Vyacheslav Aleksandrovich Fisyukov,
Student, Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Use of Techniques of Repressive Oblivion as an Example of the legitimization of the Exclusion of L.D. Trotsky from the VKP(b)
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2022-1-8
This article considers a short but very eventful chronological interval, including a demonstration organized by the opposition in honor of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution and the decision to expel its leaders, G.E. Zinoviev and L.D. Trotsky, first from the Central Committee and then from the ranks of the Party. The main research focus is on Trotsky, because the series of crushing defeats, coupled with countless criticisms from various members of the majority faction, is a clear example of the rapid disavowal of opponent’s role in a political confrontation. In order to make sense of this flow of mutual insinuations one has to draw upon and compare the individual elements of the three typologies of oblivion: “selective” and “repressive” oblivion by A. Assman, categories of the repressive erasure in the Paul Connerton system and finally “sins of Suggestibility and Bias” from D. Schacter’s theory. As a source base the author used the stenographic report of the Joint Plenum of the Central Committee and Central Committee of the VKP(b) on October 21–23, polemical speeches of the opposition and majority faction, including those in the “Pravda” newspaper and “Bolshevik” magazine, grotesque depictions of the opposition in issues of “Krokodil”, and the correspondence of various Party members. The author concludes that Trotsky’s expulsion from the VKP(b) was the culmination of a transition from “selective” oblivion, i.e., the natural process of selective remembrance of past events, to “repressive” oblivion: the denial and falsification of “inconvenient” episodes and the use of flexible interpretations.
Publishing: 28/02/2022
The article has been received by the editor on 01.12.2021
How to cite: Fisyukov V.A. The Use of Techniques of Repressive Oblivion as an Example of the legitimization of the Exclusion of L.D. Trotsky from the VKP(b) // Historical Courier, 2022, No. 1 (21), pp. 77–88. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2022/ISTKURIER-2022-1-08.pdf]
Links: Issue 1 2022
Keywords: L.D. Trotsky, intraparty struggle in the VKP(b), repressive oblivion, selective oblivion, “repressive erasure”, the Sin of Suggestibility, the Sin of Bias, critical discourse analysis