The17th Congress of theAll-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (Russian:XVII съезд ВКП(б)), popularly known as theExecuted Congress (as the majority of those present at the Congress were arrested and executed during theGreat Purge) was held from 26 January to 10 February 1934. The congress was attended by 1,225 delegates with a casting vote and 736 delegates with a consultative vote, representing 1,872,488 party members and 935,298 candidate members.[1]
During the elections to the17th Central Committee Stalin received a significant number (over a hundred, although the precise number is unknown) of negative votes, whereas only three delegates crossed out the name of the increasingly popular, Stalin-aligned Leningrad party boss,Sergei Kirov. The results were subsequently covered up on Stalin's orders and it was officially reported that Stalin also received only three negative votes.[2]
During the Congress a group ofveteran party members approached Kirov with the suggestion that he replace Stalin as the party leader. Kirov declined the offer and reported the conversation to Stalin, as he was very much loyal to Stalin.
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In public, Stalin was acclaimed, not merely as the leader of the party, but as a towering, universal genius in every human sphere. All his former opponents spoke approvingly of him (other thanLeon Trotsky, who had been exiled in 1929), and pledged their total support to the party line.
In his speech to the 20th Party Congress,Nikita Khrushchev reported that "of the 139 members and candidates of the Central Committee who were elected at the 17th Congress, 98 persons, i.e., 70 per cent, were arrested and shot (mostly in 1937-1938)." In addition, Khrushchev said that "of 1,966 delegates [to the 17th Congress] with either voting or advisory rights, 1,108 persons were arrested on charges of anti-revolutionary crimes, i.e., decidedly more than a majority."[3]
At the congressRabkrin was dissolved and its functions passed to theSovnarkom'sPeople's Control Commission.
By the Decree of theCouncil of Labor and Defense of December 11, 1933, the Directorate of Road Construction of Eastern Siberia and the Far East (Daldorstroy) was created in the city ofKhabarovsk, with the task of constructing strategic highways according to the list of the government of the USSR, in the regions of Eastern Siberia and theSoviet Far East. The construction plans were announced at the 17th Congress, held in Moscow from January-February 1934, when theSecond Five-Year Plan for the development of the Soviet Union was adopted. In accordance with it, it was planned to build a Vladivostok-Khabarovsk highway, with a hard (gravel) surface, 600 kilometers long.
1. Reports byStalin (Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)),Mikhail Vladimirsky (Central Revision Committee).Rudzutak andManuilsky
2. Second five-year plan, speakers:Vyacheslav Molotov andValerian Kuybyshev
3. Organizational issues (party and Soviet construction), speaker:Lazar Kaganovich
4. Elections to the central organs of the Party, the Central Committee, theCentral Revision Committee, and theParty Control Commission.[4]
On 1 December 1934, after the results of the 17th Party Congress,Sergei Kirov was shot and killed byLeonid Nikolaev. The assassination of Kirov following the Congress would be a bellwether for theGreat Purge of 1937–1938.
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