The Declaration of 46 () was a secret letter sent by a group of 46 leading Soviet communists to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 15 October 1923. The declaration followed Leon Trotsky's letter, which was sent to the Politburo on 8 October and expressed similar concerns and thus laying the foundation for the Left Opposition within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union later that year. The vast majority of the signatories were executed during the Great Purge.
Background
Starting in mid-summer 1923, the Soviet economy ran into significant difficulties arising from the scissor crisis, which led to numerous strikes countrywide. Two secret groups within the Communist Party, Workers' Truth and Workers' Group, were uncovered and suppressed by the Soviet secret police.
In September to October 1923, the much anticipated communist revolution in Germany ended in defeat.
On 8 October 1923, Trotsky sent a letter to the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission which attributed the difficulties to the lack of intraparty democracy. Trotsky wrote:
In the fiercest moment of War Communism, the system of appointment within the party did not have one tenth of the extent that it has now. Appointment of the secretaries of provincial committees is now the rule. That creates for the secretary a position essentially independent of the local organization. [...] The bureaucratization of the party apparatus has developed to unheard-of proportions by means of the method of secretarial selection. There has been created a very broad stratum of party workers, entering into the apparatus of the government of the party, who completely renounce their own party opinion, at least the open expression of it, as though assuming that the secretarial hierarchy is the apparatus which creates party opinion and party decisions. Beneath this stratum, abstaining from their own opinions, there lies the broad mass of the party, before whom every decision stands in the form of a summons or a command.
One week later, the Declaration of 46 followed.
Text
"Declaration of the 46" to the Politburo of the CC RCP(b)
15 October 1923
Top Secret
TO THE POLITBURO OF THE CC OF THE RCP(b)
The extreme seriousness of the situation forces us (in the interests of our party, in the interests of the working class) to tell you openly that continuation of the policy of the majority of the Politburo threatens the entire party with grave misfortune. The economic and financial crisis beginning at the end of July this year, with all the political consequences flowing from it, including those within the party, has mercilessly revealed the inadequacy of the party leadership, both in the economic realm, and especially in the area of inner-party relations.
The haphazard, poorly thought through, and unsystematic decisions of the CC, which hasn't made ends meet in the economy, have led to a situation where, given the presence of undoubtedly major successes in the realm of industry, agriculture, finances and transport, - successes which were achieved by the economy of the nation spontaneously, not thanks to but in spite of the inadequate leadership, or, to be more precise, the absence of any leadership, - we are faced not only with the perspective of the halting of these successes, but with a severe crisis of the economy as a whole.