David Riazanov and the tragic fate of Isaak Rubin

Re­portedly, the Rus­si­an re­volu­tion­ary and pi­on­eer­ing Marx­o­lo­gist Dav­id Riazan­ov once in­sul­ted Stal­in to his face at a party meet­ing held dur­ing the mid-1920s. At the time, the ma­jor top­ic of de­bate was over the feas­ib­il­ity of so­cial­ism ab­sent a re­volu­tion in the West. In the years that fol­lowed Oc­to­ber 1917 the fledgling So­viet re­gime had sur­vived bru­tal win­ters, food short­ages, and an in­ter­na­tion­al block­ade while fight­ing off a bloody do­mest­ic coun­ter­re­volu­tion staged by dis­par­ate ele­ments of the old re­gime (the Whites) with the sup­port of for­eign powers (the Al­lied In­ter­ven­tion). The civil war was over, but re­volu­tion had else­where stalled out as the USSR’s bor­ders sta­bil­ized: the European pro­let­ari­at failed to over­throw the crisis-rid­den bour­geois gov­ern­ments of France, Ger­many, Eng­land, Aus­tria, and a host of oth­er na­tions. Now the ques­tion on every­one’s mind where the Bolshev­iks should go from there. Could so­cial­ism could be es­tab­lished in one (re­l­at­ively back­wards) na­tion?

Bukhar­in was the chief ar­chi­tect of the pro­gram for those who af­firmed that it could. His days as a left com­mun­ist be­hind him, Nikolai Ivan­ovich had mean­while suc­cumbed to prag­mat­ism and un­ima­gin­at­ive Real­politik. Mar­ket re­forms put in place by Len­in un­der the New Eco­nom­ic Policy after 1921 were to be con­tin­ued, and the trans­ition to “a high­er stage of com­mun­ist so­ci­ety” delayed, but its achieve­ment no longer de­pended on the spread of world re­volu­tion. Eager to make a name for him­self as a lead­ing the­or­eti­cian, Stal­in in­ter­jec­ted with some com­ments of his own. “Stop it, Koba,” Riazan­ov acerbically replied. “You’re mak­ing a fool of your­self. We all know the­ory isn’t ex­actly your strong suit.” Little won­der, then, that Stal­in would later want Riazan­ov’s head on a plat­ter; he’d in­flic­ted a deep nar­ciss­ist­ic wound. For as Trot­sky would later point out, in a two-part art­icle mock­ing “Stal­in as a The­or­eti­cian,” noth­ing was more im­port­ant to the Gen­er­al Sec­ret­ary than to be re­garded as well-versed in the sci­ence of dia­lect­ic­al ma­ter­i­al­ism.

Years earli­er, Riazan­ov had pro­voked the wrath of Len­in by fail­ing to pick a side in the fam­ous Men­shev­ik-Bolshev­ik split that res­ul­ted from the party con­gress in 1902. Oth­ers had also de­cided to re­main in­de­pend­ent, of course, most not­ably Lev Dav­idovich. But Riazan­ov’s re­fus­al to fall in with either tend­ency es­pe­cially en­raged Len­in. In 1909, the Bolshev­ik lead­er re­ferred to Trot­sky as “a despic­able ca­reer­ist and fac­tion­al­ist of the Riazan­ov-and-co. type” in a let­ter ad­dressed to Zinoviev. Goldendakh, as Riazan­ov was ori­gin­ally known, was con­sid­er­ably older than either Len­in or Trot­sky, however, be­com­ing a Marx­ist while abroad in 1889. He’d ini­tially been close with Plekhan­ov, but the two had a fall­ing out after the former ar­gued for a stricter stance to­ward party mem­ber­ship un­der the pen-name Riazan­ov in the pages of Bor’ba [Struggle]. Bor’ba, an émigré pa­per based out of Par­is, wasn’t all that far off from Len­in’s Iskra in terms of its line, and the two col­lab­or­ated in the lead-up to the 1902 con­gress. This is per­haps why Len­in scol­ded Riazan­ov so harshly after this point, ex­pect­ing him to rally to the side of the Bolshev­iks dur­ing the con­tro­versy. When Riazan­ov va­cil­lated, in­stead tak­ing on a “con­cili­at­ory” role, Len­in was deeply dis­ap­poin­ted.

Nev­er­the­less, upon re­turn­ing to Rus­sia in 1917, both men came to an agree­ment. Riazan­ov was stuck in Eng­land for a time, so Len­in ar­rived earli­er. From Feb­ru­ary on­ward, though, he be­longed to the Bolshev­iks. After the Oc­to­ber Re­volu­tion, Len­in ap­poin­ted Riazan­ov to a pres­ti­gi­ous re­search po­s­i­tion charged with pub­lish­ing the re­main­ing works of Marx and En­gels. Dur­ing the twen­ties and thirties, then, Riazan­ov headed the renowned Marx-En­gels In­sti­tute in Mo­scow. Un­der his su­per­vi­sion, schol­ars like the eco­nom­ist Isaak Ru­bin and the crit­ic Georg Lukács would un­cov­er a vast fund of archiv­al ma­ter­i­al. Carl Grünberg, first chair of the Frank­furt In­sti­tute for So­cial Re­search, co­ordin­ated the pho­tostat copy­ing of doc­u­ments still in the pos­ses­sion of Eduard Bern­stein and Karl Kaut­sky. In Vi­enna, a young Ro­man Ros­dol­sky would serve as a cor­res­pond­ent to the Mo­scow In­sti­tute from 1928 to 1931. Len­in fre­quently wrote to Riazan­ov with ques­tions about un­pub­lished let­ters and rare art­icles by the founders of sci­entif­ic so­cial­ism. “Do you at the lib­rary have a col­lec­tion of all the let­ters of Marx and En­gels from the news­pa­pers and sep­ar­ate magazines? For ex­ample, about ma­ter­i­al­ism in Leipzieger Volk­szei­tung (1894)?” Etc.

Vic­tor Serge in his 1947 Mem­oirs of a Re­volu­tion­ary re­called meet­ing Lukács and his wife “in 1928 or 1929 [Serge mis­re­membered the date; it must have been 1930 or 1931], in a Mo­scow street. He was then work­ing at the Marx-En­gels In­sti­tute; his books were be­ing sup­pressed, and he lived bravely in the gen­er­al fear. Al­though he was fairly well-dis­posed to­wards me, he did not care to shake my hand in a pub­lic place, since I’d been ex­pelled and a known Op­pos­i­tion­ist. Lukács en­joyed a phys­ic­al sur­viv­al, and wrote short, spir­it­less art­icles in Comin­tern journ­als.” Riazan­ov ap­par­ently joked, Lukács re­vealed in an in­ter­view dec­ades later, that he’d been “Comin­terned… that is, put out to non­polit­ic­al pas­ture.” Ques­tioned about Riazan­ov’s fate, Lukács glumly re­marked that “noth­ing fur­ther was known” after the 1931 con­vic­tion in the in­fam­ous Men­shev­ik tri­al. Serge de­tailed this a bit fur­ther in his Mem­oirs:

I was on very close terms with sev­er­al of the sci­entif­ic staff at the Marx-En­gels In­sti­tute, headed by Dav­id Bor­iso­vich Riazan­ov, who had cre­ated there a sci­entif­ic es­tab­lish­ment of note­worthy qual­ity. Riazan­ov, one of the founders of the Rus­si­an work­ing-class move­ment, was, in his six­tieth year, at the peak of a ca­reer whose suc­cess might ap­pear ex­cep­tion­al in times so cruel. He had de­voted a great part of his life to a severely scru­pu­lous in­quiry in­to the bio­graphy and works of Marx — and the Re­volu­tion heaped hon­or on him, and in the Party his in­de­pend­ence of out­look was re­spec­ted. Alone, he had nev­er ceased to cry out against the death pen­alty, even dur­ing the Ter­ror, nev­er ceased to de­mand the strict lim­it­a­tion of the rights of the Cheka and its suc­cessor, the GPU. Heretics of all kinds, Men­shev­ik so­cial­ists or op­pos­i­tion­ists of Right or Left, found peace and work in his In­sti­tute, provided only that they had a love of know­ledge. He was still the man who had told a con­fer­ence to its face: “I am not one of those Old Bolshev­iks who for twenty years were de­scribed by Len­in as old fools…”

I had met him a num­ber of times: stout, strong-fea­tured, beard and mus­tache thick and white, at­tent­ive eyes, Olympi­an fore­head, stormy tem­pera­ment, iron­ic ut­ter­ance… Of course his heretic­al col­leagues were of­ten ar­res­ted, and he de­fen­ded them, with all due dis­cre­tion. He had ac­cess to all quar­ters and the lead­ers were a little afraid of his frank way of talk­ing. His repu­ta­tion had just been of­fi­cially re­cog­nized in a cel­eb­ra­tion of his six­tieth birth­day and his life’s work when the ar­rest of the Men­shev­ik sym­path­izer Sher, a neur­ot­ic in­tel­lec­tu­al who promptly made all the con­fes­sions that any­one pleased to dic­tate to him, put Riazan­ov be­side him­self with rage. Hav­ing learned that a tri­al of old so­cial­ists was be­ing set in hand, with mon­strously ri­dicu­lous con­fes­sions fois­ted on them, Riazan­ov flared up and told mem­ber after mem­ber of the Polit­buro that it was a dis­hon­or to the re­gime, that all this or­gan­ized frenzy simply did not stand up and that Sher was half-mad any­way.

Dur­ing the tri­al of the so-called “Men­shev­ik cen­ter,” the de­fend­ant [Isaak] Ru­bin, one of Riazan­ov’s protégés, sud­denly brought his name in­to the case, ac­cus­ing him of hav­ing hid­den in the In­sti­tute doc­u­ments of the So­cial­ist In­ter­na­tion­al con­cerned with war against the So­viet Uni­on! Everything that was told to the audi­ence was en­gin­eered in ad­vance, so this sen­sa­tion­al rev­el­a­tion was in­ser­ted to or­der. Summoned on that very night be­fore the Polit­buro, Riazan­ov had a vi­ol­ent ex­change with Stal­in. “Where are the doc­u­ments?” shouted the Gen­er­al Sec­ret­ary. Riazan­ov replied vehe­mently, “You won’t find them any­where un­less you’ve put them there your­self!” He was ar­res­ted, jailed, and de­por­ted to a group of little towns on the Volga, doomed to pen­ury and phys­ic­al col­lapse; lib­rar­i­ans re­ceived the or­der to purge his writ­ings and his edi­tions of Marx from their stocks. To any­body who knew the policy of the So­cial­ist In­ter­na­tion­al and the char­ac­ter of its lead­ers, Fritz Adler, Vandervelde, Ab­ramovich, Otto Bauer, and Bracke, the fab­ric­ated charge was ut­terly and grot­esquely im­plaus­ible. If it had to be ad­mit­ted as true, Riazan­ov de­served to die as a trait­or, but they merely ex­iled him. As I write this book I learn that he died a couple of years ago (in 1940?) alone and cap­tive, nobody knows where.

Ru­bin did not give up his ment­or will­ingly. In­deed, his per­se­cu­tion at the hands of Stal­in’s men was pos­sibly even more bru­tal and tra­gic. From 1905 on, Ru­bin had been in­volved in the Marx­ist move­ment in Rus­sia as part of the Men­shev­ik fac­tion. Though not quite as en­cyc­lo­ped­ic as Riazan­ov, in terms of his breadth of know­ledge, Ru­bin was a far more ori­gin­al the­or­ist. You can down­load his Es­says on Marx’s The­ory of Value (1926), his lec­ture “On Ab­stract Labor” (1927), and his His­tory of Eco­nom­ic Thought (1928) by clicking here. But the sad story of what happened to Ru­bin between 1930 and 1937 is re­coun­ted be­low by his sis­ter, in testi­mony com­piled in 1971 by the dis­sid­ent his­tor­i­an Roy Med­ve­dev (who’s now a shill for Putin). This is then fol­lowed by an art­icle Trot­sky wrote in Riazan­ov’s de­fense upon learn­ing of his ar­rest in 1931.

Con­cern­ing my broth­er, Isaak Rubin

B.I. Rubina
Circa 1971

.
This is what I learned from my broth­er. When he was ar­res­ted on Decem­ber 23, 1930, he was charged with be­ing a mem­ber of the “Uni­on Bur­eau of Men­shev­iks.” This ac­cus­a­tion seemed so ri­dicu­lous that he im­me­di­ately sub­mit­ted a writ­ten ex­pos­i­tion of his views, which he thought would prove the im­possib­il­ity of such an ac­cus­a­tion. When the in­vest­ig­at­or read this state­ment, he tore it up right there. A con­front­a­tion was ar­ranged between my broth­er and Yak­ubovich, who had been ar­res­ted earli­er and had con­fessed to be­ing a mem­ber of the “Uni­on Bur­eau.” My broth­er did not even know Yak­ubovich. At the con­front­a­tion, when Yak­ubovich said to my broth­er, “Isaac Il’ich, we were to­geth­er at a ses­sion of the Uni­on Bur­eau,” my broth­er im­me­di­ately asked, “And where was this meet­ing held?” This ques­tion caused such a dis­rup­tion in the ex­am­in­a­tion that the in­vest­ig­at­or in­ter­rup­ted the ex­am­in­a­tion right there, say­ing, “What are you, a law­yer, Isaak Il’ich?”

My broth­er in fact was a law­yer, had worked in that field for many years. After that con­front­a­tion the charge that Ru­bin was a mem­ber of the “Uni­on Bur­eau” was dropped. Soon after, my broth­er was trans­ferred to Su­zdal. The cir­cum­stances of that trans­fer were so un­usu­al that they were bound to in­spire alarm and fear. On the sta­tion plat­form there was not a single per­son; in an empty rail­road car he was met by an im­port­ant GPU of­fi­cial, Gai. To all of Gai’s at­tempts at per­sua­sion my broth­er replied with what was really true: that he had no con­nec­tions with the Men­shev­iks. Then Gai de­clared that he would give him forty-eight hours to think it over. Ru­bin replied that he didn’t need forty-eight minutes…

The ex­am­in­a­tion at Su­zdal also failed to give the in­vest­ig­at­ors the res­ults they wanted. Then they put Ru­bin for days in the kartser, the pun­ish­ment cell. My broth­er at forty-five was a man with a dis­eased heart and dis­eased joints. The kartser was a stone hole the size of a man; you couldn’t move in it, you could only stand or sit on the stone floor. But my broth­er en­dured this tor­ture, too, and left the kartser with a feel­ing of in­ner con­fid­ence in him­self, in his mor­al strength… Then he was put in the kartser for a second time, which also pro­duced no res­ults. At that time Ru­bin was shar­ing a cell with Yak­ubovich and Sher. When he came back from the kartser, his cell­mates re­ceived him with great con­cern and at­ten­tion; right there they made tea for him, gave him sug­ar and oth­er things, and tried in every way to show their sym­pathy. Telling me about this, Ru­bin said that he was so amazed: these same people told lies about him and at the same time treated him so warmly.

Soon Ru­bin was put in­to sol­it­ary con­fine­ment; in those cir­cum­stances he was sub­jec­ted to every kind of tor­ment­ing hu­mi­li­ation. He was de­prived of all the per­son­al things he had brought with him, even handker­chiefs. At that time he had the flu and walked about with a swollen nose, with ul­cers, filthy. The pris­on au­thor­it­ies of­ten in­spec­ted his cell, and as soon as they found any vi­ol­a­tion of the rule for main­tain­ing the cell they sent him to clean the lat­rines. Everything was done to break his will… They told him his wife was very sick, to which he replied: “I can’t help her in any way, I can’t even help my­self.” At times the in­vest­ig­at­ors would turn friendly and say: “Isaac Il’ich, this is ne­ces­sary for the party.” At the same time they gave him night­time in­ter­rog­a­tions, at which a man is not al­lowed to fall asleep for a minute. They would wake him up, wear him out with all sorts of in­ter­rog­a­tions, jeer at his spir­itu­al strength, call him the “Men­shev­ik Je­sus.”

This went on un­til Janu­ary 28, 1931. On the night of Janu­ary 28-29, they took him down to a cel­lar, where there were vari­ous pris­on of­fi­cials and a pris­on­er, someone named Vas­ilyevskii, …to whom they said, in the pres­ence of my broth­er; “We are go­ing to shoot you now, if Ru­bin does not con­fess.” Vas­ilyevskii on his knees begged my broth­er: “Isaac Il’ich, what does it cost you to con­fess?” But my broth­er re­mained firm and calm, even when they shot Vas­ilyevskii right there. His feel­ing of in­ner right­ness was so strong that it helped him to en­dure that fright­ful or­deal. The next night, Janu­ary 29, they took my broth­er to the cel­lar again. This time a young man who looked like a stu­dent was there. My broth­er didn’t know him. When they turned to the stu­dent with the words, “You will be shot be­cause Ru­bin will not con­fess,” the stu­dent tore open his shirt at the breast and said, “Fas­cists, gen­darmes, shoot!” They shot him right there; the name of this stu­dent was Dorod­nov.

The shoot­ing of Dorod­nov made a shat­ter­ing im­pres­sion on my broth­er. Return­ing to his cell, he began to think. What’s to be done? My broth­er de­cided to start ne­go­ti­ations with the in­vest­ig­at­or; these ne­go­ti­ations las­ted from Feb­ru­ary 2 to 21, 1931. The charge that Ru­bin be­longed to the Uni­on Bur­eau had already been dropped in Mo­scow, after the con­front­a­tion with Yak­ubovich. Now they agreed that my broth­er would con­sent to con­fess him­self a mem­ber of a pro­gram com­mis­sion con­nec­ted with the Uni­on Bur­eau, and that he, Ru­bin, had kept doc­u­ments of the Men­shev­ik Cen­ter in his of­fice at the In­sti­tute, and when he was fired from the In­sti­tute, he had handed them over in a sealed en­vel­ope to [Dav­id] Riazan­ov, as ma­ter­i­als on the his­tory of the So­cial Demo­crat­ic move­ment. Ru­bin had sup­posedly asked Riazan­ov to keep these doc­u­ments for a short time. In these ne­go­ti­ations every word, every for­mu­la­tion was fought over. Re­peatedly the “con­fes­sion” writ­ten by Ru­bin was crossed out and cor­rec­ted by the in­vest­ig­at­or. When Ru­bin went to tri­al on March 1, 1931, in the side pock­et of his jack­et was his “con­fes­sion,” cor­rec­ted with the in­vest­ig­at­or’s red ink.

Ru­bin’s po­s­i­tion was tra­gic. He had to con­fess to what had nev­er ex­is­ted, and noth­ing had: neither his former views; nor his con­nec­tions with the oth­er de­fend­ants, most of whom he didn’t even know, while oth­ers he knew only by chance; nor any doc­u­ments that had sup­posedly been en­trus­ted to his safe­keep­ing; nor that sealed pack­age of doc­u­ments which he was sup­posed to have handed over to Riazan­ov.

In the course of the in­ter­rog­a­tion and ne­go­ti­ations with the in­vest­ig­at­or it be­came clear to Ru­bin that the name of Riazan­ov would fig­ure in the whole af­fair, if not in Ru­bin’s testi­mony, then in the testi­mony of someone else. And Ru­bin agreed to tell the whole story about the myth­ic­al pack­age. My broth­er told me that speak­ing against Riazan­ov was just like speak­ing against his own fath­er. That was the hard­est part for him, and he de­cided to make it look as if he had fooled Riazan­ov, who had trus­ted him im­pli­citly. My broth­er stub­bornly kept to this po­s­i­tion in all his de­pos­itions: Riazan­ov had trus­ted him per­son­ally, and he, Ru­bin, had fooled trust­ful Riazan­ov. No one and noth­ing could shake him from this po­s­i­tion. His de­pos­ition of Feb­ru­ary 21 con­cern­ing this mat­ter was prin­ted in the in­dict­ment and signed by Krylen­ko on Feb­ru­ary 23, 1931. The de­pos­ition said that Ru­bin handed Riazan­ov the doc­u­ments in a sealed en­vel­ope and asked him to keep them for a while at the In­sti­tute. My broth­er stressed this po­s­i­tion in all his state­ments be­fore and dur­ing the tri­al. At the tri­al he gave a num­ber of ex­amples which were sup­posed to ex­plain why Riazan­ov trus­ted him so much…

Put­ting the prob­lem in such a way ruined the pro­sec­utor’s plan. He asked Ru­bin point-blank: “Didn’t you es­tab­lish any or­gan­iz­a­tion­al con­nec­tion?” Ru­bin replied, “No, there was no or­gan­iz­a­tion­al con­nec­tion, there was only his great per­son­al trust in me.” Then Krylen­ko asked for a re­cess. When he and the oth­er de­fend­ants got to an­oth­er room, Krylen­ko said to Ru­bin: “You did not say what you should have said. After the re­cess I will call you back to the stand, and you will cor­rect your reply.” Ru­bin answered sharply: “Do not call me any more. I will again re­peat what I said.” The res­ult of this con­flict was that, in­stead of the agreed three years in pris­on, Ru­bin was giv­en five, and in his con­clud­ing speech Krylen­ko gave a dev­ast­at­ing char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion of Ru­bin like that of no one else. Every­one in­ter­ested in the case could not un­der­stand why there was so much spite and venom in this char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion.

Ru­bin set him­self the goal of do­ing everything in his power to “shield” Riazan­ov… At the tri­al the pos­sib­il­ity of de­fin­ing in this way his po­s­i­tion with re­spect to Riazan­ov gave Ru­bin a cer­tain mor­al sat­is­fac­tion. But these leg­al sub­tleties made little sense to any­one else. Polit­ic­ally, Riazan­ov was com­prom­ised, and Ru­bin was stricken from the list of people who have the right to a life worthy of man. Ru­bin him­self, in his own con­scious­ness, struck him­self from the list of such people as soon as he began to give his “testi­mony.” It is in­ter­est­ing what my broth­er felt when they took him back to Mo­scow from Su­zdal. When, sick and tor­tured, he was put in­to the sleigh, he re­membered, in his words, how self-as­sured and in­tern­ally strong he had been when he came to Su­zdal and how he was leav­ing mor­ally broken, des­troyed, de­graded to a state of com­plete hope­less­ness. Ru­bin un­der­stood per­fectly well that by his “con­fes­sion” he had put an end to his life as an hon­or­able, un­cor­rup­ted work­er and achiev­er in his chosen field of schol­ar­ship.

But that was not the main thing; the main thing was that he was des­troyed as a man. Ru­bin un­der­stood per­fectly well what re­per­cus­sions his con­fes­sion would have. Why had Ru­bin borne false wit­ness against him­self? Why had he also named Riazan­ov? Why had he vi­ol­ated the most ele­ment­ary, most prim­it­ive con­cepts of hu­man be­ha­vi­or? Every­one knew with what mu­tu­al re­spect these two men were con­nec­ted, Ru­bin and Riazan­ov. Riazan­ov, who was con­sid­er­ably older than Ru­bin, saw in him a tal­en­ted Marx­ist schol­ar who had de­voted his life to the study and pop­ular­iz­a­tion of Marx­ism. Riazan­ov had trus­ted him un­re­servedly; he him­self was be­wildered by what had happened. Here I want to re­count an epis­ode, a very pain­ful one, the con­front­a­tion between Ru­bin and Riazan­ov. The con­front­a­tion took place in the pres­ence of an in­vest­ig­at­or. Ru­bin, pale and tor­men­ted, turned to Riazan­ov, say­ing, “Dav­id Bor­iso­vich, you re­mem­ber I handed you a pack­age.” Wheth­er Riazan­ov said any­thing and pre­cisely what, I don’t re­mem­ber for sure. My broth­er right then was taken to his cell; in his cell he began to beat his head against the wall. Any­one who knew how calm and self-con­trolled Ru­bin was can un­der­stand what a state he had been brought to. Ac­cord­ing to ru­mors, Riazan­ov used to say that he could not un­der­stand what had happened to Isaac Il’ich.

The de­fend­ants in the case of the “Uni­on Bur­eau” were sen­tenced to vari­ous terms of im­pris­on­ment, and all four­teen men were trans­ferred to the polit­ic­al pris­on in the town of Verkh­neur­al­sk. Ru­bin, sen­tenced to five years, was sub­jec­ted to sol­it­ary con­fine­ment. The oth­ers, who re­ceived terms of ten, eight, and five years, were placed sev­er­al men to a cell. Ru­bin re­mained in sol­it­ary con­fine­ment throughout his im­pris­on­ment. Dur­ing his con­fine­ment he con­tin­ued his schol­arly work. Ru­bin be­came sick in pris­on, and lip can­cer was sus­pec­ted. In con­nec­tion with this sick­ness, in Janu­ary, 1933. he was taken to Mo­scow, to the hos­pit­al in Bu­tyrskaia Pris­on. While in the hos­pit­al Ru­bin was vis­ited twice by GPU of­fi­cials who offered to make his situ­ation easi­er, to free him, to en­able him to do re­search. But both times Ru­bin re­fused, un­der­stand­ing the price that is paid for such fa­vors. After spend­ing six to eight weeks in the pris­on hos­pit­al, he was taken back to the polit­ic­al pris­on in Verkh­neur­al­sk… A year later, in 1934, Ru­bin was re­leased on a com­muted sen­tence and ex­iled to the town of Tur­gai, then an al­most un­pop­u­lated set­tle­ment in the desert. Aside from Ru­bin there were no oth­er ex­iles there.

After sev­er­al months at Tur­gai, Ru­bin was per­mit­ted to settle in the town of Ak­ty­u­b­insk… He got work in a con­sumer co­oper­at­ive, as a plan eco­nom­ist. In ad­di­tion he con­tin­ued to do his own schol­arly work. In the sum­mer of 1935 his wife be­came ser­i­ously sick. My broth­er sent a tele­gram ask­ing me to come. I went right away to Ak­ty­u­b­insk; my broth­er’s wife lay in the hos­pit­al, and he him­self was in a very bad con­di­tion. A month later, when his wife had re­covered, I went home to Mo­scow… My broth­er told me that he did not want to re­turn to Mo­scow, he did not want to meet his former circle of ac­quaint­ances. That showed how deeply he was spir­itu­ally shaken by all that he had been through. Only his great op­tim­ism that was char­ac­ter­ist­ic of him and his deep schol­arly in­terests gave him the strength to live.

In the fall of 1937, dur­ing the mass ar­rests of that time, my broth­er was again ar­res­ted. The pris­on in Ak­ty­u­b­insk was over­crowded, the liv­ing con­di­tions of the pris­on­ers were ter­ri­fy­ing. After a short stay in the pris­on, he was trans­ferred some­where out­side of Ak­ty­u­b­insk. We could find out noth­ing more about him.

The case of com­rade Riazan­ov

Leon Trotsky
March 1931

.
At the mo­ment we write these lines, we know noth­ing about the ex­pul­sion from the party of Riazan­ov ex­cept what is com­mu­nic­ated in the of­fi­cial dis­patches by Tass. Riazan­ov has been ex­pelled from the party, not for any dif­fer­ences with the so-called gen­er­al line, but for “treas­on” to the party. Riazan­ov is ac­cused — no more and no less — of hav­ing con­spired with the Men­shev­iks and the So­cial Re­volu­tion­ar­ies who were al­lied with the con­spir­at­ors of the in­dus­tri­al bour­geois­ie. This is the ver­sion in the of­fi­cial communiqué. What does not seem clear at first sight is that for Riazan­ov the af­fair is lim­ited to ex­pul­sion from the party. Why has he not been ar­res­ted and ar­raigned be­fore the Su­preme Tribunal for con­spir­acy against the dic­tat­or­ship of the pro­let­ari­at? Such a ques­tion must pose it­self to every thought­ful per­son, even to those who do not know the ac­cused. The latest communiqués say that Riazan­ov is named in the in­dict­ment by Krylen­ko. To be a de­fend­ant to­mor­row?

The Men­shev­iks and the So­cial Re­volu­tion­ar­ies rep­res­ent parties which seek the rees­tab­lish­ment of cap­it­al­ism. The Men­shev­iks and the So­cial Re­volu­tion­ar­ies are dis­tin­guished from oth­er parties of cap­it­al­ist res­tor­a­tion by the fact that they hope to give the bour­geois re­gime in Rus­sia “demo­crat­ic” forms. There are very strong cur­rents in these parties which be­lieve that any re­gime in Rus­sia, re­gard­less of its polit­ic­al form, would be more pro­gress­ive than the Bolshev­ik re­gime. The po­s­i­tion of the Men­shev­iks and the So­cial Re­volu­tion­ar­ies is coun­ter­re­volu­tion­ary in the most pre­cise and ob­ject­ive sense of the word, that is, in the class sense. This po­s­i­tion can­not but lead to at­tempts to util­ize the dis­con­tent of the masses for a so­cial up­ris­ing. The activ­ity of the Men­shev­iks and the So­cial Re­volu­tion­ar­ies is noth­ing but the pre­par­a­tion for such an up­ris­ing. Are blocs of the Men­shev­iks and the So­cial Re­volu­tion­ar­ies with the in­dus­tri­al bour­geois­ie ex­cluded? Not at all. The policy of the so­cial demo­cracy throughout the world is based upon the idea of a co­ali­tion with the bour­geois­ie against the “re­ac­tion” and the re­volu­tion­ary pro­let­ari­at. The policy of the Men­shev­iks and the So­cial Re­volu­tion­ar­ies in 1917 was en­tirely based upon the prin­ciple of the co­ali­tion with the lib­er­al bour­geois­ie, re­pub­lic­an as well as mon­arch­ic­al. The parties which be­lieve that there is no way out for Rus­sia oth­er than a re­turn to a bour­geois re­gime can­not but make a bloc with the bour­geois­ie. The lat­ter can­not re­fuse aid, in­clud­ing fin­an­cial aid, to its demo­crat­ic aux­il­i­ar­ies. With­in these lim­its everything is clear, for it flows from the very nature of things. But how could Com­rade Riazan­ov hap­pen to be among the par­ti­cipants in the Men­shev­ik con­spir­acy? Here we are con­fron­ted by an ob­vi­ous en­igma.

When Syrtsov was ac­cused of “double-deal­ing,” every con­scious work­er must have asked: How could an Old Bolshev­ik who, not so long ago, was put by the Cent­ral Com­mit­tee in­to the post of chair­man of the Coun­cil of People’s Com­mis­sars sud­denly be­come the il­leg­al de­fend­er of opin­ions which he re­futed and con­demned of­fi­cially? From this fact one could only es­tab­lish the ex­treme du­pli­city of the Sta­lin­ist re­gime, in which the real opin­ions of the mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment are es­tab­lished only by the in­ter­ven­tion of the GPU.

But in the Syrtsov case, it was only a mat­ter of a con­flict between the cent­rists and the right-wing­ers of the party, and noth­ing more. The Riazan­ov “case” is in­com­par­ably more sig­ni­fic­ant and more strik­ing. All of Riazan­ov’s activ­ity was mani­fes­ted in the realm of ideas, of books, of pub­lic­a­tions, and by that fact alone it was un­der the con­stant scru­tiny of hun­dreds of thou­sands of read­ers throughout the world. Fi­nally, and most im­port­antly, Riazan­ov is ac­cused not of sym­pathy for the de­vi­ation of the right-wing­ers in the party, but of par­ti­cip­a­tion in the coun­ter­re­volu­tion­ary con­spir­acy.

That nu­mer­ous mem­bers of the Com­mun­ist Party of the So­viet Uni­on, the­or­eti­cians and prac­ti­tion­ers of the gen­er­al line, are Men­shev­iks without know­ing it; that nu­mer­ous former Men­shev­iks, who have changed their names but not their es­sence, suc­cess­fully oc­cupy the most re­spons­ible posts (people’s com­mis­sars, am­bas­sad­ors, etc.); and that with­in the frame­work of the CPSU no mean place is oc­cu­pied, along­side the Besse­dovskys, the Agabekovs, and oth­er cor­rup­ted and de­mor­al­ized ele­ments, by dir­ect agents of the Men­shev­iks — on that score we have no doubts at all. The Sta­lin­ist re­gime is the breed­ing ground of all sorts of germs of de­com­pos­i­tion in the party. But the Riazan­ov “case” can­not be­set in­to this frame­work. Riazan­ov is not an up­start, an ad­ven­tur­ist, a Besse­dovsky, or any sort of agent of the Men­shev­iks. Riazan­ov’s line of de­vel­op­ment can be traced year by year, in ac­cord­ance with facts and doc­u­ments, art­icles and books. In the per­son of Riazan­ov we have a man who for more than forty years has par­ti­cip­ated in the re­volu­tion­ary move­ment; and every stage of his activ­ity has in one way or an­oth­er entered in­to the his­tory of the pro­let­ari­an party. Riazan­ov had ser­i­ous dif­fer­ences with the party at vari­ous times, in­clud­ing the time of Len­in or, rather, es­pe­cially in the time of Len­in, when Riazan­ov par­ti­cip­ated act­ively in the day-to-day for­mu­la­tion of party policy. In one of his speeches Len­in spoke dir­ectly of the strong side of Riazan­ov and of his weak side. Len­in did not see Riazan­ov as a politi­cian. Speak­ing of his strong side, Len­in had in mind his ideal­ism, his deep de­vo­tion to Marx­ist doc­trine, his ex­cep­tion­al eru­di­tion, his hon­esty in prin­ciples, his in­transigence in de­fense of the her­it­age of Marx and En­gels. That is pre­cisely why the party put Riazan­ov at the head of the Marx-En­gels In­sti­tute which he him­self had cre­ated. The work of Riazan­ov had in­ter­na­tion­al im­port­ance, not only of a his­torico-sci­entif­ic but also a re­volu­tion­ary and polit­ic­al char­ac­ter. Marx­ism is in­con­ceiv­able without the ac­cept­ance of the re­volu­tion­ary dic­tat­or­ship of the pro­let­ari­at. Men­shev­ism is the bour­geois-demo­crat­ic re­fut­a­tion of this dic­tat­or­ship. In de­fend­ing Marx­ism against re­vi­sion­ism, Riazan­ov, by all of his activ­ity, con­duc­ted a struggle against the so­cial demo­cracy and con­sequently against the Rus­si­an Men­shev­iks. How then is Riazan­ov’s prin­cipled po­s­i­tion to be re­con­ciled with his par­ti­cip­a­tion in the Men­shev­ik con­spir­acy? To this ques­tion there is no reply. And we think that there can­not be a reply. We are ab­so­lutely cer­tain that Riazan­ov did not par­ti­cip­ate in any con­spir­acy. But in that case, where does the ac­cus­a­tion come from? If it is in­ven­ted, then by whom and to­ward what end?

To this we can give only hy­po­thet­ic­al ex­plan­a­tions, based, nev­er­the­less, upon a suf­fi­ciently ad­equate ac­quaint­ance with the people and the cir­cum­stances. We will as­sist ourselves, moreover, with polit­ic­al lo­gic and re­volu­tion­ary psy­cho­logy. Neither the one nor the oth­er can be ab­ol­ished by Tass dis­patches.

Com­rade Riazan­ov dir­ec­ted a vast sci­entif­ic in­sti­tu­tion. He re­quired nu­mer­ous qual­i­fied per­son­nel as col­lab­or­at­ors: people ini­ti­ated in Marx­ism, the his­tory of the re­volu­tion­ary move­ment, the prob­lems of the class struggle, and those who knew for­eign lan­guages. Bolshev­iks hav­ing the same qual­it­ies oc­cupy, al­most without ex­cep­tion, re­spons­ible ad­min­is­trat­ive posts and are not avail­able for a sci­entif­ic in­sti­tu­tion. On the oth­er hand, among the Men­shev­iks there are nu­mer­ous idle politi­cians who have re­tired from the struggle or who, at least pre­tend to have re­tired. In the do­main of his­tor­ic­al re­search, of com­ment­ary, of an­nota­tion, of trans­la­tion, of im­port­ant cor­rec­tion, etc., Com­rade Riazan­ov based him­self to a cer­tain ex­tent on this type of Men­shev­ik in re­treat. In the in­sti­tute they played about the same role that the bour­geois en­gin­eers play in the State Plan­ning Com­mis­sion and the oth­er eco­nom­ic bod­ies. A com­mun­ist who dir­ects any in­sti­tu­tion, as a gen­er­al rule de­fends “his” spe­cial­ists, some­times even those who lead him around by the nose. The most il­lu­min­at­ing ex­ample of this is giv­en by the former chair­man of the State Plan­ning Com­mis­sion, mem­ber of the Cent­ral Com­mit­tee Krzhyzhan­ovsky, who for many years, foam­ing at the mouth, de­fen­ded against the Op­pos­i­tion the min­im­um pro­grams and plans of his saboteur-sub­or­din­ates. The dir­ect­or of the Marx-En­gels In­sti­tute felt im­pelled to as­sume the de­fense of his Men­shev­ik col­lab­or­at­ors when they were threatened with ar­rest and de­port­a­tion. This role of de­fend­er, not al­ways crowned with suc­cess, has not been prac­ticed by Riazan­ov only since yes­ter­day. Every­body, in­clud­ing Len­in, knew it; some joked about it, un­der­stand­ing per­fectly well the “ad­min­is­trat­ive” in­terests that guided Riazan­ov.

There is no doubt that cer­tain Men­shev­ik col­lab­or­at­ors, per­haps the ma­jor­ity, used the in­sti­tute to cov­er up their con­spir­at­ori­al work (con­ceal­ment of archives and doc­u­ments; cor­res­pond­ence, con­tacts abroad, etc.). One can ima­gine that Riazan­ov was not al­ways suf­fi­ciently at­tent­ive to the ad­mon­i­tions com­ing from the party, and showed an ex­cess­ive be­ne­vol­ence to­ward his per­fi­di­ous col­lab­or­at­ors. But we think that this is the ex­treme lim­it of the ac­cus­a­tion that might be leveled against Com­rade Riazan­ov. The books ed­ited by Riazan­ov are be­fore the eyes of every­body: there is neither Men­shev­ism nor sab­ot­age in them, as in the eco­nom­ic plans of Stal­in-Krzhyzhan­ovsky.

But if one ac­cepts the fact that Riazan­ov’s mis­take does not ex­ceed cred­u­lous pro­tec­tion of the Men­shev­ik spe­cial­ists, where then does the ac­cus­a­tion of treas­on come from? We know from re­cent ex­per­i­ence that the Sta­lin­ist GPU is cap­able of send­ing an of­ficer of Wran­gel in­to the ranks of ir­re­proach­able re­volu­tion­ists. Men­zh­in­sky and Ya­goda would not hes­it­ate for a mo­ment to at­trib­ute any crime what­so­ever to Riazan­ov as soon as they were ordered to do so. But who ordered it? Who would have gained by it? Who sought this in­ter­na­tion­al scan­dal around the name of Riazan­ov?

It is pre­cisely on this that we can ad­vance ex­plan­a­tions that are com­pel­lingly dic­tated by all the cir­cum­stances. In re­cent years Riazan­ov had with­drawn from act­ive polit­ics. In this sense he shared the fate of many old mem­bers of the party who, des­pair in their hearts, left the in­tern­al life of the party and shut them­selves up in eco­nom­ic or cul­tur­al work. It is only this resig­na­tion that per­mit­ted Riazan­ov to in­sure his in­sti­tute against dev­ast­a­tion in the whole post-Len­in­ist peri­od. But in the last year it be­came im­possible to main­tain one­self in this po­s­i­tion. The life of the party, es­pe­cially since the Six­teenth Con­gress, has been con­ver­ted in­to a con­tinu­al ex­am­in­a­tion of loy­alty to the chief, the one and only. In every unit, there now are agents fresh from the plebis­cite who on every oc­ca­sion in­ter­rog­ate the hes­it­ant and the ir­res­ol­ute: Do they re­gard Stal­in as an in­fal­lible chief, as a great the­or­eti­cian, as a clas­sic of Marx­ism? Are they ready on the New Year to swear loy­alty to the chief of the party — to Stal­in? The less the party shows it­self cap­able of con­trolling it­self through ideo­lo­gic­al struggle, the more the bur­eau­cracy is forced to con­trol the party with the aid of agent pro­vocateurs.

For many years Riazan­ov was able to hold his tongue very prudently — too prudently — on a whole series of burn­ing ques­tions. But Riazan­ov was or­gan­ic­ally in­cap­able of cow­ardice, of plat­it­udes; any os­ten­ta­tious dis­play of the sen­ti­ment of loy­alty was re­pug­nant to him. One can ima­gine that in the meet­ings of the in­sti­tute he of­ten flew in­to a pas­sion against the cor­rup­ted young­sters of that in­nu­mer­able or­der of young pro­fess­ors who usu­ally un­der­stand very little of Marx­ism but can ex­cel in false­hood and in­form­ing. This type of in­tern­al clique, no doubt, for a long time had its can­did­ate for the post of dir­ect­or of the in­sti­tute and, what is still more im­port­ant its con­nec­tions with the GPU and the sec­ret­ari­at of the Cent­ral Com­mit­tee. Had Riazan­ov al­luded some­where, even if only in a few words, to the fact that Marx and En­gels were only fore­run­ners of Stal­in, then all the stratagems of these un­scru­pu­lous young­sters would have col­lapsed and no Krylen­ko would have dared to make a com­plaint against Riazan­ov for his be­ne­vol­ence to­ward the Men­shev­ik trans­lat­ors. But Riazan­ov did not ac­cept this. As for the gen­er­al sec­ret­ari­at, it was un­able to make any fur­ther con­ces­sions.

Hav­ing ac­quired the power of the ap­par­at­us, Stal­in feels him­self weak­er than ever in­tern­ally. He knows him­self well and that is why he fears his own po­s­i­tion. He needs daily con­firm­a­tion of his role of dic­tat­or. The plebis­cit­ary re­gime is piti­less: it does not re­con­cile it­self with doubts, it de­mands per­petu­al en­thu­si­ast­ic ac­know­ledg­ment. This is why Riazan­ov’s turn came. If Bukhar­in and Rykov fell vic­tim to their “plat­form,” which it is true they have re­nounced two or three times, Riazan­ov fell vic­tim to his per­son­al hon­esty. The old re­volu­tion­ist said to him­self to serve while hold­ing one’s tongue with clenched teeth — good; to be an en­thu­si­ast­ic lackey — im­possible. That is why Riazan­ov fell un­der the justice of the party of the Yaroslavskys. Then Ya­goda fur­nished the ele­ments of the ac­cus­a­tion. In con­clu­sion, Riazan­ov was de­clared a trait­or to the party and an agent of the coun­ter­re­volu­tion.

In the Com­mun­ist Party of the So­viet Uni­on and in the West­ern parties of the Comin­tern, there are many who ob­serve with con­sterna­tion the activ­it­ies of the Sta­lin­ist bur­eau­cracy. But they jus­ti­fy their passiv­ity, say­ing: “What can be done? One must hold one’s tongue in or­der not to shake the found­a­tion of the dic­tat­or­ship.” This pos­sib­il­ism is not only cow­ardly, it is blind. In­stead of the found­a­tion of the dic­tat­or­ship, the ap­par­at­us of the of­fi­cial party is more and more be­ing con­ver­ted in­to an in­stru­ment for its dis­in­teg­ra­tion. This pro­cess can­not be ar­res­ted by si­lence. In­tern­al ex­plo­sions are oc­cur­ring more and more fre­quently, each time in a more threat­en­ing form. The struggle against the Sta­lin­ist re­gime is a struggle for the Marx­ist found­a­tion of a pro­let­ari­an policy. This can­not be won without party demo­cracy. The plebis­cit­ary re­gime of Stal­in by its very nature is not dur­able. So that it shall not be li­quid­ated by class en­emies, it is in­dis­pens­able to li­quid­ate it by the ef­forts of the ad­vanced ele­ments of the Com­mun­ist In­ter­na­tion­al. This is the les­son of the Riazan­ov “case”!