More About Comrade Blumkin

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In Moscow only narrow party circles know of Stalin’s violence against Blumkin. From these circles rumors systematically are spreading that Blumkin ended his life by suicide. Thus, so far Stalin does not dare to admit openly that he executed the “counterrevolutionary” Blumkin.

It is extremely noteworthy that the world capitalist press by no means rushed to make use of the Blumkin affair. It reasons, completely correctly, that the defense of left Communists from Stalinist reprisals does not enter its circle of interests. All the more persistently and irreconcilably, then, is the Communist Left Opposition obliged to campaign to expose the Stalinist crimes.

In the last issue we reported that besides Blumkin, two more Oppositionists were shot: Comrades Silov and Rabinovich.Thus the question possesses exceptional political sharpness: only publicity of his crimes among the progressive workers of the whole world can stop Stalin’s bloody violence against the Bolshevik-revolutionists.

The ex-Communist Souvarine sped to Stalin’s aid, claiming that inside the GPU Blumkin allegedly carried out the instructions of the Opposition, and that the very existence of the GPU dictates that it must execute treacherous employees. Souvarine draws the conclusion that “in the thirteenth year of the revolution” (?) it is necessary to abolish the GPU.

We have no reason whatever to indulge in a theoretical debate with Souvarine. We consider it sufficient to limit ourselves to the statement that follows.

Comrade Blumkin never carried out, and, because of the very character of his work, never could have carried out in the GPU or through the GPU the instructions of the Opposition. It is enough to say that Blumkin spent a considerable part of the last period in the Far East, mainly in Mongolia.

The prohibition against workers of the GPU, and also workers of the war department, having other views besides the present views of the Central Committee, is equivalent to a deprivation of elementary party rights for Communists working in the above-named institutions. Only Stalinist bureaucrats could defend such vileness.

The GPU is an organ of self-defense of the proletarian dictatorship. Inasmuch as the October Revolution even in its thirteenth year is surrounded by a world of enemies, it cannot renounce such organs — the dictatorship cannot stop being a dictatorship.

Only liberals and Social Democrats who are becoming liberals could see the question from a formal viewpoint. We look at the question from a class viewpoint: in the name of what are the repressions adopted? Against whom are they adopted? Whom and what do they serve? It is a matter of revolutionary expediency, and not supra-class justice.

The murder of Blumkin and in general all the repressions against the Leninist opposition weaken the proletarian vanguard, undermine the party, and strengthen the class enemies. We conduct the battle against Stalin’s treacherous, cowardly murder of Blumkin in the name of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

And let this he known to friends and enemies!