Document

A list of shame

The document below is the official list of banned books appended to the Orgburo decree of 14 June 1935. In this decree, the Orgburo found that the removal of Trotskyist-Zinovyevist literature from libraries had spiralled into an “uncontrolled and unmanageable purge”, with books being looted and destroyed. It therefore set out a detailed procedure to bring the process under discipline. Under the decree, only the works included in the attached list were to be removed, and this was to be carried out under the joint supervision of Glavlit [*] and NKVD officials.

A 1927 Soviet poster by Ivan M. Mashkov: “What interests you most? There are plenty of books in the library on the subjects that appeal to you.”

Appendix to item #139, Politburo Protocol #27

NOT FOR PUBLICATION

LIST OF TROTSKYIST-ZINOVIEVIST COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY LITERATURE SUBJECT TO REMOVAL FROM PUBLIC LIBRARIES

(Confirmed by the Politburo of the CC of the VKP(b) [**] 16 June 1935)

1. Trotsky – All books

2. G. Zinoviev – Philosophy of the Age, 1925

3. G. Zinoviev – Leninism, 1926

4. G. Zinoviev – Leninism and NEP, 1926

5. G. Zinoviev – The History of the Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks [no date]

6. G. Zinoviev – The Theory of Marx and Lenin on War, 1930

7. G. Zinoviev – The Path of October, 1926

8. G. Zinoviev – We Are All Octobrists, 1924

9. G. Zinoviev – The Year of the Revolution (February 1917-March 1918)

10. G. Zinoviev – N. Lenin, 1920

11. G. Zinoviev – From the History of Our Party, 1923

12. G. Zinoviev – Our Differences of Opinion, 1926

13. G. Zinoviev – Of Made-up and Genuine Differences of Opinion in Our Party, 1926

14. L. Kamenev – Kamenev and Zinoviev on the Middle Peasant, 1926

15. A. Shliapnikov – The Year 1917, 1927 and 1931, books 1, 2,3,4

16. A. Shliapnikov – On the Eve of the Year 1917, part 1,3d edition, 1924, parts 1 and 2

17. A. Shliapnikov – On the Eve of the Year 1917, 1920

18. M. I. Yavorsky – A Short History of the Ukraine, 1927

19. M. I. Yavorsky – Essays from the History of the Revolutionary Struggle in the Ukraine, 1927

20. G. Gorbachev – Two Years of a Literary Revolution, 1926

21. Preobrazhensky – The Twilight of Capitalism, 1931

22. Preobrazhensky – Economic Crises Under NEP [no date]

23. V. Nevsky – The History of the Russian Communist Party [RKP(b)], 1926

24. V. Bulakh – On Farm Laborers, 1929

25. V. Vardin – The Bolsheviks After October [no date]

26. P. Zalutsky – Questions Pertaining to Party Work and Link Organizers [no date]

27. N. Maiorsky and N. Elvov – Leninism and an Assessment of the October Revolution [no date]

28. A. Lunacharsky – Revolutionary Profiles, 1923

29. G. Safarov – Foundations of Leninism, 1924

30. G. Safarov – On the Matter of Our Stabilization, 1925

31. Zalutsky and Safarov – On State Capitalism and Socialism: A Reexamination, 1926

32. G. Safarov – Leninism as a Theory of the Development of the Proletarian Revolution, 1925

33. G. Safarov – The Peasant Question and Leninism [no date]

34. G. Safarov – Lenin's Theory of Imperialism, 1925

35. A. Slepkov – On the Propagation of Leninism in the Workers' Party School, 1926

36. V. Volosevich – Organizational Principles of Bolshevism, 1929

37. V. Volosevich – A Course in the History of the VKP(b), 1930

38. V. Volosevich – A Very Short History of the VKP(b), 1931

39. V. Volosevich – A Course in the History of the VKP(b), 1931

40. V. Volosevich – The Thirteenth Party Congress, 1928

41. V. Volosevich – Bolshevism During the Years of the World War [no date]

42. V. Astrov – Democracy Within the Party [no date]

43. The Ninth of January: A Collection [of Articles] with a Foreword by V. Friche, 1924

The list was ratified on 16 June 1935.

[*] Glavlit was the principal institution responsible for state censorship of publishing and the press in the Soviet Union. Founded in 1922, its full name was Gosudarstvennoe upravlenie po delam literatury i izdatel'stv (the State Administration for Literature and Publishing). It exercised ideological oversight over books, newspapers, archives, and even library catalogues, determining which works could be published, which were to be banned, and which were to be placed in “special storage”.

[**] The All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)

Source: J. Arch Getty ve Oleg V. Naumov, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks (1932-1939), Translated by Benjamin Sher, Yale University Press, New York, 1999, pp. 182-184.