Document 54

Letter of denunciation from A. B. Krikunchik to TsK, 9 November 1937

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 100, d. 39599, l. 11. Original letter.

Doubtless when making appointments to the higher state posts, the Central Committee of the VKP(b) verifies comrades in the most thorough manner possible and the Committee is aware of all their past political activity down to the smallest detail. The remarks of Comrade Akaev while proposing the People's Commissar of Machine Construction, Aleksandr Davidovich Bruskin, as a candidate for election as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet published in issue N255 of the newspaper Izvestia for 1 November of this year force one to doubt that the TsK VKP(b) is aware of everything about A. D. Bruskin's political past. This circumstance has prompted me to send the TsK the present declaration.

Comrade Akaev's remarks are reported in the following way by the newspaper Izvestia:

"I am proposing as a candidate for election as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet People's Commissar of Machine Construction Aleksandr Davidovich Bruskin who has shown himself to be a staunch Bolshevik. In the revolutionary underground he actively fought for the Leninist-Stalinist cause. He participated in the liberation of Ukraine from Denikin's bands." In fact, in 1920 A. D. Bruskin was still an active Menshevik. He was a member of the Kharkov City Committee of Mensheviks. In September or October of 1920 he was arrested in Kharkov by the Cheka for being a Menshevik. And only in November or December of 1920 did he submit a request to the party organization of the Kharkov Technological Institute to become a member of VKP(b) and was made a VKP(b) member without going through the candidate probationary period.

I remember the facts I have cited because I attended that meeting of the Technological Institute's party organization, very small at that time, at which the matter of accepting A. D. Bruskin as a VKP(b) member was decided.