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Martemyan Ryutin

January 29, 2023

Martemyan Nikitich Ryutin (Russian: Мартемья́н Ники́тич Рю́тин, tr. Martem'yán Nikítich Ryútin; 13 February, 1890 – 10 January, 1937) was a Russian Marxist activist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and a political functionary of the Russian Communist Party. Ryutin is best remembered as the leader of a pro-peasant political faction organized against Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in the early 1930s and as the primary author of a 200-page oppositional platform. Ryutin was arrested by the Soviet secret police, along with his co-thinkers, in what has come to be known as the Ryutin Affair. He was executed in January 1937 as part of the "Yezhovshchina" (Great Purge) conducted against political oppositionists and suspected economic "wreckers" and spies.

Martemyan Ryutin in 1936

During the final years of the Soviet Union, Ryutin was politically rehabilitated, and his lengthy critique of Stalin and his policies was published for the first time. The document saw its first edition in English translation in 2010.

Biography

Early years

Martemyan Nikitich Ryutin was born on February 13 [O.S. February 1] 1890 to a peasant family in Verkhne-Ryutino, a village in Irkutsk oblast in Siberia, then part of the Russian Empire.[1] He was descended from an Estonian rebel who was exiled to Siberia in 1830. He graduated from the Irkutsk Teachers' Seminary, and worked as a teacher and journalist. Politically radical from his early years, Ryutin was arrested and held in solitary confinement in Suzdal prison.[2]

Ryutin joined the Bolshevik Party in 1914.[1] He was a participant in both the February Revolution which overthrew Tsar Nikolai II in 1917 and the Bolshevik Revolution in November of that same year.[3] In 1917 he headed the local soviet in Harbin, a city which is today part of China.[3]

During the Russian Civil War which followed the 1917 revolution, Ryutin commanded a military group in the Irkutsk region.[3]

Political career

Following his time in the military, Ryutin became a full-time political functionary of the Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks), the RKP(b).[1] From 1920 to 1921 he was the head of the Irkutsk Guberniya Committee of the RKP(b).[3] In 1922 he was made Secretary of the Dagestan Oblast Committee of the party, a position which he retained through 1924, when he was transferred to Moscow.[3]

In the capital, Ryutin was first named the head of the Zamoskvoreche Raion Committee of the Communist Party.[4] He was promoted to head of the more important Krasnaya Presnya Raion Committee in 1927.[4]

Ryutin was elected as a delegate to the 14th Congress (December 1925) and 15th Congress (December 1927) of what was by then known as the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks), the VKP(b).[1] The latter elected him a candidate (non-voting) member of the Central Committee of the VKP(b).

Ryutin was a supporter of the moderate agrarian policies of the New Economic Policy and held views closely associated with such "moderate" party leaders as Nikolai Bukharin, Nikolai Uglanov, and Alexei Rykov. During the period when the 'moderates' were on the same side as Joseph Stalin against Leon Trotsky and the left, Ryutin held hard line views on party discipline. In 1923, he declared:

The party cannot be without leaders ... The Mensheviks and those petty-bourgeois groups with which we have come to blows, were always inclined to speak a great deal about democratism. We, however, have always subordinated the principles of democratism to revolutionary expediency. We will continue to do this in the future."[5]

During 1927, he organised strong arm squads to break up oppositionist meetings in the Krasnaya Presnya district.[6]

 
General Secretary of the All-Union Communist Party Joseph Stalin as he appeared in 1930.

With a new wave of grain procurement difficulties emerging in the fall of 1928, the Communist Party, headed by Joseph Stalin, took a radical turn towards forcing the sales of grain at below-market prices by the peasantry. This action drew the opposition of moderate Bolsheviks who opposed the use of force and coercion against the peasantry as the manifestation of the failed agrarian policies of War Communism.

The radical Stalin faction worked to capture key positions in the party to assure the implementation of the policies which they favored. At the September 24 and October 8 sessions of the Krasnopresnenskii raikom — gatherings in which Stalin himself participated — Ryutin came under fire for his alleged support of a "Right Opposition" led by Bukharin and Uglanov.[1] Ryutin garnered no favor by remarking at one session that Stalin had his faults, "which Lenin had talked about" — a pointed reference to Lenin's so-called "last will" which even drew criticism from his factional ally Uglanov.[7] By the end of the month, Ryutin had been removed from his position as Secretary of the city party committee.[1]

Ryutin was transferred to the position of Deputy Editor of Red Star, the official organ of the Red Army.[1] He retained his seat as a candidate member of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) at this time, however.[1]

In 1929, faced with bitter peasant opposition to forced requisitioning, the Stalin faction moved towards a radical restructuring of Soviet agriculture through a drive for collectivization. The Central Committee determined to send Ryutin back to his native village in Siberia to report on the progress of collectivization in the grain-producing areas of Siberia.[1]

As a child of a peasant family, Ryutin understood full well the unpopularity of the collectivization idea with the peasantry as a whole, and the potential for economic catastrophe represented by the program.[8] Upon his return to Moscow, Ryutin sharply criticized the collectivization program in a report to the Politburo.[8] This report drew Stalin's ire, but he nevertheless made use of Ryutin's analysis as part of his seminal article, "Dizzy with Success."[8] In January 1930, Ryutin published an article in Red Star which again publicly challenged the implementation of the collectivization program.[8]

In February 1930, the Soviet government created a new body, the All-Union Cinema Industry Combine or Soyuzkino, to plan and regulate the cinema industry across the whole of the USSR. As this body's first chairman, Ryutin defended the right of cinema organisations to take independent initiative, and persuaded the Politburo to delay bringing cinema industries in the various republics under central control.[9] film On March 1 of that same year, Ryutin was made a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of National Economy (VSNKh), one of the leading state economic planning organizations of the period.[10]

Unlike Bukharin and other leading members of the so-called "Right" in the Communist Party, Ryutin refused to recant his views and endorse the policies of Stalin and his associates.[11] The Stalin faction launched an effort to eliminate Ryutin from the Communist Party in the fall of 1930. Ryutin was accused of "propagandizing right-opportunist views" and the move was made not just from the Central Committee of the VKP(b), but to expel him from the VKP(b) completely.[11]

Despite having made an aggressive defense of his position before the Central Control Commission, the Communist Party's disciplinary body, Ryutin's expulsion was ultimately confirmed by the Politburo on October 5, 1930.[8]

The Ryutin Affair

Main article: Ryutin Affair

Now outside the party, Ryutin no longer had protection against the secret police (OGPU). On November 13, 1930, Ryutin was arrested by the OGPU, charged with having engaged in counterrevolutionary agitation.[12] Ryutin was held in jail for investigation but was ultimately released on January 17, 1931, for lack of sufficient evidence.[12] Upon his release, Ryutin was assigned work in as an economist for an electrical production unit.[12]

In the interim, the Soviet economy had gone from bad to worse. The grain shortage of 1928 had given way to complete disorganization of agriculture by the ill-conceived collectivization campaign of 1929–30, which — exacerbated by drought — had ultimately resulted in a massive famine in the Ukraine, Kazakhstan and parts of southern Russia in 1932 and 1933. The entire Soviet economy was in a state of crisis.[citation needed]

In March 1932 Ryutin was the principal writer of a 200-page document titled "Stalin and the Crisis of the Proletarian Dictatorship," the so-called "Ryutin Platform," which was self-prepared and secretly circulated from hand-to-hand among party members.[13]

The so-called Ryutin Platform attacked the "adventurist" tempos of industrialization that were part of the first five-year plan, charging that they had brought about a massive fall in the real income of the working class, high taxation, and an inflationary fall in the value of the currency.[14] In the countryside, Ryutin declared, expropriation through the exertion of brute force had created "appalling impoverishment of the masses and famine" and the flight of "all the young and healthy people" from the countryside.[14] Millions of surplus people cluttered the cities of the nation while the countryside starved, Ryutin charged.[14]

A second document, "Appeal to All Members of the VKP(b)," was also prepared and circulated on behalf of a faction called the Union of Marxists-Leninists.[13] In this document, Ryutin placed the blame for the Soviet Union's catastrophic economic situation on the doorstep of General Secretary of the Communist Party Joseph Stalin, writing:

"The party and the dictatorship of the proletariat have been led into an unknown blind alley by Stalin and his retinue and are now living through a mortally dangerous crisis. With the help of deception and slander, with the help of unbelievable pressures and terror, Stalin in the last five years has sifted out and removed from the leadership all the best, genuinely Bolshevik party cadres, has established in the VKP(b) and in the whole country his personal dictatorship, has broken with Leninism, has embarked on a path of the most ungovernable adventurism and wild personal arbitrariness."[15]

It is unclear how many individuals read the so-called Ryutin Platform or even how many knew of its existence.[16] According to Russian historian Roy Medvedev, the opposition was organized by Ryutin with his friend P.A. Galkin and included a membership of "fifteen at most."[17] Outside of this small group, it seems that only a handful of party leaders were familiar with the content of the document, including most notably Nikolai Uglanov,[17] According to his widow, Nikolai Bukharin was not aware of the document or its content.[18]

What is clear is that when the secret police discovered the existence of the document, they took its appeal to "destroy Stalin's dictatorship" as a call for armed revolution.[16] On September 22, 1932, Ryutin was arrested and held for investigation.[13] At his first interrogation, held September 24, Ryutin confirmed that he had been politically opposed to Stalin and his policies since 1928.[13] On September 27, the Central Control Commission decided to expel 14 members of the party due to their alleged connection with Ryutin's factional group.[13]

At a second investigative hearing, conducted September 28, Ryutin acknowledged authorship of the two key factional documents mentioned above and sought to take full responsibility for them, attempting to absolve his comrades from blame.[13] Investigations continued, however, and on October 9, 1932, the Politburo of the Communist Party voted to expel another 24 individuals from the party in light of their alleged connections to Ryutin and his group.[13]

On October 11, 1932, Pravda published a list of names of those expelled for participation in the Ryutin group.[19] The expulsions meted were for a period of one year.[19]

The Ryutin Platform was different from previous communist oppositional documents in that it was almost completely suppressed. As historian Catherine Merridale notes

"The official attitude towards the 1932 crisis was to pretend all was well; the press was full of accounts of successes and improvements. To have the truth so bluntly stated would have been very damaging. By 1932 it was possible to silence a critic like Ryutin. Opposition groups could no longer form easily, and they had no access to the media. So from the time of its appearance until 1988, little was known about the 'Ryutin Platform's' contents. No copy of it was available and scarcely any evidence for the existence of a 'Ryutin group' could be found. Stalin's policy in this case was 'not only to downgrade, crush, annihilate, but also to eliminate from memory, erase all evidence of the existence of the objectionable person.'"[20]

A three-person Collegium of the OGPU — consisting of GPU chairman Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, his successor Genrikh Yagoda, and future People's Commissar of Internal Affairs V. A. Balitsky — formally decided the charges against Ryutin.[19] While Stalin reportedly advocated a death sentence for Ryutin during Politburo deliberations, ultimately a 10-year sentence in prison resulted from his pro forma trial.[19] Ryutin was sent first to the Ural region before being returned to Suzdal, northeast of Moscow near the city of Vladimir.[19] In prison, he was thrown into the company of left wing oppositionists to whom he had dealt out such rough treatment five years earlier. A fellow prisoner, Ante Ciliga wrote:

Ryutin in prison! This same Ryutin who ... was the fiercest persecutor of Trotskyism, was now in prison, alone amongst his victims, delivered to their mercy. It was a great temptation. But since 1927 much water had flowed under the bridge, and it was no longer a question of 'widening the NEP' but of 'discussing the ultra-left adventure' of Stalin. The prison therefore received Ryutin coldly, but calmly.[21]

Late in 1932, a number of prominent leaders of opposition movements within the Communist Party, including Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, and Karl Radek, were called before the Central Control Committee and interrogated about whether they were aware of or had read the so-called Ryutin Platform.[22] Even knowing of the document and failing to report that knowledge was considered a crime.[22] Zinoviev and Kamenev were again expelled from the party for their failure to report the existence of the document.

Death and legacy

During the period of political paranoia and spy mania remembered to history as the Yezhovshchina of 1937–38, Ryutin was brought back to Moscow from Suzdal prison to be retried. The guards had to use force to move him because he refused to leave his cell voluntarily. Under interrogation, on 4 November 1936, he wrote a note saying: "Being absolutely certain of my innocence and finding the present indictment absolutely unlawful, arbitrary and partial, dictated solely by animosity and by a thirst for a new, this time bloody, reprisal, I have categorically refused and continue to refuse to plead guilty to the charges brought against me."[23]

On January 10, 1937 the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to death.[24] He was executed that same day.[24]

The rest of Ryutin's family also suffered brutal repression at the hands of the state, with his younger son Vissarion (born 1913) similarly retried and executed in a camp in Central Asia in 1937 and his older son Vassily (born 1910) shot to death in Lefortovo prison in that same year.[25] His widow was sent to a camp of the Gulag located in Karaganda, where she also perished.[25] Only a daughter, Lyubov Ryutina, survived the terror.

At the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Ryutin's daughter proposed the posthumous rehabilitation of her father and two brothers. This effort failed.[25]

On June 13, 1988, as a byproduct of the glasnost campaign of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the Supreme Court of the USSR formally rehabilitated Martemyan Ryutin.[25]

The so-called Ryutin Platform, long locked in the archives of the KGB, was published for the first time in 1990, serialized in five parts in the official journal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Izvestiya TsK KPSS (News of the CC of the CPSU).[26] The source of this publication was an official typescript of the original handwritten document; the original, if it still exists in the archives, remains to be located.[24]

The Ryutin Platform was published in English translation for the first time in 2010.[27]

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Sobhanlal Datta Gupta (ed.), The Ryutin Platform: Stalin and the Crisis of Proletarian Dictatorship: Platform of the "Union of Marxists-Leninists." Parganas, India: Seribaan, 2010; pg. xvi.
  2. ^ Borshchagovsky, Alexander (1990). "Ryutin and his Voice Must be Heard". Moscow News. 21: 16.
  3. ^ a b c d e V.A. Torchinov and A.M. Leontiuk, Vokrug Stalina: Istoriko-biografiicheskii spravochnik (Stalin's Circle: Historical-Biographical Handbook). St. Petersburg: Philosophical Department of St. Petersburg State University, 2000; pp. 419–420.
  4. ^ a b Catherine Merridale, Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin: The Communist Party in the Capital, 1925–32. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990; pg. 52.
  5. ^ Daniels, Robert Vincent (1969). The Consvience of the Revolution, Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 195–196. ISBN 0-671-20387-8.
  6. ^ Daniels. The Conscience... pp. 303–04.
  7. ^ Merridale, Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin, pg. 58 and footnote 66 on pg. 266.
  8. ^ a b c d e Gupta (ed.), The Ryutin Platform, pg. xvii.
  9. ^ Miller, Jamie (2010). Soviet Cinema, Politics and Persuasion under Stalin. London: I.B.Tauris. pp. 18–20. ISBN 978-1-84885-009-5.
  10. ^ R.W. Davies, M.J. Ilič, H. P. Jenkins, C. Merridale, and S.G. Wheatcroft (eds.), Soviet Government Officials, 1922–41: A Handlist. Birmingham: Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, 1989; pg. 369.
  11. ^ a b J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999; pg. 52.
  12. ^ a b c Gupta (ed.), The Ryutin Platform, pg. xviii.
  13. ^ a b c d e f g Gupta, The Ryutin Platform, pg. xix.
  14. ^ a b c Merridale, Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin, pg. 85.
  15. ^ Merridale, Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin, pg. 85, reprinting an excerpt published in Arkadii Vaksberg, "Kak zhivoi c zhivymi," Literaturnaia gazeta, June 29, 1988, pg. 13.
  16. ^ a b Getty and Naumov, The Road to Terror, pg. 53.
  17. ^ a b Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism. Revised and Expanded Edition. George Shriver, trans. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989; pg. 296.
  18. ^ Aware of his impending doom, Bukharin had his young wife memorize a document called "To a Future Generation of Party Leaders" in which he asserted "I knew nothing about the secret organizations of Ryutin and Uglanov. Along with Rykov and Tomsky, I always expounded my views out in the open." See: Anna Larina, This I Cannot Forget: The Memoirs of Nikolai Bukharin's Widow. [1988] Garry Kern, trans. New York: W.W. Norton, 1993; pp. 261–262.
  19. ^ a b c d e Gupta, The Ryutin Platform, pg. xx.
  20. ^ Merridale, Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin, pg. 84. At the end of this passage Merridale is quoting Arkadii Vaksberg, "Kak zhivoi c zhivymi," Literaturnaia gazeta, June 29, 1988, pg. 13.
  21. ^ Ciliga, Ante (1979). The Russian Enigma. London: Ink Links. p. 228. ISBN 0-906133-22-X.
  22. ^ a b Getty and Naumov, The Road to Terror, pg. 54.
  23. ^ Vaksburg, Arkadi (1989). Names That Have Returned. Moscow: Novosti Press Agency. p. 48.
  24. ^ a b c Gupta, The Ryutin Platform, pg. xv.
  25. ^ a b c d Gupta, The Ryutin Platform, pg. xxii.
  26. ^ Gupta, The Ryutin Platform, pg. ix.
  27. ^ See: Sobhanlal Datta Gupta (ed.), The Ryutin Platform: Stalin and the Crisis of Proletarian Dictatorship: Platform of the "Union of Marxists-Leninists." Pranab Ghosh and Susmita Bhattacharya, translators. Parganas, India: Seribaan, 2010; pp. 1–150.

Further reading

See also: Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union
  • Sobhanlal Datta Gupta (ed.), The Ryutin Platform: Stalin and the Crisis of Proletarian Dictatorship: Platform of the "Union of Marxists-Leninists." Pranab Ghosh and Susmita Bhattacharya, translators. Parganas, India: Seribaan, 2010. —Includes full text of the Ryutin Platform.
  • Boris A. Starkov, Martem'ian Riutin: Na koleni ne vstanu. Moscow: Politizdat, 1992.
  • I. Anfertev, Martem'ian Riutin. Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1990.
  • William A. Clark, “The Ryutin Affair and the ‘Terrorism’ Narrative of the Purges,” Russian History, vol. 42, no. 4 (2015): 377-424.

January 29, 2023
martemyan, ryutin, martemyan, nikitich, ryutin, russian, Мартемья, Ники, тич, Рю, тин, martem, yán, nikítich, ryútin, february, 1890, january, 1937, russian, marxist, activist, bolshevik, revolutionary, political, functionary, russian, communist, party, ryutin. Martemyan Nikitich Ryutin Russian Martemya n Niki tich Ryu tin tr Martem yan Nikitich Ryutin 13 February 1890 10 January 1937 was a Russian Marxist activist Bolshevik revolutionary and a political functionary of the Russian Communist Party Ryutin is best remembered as the leader of a pro peasant political faction organized against Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in the early 1930s and as the primary author of a 200 page oppositional platform Ryutin was arrested by the Soviet secret police along with his co thinkers in what has come to be known as the Ryutin Affair He was executed in January 1937 as part of the Yezhovshchina Great Purge conducted against political oppositionists and suspected economic wreckers and spies Martemyan Ryutin in 1936 During the final years of the Soviet Union Ryutin was politically rehabilitated and his lengthy critique of Stalin and his policies was published for the first time The document saw its first edition in English translation in 2010 Contents 1 Biography 1 1 Early years 1 2 Political career 1 3 The Ryutin Affair 1 4 Death and legacy 2 Footnotes 3 Further readingBiography EditEarly years Edit Martemyan Nikitich Ryutin was born on February 13 O S February 1 1890 to a peasant family in Verkhne Ryutino a village in Irkutsk oblast in Siberia then part of the Russian Empire 1 He was descended from an Estonian rebel who was exiled to Siberia in 1830 He graduated from the Irkutsk Teachers Seminary and worked as a teacher and journalist Politically radical from his early years Ryutin was arrested and held in solitary confinement in Suzdal prison 2 Ryutin joined the Bolshevik Party in 1914 1 He was a participant in both the February Revolution which overthrew Tsar Nikolai II in 1917 and the Bolshevik Revolution in November of that same year 3 In 1917 he headed the local soviet in Harbin a city which is today part of China 3 During the Russian Civil War which followed the 1917 revolution Ryutin commanded a military group in the Irkutsk region 3 Political career Edit Following his time in the military Ryutin became a full time political functionary of the Russian Communist Party bolsheviks the RKP b 1 From 1920 to 1921 he was the head of the Irkutsk Guberniya Committee of the RKP b 3 In 1922 he was made Secretary of the Dagestan Oblast Committee of the party a position which he retained through 1924 when he was transferred to Moscow 3 In the capital Ryutin was first named the head of the Zamoskvoreche Raion Committee of the Communist Party 4 He was promoted to head of the more important Krasnaya Presnya Raion Committee in 1927 4 Ryutin was elected as a delegate to the 14th Congress December 1925 and 15th Congress December 1927 of what was by then known as the All Union Communist Party bolsheviks the VKP b 1 The latter elected him a candidate non voting member of the Central Committee of the VKP b Ryutin was a supporter of the moderate agrarian policies of the New Economic Policy and held views closely associated with such moderate party leaders as Nikolai Bukharin Nikolai Uglanov and Alexei Rykov During the period when the moderates were on the same side as Joseph Stalin against Leon Trotsky and the left Ryutin held hard line views on party discipline In 1923 he declared The party cannot be without leaders The Mensheviks and those petty bourgeois groups with which we have come to blows were always inclined to speak a great deal about democratism We however have always subordinated the principles of democratism to revolutionary expediency We will continue to do this in the future 5 During 1927 he organised strong arm squads to break up oppositionist meetings in the Krasnaya Presnya district 6 General Secretary of the All Union Communist Party Joseph Stalin as he appeared in 1930 With a new wave of grain procurement difficulties emerging in the fall of 1928 the Communist Party headed by Joseph Stalin took a radical turn towards forcing the sales of grain at below market prices by the peasantry This action drew the opposition of moderate Bolsheviks who opposed the use of force and coercion against the peasantry as the manifestation of the failed agrarian policies of War Communism The radical Stalin faction worked to capture key positions in the party to assure the implementation of the policies which they favored At the September 24 and October 8 sessions of the Krasnopresnenskii raikom gatherings in which Stalin himself participated Ryutin came under fire for his alleged support of a Right Opposition led by Bukharin and Uglanov 1 Ryutin garnered no favor by remarking at one session that Stalin had his faults which Lenin had talked about a pointed reference to Lenin s so called last will which even drew criticism from his factional ally Uglanov 7 By the end of the month Ryutin had been removed from his position as Secretary of the city party committee 1 Ryutin was transferred to the position of Deputy Editor of Red Star the official organ of the Red Army 1 He retained his seat as a candidate member of the Central Committee of the VKP b at this time however 1 In 1929 faced with bitter peasant opposition to forced requisitioning the Stalin faction moved towards a radical restructuring of Soviet agriculture through a drive for collectivization The Central Committee determined to send Ryutin back to his native village in Siberia to report on the progress of collectivization in the grain producing areas of Siberia 1 As a child of a peasant family Ryutin understood full well the unpopularity of the collectivization idea with the peasantry as a whole and the potential for economic catastrophe represented by the program 8 Upon his return to Moscow Ryutin sharply criticized the collectivization program in a report to the Politburo 8 This report drew Stalin s ire but he nevertheless made use of Ryutin s analysis as part of his seminal article Dizzy with Success 8 In January 1930 Ryutin published an article in Red Star which again publicly challenged the implementation of the collectivization program 8 In February 1930 the Soviet government created a new body the All Union Cinema Industry Combine or Soyuzkino to plan and regulate the cinema industry across the whole of the USSR As this body s first chairman Ryutin defended the right of cinema organisations to take independent initiative and persuaded the Politburo to delay bringing cinema industries in the various republics under central control 9 film On March 1 of that same year Ryutin was made a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of National Economy VSNKh one of the leading state economic planning organizations of the period 10 Unlike Bukharin and other leading members of the so called Right in the Communist Party Ryutin refused to recant his views and endorse the policies of Stalin and his associates 11 The Stalin faction launched an effort to eliminate Ryutin from the Communist Party in the fall of 1930 Ryutin was accused of propagandizing right opportunist views and the move was made not just from the Central Committee of the VKP b but to expel him from the VKP b completely 11 Despite having made an aggressive defense of his position before the Central Control Commission the Communist Party s disciplinary body Ryutin s expulsion was ultimately confirmed by the Politburo on October 5 1930 8 The Ryutin Affair Edit Main article Ryutin Affair Now outside the party Ryutin no longer had protection against the secret police OGPU On November 13 1930 Ryutin was arrested by the OGPU charged with having engaged in counterrevolutionary agitation 12 Ryutin was held in jail for investigation but was ultimately released on January 17 1931 for lack of sufficient evidence 12 Upon his release Ryutin was assigned work in as an economist for an electrical production unit 12 In the interim the Soviet economy had gone from bad to worse The grain shortage of 1928 had given way to complete disorganization of agriculture by the ill conceived collectivization campaign of 1929 30 which exacerbated by drought had ultimately resulted in a massive famine in the Ukraine Kazakhstan and parts of southern Russia in 1932 and 1933 The entire Soviet economy was in a state of crisis citation needed In March 1932 Ryutin was the principal writer of a 200 page document titled Stalin and the Crisis of the Proletarian Dictatorship the so called Ryutin Platform which was self prepared and secretly circulated from hand to hand among party members 13 The so called Ryutin Platform attacked the adventurist tempos of industrialization that were part of the first five year plan charging that they had brought about a massive fall in the real income of the working class high taxation and an inflationary fall in the value of the currency 14 In the countryside Ryutin declared expropriation through the exertion of brute force had created appalling impoverishment of the masses and famine and the flight of all the young and healthy people from the countryside 14 Millions of surplus people cluttered the cities of the nation while the countryside starved Ryutin charged 14 A second document Appeal to All Members of the VKP b was also prepared and circulated on behalf of a faction called the Union of Marxists Leninists 13 In this document Ryutin placed the blame for the Soviet Union s catastrophic economic situation on the doorstep of General Secretary of the Communist Party Joseph Stalin writing The party and the dictatorship of the proletariat have been led into an unknown blind alley by Stalin and his retinue and are now living through a mortally dangerous crisis With the help of deception and slander with the help of unbelievable pressures and terror Stalin in the last five years has sifted out and removed from the leadership all the best genuinely Bolshevik party cadres has established in the VKP b and in the whole country his personal dictatorship has broken with Leninism has embarked on a path of the most ungovernable adventurism and wild personal arbitrariness 15 It is unclear how many individuals read the so called Ryutin Platform or even how many knew of its existence 16 According to Russian historian Roy Medvedev the opposition was organized by Ryutin with his friend P A Galkin and included a membership of fifteen at most 17 Outside of this small group it seems that only a handful of party leaders were familiar with the content of the document including most notably Nikolai Uglanov 17 According to his widow Nikolai Bukharin was not aware of the document or its content 18 What is clear is that when the secret police discovered the existence of the document they took its appeal to destroy Stalin s dictatorship as a call for armed revolution 16 On September 22 1932 Ryutin was arrested and held for investigation 13 At his first interrogation held September 24 Ryutin confirmed that he had been politically opposed to Stalin and his policies since 1928 13 On September 27 the Central Control Commission decided to expel 14 members of the party due to their alleged connection with Ryutin s factional group 13 At a second investigative hearing conducted September 28 Ryutin acknowledged authorship of the two key factional documents mentioned above and sought to take full responsibility for them attempting to absolve his comrades from blame 13 Investigations continued however and on October 9 1932 the Politburo of the Communist Party voted to expel another 24 individuals from the party in light of their alleged connections to Ryutin and his group 13 On October 11 1932 Pravda published a list of names of those expelled for participation in the Ryutin group 19 The expulsions meted were for a period of one year 19 The Ryutin Platform was different from previous communist oppositional documents in that it was almost completely suppressed As historian Catherine Merridale notes The official attitude towards the 1932 crisis was to pretend all was well the press was full of accounts of successes and improvements To have the truth so bluntly stated would have been very damaging By 1932 it was possible to silence a critic like Ryutin Opposition groups could no longer form easily and they had no access to the media So from the time of its appearance until 1988 little was known about the Ryutin Platform s contents No copy of it was available and scarcely any evidence for the existence of a Ryutin group could be found Stalin s policy in this case was not only to downgrade crush annihilate but also to eliminate from memory erase all evidence of the existence of the objectionable person 20 A three person Collegium of the OGPU consisting of GPU chairman Vyacheslav Menzhinsky his successor Genrikh Yagoda and future People s Commissar of Internal Affairs V A Balitsky formally decided the charges against Ryutin 19 While Stalin reportedly advocated a death sentence for Ryutin during Politburo deliberations ultimately a 10 year sentence in prison resulted from his pro forma trial 19 Ryutin was sent first to the Ural region before being returned to Suzdal northeast of Moscow near the city of Vladimir 19 In prison he was thrown into the company of left wing oppositionists to whom he had dealt out such rough treatment five years earlier A fellow prisoner Ante Ciliga wrote Ryutin in prison This same Ryutin who was the fiercest persecutor of Trotskyism was now in prison alone amongst his victims delivered to their mercy It was a great temptation But since 1927 much water had flowed under the bridge and it was no longer a question of widening the NEP but of discussing the ultra left adventure of Stalin The prison therefore received Ryutin coldly but calmly 21 Late in 1932 a number of prominent leaders of opposition movements within the Communist Party including Grigory Zinoviev Lev Kamenev and Karl Radek were called before the Central Control Committee and interrogated about whether they were aware of or had read the so called Ryutin Platform 22 Even knowing of the document and failing to report that knowledge was considered a crime 22 Zinoviev and Kamenev were again expelled from the party for their failure to report the existence of the document Death and legacy Edit During the period of political paranoia and spy mania remembered to history as the Yezhovshchina of 1937 38 Ryutin was brought back to Moscow from Suzdal prison to be retried The guards had to use force to move him because he refused to leave his cell voluntarily Under interrogation on 4 November 1936 he wrote a note saying Being absolutely certain of my innocence and finding the present indictment absolutely unlawful arbitrary and partial dictated solely by animosity and by a thirst for a new this time bloody reprisal I have categorically refused and continue to refuse to plead guilty to the charges brought against me 23 On January 10 1937 the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to death 24 He was executed that same day 24 The rest of Ryutin s family also suffered brutal repression at the hands of the state with his younger son Vissarion born 1913 similarly retried and executed in a camp in Central Asia in 1937 and his older son Vassily born 1910 shot to death in Lefortovo prison in that same year 25 His widow was sent to a camp of the Gulag located in Karaganda where she also perished 25 Only a daughter Lyubov Ryutina survived the terror At the 20th Congress of the CPSU Ryutin s daughter proposed the posthumous rehabilitation of her father and two brothers This effort failed 25 On June 13 1988 as a byproduct of the glasnost campaign of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev the Supreme Court of the USSR formally rehabilitated Martemyan Ryutin 25 The so called Ryutin Platform long locked in the archives of the KGB was published for the first time in 1990 serialized in five parts in the official journal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Izvestiya TsK KPSS News of the CC of the CPSU 26 The source of this publication was an official typescript of the original handwritten document the original if it still exists in the archives remains to be located 24 The Ryutin Platform was published in English translation for the first time in 2010 27 Footnotes Edit a b c d e f g h i Sobhanlal Datta Gupta ed The Ryutin Platform Stalin and the Crisis of Proletarian Dictatorship Platform of the Union of Marxists Leninists Parganas India Seribaan 2010 pg xvi Borshchagovsky Alexander 1990 Ryutin and his Voice Must be Heard Moscow News 21 16 a b c d e V A Torchinov and A M Leontiuk Vokrug Stalina Istoriko biografiicheskii spravochnik Stalin s Circle Historical Biographical Handbook St Petersburg Philosophical Department of St Petersburg State University 2000 pp 419 420 a b Catherine Merridale Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin The Communist Party in the Capital 1925 32 New York St Martin s Press 1990 pg 52 Daniels Robert Vincent 1969 The Consvience of the Revolution Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia New York Simon amp Schuster pp 195 196 ISBN 0 671 20387 8 Daniels The Conscience pp 303 04 Merridale Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin pg 58 and footnote 66 on pg 266 a b c d e Gupta ed The Ryutin Platform pg xvii Miller Jamie 2010 Soviet Cinema Politics and Persuasion under Stalin London I B Tauris pp 18 20 ISBN 978 1 84885 009 5 R W Davies M J Ilic H P Jenkins C Merridale and S G Wheatcroft eds Soviet Government Officials 1922 41 A Handlist Birmingham Centre for Russian and East European Studies University of Birmingham 1989 pg 369 a b J Arch Getty and Oleg V Naumov The Road to Terror Stalin and the Self Destruction of the Bolsheviks 1932 1939 New Haven CT Yale University Press 1999 pg 52 a b c Gupta ed The Ryutin Platform pg xviii a b c d e f g Gupta The Ryutin Platform pg xix a b c Merridale Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin pg 85 Merridale Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin pg 85 reprinting an excerpt published in Arkadii Vaksberg Kak zhivoi c zhivymi Literaturnaia gazeta June 29 1988 pg 13 a b Getty and Naumov The Road to Terror pg 53 a b Roy Medvedev Let History Judge The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism Revised and Expanded Edition George Shriver trans New York Columbia University Press 1989 pg 296 Aware of his impending doom Bukharin had his young wife memorize a document called To a Future Generation of Party Leaders in which he asserted I knew nothing about the secret organizations of Ryutin and Uglanov Along with Rykov and Tomsky I always expounded my views out in the open See Anna Larina This I Cannot Forget The Memoirs of Nikolai Bukharin s Widow 1988 Garry Kern trans New York W W Norton 1993 pp 261 262 a b c d e Gupta The Ryutin Platform pg xx Merridale Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin pg 84 At the end of this passage Merridale is quoting Arkadii Vaksberg Kak zhivoi c zhivymi Literaturnaia gazeta June 29 1988 pg 13 Ciliga Ante 1979 The Russian Enigma London Ink Links p 228 ISBN 0 906133 22 X a b Getty and Naumov The Road to Terror pg 54 Vaksburg Arkadi 1989 Names That Have Returned Moscow Novosti Press Agency p 48 a b c Gupta The Ryutin Platform pg xv a b c d Gupta The Ryutin Platform pg xxii Gupta The Ryutin Platform pg ix See Sobhanlal Datta Gupta ed The Ryutin Platform Stalin and the Crisis of Proletarian Dictatorship Platform of the Union of Marxists Leninists Pranab Ghosh and Susmita Bhattacharya translators Parganas India Seribaan 2010 pp 1 150 Further reading EditSee also Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union Sobhanlal Datta Gupta ed The Ryutin Platform Stalin and the Crisis of Proletarian Dictatorship Platform of the Union of Marxists Leninists Pranab Ghosh and Susmita Bhattacharya translators Parganas India Seribaan 2010 Includes full text of the Ryutin Platform Boris A Starkov Martem ian Riutin Na koleni ne vstanu Moscow Politizdat 1992 I Anfertev Martem ian Riutin Moscow Moskovskii rabochii 1990 William A Clark The Ryutin Affair and the Terrorism Narrative of the Purges Russian History vol 42 no 4 2015 377 424 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Martemyan Ryutin amp oldid 1089944513, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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