Ryutin Affair

The Ryutin Affair (1932) was one of the last attempts to oppose the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin within the All-Union Communist Party.

Martemyan Ryutin was an Old Bolshevik and a secretary of the Moscow City Communist Party Committee in the 1920s. In December 1927–September 1930, he was a candidate (non-voting) member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and a supporter of the moderate ("Rightist") wing within the party led by the communist theoretician Nikolai Bukharin and prime minister Alexei Rykov. When the latter were defeated and demoted by Stalin in 1928–1930, Ryutin was demoted as well. In September 1930 he was expelled from the Communist Party; six weeks later, he was arrested for oppositionist views. He was released on 17 January 1931 and allowed to re-join the party, but remained silently opposed to Stalin's regime.

With Stalin now firmly in control of the Communist Party and all dissent punishable by immediate expulsion and exile, Ryutin decided to act in secret. In June 1932, he wrote a pamphlet entitled "Appeal to All Members of the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks)" and a nearly 200-page document entitled "Stalin and the Crisis of the Proletarian Dictatorship," which is more commonly known as Ryutin's Platform. In these documents Ryutin called for an end to forced collectivization ("peace with the peasants"), slowing down of the industrialization, a reinstatement of all previously expelled Party members on the left and on the right (including Leon Trotsky), and a "fresh start". Four of the Platform's thirteen chapters were devoted to examining the character of Stalin, whom Ryutin called "the gravedigger of the Revolution" and "the evil genius of the Party and the revolution". "Appeal" was even more inflammatory, arguing Stalin "must be removed by force" and urging its readers "to everywhere organize cells of the 'Union' to be joined under the banner of Leninism for the liquidation of the Stalin leadership."

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