273. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 232 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 91–104), 285–6 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 3, d. 99, l. 157–60). This overturned the recent politburo decision on sown area expansion that Stalin had mandated (f. 17, op. 3, d. 895, l. 14: Aug. 7, 1932). Total sown area for the 1933 harvest would be 4.7 million hectares fewer than for 1932. Still, crop rotation would not be restored even by 1935, when it was practiced on just 50 percent of the sown area. Davies, “Stalin as Economic Policy-Maker,” 133–4.
274. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 180–1 (APRF, f. 3, op. 40, d. 81, l. 107–10), 182 (l. 105).
275. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 728, l. 38 (Aug. 16, 1932).
276. Also present were Dmitry Maretsky, editor-in-chief of Leningrad Pravda; Pyotr Petrovsky, first deputy editor of Pravda and a former editor of Red Star; and Alexander Sleptsov, a founding editor of Communist Youth League Pravda. Petrovskii, “Poslednii rot front,” 179–98.
277. Merridale, “Reluctant Opposition,” at 392; Merridale, Moscow Politics, 231–3; Starkov, Martem’ian Ryutin, 15–6; Cohen, Bukharin, 234. Ryutin had been born in Eastern Siberia, joined the Menshevik wing of the Russian Social Democrats in 1914, and, after the seizure of power, managed to get elected a delegate to the 10th Party Congress, while participating in the regime crackdown against the Kronstadt sailors. He had once been admonished for alluding to Lenin’s Testament at a ward party bureau session (“We know that Comrade Stalin has his faults, about which Comrade Lenin spoke”). “O dele tak nazyvaemogo ‘Soiuza Marksistov-Lenintsev,’” 108; Zagoria, Power and the Soviet Elite, 11; Iakovlev et al., Reabilitatsiia: politicheskie protsessy, 92–104. Around the time of the 16th Party Congress (June 1930), Stalin evidently offered him an opportunity to remain in the Central Committee in exchange for publicly denouncing the right; Ryutin demurred. “M. N. Riutin,” 156. Stalin wrote to Molotov of Ryutin (Sept. 13), “This counterrevolutionary scum must be completely disarmed.” Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 215. Eight days later, as if on cue, a denunciation came forward from a former official in the Krasnaya Presnya ward party committee who claimed that in Aug. 1930 Ryutin had called Stalin “a trickster and political intriguer who will lead the country to ruin.” Radzinsky, Stalin, 273 (quoting A. Nemov, without a reference). Hauled before the Central Control Commission, Ryutin denied the accusations (“99 percent of it is the most vile lie”) but did admit that back in 1928 “Comrade Stalin defamed me needlessly and had me thrown out of party work with a clever maneuver. I consider that dishonesty toward me on his part.” On Oct. 5, 1930, Ryutin was expelled from the party for “double-dealing” and right opportunism. On Nov. 13, the OGPU imprisoned Ryutin at Butyrka for counterrevolutionary agitation, but interrogators were unable to break him; Mężyński wrote to Stalin that Ryutin “poses as an innocent wronged.” Stalin, for reasons that remain obscure, ordered Ryutin’s release, which took place on Jan. 17, 1931. “O tak nazyvaemom ‘vsesoiuzom trotskistskom tsentre,’” 110–1; Starkov, “Delo Riutina,” 166–7); Starkov, Martem’ian Ryutin, 22–25; Anfert’ev, “Osobennosti preodoleniia I. V. Stalinym krizisnoi situatsii,” 2 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5282, l. 1). Radzinsky speculates that Ryutin was meant to be used to entrap other oppositionists. Radzinsky, Stalin, 273. See also Tel’man, “Riutin protiv Stalina” (purporting to quote additional instructions from Stalin to Mężyński). Ryutin got hired as an economist at an electrical production unit.
278. “Platforma ‘Soiuza Marksistov-Lenintsev’ (‘Gruppa Riutina’): ‘Stalin i krzis proletarskoi diktatury’” (1990, no. 8), 201–6, (no. 9), 172.
279. Ryutin had said back at the 12th Party Congress in 1923, when Trotsky attacked the leadership, that “a party cannot exist without its leaders. . . . A party that discredits its leaders is unavoidably weakened, disorganized. Parties are always led by leaders.” XII s”ezd RKP (b), 165. See also Getty and Naumov, Yezhov, 74; Starkov, “Trotsky and Ryutin,” 71. See also Joffe, Back in Time, 45; Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, 1928, no. 1; Poslednie novosti, Dec. 4, 1927; Starkov, Martem’ian Ryutin, 13; Pavlov [pseudonym], 1920-e: revoliutsiia i biurokratiia, 86–7: a manuscript in the Hoover Institution archives (“Pavlov file”); the identity of the author, a student at Moscow University in the 1920s, remains unclear.
