How the 16th Party Congress Was Prepared The Persecution of the Russian Bolshevik Opposition Since the Spring of this year, the StalBy MARKIN cusation being formulated against them, nist leadership has again been compelled four Oppositionists were arrested: Abramto pose as a task of the moment the ques that means hunger, and cold in winter. Ing them with water in the bitter cold sky, Antokolsky, Veskresensky, Evingeltion of the extermination of the OpposiSince they have no right to be members of winter, etc. Beatings are a system staedt. From the Rubtsevsk prison, they tion. This task arises out of the fact of the cooperatives, they can frequently known in the prison of Kharkov, in the sent a declaration to the Central Committhat, in spite of the boastings to the conbuy nothing, even with these 15 rubles; Verchnye Uralsk Solitary, in the Leningrad tee of the on June 4, in which they trary by the members of the apparatus, they live in lodgings without fire, remain prison, and in a whole number of others. said We can only consider this represthe Opposition lives, works and will con. ing for weeks without warm food, often It was through blows that comrade Haen sive act excercized against us only a a tinue to work. It is enough to run through without light. Especially painful is the richsen was killed in the Leningrad prison.
preparation by unusual means for the 16th the Soviet papers to be convinced that situation of the deportees in Narym, one The colony of Oppositionists deported Party Congress. The repression will rarely does a nucleus meeting or Party of the most terrible places of deportation at Tomsk has gathered a great deal of not halt the struggle for the redressment conference take place without Oppositionin Siberia. The Narym deportees are lit information on the absolutely terrible of the Party, just as the damage done will ists or semi Oppositionists taking the floor. erally condemned to death by hunger, crimes Stalin has perpetrated against our not prevent the Party from returning to The apparatus struggle against the Left Moreover at Narym which, by the harsh comrades. It has presented a document the positions of Leninism.
What was Opposition is developed exclusively by ness of living conditions, is similar to a of protest to which all the other colonies ubsequently the fate of the Rubtsevsk means of repression. In connection with Solitary, they transport the Bolsheviks of deportees have rallied. In this docu comrades is not known to us. But there is this Congress, the repression mounted originally deported elsewhere, in an ever ment it is learned that hunger prevails in no doubt that they will be imprisoned in rightfully. The rotten monolithism of growing number, It is a course delib all the places of deportation for Opposi the Solitaries.
the top is guaranteed by the coercion, the erately directed towards the physical ex tionists; it is established that for BolsheA similar destruction took place at arrests, the banishments at the bottom.
termination of the Opposition.
viks, the conditions of Stalinist deportation Kansk (comrades Kusminsky and Landau. The Solitaries replace the discussion that Over and above the material privations, are incomparably worse than those of czar at Alma Ata (comrades Goldin and others. should have preceded the Congress That every deportee is exposed to innumerable ism. Many deportees have become invalids at Slavgorod, Chimkent, and many other is how the Congress of the Party was little vexations, the fruit of the absolute (there are dozens of them) for lack of any places. Raids have taken place everyprepared.
arbitrariness and impunity of the local medical succor, at Narym and similar where. The impudent raid upon comrado The aim of this article is to give the The already tiny aid is kept back places elsewhere. The seriously ill are Rakovsky has been told everywhere and genuine facts, particularly on the prepar. a case is cited where it was withheld for not even transported to the nearest in18 well known. Upon him, as the leader of ations for the Congress. In January four months and where the only reply to habited regions where a doctor might be the Russian Opposition, the Stalinists are Febraury there was a strong wave of ar the demand for it was mockery of this found. When it is decided to transport an concentrating their hatred. Seriously ill rests of Oppositionists, of comrades who sort: Go to Moscow. that is: Capitill comrade. it is only when he is in (afflicted with heart trouble and malaria. sympathized with them, and even of com ulate! In a similar situation a comrade hopeless state. This winter, many comcomrade Rakovsky, far from being sent to rades simply suspected of sympathizing reduced to despair asked that he be led rades had their limbs frozen, and some a more clement climate as the doctors with them. According to an approximate to a Solitary, and that is not the only had to undergo amputations because no ordered) has been transported from Astrareckoning more or less correct, 300 com instance. people simply suspected of medical aid was given them in time.
kan to Barnaoul. Comrade Rakovsky, who rades were arrested in Moscow alone. knowing a deported Oppositionist are arBabies, right after their birth, have is 57 years old, of which 40 have been delarge number of comrades arrested in the rested, thus sowing terror among the tobeen tuken from their mother, and the latvoted to the struggle for Communism, passprovinces passed through Moscow to the cal population in order to cast the Oppoter sent into Solitaries (comrade Yanoved a very painful Winter, his sick organism Butirskala prison, coming mainly from the sitionists into absolute isolation.
skaia among others. The same document having to undergo cold of 40 to 50 degrees.
Ukraine, and especially from the Donbas Systematic raids are informy us that a new shooting of Oppost The isolation in which he is held is more organized in (the proletarian mining district. which not only political works are seized tionists took place at Solovski; it is no rigorous than for anybody else. The game rom comrade Sosnovsky, in prison, rare thing for the now to pronounce of Stalin is clear: slowly but surely to Non Party Workers Arrested his work on the agrarian policy of Censentences, not or to years, but of 10 finish off Rakovsky.
At Butirki, there were a few dozen trism was seized; at comrade Rakov years, in vengeance for the political connon Party worker of Moscow, arrested sky, his declaration to the Party was taken, duct of a comrade. For instance, without Sosnovsky in Danger for the sympathy they expressed for the etc. but also quotations from the works any formal prool, comrade Golodni was It is in an even more painful situation of Marx and Lenin condemned to 10 years in Solitary. In all Opposition, who are now deported to SiberThis is accompanied the colonies of deportees, before the 16th that another eminent leader of the Oppoia. Among the prisoners, there was also by a courier blockade so as to isolate the Congress, comrades were arrested and sent sition, an old Bolshevik, comrade Sosa certain percentage of capitulators, main deportees politically. During the Congress, to the Solitaries.
the did not let a single letter go We do not give here novsky is to be found. He is incarcerated ly of those who repented under the infiuthe names of the colonies nor the names in the Tomsk prison, in a regime of isolation ence of a momentary weakness, and who through in order to prevent the elabormore severe than any known in the czarof the comrades arrested; we will deal subsequently declared, almost that ation of a collective declaration of the only with the most striking facts.
ist prisons for those cond mned to they had made a mistake. Many of them Opposition. But this did not succeed, and No correspondence is allowed him, no auare no longer just deported, but sent to a declaration bearing the signatures of Hunger Strike in Ichim thorized mail, no relation with the other the Solitaries. They now demand from the comrades Rakovsky. Moralov, Kasparova capitulators not only the complete and prisoners; he must take his walks in comand Kossior, was presented (all the deIn May, at Ichim, the whole colony was pany with a special agent of the absolute disavowal of their convictions portees joined with it. in deportation arrested comardes as well as 15 inbut also that they discose all their conThe state of health of comrade Sosnovsky the receipt of a letter is an event! We habitants of the city who, according to the is critical. prolonged imprisonment unnections. For refusal there is the Sol are not speaking even of political, but of accusation of the had been propader such conditions means the end for him.
itary (Zabrovskaia, Blumenfeld, and dozens family letters.
gandized by Oppositionists. All are now It is under similar conditions than another of others)
All the deportees live under the conin terrible condition, our comrades write old Bolshevik, Eltsin, is to be found The lengths to which they will go in stant threat of being transferred to a us they are locked up in the Sverdolsk arrests and deportations can be seen by prison.
Solitary (and this threat exists for the (in the Supdalsk Solitary) this comrade is Two of them are seriously ill, afflicted by spinal meningitis, the fact that among those arrested there smallest thing: for instance, a delay of they do not receive the political prisoner That is how the 16th Congress was preis a big percentage of people arrested by five minutes for the compulsory registra ration, they are locked up in different cells, pared on the back of the Left Opposition.
chance, geized for reasons of relation tion at the Often they do noti and have been compelled to declare a hunBy using the power of coercion of the ship or simply because of saying Hello even give formal reasons. The real aim ger strike. How this hunger strike ended, apparatus for factional ends, the Stalinist to an Oppositionist. That is how dozens is to shatter the revolutionary intransi and above all, what was subsequently the leadersbip has set this apparatus against of people were arrested who have no con geance of the Oppositionist. At the same fate of the Ichim deportees, we do not the Left proletarian wing of the Party.
nection with the Opposition (it frequently time with an open tendency to transfer the know.
Fire to the Loft! the inore terrible this fire happens that they become real Opposition points of deportation to the harshest re The comrades informing us, call this ists in prison or deportation. will be, the clearer will appear in the eyes During gions of the North, the Solitaries are filled arrest together with 15 non Oppositionists of the proletarians the lamentable bankthis period the Moscow comrades have dis up more and more. Their number is al an amalgam. which means an artificial tributed a leaflet and have assumed charge ruptcy of Centrist policy.
ways growing because those that exist are liaison for the purpose of discrediting our By hunger, by cold, by the blockade, of a whole series of strikes which were already full. The regime in the prisons comrades by means of people alien to by outrages, by blows and by shootings, provoked by the policy of the bureaucracy and Solitaries is incomparably worse than the Opposition. The destruction of the Centrism aims to squeeze out of the weak(in Serpuchov at Moscow, four factories that of deportation. In the prisons there colony and the creation of a Thermidorian est ones a capitulation, and the strongest of Mostriutaga and elsewhere. is rarely any light (the windows are cov amalgam are the work of a provocateur, still further irritated the bureaucracy.
ones it condemns to ruin. Only the workered with an opaque panel. the damp cells The provocations practised against the Oping class can thwart this Thermidorian wave of arrests that began at the end are occupied by two or three times as many position recently have assumed Homeric plan There is its duty, there is its task.
of the winter continued to rise up to the proportions.
prisoners as the rules provide for; place By making an end of the Left wing, Stalin month of May. The number of persons is lacking for not nly on the Not only are the Opposition groups will make an end of the October revolution.
arrested in this period is at least 500, but even on the floor.
still filled with provacteurs, but these That must be understood, that must be without counting more than 100 arrested in the Solitaries operate also in the deportation and in prevented, that must not be permitted.
persons who were transported to the Solprison. There, their task is to disclose the itaries. By this time the figure has tur What the sanitary conditions are is most intransigeant, to provoke decompother increased.
not difficult to judge. in their cells, the sition by leading comrades to capitulate, We take this occasion to inform the remark must be made here. The Oppositionists, kept separate from earch etc. provacteur showing himself under Foreign comrades that in reply to the Stalinist repression exercized against the other, are mixed up with counter revoluthe mask of a capitulator is now a cur greetings of the international conference Bolshevik Leninists 1s distiaguished from tionaries and criminals who not only de rent phenomenon in the deportation. in Paris to the deported and imprisoned that practised against the Mensheviks and test our comrades as the representatives That is how the colony of deportees at Russian Oppositionists, there have arrived While the latter are simply isolated of Bolshevism but hate and jeer at them, Kaminsk was destroyed. Two comrades, in the editorial Board of the Bulletin of from the social life of the country, to casting upon them all the hatred they nurStolovsky and Densov, were transferred to the Russian Oppositions numerous greethamper them in their counter revolutionary ture against the Soviet power. The system the Tomsk prison, the others, to the fur ings not only from the places of deportaaction against the proletarian dictatorship of the holding Oppositionists in thest corners of Siberia. This colony was tion but also from the Solitaries.
for the Oppositionists who fight Centrism common cells with criminals did not even dispersed only because it didn produce which upsets the dictatorship of the pro exist in the prisons of czarism. This sys a single capitulator. In their declaration letariat the Stalinist course is directed tem is applied only to Oppositionists. The to the Central Committee of the toward their moral strangulation and their Mensheviks (at Butyrki, for instance) en the Kaminsk comrades showed how the physical extermination.
joy all the rights of political prisoners; cadres of the local Party organizations are Among the Oppositionists arrested in they are kept separate from criminals, their recruited. Basing themselves on exact inWinter were comrades Silov and Rabinov cell doors are open; they have a small formation, they name more than 30 memAll readers ocne Militant and their itch, who had unleashed against them the library at their disposal.
bers of the Party now occcpying respon friends who desire to get their copy of special hatred of the apparatus: they have The cells of the Oppositionists are sible posts who were agents of the White of Leon Trotsky. My Life. should make it been shot. How comrade Elumkin was closed, nowhere is visiting allowed them, terror during the days of Kolchak and who shot before them this crime is known to they have no rights to anything sent from shot Reds. These elements are leaders of a point to order the book directly through the whole world.
the outside. And in addition to all this, this district to this very day. The Kolthe Militant. Shipment will be made the The repression has been sharpened they are treated coarsely and laughed at. chakists are chiefly to be found in great day the order is received, and the cost of against all the deportees. regime of hor Under such a regime, hunger strikes break numbers in the This fact throws the book, five dollars. 00. covers the rors has been established: they have lost out without end, and sometimes last until a striking light on the question: Who is the right to work, that is, the right to a mortal end (let us remember the heroic posielne charge. Send your order, together carrying out the Stalinist policy which serve, and by that they have aquired death of comrade Butov) To the hunger hounds the deported Bolsheviks, which aids with order or cash to the right to be hungry. The official aid strikes, to the minimum demands of the in their extermination? Ex Whites, and THE MILITANT a deportee receives has long ago been prisoners, the prison direction replies by not accidentally!
25 Third Avenue. New York reduced to 15 rubles. 50 a month) and having them systematically beaten, by soak At Rubtsevsk, Siberia, without any acThis bas MY LIFE