Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Aims and Purposes of the Purge. April 28, 1933

Part 1, a historic review of purges and purge decrees is omitted.

II. Aims and Purposes of the Purge

The purpose of the Party purge is to achieve a higher ideological standard of Party members, to strengthen the Party organization politically, to secure further confidence in the Party on the part of millions of non-party men and women.

This purpose will be attained, during the purge, in the following manner: (a) by carrying but open and honest self-criticism of the Party members and Party organizations; (b) by checking the activities of each Party cell from the point of view of the execution of the decisions and directions of the Party; (c) by participation in the Party purge of the toiling non-party masses; and (d) by expulsion from the Party of such persons as are not worthy of the highly honorable rank of a party member.

The following elements must be expelled: (1) Alien and hostile elements which have worn their way into the Party by fraudulent means and which remain there in order to corrupt members of the Party;... (3) open and secret breakers of the iron discipline of the Party who do not carry out the decisions of the Party and of the Government, who express doubts in the wisdom of the Party decisions and the plans marked out by the Party, who discredit these decisions and plans by empty talk about their "impossibility" and "futility"; (4) degenerate persons who fall under the influence of capitalist elements, who do not wish to fight class enemies, who do not fight the kulaks, unscrupulous egotists, loafers, thieves and pilferers of public property; (5) careerist, selfish and bureaucratic elements which make use of their membership and their positions in the Soviet administration for their own selfish interests, which have broken away from the masses, which neglect the needs and requirements of the workers and peasants...

III. Methods of the Purge

The purge is a manifestation of the Bolshevist self-criticism of our Party. It must be carried out without any favoritism, and be guided by the following considerations: the fulfillment of the most important Party decisions by members and candidates, their participation in Socialist competition and shock-brigades, active efforts for the fulfillment of the financial and industrial programs and of other important economic tasks, combating absenteeism from work, combating the pilfering of Socialist property.

The purging commissions must request that every member should know the party program, its statutes and its most important decisions.. But the purging commissions must not, while examining the political knowledge of members, put complicated, of catchy" and litigious questions. They must take into account the general cultural standard of the members examined and not put outside the Party pale such comrades as have proved their unconditional allegiance to the Party and their zeal in socialist construction, but who could not attain the necessary standard of political education. This especially refers to industrial workers and to members of kolkhozes.

The purge must be carried out at open meetings of the cells with the participation of non-party men and women... All members and candidates must go through the purge with the exception of members and candidates of the Central Committee and of the Central Control Commission and members of the Committee of Inspection of the Central Committee, as having been elected by the Party Congress, and also the chiefs of the Political Departments of the Machine -and-Tractor Stations and of the sovkhozes, because these men have already been examined by the Party at the time of their appointment to their posts. But if a detailed application should be made by a Party meeting or by a group of Party members requesting the examination of (these officials, they] must also be subjected to the purge.

IV. Direction of the Purge

The general direction of the purge in the whole of the

USSR is to be in the hands of the Central Purging Commission composed of the following comrades: Rudzutak (Chairman), Kaganovich, Kirov, Iaroslavskii, Shkiriatov, Ezhov, Stasova and Piatnitskii.

The Central Purging Commission appoints corresponding purging commissions for the direction of the purge in provincial and republican organizations. The provincial and republican commissions organize district purging commissions.

... Any cell may, at its general meeting, criticize any decision of a purging commission and lodge an appeal against such decisions, but may not cancel them. The members of the purging commissions must remember that they themselves are liable to prosecution for any infringement of Party democracy, for rudeness and tactlessness during the purge, as persons who compromise the purge.

The purge must be begun as from June 1, in Moscow, Leningrad, the Urals, Donetsk, Odessa, Kiev, Vinnitsa, Eastern Siberia, the Far East and White Russia, and completed not later than by the end of November of the current year.

The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
The Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)