Document 30

A. Stetsky on lack of vigilance among TASS workers, 28 May1933

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d . 608, ll. 140-141. Typed original.

To the Secretaries of TsK VKP(b)

To the Politburo of TsK KP(b)

CC: Comrades Doletsky, Bukharin, and the Director of RATAU, (Russkoe Agenstvo Telegrafnykh Agenstv Ukrainy [Russian Language Agency of the Telegraph Agencies of Ukraine]), Comrade Lakizo.

On May 21st in Izvestia appeared the following item:

"INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF TEACHERS

Kiev, May 20 (TASS) C An international congress of teachers attended by more than three hundred delegates took place in the Education Workers Club.

To loud cheers Comrades Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Kossior, Postyshev, Zatonsky, Thälmann, Dimitrov, and Stasova were elected to the honorary presidium of the congress.

Talks were given at the congress by representatives of revolutionary teachers in Germany, France, England, Poland, and Japan."

This news item was placed in Ekonomicheskaia Zhizn' (Economic Life), Komsomol'skaia Pravda (Komsomol Pravda), ">Za kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie'" ("For a Communist Education"), Tsentral'naia nemetskaia gazeta (Central German Gazette), Lesnaia Promyshlennost' (Lumber Industry).

In actual fact no international congress of teachers took place. It turned out that local organizations in Kiev, in tune with their usual way of bungling mass work condemned by TsK VKP(b), made an evening devoted to the status of teachers in capitalist countries out to be a "congress" at which individual lecturers spoke for each country, an honorary "congress" presidium was chosen, and so forth.

This small occurrence calls for special attention because it reveals a lack of fundamental vigilance among TASS workers and newspaper editors.

Under work circumstances such as these there is the danger that staff of our news agencies and newspaper editors, including even the editorial staff of an official state organ, might permit even provocative items planted by our enemies to be published.

TASS received the wire cited above from the Ukrainian News Agency (RATAU). RATAU had received the wire from Kiev from Rabinovich (not a party member), Secretary of RATAU's bureau in Kiev. Comrade Leshevov (not a party member), a RATAU editor, and Comrade Kryzhanovsky (not a party member) who approved the dispatch without verifying the report, sent it on to TASS. At TASS, the wire was edited by Comrade Gol'der (not a Party member), and Comrade Sushchenko (a Party member) approved1 its dispatch to newspapers also without verifying the facts of the report. In addition, this report was OK'd by NKID's (Narodnyi Komissariat Inostranykh Del [People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs]) publication office, whose employee Comrade Yaroshevsky (a party member) also did not verify the credibility of the information. Penalties for RATAU's mistake were imposed on Comrade Deshevov (fired) and Comrade Kryzhanovsky (reprimanded).

I consider the measures taken to be insufficient.

I request that the question of TASS's inside information and its ties with the news agencies of the Union's republics be raised by Orgburo.

I request that the Politburo TsK KP(b) of Ukraine investigate RATAU's scandalous actions.

I propose that Comrade Doletsky remove Comrade Gol'der from work at TASS and issue a severe reprimand to Comrade Sushchenko

Director of the Department of Culture and Propaganda of Leninism, TsK VKP(b)

A. Stetsky.