The March plenum of the Kraikom

Tension had been building up in the krai party leadership in the first months of 1928 in the wake of Stalin's severe reprimanding of their conduct of affairs and the intensification of the ‘grain offensive’. When the Kraikom plenum convened from 3 to 7 March to review the regional party's performance during the procurement campaign, this tension cracked under the strain of heated debates and mutual recriminations over the application of Article 107 and the party's role in the arbitrary excesses committed in the emergency situation. Syrtsov's previously well-aired public support for ‘accumulation’ by the well-off peasant farms, and his tolerant approach to the kulak question, created difficulties for him in the light of Stalin's new anti-kulak radicalism and demands for a punitive policy in the countryside. Now Syrtsov found himself in the invidious position of having to politically adjust to Stalin's line and justify the application of Article 107, while at the same time do justice to his own consistently pro-NEP instincts and reassure the like-minded majority of the regional party elite by suitably condemning the excesses perpetrated against the peasantry. Given his lukewarm support for the emergency measures during the grain crisis, in particular his ambivalent attitude to the use of Article 107, the scene was set for a challenge to the authority of Syrtsov from hardliners in the regional party leadership.

Not surprisingly, the challenge came from the area that had most to gain from disarray in the Kraikom leadership: Irkutsk.