The 15th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was held during 2-19 December 1927 in Moscow. It was attended by 898 delegates with a casting vote and 771 with a consultative vote.
In October 1927, the last Left Opposition members were expelled from the Communist Party Central Committee, and in November 1927 Leon Trotsky and Grigory Zinoviev were expelled from the Party itself.
Oppositionists Christian Rakovsky and Lev Kamenev held brief speeches in front of the Congress. Rakovsky's speech was interrupted fifty-seven times by his opponents—Nikolai Bukharin, Martemyan Ryutin, and Lazar Kaganovich. Although, unlike Rakovsky, Kamanev used the occasion to appeal for reconciliation, he was interrupted twenty-four times by the same group.
In this triumphant Congress, Stalin's power was consolidated, with the Trotskyists and all other leading oppositionists (like Rakovsky, Kamenev and Timofei Sapronov) expelled from the Party.
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Milovan Djilas (b. 1911)
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—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)