View Single Post
Old May 14th, 2013 #28
Alex Linder
Administrator
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 45,756
Blog Entries: 34
Default

Harsh administrative measures to eradicate factionalism from party ranks were stepped up after 1917. Demonstration of ideological orthodoxy become crucial for survival. Evidence of the party's determination to root out factionalism and other heresies can be seen at the 10th Party Congress in 1921. The resolution 'Concerning Syndicalist and Anarchistic Deviation in Our Party' (16th March 1921) is particularly important:

Quote:
Apart from theoretical disloyalty and a fundamentally incorrect [nepravil'nyi] attitude towards the practical expertise initiated by Soviet power in the field of economic construction, the congress of the RKP, in the views of the aforementioned group and analogous groups and persons, sees colossal political incorrectness [gromadnaya politicheskaya nepravil'nost'] and an immediate political danger for the preservation of power on behalf of the proletariat (Resheniya, 1967, paragraph 5, 205, emphasis added).
Returning to ideas first expressed in How to Begin?[8], Lenin in a letter to Kurskii dated 17th May 1922, submitted an amendment to the Soviet Criminal Code. Free of all practical restraints, the theoretical struggle now gives way to physical extermination of class enemies. Terror reaches its politically correct apotheosis:

Quote:
Despite all the shortcomings of the draft, the fundamental idea is, I hope, clear: that is openly to bring forward a principled and politically correct[9] (and not merely narrowly juridical) statute, which sets out the essence and justification of terror, its necessity and limits.

The court must not eliminate terror -- to promise that would be self-deceit or a trick but is to put it on a sound principled foundation, to legitimise it, clearly, without any lies or evasions. It must be formulated as widely as possible, since only a revolutionary feel for justice and a revolutionary conscience will stipulate the terms of use as widely or as not (Lenin, 1964, 190, emphasis in the original).
________________________
[8] 'From a point of principle we have never renounced and cannot renounce the use of terror' (Lenin, 1946, 7).

[9] Richard Pipes translates the Russian original - politicheski pravdivoe - as politically correct (Pipes, 1994, 401) which I have retained since it is consistent with the ideological justification for the use of terror demanded by Lenin.

Last edited by Alex Linder; May 14th, 2013 at 09:49 PM.