861.00 Party, All-Union Communist/194: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Henderson) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 20—10:05 a.m.]
19. 1. Today’s Moscow press published the text of lengthy resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party regarding the mistakes of the Party organizations in excluding members from the Party.
2. The resolution severely criticizes Party leaders for the manner in which they have permitted “mass exclusions from the Party” and in which they have [been?] assisting in conducting the purging campaign. It would appear from the wording of the resolution that in the past an accused Party member was presumed to be guilty until he could prove his innocence whereas in the future a burden is also imposed upon the accuser to furnish proof of the truth of his charges.
3. A number of both foreign and Soviet observers with whom members of the Embassy have discussed this resolution take the view that it may rank in importance with Stalin’s famous dizziness from success statement which in 1930 resulted in curtailing the excesses of the agricultural collectivization campaign and place the blame for these excesses on the shoulders of overzealous Party and governmental workers. In the present instance it is not charged that the excesses were the result of too much zeal, but rather of the distortion of the Party directives either by “masked enemies” or by “Communist careerists” in the Party. Care is taken in the resolution to absolve the Commissariat for Internal Affairs from any responsibility for the excesses of the Party purge. Since the secret police of this Commissariat have played a dominant role in the purging process it would appear that the Kremlin does not desire that the publication of the resolution result in any way in the lowering of the prestige of that Commissariat.
4. It is generally agreed that the resolution is a signal to those who have been carrying on the purge to curtail their activities in regard to the rank and file members of the Party. The strong condemnation of the actions of the Party officials who have been conducting the purge in the past would indicate that at least some of them will suffer the same treatment as that which they have administered to so many others.
5. It is as yet too early to state whether this resolution which concerns itself only with activities within the Party signifies the beginning of the end of the campaign of dismissals, arrests and executions which during the last year has affected every phase of Soviet life.