“Left-wing” affinities and Trotskyist oppositionists among provincial party officials and rank-and-file communists in the Central Black Earth region during the late 1920s

I. Stalin’s triumph at the 15th Congress of the VKP(b), at which not only L. D. Trotsky and G. E. Zinoviev, but also all active figures of the anti-Stalinist opposition were excluded from the party, allowed him to launch the demolition of the New Economic Policy and the construction of socialism by command and repressive methods. The study of the struggle of Stalin and his supporters against the left-wing opposition reveals not only the process of formation of the Stalinist apparatus of power and the mechanism of making political and economic decisions, but also the confrontation of members of the Bolshevik Party, who were supporters of the left-wing opposition, to the central and regional party authorities. The article shows the acute phase of the internal party struggle in the late 1920s in the Central Black Earth Region. For the first time, based on archival documents of Trotskyist oppositionists secretly transported to the largest cities of Russia, and materials from the Voronezh District Control Commission of the VKP(b), the underground activities of provincial Trotskyists were reconstructed. Special attention is paid to the political views of the Trotskyists of Voronezh, the causes of the emergence of opposition groups of rank-and-file communists, their methods of activity, and the extent of the spread of “leftist” sentiments in the cities of the Central Black Earth Region. It is concluded that the organizers of the opposition groups in the Central Black Earth Region were party or Soviet leaders of the lower and middle levels. Thinking that the Politburo of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) was taking the wrong line and the country was led into a dead end, they applied Trotskyist positions to the surrounding reality. As the rank-and-file left-wing oppositionists, for the most part, had lower education and little party experience, the dissemination of their views was not widespread. In their confrontation with the local party leadership, the left-wing oppositionists raised the issue of the relationship between the Bolshevik Party’s governing bodies and ordinary party members, and sought to prevent the persecution of Communists for dissent.