The 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) convened on January 26, 1934, in the Great Hall of the Kremlin in Moscow, marking the first party congress since 1929. The opening session immediately transitioned into the presentation of the Central Committee's report by Stalin, which reviewed the party's work over the preceding four years and set the tone for the proceedings. His report emphasized industrial and agricultural advancements amid ongoing collectivization efforts. The agenda was adopted unanimously, encompassing key elements such as the Central Committee report, contributions from the Central Control Commission, and addresses by foreign communist delegations. Procedural votes on organizational matters, including the agenda and session rules, passed without dissent, highlighting the tightly orchestrated environment where opposition was precluded. Over the initial days, delegates began delivering hundreds of speeches strictly aligned with the leadership's positions, with no deviations permitted in the formal structure. During the elections to the
17th Central Committee Stalin received a significant number (over a hundred, although the precise number is unknown; one account stated that he received 292 negative votes) of negative votes, whereas only three delegates crossed out the name of the increasingly popular, Stalin-aligned Leningrad party boss,
Sergei Kirov. The results were subsequently covered up on Stalin's orders and it was officially reported that Stalin also received only three negative votes. During the Congress a group of
veteran party members approached Kirov with the suggestion that he replace Stalin as the party leader. Kirov declined the offer and reported the conversation to Stalin, as he was very much loyal to Stalin. holding a
Pravda newspaper in 1934 In public, Stalin was acclaimed, not merely as the leader of the party, but as a towering, universal genius in every human sphere. All his former opponents spoke approvingly of him (other than
Leon Trotsky, who had been exiled in 1929), and pledged their total support to the party line. At that time, it was dubbed as the
Congress of Victors to celebrate the success of the
First Five-Year Plan and the completion of collectivization. In his speech to the 20th Party Congress,
Nikita Khrushchev reported that "of the 139 members and candidates of the Central Committee who were elected at the 17th Congress, 98 persons, i.e., 70 per cent, were arrested and shot (mostly in 1937-1938)." In addition, Khrushchev said that "of 1,966 delegates [to the 17th Congress] with either voting or advisory rights, 1,108 persons were arrested on charges of anti-revolutionary crimes, i.e., decidedly more than a majority." At the congress
Rabkrin was dissolved and its functions passed to the
Sovnarkom's People's Control Commission. By the Decree of the
Council of Labor and Defense of December 11, 1933, the Directorate of Road Construction of Eastern Siberia and the Far East (Daldorstroy) was created in the city of
Khabarovsk, with the task of constructing strategic highways according to the list of the government of the USSR, in the regions of Eastern Siberia and the
Soviet Far East. The construction plans were announced at the 17th Congress, held in Moscow from January-February 1934, when the
Second Five-Year Plan for the development of the Soviet Union was adopted. In accordance with it, it was planned to build a Vladivostok-Khabarovsk highway, with a hard (gravel) surface, 600 kilometers long. ==Agenda of the Congress==