He was executed in January 1937 as part of the "Yezhovshchina" (Great Purge) conducted against political oppositionists and suspected economic "wreckers" and spies.

During the final years of the Soviet Union, Ryutin was politically rehabilitated, and his lengthy critique of Stalin and his policies was published for the first time.

During the period when the 'moderates' were on the same side as Joseph Stalin against Leon Trotsky and the left, Ryutin held hard line views on party discipline.

"[5]During 1927, Ryutin was the main organiser of the strong arm squads known as 'Uglanov's hooligans', who used intimidation to break up opposition meetings in the Krasnaya Presnya district.

[7] He also disrupted the last public demonstration by the left, when Trotsky and other spoke at the funeral of Adolph Joffe, who had committed suicide in protest at the state of the Communist party.

This action drew the opposition of moderate Bolsheviks who opposed the use of force and coercion against the peasantry as the manifestation of the failed agrarian policies of War Communism.

At the September 24 and October 8 sessions of the Krasnopresnenskii raikom — gatherings in which Stalin himself participated — Ryutin came under fire for his alleged support of a "Right Opposition" led by Bukharin and Uglanov.

[1] In 1929, faced with bitter peasant opposition to forced requisitioning, the Stalin faction moved towards a radical restructuring of Soviet agriculture through a drive for collectivization.

[1] As a child of a peasant family, Ryutin understood full well the unpopularity of the collectivization idea with the peasantry as a whole, and the potential for economic catastrophe represented by the program.

[10] film On March 1 of that same year, Ryutin was made a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of National Economy (VSNKh), one of the leading state economic planning organizations of the period.

[11] Unlike Bukharin and other leading members of the so-called "Right" in the Communist Party, Ryutin refused to recant his views and endorse the policies of Stalin and his associates.

[12] Despite having made an aggressive defense of his position before the Central Control Commission, the Communist Party's disciplinary body, Ryutin's expulsion was ultimately confirmed by the Politburo on October 5, 1930.

The grain shortage of 1928 had given way to complete disorganization of agriculture by the ill-conceived collectivization campaign of 1929–30, which — exacerbated by drought — had ultimately resulted in a massive famine in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and parts of southern Russia in 1932 and 1933.

[14] In this document, Ryutin placed the blame for the Soviet Union's catastrophic economic situation on the doorstep of General Secretary of the Communist Party Joseph Stalin, writing:

"The party and the dictatorship of the proletariat have been led into an unknown blind alley by Stalin and his retinue and are now living through a mortally dangerous crisis.

[14] On September 27, the Central Control Commission decided to expel 14 members of the party due to their alleged connection with Ryutin's factional group.

[14] At a second investigative hearing, conducted September 28, Ryutin acknowledged authorship of the two key factional documents mentioned above and sought to take full responsibility for them, attempting to absolve his comrades from blame.

Stalin's policy in this case was 'not only to downgrade, crush, annihilate, but also to eliminate from memory, erase all evidence of the existence of the objectionable person.

'"[21]A three-person Collegium of the OGPU — consisting of GPU chairman Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, his successor Genrikh Yagoda, and future People's Commissar of Internal Affairs V. A. Balitsky — formally decided the charges against Ryutin.

[22]Late in 1932, a number of prominent leaders of opposition movements within the Communist Party, including Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, and Karl Radek, were called before the Central Control Committee and interrogated about whether they were aware of or had read the so-called Ryutin Platform.

[26] On June 13, 1988, as a byproduct of the glasnost campaign of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the Supreme Court of the USSR formally rehabilitated Martemyan Ryutin.

[26] The so-called Ryutin Platform, long locked in the archives of the KGB, was published for the first time in 1990, serialized in five parts in the official journal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Izvestiya TsK KPSS (News of the CC of the CPSU).