you about some matters and to receive instructions on the progress of the verification of party documents:

a) finished hearing the reports of all the secretaries of the regional committees on the progress of the audit. In most regions and regions, the inspection deadlines were forced to be postponed until October 1-15. In the cities - Moscow and Leningrad were postponed until November 1 (large organizations).

Thus, instead of the two months' inspection deadline set in the letter dated May 13 (it was supposed to be completed by August 1-10), the inspection timeline was postponed by another three months. This is explained by two reasons: firstly, because the party organizations only a month after the inspection realized the seriousness of this matter and in fact almost all of them began to re-check. In many organizations, the Central Committee had to cancel the check and repeat it even 2 months later (Vinnitsa, Moldova, Odessa, Kirovsk, etc.); secondly, the contamination of the party ranks turned out to be greater than we expected, which required exceptional thoroughness when checking party members, while the cadres of inspectors were limited by the decision of the Central Committee of the party and, as experience shows, it was very correct and in no way to expand case was impossible.

In connection with all this current situation with the course of checking party documents, I have the following plans:

1. For local party organizations, basically complete the check by November 1.

2. Begin acceptance of the party organizations that have completed the verification of party documents from October 15 and finish it by about November 15.

This period is minimal. The fact is that we have established in our country such a procedure, when every act submitted and approved by the district committee and the regional committee during the check, in which the names of party members and numbers of party cards are indicated, we check with our report cards for each party card.

This measure, as the first experience with several districts has shown, is an obligatory and serious additional guarantee of identifying unfit party members who were not found during the inspection. Our conclusion on the act submitted by the Chernyansky District Committee and approved by the Bureau of the Kursk Regional Committee is an indicator that the verification of the act with the report card for each party card is correct. If you find the time and desire, you can watch it 2 .

I think that this conclusion of ours would not be bad to send out to all party organizations when sending out the next bulletin. This would greatly help a more responsible presentation of acts in the Central Committee and the conclusion about them by the regional committees.

b) New in the course of checking party documents in recent years in terms of identifying the enemies of the party is that not only individual people who fraudulently infiltrated the CPSU (b), but also entire organizations are clearly revealed, and methods are clearly outlined, with which they worked and their tactics in the fight against the party.

In this respect, the Trotskyite formations are especially indicative. They were opened in many places in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Krasnoyarsk and other organizations.

The methods of penetrating the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks are the same in all these organizations, and the tactics of their struggle with the party are also uniform. Personally, I think that we undoubtedly have a Trotskyist center somewhere that directs Trotskyist organizations. It is unlikely that a foreign center could give instructions so specifically. Apparently, the center is also in the USSR.

The Trotskyists' penetration into the Party proceeds in two ways. The Trotskyists who remained in the CPSU (b), who continue to take Trotskyist positions, take all measures to stay in the CPSU (b). Many of them are expelled from the party several times, do not hand over party cards, move to other party organizations and register there. Since this is applied everywhere, it is quite obvious that the Trotskyists have a definite directive in this regard.

With regard to penetrating the Party, the Trotskyists use the following method: a Party member, a Trotskyist, cultivates non-Party workers in the Trotskyist spirit. After that, when he fixes him in the Trotskyist organization, he obliges him to enter the CPSU (b). He encourages him to join the party in every possible way, either by receiving recommendations from other organizations, or, in extreme cases, gives him a recommendation himself. In many cases, they were quite successful. Such facts were found in Odessa, Ivanov, in the Urals, etc. It is quite obvious that here, too, the Trotskyists acted on some directive.

I cannot refrain from telling you one extremely curious fact. How did the Trotskyists cheat our party fools? In Odessa, the Trotskyists organized (having donated a special person for this) a Trotskyist "sortie". The Trotskyist, following the directive of his organization, made a speech in which he defamed the party in every possible way, and argued that it was non-proletarian not only in its policy, but also in its composition. After this "sortie" the Trotskyists themselves organized a rebuff. They went to the secretary of the party committee and asked him to recruit several dozen workers into the party in response to this Trotskyist "sortie". The secretary of the party committee was delighted with this proposal and at the next meeting, in response to the Trotskyists' "sortie", accepted up to 30 people into the party. Among them, the Trotskyists slipped 12 of their own people, they had previously processed non-party workers who had already repeatedly carried out Trotskyist orders. Some of them had leaflets in their apartment, some were distributing leaflets. All gathered for underground meetings, where Trotskyist guidelines were worked out.

As for the spies to be detected, it is perfectly obvious that foreign intelligence agencies gave their people a direct task to infiltrate the party, which is the best and most reliable method of covering up espionage work.

All spies discovered, with a few exceptions, were not recruited from party members, they entered the party, either by direct directive of foreign intelligence services, or by directive of residents of 3 foreign intelligence services operating in the USSR.

The way to penetrate the party is twofold. The first method consisted in the fact that the spy penetrated somewhere in the enterprise, worked for it as a worker, showed himself as a social activist, a drummer, and then entered the party. After going to the party, he began to move either from factory to factory, or to an institution. The second way is when a spy, using 4 stolen party cards or obtained through a purchase. In some cases, facts are revealed when some party members were specially killed in order to take possession of his party card, name and surname and act under his name.

There are isolated facts when foreign intelligence services gave direct instructions to their agents to infiltrate not only the party, but to communicate within the party with disguised Trotskyists, Zinovievites, etc. This fact was discovered in Krasnoyarsk, where a spy from Dneprov arrived (she changed her last name 5 times). She joined the party as a worker. In fact, it turned out that she is the daughter of a colonel who was killed on the Don. All her relatives are abroad. She was associated with the arrested Polish spy Jankowski. During a search, 37 addresses of the exiled Zinovievites and Trotskyists were found.

It was established that she personally knew the executed participants of the Leningrad Center Kotolynov, Zvezdov, Khanik, Evdokimov and others. She was aware of the work of the Leningrad Center and presented her apartment to them for meetings. She refused to give any evidence.

Unfortunately, the NKVD until recently stood aside from this case. It goes without saying that it is impossible to fully disclose all this bastard with the apparatus of only our party organizations. The check gives only a clue, and the NKVD organs must unearth the matter to the end. Only in recent months have I managed to promptly involve them in this work, and this is already beginning to yield results. People seem to be beginning to realize that testing provides them with a tremendous opportunity to overcome shortcomings in their work in identifying enemies.

If you had nothing against - I want to come to an agreement with Agranov and convene a small operational conference, mainly for the central workers of the NKVD, to analyze all the facts of spies, Trotskyists, etc., discovered in the party, in order to properly instruct the people and direct them in search of Trotskyist and spy formations. I think that such a briefing meeting would be useful in all respects.

c) As for the general level of verification, it is now proceeding at a fairly high level and we do not make particularly big claims to local party organizations, correcting them all the time on the go.

Undoubtedly, we managed to rock Ukraine, in respect of which you were especially worried and were absolutely right. A second check in Ukraine (Chernigov, Vinnitsa, Odessa, Moldova) gives a huge amount of facts about the contamination of party organizations, where Pilsudski, Romania, and the Germans found their people in the mass. The Ukrainians now understand this. Comrade Postyshev now calls me almost daily about these matters.

I will report in more detail about all these cases in the near future in the next summary.

d) We begin to seriously prepare for the issue of the upcoming exchange of party tickets. This raises a lot of practical questions, which I will specifically mention.

One question that requires your consent now is the following: we will not establish any order in the registration of party members, we will not be able to truly guarantee the procedure for issuing party tickets and their safety without fundamentally overcoming that handicraft in registration and statistics, with which the party apparatus is saturated from top to bottom. Kustarschism in this matter reigns utterly, including in the apparatus of the Central Committee. All statistics and records are kept manually. Can you imagine when people roll over two million party cards and count without cars. The statistics are all based on completely inadequate data sent to us by local party organizations. All calculations are also done manually. The workers are terribly unskilled. Many of them are "promoted" from among the cleaning ladies of the Central Committee, etc. In this case, of course, qualified people, who know statistics and accounting for real, should sit. In addition, without the mechanization of all accounting, statistics, we will not be able to do anything worthwhile. I have called several meetings with specialists about the organization of the case with us. And we all came to the conclusion that it is necessary to organize a machine, accounting statistical station with an appropriate set of machines. Unfortunately, these machines are not produced in our country, and I am forced to raise the issue of import. We are talking about an amount of 25-30 thousand dollars. I spoke with Comrade Chubar, he believes that it is quite possible to release this amount, since our German credits have not been fully used and there are difficulties in using them. If you authorize this case, I will submit a corresponding proposal to the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). without the mechanization of all accounting, statistics, we will not be able to do anything worthwhile. I convened several meetings with experts on the organization of the case with us. And we all came to the conclusion that it is necessary to organize a machine, accounting statistical station with an appropriate set of machines. Unfortunately, these machines are not produced in our country, and I am forced to raise the issue of import. We are talking about an amount of 25-30 thousand dollars. I spoke with Comrade Chubar, he believes that it is quite possible to release this amount, since our German credits have not been fully used and there are difficulties in using them. .