To the Moscow Provincial Commission for Verification and Purging of the Party
В МОСК. ГУБ. КОМИССИЮ ПО ПРОВЕРКЕ И ОЧИСТКЕ ПАРТИИ
Date: 1917-08
Source: ru:PSS/v54
Translated by: AI (Claude)

And what comrade Shapiro has stated about this period is extremely important, because it comes down to the fact that the Menshevik Shapiro began to speak out against the Mensheviks even before the October Revolution.

To my question specifically addressed to comrade Yenukidze about Shapiro, comrade Yenukidze answered me today that he worked together with him from April to August 1917 in the front commission of the old, Menshevik, All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Having become closely acquainted with comrade Shapiro during this period, comrade Yenukidze told me that he absolutely does not doubt the sincerity of comrade Shapiro and that he, Yenukidze, would certainly speak for keeping comrade Shapiro in the Party.

Comrade Yenukidze added to me such a characteristic fact that after the July Days of 1917, when the persecution of the Bolsheviks was raging furiously, Shapiro at a meeting defended the Bolsheviks so strongly that a member of the Central Committee of the Mensheviks, Vainshtein, almost threw himself at Shapiro with his fists.

It must be said that comrade Yenukidze, a Party member since 1898, belongs to that old Party guard which should properly verify and purge our Party.

Any testimony from the ranks of this old guard deserves, in my conviction, triple attention. Therefore it seems to me absolutely wrong that the district commission excluded comrade Shapiro without summoning comrade Yenukidze. And I petition before the Moscow Provincial Commission for the summoning of comrade Yenukidze, secretary of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in the case of Shapiro.

4) From comrade Shapiro's statement it is evident that he is the author of a pamphlet on the agrarian question published in 1907 under the pseudonym M. Shanin. As comrade Shapiro indicates, I analyzed this pamphlet in my book: "The Agrarian Program of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution of 1905-1907" (2nd ed., Petrograd, 1919, p. 84 and following)*. Criticizing Shanin for a number of Menshevik errors, I already then, more than ten years ago, noted his difference from the Mensheviks. For example, on page 85 of the mentioned book I noted that

* See Collected Works, 5th ed., vol. 16, pp. 193-413. Ed.

Shanin, "following, of course, the best intentions, defends confiscation against redemption"*.

This is a very essential point, proving that more than ten years ago comrade Shapiro stood out from the Mensheviks in a revolutionary direction.

5) My fears that the purging of the Party might give someone grounds for intrigue against comrade Shapiro—fears which I communicated to N. K. Krupskaya long before the purge began in the city of Moscow—find confirmation in the following circumstance. The district commission excludes Shapiro without summoning Yenukidze, without naming anyone who knows Shapiro closely from work and could bring facts of his unreliability. The commission calls Shapiro "unstable and wavering" without the slightest proof, without a shadow of concrete indications. Involuntarily the thought arises that someone's far from impartial review (from colleagues, for example) to the effect that this is a person "not one of us" or "alien," could have played a role in this.

Meanwhile, the cell of Glavpolitprosvet unanimously spoke in favor of Shapiro (as I learned from a communication of a cell member who was present at this meeting, comrade Anna Ivanovna Meshcheryakova, personally known to me as an old Party member even from the times of emigration). Shapiro headed one department of Glavpolitprosvet out of six departments; consequently, persons subordinate to him were a small minority at the cell meeting. No one has observed comrade Shapiro's daily work as closely as the cell of his institution. If this cell unanimously speaks in favor of Shapiro, the probative value of such a vote, it seems, should be recognized as very high. The probability that Shapiro fell victim to an intrigue that spread a rumor that he is a person "not one of us," without a shadow of proof, without any direct statement by even one Party member who had the opportunity to closely observe comrade Shapiro at work—this probability seems to me very high.

* See Collected Works, 5th ed., vol. 16, p. 265. Ed.