Timofei Vladimirovich Sapronov

The 'Group of Democratic Centralism' (decists), which Sapronov led alongside Vladimir Smirnov, Valerian Ossinsky, and others, was formed at the 8th Party Congress in March 1919. They argued that the democratic dimension of 'democratic centralism' had been gutted as the party rapidly bureaucratized and centralized during the Civil War. They charged that rigid control from above was strangling local initiative in industry, local administration, and the party apparatus, and that the party was substituting a 'dictatorship of the party' for the dictatorship of the proletariat. They demanded freedom of criticism and debate within the party, accountability and recall rights for elected officials, and the restoration of real authority to local party organizations. At the 9th Party Congress (March–April 1920) they won partial support from trade union leaders like Tomsky, but their proposals were voted down. During the trade union debate of late 1920–early 1921, Sapronov defended an independent position opposing the absorption of unions into the state apparatus. The 10th Party Congress in March 1921, convened under Lenin's leadership immediately after the Kronstadt uprising, adopted the resolution 'On Party Unity' banning all factional activity; the decists were effectively dissolved. Sapronov regarded this resolution as suffocating inner-party democracy and permanently entrenching bureaucratic centralism. He subsequently joined Trotsky's Left Opposition, formed the 'Group of 15,' and became one of the most penetrating critics of the Stalinist system.

The opposition group that issued the Platform of 46 in the autumn of 1923 brought together Trotsky's supporters, led by Preobrazhensky, and the Decists, led by Sapronov. Because the term 'Trotskyist' was not yet in use, these oppositionists were called 'supporters of Sapronov and Preobrazhensky', and the Decists played a key role in forming and running the 1923 Opposition.\n\nRussian Wikipedia records Sapronov as one of the leaders of the Left Opposition in the autumn and winter of 1923–1924. He spoke in the party press and at numerous meetings, and at the 13th Conference of the RCP(b) in January 1924. According to English Wikipedia, he signed the Declaration of 46 in October 1923 alongside Osinsky, Smirnov and Drobnis, and later adhered to the Left Opposition as a separate ultra-left grouping, helping lay the groundwork for the United Opposition in 1926.\n\nThe opposition lost the intra-party debate of 1923–24. The 13th Conference of the RCP(b) in January 1924 declared the oppositionists bearers of a 'petty-bourgeois deviation', triggering a new wave of party sanctions against them. After the 1923 defeat the Decists took a wait-and-see position and did not speak openly in the 1924 'Literary Discussion' or in the 1925 Stalin–Bukharin/Zinoviev clash. In 1925 the Pilipenko–Drobnis affair showed the leadership continuing to police any revival of organised opposition, and around this time some Decists, among them Osinsky, Maksimovsky and Bubnov, left the opposition.\n\nWhen the United Opposition moved to open speeches at enterprises in 1926, Sapronov joined in. In September 1926 he spoke over two days at a meeting of the Ryazan-Urals Railway workers, where the enterprise administration and party bodies confronted him. His own account records that district committee members denied him the floor and surrounded him with fists, and that the meeting ended with the unanimous adoption of its resolution and the singing of the Internationale. On 1 October he was barred from a party cell meeting at the Podmoskovnaya railway depot, and that night attended the Aviapribor factory meeting with Trotsky, Zinoviev, Smilga, Radek and Pyatakov, where the resolution for the 'general line' won 78 votes to 27 for the opposition.\n\nFollowing the opposition leaders' statement of 16 October 1926, in which Trotsky, Zinoviev and others admitted responsibility for factional steps and promised to cease the factional struggle, the Decists rejected it as capitulation and left the opposition bloc. In a 1927 circular letter Sapronov characterised the Trotskyist–Zinovievist group as turning into a 'tame, court opposition'; these conclusions formed the basis of the 1927 'Platform 15', the new programme of the Decists, who took the name 'Proletarian Opposition'. Gusev's study concludes that the rapprochement with the Trotskyists was brief: the Decists left the United Opposition bloc in October 1926 and evolved into the 'Proletarian Opposition', distancing themselves both from the party-state leadership and from the 'liberalism' and 'compromise' of the Trotskyists and Zinovievists.\n\nIn 1926 Sapronov formed his own group with V. M. Smirnov. According to Russian Wikipedia he was expelled from the party at the 15th Congress in December 1927, and in 1928, per the official case record, the 31 December 1927 sentence of the OSO under the OGPU Collegium, he and Smirnov were sentenced to three years of exile. The official 1990 Politburo commission case file likewise records that Sapronov and Smirnov were active opposition figures in 1923–1927, signed the 'Statement of the 15' in 1927, and were expelled for 'factional activity and organising illegal meetings', then sentenced to three years of exile by the same body on 31 December 1927.