The Beginning of a Wide Campaign to Identify the "Enemies" of the Party and the People
Organized Repressions in the Country
One should not fall into extremes when addressing history and evaluating its figures. Both the ostracism of Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev in previous years, and their excessive idealization in recent times distort historical truth. They sought their position along a different path of the country's development and fell victim to repressive policies, and they have been justifiably fully rehabilitated.
Organized repressions in the country began with the trial of the "industrial party" in 1930. This opened a whole series of political trials that intensified mass repressions against the intelligentsia in 1937-1938, although the "leader of the industrial party," Professor L. K. Ramzin, escaped a fatal fate. Sentenced on December 7, 1930, by the Supreme Court of the USSR to execution, which was later commuted to a ten-year prison term, Ramzin soon received leniency, did not serve time in prison at all, and was amnestied in February 1936. He was given the opportunity to work.
As a recognized specialist in the field of thermal engineering and a developer of steam turbines, he worked productively during the war, headed a laboratory at the energy institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, was awarded the Stalin Prize of the first degree, received the Order of Lenin, and became a Doctor of Technical Sciences without defense. All this was sanctioned by Stalin, and Ramzin's entourage suspected his role in the "industrial party" trial.
Therefore, when, at Stalin's direction, the Council of Ministers of the USSR allocated a member of the Academy of Sciences specifically for Ramzin, 24 academicians voted against and only one in favor (even in a secret ballot—an enormous risk, but the academicians stood firm, thereby expressing their attitude towards their "colleague").
What is the unprecedented reason for this leniency? It turns out that L. K. Ramzin participated in the spectacle of the "industrial party" trial, organized by the NKVD at the direction of I. V. Stalin, acknowledged himself as its leader, and implicated hundreds of other specialists. At the end of his life, Ramzin himself admitted: "This was a script from Lubyanka, and the master knows it."
Subsequently, this factor—the self-incrimination of oneself and others for the sake of preserving life—played its tragic role in the trials of political leaders.
There was an example before their eyes: confess, play a role "for the good of the party and socialism"—live. But life for confession was only promised, and after public trials, one could be treated without ceremony. If Ramzin never posed a political threat to Stalin, and by playing the role of the scapegoat leading the sheep to slaughter, he even proved useful by his example, those who posed a danger to the "master" still had to die, even if they took on the blame for the most senseless crimes.
A broad campaign began in the country to identify the "enemies" of the party and the people, "spies," and "saboteurs." They turned out to be innocent old members of the VKP(b), party, Soviet, economic, Komsomol workers, military personnel, figures of science and culture, ordinary communists, and non-party members, both in the center and in the regions.
Red Terror Declared in Response to White Terrorism
