Dictated: Dictated over the telephone December 22, 1921
Published:
First published in 1959 in Lenin Miscellany XXXVI.
Printed from the secretary’s notes (typed copy).
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 42,
pages 369b-370a.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala and D. Walters
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2004).
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With regard to Zalutsky’s draft resolution on the Party purge I would like to make two remarks.
1) In section 3 §a Zalutsky proposes that enrolment into the Party be suspended for 6 months. I think this is wrong. I would propose, on my part, not to suspend enrolment, but to lay down stricter conditions, namely: a long term of probation. If an eighteen-month term for real workers is considered too long, it can be reduced, say, to nine, or even six months, as Trotsky proposes. In the case of such short terms, however, I think we should require a qualified majority in the bodies making enrolment decisions, for instance, that it should require a majority of not less than four-fifths to have the term of enrolment reduced, this four-fifths majority to be demanded not only from one Party body (the local cell making the admission), but from several bodies for the sake of mutual control (for example, from the Gubernia Party Committee in addition to the local cell, and so on). I would have nothing whatever against admission into the Party being made easier for genuine workers, but unless very strict conditions are laid down for determining who is to be considered a worker of large industry, we shall immediately find a mass of riff-raff crawling through the hole again. As regards Red Armymen, I think we should have stricter conditions, since, for one thing, most of them are not workers, but peasants, and secondly, these people are too young and need testing.
2) In Section 4 §a Zalutsky proposes a revision of the plans of work among the Young Communist League. I believe stricter conditions should be laid down on this point to make sure that the members of the Y.C.L. admitted to member ship of the Party have, first, really studied seriously and learnt something, and secondly, that they have a long record of serious practical work (economic, cultural, etc.).[1]
Lenin
[1] Lenin’s remarks on the draft resolution for the Eleventh Conference of the R.C.P.(B.) on the Party purge were taken into consideration by the drafting committee.
The conference discussed the results of the Party purge and adopted a resolution “On the Question of Strengthening the Party as a Result of the Verification of Its Membership”, which was drafted in its final version at a meeting of regional committees, regional bureaux and Gubernia Committees of the R.C.P. and endorsed by the Central Committee and the Eleventh Congress of the Party (see The C.P.S. U. in the Resolutions and Decisions of Congresses, Conferences and Plenary Meetings of the Central Committee, Part I, 1954, pp. 597-98).
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