Resumen de The Ryutin Affair and the “Terrorism" Narrative of The Purges
Described by one prominent Russian historian as “the only genuine conspiracy against Stalin," and by another as “the process that would lead to the Terror," the Ryutin Affair of the 1930s is inextricably tied to the events that surround the consolidation of Stalin's dictatorship. It serves as a common thread linking Stalin's repudiation of the NEP in 1928, the internal party resistance of the Right Opposition, the destruction of intra party dialogue on important policy questions, the systematic elimination of Stalin's perceived rivals within the leadership, and the public show trials that punctuated the Terror. And yet, detailed accounts of the Ryutin Platform and the political affair that followed are largely absent from the English-language historiography of the period. Rather, the Ryutin Affair, despite its key role in the story of Stalin's consolidation of power and radical turn to the Left after 1928, has gone largely underspecified in the literature. This paper seeks to contribute to a remedy by tracing the impact of the Ryutin Affair - predicated as it was on a 194-page philosophical denunciation of Stalin and his policies written and circulated within party circles by Moscow party official Martem'ian Ryutin - in the events surrounding Stalin's key claim during the period of the purges that leading figures of the Bolshevik leadership (Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Tomsky, Rykov and others) were engaged in a terrorist conspiracy against Stalin and his inner leadership. As one after another of Stalin's rivals are eliminated, and as one after another of the key protagonists in these events admit to terroristic plans against “Stalin and his clique," Ryutin steadfastly denied terroristic intent and refused to be a willing participant in the denunciations that were part and parcel of the purge trials. The paper reveals Stalin's determination to defend his “terrorism" narrative - a narrative rejected by the Politburo in 1932 when Stalin initially sought Ryutin's execution but resurrected successfully in 1936 as the basis of the Show Trials.
