“The deployment of criticism and self-criticism” during the execution of the resolution of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) about the work of the Tomsk Regional Committee

Here is a corrected and improved version of your text, which maintains your original meaning while enhancing its grammatical accuracy, flow, and academic tone. In our opinion, the issue of "the deployment of Bolshevik criticism and self-criticism" as a political practice of Stalinism is relatively understudied. Furthermore, studies of this political practice are essentially studies of power dynamics between the state and society. It is this aspect that renders our research relevant. The purpose of this article is to identify the role of criticism and self-criticism in the political and ideological activities of the late Stalinist period, using as a case study the implementation of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) resolution concerning the work of the Tomsk Regional Committee from 1950 to 1952. The primary source base for the study consists of archival documents from local party organizations, including regional, city, and district committees, as well as primary party organizations from Tomsk State University, the Tomsk Medical Institute, the Tomsk Pressure Gauge Factory, and the Tomsk Rubber Shoe Factory. Additional sources include press materials from the newspapers Krasnoye Znamya and Izvestiya, as well as the unpublished memoirs of Krasnoye Znamya's chief editor, Vladimir Kuzmichev. The authors examine the genesis and ideological basis of "Bolshevik criticism and self-criticism" as a method of Stalinist policy and present various scholarly perspectives on the issue. In the authors' view, criticism and self-criticism in the late 1930s were intimately connected with political repressions and social conflict within Soviet society. A new iteration of "the deployment of criticism and self-criticism" commenced after the war. According to the authors' perspective, the Stalinist government and central authorities deployed this practice to improve the performance of local authorities - in this specific case, the Tomsk Regional Committee of the Communist Party. However, at the grassroots level, local leaders, ordinary communists, scientists, and students utilized this practice to serve their own interests, despite the illusion of a unified process under a common ideological label. The results of implementing "criticism and self-criticism" were therefore varied, depending on local conditions and the effectiveness of each party involved in the conflict. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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