3 - The Verification of Party Documents of 1935: a case study in bureaucratic ineptitude

Summary

Party organizations must not transform the work of verifying party documents into a campaign of unmasking.

Smolensk City Party Committee, 1935

After a year and a half of confusion in party accounting (uchet), the leadership decided in October 1934 to conduct a general registration of membership that would eventually be known as the Verification of Party Documents, or proverka, of 1935. The proverka illustrates many of the problems in the party apparatus: the chaos in the records, delays, hesitant starts, bureaucratism, bungling, and the inability of the Central Committee to compel obedience in the localities. In response to poor implementation, the Moscow leadership would “go public” on the collapsed proverka and attack regional party leaders for bureaucratism and “opportunist complacency.”

The files and first hesitant steps

The decision to conduct a general verification of party records had been taken more than a year after the first revelations of disorder, and several weeks before the assassination of Kirov. The admission of new members into the party had been suspended since the beginning of the chistka in early 1933 so that such admissions would not interfere with the conduct of the purge, but the interminable process of the chistka and the disturbing situation in party records convinced the leadership not to allow any new admissions. The membership of the party was “frozen” from January 1933 until November 1936.

The first issue of the party's organizational journal for 1935 carried an article entitled “Again on the Irresponsible Attitude Toward Party Documents.” It referred to a Central Committee order of December 13, 1934, on improving the record system and ordering regional committees to report the results to the center.