15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
The 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was held during 2–19 December 1927 in Moscow. It was attended by 898 delegates with a casting vote and 771 with a consultative vote.[1] The congress ended an inner-party struggle, as Leon Trotsky, Gregorii Zinoviev and other opponents of Joseph Stalin were expelled from the party.[2]
History
Background
In October 1927, the last
Repudiation of the United Opposition
The 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was convened in Moscow on 2 December 1927. This marked the first Soviet Communist Party Congress in two years, this despite the fact that party regulations called for annual meetings.[3] The gathering was retrospectively remembered as the "Congress of the Collectivization of Agriculture and of the Socialist Offensive on All Fronts" in the official party history of 1962, although a major part of time spent by the gathering related to internal party politics and the final ritualistic repudiation of the United Opposition of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and their supporters, effectively ending a two-year factional war.[3]
Oppositionists Christian Rakovsky and Lev Kamenev held brief speeches in front of the Congress.[4] Rakovsky's speech[5] was interrupted fifty-seven times by his opponents, including Nikolai Bukharin, Martemyan Ryutin, and Lazar Kaganovich.[4] Although, unlike Rakovsky, Kamenev used the occasion to appeal for reconciliation, he was nevertheless interrupted twenty-four times by the same group.[4]
Theses on Industrialization
The Central Committee adopted a set of theses regarding industrialization which had been prepared in October 1927 by the Central Committee.[6]
Election of a new Central Committee
The 15th Congress elected a new
Central Committee: 71 members, 50 candidates to Central Committee membership Central Revision Commission: 9 members Central Control Commission: 195 members
Footnotes
- ^ Fifteenth Congress of the CPSU (Bolshevik) in The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979)
- S2CID 257067749.
- ^ a b Moshe Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power: A Study of Collectivization. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1968; p. 198.
- ^ a b c Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Soviet State and Society Between Revolutions, 1918–1929, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 189-190.
- ^ Christian Rakovsky; Speech to the Fifteenth Party Congress, (December 1927); First published in Report on the Fifteenth Party Congress, Communist Party of Great Britain, 1928; at the Marxists Internet Archive
- ^ Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power, p. 199.
Further reading
- J.V. Stalin, The Fifteenth Congress of the CPSU(b), 2-19 December 1927, Works: Volume 10. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954 pp. 275–382.
External links
- Report of the Fifteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, described as "official report with decisions and discussions."
- Fifteenth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) at the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979)