"It is true that Stalin carried out a series of purges, but before 1934 there were still many old Bolsheviks in the party, and the Stalinist system was to some extent inseparable from them. Although these personnel cannot devote themselves to political life, they are able to devote all their energy to the country's industrialization and national defense construction. But now, even these people will be kicked away as 'stumbling blocks', because Stalin cannot tolerate these people who have seen through his political ambitions and never forgot Lenin and Trotsky. ”

"In order to get rid of these people, Stalin organized another purge in 1935 under the pretext of censoring and renewing party cards. This purge is blatant and brazen in pointing the finger at the old party members. As a result, the leadership of the party committees at all levels has fallen into the hands of those new Mao leaders who have only recently joined the party, and most of these people are junior staff members of the Central Committee, who have assumed real power as soon as they came out. Even the work of the party committee of the huge State Political Security Bureau. In 1934, it was also in charge of a balayan who was only twenty-five years old and had only been a member of the party for more than a year. But it was this Barayaan who set up a purge committee in the Dzerzhinsky district of Moscow and kicked out many of the old Bolsheviks who had been imprisoned before the revolution from the party. ”

Then Stalin took another step. He announced the dissolution of the Old Bolshevik Association in May 1935. The members of this association are all veteran party members. Under the Tsarist regime, they were active in the underground revolutionary struggle and called on the working class to rise up for revolution. Lenin called these veterans a 'gold mine'. The majority of party members have great respect and love for them, and call them the 'conscience of the party'. The Old Bolshevik Association owned a publishing house and a printing house attached to it. The factory publishes all kinds of Marx's writings, as well as memoirs written by the members of the association to recreate the past events of the Bolshevik struggle for party building. Since most of these books were published during Lenin's lifetime, Stalin's name is naturally not mentioned, but the entire chapter recalls the revolutionary activities of other outstanding Bolsheviks. It was for this reason that Stalin hated these veterans of the Bolshevik Party. To know. Their memoirs fundamentally debunk many biographies of Stalin that were fabricated at Stalin's behest. Stalin believed. To achieve reading [***]. It is necessary to rewrite and beautify its own history. ”

"The members of the old Bolshevik Association were indignant to see how Stalin's 'theoreticians' brazenly falsified historical events, fabricated nonsense, and even blatantly falsified them directly to concoct demagogic biographies for Stalin, and how the 'theoreticians' dedicated such fakes to Lenin's 'closest comrade-in-arms'. They saw first-hand the ban on Party history published during Lenin's time, replaced by a new collection of sensual books extolling Stalin and denigrating other revolutionaries, even though they were the real leaders of the party. ”

"As time went on, Stalin's lust for power became more and more unquenchable. Later, the previous batch of books on the history of the new party was no longer satisfactory to him, and was banned from circulation, and was replaced by another batch of pamphlets, whose contents were so absurd and bizarre that they exaggerated and highlighted Stalin's role without limit, and even Lenin's image was overshadowed by it. But the old Bolsheviks would not forget the past, much less recite bizarre tales that praise the [***] of today's scholars, as schoolchildren do. These old men, who had spent their youth in Tsarist prison and exile, could not be bought by Stalin. It is true that some of them could not stop the evil forces of the world, fearing that they would be connected with their own children and grandchildren, and turned to Stalin in defiance of their conscience, but the vast majority of the rest insisted that Stalin was a traitor to the revolution. These people feel great anguish in their hearts when they see that the reactionary forces that have succeeded have buried one revolution after another. ”

"After seeing the arrest and exile of members of the association who had been members of the opposition, other members who were still free were forced to remain silent. They were powerless to resist Stalin's violence. Their rich experience in political struggle tells them that the revolution has both its best and its lowest ebbs. They secretly hoped that Stalin's [***] rule would be swept away by the new revolutionary wave, although they did not pay lip service to it. Under Stalin[***], who was touted by the whole people for his leadership and his achievements, this silence was in fact a sign of defiance. In addition to this, they gathered in associations at every opportunity to discuss events in the country, which prevented Stalin from creating false cases to cut off the older generation of leaders of the Bolshevik Party. ”

"After the dissolution of the Old Bolshevik Association, the old fighters of the party began to disappear one after another. They were sent to various cities to take up various positions, but only a small number actually reached the place of their appointment, and most were assigned to Siberia, after which they disappeared altogether. ”

A month after the dissolution of the Old Bolshevik Society, Stalin dissolved the Association of Prisoners and Exiles. The forced labor exile in Tsarist Russia was equivalent to the exile on Onishima Island in France at that time. The members of this association have all served this kind of hard labor. Stalin, as you know, did not enjoy the privilege of being a prisoner of political hard labor. ”

"From 1921 onwards, the Association of Political Prisoners published the magazine "Hard Labor and Exile", which reproduced the history of the Tsar's persecution of revolutionaries with prisons, hard labor and exile, as well as the history of the Russian revolutionary movement before 1917. Just take a look at the various issues of the magazine. It is a very important fact that the extraordinary leaders of the Russian revolutionary movement mentioned in the magazine were purged from the time of Stalin's tyranny. According to Stalin, these rebels, who had threatened the rule of the tsar, were now his personal enemies. ”

While these two associations were dissolved, many other organizations continued to operate and received significant funding from above. It was also during these years that many privileged clubs were established in the country, such as the Factory Director's Club, the Factory Director's Wife Club, the Car Owners' Club, and even the 'Western Dance Club'. Stalin believed that it was not only the old Bolsheviks who threatened his command. The younger generation who grew up in the [***] environment also made him panic. He knew very well that the revolutionary parties of the Tsarist period were mainly to mobilize young people to join the underground organization, because young people always had a high sense of justice and refused to submit to any form of oppression. ”

"Stalin was afraid of the youth, in a sense, more than of the old party members. Because Stalin was familiar with all the old party members, knew their way of thinking and their aspirations. Every veteran party member is on the 'blacklist' of the Party Central Committee and is closely monitored by the State Political Security Bureau. On the contrary, it is not so easy to find out the situation of the younger generation, to classify them, and to eliminate the revolutionaries among them. And at the critical moment. They may well become a real threat to Stalin's tyranny. Therefore, Stalin repeatedly ordered the Main Directorate of State Political Security to expand the intelligence network among the youth, especially among the youth of factories and universities. ”

Hearing Bukharin's words, Zhou Guansheng and Shuijing's faces showed a look of concern.

"All Stalin's attempts to control the youth with the help of the Komsomol and other mass organizations did not materialize. Across the country, many youth groups have spontaneously emerged, the participants of which want to find answers to a set of political questions that cannot be discussed publicly. However, the members of the group, who had no experience in underground activities, often fell into the hands of the Ministry of the Interior. ”

"The discontent of the people, of course, is also reflected in the Komsomol members, especially those who were born into workers' families. Young people watch with anguish as glaring inequalities rampate across the country; The majority of the common people are half-starved, while the bureaucratic privileges are extravagant. The sons and daughters of ordinary workers saw how their peers of 'noble' birth could enter attractive positions in the state apparatus while they themselves were being exploited by the hard jobs they were working forgery. The Komsomol members recruited to build the Moscow metro worked for ten hours a day, often waist-deep in snow. And those peers who came out of the upper echelons drove around Moscow in their father's car. The brutal exploitation of the members of the League who built the subway forced more than 800 young people to abandon their jobs, rush into the Central Office Building of the League, throw their League cards on the ground, and curse those in power. This incident greatly annoyed the head office. Stalin immediately called a meeting of the Politburo members. It is also necessary to take advantage of the plenum of the Moscow Party Committee to discuss this unprecedented strike of Komsomol members. ”

"Lack of freedom of speech and harsh suppression of dissenting opinions. All this forced the Komsomol members to form illegal groups to discuss disturbing events. But the repression by the rulers ensued immediately: between 1935 and 1936, several thousand members of the regiment were arrested. Concentration camps in exile in Siberia and the northern ice fields. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of young people who are considered unreliable by those in power are also sent to places where they are 'building new cities', even though those in power say they go there 'voluntarily'. ”

"Unable to trust the working class and other strata of the people, Stalin began to look for another pillar of society, one that could support him personally [***] in times of unforeseen circumstances. The most daring step he took in this regard was the restoration of the Cossack army, which had long been destroyed by the revolution. ”

"In tsarist times, the Cossacks were the fortress of the tsars and a weapon for suppressing the Russian revolutionary movement. The Cossack army was a reading force of the Russian army. Contains privileges and autonomy. The tsar himself was the commander-in-chief of the Cossack troops, the tsar's heir was its commander-in-chief, and successive Cossacks were able to begin to study military affairs from childhood, receive a strict monarchical education, and die of the revolution. The reactionary surnames of the Cossacks were deeply rooted, as if they were a special kind of people. The Cossacks were ordered to carry out encirclement and suppression, often drowning the spark of the revolution in a pool of blood. ”

"After the October Revolution, the Cossacks naturally sided with the counter-revolution. The White Bandit troops of Generals Kaletin and Krasnov were all Cossacks, and the Donko White Bandit Volunteer Army, led by Generals Alekseev and Kornilov, was also Cossacks. The Cossacks of the Don and Kuban were the main forces of General Denikin, and the Cossacks of Orenburg and the Urals were the main forces of Dutov. During the three-year civil war, the Cossack army fought the Red Army with unusual cruelty. the merciless killing of captured Red Army soldiers; All those suspected of sympathizing with the Soviet regime were also killed. ”

"Now Stalin restored the Cossack army and all its privileges, and even allowed the Cossack servicemen to continue to wear the kind of uniform worn in tsarist times. This move by Stalin coincided in time with the dissolution of the Old Bolshevik Association and the Association of Political Prisoners. This makes it abundantly clear that Stalin had essentially betrayed the revolution. ”

"I remember it was one day in December 1935. A solemn rally was held in the Bolshoi Theatre to celebrate the first anniversary of the establishment of the State Political Security Bureau. Suddenly, all the invited delegates were stunned: a group of Cossack soldiers appeared in the third compartment not far from Stalin. The sergeants wore Tsarist Russian uniforms adorned with gold and silver ribbons, which was quite provocative. To welcome them, the Moscow Song and Dance Troupe also performed a Cossack dance. Stalin and Ordzhonikidze also welcomed them with a gleeful applause. The delegates were not so much watching the dance as they were watching the resurrected Cossack officers of the Russian Imperial era. The former director of the State Administration of Political Security, who had served hard labor, turned around and muttered to his colleagues: 'As soon as I see these people, blood gushes all over my body. Look, that's what they did! As he spoke, he lowered his head and showed his comrades the scar on his head from the attack on the Cossack sabre. ”

"Stalin, like the tsar, needed the Cossacks to suppress the revolt of the discontented, because apart from the Cossacks, it was difficult to find a more reliable executioner for such a task." Zhou Guansheng sighed and said, "He is an out-and-out 'Red Tsar'. ”

"In September 1935, the Soviet people were astonished to read in the newspapers a political axe order: to restore in the Red Army the rank system that had been outlawed by the October Revolution. Prior to this, commanders of the Red Army were called by their positions: company commander, battalion commander, regiment commander, and so on. This new order has almost restored the old set of rank titles. Officers' salaries were doubled, and huge allocations were spent on the construction of clubs, sanatoriums and residences specifically for officers. And that's just the beginning. Then Stalin reinstated the rank of general (although the people had long hated the word "general") and the general's uniform. The garments had gold and silver prayer belts, almost exactly the same as those before the revolution. ”

"The introduction of a system of military ranks and the granting of privileges to officers was a move that wiped out the comradely ties that had been formed in the civil war and which had become mutilated in the army. Stalin's purpose was twofold: first, to give the Red Army commanders a material incentive to defend Soviet power. Second, to make it clear to the people that the revolution and all the promises made by the revolution have come to an end and that the Stalinist system has been fully consolidated. ”

"On April 7, 1935, the Soviet government issued a decree unprecedented in the history of world civilization. The Act stipulates that children over the age of 12 are guilty of offences such as pickpocketing. He was punished the same as Chengren, and was even sentenced to death. ”

"This terrible decree shocked the people. Stalin's court was known to be cold, ruthless, and unruly, and feared for their children, fearing that they could easily become false accusations or simply victims of a misunderstanding. Even those who held prominent positions in the Stalinist bureaucracy were apprehensive about this. ”

"The political axe has played a chilling trick to alleviate the terrible impression caused by this decree. It threatens that the new decree is mainly aimed at street children who steal farm granaries and train cars! ”

According to Marx's theory, the phenomenon of crime is caused by the social environment, and it is society that creates criminals. If this view is correct, it is a ruthless sentence against the entire Stalinist system, which has turned even children into criminals, and the number of criminals is such that the political axe has no choice but to extend the law against adult criminals to children. Eighteen years after the founding of the Soviet state, the fact that Stalin even imposed the death penalty on children is the most vivid picture of the true moral outlook of Stalin himself. ”

"I was abroad when this new decree was announced. The Soviet diplomats stationed abroad at that time were all indignant at this appalling decree issued by Stalin [***]. Stalin, however, said that he only sneered at the accusations of world public opinion. A Soviet ambassador told me that he had to advise his subordinates to cancel the press conference in order to prevent foreign journalists from asking questions about the humiliating decree. ”

"The leaders of the party organizations in various countries are in the same embarrassing situation. At the Congress of the Union of Teachers of French in August 1935, questions about this decree were posed to the representatives of the Party members. On the first day, unable to find a proper explanation, they simply denied that the Soviet Union would adopt such a decree. But the next day, when they had shown them the full text of the decree, they replied with a passage from the decree: 'In the [***] period, children are highly conscious, well-educated, and fully responsible for their actions." ’”

It is even more difficult to explain how such a humiliating decree could have been published without scruples, given that Stalin had always tried to keep the dark side of his society out of sight. We know. He even vehemently denied the existence of concentration camps in the Soviet Union, even though it was no secret to the whole world. Under his rule, millions of prisoners struggling in Siberian concentration camps were held behind bars without any trial, and the Soviet newspapers never mentioned anything about them. As for the death penalty in the Soviet Union, the fact is that behind every death sentence handed down and published by a court, at least hundreds of people were secretly executed. ”

"You only found out about this barbaric decree after you returned to Moscow, didn't you?" Zhou Guansheng thought for a while and asked.

(To be continued)