Surviving Children of Murdered Bolsheviks Protest

[p039] THE LETTER of resignation and the funeral ora- tion published here have an exceptional significance for the international communist movement. The author of the letter was an old Bolshevik who fought in the civil war, endured the torture and terror of the Stalin regime and yet retained his communist convictions undimmed. He fought the bureaucracy’s policies in the party consistently and passionately. In particular he fought for a Leninist policy in relation to the national minorities such as the Chetchen-Ingush, the Volga Germans and the Crimean Tartars who were deported en masse to the far east before the Second World War by Stalin. After his resignation Kosterin continued his struggle for the regeneration of socialism in the USSR and against the return of some of the worst features of Stalinism—exemplified by the trial of the Soviet writers and the invasion of Czechoslo- vakia. Kosterin lived and died a communist. His remarkable life and struggle, the grandeur and pathos of which is so vividly evoked in the speech of Yakir, is a magnificent testimony to the resur- gence of the Soviet working class and the new generation of youth who will dig the graves of the Kremlin bureaucracy as surely as Kosterin’s generation dug the graves of the Kremlin Tsar and the Russian bourgeoisie. The speech and the letter together constitute an eloquent and damning indictment of the heirs of Stalin and, we feel certain, it will inspire the new generation of communists inside and outside the Soviet Union to complete the task begun by Trotsky and the Left Opposition: to carry through the political revolution and open the road to a world October. M. Banda, October 10, 1969 ALEXIS KOSTERIN joined the Bolshevik Party in 1916. He was deported for 17 years to the gold mines of Kolyma. He died on November 16, 1968, three weeks after writing this letter. 24 Appeal by Alexis Kosterin translated from ‘Samizdat 1’ Take_up the stru gle against Stalinism Appeal by Alexis Kosterin to to the Politbureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR. Copies to: The editorial committee of ‘Pravda’ for publication; The local committee of the Frunze Party; The Party organizacion of the Moscow Writers’ Union. Dear Comrades, the last few months I have sent several letters to my Party cell and to the Central Committee criticising a whole series of negative phenomena in the internal life of the Party and the social life of our country. I persisted so that the pro- blems I raised would lead to public discussion. After having debated them clearly, in the spirit of the Party, I could be told how and why I was wrong; and, if sometimes I was right, I could be supported so that positive solutions to the pro- blems I raised could be found and applied where necessary to the Party and the State. No one can deny, I believe, that I had the indisputable right guaranteed to me by the Party statutes as @ Party member, to take this step. What followed however, violated the Party statutes as well as violating simple com- mon sense. I was informed that the Moscow’ Party Committee would debate my letters on October 17 of this year. For reasons of health. I Fourth International, Summer 1970

[p040] THE LETTER of resignation and the funeral ora- tion published here have an exceptional significance for the international communist movement. The author of the letter was an old Bolshevik who fought in the civil war, endured the torture and terror of the Stalin regime and yet retained his communist convictions undimmed. He fought the bureaucracy’s policies in the party consistently and passionately. In particular he fought for a Leninist policy in relation to the national minorities such as the Chetchen-Ingush, the Volga Germans and the Crimean Tartars who were deported en masse to the far east before the Second World War by Stalin. After his resignation Kosterin continued his struggle for the regeneration of socialism in the USSR and against the return of some of the worst features of Stalinism—exemplified by the trial of the Soviet writers and the invasion of Czechoslo- vakia. Kosterin lived and died a communist. His remarkable life and struggle, the grandeur and pathos of which is so vividly evoked in the speech of Yakir, is a magnificent testimony to the resur- gence of the Soviet working class and the new generation of youth who will dig the graves of the Kremlin bureaucracy as surely as Kosterin’s generation dug the graves of the Kremlin Tsar and the Russian bourgeoisie. The speech and the letter together constitute an eloquent and damning indictment of the heirs of Stalin and, we feel certain, it will inspire the new generation of communists inside and outside the Soviet Union to complete the task begun by Trotsky and the Left Opposition: to carry through the political revolution and open the road to a world October. M. Banda, October 10, 1969 aS ALEXIS KOSTERIN joined the Bolshevik Party in 1916. He was deported for 17 years to the gold mines of Kolyma. He died on November 16, 1968, three weeks after writing this letter. 24 Appeal by Alexis Kosterin translated from ‘Samizdat 1’ Take u the stru p e against Stalinism Appeal by Alexis Kosterin to to the Politbureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR. Copies to: The editorial committee of ‘Pravda’ for publication; The local committee of the Frunze Party; The Party organizacion of the Moscow Writers’ Union. Dear Comrades, VER the few months I have sent several letters to my Party cell and to the Central Committee criticising a whole series of negative phenomena in the internal life of the Party and the social life of our country. last I persisted so that the pro- blems I raised would lead to public discussion. After having debated them clearly, in the spirit of the Party, I could be told how and why I was wrong; and, if sometimes I was right, I could be supported so that positive solutions to the pro- blems I raised could be found and applied where necessary to the Party and the State. No one can deny, I believe, that I had the indisputable right guaranteed to me by the Party statutes as @ Party member, to take this step. What followed however, violated the Party statutes as well as violating simple com- mon sense. I was informed that the Moscow’ Party Committee would debate my letters on October 17 of this year. For reasons of health. I Fourth international, Summer 1970

[p041] could not be at the meeting— following a serious and pain- ful heart attack, the second! —that recently laid me up; the doctors categorically for- bid me to participate in these discussions because of the nervous tension it would have involved. And as I had set out and argued very clearly and in a convincing way the problems I was raising I thought the discussion could go on with- out me. It appears that the content of my letters was never ex- amined. Instead of discussing them, my letters had _ the labels ‘anti-Party’ and ‘anti- Soviet’ attached to them in a totally wanton way and I was expelled from the Party. Several other CPSU sta- tutes were flagrantly violated: ] The question of my Party * membership was ruled on without consulting my local organization. 2 I was expelled for exer- * cising the indefensible right of a Party member: to express himself before the Party on any impor- tant question, to present his proposals and defend them until a decision is taken about the matters they concern. 3 The transcript of the pro- * ceedings of the meeting and the decision of the Party Committee were passed on to the local committee right away without informing me first. 4 Neither was I told about * the local committee’s de- liberations; they had evi- dently already decided with amazing rapidity to ‘settle’ the question of my expulsion. This confirmed my hypo- thesis that only the fact that I sent the letters was _ con- sidered and not the questions raised in those letters. Their content—the real problems— has not been examined. The label ‘anti-Party’ was wantonly attached to my let- ters. I had already been re- proached for defending the Tartars of Crimea. To be consistent, the Party Committee should have ac- cused me at the same time for writing in defence of the Germans living in the Volga and the Turks. It should also be remembered that in 1958 I was expelled from the Party for having defended the Chet- chen-Ingush people. I should have been’ reproached for having defended with arms, in the first years of the revo- lution, the Leninist policy of nationalities and the right of minorities to national equal- ity. What happened to me is not accidental. It springs from the whole line of the Party leadership. The Politbureau of the Cen- tral Committee does not itself respect the Party laws, does not take them into account. In spite of the decisions of the 22nd and 23rd Party Con- gresses, the name and anti- human acts of Stalin are being ‘cautiously’ but insistently re- habilitated. And, in practice, Stalinist methods are allowed more and more scope. As under Stalin, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom to meet, freedom to march and demonstrate in the streets only exists in written form in the Constitution. In practice, all those who try to exercise these rights are arrested; those who pro- test against this arbitrary in- justice are expelled from the Party, dismissed from their jobs and put under constant surveillance by KGB agents. Their mouths are closed by all possible methods including the most repugnant. As under Stalin, a whole series of national minorities are the victims of savage per- secution, discrimination and veritable acts of genocide. Stalinism manifests itself with particular clarity in the domain of foreign policy. The events in Czechoslovakia are an especially striking illustra- tion. The supreme leadership of the Party and the Soviet state is not afraid to put the world on the brink of a ther- monuclear catastrophe with- Kosterin endured all attacks and privations during the repressive Stalin era, but still remained a communist. Stalin is seen left with Bukharin. Documents from the Soviet Opposition out considering the genuine interests of our country and the world communist move- ment; the leadership has pro- vided the imperialist extrem- ists with arguments to be used for increasing interna- tional tension. The leadership has inflicted a moral defeat with very far reaching effects on our coun- try and on the international communist movement. And all this with the sole end of defending the narrow interests of caste. A climate of oppression continues to reign in_ the Party. The carefully sorted and selected Stalinist Party machinery throws itself un- animously into the assault against whoever expresses any doubts—whoever the doubter is—about the machine’s poli- cies or tries to criticise any member of the Party and state leadership. In our Party today discus- sion is forbidden, the right to think is refused. You are ex- pelled for the sole reason that you have formulated pro- posals that appeared good to you but don’t conform to the prescriptions that rain down from on high. Only those who carry out orders from on high without thinking can live in_ this Party; only those who consi- der their presence in the Party an assurance of safe conduct and of their own well. being can live in this Party. I foresaw what the local Party Committee’s decision would be because I knew of certain other expulsions from the Party decided upon by its committees without any dis- cussion in the lower Party or- ganizations. _ But I do not want to go to the local committee to be ‘corrected’. I don’t have the strength or health for that. I could still endure these cor- rections in 1937 when they followed my arrest, but not today. As a protest against the flagrant violations of Party statutes and in order to free myself from that Party discip- line which deprives me of the right to think, I am resigning from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and I am returning my Party member- ship card, number 8,293,698. 25

[p042] could not be at the meeting— following a serious and pain- ful heart attack, the second! —that recently laid me up; the doctors categorically for- bid me to participate in these discussions because of the nervous tension it would have involved. And as I had set out and argued very clearly and in a convincing way the problems I was raising I thought the discussion could go on with- out me. It appears that the content of my letters was never ex- amined. Instead of discussing them, my letters had the labels ‘anti-Party’ and ‘anti- Soviet’ attached to them in a totally wanton way and I was expelled from the Party. Several other CPSU ssta- tutes were flagrantly violated: ] The question of my Party * membership was ruled on without consulting my local organization. 2 I was expelled for exer- * cising the indefensible right of a Party member: to express himself before the Party on any impor- tant question, to present his proposals and defend them until a decision is taken about the matters they concern. 3 The transcript of the pro- ° ceedings of the meeting and the decision of the Party Committee were passed on to the local committee right away without informing me first. 4 Neither was I told about * the local committee’s de- liberations; they had evi- dently already decided with amazing rapidity to ‘settle’ the question of my expulsion. This confirmed my hypo- thesis that only the fact that I sent the letters was con- sidered and not the questions raised in those letters. Their content—the real problems— has not been examined. The label ‘anti-Party’ was wantonly attached to my let- ters. I had already been re- proached for defending the Tartars of Crimea. To be consistent, the Party Committee should have ac- cused me at the same time for writing in defence of the Germans living in the Volga and the Turks. It should also be remembered that in 1958 I was expelled from the Party for having defended the Chet- chen-Ingush people. I should have been’ reproached for having defended with arms, in the first years of the revo- lution, the Leninist policy of nationalities and the right of minorities to national equal- ity. What happened to me is not accidental. It springs from the whole line of the Party leadership. The Politbureau of the Cen- tral Committee does not itself respect the Party laws, does not take them into account. In spite of the decisions of the 22nd and 23rd Party Con- gresses, the name and anti- human acts of Stalin are being ‘cautiously’ but insistently re- habilitated. And, in practice, Stalinist methods are allowed more and more scope. As under Stalin, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom to meet, freedom to march and demonstrate in the streets only exists in written form in the Constitution. In practice, all those who try to exercise these rights are arrested; those who pro- test against this arbitrary in- justice are expelled from the Party, dismissed from their jobs and put under constant surveillance by KGB agents. Their mouths are closed by all possible methods including the most repugnant. As under Stalin, a whole series of national minorities are the victims of savage per- secution, discrimination and veritable acts of genocide. Stalinism manifests itself with particular clarity in the domain of foreign policy. The events in Czechoslovakia are an especially striking illustra- tion. The supreme leadership of the Party and the Soviet state is not afraid to put the world on the brink of a ther- monuclear catastrophe with- Kosterin endured all attacks and privations during the repressive Stalin era, but still remained a communist. Stalin is seen left with Bukharin. Documents from the Soviet Opposition out considering the genuine interests of our country and the world communist move- ment; the leadership has pro- vided the imperialist extrem- ists with arguments to be used for increasing interna- tional tension. The leadership has inflicted a moral defeat with very far reaching effects on our coun- try and on the international communist movement. And all this with the sole end of defending the narrow interests of caste. A climate of oppression continues to reign in the Party. The carefully sorted and selected Stalinist Party machinery throws itself un- animously into the assault against whoever expresses any doubts—whoever the doubter is—about the machine’s poli- cies or tries to criticise any member of the Party and state leadership. In our Party today discus- sion is forbidden, the right to think is refused. You are ex- pelled for the sole reason that you have formulated pro- posals that appeared good to you but don’t conform to the prescriptions that rain down from on high. Only those who carry out orders from on high without thinking can live in_ this Party; only those who consi- der their presence in the Party an assurance of safe conduct and of their own well being can live in this Party. I foresaw what the local Party Committee’s decision would be because I knew of certain other expulsions from the Party decided upon by its committees without any dis- cussion in the lower Party or- ganizations. But I do not want to go to the local committee to be ‘corrected’. I don’t have the strength or health for that. I could still endure these cor- rections in 1937 when they followed my arrest, but not today. As a protest against the flagrant violations of Party statutes and in order to free myself from that Party discip- line which deprives me of the right to think, I am resigning from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and I am returning my Party member- ship card, number 8,293,698. 25

[p043] I am taking this step con- sciously and with the hope that it will compel true com- munists to think seriously about what is happening in- cluding the Party machine, observe the statutes, it will decide on my case publicly and punish those who are guilty of violating these sta- mitting to its discipline. But with or without a Party card I have been, I am, and I will remain a Marxist- ideas, for their democratic application in life, as I’ve always struggled, making use of all the rights given to me by our Constitution and the Leninist communist, a_ Bol- shevik. My whole existence, from my youth to _ today, bears witness to that. If I find myself outside the Party I will continue to strug- gle for my Marxist-Leninist side our Party as well as in tues. Declaration of the Rights of all of our society. Man adopted by the United Nations and signed by our government. If this is the case I will res- cind my decision to resign from the Party and continue