An appeal from the workers of Motovilikha in Perm, defending Gavril Myasnikov after his expulsion from the Russian Communist Party. The original text can be found in Appendix 2 here.
Gavril Miasnikov, centre, with other Bolsheviks.
Having reviewed the theses of Comrade Myasnikov, we, the undersigned party members, find the following:
1. The declaration that Comrade Myasnikov’s theses are entirely “incompatible with the interests of the party” is the result of an unserious approach to the matter by the Organizational Bureau of the Central Committee, which evidently can, without much effort, deem any dissent harmful and “incompatible with the interests of the party.”
2. The prohibition on Comrade Myasnikov speaking out does not resolve the issues raised in his “memorandum” and the article “Painful Questions,” which confront communists in factories, plants, villages, and hamlets on an hourly basis.
3. Allowing criticism of the Central Committee’s line and defense of one’s own viewpoint only in a “discussion bulletin” indicates that the Central Committee is preoccupied with shielding and guarding party members from the penetration of these “harmful questions.”
4. We, the undersigned party members, share Comrade Myasnikov’s viewpoint and therefore insist that both Comrade Myasnikov and all of us who stand with him be granted freedom of speech and press within the party.
5. We regard the recall of Comrade Myasnikov from Motovilikha as yet another exile for his dissent and request that the Central Committee allow him to remain here in Motovilikha.
6. All repressions (exile, deprivation of the right to intraparty criticism and the right to defend one’s viewpoint, deprivation of electoral rights, etc., up to and including expulsion from the party) applied to Comrade Myasnikov, we consider and will continue to consider as repressions against us.
Comments
Nice stuff, is this a…
Nice stuff, is this a personal translation (i.e. without Google or other translation tools)? I was about to say, if we're translating Russian stuff, it would be great to do Miasnikov's The Material of Discussion (Diskussionnyi material) pamphlet. It was a pamphlet published by Miasnikov in November 1921 that included correspondence between him and Lenin, along with other items (e.g. his memorandum to the Central Committee, a pamphlet entitled Bol'nye voprosy (Vexed Questions), and more). It seems like a rather important historical document as far as left-communism or anti-Leninist communism in Russia is concerned. I don't have a Russian version of the pamphlet on hand at the moment, but I believe you can easily find one online somewhere.
These are also incidentally the texts I just referenced.
Adri, No, this is not a…
Adri,
No, this is not a personal translation but one from DeepL. I'll also try to look for the pamphlet that you mention. Apparently, in Russia there are apparently 54 volumes of files about activities of the Workers' Group, which must be very important. Also, I have been going through Красноярское общество "Мемориал" and noticed that "Обвинение в КРП" on description of a number of individuals translates to "Charged with Communist Workers' Party", so I'm assuming they might've been comrades of Myasnikov. Although I'm not too sure. Also, in the future I plan to translate works by Myasnikov that the KAPD had published which includes the manifesto of his group where the KAPD basically starts calling the Workers' Group as its sister organization in Russia.
On the translation, do you…
On the translation, do you go through and make any manual corrections after the machine translation?
I think we could definitely…
I think we could definitely use a translation tool, especially considering how much they've improved over the years. We just have to add a note about the translation's origin. I will also see if I can find the above-mentioned writings.
Indo wrote: Also, in the…
I think that document is just the German version of this manifesto here, so you probably don't have to bother with that. I can't recall if there was any introductory text that went along with the KAPD's version of the manifesto, but that could potentially be worth translating if it's something substantive.
Steven. wrote: On the…
I use whisperai for subtitling films, the results are pretty close but always need fine tuning.
No luck finding a Russian…
No luck finding a Russian version of Miasnikov's Discussion Material unfortunately. I could have sworn that I came across it. It's obviously available somewhere, whether in a physical archive or some other place, because I keep seeing people citing it. I did find this documentary biography by Nadezhda Alikina, however, which contains some of Miasnikov's writings starting on page 165. The "no. 5" item on pages 168-173 seems to be a lengthy letter from Miasnikov to Lenin, which is dated at the end of August 1921. If I'm not mistaken, this letter is possibly a reply from Miasnikov to Lenin's (completely repressive and anti-working-class) letter from 5 August 1921, so that could potentially be worth translating.