"Harmful tendencies" were also evident at a conference of agronomists in March 1922. These professors of agronomy and economics passed a resolution favoring "abstract legality, above classes." People's Commissar of Health Semashko informed Lenin that at a congress of physicians the doctors had "praised the liberal zemstvo tradition in medicine and called for democracy and the right to print a publication of their own." A historian of the Cheka and the GPU states that during this period "anti-Soviet organizations, operating through the intelligentsia (professors, specialists, writers) carried on work among the student youth and among petit bourgeois and philistine elements, establishing bases of support in higher educational institutions, in the press, in literary circles, and in the cooperatives."88
In March 1922 Lenin wrote an article "On the Significance of Militant Materialism," in which he said that the "first and foremost duty of a Communist" is to declare "a systematic offensive against bourgeois ideology, philosophical reaction, and all forms of idealism and mysticism." In a letter to GPU head Dzerzhinsky, dated May 19, 1922, Lenin translated these philosophical terms into everyday language. He referred to the intellectuals, the "professors and writers," as "patent counterrevolutionaries, accomplices of the Entente,... spies and corrupters of the student youth."89 Some "professors and writers" were arrested, tried, and shot; others died of hunger. One researcher noted, "In the history of the Russian Academy of Sciences three fatal epidemics seem to have occurred: 1918—1923, 1929- 1931, 1936-1938. A unique feature of the first period was that many prominent Russian scientists and academicians froze or starved to death during that time. The historian cites obituaries published in the newsletter of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The obituary for the historian Lappo- Danilevsky, who died on February 7, 1919, noted: "He is the seventh victim torn from the ranks of full members of the academy since the end of May 1918." That the academy had slightly more than forty members at the time points up the extent of the catastrophe. Prominent scientists and academics continued to die, among them V. A. Zhukovsky, the founder of hydrodynamics and aerodynamics, the respected Orientalist B. A. Turaev, the great mathematician A. M. Lyapunov, the linguist A. A. Shakhmatov, and the theologian I. S. Palmov. In 1921 Lenin signed a decree on the "creation of favorable conditions for scientific work." Its aim was to save the life of Academician Ivan Pavlov, Russia's only Nobel laureate. The need for such a decree was eloquent testimony to the tragic situation in which Russian science found itself.
Lenin, in his May 19 letter to Dzerzhinsky, urged "thorough preparation" for a new method of repression aimed at the intelligentsia: the deportation of "the writers and professors helping the counterrevolution."91
In May 1922 Lenin also read the draft for the first Soviet penal code. He insisted that it was necessary to "put forward publicly a thesis that is correct in principle and politically correct (not just a narrow juridical thesis) that would explain the essence of terror, its necessity and limits, and the justification for it. The courts must not ban terror—to promise that would be deception or self-deception—but must formulate the motives underlying it, legalize it as a principle plainly, without any make-believe."92 He urged that "the application of the death sentence be extended... to all forms of activity by the Mensheviks, SRs, and so on."93 But his main contribution to the science of jurisprudence was the way he formulated the clause on "propaganda or agitation":
Propaganda or agitation which objectively assists that section of the international bourgeoisie which refuses to recognize the rights of the Communist system of ownership that has superseded capitalism, that section which is striving to overthrow the Communist system by violence, either by means of foreign intervention, blockade, or by espionage, financing the press, and similar means, is an offense punishable by death, which, if mitigating circumstances are proved, may be commuted to deprivation of liberty, or deportation.94
Lenin introduced the concept of objectively aiding the international bourgeoisie. In this way, as the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski put it, Lenin "laid the foundations for the system of law characteristic of totalitarianism, as opposed to the laws of a despotic system."95 In despotism the characteristic feature is the severity of the law. What is characteristic in a totalitarian system is the fictitious nature of the law. Lenin's contribution—the death penalty for views which might "objectively aid" the bourgeoisie—meant that the government could kill anyone it wished, anyone it disliked. Or if there were extenuating circumstances, it could send such persons to prison or labor camps or deport them. In reality, then, the law did not exist, nor did the penal code.
The first experiment in applying the new formula was the deportation of a large group of scientists, writers, doctors, and agronomists. On August 31, 1922, Pravda published an article entitled "A First Warning." Noting that "certain strata of the bourgeois intelligentsia have not accepted Soviet power," the newspaper reported that the "most active counterrevolutionary elements" among these strata had been arrested and sent into internal exile "in the northern provinces and some deported from the country" by a decree of the GPU. The deported professionals represented a very broad spectrum ("160 of the most active bourgeois ideologists").96 From the few available documents and memoirs it may be gathered that the Politburo decided to strike this blow at the intelligentsia on Lenin's initiative after singling out the most important centers of independent thought which in their opinion had to be paralyzed. Some names were provided (the list of philosophers was drawn up almost entirely by Lenin himself), but for the rest the initiative was left to the GPU and to influential party leaders and their retainers who might have personal scores to settle. The list of the proscribed was drawn up with one central aim in mind: to give the intelligentsia a warning, expelling the main troublemakers and intimidating the rest. This is why the list included some people against whom no complaint had ever been made and left out others who seemed to be prime candidates for deportation.
CHANGING LANDMARKS
Deportation from the country was a drastic measure, but compared to a death penalty handed down at a show trial, it was benign. The Soviet government could not, in 1922, risk shooting one or two hundred of the best-known Russian intellectuals; that might make too unfavorable an impression abroad. Another obstacle to mass execution was the shortage of skilled scientific and cultural personnel, whom the state needed, despite their unreliability.
In July 1921 there occurred an event which opened up new possibilities for the Communist party "on the ideological front" in relation to such skilled personnel. An anthology entitled Smena vekh (Changing landmarks) was published in Prague, giving distinctive shape to a movement that had first begun in the Soviet Republic, gained the active support of the Communist party—because to its members the party was coming to lose its bolshevist substance and to take on a nationalist character—then spread to the emigr6 community.