Source: Lubyanka. Stalin and the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD. Stalin's Archive. Documents of the highest bodies of party and state power. 1937-1938. - Moscow: MFD, 2004, pp. 109-114.
Archive: AP RF. F. 3. Op. 58. D. 6. L. 30-31. Original version. Typescript.
March 3, 1937
The Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) considers that all the facts revealed during the investigation of the cases of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist centre and its local supporters show that the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs was at least 4 years late in exposing these worst enemies of the people.
The traitors to the motherland, the Trotskyists and other double-crossers, in alliance with German and Japanese counterintelligence, managed to launch wrecking, sabotage, espionage and terrorist activities with relative impunity, and to damage the cause of socialist construction in a number of industries and transport, not only due to the shortcomings of the party and economic organizations, but also due to the weak work of state security agencies Narkomvnudela USSR.
Despite the repeated warnings of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) about the restructuring of all Chekist work in the direction of a more organized and sharp struggle against counter-revolution (instructions of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) and the SNK of the USSR of May 8, 1933, closed letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) on the lessons of events related to the Kirov and a friend.), the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR did not comply with these instructions of the party and government and was unable to expose the anti-Soviet Trotskyist gang in time.
The main shortcomings in the work of State security agencies, which had a decisive influence on the delay in exposing the Trotskyist anti-Soviet organization, continue to be the following::
a) The People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the U.S.S.R. failed to raise the level of intelligence work, which is one of the main levers in the fight against counterrevolution. Agents were recruited randomly and by gravity. As a rule, no attention was paid to the main and crucial areas where the agent network should have been well established. In particular, the agents of the Trotskyists, Zinovievites, and Rightists were weak, even in the places where they were most concentrated. There were also almost no agents in any of the foreign anti-Soviet organizations, including the Trotskyists. Senior operatives of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, as a rule, did not personally engage in agency work. Meetings with agents and receiving materials from them were conducted by poorly qualified ordinary employees.
As a result of such poor management of the agency, there were many traitors among the latter. During the investigation of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist centre in Moscow alone, 65 traitorous agents were identified who systematically misinformed the state security agencies, confused the whole case, and actively contributed to the unpunished activities of Trotskyists.
b) The lack of qualified agents and inept management of the existing agency determined the poor formulation of investigative work. The investigation, not having sufficient evidence from the agents, often depended on the criminal and his good will to give exhaustive testimony or not, i.e. the entire investigation was based on the voluntary confession of the accused.
This also explains to a certain extent the fact that the arrested Trotskyists managed to hide from the investigation the darkest aspects of their anti-Soviet activities and, most importantly, the people who were organizationally connected with them.
c) In all its practice, the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the USSR pursued a wrong punitive policy, especially against Trotskyists and other enemies of the Soviet system.
An analysis of the arrests made in 1935-36 shows that the main blow of the state security agencies was directed not against organized counter-revolutionary formations, but mainly at individual cases of anti-Soviet agitation, all kinds of official crimes, hooliganism, domestic crimes, etc. Of the total number of people repressed in 1935-36, about 80% falls on all sorts of minor crimes, which are, in fact, objects of the work of the police, and not of state security agencies.
d) Even more intolerable is the prison regime established by the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R. against convicts, the most vicious enemies of the Soviet government, Trotskyists, Zinovievites, Rightists, Social Revolutionaries, and others.
All these enemies of the people, as a rule, were sent to the so-called political isolators, which were subordinate to the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. Political isolators were in particularly favourable conditions and looked more like forced rest homes than prisons.
In the political isolation cells, convicts had the opportunity to communicate closely with each other, discuss all political events in the country, develop plans for the anti-Soviet work of their organizations, and communicate with volya. Prisoners were granted the right to use literature, paper and writing materials in unlimited quantities, to receive an unlimited number of letters and telegrams, to acquire their own equipment in their cells, and to receive, along with government food, parcels from the prison in any quantity and assortment.
e) The most serious drawback in the work of state security agencies is the practice of selecting, nominating and educating Chekist cadres.
For the most part, the employees of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs are, of course, experienced, qualified security officers who are selflessly devoted to the cause of our party. Despite this, the practice of nominating and appointing people was often guided by non-business motives. In many cases, people were nominated not on the grounds of their loyalty to the party, abilities and knowledge of the matter, but on the grounds of servility and sycophancy.
As a result, alien and criminal elements have infiltrated certain parts of the State security agencies. A number of cases were discovered when even foreign intelligence spies managed to infiltrate state security agencies (Polish spies-Sosnowski, Mazepus, Polish-German spy Ilinich, etc.).
The same practice of a non-partisan attitude to the nomination of people, as well as the lack of political educational work, created conditions under which direct traitors-Trotskyists-found themselves in the leading Chekist work.
Some of them systematically informed members of the Trotskyist organization about the materials available in the NKVD about the latter's anti-Soviet activities (head of the Taganrog city department of the NKVD-Balanyuk, head of the Novocherkassk city department of the NKVD-Shapovalov, ex. head of the special branch of the NKVD of Ukraine-Kozelsky and a friend.).
In addition, it should be noted that among the Chekist cadres, party and political educational work was extremely poorly carried out. People were brought up in a one-sided departmental patriotism, out of alignment with the general work of the party. As a result, some chekists broke away from party life and closed themselves in the circle of only their departmental interests. This is the case with the general shortcomings in the work of the NKVD of the USSR.
However, the delay in exposing the anti-Soviet activities of Trotskyist bandits is due not only to these general shortcomings in the work of state security agencies and the specific criminal activities of individual responsible employees of the Cheka and, in particular, the former head of the Secret Political Department of the GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR-Molchanov.
This criminal activity was expressed, first of all, in the fact that the Secret-Political Department already in 1932-33 had in its hands all the threads in order to fully reveal the monstrous conspiracy of the Trotskyists against the Soviet government. In 1932, the Secret Political Department of the GUGB of the NKVD had sufficient intelligence materials that directly indicated the existence of a Trotskyist centre headed by I. N. Smirnov, about Smirnov's connections with Trotsky and his son Sedov, and about the terrorist intentions of a number of major Trotskyists. The materials showed that the Trotskyist centre was establishing organizational ties with local Trotskyist groups and implementing Trotsky's directive to form a bloc with the Zinovievites and the right.
On the basis of these intelligence materials, a group of Trotskyists headed by Smirnov was arrested in early 1933. With such intelligence materials at its disposal, the investigation was fully able to reveal to the end all the organizational connections and all the criminal terrorist activities of the Trotskyists and Zinovievites. Meanwhile, the investigation was conducted so negligently and criminally that the main agent materials available in the case were not used. The head of the Trotskyist centre, I. N. Smirnov, was interrogated only on his attitude to collectivization; Safonova, a very active member of the Trotskyist centre, was asked only whether she had read Trotsky's book "My Life"; Ter-Vaganyan was asked what his differences with the party line were; Trotsky's terrorist emissary, Pereverzev, was not questioned. interrogated at all. As a result of such criminal conduct of the investigation, the accused escaped with a minor punishment and were sent to political isolation and exile, where they were given the widest possible opportunities to continue their anti-Soviet criminal activities.
Absolutely unprecedented is the case of the secret agent of the NKVD in the Moscow region Z-na. Beginning in November 1933, Agent Z-n, in a whole series of reports, signals that anti-Soviet work has been developed by the Trotskyists, that there is a leading Trotskyist centre, and that Dreitzer, Muralov, Pyatakov, Radek, and others have participated in the active work of the centre. Agent Z-n's materials explicitly mention the Trotskyist terrorist tendencies, point out the existence of close ties between the Trotskyists and foreign countries, and point out the connection of the imprisoned Trotskyists with Volya. Active Trotskyist terrorists Khrustalev and Zilberman were arrested based on the materials of Agent Z-n. However, the former head of the Secret Political Department Molchanov turned the investigation in such a way that in the end, active Trotskyists Khrustalev and Zilberman were released, and agent Z-n was convicted on charges of provocation and exiled for 5 years. Meanwhile, in the person of Khrustalev, one of the most ardent enemies of the Soviet government, the owner of the safe house of the Moscow Trotskyist terrorist centre, from which Comrade Stalin's routes were monitored, was released.
Trotsky's terrorist emissary, Olberg V., who was shot in the August 1936 trial, was known to the NKVD authorities as early as 1931. He was monitored for some time, but then the case was dropped and Ahlberg was allowed to create terrorist groups that tried to assassinate party and government leaders with impunity for three years.
Along with the signals coming from the agents, Molchanov, the former head of the Secret Political Department of the GUGB, also received many materials from NKVD employees who persistently raised the question of the need to take measures against the anti-Soviet terrorist activities of Trotskyists, Zinovievites and rightists. Instead of being conscientious and Bolshevik about the reports of some agents and the signals of many NKVD operatives, Molchanov suspiciously blindly trusted his double agents, who entangled the apparatus of the Secret-Political Department and diverted its employees from the possibility of timely opening all the vile anti-Soviet work of the Trotskyists.
Moreover, Molchanov, being personally connected with the Trotskyist Fuhrer, systematically told him about the secret information available in the Secret Political Department about the anti-Soviet activities of the Trotskyists. As is now being established by the investigation, Fuhrer inquired about this from Molchanov, acting on the direct instructions of the head of the entire terrorist organization on the Livshits transport.
These are examples of the criminal activities of some NKVD employees, and especially the former head of the Secret Political Department of the GUGB Molchanov.
These are the main reasons why the NKVD failed to expose in a timely manner the monstrous anti-Soviet conspiracy of Trotskyist agents of German — Japanese intelligence. The Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) decides:
1. Approve the measures taken by the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) to defeat the anti-Soviet, sabotage-wrecking, espionage and terrorist gang of Trotskyists and other double-dealing criminals.
Oblige the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the U.S.S.R. to complete the task of exposing and defeating Trotskyist and other agents of fascism, in order to suppress the slightest manifestations of their anti-Soviet activities.
2. Approve the measures of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) aimed at improving the organization of work in the organs of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, and, in particular, measures to reorganize the GUGB apparatus and strengthen it with new party cadres.
3. Approve the measures taken by the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) aimed at improving the state security apparatus by promoting new Bolshevik-tested chekists to leadership positions and removing from the apparatus decayed bureaucrats who have lost all Bolshevik acuteness and vigilance in the fight against the class enemy and disgrace the glorious name of the Chekists.
Approve, in particular, the arrest and trial of one of the main perpetrators of the shameful failure of the state security agencies in the fight against the Zinovievites and Trotskyists, the former head of the Secret Political Department of the GUGB Molchanov.
4. Continue and complete the reorganization of the Narkomvnudel apparatus, especially the GUGB apparatus, making it a truly militant body capable of fulfilling the tasks assigned to it by the party and the Soviet Government to ensure State security in our country.
5. Taking into account the most important national economic and defence importance of railway transport and the need to protect it from the anti-Soviet destructive activities of the enemies of the Soviet Union, reorganize the 6th Department of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD of the USSR (Department of Transport and Communications), allocating a special department for the maintenance of railway transport.
Assign to this department the fight against all forms of counter-revolution in transport, primarily against the wrecking, sabotage and espionage activities of the enemies of the Soviet government.
Release the Transport Department of the GUGB from the functions of protecting public order in railway transport, keeping watch at railway stations, combating theft of socialist property, hooliganism and child homelessness.
To protect public order and combat criminal crime in railway transport, create a special railway militia, which should be subordinated to the Main Directorate of the Workers 'and Peasants' Militia of the NKVD of the USSR.
The transport department of the GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR should be organized on a linear basis, subordinating road transport departments directly to the Transport Department of the GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR.
Organize the XI-th Department for maintenance of water transport, highways and the system of the People's Commissariat of Communications as part of the GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR.
6. Propose to the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the USSR to arrange for the organization of qualified and reliable agents, both inside the country and abroad, carefully selected and appropriately placed in those areas where the activity of the enemies of the Soviet system is most active.
7. The People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the U.S.S.R. ordered the strictest measures to ensure that the shameful cases when individual Chekists, because of their talkativeness, were themselves a source of supplying the enemies of the Soviet system with the most secret information, were completely eliminated.
8. Oblige all regional committees, regional committees and the Central Committee of National Parties to pay more attention to the work of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, providing them with all possible assistance in their work, for which purpose:
a) systematically strengthen the organs of the People's Commissariat of Labour with the best proven cadres of party workers;
b) to assist in every possible way the political education and rearing of Bolshevik Chekist cadres;
c) do not load state security agencies and employees of these bodies with assignments and tasks that are not directly related to the fight against counter-revolution.
9. To propose to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR, on the basis of this resolution of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b), to draw up a letter to all employees of the state security bodies of the NKVD of the USSR about the lessons and tasks of the Chekists arising from this resolution.
The Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) expresses its firm confidence that all Chekists will learn the lessons of the mistakes made in exposing the anti-Soviet Zinovievist and Trotskyist conspiracy, correct these mistakes in the shortest possible time, and justify allotment in the high rank of an advanced armed detachment of the Lenin—Stalin party.
Published by: Questions of History. 1995. No. 2. pp. 22-26.
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Source: https://istmat.org/node/30153
Origin of Language: Russian
Translation by Yandex Translate