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A reply to Youtube-Trotskyite
Preface:
Not long ago, I had some little discussions with a Trotskyite, who has uploaded some videos on Youtube, which are prizing Trotsky as a holy saint and Stalin and all Stalinist as evil. Denouncing me and another comrade as a Stalinist (the term ‘Stalinist’ is nothing than an unscientific paradigm from bourgeois counterrevolutionary propaganda – using this unscientific term by a so called true Leninist shows his real face) this little boy produced a special video called ‘A reply to the Youtube Stalinists’ (you can watch the video here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=icbfJGZipeY ) to show some ‘facts’ which ‘prove’ the evilness of Stalinism.
But the reality is the opposite. Trotskyism has nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism and it is not just a revisionist tendency like Maoism or Titoism, where alliances in some questions are possible, like antifascist struggles. It is pure counterrevolutionary; they stand objectively on the side of the class enemy. In history Trotskyites sabotaged socialism in the Soviet Union, appealed to overthrow the bureaucratic Stalinist Regime together with fascist, and so on. But also today, the modern Trotskyism shows his counterrevolutionary face. For example many Trotskyite organisations like “S”AV and “Links”ruck in Germany appeal to overthrow the Cuban Castro regime, so they go hand in hand with the Batista-fascist and Miamian Mafia.
The Troskyite of the 4 th Inernational, in Germany till the 80ies it was the GIM (Gruppe Internationaler Marxisten), never were able to establish an own organisation. Like parasites they exhaust other parties and organisations. During the 60ies ist was the Social Democratic Party of Germany. During the 80ies they entered the Stalinist KPD/ML and united with them to VSP. Today there exist just some small parts of KPD/ML. The VSP has no meaning in workers movement today, so they destroyed a part of wokres movement in Germany!
In the middle of the 90’s Linksruck started a huge campaign to enter in the SPD to build a new workers party in Frankfort (the SPD is the Social Democratic Party of Germany). Today Linksruck and SAV – both Trotskyite organisations hate each other – fight in Berlin for entering in the WASG (WASG is a left-wing social democratic party which has split from the SPD some years ago). This and the other x-Trotskyite organisations in Germany (aside of SAV and Linksruck there are many other Trotskyite organisations like PSG, Gruppe Arbeitermacht, RSB, GIS, IBT and so on) are the main reason for splitting and disorientating the workers movement.
In my reply I will prove that Trotskyism is counterrevolutionary and a real Marxist-Leninist fights against those phoney-leftists.
This is no personally reply to that Trotskyite who made the video. It is more a general writing which deals with many anticommunist prejudgements and should be a help for Marxist-Leninists against those propaganda.
Many parts of the text are copied from works of Ludo Martesn, Bill Bland or other ‘Stalinist’.
1. The relationship between Trotsky and Lenin and Lenin’s “testament”
2. Trotsky’s and Stalin’s role during the October Revolution and the Civil War
3. From "February Revolution" to October Revolution
4. Trotsky, Stalin and the Red Army - Civil War in the USSR
7.Collectivization and the `Ukrainian Holocaust
11. THE FIGHT AGAINST BUREAUCRACY IN THE SOVIET UNION.
12. Trotsky's rôle on the eve of the Second World War
Excursion 1: The Deformed Worker’s State
Excursion 3: BUREAUCRATIC STATE COLLECTIVISM
1. The relationship between Trotsky and Lenin and Lenin’s “testament”
THE CHARGE: That in 1922 Lenin Advised the Russian Communist Party to Remove Stalin from the Top Post of General Secretary.
"In December 1922 in a letter to the Party Congress Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin -- Ed.) wrote . . a political document of tremendous importance,known in the Party history as Lenin’s Testament . Vladimir Ilyich said: "I propose that the comrades consider the method by which Stalin would be removed from this position (of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union). " N.S. Khrushchev: Secret Speech to 20th CongressCPSU, in: Russian Institute, Columbia Univ (Ed.):'The Anti-Stalin Campaign and International Communism: A Selection of Documents'; New York; 1956; p. 6, 7.
INTRODUCTION
Khrushchev's charge -- as above -- is inaccurate in only one detail. Lenin did not write the document known as 'Lenin's Testament', it was in factdictated by Lenin to one of his secretaries, Lidya Fotieva. However its authenticity has never been challenged. The passage concerned in Lenin's letter reads:
"Stalin is too rude , and this defect becomes intolerable in a Secretary General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post". V.I. Lenin: Letter to the Congress, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 36; Moscow: 1966; p. 596.
However, there are some puzzling features about Lenin's action in dictating this and some other passages in the letter.
LENIN'S ASSESSMENT OF STALIN
One puzzling feature about the document known as 'Lenin's Testament' is thatthroughout Lenin's political life until late 1922, his assessment of Stalin was extremely high.
For example, as long ago as February 1913 Lenin was describing Stalin, in a letter to the writer Maksim Gorky, as ‘a marvellous Georgian’:
"We have a marvellous Georgian who has sat down to write a big article for ‘Prosveshcheniye’, for which he has collected all the Austrian and other materials". V.I. Lenin: Letter to Maksim Gorky, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 35; Moscow; 1966; p. 84.
A little later, in December 1913 Lenin was characterising Stalin as the Party's leading Marxist analyst of the national question:
"The situation and the fundamentals of a national programme for Social-Democracy have recently been dealt with in Marxist theoretical literature (the most prominent place being taken by Stalin's article)". V.I. Lenin: 'The National Programme of the RSDLP', in: 'Coll Works', Vol 19; Moscow; 1963; p.539..
And as late as March 1922, at the 11th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, Lenin was defending Stalin against criticism from Yevgeny Preobrazhensky over the fact that Stalin held the posts of both People's Commissar of Nationalities and People's Commissar of State Control:
"The ' Turkestan, Caucasian and other questions . . are all political questions! They have to be settled. These are questions that have engaged the attention of European states for hundreds of years. . We are settling them; and we need a man to whom the representatives of any of these nations can go and discuss their difficulties in all detail. Where can we find such a man? I don't think Comrade Preobrazhensky could suggest any better candidate than Comrade Stalin... The same thing applies to the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection. This is a vast business; but to be able to handle investigations we must have at the head of it a man who enjoys high prestige, otherwise we shall become submerged in and overwhelmed by petty intrigue". V.I. Lenin: 'The National Programme of the RSDLP', in: 'Coll Works', Vol 19; Moscow; 1963; p.539.
Indeed, it was on Lenin's proposal that in April 1922, after the Congress, the Central Committee elected Stalin to the highest post in the Party - that of General Secretary:
"On Lenin's motion, the Plenum of the Central Committee, on April 3 1922, elected Stalin . . . General Secretary of the Central Committee". G. F. Aleksandrov et al (Eds.): 'Joseph Stalin: A Short Biography'; Moscow; 1947; p. 74-75.
"After the congress, the Central Committee, on Lenin's proposal, elected Stalin . . as General Secretary of the Central Committee".Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute: 'Lenin'; London; 1943; p. 183
"A new Central Committee.. voted to establish the post of General Secretary to run the Secretariat and named Stalin to this office. It is highly probable that Lenin initiated this decision". R. H. McNeal: 'Stalin: Man and Ruler' (hereafter listed as 'R. H.McNeal:1988'); Basingstoke;1988; p. 67.
"It is.. fanciful for some Soviet historians, official and unofficial, to suggest that Stalin was not Lenin's personal choice for the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee to which he was elevated in April 1922". A. B. Ulam: 'Stalin: The Man and his Era'; London; 1989; p. 205.
"The obvious and indeed the only man with the knowledge, efficiency and authority for this key post (of General Secretary - Ed.) was Stalin. There can be no doubt that Lenin supported the nomination, which he probably initiated".I. Grey: 'Stalin: Man of History'; London; 1979; p. 159.
Clearly, something occurred in late 1922 to cause Lenin radically to alter the opinion of Stalin he had held until that date.
LENIN'S ASSESSMENT OF TROTSKY
There is a similar puzzling feature about references to Trotsky in the document known as 'Lenin's Testament'. In it Lenin says:
"Comrade Trotsky . . is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present CC".V.I. Lenin: Letter to the Congress, in: 'Collected Works;, Volume 36; Moscow; 1966; p. 595.
It is, indeed, an important feature of Trotskyist mythology that during the period of Lenin's leadership of the Russian Communist Party Trotsky's relations with Lenin and the Party were relations or 'mutual confidence', and that Trotsky's conflict with the Party only began following Stalin's accession to the Party leadership. This picture, however, is quite false. In brief the following major policy disagreements and violent differences between Lenin and Trotsky are traced by dates :
In 1903:
At the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic labour Party in July-August. 1903, Trotsky's sympathetic biographer, Isaac Deutscher, records that
"Trotsky was one of Lenin's most vocal opponents. He charged Lenin with the attempt to build up a closed organisation of conspiracy not a party of the working class.. . . Lenin . . mildly and persuasively appealed to Trotsky. All was in vain. Trotsky was stiffening in hostility". Deutscher: 'Prophet Armed: Trotsky: 1879-1921' (hereafter : 'I. Deutscher:1989 (1)'; Oxford; 1989; p.80-81.
Shortly after the Congress, Trotsky wrote the 'Report of the Siberian Delegation' (of which he was a member). In this report he charged that Lenin 'resembles Maximilian Robespierre', although only as
‘a vulgar farce resembles historic tragedy’". L.D. Trotsky: 'Vtoroi Syezd RSDRP (Otchet Sibirskoi Delegatsy)'; Geneva; 1903; p. 33.
Deutscher comments:
"Once he had made up his mind against Lenin, he did not mince his words. He attacked with all his intensity of feeling and with all the sweep to his invective". L.D. Trotsky: 'Vtoroi Syezd RSDRP (Otchet Sibirskoi Delegatsy)'; Geneva; 1903; p. 33..
In 1904:
In August 1904 Trotsky published his pamphlet 'Our Political Tasks', in which he strongly attacked as 'Jacobinism' Lenin's concept that a disciplined party was essential to lead the working people to carry through a socialist revolution and supported the idea of a 'workers' party' modelled on the lines of the social-democratic parties of Western Europe:
"Lenin's methods lead to this: the party organisation at first substitutes itself for the party as a whole; then the Central Committee substitutes itself for the organisation; and finally a single 'dictator' substitutes himself for the Central Committee. .... Is it so difficult to see that any serious group . . when it is confronted by the dilemma whether it should, from a sense of discipline, silently efface itself, or, regardless of discipline struggle for survival - will undoubtedly choose the latter course . and say: perish that 'discipline' which suppresses the vital interests of the movement. This evil-minded and morally repugnant suspicion of Lenin, this shallow caricature of the tragic intolerance of Jacobinism. . must be liquidated at the present time at all costs, otherwise the party is threatened by complete political, moral and theoretical decay". L. D. Trotsky: 'Nos Taches Politiques'; Paris; 1970; p. 192.
Trotsky's biographer Deutscher comments on this book:
"Hardly any Menshevik* writer attacked Lenin with so much personal venom. 'Hideous', 'dissolute', 'demagogical', 'slovenly attorney', 'malicious and morally repulsive', these were the epithets which Trotsky threw at the man who had so recently held out to him the hand of fellowship, who had brought him to Western Europe, who had promoted him" .I. Deutscher: 1989 (1): p. 93.
However, Lenin was equally scathing about Trotsky. In October 1904 Lenin wrote:
"A new pamphlet by Trotsky came out recently. . . The pamphlet is a pack of brazen lies". V. I. Lenin: Letter to Yelena Stasova and Others, in: 'Collected Works'; Volume 43; Moscow; 1969; p. 129.
In 1909:
By August 1909 Lenin was writing:
"Trotsky behaves like a despicable careerist and factionalist. He pays lip-service to the Party and behaves worse than any other of the factionalists". V. I. Lenin: Letter to Grigory Zinoviev, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 34; Moscow; 1966; p. 399-400.
In 1910:
In March-June 1910 Lenin was writing:
"Trotsky expressed the full spirit of the worst kind of conciliation, 'conciliation' in inverted commas . . . which actually renders the most faithful service to the liquidators** and Otzovists**. . This position of . . Trotsky is wrong". V. I. Lenin: 'Notes of a Publicist', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 16; Moscow; 1963; p. 211, 251.
In December 1910, Lenin was no kinder to Trotsky, whose resolution said Lenin :
"Expresses the very aim of the 'Golos'** group - to destroy the central bodies . . . and with them the Party as an organisation". V.I. Lenin: 'The State Volume 17; Moscow; 1968; of Affairs in the Party', in: 'Collected Works', p. 23.
"Trotsky's call for ‘friendly’ collaboration by the Party with the 'Gobs' and 'Vpered' is disgusting hypocricisy and phrase-mongering. Trotsky groups all the enemies of Marxism. .. Trotsky unites all to whom ideological decay is dear, all who are not concerned with the defence of Marxism. struggle against the splitting tactics and the unprincipled adventurism of Trotsky!" V. I. Lenin: ‘To Russian Collegium of the CC of RSDLP, in: 'Works', Vol 17; Mos; 1963; p. 20, 21, 22 .
And at the end of 1910 Lenin was speaking of :
"The resonant but empty phrases of which our Trotsky is a master...Trotsky distorts Bolshevism, because he has never been able to form any definite views on the role of the proletariat in the Russian bourgeois revolution. That Trotsky's venture is an attempt to create a faction is obvious to all. Trotsky . . .represents only his own personal vacillations and nothing more. In 1903 he was a Menshevik; he abandoned Menshevism in 1904, returned to the Mensheviks in 1905 and merely flaunted ultra-revolutionary phrases.
One day Trotsky plagiarises from the ideological stock-in-trade of one faction; the next day he plagiarises that of another, and therefore declares himself to be standing above both factions. I am obliged to declare that Trotsky represents only his own faction and enjoys a certain amount of confidence exclusively among the Otzovists and the liquidators." V.I.Lenin: 'Historical Meaning of Inner-Party Struggle in Russia', in: 'Works', Vol 16; p. 375, 380, 389, 391.
In 1911:
In January 1911 Lenin was referring to Trotsky as : "Judas Trotsky".V. I . Lenin: 'Judas Trotsky's Blush of Shame', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 17; Moscow; 1968; p. 45.
In September 1911 Lenin declared:
"The 'Trotskyites . . .' are more pernicious than any liquidator. The Trotskys deceive the workers". V. I. Lenin: 'From the Camp of Stolypin Labour Party', 'Coll Works', Vol 17; Mos; 1968; p. 243.
In October 1911:
"Trotsky expressed conciliationism ** more consistently than anyone else. He was probably the only one who attempted to give the trend a theoretical foundation. Ever since the spring of 1910 Trotsky has been deceiving the workers in a most unprincipled and shameless manner by assuring them that the obstacles to unity were principally (if not wholly) of an organisational nature.
The only difference between Trotsky and the conciliators in Paris is that the latter regard Trotsky as a factionalist and themselves as non-factional, whereas Trotsky holds the opposite view. .Trotsky provides us with an abundance of instances of scheming to establish unprincipled 'unity'". Lenin: 'The New Faction of Conciliators, or the Virtuous', in: 'Works', Vol 17; 1968; p. 258, 260, 264, 270.
and in December 1911:
"It is impossible to argue with Trotsky on the merits of the issue because Trotsky holds no views whatever. . In his case the thing to do is to expose him as a diplomat of the smallest calibre".V. I. Lenin: 'Trotsky's Diplomacy and a Certain Party Platform', in:'Works', Vol 17; 1968; p. 362.
In 1912:
The Prague conference in January 1912 proclaimed the Bolsheviks alone to be the Party. In his paper 'Pravda'** :
"Trotsky denounced Lenin's venture with much sound and fury. His anger rose to highest pitch in April, when the Bolsheviks began to publish in Petersburg a daily called 'Pravda'. . He thundered against the 'theft' and 'usurpation' . . committed by . . 'the circle which lives and thrives only through chaos and confusion". I. Deutscher: 1989 (1); p. 198-99 .
Lenin wrote in July 1912 to the editor of the paper:
"I advise you to reply to Trotsky through the post: 'To Trotsky'. ( Vienna): We shall not reply to disruptive and slanderous letters. Trotsky's dirty campaign against 'Pravda' is one mass of lies and slander". V.I. Lenin: Letter to the Editor of 'Pravda', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 35; Moscow; 1966; p. 41.
In August 1912 Trotsky's group got together with the Mensheviks, Jewish Bund** and others to form an anti-Bolshevik coalition known as the 'August Bloc'. Trotsky's biographer Deutscher comments:
"Trotsky was that bloc's chief mouthpiece, indefatigable at castigating Lenin's 'disruptive work". I. Deutscher: 1989 (1); p. 200.
In November 1912 Lenin was writing:
"Look at the platform of the liquidators. Its liquidationist essence is artfully concealed by Trotsky's revolutionary phrases". V.I. Lenin: 'The Platform of the Reformists and the Platform of Revolutionary Social-Democrats', in:'Works', Vol 18, Moscow; 1968; p. 380.
In 1914:
Between February and May 1914 Lenin wrote:
"Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any important question of Marxism.. At the present moment he is in the company of the Bundists and the liquidators". V.I. Lenin: 'The Right of Nations to Self-Determination', in: ‘Works’, Vol 20; Moscow; 1964; p. 447-48.
In May, 1914:
"Trotsky is fond of high-sounding and empty phrases. We were right in calling Trotsky a representative of the 'worst remnants of factionalism'. Trotsky. . possesses no ideological and political definiteness. Under cover of 'non-factionalism' Trotsky is championing the interest of a group abroad which particularly lacks definite principles and has no basis in the working-class movement in Russia. There is much glitter and sound in Trotsky's phrases, but they are meaningless. Joking is the only way of retorting mildly to Trotsky's insufferable phrase-mongering. Trotsky is very fond of using with the learned air of the expert pompous and high-sounding phrases, to explain historical phenomena in a way that is flattering to Trotsky. .
Trotsky is trying to disrupt the movement and cause a split..
Trotsky avoids facts and concrete references .. because they relentlessly refute all his angry outcries and pompous phrases.
At the end of 1903 Trotsky was an ardent Menshevik. . . In 1904's he deserted the Mensheviks and occupied a vacillating position, now proclaiming his absurdly Left 'permanent revolution' theory. In the period of disintegration. . he again went to the right, and in August 1912 he entered into a bloc with the liquidators. He has now deserted them again, although in substance he reiterates their shoddy ideas".V.I. Lenin: 'Disruption of Unity under Cover of Outcries for Unity', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 20; Moscow; 1964; p. 329, 331, 332, 333-334, 345, 346-7.
In 1915:
In July 1915 Lenin was declaring:
"Trotsky... as always entirely disagrees with the social-chauvinists** in principle, but agrees as always, entirely disagrees with the social-in principle, but agrees with them ". V.I. Lenin: 'The State of Affairs in Russian Social-Democracy', in: 'Works', Vol 21;
Moscow ; 1964; p. 284.
In the same month he was referring to
"high-flown phraseology with which Trotsky always justifies opportunism. The phrase-banding Trotsky has completely lost his bearings on a simple issue". V. T. Lenin: 'The Defeat of One's Own Government in the Imperialist War', In.'Works', Vol 15;
Moscow ; 1964; p. 275
And Lenin was denouncing Trotsky's support for "the 'neither-victory-nor-defeat' slogan.
"Whoever is in favour of the slogan of 'neither victory nor defeat' is consciously or unconsciously a chauvinist; he is an enemy to proletarian policy… a partisan of the existing governments, of the present ruling classes. Those who stand for the 'neither-victory-nor-defeat' slogan are in fact on the side of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists, for they do not believe in the possibility of international revolutionary action by the working class against their own governments". V.I. Lenin: 'The Defeat of One's Own Government in the Imperialist War', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 21; Moscow; 1964; p. 278, 279, 280.
Between July and August 1915 we find Lenin saying that :
"Phrase-lovers . . like Trotsky defend - in opposition to us - the peace slogan". V.I. Lenin: 'The "Peace" Slogan Appraised', Volume 21; ‘Works’; Moscow; 1964; p. 288.
and Lenin was asserting that :
"In Russia, Trotsky. . . defends unity with the opportunist and chauvinist 'Nashe Zarya'** group". V.I. Lenin: 'Socialism and War', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 29; Moscow; 1964; p. 312.
In November 1915 Lenin was saying:
"Trotsky . . is repeating his 'original' 1905 theory and refuses to give some thought to the reason why, in the course of ten years, life has been by-passing this splendid theory. From the Bolsheviks Trotsky's original theory has borrowed their call for a decisive proletarian revolutionary struggle and the conquest of political power by the proletariat, while from the Mensheviks it has borrowed 'repudiation of the peasantry's role. .Trotsky is, in fact, helping the liberal-labour politicians in Russia who by 'repudiation' of the role of the peasantry understand a refusal to raise up the peasants".V.I. Lenin: 'On the Two Lines in the Revolution', in ''Works', Vol21; Moscow; 1964; p. 419, 420.
In 1916: In March 1916 Lenin wrote to Henriette Roland-Holst*:
"What are our differences with Trotsky? . In brief - he is a Kautskyite. V.I. Lenin: Letter to Henriette Roland-Holst, in: 'Collected 'Works', Volume 43; Moscow 1969;p. 515-16.
and in the same month was declaring:
"Trotsky . . is body and soul for self-determination, but in his case it is an empty phrase".V.I. Lenin: 'The Peace Programme', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 22; Moscow; 1964; p. 167.
In June 1916 Lenin declared:
"No matter what the subjective 'good' intentions of Trotsky and Martov may be, their evasiveness objectively supports Russian social-imperialism".V.I. Lenin: 'Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up in:'Works', Volume 22; Moscow; 1964; p. 360
In 1917:
In February 1917 Lenin was writing respectively to Aleksandra Kollontai and Inessa Armand:
"What a swine this Trotsky is - Left phrases and a bloc with the Right . !!. He ought to be exposed". V.I.Lenin: ‘Letter to Aleksandra Kollontai, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 35; Moscow; 1966; p. 285.
"Trotsky arrived, and this scoundrel at once ganged up with the Right wing of 'Novy Mir'**. . . That's Trotsky for you!! Always true to himself ‘ twists, swindles, poses as a Left, helps the Right". V.I Lenin: Letter to Inessa Armand, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 35; Moscow; 1966; p. 288.
In April 1917 Lenin reported to the Petrograd City Conference of the RSDLP:
"Trotskyism: 'No Tsar but a workers' government'. This is wrong". V.I. Lenin: Concluding Remarks, Debate on the Present Situation, Petrograd City Conference of RSDLP, in: 'Collected Works' Volume 24; Moscow; 1966; p. 150.
In May 1917 the Bolsheviks met the 'Inter-Borough Organisation', of which Trotsky was a member, to consider the possibility of a merger. At the meeting Trotsky declared:
"I cannot call myself a Bolshevik. We cannot be asked to recognise Bolshevism. The old factional name is undesirable" L.D. Trotsky: Speech at the Mezhraiontsji Conference, in: Institute of Marxism-Leninism: 'Against Trotskyism: Struggle of Lenin & CPSU against Trotskyism: Collection of Documents'; Mos; 1972; p. l22..
On 15 December 1917, the new revolutionary government of Soviet Russia signed an armistice with Germany, and on 22 December negotiations for a peace treaty began at Brest-Litovsk. The plan of Trotsky, who led the Russia Soviet delegation, was as follows:
"We interrupt the war and do not sign the peace - we demobilise the army". I. Deutscher: 1989 (1); p. 175.
Lenin was strongly opposed to Trotsky's plan:
"Lenin opposed . . . my plan discreetly and calmly". L.D. Trotsky: 'Lenin'; New York; 1925; p. 135.
And so :
"Trotsky made a private arrangement with Lenin. . . What would happen, Lenin anxiously asked, if they (the (;Germans - Ed.) chose to resume hostilities? Lenin was rightly convinced that this was bound to happen. Trotsky treated this danger lightly. but he agreed to sign the peace if Lenin's fears proved justified". I.Deutscher: 1989 (1); p. 375.
On 9 February Trotsky announced to the peace conference that
"While Russia was desisting from signing a formal Peace Treaty, it declared the state of war ended with Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria simultaneously, giving orders for the complete demobilisation of Russian forces on all fronts". I.Deutscher: 1989 (1); p. 375.
Trotsky's delegation then walked out of the peace conference and returned to Petrograd.
On l5 February 1918, as Lenin had foreseen, Germany resumed military operations against Soviet Russia. On 18 February 1918, the Central Committee instructed its delegation to sign a peace treaty immediately. On 23 February 1918 the German government presented new peace terms, significantly harsher than the earlier ones. The Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was formally signed on 23 March 1918.
Lenin commented at the 7th Congress of the RCP in March 1918:
"'That I predicted, has come to pass: instead of the Brest peace we have a much more humiliating peace, and the blame for this rests upon those who refused to accept the former peace". V.I. Lenin: Political Report of the Central Committee, Extraordinary 7th Congress of the RCP, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 27; Moscow; 1965; p.102.
As the Foreword to 'Against Trotskyism", issued by the Soviet revisionists in power in 1972, correctly expresses it:
"On the question of the Brest Peace Treaty, Trotsky maintained an anti-Leninist stand, criminally exposing the newly emerged Soviet Republic to mortal danger. As head of the Soviet delegation to the peace talks, he ignored the instructions of the Party Central Committee and the Soviet Government. At a crucial moment of the talks he declared that the Soviet Republic was unilaterally withdrawing from the war, announced that the Russian Army was being demobilised, and left Brest-Litovsk.
The German Army mounted an offensive and occupied considerable territory. As a result, much harsher peace terms were put forward by the German Government". V.I. Lenin: Political Report of the Central Committee, Extraordinary 7th Congress of the RCP, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 27; Moscow; 1965; p.102.
And 'The 'Great Soviet Encyclopedia', issued by the Soviet revisionists 1974, comments similarly:
"No less adventuristic and demagogic was the position of L. D.Trotsky (People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR at the time) who proposed to declare the war terminated and to demobilise the army but not to sign the treaty. . As Trotsky, the head of the Soviet delegation was leaving for Brest, it was agreed between him and Lenin, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, that the negotiations were to be prolonged by all possible means until the presentation of an ultimatum, after which the peace treaty should be signed immediately. On January 28 Trotsky presented the adventuristic declaration that Soviet Russia would terminate the war and demobilise its army but not sign the peace. Trotsky refused further negotiations, and the Soviet delegation left Brest-Litovsk". Great Soviet Encyclopedia', Volume 4; New York; 1974; p. 66, 67.
In 1920:
In December 1920 Lenin wrote:
"I have had to enumerate my 'differences' with Comrade Trotsky because, with such a broad theme as 'The Role and Tasks of the Trade Unions’, he has, I am quite sure, made a number of mistakes bearing on the very essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat". V.I. Lenin: 'The Trade Unions, the Present Situation and Trotsky's Mistakes', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 32; Moscow; 1965; p. 22.
In 1921:
In January 1921 Lenin severely criticised Trotsky for dereliction of Party duty and factionalism:
"The Central Committee sets up a trade union commission and elects Comrade Trotsky to it. Trotsky refuses to work on the commission, magnifying by this stepalone his original mistake, which subsequently leads to factionalism, becomes magnified and later leads to factionalism"'. V.I. Lenin: 'The Party Crisis', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 32; Moscow; 1965; p. 45.
and in the same month, Lenin criticised him for his proposal to 'militarise' the trade unions:
"Comrade Trotsky's theses have landed him in a mess. That part of them which is correct is not new, and what is more, turns against him. That which is new is all wrong. .Comrade Trotsky's political mistakes distract our party’s attention from economic tasks. .All his theses, his entire pamphlet, are so wrong". V.I. Lenin: 'Once Again on the Trade Unions, the Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin=, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 32; Moscow; 1965; p. 74, 85, 90.
Even as Late As In 1922:
There were serious differences between Lenin and Trotsky. Trotsky's biographer Deutscher describes a further rift between Lenin and Trotsky in 1922 over Trotsky's refusal to accept the post of Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars:
"In April 1922 an incident occurred which did much to cloud relations between Lenin and Trotsky. On 11 April . . . categorically and somewhat haughtily Trotsky declined to fill this office. The refusal and the manner in which it was made annoyed Lenin. Throughout the summer of 1922 . . the dissension between Lenin and Trotsky persisted. On 11 September . . Trotsky once again refused the post. . On 14 September the Politburo met and Stalin put before it a resolution which was highly damaging to Trotsky; it censured him in effect for dereliction of duty".. The circumstances of the case indicated that Lenin must have prompted Stalin to frame this resolution or that Stalin at least had his consent for it". I.Deutscher: 'The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky: 1921-1929 (hereafter listed as: 'I. Deutscher: 1989 (2)); Oxford; 1989; p. 35, 65-66.
Clearly, something occurred in late 1922 to cause Lenin radically to alter the opinion of Trotsky he had held until that date.
THE 'GEORGIAN DEVIATION'
In July 1921 Stalin, speaking to the Tiflis Organisation of the Communist Party of Georgia, referred to the rise of nationalism in Transcaucasia:
"Nationalism Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijanian - has shockingly increased in the Transcaucasian republics during the past few years and is an obstacle to joint effort. Evidently, the three years of existence of nationalist governments in Georgia (Mensheviks), in Azerbaijan (Mussavatists**) and in Armenia (Dashnaks**) have left their mark". J.V. Stalin: 'ImmediateTasks of Communism in Georgia & Transcaucasia', 'Works', Vol 5; 1953; p. 97
For this reason. Lenin proposed that Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia should, as a temporary measure, be united in a Federation. On 28 November 1921 Lenin wrote to Stalin stating that :
"A federation of the Transcaucasian republics is absolutely correct in principle, and should be implemented without fail". V.I. Lenin: Memo to J. V. Stalin, 28 November 1921, in: 'Works', Vol 33; Moscow; 1973; p. 127.
"This unification (in the Transcaucasian Federation - Ed.) was proposed by Lenin".Great Soviet Encyclopedia', Volume 9; New York; 1975; p. 495.
On 29 November 1921:
"That proposal . . . was adopted by the Political Bureau unanimously". J.V. Stalin: Reply to Discussion on CC’s Organizational Report, 12th Congress RCP,Vol 5; 1953; p.234.
And it was confirmed by three subsequent decisions of the Central Committee:
"The Central Committee has on three occasions affirmed the necessity of preserving the Transcaucasian Federation". J.V. Stalin: ibid.; p. 257.
As a result :
"The Transcaucasian Federation - the Federative Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of Transcaucasia - was founded on March 12, 1922.. . . In December 1922, the Federative Union was transformed into the Transcaucasian Federative Soviet Republic. The Transcaucasian Federation existed until 1936. In conformity with the Constitution of the USSR adopted in 1936, the Armenian, Azerbaijanian and Georgian Soviet Socialist Republics entered the USSR as Union Republics". Note to: J. V. Stalin: 'Works', Volume 5; Moscow; 1953; p. 421.
Stalin reminded the 12th Congress of the RCP in April 1923 why the formation of the Transcaucasian Federation had been considered essential:
"In a place like Transcaucasia . . it is impossible to dispense with a special organ of national peace. As you know, Transcaucasia is a country where there were Tatar-Armenian massacres while still under the tsar, and war under the Mussavatists, Dashnaks and Mensheviks. To put a stop to that strife an organ of national peace was needed, i.e., a supreme authority. . . And so . . . a federation of republics, and a year after that.. a Union of Republics was formed". Stalin:Reply to Discussion on CC's Organizational Report, 12th Congress of RCP, WorksVol 5; p. 232
"From very early times Transcaucasia has been an arena of massacre and strife and, under the Mensheviks and Dashnaks, it was an arena of war. That is why the Central Committee has on three occasions affirmed the necessity of preserving the Transcaucasian Federation as an organ of national peace. . The point is that the bonds of the Transcaucasian Federation deprive Georgia of that somewhat privileged position which she could assume by virtue of her geographical position. . Georgia has her own port -Batum - through which goods must flow from the West; Georgia has a railway junction like Tiflis, which the Armenians cannot avoid, nor can Azerbaijan avoid it. . If Georgia were a separate republic, if she were not part of the Transcaucasian Federation, she could present something in the nature of a little ultimatum both to Armenia, which cannot do without Tiflis, and to Azerbaijan, which cannot do without Batum.
There is yet another reason. Tiflis is the capital of Georgia, but the Georgians there are not more than 30% of the population, the Armenians not less than 35%, and then come all the other nationalities. . If Georgia were a separate republic, the population could be reshifted somewhat.. . Was not a well-known decree adopted in Georgia to reshift the population so as to reduce the number of Armenians in Tiflis from year to year, making them fewer than the Georgians, and thus convert Tiflis into a real Georgian capital?". J.V. Stalin: Report on National Factors in Party and State Affairs, 12th Congress 'of RCP, in: 'Works', Volume 5; Moscow; 1953; p. 256, 257, 258-59.
However, both before and after its formation, the existence of the Transcaucasian Federation was opposed by a group of Georgian nationalists within the Communist Party of Georgia, headed by Polikarp ('Budu') Mdivani and Filipp Makharadze* and known as the 'Georgian deviators':
"The struggle which the group of Georgian Communists headed by Mdivani is waging against the Central Committee's directive concerning federation dates back to that time (the end of 1921 - Ed.)". J.V. Stalin: Reply to the Discussion on the Central Committee's Organisational Report, 12th Congress of RCP, in:'Works', Volume 5; Moscow; 1953; p. 234.
"The national-deviationist opposition in the ranks of the Communist Party of Georgia arose and took shape in 1921. During the entire period of 1921-24 the Georgian national-deviationists carried on a fierce struggle against the Leninist and Stalinist national policy of our Party". L.P.Beria:'On the History of Bolshevik Organisations in Transcaucasia'; London; 1939; p. 167.
later, many of the 'Georgian deviators' joined the Trotskyist opposition:
"In 1924 a considerable number of the national-deyiationists joined what was then the Trotskyite anti-Party opposition". L. P. Beria: ibid.; p. 167.
Stalin pointed out to the 12th Congress that fear of Great Russian chauvinism was obviously not the cause of the 'Georgian deviation', since the 'Georgian deviators’ supported the entry of Georgia into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as an independent state:
"There has been and still is a group of Georgian Communists who do not object to Georgia uniting with the Union of Republics, but who do object to this union being effected through the Transcaucasian Federation. These statements indicate that on the national question the attitude towards the Russians is of secondary importance in Georgia, for these comrades, the deviators (that is what they are called), have no objection to Georgia joining the Union directly; that is, they do not fear Great-Russian chauvinism, believing that its roots have been cut in one way or another or at any rate, that it is not of decisive importance". J. V. Stalin: Report on National Factors in Party and State Affairs, 12th Congress of RCP, in: 'Works', Volume S; Moscow; 1953; p. 257.
He assessed the cause of the 'Georgian deviation’ as the desire of the Georgian nationalists not to lose the geographical advantages which an independent Georgia would possess, advantages of which they wished to take advantage:
"It is these geographical advantages that the Georgian deviators do not lose.. that are causing our deviators to oppose federation. They want to leave the federation, and this will create legal opportunities for independently performing certain operations which will result in the advantageous position enjoyed by the Georgians being fully utilised against Azerbaijan and Armenia. And all this would create a privileged position for the Georgians in Transcaucasia. Therein lies the whole danger. The Georgian deviators . . . are pushing us on to the path of granting them certain privileges at the expense of the Armenian and Azerbaijanian Republics. But that is a path we cannot take, for it means certain death to . . Soviet power in the Caucasus". J. V. Stalin: Report on National Factors in Party and State Affairs, 12th Congress of RCP, in: 'Works', Volume 5; Moscow; 1953; p. 258, 261.
The 'Georgian deviators', while dominating the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, formed only a small minority within the Communist Party of Georgia as a whole:
"The Mdivani group has no influence in its own Georgian Communist Party. . The Party has held two congresses: the first congress was held at the beginning of 1922, and the second was held at the beginning of 1923. At both congresses the Mdivani group, and its idea of rejecting federation, was emphatically opposed by its own Party. At the first congress, I think, out of a total of 122 votes he obtained somewhere about 18; and at the second congress, out of a total of 144 votes he obtained about 20". J. V. Stalin: Reply to the Discussion on the Central Committee's Organisational Report, 12th Congress of PCP, in: 'Works', Volume 5; Moscow; 1953; p. 234-35.
Nevertheless, even after the Transcaucasian Federation had been formed against the objections of the 'Georgian deviators', the latter did all they could to sabotage the functioning of the federation:
"Mdivani and his supporters, constituting a majority on the Georgian Communist Party Central Committee, virtually slowed down the economic and political union of the Transcaucasian Republics and were intent, in essence, on keeping Georgia isolated". Note to: V. I. Lenin: 'Collected Works', Volume 45; Moscow; 1970; p. 750.
"The Mdivani group, now joined by Makharadze and his followers, protested the infringement on Georgian sovereignty and did everything in its power to prevent implementation of the federal union's directives". P. G. Suny: >The Making of the Georgian Nation=; London; 1989; p. 215.
"The Georgians sabotaged as best they could the measures taken to bring about the economic integration of the three republics. They installed military guards on the frontiers of the Georgian republic, demanded residence permits, etc." M. Lewin: 'Lenin's Last Struggle'; London; 1969; p. 45.
At the 12th Congress of the RCP in April 1923 Grigory ('Sergo') Ordzhonikidze*, First Secretary of the Transcaucasian Territorial Party Committe':,
'accused the 'deviationists', Mdivani and Makharadze, of a series of improper activities - refusing to take down customs barriers, selling a Soviet ship to foreigners, negotiating with the Ottoman Bank, and closing the frontiers of Georgia to hungry refugees from the North Caucasus and the Volga region... More important, he condemned the Georgian government's failure to implement a radical land reform and eliminate once and for all the noble landlords". R. G. Suny: op. cit.; p. 218.
The policy of maintaining the Transcaucasian Federation was continued as preparations were made to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. On 6 October 1922 the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party decided:
"To have Transcaucasia enter the union as one unit". R. G. Suny: op. cit.; p. 216.
However:
"the Georgian leadership in Tiflis insisted on Georgia's separate entry.. . From Tiflis the Georgian leaders wired Moscow in protest and heatedly criticised the authoritarianism of the Transcaucasian Territory Party Committee".R. G. Suny: op. cit.; p. 216.
"The Georgians. . protested to Moscow, demanding the disbandment of the projected federation. To this request Stalin replied on October 16 in the name of the Central Committee, stating that it was unanimously rejected". R. Pipes: 'The Formation of the Soviet Union'; Cambridge (USA); 1964; p.274
A group of the 'Georgian deviators', headed by Kate Tsintsadze and Sergey Kavtaradze then telegraphed a protest, making a strong attack on Ordzhonikidze, directly to Lenin, who rebuked them sharply and defended Ordzhonikidze in a telegram of reply dated 21 October 1922:
"I am surprised at the indecent tone of the direct wire message sent by Tsintsadze and others. . . I was sure that all the diffferences had been ironed out by the CC Plenum resolutions with my indirect participation and with the direct participation of Midivani. That is why I resolutely condemn the abuse against Ordzhonikidze and insist that your conflict should be referred in a decent and loyal tone for settlement by the RCP CC Secretariat". V. I. Lenin: Telegram to K.M.Tsintsadze and S. I.Kavtarddze, 21 October 1922, in: 'Collected Works',
On receiving Lenin's rebuke, the bloc of 'Georgian deviators', who formed nine of the eleven members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, resigned in protest:
"Faced with Lenin's fury and isolated from the central leaders, the Georgian Central Committee took an unprecedented step: on October 22 they resigned en masse. Ordzhonikidze quickly appointed a new Central Committee of people who agreed with the positions taken up in Moscow, but the Mdivani-Makharadze stepped up their protests". R. C. Suny: op. cit.; p. 216.
On 25 November the Politburo of the Central Committee decided to send a commission to Georgia, headed by People's Commissar for Internal Affairs Feliks Dzerzhinsky :
"To examine urgently the statements by members of the Central Committee of the Georgian Communist Party who had resigned, and to work out measures to establish tranquility in the Georgian Communist Party". Note to: V. I. Lenin: 'Collected Works', Volume 45; Moscow; l97O; p. 656-57.
Dzerzhinsky reported the findings of his commission to Lenin on 12 December 1922, including the fact that :
"The commission had decided to recall to Moscow the leaders of the former Georgian Central Committee, who were held responsible for everything". M.Lewin, op. cit.; p. 68.
Then, at the very end of December 1922, Lenin, who had initiated the concept of the Transcaucasian Federation, who had denounced the 'Georgian deviators’, and defended Ordzhonikidze against their attacks, suddenly reversed his position on these questions. In the document known as 'Lenin's Testament' he dictated to his secretary Maria Volodicheva on 30 December 1922, he implied that the charges of 'Georgian nationalism' levelled against the 'Georgian deviators’ were 'imaginary' (and the product of 'Great Russian chauvinism on the part of Dzerzhinsky':
"Comrade Dzerzhinsky, who went to the Caucasus to investigate the 'crime' of those ‘nationalist-socialists', distinguished himself there by his truly Russian frame of mind (it is common knowledge that people of other nationalities who have become Russified overdo this Russian frame of mind)". V.I. Lenin: 'The Question of "Nationalities, or "Autonomisation"', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 36; Moscow; 1966; p. 606.
However, Lenin placed the main blame for this 'erroneous policy of Great Russian chauvinism’ on Stalin. He declared that it was necessary:
"To defend the non-Pussian from the onslaught of that really Russian man, the Great Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal and a tyrant... I think that Stalin’s . . spite against the notorious 'nationalist-socialism' played a fatal role here. In politics spite generally plays the basest of roles". V.I. Lenin: 'The Question of Nationalities, or "Autonomisation", in: 'Collected Works 1, Vol 36; Moscow; 1966; p 606.
On the following day, 31 December 1922, Lenin dictated a postcript on the same lines, referring to Stalin as :
"The Georgian who. . casually flings about accusations of 'nationalist-socialist', whereas he himself is a real and true nationalist-socialist’ and even a vulgar Great-Russian bully)...The political responsibility for all this truly Great-Russian nationalist campaign must, of course, be laid on Stalin and Dzerzhinsky". V.I. Lenin: 'The Question of Nationalities, or 'Autononisation"', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 36; Moscow; 1966; p. 606
By March 1923 Lenin was dictating a letter to Trotsky asking him to defend the case of the 'Georgian deviators' in the Central Committee:
"It is my earnest request that you should undertake the defence of the Georgian case in the Party CC. The case is now under 'persecution' by Stalin and Dzerzhinsky, and I cannot rely on their impartiality. Quite the contrary, I would feel at ease if you agreed to undertake this defence".V.I. Lenin: Letter to L. D. Trotsky, 5 March 1923, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 45; Moscow; 1970; p. 607
Trotsky declined to intervene in the affair: ".On the plea of ill health". Note to: V. I. Lenin: 'Collected Works;', Volume 45; Moscow; 1970; p. 757.
On the following day, Lenin dictated a letter to the leading 'Georgian deviators', giving them his whole-hearted support to their case and offering to assist it with notes and a speech:
"I am following your case with all my heart. I am indignant over Ordzhonikidze's rudeness and the connivance of Stalin and Dzerzhinsky. I am preparing for you notes and a speech". V.I. Lenin: Letter to P. G. Mdivani, F. Y. Makharadze and Others, 6 March 1923, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 45; Moscow; 1970; p. 608.
In conclusion it may be added that Trotsky's efforts in 1923 to persuade the Central Committee to adopt the line of the 'Georgian deviators' and abolish the Transcaucasian Federation were heavily defeated:
"Trotsky's motion in the Politburo on March 26 to recall Ordzhomikidze, decentralise the Transcaucasian Federation and recognise that the minority in the Communist Party of Georgia had not been 'deviationists', failed by six to one". R.G.Suny: op. cit.; p. 218.
Clearly, something occurred in late 1922 to cause Lenin radically to alter the opinion on Transcaucasia he had held until that date. And this was the same time at which something occurred to cause him radically to alter the opinions he had held of Stalin and Trotsky until that date.
LENIN'S ILLNESS
Lenin fell seriously ill in 1921 :
"Lenin fell seriously ill towards the end of 1921 and was forced to rest for several weeks". M.Lewin: op. cit.; p. 33.
On 23 April 1922 Lenin underwent surgery to remove one of the bullets fired at him in an assassination attempt by the Socialist Revolutionary Fanya Kaplan on 30 August 1918. Note to: V. I. Lenin: 'Collected Works', Volume 33; Moscow; 1966; p. 527.
Then, on 26 May 1922,
"Catastrophe struck: his right hand and leg became paralysed and his speech was impaired, sometimes completely so. . his convalescence was slow and tedious. . . He never fully regained his health. The return to public life was not to last long". M.Lewin: op. cit.; p. 33, 34.
and on 16 December, Lenin suffered : "Two dangerous strokes". M.Lewin: ibid.; p. xxii.
and furthermore :
"On December 23 he . . . suffered another attack of his illness... He realised next morning that once again a part of his body, his right hand and leg, was paralysed". M. Lewin: op. cit.; p. 73.
On 10 March 1923:
"A new stroke paralyses half of Lenin's body and deprives him of his capacity to speak. Lenin's political activity is finished". M. Lewin: op. cit.; p. xxiv.
Lenin died on 21 January 1924. The doctors who performed the autopsy on Lenin on 22 January found that
"The basic disease of the deceased was disseminated vascular arteriosclerosis based on premature wearing out of the vessels. The narrowing of the lumen of the cerebral arteries and the disturbances of the cerebral blood supply brought about focal softening of the brain tissue which can account for all symptoms of the disease (paralysis, disturbance of speech)". R.Payne: Report on the Pathological-Anatomical Examination of the Body of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, in: 'The Life and Death of Lenin'; London; 1967; p. 632.
The controversial document known as 'Lenin's Testament' was dictated between 23 and 31 December 1922, with a supplement dated 4 January 1923, after Lenin had already suffered four severe strokes which had adversely affected his brain function. Thus Lenin's radical changes of opinion on Stalin, on Trotsky and on Transcaucasia are partly explicable by psycho-pathological factors.
Trotsky knew his brief hour of glory in 1919, during the Civil War. However, without question, in 1921--1923, it was Stalin who was the second in the Party, after Lenin.
Since the Eighth Congress in 1919, Stalin had been a member of the Politburo, beside Lenin, Kamenev, Trotsky and Krestinsky. This membership did not change until 1921. Stalin was also member of the Organizational Bureau, also composed of five members of the Central Committee. (Ian Grey, Stalin – Man of History p. 151. )
On April 23, 1922, on Lenin's suggestion, Stalin was also appointed to head the secretariat, as General Secretary. Grey, p. 159.
Stalin was the only person who was a member of the Central Committee, the Political Bureau, the Organizational Bureau and the Secretariat of the Bolshevik Party. At the Twelfth Congress in April 1923, he presented the main report.
Lenin had suffered his first stroke in May 1922. On December 16, 1922, he suffered another major attack. His doctors knew that he would not recover.
On December 24, the doctors told Stalin, Kamenev and Bukharin, the representatives of the Political Bureau, that any political controversy could provoke a new attack, this time fatal. They decided that Lenin `has the right to dictate every day for five or ten minutes .... He is forbidden [political] visitors. Friends and those around him may not inform him about political affairs'. Ibid. , p. 171.
The Politburo made Stalin responsible for the relations with Lenin and the doctors. It was a thankless task since Lenin could only feel frustrated because of his paralysis and his distance from political affairs. His irritation would necessarily turn against the man who was responsible for interacting with him. Ian Grey writes:
`The journal of Lenin's secretaries, from November 21, 1922 to March 6, 1923, contained the day-by-day details of his work, visitors, and health, and after December 13 it recorded his smallest actions. Lenin, his right arm and leg paralyzed, was then confined to bed in his small apartment in the Kremlin, cut off from government business and, in fact, from the outside world. The doctors insisted that he should not be disturbed ....
`Unable to relinquish the habits of power, Lenin struggled to obtain the papers he wanted, relying on his wife, Krupskaya, his sister, Maria Ilyichna, and three or four secretaries.' Ibid. , p. 172.
Used to leading the essential aspects of the life of Party and State, Lenin desperately tried to intervene in debates in which he could no longer physically master all the elements. His doctors refused to allow him any political work, which bothered him intensely. Feeling that his end was near, Lenin sought to resolve questions that he thought of paramount importance, but that he no longer fully understood. The Politburo refused to allow him any stressful political work, but his wife did her best to get hold of the documents that he sought. Any doctor having seen similar situations would say that difficult psychological and personal conflicts were inevitable.
Towards the end of December 1922, Krupskaya wrote a letter that Lenin had dictated to her. Having done that, she was reprimanded by telephone by Stalin. She complained to Lenin and to Kamenev. `I know better than all the doctors what can and what can not be said to Ilyich, for I know what disturbs him and what doesn't and in any case I know this better than Stalin'. Ibid. , p. 173.
About this period, Trotsky wrote: `In the middle of December, 1922, Lenin's health again took a turn for the worse .... Stalin at once tried to capitalize on this situation, hiding from Lenin much of the information which was concentrating in the Party Secretariat.... Krupskaya did whatever she could to shield the sick man from hostile jolts by the Secretariat.' Trotsky, Stalin, p. 374.
These are the unforgivable words of an intriguer. The doctors had refused to allow Lenin receipt of reports, and here is Trotsky, accusing Stalin for having made `hostile maneuvers' against Lenin and for having `hidden information'!
What enemies of Communism call `Lenin's will' was dictated in these circumstances during the period of December 23--25, 1922. These notes are followed by a post-scriptum dated January 5, 1923.
Bourgeois authors have much focused on Lenin's so-called `will', which supposedly called for the elimination of Stalin in favor of Trotsky. Henri Bernard, Professor Emeritus at the Belgian Royal Military School, writes: `Trotsky should normally have succeeded Lenin .... (Lenin) thought of him as successor. He thought Stalin was too brutal'. Henri Bernard, Le communisme et l'aveuglement occidental (Soumagne, Belgium: Éditions André Grisard, 1982), p. 48.
The U.S. Trotskyist Max Eastman published this `will' in 1925, along with laudatory remarks about Trotsky. At the time, Trotsky had to publish a correction in the Bolshevik newspaper, where he wrote:
`Eastman says that the Central Committee `concealed' from the Party ... the so-called `will,' ... there can be no other name for this than slander against the Central Committee of our Party .... Vladimir Ilyich did not leave any `will,' and the very character of the Party itself, precluded the possibility of such a `will.' What is usually referred to as a `will' in the émigré and foreign bourgeois and Menshevik press (in a manner garbled beyond recognition) is one of Vladimir Ilyich's letters containing advice on organisational matters. The Thirteenth Congress of the Party paid the closest attention to that letter.... All talk about concealing or violating a `will' is a malicious invention.' Quoted in Stalin, The Trotskyist Opposition Before and Now. Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954), pp. 179--180. Stalin's emphasis.
A few years later, the same Trotsky, in his autobiography, would clamor indignantly about `Lenin's ``Will'', which Stalin concealed from the party'. Trotsky, My Life, p. 469.
Let us examine the three pages of notes dictated by Lenin between December 23, 1922 and January 5, 1923.
Lenin called for `increasing the number of C.C. members (to 50 to 100), I think it must be done in order to raise the prestige of the Central Committee, to do a thorough job of improving our administrative machinery and to prevent conflicts between small sections of the C.C. from acquiring excessive importance for the future of the Party. It seems to me that our Party has every right to demand from the working class 50 to 100 C.C. members'. These would be `measures against a split'. `I think that from this standpoint the prime factors in the question of stability are such members of the C.C. as Stalin and Trotsky. I think relations between them make the greater part of the danger of a split'. Lenin, Letter to the Congress. Works, vol. 36, pp. 593--594.
So much for the `theoretical' part.
This text is remarkably incomprehensible, clearly dictated by a sick and diminished man. How could 50 to 100 workers added to the Central Committee `raise its prestige'? Or reduce the danger of split? Saying nothing about Stalin's and Trotsky's political concepts and visions of the Party, Lenin claimed that the personal relationships between these two leaders threatened unity.
Then Lenin `judged' the five main leaders of the Party. We cite them here:
`Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands; and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution. Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand, as his struggle against the C.C. on the question of the People's Commissariat for Communications has already proved, is distinguished not only by exceptional abilities. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present C.C., but he has diplayed excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work.
`These two qualities of the two outstanding leaders of the present C.C. can inadvertently lead to a split ....
`I shall just recall that the October episode with Zinoviev and Kamenev was, of course, no accident, but neither can the blame for it be laid upon them personally, any more than non-Bolshevism can upon Trotsky ....
`Bukharin is not only a most valuable and major theorist of the Party; he is also rightly considered the favourite of the whole Party, but his theoretical views can be classified as fully Marxist only with great reserve, for there is something scholastic about him (he has never made a study of dialectics, and, I think, never fully understood it).' Ibid. , pp. 594--595.
Note that the first leader to be named by Lenin was Stalin, who, in Trotsky's words, `always seemed a man destined to play second and third fiddle'. Trotsky, My Life, p. 506.
`Unquestionably, his object in making the will was to facilitate the work of direction for me'. Ibid. , pp. 479--480.
Of course, there is nothing of the kind in Lenin's rough notes. Grey states quite correctly:
`Stalin emerged in the best light. He had done nothing to besmirch his party record. The only query was whether he could show good judgment in wielding the vast powers in his hands.' Grey, op. cit. , p. 176.
With respect to Trotsky, Lenin noted four major problems: he was seriously wrong on several occasions, as was shown in his struggle against the Central Committee in the `militarization of the unions' affair; he had an exaggerated opinion of himself; his approach to problems was bureaucratic; and his non-Bolshevism was not accidental.
About Zinoviev and Kamenev, the only thing that Lenin noted was that their treason during the October insurrection was not accidental.
Bukharin was a great theoretician, whose ideas were not completely Marxist but, rather, scholastic and non-dialectic!
Lenin dictated his notes in order to avoid a split in the Party leadership. But the statements that he made about the five main leaders seem better suited to undermining their prestige and setting them against each other.
When he dictated these lines, `Lenin was not feeling well', wrote his secretary Fotieva, and `the doctors opposed discussions between Lenin and his secretary and stenographer'. Fotieva, Souvenirs sur Lénine ( Moscow: Éditions Moscou, n.d.), pp. 152--153.
Then, ten days later, Lenin dictated an `addition', which appears to refer to a rebuke that Stalin had made twelve days earlier to Krupskaya.
`Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealings among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc. This circumstance may appear to be a negligible detail. But I think that from the standpoint of safeguards against a split and from the standpoint of what I wrote above about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky it is not a detail, or it is a detail which can assume decisive importance.' Lenin, Letter to the Congress, p. 596.
Gravely ill, half paralyzed, Lenin was more and more dependent on his wife. A few overly harsh words from Stalin to Krupskaya led Lenin to ask for the resignation of the General Secretary. But who was to replace him? A man who had all of Stalin's capacities and `one more trait': to be more tolerant, polite and attentive! It is clear from the text the Lenin was certainly not referring to Trotsky! Then to whom? To no one.
Stalin's `rudeness' was `entirely supportable in relations among us Communists', but was not `in the office of the General Secretary'. But the General Secretary's main role at the time dealt with questions of the Party's internal organization!
In February 1923, `Lenin's state worsened, he suffered from violent headaches. The doctor categorically refused to allow newspaper reading, visits and political information. Vladimir Ilyich asked for the record of the Tenth Congress of the Soviets. It was not given to him, which made him very sad'. Fotieva, op. cit. , pp. 173--174.
Apparently, Krupskaya tried to obtain the documents that Lenin asked for. Dimitrievsky reported another altercation between Krupskaya and Stalin.
`When Krupskaya ... telephoned him ... once more for some information, Stalin ... upbraided her in the most outrageous language. Krupskaya, all in tears, immediately ran to complain to Lenin. Lenin's nerves, already strained to the breaking point by the intrigues, could not hold out any longer.' Trotsky, Stalin, p. 374.
On March 5, Lenin dictated a new note:
`Respected Comrade Stalin. You had the rudeness to summon my wife to the telephone and reprimand her.... I do not intend to forget so easily what was done against me, and I need not stress that I consider what is done against my wife is done against me also. I ask therefore that you weigh carefully whether you are agreeable to retract what you said and to apologize or whether you prefer to sever relations between us. Lenin.' Grey, op. cit. , p. 179.
It is distressing to read this private letter from a man who had reached his physical limits. Krupskaya herself asked the secretary not to forward the note to Stalin. Ibid. .
These are in fact the last lines that Lenin was able to dictate: the next day, his illness worsened significantly and he was no longer able to work. Fotieva, op. cit. , p. 175.
That Trotsky was capable of manipulating the words of a sick man, almost completely paralyzed, shows the utter moral depravity of this individual. Sure enough, like a good forgerer, Trotsky presented this text as the final proof that Lenin had designated him as successor! He wrote:
`That note, the last surviving Lenin document, is at the same time the final summation of his relations with Stalin.' Trostky, Stalin, p. 375.
Years later, in 1927, the united opposition of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev tried once again to use this `will' against the Party leadership. In a public declaration, Stalin said:
`The oppositionists shouted here ... that the Central Committee of the Party ``concealed'' Lenin's ``will.'' We have discussed this question several times at the plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission.... ( A voice: ``Scores of times.'') It has been proved and proved again that nobody has concealed anything, that Lenin's ``will'' was addressed to the Thirteenth Party Congress, that this ``will'' was read out at the congress ( voices: ``That's right!''), that the congress unanimously decided not to publish it because, among other things, Lenin himself did not want it to be published and did not ask that it should be published.' Stalin, The Trotskyist Opposition Before and Now, p. 178.
`It is said in that ``will'' Comrade Lenin suggested to the congress that in view of Stalin's ``rudeness'' it should consider the question of putting another comrade in Stalin's place as General Secretary. That is quite true. Yes, comrades, I am rude to those who grossly and perfidiously wreck and split the Party. I have never concealed this and do not conceal it now.... At the very first meeting of the plenum of the Central Committee after the Thirteenth Congress I asked the plenum of the Central Committee to release me from my duties as General Secretary. The congress discussed this question. It was discussed by each delegation separately, and all the delegations unanimously, including Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev, obliged Stalin to remain at his post ....
`A year later I again put in a request to the plenum to release me, but I was obliged to remain at my post.' Ibid. , pp. 180--181.
But Trotsky's intrigues around this `will' were not the worst that he had to offer. At the end of his life, Trotsky went to the trouble to accuse Stalin of having killed Lenin!
And to make this unspeakable accusation, Trotsky used his `thoughts and suspicions' as sole argument!
In his book, Stalin, Trotsky wrote:
`What was Stalin's actual role at the time of Lenin's illness? Did not the disciple do something to expedite his master's death?' Trotsky, Stalin, p. 372.
`(O)nly Lenin's death could clear the way for Stalin.' Ibid. , p. 376.
`I am firmly convinced that Stalin could not have waited passively when his fate hung by a thread.' Ibid. , p. 381.
Of course, Trotsky gave no proof whatsoever in support of his charge, but he did write that the idea came to him when `toward the end of February, 1923, at a meeting of the Politburo ..., Stalin informed us ... that Lenin had suddenly called him in and had asked him for poison. Lenin ... considered his situation hopeless, foresaw the approach of a new stroke, did not trust his physicians ..., he suffered unendurably.' Ibid. , p. 376.
At the time, listening to Stalin, Trotsky almost unmasked Lenin's future assassin! He wrote:
`I recall how extraordinary, enigmatic and out of tune with the circumstances Stalin's face seemed to me .... a sickly smile was transfixed on his face, as on a mask.' Ibid.
Let's follow Inspector Clousot-Trotsky in his investigation. Listen to this:
`(H)ow and why did Lenin, who at the time was extremely suspicious of Stalin, turn to him with such a request Lenin saw in Stalin the only man who would grant his tragic request, since he was directly interested in doing so .... (he) guessed ... how Stalin really felt about him.' Ibid. , p. 377.
Just try to write, with this kind of argument, a book accusing Prince Albert of Belgium of having poisoned his brother King Beaudoin: `he was directly interested in doing so'. You would be sentenced to prison. But Trotsky allowed himself such unspeakable slanders against the main Communist leader, and the bourgeoisie hails him for his `unblemished struggle against Stalin'. Bernard, op. cit. , p. 53.
Here is the high point of Trotsky's criminal enquiry:
`I imagine the course of affairs somewhat like this. Lenin asked for poison at the end of February, 1923.... Toward winter Lenin began to improve slowly ...; his faculty of speech began to come back to him....
`Stalin was after power .... His goal was near, but the danger emanating from Lenin was even nearer. At this time Stalin must have made up his mind that it was imperative to act without delay.... Whether Stalin sent the poison to Lenin with the hint that the physicians had left no hope for his recovery or whether he resorted to more direct means I do not know.' Ibid. p. 381.
Even Trotsky's lies were poorly formulated: if there was no hope, why did Stalin need to `assassinate' Lenin?
From March 6, 1923 until his death, Lenin was almost completely paralyzed and deprived of speech. His wife, his sister and his secretaries were at his bedside. Lenin could not have taken poison without them knowing it. The medical records from that time explain quite clearly that Lenin's death was inevitable.
The manner in which Trotsky constructed `Stalin, the assassin', as well as the manner in which he fraudulously used the so-called `will', completely discredit all his agitation against Stalin.
2. Trotsky’s and Stalin’s role during the October Revolution and the Civil War
Stalin’s activities in 1900 - 1917
In 1897, at the age of eighteen, Dzhugashvili joined the first Socialist organization in Georgia, led by Zhordania, Chkheidze and Tseretelli, who would later become famous Mensheviks. The next year, Stalin led a study circle for workers. At the time, Stalin was already reading Plekhanov's works, as well as Lenin's first writings.
In 1899, he was expelled from the Seminary. Here began his career of professional revolutionary. Grey, op. cit. , pp. 22--24.
Right from the start, Stalin showed great intelligence and a remarkable memory; by his own efforts, he acquired great political knowledge by reading widely.
To denigrate Stalin's work, almost all bourgeois authors repeat Trotsky's slanders: `(Stalin's) political horizon is restricted, his theoretical equipment primitive .... His mind is stubbornly empirical, and devoid of creative imagination'. Leon Trotsky, My Life (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), p. 506.
On May 1, 1900, Stalin spoke in front of an illegal gathering of 500 workers in the mountains above Tiflis. Under the portraits of Marx and Engels, they listened to speeches in Georgian, Russian and Armenian. During the three months that followed, strikes broke out in the factories and on the railroads of Tiflis; Stalin was one of the main instigators. Early in 1901, Stalin distributed the first issue of the clandestine newspaper Iskra, published by Lenin in Leipzig. On May 1, 1901, two thousand workers organized, for the first time, an open demonstration in Tiflis; the police intervened violently. Lenin wrote in Iskra that `the event ... is of historical importance for the entire Caucasus'. Grey, op. cit. , pp. 29--31.
During the same year, Stalin, Ketskhoveli and Krassin led the radical wing of social-democracy in Georgia. They acquired a printing press, reprinted Iskra and published the first clandestine Georgian newspaper, Brdzola (Struggle). In the first issue, they defended the supra-national unity of the Party and attacked the `moderates', who called for an independent Georgian party that would be associated with the Russian party. Ibid. , p. 32.
In November 1901, Stalin was elected to the first Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party and sent to Batum, a city half of whose population was Turkish. In February 1902, he had already organized eleven clandestine circles in the main factories of the city. On February 27, six thousand workers in the petroleum refinery marched through the city. The army opened fire, killing 15 and arresting 500. Ibid. , pp. 34--35.
One month later, Stalin was himself arrested, imprisoned until April 1903, then condemned to three years in Siberia. He escaped and was back in Tiflis in February 1904. Ibid. , p. 38.
During his stay in Siberia, Stalin wrote to a friend in Leipzig, asking him for copies of the Letter to a Comrade on our Organizational Tasks and expressing his support for Lenin's positions. After the Congress of August 1903, the Social-Democratic Party was divided between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks; the Georgian delegates were among the latter. Stalin, who had read What is to be done?, supported the Bolsheviks without hesitation. `It was a decision demanding conviction and courage. Lenin and the Bolsheviks had little support in Transcaucasia', wrote Grey. Ibid. , pp. 41--45.
In 1905, the leader of the Georgian Mensheviks, Zhordania, published a criticism of the Bolshevik theses that Stalin defended, thereby underscoring the importance of Stalin in the Georgian revolutionary movement. During the same year, in `Armed Uprising and Our Tactics', Stalin defended, against the Mensheviks, the necessity of armed struggle to overthrow Tsarism. Ibid. , p. 51.
Stalin was 26 years old when he first met Lenin at the Bolshevik Congress in Finland in December 1905. Ibid. , p. 53.
Between 1905 and 1908, the Caucasus was the site of intense revolutionary activity; the police counted 1,150 `terrorist acts'. Stalin played an important role. In 1907--1908, Stalin led, together with Ordzhonikidze and Voroshilov, the secretary of the oil workers' union, a major legal struggle among the 50,000 workers in the oil industry in Baku. They attained the right to elect worker representatives, who could meet in a conference to discuss the collective agreement regarding salaries and working conditions. Lenin hailed this struggle, which took place at a time when most of the revolutionary cells in Russia had ceased their activities. Ibid. , pp. 59, 64.
In March 1908, Stalin was arrested a second time and condemned to two years of exile. But in June 1909, he escaped and returned to Baku, where he found the party in crisis, the newspaper no longer being published.
Three weeks after his return, Stalin had started up publication again; in an article he argued that `it would be strange to think that organs published abroad, remote from Russian reality, could unify the work of the party'. Stalin insisted on maintaining the clandestine Party, asking for the creation of a coordinating committee within Russia and the publication of a national newspaper, also within Russia, to inform, encourage and re-establish the Party's direction. Feeling that the workers' movement was about to re-emerge, he repeated these proposals early in 1910. Ibid. , pp. 65--69.
But while helping prepare a general strike of the oil industry, he was arrested for a third time in March 1910, sent to Siberia, and banished for five years. In February 1912, he escaped again and came back to Baku. Ibid. , p. 70.
Stalin learned that at the Prague Conference, the Bolsheviks had created their independent party and that a Russian bureau, of which he was a member, had been created. On April 22, 1912, at St. Petersburg, Stalin published the first edition of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda.
On the same day, he was arrested a fourth time, together with the editorial secretary, Molotov. They were denounced by Malinovsky, an agent provocateur elected to the Central Committee! Shernomazov, who replaced Molotov as secretary, was also a police agent. Banished for three years to Siberia, Stalin once again escaped and took up the leadership of Pravda.
Convinced of the necessity of a break with the Mensheviks, he differed with Lenin about tactics. The Bolshevik line had to be defended, without directly attacking the Mensheviks, since the workers sought unity. Under his leadership, Pravda developed a record circulation of 80,000 copies. Ibid. , pp. 71--73.
At the end of 1912, Lenin called Stalin and other leaders to Cracow to advocate his line of an immediate break with the Mensheviks, then sent Stalin to Vienna so that he could write Marxism and the National Question. Stalin attacked `cultural-national autonomy' within the Party, denouncing it as the road to separatism and to subordination of socialism to nationalism. He defended the unity of different nationalities within one centralized Party.
Upon his return to St. Petersburg, Malinovsky had him arrested a fifth time. This time, he was sent to the most remote regions of Siberia, where he spent five years. Ibid. , pp. 75--79.
It was only after the February 1917 Revolution that Stalin was able to return to St. Petersburg, where he was elected to the Presidium of the Russian Bureau, taking up once again the leadership of Pravda. In April 1917, at the Party Conference, he received the third largest number of votes for the Central Committee. During the month of July, when Pravda was closed by the Provisional Government and several Bolshevik leaders were arrested, Lenin had to hide in Finland; Stalin led the Party. In August, at the Sixth Congress, he read the report in the name of the Central Committee; the political line was unanimously adopted by 267 delegates, with four abstentions. Stalin declared: `the possibility is not excluded that Russia will be the country that blazes the trail to socialism .... It is necessary to give up the outgrown idea that Europe alone can show us the way'. Ibid. , pp. 88--96.
At the time of the October 25 insurrection, Stalin was part of a military revolutionary `center', consisting of five members of the Central Committee. Kamenev and Zinoviev publicly opposed the seizing of power by the Bolshevik Party; Rykov, Nogin, Lunacharsky and Miliutin supported them. But it was Stalin who rejected Lenin's proposal to expel Kamenev and Zinoviev from the Party. After the revolution, these `Right Bolsheviks' insisted on a coalition government with the Mensheviks and the Social-Revolutionaries. Once again threatened with expulsion, they toed the line. Ibid. , pp. 97--98.
Stalin became the first People's Commissar for Nationality Affairs. Quickly grasping that the international bourgeoisie was supporting the local bourgeoisies among national minorities, Stalin wrote: `the right of self-determination (was the right) not of the bourgeoisie but of the toiling masses of a given nation. The principle of self-determination ought to be used as a means in the struggle for socialism, and it ought to be subordinated to the principles of socialism'. Ibid. , pp. 103--104.
Between 1901 and 1917, right from the beginning of the Bolshevik Party until the October Revolution, Stalin was a major supporter of Lenin's line. No other Bolshevik leader could claim as constant or diverse activity as Stalin. He had followed Lenin right from the beginning, at the time when Lenin only had a small number of adherents among the socialist intellectuals. Unlike most of the other Bolshevik leaders, Stalin was constantly in contact with Russian reality and with activists within Russia. He knew these militants, having met them in open and clandestine struggles, in prisons and in Siberia. Stalin was very competent, having led armed struggle in the Caucasus as well as clandestine struggles; he had led union struggles and edited legal and illegal newspapers; he had led the legal and parliamentary struggle and knew the national minorities as well as the Russian people.
Trotsky did his best to systematically denigrate the revolutionary past of Stalin, and almost all bourgeois authors repeat these slanders. Trotsky declared:
`Stalin ... is the outstanding mediocrity in the party'. Trotsky, My Life, p. 512.
Trotsky was trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes, talking about `the party', because he had never belonged to the Bolshevik Party that Lenin, Zinoviev, Stalin, Sverdlov and others forged between 1901 and 1917. Trotsky joined the Party in July 1917.
Trotsky also wrote: `in routine work it was more convenient for Lenin to depend on Stalin, Zinoviev or Kamenev .... I was not suited for executing commissions.... Lenin needed practical, obedient assistants. I was unsuited to the rôle'. Ibid. , p. 477.
These sentences say nothing about Stalin, but everything about Trotsky: he pinned onto Lenin his own aristocratic and Bonapartist concept of a party: a leader surrounded by docile assistants who deal with current affairs!
Trotsky’s role in 1900 – 1917
Trotsky arrived in London in October 1902 and Lenin found him lodgings. He began to contribute to "Iskra" in November 1902 and soon became known as a brilliant writer and orator.
From time to time he visited Prance, Switzerland and Belgium, and it was on a visit to Paris that he met his second "wife" (he was never formally divorced from Aleksandra Sokolovskaya), a Russian revolutionary of noble birth, Natalya Sedova, who was studying the history of art at the Sorbonne.
The sharpest controversy at the second congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Party in 1903 arose around the first clause of the rules, defining what was meant by the term "member of the party". In accordance with the principles he had been putting forward for some time in "Iskra", Lenin proposed the following wording for Clause 1:
"A member of the R.S.D.L.P. is one who recognises its programme and supports the Party materially as well as by personal participation in one of the organisations of the Party".
Yuli Martov moved to substitute for the words underlined:
"Working under the control and guidance of one of the organisations of the Party".
Lenin's case against Martov’s formulation was that:
1) It would in practice be impossible to maintain effective "control and guidance" over Party members who did not personally participate in one of the organisations of the Party;
2) It reflected the outlook, not of the working class, which is not shy of organisation and discipline, but of the petty bourgeois intelligentsia, who tend to be individualistic and shy of organisation and discipline;
3) It would widen Party membership to include supporters of the Party, and so would abolish the essential dividing line between the working class and its organised, disciplined vanguard; it would, therefore, have the effect of dissolving the vanguard in the working class as a whole and so would serve the interests of the class enemies of the working class.
Trotsky sided with Martov, whose formulation was adopted by 28 votes to 22 with 1 abstention.
Later, the withdrawal of seven opponents of Lenin from the congress altered the balance of forces in favour of Lenin and his supporters, Lenin then proposed that the editorial board of "Iskra" (which consisted of six members) should be replaced by one of three members. Trotsky countered this manoeuvre with a motion confirming the old editorial board in office, but this was defeated by a majority of 2 votes; thereupon the anti-Leninists abstained from further voting. In the elections which followed three anti-Leninists (Axelrod, Potresov and Vera Zasulich) were dropped from the board, leaving Lenin, Plekhanov and Martov. Furthermore, three supporters of Lenin were elected to form the Central Committee.
Thus, at its Second Congress the Party showed itself to be divided into two factions. From that time those Party members who supported Lenin's political line were known as Bolsheviks (from 'bolshinstvo", majority) while those who opposed Lenin’s political line were known as Mensheviks (from "menshinstvo" minority) .
The Bolshevik trend was a Marxist trend, representing the interests of the working class within the labour movement;
TheMenshevik trend was a revisionist trend representing the interests of the capitalist class within the labour movement.
Later Trotsky admitted his error in having opposed Lenin at the 2nd. Congress on the question of Party organisation. Speaking of Lenin’s attitude at the Congress, Trotsky says in his autobiography:
"His behaviour seemed unpardonable to me, both horrible and outrageous. And yet, politically, it was right and necessary, from the point of view of organisation.
My break with Lenin occurred on what might be considered "moral" or even personal grounds. But this was merely on the surface. At bottom, the separation was of a political nature and merely expressed itself in the realm of organisational methods.
I thought of myself as a centralist. But there is no doubt that at that at that time I did not fully realise what an intense and imperious centralism the revolutionary party would need to lead millions of people in a war against the old order . . At the time of the London Congress in 1903, revolution was still largely a theoretical abstraction to me. Independently I still could not see Lenin's centralism as the logical conclusion of a clear revolutionary concept".
(L.Trotsky: "My Life"; New York; 1971; p. 162)
His immediate reaction to the congress, however, was to write "Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. (Report of the Siberian Delegation" which was published in Geneva in1903.
In this he defended his, and his delegation’s opposition to Lenin and his supporters at the congress:
"Behind Lenin stood the new compact majority of the ‘hard’ ‘Iskra’ men, opposed to the ‘soft’ ‘Iskra’ men. We, the delegates of the Siberian Union, joined the ‘soft’ones, and . . we do not think that we have thereby blotted our revolutionary record".
(L.Trotsky: "Vtoroi Syezd R.S.D.R.P. (Otchet Sibirskoi Delegatskii)" (Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. (Report of the Siberian Delegation); Geneva: 1903; p.21.)
At the Congress, declared Trotsky, Lenin had:
"..With the energy and talent peculiar to him, assumed the role of the party’s disorganiser".
(L.Trotsky: ibid.;. p.11),
and, like a new Robespierre, was trying to:
"..transform the modest Council of the Party into an omnipotent Committee of Public Safety",
(L. Trotsky: ibid.; p.21),
so preparing the ground for the:
"Thermidorians of Socialist opportunism".
(L. Trotsky: ibid; p.30).
He added in a postscript that Lenin resembled Robespierre, however, only as
"a vulgar farce resembles historic tragedy"...
(L.Trotsky: ibid.; p.33).
After the Congress, the Mensheviks -- including Trotsky boycotted "Iskra" and refused to contribute to it.
In September 1903 they held a factional conference in Geneva to decide on future action. A shadow "central committee" was set up, consisting of Pavel Axelrod, Pedor Dan, Yuli Martov, Aleksandr Potresov and Trotsky, to direct the struggle against the Bolsheviks.
In Trotsky's view the immediate aim of the campaign should be to force the Bolsheviks to restore the ousted Mensheviks to their former positions of influence, both in the Central Committee and the editorial board. A resolution, drafted by Martov and Trotsky, was adopted by the conference:
"We consider it our moral and political duty to conduct . . the struggle by all means, without placing ourselves outside the Party and without bringing discredit upon the party and the idea of its central institutions, to bring about a change in the composition of the leading bodies, which will secure to the Party the possibility of working freely towards its own enlightenment".
(P.B. Axelrod &. Y. 0. Martov: "Pisma P.B. Axelroda i.Yu Martova" (Letters of P.B. Axelrod and Y.0.Martv); Berlin; l924; p.94).
Soon after the Second Congress of the Party, Plekhanov gave way to the attacks of the Mensheviks. In violation of the decisions taken at the Party congress, he claimed and exercised the right as joint editor to coopt to the editorial board of "Iskra" the Menshevik former editors. Lenin strongly objected to this step, and resigned from the board.
The new editorial board transformed "Iskra" into a Menshevik organ, which waged unremitting struggle against Lenin and his supporters and against the Bolshevik Central Committee of the Party. Thus, from its 52nd. issue "Iskra" became known in the Party as the "new" "Iskra", in contrast to the "old" Leninist "Iskra". It continued publication until October l905.
Trotsky became a prominent contributor to the "new Iskra" and issued a pamphlet setting forth the Menshevik political line. Lenin commented:
"A new pamphlet by Trotsky came out recently, under the editorship of ‘Iskra’, as was announced. This makes it the ‘Credo’, as it were, of the new ‘Iskra’. The pamphlet is a pack of brazen lies, a distortion of the facts. . . The Second Congress was, in his words, a reactionary attenpt to consolidate sectarian methods of organisation, etc."
(V.1. Lenin: Letter to Yelena Stasova, F.V. Lengnik, and 0thers, 0ctober 1904, in: "Collected Works", Volume 43; Moscow; 1969; p. 129).
Between February and May l904, Lenin was engaged on writing the book "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back". In this he expounded at length the principles of party organisation he had put forward at the Second Congress and analysed the character of the Menshevik opposition.
In August l904 Trotsky’s reply to Lenin’s book was published in Geneva under the title "Our Political Tasks" . It was dedicated to "My dear teacher Pavel B.Axelrod".
In "Our Political Tasks" - Trotsky developed his attack upon "Maximillien Lenin"; whom he described as:
".an adroit statistician and a slovenly attorney" (L. Trotsky: ‘ashi Politicheskie Zadachi’(Our Political Tasks) Geneva; l904; p. 95), with a " . . hideous, dissolute and demagogical . " (L.Trotsky : ibid. ; p. 75),
style, whose
"Evil-minded and morally repulsive suspiciousness, a shallow caricature of tragic Jacobinist intolerance, must be liquidated now at all costs, otherwise the Party is threatened with moral and theoretical decay";
(L. Trotsky: ibid. ; p. 95).
He developed his attack upon Lenin’s principles of Party organisation, claiming that they would lead to the establishment, not of the dictatorship of the working class but of a dictatorship over the working class (a dictatorship that would eventually be one of a single individual), which the working class would find intolerable:
"Lenin’s methods lead to this: the Party organisation at first substitutes itself for the Party as a whole; then the Central Committee substitutes itself for the organisation; and finally a single ‘dictator’ substitutes himself for the Central Committee…. A proletariat capable of exercising its dictatorship over society will not tolerate any dictatorship over itself".
(L. Trotsky. Ibid.; p. 54, l05)
and declaring that Lenin’s organisational principles would, in any case, be unworkable since any serious faction would defy Party discipline:
"Is it so difficult to see that any group of serious size and importance, if faced with the alternative of silently destroying itself or of fighting for its survival regardless of all discipline, would undoubtedly choose the latter course?"
(L. Trotsky: ibid; p. 72).
Meanwhile, readers of the "new" "Iskra" in Russia had been complaining strongly about Trotsky’s virulent attacks on Lenin in the columns of the paper, and in April l904, on the demand of Plekhanov, he was forced to resign from it.
In May 1905 Trotsky went to Finland. When he returned to St. Petersburg in October, a general strike had broken out in the city.
The striking workers elected delegates to a strike committee 3 which quickly developed into the first important "Soviet of Workers’ Deputies" and began to publish its own organ: "Izvestia" (News). The Mensheviks supported the Soviet from its inception, regarding it as an organ of democratic local government-. The St. Petersburg Bolsheviks, led by Bogdan Knunyantz, were, however, at first hesitant in their approach to it, regarding it as a rival to the Party and demanding that it affiliate to the Party before they could support it.
Meanwhile Lenin, after making arrangements for the publication in St. Petersburg of a legal Bolshevik newspaper "Novaya Zizn" (New Life), had left-Geneva in October for Russia. Held up in Stockholm, he wrote from there:
"Comrade Radin (i.e., Knunyantz -- -Ed.) is wrong in raising the question in No. 5 of the ‘Novaya Zhizn', …the Soviet of Workers? Deputies or the Party? I think that it is wrong to put the question in this way, and that the decision must certainly be: both the Soviet of Deputies and the Party . . .
The Soviet of Deputies, as an organ representing all occupations, should strive to include deputies from all industrial, professional and office workers, domestic servants, farm labourers, etc., from all who want and are able to fight in common for a better life for the whole working people.
I think it inadvisable to demand that the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies should accept the Social-Democratic Programme and join the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party….
I believe (On the strength of the incomplete and only ‘paper’ information at my disposal) that politically the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies should be regarded as the embryo of a provisional revolutionary Government".
(V.I. Lenin "Our Tasks and the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies"; in "Collected Works"; Volume 10; Moscow; 1962; p. 19, 20, 21).
Later, after his arrival in St. Petersburg, Lenin made a clear analysis of the Soviet. It could not be an organ of government until the power of the central tsarist state had been smashed, at least locally; in the existing circumstances its role must be to conduct this revolutionary struggle to smash the central state machine .
"The Soviet of Workers’ Deputies is not a parliament of labour and not an organ of proletarian self-government. It is not an organ of government at all, but a fighting organisation for the achievement of definite aims. . .
The Soviet of Workers Deputies represents an undefined, broad fighting alliance of socialists and revolutionary democrats".
(V. I.Lenin: "Socialism and Anarchism", in: "Selected Works", Volume 3; London; l943; p. 343) .
"The Soviets of Workers' Deputies, etc., were in fact the embryo of a provisional government; power would inevitably have passed to them had the uprising been victorious". (V. I.Lenin; "The Dissolution of the Duma and the Tasks of the Proletariat", in: Ibid.; p. 383).
Although the St. Petersburg Bolsheviks corrected their attitude to the Soviet within a few days, their hesitancy in supporting it contributed in considerable measure to the fact that the majority of the deputies were from the outset Mensheviks or supporters of the Mensheviks. On October 30 th, the Soviet elected its Executive; this consisted of three Mensheviks, three Bolsheviks, and three Socialist-Revolutionaries.
After a few days under the chairmanship of the Menshevik S. Zborovski, the Soviet elected as its chairman the lawyer Georgi Nosar (better known under his pseudonym "Khrustalev"); who was then independent of any party but later joined the Mensheviks.
Trotsky, who had allied himself with the St. Petersburg Mensheviks on his arrival in the city, was elected to the Soviet and soon came to play a leading role in its activities - which following the Menshevik political line of damping down the revolutionary enthusiasm and activity of the workers.
On November 2nd.
"Trotsky urged the Soviet to call off the general strike".
(I. Deutscher: "The Prophet Armed: Trotsky: 1879-1921"; London; 1970; p. 132).
and it duly came to an end on November 3rd.
On November 13th. The workers themselves began to introduce an eight-hour working day in the factories, and on the l5th, widespread public indignation at the state of siege which the tsarist government had just imposed on Poland, forced the Soviet to call a second general strike in St. Petersburg.
On November l8th, three days later,
"Trotsky.. . proposed to call an end to the second general strike".
(I. Deutscher; ibid ; p. 134),
on the pretext that :
"The government had just announced that the sailors of Kronstadt (who had participated in the first general strike -- Ed.) would be tried by ordinary military courts, not courts martial. The Soviet could withdraw not with victory indeed, but with honour".
(I. Deutscher; Ibid.; p. 134).
In his speech to the Soviet urging the calling-off of the second general strike, Trotsky’s biographer declares that:
"While he tried to dam up the raging element of revolt, he stood before the Soviet like defiance itself, passionate and sombre".
(I. Deutscher: ibid; p. 134),
and:
"Events work for us and we have no need to force the pace. We must drag out the period of preparation for decisive action as much as we can, perhaps for a month or two, until we can come out as an army as cohesive and organised as possible. . .
When the liberal bourgeoisie, as if boasting of its treachery, tells us: ‘You are alone. Do you think you can go on fighting without us? Have you signed a pact with victory?’, we throw our answer in their face: ‘No, we have signed a pact with death’".
(L.Trotsky; Speech to St. Petersburg Soviet, November 16th., l905, in: No. 7, November 20th., l905).
Having succeeded in inducing the Soviet to call off the second general strike,
"A few days later he had again to impress upon the Soviet its own weakness and urge it to stop enforcing the eight-hour day. . . The Soviet was divided, a minority demanding a general strike; but Trotsky prevailed".
(I. Deutscher: ibid; p. 135).
Saying:
"We have not won the eight-hour day for the working class, but we have succeeded in winning the working class for the eight-hour day".
(L.Trotsky: Speech to St. Petersburg Soviet, cited in: I. Deutscher: ibid.; p. 140).
In addition to his activities in the Soviet, Trotsky had contrived to gain control, jointly with Parvus (who had followed him to St. Pctersburg and had become a deputy in the Soviet) of a daily newspaper, "Russkaya Gazeta" (The Russian Newspaper), and later in the year, alongside it, he founded with Parvus and Yuli Martov a second daily "Nachalo" (The Beginning),which became the organ of Menshevisim from October to December 1905.
By the beginning of December, the government felt strong enough to take the offensive again. Press censorship was reimposed, and on December 5th. Khrustalev, the Chairman of the Soviet, was arrested together with a few other leading members. Trotsky replied to this by proposing that:
"The Soviet of Workers’ Deputies temporarily elect a new chairman and continue to prepare for an armed uprising."
(L. Trotsky: Resolution to St. Petersburg Soviet, cited in: I. Deutscher:Ibid.; p. 140)
The Soviet accepted the proposal and elected a three-man Presidium, headed by Trotsky.
But the preparations for the "armed uprising" of Trotsky’s were virtually non-existent.
"The preparations for the rising which Trotsky had mentioned had so far been less than rudimentary: two delegates had been sent to establish contact with the provincial Soviets. The sinews of insurrection were lacking".
(I. Deutscher: ibid.; p. 140).
Trotsky’s last gesture in the 1905 Revolution was then to put forward a "Financial Manifesto" written by Parvus. This called upon the people to withhold payment of taxes, declaring:
"There is only one way to overthrow the government --to deny it . . its revenue".
(Financial Manifesto of St. Petersburg Soviet, cited in: I.Deutscher: ibid.; p.141).
On December 16th., Trotsky presided over a meeting of the Executive of the St. Petersburg Soviet, when a detachment of soldiers and police burst in to the meeting room and the members of the executive were arrested. A number of charge were brought against them, the principle charge being that of plotting insurrection:
The role of the Mensheviks in the St. Petersburg Soviet was summed up later by J.V. Stalin:
"The St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, being the Soviet of the most important industrial and revolutionary centre of Russia, the capital of the tsarist empire, ought to have played a decisive role in the Revolution of 1905. However, it did not perform this task, owing to its bad, Menshevik leadership. As we know Lenin had not yet arrived in St. Petersburg; he was still abroad. The Mensheviks took advantage of Lenin’s absence to make their way into the St.Petersburg Soviet and to seize hold of its leadership. It was not surprising under such circumstances that the Mensheviks Khrustalev, Trotsky, Parvus and others managed to turn the St. Petersburg Soviet against the policy of an uprising. Instead of bringing the soldiers into close contact with the Soviet and linking them up with the common struggle, they demanded that the soldiers be withdrawn from St. Petersburg. The Soviet, instead of arming the workers and preparing them for an uprising, just marked time and was against preparations for an uprising".
(J.V. Stalin: "History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union"(Bolsheviks; Moscow; 1941; p.79-80).
The Fifth Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party was held in London in May/June 1907. It was attended by 336 delegates, representing a membership of some 150,000.
In the resolutions the congress large1y adopted the Bolshevik line. A Bolshevik resolution condemning the Menshevik proposal to transform the Party into a broad "Labour Party" of the British type was carried by l65 votes to 94; another Bolshevik resolution declaring that the Cadets were now a counter-revolutionary party which must be mercilessly exposed, and that it was essential to coordinate the Party’s own activity with that of the parties expressing the outlook of the peasantry (i.e., the Trudoviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries) was carried by l59 votes to 104.
However, a Bolshevik motion of censure on the Menshevik Central Committee elected at the Fourth Congress in 1906 was lost. This resolution was opposed not only by the Mensheviks, but by a centrist group headed by Trotsky:
"If, after all, the Bolshevik resolution, which noted the mistakes of the Central Committee was not carried, it was because the consideration "not to cause a split" strongly influenced the comrades".
(J.V. Sta1in: "The London Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Notes of a Delegate)"; in: ‘Works’, Volume 2; Moscow; l953; p. 59)
"Trotsky… spoke on behalf of the ‘Centre’, and expressed the views of the Bund. He fulminated against us for introducing our ‘unacceptable’ resolution. He threatened an outright split. . . That is a position based not on principle, but on the Centre’s lack of principle".
(V. I. Lenin: Fifth Congress of RSDLP, Speech on the Report of the Activities of the Duma Group, in: "Collected Works", Volume 12; Moscow; 1962; p. 45l-2)
Trotsky endeavored to justify his concilationist position by suggesting that there were no fundamental differences between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, saying:
"Here comes Martov . . and threatens to raise between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks a Marxist wall . . .’Comrade Martov, you are going to build your wall with paper only with -your polemical literature you have nothing else to build it with".
(Pyatyi Syezd RSDRP (Fifth Congress RSDLP); Moscow; n.d.; p. 54-55).
In view of the decline of the revolutionary tide, the question of ‘armed insurrection’ was dropped from the agenda of the congress. However, a sharp controversy arose at the congress on the question of "expropriations", i.e., the illegal acquisition of funds for the Party.
Lenin's views on this question had been expressed in an article published in "Proletary", in October 1906:
"Armed struggle pursues two different aims; which must be strictly distinguished; in the first place this struggle aims at assassinating individuals, chiefs and subordinates, in the army and police: in the second place, it aims at the confiscation of monetary funds both from the government and from private persons. The confiscated funds go partly into the treasury of the Party, partly for the special purpose of arming and preparing for an uprising, and partly for the maintenance of persons engaged in the struggle we are describing. . .
It is not guerilla actions which disorganise the movement, but the weakness of a party which is incapable of taking such actions under its control".
(V. I. Lenin: ‘Guerilla Warfare, in: "Collected Works"", Volume 11; Moscow; 1962; p. 216, 219).
The Fourth Congress of the Party in 1906 had adopted a Menshevik resolution banning Party members, from taking part in "expropriations", and at the- Fifth Congress an attack was launched upon the Bolsheviks for allegedly continuing to take part in (or at least advise others on the organisation of "expropriations". A Menshevik motion was adopted at the Fifth Congress banning the participation of Party members in all armed actions and acts of "expropriation" and- ordering the disbandment of the fighting squads connected with the, Party.
Trotsky, according to his biographer, sharply supported the Menshevik attacks on this issue:
"The records of the Congress say nothing about the course of this controversy, (i.e. on "expropriations" --Ed.); only fragmentary reminiscences, written many years after, are available. But there is no doubt that Trotsky was, with Martov, among those who sharply arraigned the Bolsheviks".
(I. Deutscher; 'The Prophet Armed: Trotsky: 1879-1921"; London; 1970; p. 179).
Shortly after the Congress, Lenin wrote to Maxim Gorky that :
"At the London Congress, too, he (i.e., Trotsky --Ed.) acted the ‘poseur’".
(V. I. Lenin: Letter to Maxim Gorky, February 13th., 1908; in: ,"Collected Works", Volume 34; Moscow; 1966; p. 386).
While Stalin, writing of Trotsky’s activities at the congress, declared
"Trotsky proved to be ‘pretty but useless’".
(J.V. Stalin: "The London Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Notes of a Delegate)", in: "Works"; Volume 2; Moscow; 1953; p. 52) .
After the congress Trotsky carried his attacks on the Bolsheviks on the question of "expropriations’ into the columns of "Vorwaerts" (Forward), the organ of the German Social-Democratic Party. He describes how Lenin reacted to this news:
"I told Lenin of my latest article in "Vorwaerts" about the Russian Social-Democracy. . . The most prickly question in the article was that of so-called ‘expropriations’. .. The London congress, by a majority of votes composed of Mensheviks, Poles and some Bolsheviks banned ‘expropriations’. When the delegates shouted from their seats: "What does Lenin say? We want to hear Lenin", the latter only chuckled, with a somewhat cryptic expression. After the London congress, ‘expropriations’ continued. . . That was the point on which I had centred my attack in the "Vorwaerts".
‘Did you really write like this?’, Lenin asked me reproachfully.
Lenin tried to induce the Russian delegation at the congress to condemn my article. This was the sharpest conflict with Lenin in my whole life".
(L.Trotsky: "My Life"; Now York; 1971; p. 218).
In the summer of 1907, following the Fifth Congress of the RSDLP, Trotsky had moved to Berlin. Here he became intimate with the right wing-leaders of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany. As his biographer, Isaac Deutscher, expresses it:
"Curiously enough, Trotsky’s closest ties were not with the radical wing of German socialism, led by Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebnicht and Franz Mehring, the future founders of the Communist Party, but with the men . . who maintained the appearances of Marxist orthodoxy, but were in fact leading the party to its surrender to the imperialist ambitions of the Hohenzollern empire".
(I. Deutscher "The Prophet Armed Trotsky: 1879-1921"; London: 1970; p.162).
Trotsky contributed frequently to the SPG’s daily "Vorwarts" (Forward) and to its monthly ‘Neue Zeit’ (New Life), on which his influence was strong.
In those articles Trotsky reiterated his attacks on the "sectarianism" of the Bolsheviks, alleging that the:
"Boycottist tendency runs through the whole history of Bolshevism -- the boycott of the trade unions, of the State Duma, of the local government bodies, etc."
(L.. Trotsky: Article in "Neue Zeit", No.50, cited in: V. I. Lenin: "The Historical Meaning of the Internal Party Struggle in Russia", in: Selected Works’, Volume 3; London; l946; p.505),
as a
". . result of the sectarian fear of being swamped by the masses"
(L. Trotsky: ibid.; p. 505).
To which Lenin replied: -
"As regards the boycott of the trade unions and the local government bodies, what Trotsky says is positively untrue.. It is equally untrue to say that boycottism runs through the whole history of Bolshevism; Bolshevism as a tendency took definite shape in the spring and summer of l905, before the question of the boycott first came up. In August 1906 in the official organ of the faction, Bolshevism declared that the historical causes which called forth the necessity of the boycott had passed. Trotsky distorts Bolshevism".
(V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 505.)
Trotsky further declared that both the Bolshevik and the actions, and the Party itself were "falling to pieces". To this Lenin replied:
"Failing to understand the historical-economic significance of this split in the epoch of the counter-revolution, of this falling away of non-Social-Democratic elements from the Social-Democratic Labour Party, Trotsky tells the German readers that both factions are ‘falling to pieces,’ that the Party is ‘falling to pieces’, that the Party is becoming ‘disintegrated’.
This is not true. And this untruth expresss.. first of all, Trotsky’s utter lack of theoretical understanding. Trotsky absolutely fails to understand ‘why the Plenum described both liquidationism and otzovism as the manifestation of bourgeois influence over the proletariat’. Just think: is the severance from the Party of trends which have been condemned by the Party and which express the bourgeois influence over the proletariat, the collapse of the Party, the disintegration of the Party, or is it the strengthening and purging of the Party?"
(V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 5l5)
The German government refused to allow Trotsky to stay in Berlin, and he moved shortly to Vienna. However he maintained his influence in the press of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany, the leaders of which continued to regard him as "the authority", on the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party.
"It is time to stop being naive about the Germans, Trotsky is now in full command there.. . It’s Trotsky and Co. who are writing, and the Germans believe them. Altogether, Trotsky is boss in ‘Vorwarts’".
(V. I. Lenin: "Letter to the Bureau of the CC of the RSDLP", April l6th. 1912, in: "Collected Works"Volume 35; Moscow; 1966; p. 34, 35).
Trotsky remained in Vienna for seven years, and there he became intimate with the right-wing leaders of the Austrian Social-Democratic Party - Victor Adler, Rudolf Hilferding, Otto Bauer an& Karl Renner. He became Vienna correspondent of the daily newspaper "Kievskaya Mysl" (Kievan Thought), and contributed to a number of other papers.
In October 1908, Trotsky began to edit a small run-down paper called "Pravda" (Truth), started in l905, by the pro-Menshevik Ukrainian Social-Democratic League ("Spilika") At the end of 1908, the group abandoned the paper, and it became Trotsky’s own journal. Published in Vienna from November 1909, it continued to appear until December 1913.
The principal regular contributors to the Viennese "Pravda", under Trotsky, were Aleksandr Skobolev (a student-who later became Minister of Labour in the Kerensky government) Adolf Yoffe (who committed suicide in 1927-in protest at Trotsky's expulsion from the Party), David Ryazanov (later director of the Marx-Engels Institute) and Victor Kopp (later a Soviet diplomat).
As Lenin commented in October 1911:
"’Pravda" represents a tiny group, which has not given an independent and consistent answer to any-important fundamental question of the revolution and counter-revolution". (V. I. Lenin: "The New Faction of Concilators or the Virtuous" in: "Selected Works", Volume 4; London; l943; p. 106).
Under Trotsky the Viennese -"Pravda" became the principal organ of conciliationism, as Lenin repeatedly pointed out, describing Trotsky as a
"spineless conciliator";
(V. I. Lenin: "Notes of a Publicist", in: "Selected Works", Volume 4; London; l943; p. 60).
"During the period of the counter-revolution of 1908-11 . . Trotsky provides us with an abundance of instances of unprincipled ‘unity’ scheming"..
(V. I. Lenin: "The New Faction of Conciliators or the Virtuous", in: ibid.; p. 93, l05.)
Trotsky himself admits:
"My inner party stand was a concilationist one. . The great historical significance of Lenin's policy was still unclear to me at that time, his policy of irreconcilable ideological demarcation and, when necessary split, for the purpose of welding and tempering the core of the truly revolutionary party.
By striving for unity at all-costs, I involuntarily and unavoidably idealised centrist tendencies in Menshsvism".
(L. Trotsky: "The Permanent Revolution"; New York; 1970; p. 173).
In fact, Trotsky elaborated in this period a "theory" of conciliationism, based on the erroneous concept that factions expressed, not the interests of different classes, but "the influence of the intelligentsia" upon the working class:
"Trotsky expressed conciliationism more consistently than anyone else. He was probably the only one who attempted to give this tendency a theoretical foundation. This is the foundation: factions and factionalism-expressed the struggle of the intelligentsia ‘for influence over the irmiature proletariat’. . . .
The opposite view (i.e. the Leninist view - Ed.) is that the factions are generated by the relations between the classes in the Russian revolution".
(V. I. Lenin: "The New Faction of Conciliators or the Virtuous", in: "Se1ected Works", Volume 4; London; l943; p. 93).
Trotsky attempted to give substance to his "non-factional" pose by articles in which he attacked as "anti-revolutionary" both the Bolsheviks and the Menshoviks. In 1909, for example, he wrote in Rosa Luxemburg’s Polish paper "Przeglad Socjal-Demokratyczny" (Social-Democratic Review):
"While the Mensheviks, proceeding from the abstraction that ‘our revolution is bourgeois’, arrive at the idea of adapting the whole tactic of the proletariat to the conduct of the liberal bourgeoisie, right up to the capture of state power, the Bolsheviks, proceeding from the same bare abstraction: ‘democratic, not socialist dictatorship’, arrive at the idea of the bourgeois-democratic self-limitation of the proletariat with power in its hands. The difference between them on this question is certainly quite important: while the anti-revolutionary sides of Menshevism are already expressed in full force today, the anti-revolutionary features of Bolshevism threaten to become a great danger only in the event of the victory of the revolution."
(L. Trotsky: Article in "'Przeglad Socjal-Demokratyczny", cited in: L. Trotsky: "The Permanent Revolution"; New York; 1970; p. 235-36).
However, Lenin pointed out that, under the guise of "non-factionalism", Trotsky was, in fact, forming his own faction:
"That Trotsky’s venture is an attempt to create a faction is obvious to all now".
(V. I. Lenin: "The Historical Meaning of the Internal Party Struggle in Russia", in: "Selected Works"; Volume 3; London; l943; p.517).
"We were right in referring to Trotsky as the representative of the ‘worst remnants of factionalism’. .
Although Trotsky professes to be non-factional, he is known to all who are in the slightest degree acquainted with the labour movement in Russia as the representative of "Trotsky’s faction" -- there is factionalism here, for both the essential characteristics of it are present: 1) the nominal recognition of unity, and 2) group segregation in reality. This is a remnant of factionalism, for it is impossible to discover in it anything serious in the way of contacts with the mass labour movement in Russia.
Finally it is the worst kind of factionalism, for there is nothing ideologically and politically definite about it."
(V.I.,Lenin: "Violation of Unity under Cover of Cries for Unity", in: "Selected Works"; Volume 4; London; l943; p. 191, 192).
Trotsky’s faction, declared Lenin, vacillated in theory from one of the major factions to the other:
"Trotsky completely lacks a definite ideology and policy, for having the patent, for ‘non-factionalism’, only means . . having a patent granting complete freedom to flit from one faction to another".
(V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 191-92).
"Trotsky, on the other hand; represents only his own personal vacillations and nothing more. In l903 he was a Menshevik; he abandoned Menshevism in l904, returned to the Mensheviks in l905 and merely flaunted ultra-revolutionary phrases; in 1906 he left them again; at the end of 1906 he advocated elect-oral agreements with the Cadets (i.e., was virtually once more with the Mensheviks) ; and in the spring of 1907, at the London Congress, he said that he differed from Rosa Luxemburg on ‘individual shades of ideas rather than on political tendencies’. Trotsky one day plagiarises the ideological stock-in-trade of one faction; next day he plagiarises that of another, and therefore declares himself to be standing above both factions."
(V. I. Lenin: "The Historical Meaning of the Internal Party Struggle in Russia in: 'Selected Works", Volume 3; London; l946; p. 5l7).
His "political line" asserted Lenin, is mere high flown demagogy, characterised by revolutionary phrases, designed to deceive the workers:
"The Trotskys decieve the workers. Whoever supports Trotsky’s puny group supports a policy of lying and deceiving the workers. . . by ‘revolutionary’ phrase-mongering".
(V. I. Lenin: "From the Camp of the Stolypin ‘Labour’ Party", in: "Collected Works"; Volume 17; Moscow; 1963; p. 243).
"Empty exclamations, high-flown words. . and impressively important assurances -- that is Trotsky’s total stock-in-trade".
(V. I. Lenin: "The Question of Unity", in: "Collected Works", Volume 18; Moscow; 1963; p.553) .
"Trotsky is fond of sonorous and empty phrases. . . . Trotsky’s phrases are full of glitter and noise, but they lack content. . . . Trotsky is very fond of explaining historical events in pompous and sonorous phrases, in a manner flattering to Trotsky".
(V. I. Lenin: "Vio1ation of Unity under Cover of Cries for Unity", in: ""Selected Works"; Volume 4; London; 1943; p. 189,192, 194).
This demagogy, asserted Lenin, is used to attempt to conceal the fact that in practice Trotsky’s faction supports, and has the confiidence of the liquidator Mensheviks and the otzovists:
"People like Trotsky, with his inflated phrases about the RSDLP and his toadying to the liquidators, ‘who have nothing in common’ with the RSDLP, today represents ‘the prevalent disease’. At this time of confusion, disintegration and wavering it is easy for Trotsky to become the ‘hero of the hour’ and gather all the shabby elements around himself. Actually they preach surrender to the liquidators who are building a Stolypin Labour Party".
(V. I. Lenin: Resolution Adopted By the Second Paris Group of the RSDLP on the State of Affairs in the party", in: "Collected Works", Volume 17: Moscow; 1963; p. 216).
"Trotsky and the ‘Trotskyites and conciliators’ like him are more pernicious than any liquidators; the convinced liquidators state their views bluntly, and it is easy for the workers to detect where they are wrong, whereas the Trotskys deceive the workers, cover up the evil. . . Whoever supports Trotsky’s puny group supports a policy. . of shielding the liquidators. Full freedom of action for Potresov and Co. in Russia, and the sheltering of their deeds by ‘revolutionary’ phrase-mongering abroad - -- there you have the essence of the policy of ‘Trotskyism’".
(V. I. Lenin: "From the Camp of the Stolypin ‘Labour Party’", in: ibid.; p. 243).
"Trotsky’s particular task is to conceal liquidationism by throwing dust in the eyes of the workers. It is impossible to argue with Trotsky on the merits of the issue, because Trotsky holds no views whatever. We can and should argue with confirmed liquidators and otzovists; but it is no use arguing with a man whose game is to hide the errors of both trends; in his case the thing is to expose him as a diplomat of the smallest calibre".
(V. I. Lenin: "Trotsky’s Diplomacy and a Certain Party Platform", in: ibid.; p. 362).
"Trotsky follows in the wake of the Mensheviks and camouflages himself with particularly sonorous phrases. . .
In theory Trotsky is in no respect in agreement with either the liquidators or the otzovists, but in actual practice he is in entire agreement with both the ‘Golos’-ites and the ‘Vperyod’-ists. . .
Trotsky . . enjoys a certain amount of confidence exclusively among the otzovists and the liquidators."
(V. I.Lenin : "The Historical Meaning of the Internal Party Struggle" in Russia, in: "Selected Works", Volume 3; London; 1946; p. 499, 517).
The Menshevik leader Yuli Martov endorsed Lenin’s estimate of Trotsky in a letter dated May 1912:
"The logic of things compels Trotsky to follow the Menshevik road, despite all his reasoned pleas for some ‘synthesis’ between Menshevism and Bolshevism. . -. He has not only found himself in the camp of the ‘liquidators’, but he is compelled to take up there the most ‘pugnacious’ attitude towards Lenin".
(Y. Martov: Letter, May 1912, cited in: "Pisnia P. B. Axelroda i Y. 0. Martova". (Letters of P. B.Axelrod and Y. 0. Martov); Berlin, 1924; p. 233).
In January 1910, against the opposition of Lenin who considered the circumstances inopportune, a meeting of the Central Commiittee of the RSDLP was held in Paris, attended by representatives of the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks, the "Party Mensheviks", the Social-Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, the Social-Democratic Party of the Latvian Region, the "Vperyod" group, the Viennese group, and the "Bund'. Lenin's opposition to the holding of the Central Committee at this time was due to his awareness that a number of Bolsheviks -- including Alexel Rykov, Solomon Lozovsky, Lev Kamenev, and Grigori Sokolnikov, had adopted a concilationist position.
Despite this, the Leninists were able to secure the unanimous adoption of a resolution which condemned both otzovism and liquidationism, although without specifically naming them.
" The historical situation of the Social-Democratic movement in the period of the bourgeois counter-revolution inevitably gives rise, as a manifestation of the bourgeois influence over the proletariat, on the one hand to the renunciation of the illegal Social-Democratic Party, this debasement of its role and importance, the attempts to curtail the programme and tactical tasks and slogans of consistent Social-Democracy, etc.; on the other hand, it gives rise to the renunciation of the Duma work of Social-Democracy and of the utilisation of the legal possibilities, the failure to understand the importance of either, the inability to adapt the consistent Social-Democratic tactics to the peculiar historical conditions of the present moment, etc.
An integral part of the Social-Democratic tactics under such conditions is the overcoming of both deviations by broadening and deepening the Social-Democratic work in all spheres of the class struggle of the proletariat and by explaining the danger of such deviations".
(Resolution of Plenum of Central Committee of the RSDLP, January 1910, cited by V. I. Lenin: "Controversial Questions", in: "Selected Works", Volume 4; London; 1943; p. 129).
Lenin’s draft resolution used the phrase "fight on two fronts", but this was altered by the meeting, on Trotsky's motion, to the phrase "overcoming . . by broadening and deepening":
"The draft of this resolution was submitted to the Central Committee by myself, and the clause in question was altered by the plenum itself . . on the motion of Trotsky, against whom I fought without success. . . . The words ‘overcoming by means of broadening and deepening’ were inserted on Trostsky’s motion. . . "
Nothing at the plenum aroused more furious – and often comical -- indignation than the idea of a 'struggle on two fronts’. . . .
Trotsky's motion to substituite 'overcoming by means of broadening and deepening' for the struggle on two fronts’ meet with the hearty support of the Mensheviks and the ‘Vperyod’-ists. . . .
In reality this phrase expresses a vague desire, a pious innocent wish that there should be less internal strife among the Social-Democrats! . . it is a sigh of the so-called conciliators."
(V. I. Lenin: "Notes of a Publicist', in: ibid.; p. 45, 47)
Despite it’s dilution by the concilationists, Lenin considered this resolution as "especially important":
"This decision is especially important because it was carried unanimously: all the Bolsheviks, without exception, all the so-called 'Vperyod'-ists, and finally (this is most important of all) all the Mensheviks and the present liquidators without exception, and also all the 'national' (i.e., Jewish, Polish and Lettish) Marxists endorsed this decision".
(V. I. Lenin: "Controversial Questions ", in: ibid.; p. 128-9).
However, the conciliationists managed to secure the adoption of a number of other resolutions at the Central Committee meeting:
1) to dissolve all factional groups;
2) to discontinue the Bolshevik paper "Proletary" and the Menshevik paper "Golos Sotsial-Demokrata";
3) to grant Trotsky's Viennese "Pravda"' a subsidy from Party funds and to delegate a representative of the Central Committee to sit as co-editor along with Trotsky;
4) to set up an editorial board for the Party's central organ, "Sotsial-Demokrat" (The Social-Democrat) consisting of two Bolsheviks (Lenin and Zinoviev), two Mensheviks (Martov and Dan, and one representative of the Polish Party (Waraki);
5) to initiate a "Discussion Sheet" in conjunction with the central organ, open to representatives of trends which differed from the line of the Party;
6) to establish the seat of the Central Commitee in Russia;
7) to transfer all funds in the possession of factional centres to the general Party treasury.
So far as the last point was concerned, the Bolsheviks transferred their funds to three trustees - the leaders of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany, Karl Kautsky, Franz Mehring and Clara Zetkin -- until it could be shown that the other factions had carried out the decisions adopted at the Central Committee meeting.
The Leninists characterised this series of decisions as a conciliationist error, since it secured the dissolution of the Bolshevik faction in return for a worthless verbal promise from the other factions.
"Both the ideological merit of the plenum and its conciliationist error become clear. Its merit lies in its rejection of the ideas of liquidationism and otzovism; its mistake lies in indiscriminately concluding an agreement with persons and groups whose deeds do not correspond to their promises ( 'they signed the resolution')".
(V. I. Lenin: "The New Faction of Conciliators or the Virtuous", in: ibid.; p. 101).
"The conciliators recognised all and sundry tendencies on 'their mere promise to purge themselves, instead of recognising only those tendencies which are purging themselves (and only in so far as they do purge themselves) of their "ulcers". The 'Vperyod'-ists, the 'Golos' ites and Trotsky all ‘signed’ the resolution against otzovism and liquidationism -- that is, they promised to 'purge themselves' -- and that was the end of it! The conciliators 'believed' the promise and entangled the Party with non-Party grouplets, ‘ulcerous’ as they themselves admitted."
(V. I.. Lenin: 'The Climax of the Party Crisis’ in. ibid; p. 115).
The Bolsheviks dissolved their factional organisation and wound up their factional Paper ‘Proletary' (The Proletarian), in accordance with the decisions of the January 1910 meeting of the Central Committee.
The Mensheviks, however, declined to dissolve their factional organisation, their factional paper "Golos Sotsial-Demokrata' (The Voice of the Social-Democrat) or to break with liquidationism. In fact, they began to publish in St. Petersburg a new legal monthly magazine called "Nasha Zarya" (Our Dawn) (which continued to appear until 1914) and continued to publish in Moscow their legal journal "Vozrozhdeniye" (Regeneration). And in August 1910 the Mensheviks began to issue in Moscow the magazine "Zhizn"(Life) (which, appeared until September 1910), while in January 1911 they began to issue in St. Petersburg the legal magazine "Dyelo Zhizni" (Life’s Cause)
(which appeared until October 1941).
In all these publications, as well as in "Golos Sotsial-Deniokrata"; which continued to appear regularly, the Mensheviks continued to put forward openly liquidationist views:
"A party in the form of a complete and organised hierarchy of institutions does not exist"
(P. Potresov: Article in "Nasha Zarys", No. 2, February 1910, p. 61, cited in: V. I. Lenin: "Notes Of a Publicist", in: "Selected Works", Volume 4; London; l943; p. 53).
"There is nothing to wind up and -- we on our part would add -- the dream of re-establishing this hierarchy in its old underground form is simply a harmful reactionary utopia".
(Editorial in "Vozrozhdeniye", No. 5, April 12th., 1910, p. 51, cited in V.I.Lenin: ibid.; p. 53).
" The tactics which are to be observed in the activities of the so-called 'liquidators' are the 'tactics' which put the open labour movement in the centre, strive to extend it in every possible direction, and seek within this open labour movement and there only the elements for the revival of the party".
(Y.Martov: "Article in "Zhizn", No. 1, September 12th., 1910, p. 9-l0; cited in: V. I. Lenin: 'The Social Structure of State Power, the Prospects and Liquidationism"; in:ibid.; p. 84).
"In the new historical period of Russian life that has set in, the working class must organise itself not 'for revolution’, not 'in expectation of a revolution’, but simply for the determined and systematic defence of its special interests in all spheres of life; for the gathering and training of its forces for this many-sided and comlex activity; for the training and accumulation in this way of socialist consciousness in general; for acquiring the ability to find one’s bearings -- to stand up for oneself".
(Y. Larin: "Right Turn and About Turn!", in: "Dyelo Zhizni", No. 2, p..18, cited in: V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 90).
"Great political tasks make inevitable a relentless war against anti- liquidationism. ., . Anti-liquidationism is a constant brake, constant disruption."
(F. Dan: "Article in "Nasha Zarya", No. 6, 1911, cited by: J. V. Stalin: "The Situation in the Social-Democratic Group in the Duma ", in: "Works", Volume 2; Moscow; 1953; p. 385).
In various articles from June 1910 onwards, Lenin drew attention to the fact that the liquidator Menshviks had failed to carry out the decisions of the January 1910 Central Committee meeting:
"During that year (1910), the 'Golos'-ites, the 'Vperyod'-ists, and Trotsky, all in fact, estranged themselves from the Party and moved precisely in the direction of liquidationism and otzovism-ultimatumism".
(V. I. Lenin: "The Climax of the Party Crisis", in: ibid; p. 116).
"Since that very plenum of 1910, the above-mentioned principal publications of the liquidators. . have turned decidedly and along the whole line towards liquidationism, not only by 'belittling' (in spite of the decisions of the plenum) 'the importance of the illegal Party'; but directly renouncing the Party, calling it a ‘corpse’, declaring the Party to be already dissolved, describing the restoration of an illegal Party as a 'reactionary Utopia', heaping calumny and abuse on the illegal Party in the pages of the legal magazines".
(V. I. Lenin: Resolution on Liquidationism and the Group of Liquidators, Sixth Conference of the RSDLP, in: Ibid.; p. 152)
"All the liquidationist newspapers and magazines….. after the most definite and even-unanimous decisions have been adopted by the Party, reiterate thoughts and arguments that contain obvious liquidationism. . . .
The truth proved by the documents I have quoted, which cover a period of more than five years (.1908-13), is that the liquidators, mocking all the Party decisions, continue to abuse and bait the Party, i.e., 'illegal work'".
(V.- I. Lenin: "Controversial Questions", in:. ibid.; p. l33-4).
The 'Vperyod'-ists, on the other hand, continued to support toleration of otzovism within the Party:
"'Vperyod', No. 3 (May 1911) . . openly states that otzovism is a 'completely legitimate tendency within our Party' (p. 78)".
(V.I. Lenin: 'The New Faction of Conciliators Or the Virtuous', in; ibid.; p. 107).
In September 1910, Trotsky expelled Lev Kamenev, the officica representative of the Central Committee of the Party, from the editorial board of ‘ravda' denouncing:
"The conspiracy of the emigre clique (i.e., the Bolsheviks -- Ed.) against the Russian Social-Democratic Labour party";
(L. Trotsky: "Pravda', No. 21, 1910),
and adding threateningly:
"Lenin’s circle, which wants to place itself above the Party, will find itself outside it'.
(L. Trotsky: ibid).
Lenin declared that Trotsky's expulsion of the CC representative from the editorial board of "Pravda" confirmed the already expressed view of the Bolsheviks that, under the guise of "non-factionalism", Trotsky was, in fact, endeavouring to form a faction:
"That Trotsky's venture is an attempt to create a faction is obvious to all now, after obvious to all now, after Trotsky has removed the representative of the Central Committee from ‘Pravda’".
(V. I. Lenin: "The Historical Meaning of the Internal Party Struggle in Russia": In 'Selected Works'; Volume 3; London; 19~6; p. 517).
The fact that Trotsky’s professed desire for unity of the factions concealed his support in practice for the Menshevik liquidators and otzovists is shown by his failure to condemn these factions for their repudiation of the conciliationist decisions to which all actions had agreed at the January 1910 meeting Central Committee.
As Trotsky’s sympathetic biographer Isaac Deutscher expresses it:
"This was the occasion on which Trotsky, the champion of unity, should have spared the offenders against unity no censure. Yet in 'Pravda’ he 'suspended judgement’ and only mildly hinted at his disapproval of the Mensheviks' conduct.. . . Trotsky took his stand against the disciplinarians. Having done so, he involved himself in glaring inconsistencies. He, the fighter for unity, connived in the name of freedom of dissent at the new breach in the Party brought about by the Mensheviks. He, who glorified the underground with zeal worthy of a Bolshevik; joined hands with those who longed to rid themselves of the underground as a dangerous embarrassment. Finally, the sworn enemy of bourgeois liberalism allied himself with those who stood for an alliance with liberalism against those who were fanatically opposed to such an alliance. . . .
So self-contradictory an attitude brought him nothing but frustration. Once again to the Bolsheviks he appeared not just an opponent, but a treacherous enemy. . . Martov made him turn a blind eye more than once on Menshevik moves which were repugnant to him. His long and bitter quarrel with Lenin made him seize captiously on every vulnerable detail of Bolshevik policy. His disapproval of Leninism he expressed publicly with the usual wounding sarcasm. His annoyance with the Mensheviks he vented mostly in private arguments or in 'querulous' letters".
(I. Deutscher: "The Prophet Armed: Trotsky: 1879-1921"; London; 1970; p.. 195, 196).
Lenin expressed, himself more forthrightly on Trotsky's attitude in an article entitled "Judas Trotsky's Blush of Shame":
"At the Plenary Meeting Judas Trotsky made a big show of fighting liquidationism and otzovism. He vowed and swore that he was true to the Party. He was given a subsidy. . .
Judas expelled the representative of the Central Committee from 'Pravda' and began to write liquidationist articles in ‘Vorwarts'. In defiance of the direct decision of the School Commission appointed by the Plenary Meeting to the effect that no Party lecturer may go to the ‘Vperyod’ factional school, Judas Trotsky did go and discussed a plan for a conference with the ‘Vperyod’ group. . . Such is Judas Trotsky's blush of shame".
(V. I. Lenin: "Judas Trotsky's Blush of Shame"; in: "Collected Works"; Volume 17; Moscow; l963; p.45) .
The liquidator Menshevik members of the Central Committee, now based in Russia by the decision of the January 1910 meeting of the Central Committee and so compelled to function illegally, refused to attend the CC on the grounds that all illegal organisations were "objectionable" and "harmful". The conciliationist members of the Central Committee refused to agree to meetings of the Central Committee without the liquidator Mensheviks, on the grounds that such meetings would be "unrepresentative".
"And what about the work in Russia? Not a single meeting of the Central Committee was held during the whole year! Why? Because the members of the Central Committee in Russia (conciliators who well deserved the kisses of 'Golos Likvidatorov') kept on 'inviting' the liquidators for a year and a quarter but never got them to 'accept the invitation’".
(V. I. Lenin: "The Climax of the Party Crisis", in: Ibid.; p.116).
The result was that for a considerable period after the January 1910 meeting of the Central Committee, all practical Party work was carried out by the Bolsheviks and the Party Mensheviks", the latter led by Georgi Plekhanov.
"All Party work .. during the whole of that year (i.e., 1910 -- Ed.) was done by the Bolsheviks and the Plekhanovists. . .
This Party work (in literature, which was accessible to all) was conducted by the Bolsheviks and the Plekhanovists in spite.. of the 'conciliatory' resolutions and the collegiums formed by the plenum, and not in conjunction with the 'Golos'-ites and the 'Vperyod'-ists, but against them (because it was impossible to work in conjunction with the liquidators and otozovists-ultimatumists)".
(V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 115, 116).
In June 1911, on the initiative of Lenin, a meeting of Central Committee members living- abroad was held in Paris, attended by representatives of the Bolsheviks, the "Party Mensheviks" the Social-Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, and the Social-Democratic Party of the Latvian Region.
The meeting set up an Organising Commission Abroad, charged with the calling of an All-Russian Conference. This, in turn, set up a Technical Comminion Abroad, to deal with technical questions such as publishing, transport, etc.
From its inception the Organising Commission Abroad had a majority of conciliationist members and, to avoid bringing about a break with the liquidator Mensheviks, it did not proceed with the work of calling a conference. In November 1911 therefore, the Bolshevik members withdrew from it.
In July 1911 the Bolshevik member of the Central Committee in Paris sent Grigori Ordzhonikidze to Russia to work there for the calling of a Party Conference. As a result of Ordzhonikidze’s activity, a meeting of representatives of local Party organisations set up in November 1911 a 'Russian Organising Commission" charged with making all arrangements for convening of a Party Conference.
This commission, composed of Bolsheviks and "Party Mensheviks", made arrangements for the convening of the Sixth Party Conference in Prague in January 1912.
"By November l4, the Russian Organisation Committee was formed. In reality, it was created by the Bolsheviks and by the Party Mensheviks in Russia. 'The alliance of the two strong factions' (strong in their ideological solidarity and in their work of purging 'ulcers') became a fact".
(V.I. Lenin: "The Climax of the Party Crisis", in: "Selected Works", Volume 4; London; 1943, p. 118)
In December 1911 the Bolsheviks began publication in St. Petersburg of a legal monthly magazine "Prosveshceniye" (Enlightenment) to succeed "Mysl", suppressed by the Tsarist government. This in turn was suppressed by the tsarist government in June l914, but a double number appeared in the autumn of 1917.
In the same month, December 1911, a meeting of Bolshevik groups abroad took place in Paris, with the aim of unifying the Bolshevik groups abroad for the forthcoming Party conference. It was attended by 11 voting delegates, under the leadership of Lenin.
To remedy the intolerable situation created by Menshevik domination of the Central Committee, which refused either to be active or to convoke a congress, a conference of the Party was convened in January 1912 on the initiative of the Bolsheviks - the Sixth Conference of the- RSDLP.
More than twenty organisations of the Party were represented at the conference, including those of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Ekaterinoslav, Nicolayev, Saratov, Kazan, Vilna, Dvinsk, Tiflis and Baku. The Mensheviks refused to attend – except for a small group of "Party Mensheviks".
The conference elected a Bolshevik Central Committee, headed by Lenin, and this in turn set up a new Russian Bureau of the Central Committee, headed by Stalin, to direct the practical work of the Party within Russia.
A resolution drafted by Lenin and adopted by the conference reviewed the anti-Party activities of the liquidator Mensheviks, who were grouped around the magazines "Nasha Zarya" (Cur Dawn) and "Dyelo Zhizni" (Life’s Cause), and declared them to be now "outside the Party":
"The Conference declares that the group represented by 'Nasha Zarya' and ‘Dyelo Zhizni’ has by its behaviour, definitely placed itself outside the Party'.
(V. I. Lenin: Resolution on Liquidationism and the Group of Liquidators, Sixth Conference RSDLP, in: "Selected Works", Volume 4; London; l943; p. 152).
The Bolsheviks regarded the Sixth Party Conference as of great significance since, by the expulsion of the liquidator Mensheviks, it created for the first time a truly united Party based on Leninist principles:
"The conference was of the utmost importance in the history of our Party, for it drew a boundary line between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks and amalgamated the Bolshevik organisations all over the country into a united Bolshevik Party".
(J. V. Stalin: Report to the 15th. Congress of the CPSU (B.), cited in: "History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)". Moscow; 194l; p. l42).
The liquidator Mensheviks and the group around Trotsky's "Pravda" (Truth) refused to recognise the Sixth Party Conference as "legitimate":
"Neither the liquidators nor the numerous groups living abroad (those of . . Trotsky and others). . recognised our January 1912 conference".
(V. I. Lenin: "Socialism and War", in: "Collected Works", Volume 18; London; n.d.; p. 255).
Trotsky, in particular, denounced the Conference virulently in the pages of "Pravda" (e.g., "Pravda" No. 24, 1912) and anonymously in the pages of "Vorwarts". His anger was intensified when, on May 5th., 1912, the Bolsheviks began publication in St. Petersburg of a daily newspaper under the name of "Pravda", edited by Stalin; Trotsky thundered against the "theft" of "his" paper's name by the:
"The circle whose interests are in conflict with vital needs of the Party, the circle which lives and thrives only through chaos and confusion".
("Pravda", No. 25; 1912),
and demanded that the Bolshevik paper change its name, concluding threateningly:
"We wait quietly for an answer before we undertake further steps'.
(Ibid.)
Lenin wrote to the editorial board of the Bolshevik "Pravda":
"I advise you to reply to Trotsky through the post:
"To Trotsky ( Vienna) . We shall not reply to disruptive and slanderous letters"; Trotsky's dirty campaign against ‘Pravda’ is one mass of lies and slander.."
(V. I. Lenin: "Letter to the Editor of Pravda", July 19th., 1912, in: "Collected Works", Volume 35; Moscow; 1966; p. 41),
and Stalin commented drily that Trotsky was merely:
". . .a vociferous champion with fake muscles".
(J. V. Stalin: "The Elections in St. Petersburg", in: "works"; Volume 2; Moscow; l953; p. 288).
From the autumn of 1910 Trotsky began preparations to try to unite all the anti-Bolshevik elements associated with the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party into a single bloc which, by calling a conference in the name of the Party, might usurp the name and machinery of the Party.
As Lenin put it:
"Trotsky groups all the enemies of Marxism. Trotsky unites all to whom ideological decay is dear; . . . all philistines who do not understand the reasons for the struggle and who do not wish to learn, think and discover the ideological roots of the divergence of views".
(V. I Lenin: Letter to the Russian Collegium of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, in: "Collected Works", Volume 17; 1963; p. 21).
In November 1910 Trotsky secured the passage through the Vienna Club of the Russian Social-Democratic Party of a resolution setting up a fund for the purpose of convening such a conference. Lenin commented:
"On the 26 th November, 1910, Trotsky carried through a resolution in the so called Vienna Party Club (a circle of Trotskyites, exiles who are pawns in the hands of Trotsky) . . . . Trotsky’s attacks on the bloc of Bolsheviks and Plekhanov’s group are not new; what is new is the outcome of his resolution; the Vienna Club (read 'Trotsky') has organised a 'general Party fund for the purpose of preparing and convening a conference of the RSDLP'.
This . . is a clear violation of Party legality and the start of an adventure in which Trotsky will come to grief".
(V. I. Lenin: ibid; p. 19, 20)
"Trotsky's resolution.. . expresses the very aim of the 'Golos' group -- to destroy the central bodies so detested by the liquidators, and with them, the Party as an organisation. It is not enough to lay bare the anti-Party activities of 'Golos' and Trotsky; they must be fought".
(V. I. Lenin: "The State of Affairs in the Party", in: ibid.; p. 23).
In March 1912 Trotsky attempted to take advantage of the expulsion of the liquidator Mensheviks from the Party by calling a preliminary conference in Paris, attended by delegates of the various organisations (some purely fictitious) the leaderships of which were opposed to the Bolsheviks: the Social-Democratic Party of the Latvian Region, the "Caucasian Regional Committee" of the RSDLP, the Bund, the Menshevik group around the newspaper "Golos Sotsial-Demokrata" (The Voice of the Social-Democrat), the "Vperyod" (Forward) Group, and the group around Trotsky’s Viennese "Pravda".
The meeting denounced the Sixth Party Conference, and the Central Committee elected by it, as "illegitimate":
"The conference declared that the conference (i.e., the Sixth Party Conference of the RSDLP -- Ed) is an open attempt of a group of pcrsons, who have quite deliberately led the Party to a split, to usurp the Party's flag, and it expresses its profound regret that several Party organisations and comrades have fallen victims to this deception and have thereby facilitated the splitting and usurpatory policy of Lenin's sect. The conference expresses its conviction that all the Party organisations in Russia and abroad will protest against the coup d’etat that has been brought about, will refuse to recognise the central bodies elected at that conference, and will by every means help to restore the unity of the Party by the convocation of a genuine all-Party conference".
(Resolution of March 1912 Paris conference in: "Vorwarts"; (Forward), March 26th., 1912).
The conference set up an "Organisation Committee" with the official aim of convening a "legitimate Party Conference".
Lenin pointed out that Trotsky's role' in the projected anti-Bolshevik bloc was to screen the liquidator Mensheviks with "left"demagogic phrases:
"The basis of this bloc is bloc is obvious: the liquidators enjoy full freedom to pursue their line . . 'as before’, while Trotsky, operating abroad, screens them with
r-r-revolutionary phrases, which cost him nothing and do not bind them in any way".
(V. I. Lenin: "'The Liquidators against the Party", in: "Collected Works", Volume 18; Moscow; 1963; p. 24).
In August 1912 the anti-Bolshevik conference, to prepare which the "Organisation Committee" had been set up in March, took place in Vienna under the leadership of Trotsky, Martov and Dan.
The organisations represented at the conferences --organisations which together formed what the Party called the "August Bloc" were:
1) liquidator Mensheviks grouped around the paper -"Golos Sotsial-Demokrata";
2) The liquidator Menshevik group around "Nevsky Golos"(The Voice of the Neva), a legal newspaper published in St. Petersburg from May to August 1912;
3) The "Caucasian Regional Committee of the Social-Democratic Labour Party". (described by Lenin as a fictitious body), a group of Mensheviks from the Caucusus headed by Noah Jordania);
4) The Ukrainian social-democratic organisation 'Spillka";
5)The seven Menshevik Duma deputies;
6) The "Vperyod" group;
7) The Social-Democratic Party of the Latvian Region; and
8) The group around Trotsky’s Viennese "Pravda".
Representatives of the Polish Socialist Party (not the Polish Social-Democratic Party) and of the Lithuanian Social-Democratic Party attended as observers.
The "Vperyod" group withdrew from the conference on its first day, and a "Bolshevik" who attended from Moscow was subsequently exposed as a police agent.
The conference adopted a resolution calling for the adaptation of the Party organisation to the "new forms and methods of the open Labour Movement'.
It adopted a new programme virtually in line with that of the liberal capitalists in order to make it acceptable to the tsarist government and enable the new party which was planned to emerge from the conference to function legally.
It also adopted a resolution on "national-cultural autonomy" in violation of the national programme of the RSDLP (to be discussed in the next section).
The "Organisation Committee" continued in existence.
Seventeen years later Trotsky commented critically on his role in initiating the formation of the "August Bloc";
"In 1912, when the political curve in Russia took an unmistakable upward turn, I made an attempt to call a union conference of representatives of all the Social-Democratic factions. . . Lenin, however, came out with all his force against union. The entire course of events that followed proved conclusively that Lenin was right. The conference met in Vienna in August 1912, without the Bolsheviks, and I found myself formally in a 'bloc’ with the Mensheviks and a few disparate groups of Bolshevik dissenters. This ‘bloc’ had no common political basis."
(L. Trotsky: "My Life"; New York; 1970; p. 224-5).
In "April 1913 Trotsky wrote a letter to Nikolai Chkheidze, Chairman of the Duma Menshevik fraction, in which he said:
"And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration".
(L. Trotsky: Letter to Nikolai Chkheidze, April 1913, cited in: N.Popov,:, "Outline History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union"; Volume 1; London; n.d.; p. 289).
Sixteen years later Trotsky did not challenge the authenticity of the letter:
"My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the 'official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, 'The Pravda -- a Labour Paper'. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor's revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party".
(L. Trotsky: "My Life"; New York; 1970: p. 5l4-5),.
but described its use by the leadership of the, CPSU in the campaign to expose the role of Trotsky as "One of the 'greatest frauds in the world’s history":
"In 1924, the epigones disinterred the letter from archives and flung it at the party. . The people read Trotsky's hostile remarks about Lenin and were stunned. . . The use "that the epigones made of my letter to Chkheidze is one of the greatest frauds in the world's history. The forged documents of the French reactionaries in Dreyfus case are as nothing compared to the political forgery perpetrated by Stalin and his associates".
(L. Trotsky: ibid.; p. 5l6)
In October 1913 another conference of the Central Committee of the Party with leading Party workers, attended by 22 persons, was held at Poropino (Polarid) -- a conference referred to in Party literature as the"Summer" Conference of 1913.
One of the principal resolutions adopted by the Conference dealt with the position of the Party's Duma fraction. Since the seven Menshevik deputies had a majority in the fraction over the six Bolshevik deputies, the latter were constantly being pressed, in the name of "democracy", to adopt the rightist viewpoints of the majority. The conference protested at the conduct of the seven Menshevik deputies and decided that the bloc of six Bolshevik deputies, who were following the political line of the Party's Central Committee, should have equal rights with the bloc of Mensheviks.
The seven Menshevik deputies refused to accept this resolution, and the Bolshevik "six" formed an independent "Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Fraction".
Another important resolution dealt with the national question, and clarified the meaning of "the self-determination of nations", as the right of an oppressed nation to secede and form an independent state:
"As regards the right of the nations oppressed by the tsarist monarchy to self-determination, i.e., the right to secede and form independent states, the Social-Democratic Party must unquestionably champion this right".
(Resolution on the National Question, "Summer Conference", 1913, cited in: V. I. Lenin: "Collected Works", Volume 19; Moscow; 1963; p. 428)
The delegation of the Social Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania at the "Summer Conference" refrained from voting on the question of the right of nations to self-determination,
"Declaring themselves opposed to any such right in general"'.
(V. I. Lenin: "On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination", in: "Selected Works", Volume 4; London; l943; p.286).
The Polish delegation to the Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in 1903 had similarly opposed recognition of this right in the Programme Commission of the congress, but, receiving no support, did not raise their objections in the full congress but withdrew from it.
The Polish Party based their attitude on the ideas put forward by Rosa Luxemburg in her article "The National Question and Autonomy"; published in "Przeglad Socjal-Demokratyczny" (Social-Democratic Review) in 1908-09).
Although the Polish Party rejoined the RSDLP in 1906, its leaders continued to opposethe principle of the right of nations to self-determination, and in March 1914, Trotsky used this opposition to attack the Bolsheviks:
"The Polish Marxists consider that 'the right to national self-determination’ is entirely devoid of political content and should be deleted from the programme".
(L. Trotsky: "Borba", No. 2, l914, p. 25).
Lenin replied to these attacks in his article "On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination":
"Unless we in our agitation advance and carry out the slogan of the right to secession we shall play into the hands, not only of the bourgeoisie, but also of the feudal landlords and of the absolutism of the oppressing nation. . . In her anxiety not to 'assist' nationalistic bourgeoisie of Poland, Rosa Luxemburg by her denial of the right to secession in the programme of the Russian Marxists, is in fact assisting the Great Russian Black Hundreds".
(V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 266).
And Lenin commented again on Trotsky's role in such controversies:
"Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any serious question relating to Marxism; he always manages to creep into the chinks of this or that difference of opinion, and desert one sided for the other".
(V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 286).
With the collapse of the "August Bloc", in February 1914, Trotsky withdrew from the editorial board of the Menshevik paper "Luch" (The Torch) and, together with some of his Viennese supporters, began to publish a legal journal called "Borba" (The Struggle), which continued to come out until July 1914. In this paper, as Lenin noted, he put forward liquidationist ideas in a disguised form.
"In his magazine Trotsky has tried to say as little as possible about the essence of his views, but "Pravda" (No . 37) has already pointed out that Trotsky has not uttered a word either on the question of illegal work, or on the slogan of the struggle for an open party, etc. .
But although Trotsky has avoided expounding his views directly, a whole series of passages in his magazine -indicate the 'kind of ideas he is stealthily introducing and concealing.
Trotsky repeats the liquidationist libels upon the Party . . repeating . . what in essence are their pet ideas".
(V. I. Lenin: 'Violation of Unity under Cover of Cries for Unity", in: "Selected Works", Volume 4; London; l943; p. 203, 204, 208)
The appearance of "Borba" stimulated Lenin to write one of his fullest analyses of the disruptive role of Trotsky and his supporters, the article "Violation of Unity under Cover of' Cries for Unity", written in May l914:
"Trotsky calls his new magazine ‘non-factional’. He puts this word in the forefront in his advertisements, he stresses it in every way in the editorials of ‘Borba’. . . Trotsky's 'workers' magazine' is Trotsky's magazine for the workers, for it bears no trace either of workers' initiative or of contact with the workers' organisations.. . . . By this label of 'non-factionalism' the worst representatives of the worst remnants of factionalism mislead the young generation of workers. . . .
Since 1912, for more than two years, there has been no factionalism in Russia among the organised Marxists. There is a complete break between the Party and the liquidators . . . The word 'factionalism' is a misnomer.
Trotsky talks to us about the 'chaos of factional struggle’ . . . . .
Trotsky is fond of sonorous and empty phrases --this is known, but the catchword ‘chaos’ is not only a phrase; in addition to that it is . . .a vain attempt to transplant to Russian soil in the present epoch the émigré relationships of the epoch of yesterday.
It is impossible to describe as chaos a struggle against a tendency which has been recognised by the entire Party as a tendency, and has been condemned since 1908. . . . To treat the history of one’s own party as 'chaos' means that one is suffering from unpardonable empty-headedness. . . . .
Apart from the ‘Pravda’-ists and the liquidators, there are no fewer than five Russian factions, i.e., separate groups, which claim to belong to the same Social-Democratic Party: Trotsky's group, the two 'Vperyod' groups, the 'Party Bolsheviks', the ‘Party Mensheviks’.
And here Trotsky is to a certain extent correct! This is real factionalism, this is real chaos. . . .
During the whole of those two years (i.e., 1912 and 1913-- Ed.) not one, not a single one of those five factions abroad made the slightest impression on any of the manifestations of the mass labour movement in Russia. . . .
This fact proves that we were right in referring to Trotsky as the representative of the 'worst remnants of factionalism'. . . .
Although Trotsky professes to be non-factional, he is known to all who are in the slightest degree acquainted with the labour movement in Russia as the representative of 'Trotsky's faction’. . . This is a remnant of factionalism for it is impossible to discover in it anything serious in the way of contacts with the mass labour movement of' Russia.
Finally, it is the worst kind of factionalism, for there is nothing ideologically and politically definite about it. . . .
It cannot be denied that sections of the factions which, like Trotsky's faction, really exist only from the Vienna-Paris, and not at all from the Russian, point of view are definite.
But Trotsky completely lacks a definite ideology; and policy, for having the patent for 'non-factionalism' only means . . having a patent granting complete freedom to flit to and fro from one faction to another . . . . .
Under the flag of 'non-factionalism' Trotsky is upholding one of the factions abroad which is particularly devoid of ideas and has no basis in the labour movement in Russia. . . .
Not all is gold that glitters. Trotsky's phrases are full of glitter and noise, but they lack content.....
Recently (between August 1912 and February 1914) he followed in the footsteps of F. Dan, who, as is known, threatened and called for the ‘killing’ of anti-liquidationism. Now Trotsky does not threaten to 'kill' our tendency (and our Party --); he only prophesies that it will kill itself . . ..
'Suicide' is merely a phrase, an empty phrase, it is just ‘Trotskyism’ . . .
If our attitude towards liquidationism is wrong in theory and principle then Trotsky should have said plainly . . . . wherein he found it to be wrong. Trotsky, however, has for years avoided that essential point.
If our attitude towards liquidationism is refuted in practice by the experience of the movement, this experience should be analysed, and this again Trotsky fails to do. He admits: ‘advanced workers become the active agents of ‘schism' (read -- active agents of the 'Pravda'-ist line, tactics, system, organisation).
Why is this regrettable development taking place that. . . .the advanced workers, and numerous workers at that, are supporting; 'Pravda'?
Trotsky answers --- owing to the state of ‘utter political perplexity' of these advanced workers.
This explanation is no doubt extremely flattering to Trotsky, to all the five factions abroad, and to the liquidators. Trotsky is very fond of explaining historical events 'with the learned mien of an expert’ in pompous and sonorous phrases, in a manner flattering to Trotsky. If 'numerous advanced workers’ become ‘active agents' of the political and Party line, which does not harmonise with the line of Trotsky, then Trotsky settles the question unceremoniously, directly and immediately: these advanced workers are ‘in a state of utter political perplexity, and he, Trotsky, is obviously in a ‘state’ of political firmness, clarity and correctness regarding the line! And this very same Trotsky, beating his chest, thunders against factionalism, against narrow circles, and against the intelligentsia foisting their will on the workers! . . . .
Trotsky is trying to disrupt the movement and cause a split. . . .
Trotsky's 'non-factionalism' is schism, in the sense that it is a most impudent violation of the will of the majority of the workers. . . . .
You believe it is precisely the ‘Leninists’ who are the splitters? . .
But if you are right, why did not all the factions and groups prove that unity with the liquidators was possible without the 'Leninists' and against the 'splitters'?
In August 1912 the conference of the 'uniters' met. Discord set in at once.
The August Bloc turned out to be a fiction and collapsed.
In concealing this collapse, from his readers, Trotsky is deceiving them.
The experience of our opponents has proved we were right; it has proved that it is impossible to work with the liquidators. . .
In his magazine Trotsky has tried to say as little as possible about the essence of his views. Trotsky has not uttered a word either on the question of illegal work, or on the slogan of the struggle for an open party, etc. Incidentally, that is why we say in this case, in which a segregated organisation wants to set itself up without having an ideological-political complexion, that it is the worst sort of factionalism . . .
Trotsky has avoided expounding his views directly.
Trotsky avoids facts and concrete indications just because they mercilessly refute all his angry exclamations and pompous phrases. It is of course very easy to assume a proud pose and say: ‘coarse sectarian caricature’. It is equally easy to add more slashing and pompous catchwords about ‘emancipation from conservative factionalism’.
But is this not too cheap? Is this not a weapon taken from the arsenal of the period when Trotsky was dazzling the schoolboys?
The old participants in the Marxian movement in Russia know Trotsky’s personality very well, and it is not worth while talking to them about it. But the young generation of workers do not know him and we must speak of him, for he is typical of all the five grouplets abroad which in fact are also vacillating between the liquidators and the Party. .
Trotsky was an ardent 'Iskra'-ist in 1901-03. .
At the end of 1903 Trotsky was an ardent Menshevik, i.e., one who deserted the 'Iskra'-ists for the 'Economists'; he proclaimed that 'there is a deep gulf between the old and the new "Iskra". In l904-5, he left the Mensheviks and began to vacillate, at one moment collaborating with Martynov (the 'Economist'), and at another proclaiming the absurdly 'Left' theory of 'permanent revolution'. In 1906-07 he drew nearer to the Bolsheviks, and in the spring of 1907 he declared his solidarity with Rosa Luxemburg.
During the period of disintegration, after long 'non-factional' vacillations, he again shifted to the Right, and in August 1912 entered into a 'bloc' with the liquidators. How he is again abandoning them, repeating, however, what in essence are their pet ideas.
Such types are characteristic as fragments of the historical factions of yesterday, when the mass labour movement of Russia was still dormant and every grouplet was 'free’ to represent itself as . . a 'great power’ talking of uniting with others. The young generation of workers must know very well with whom it has to deal".
(V. I. Lenin: "Violation of Unity Under Cover of Cries for Unity", in: "Selected Works", Volume 4; London; l943; p. 187-88, 189, 190; 191, l94, l95, 197, 198, 203, 206-08).
On the outbreak of war, Trotsky was forced to leave Vienna and for two months he settled in Zurich, where he wrote "The War and the International', which was published in November in "Golos" (The Voice), a Menshevik paper published in Paris.
In this work Trotsky put forward the view that "the main obstacle to economic development' was the existence the national state":
"The old national state .. has outlived itself, and is now an intolerable hindrance to economic development. . . .
The outlived and antiquated national 'fatherland' has become the main obstacle to economic development . . . .
The national states have become a hindrance to the development of the forces of production".
(L. Trotsky: Preface to "The War and the International"; London; 1971; p. vii, x, xii).
Thus, declared Trotsky, the aim of the working class should be the creation of a 'republican United States of Europe":
"The task of the proletariat is to create a far more powerful fatherland, with far greater power of resistance - the republican United States of Europe".
Lenin at first (in one document only) accepted the slogan of a "United States of Europe":
"The immediate political slogan of the Social-Democrats of Europe must be the formation of a republican United States of Europe".
(V. I. Lenin: 'The War and Russian Social-Democracy' in: "Selected Works;' Volume 5; Moscow; 1935; p. 129).
By August 1915, however, the Bolsheviks, on Lenin's initiative had decisively rejected this slogan, firstly, because it could, under capitalist society, only be reactionary:
"From the point of view of the economic conditions of imperialism, . . the United States of Europe is either impossible or reactionary under capitalism. A United States of Europe under capitalism is equivalent to an agreement to divide up the colonies. Under capitalism, however, . . no other principle of division . . . . is possible except force. . . Division cannot take place except 'in proportion to strength', And strength changes in the course of economic development.
Of course, temporary agreements between capitalists and between the powers are possible. In this sense, the United States of Europe is possible as an agreement between the European capitalists. . but what for? Only for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe, of jointly protecting colonial booty against Japan and America. . . Under capitalism, the United States of Europe would mean the organisation of reaction to retard the more rapid development of America".
(V. I. Lenin: 'The United States of Europe Slogan', in: "Selected Works", Volume 5; London 1935; p. 139, 140, l41).
and secondly because if regarded as a socialist slogan, it suggests that_the victory of socialism was possible only on an all European scale:
"Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible, first in a few or even in one single capitalist country".
(V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p.141).
Lenin concludes:
"It is for those reasons and after repeated debates that the editors of the central organ have come to the conclusion that the United States of Europe slogan is incorrect'".
(V.I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 141).
That Trotsky did, in fact, link the Slogan of "a United States of Europe" with the concept, inherent in his "theory of permanent revolution", that proletarian revolution could only be successful an an international scale, is shown by his reply to Lenin's article:
"The only more or less concrete historical argument advanced against the slogan of a United States of Europe was formulated in the Swiss 'Sotsial-Demokrat' in the following sentence:
'Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism'.
From this the 'Sotsial-Domokrat' draws the conclusion that the victory of socialism is possible in one country, and that therefore there is no reason to make the dictatorship of the proletariat in each separate country contingent upon the establishment of a United States of Europe. That capitalist development in different countries is uneven is an absolutely incontrovertible argument. But this unevenness is itself extremely uneven. The capitalist level of Britain, Austria, Germany or France is not identical. But in comparison with Africa and Asia all these countries represent capitalist ' Europe', which has grown ripe for the social revolution. That no country in its struggle must 'wait' for others, is an elementary thought which it is useful and necessary to reiterate in order that he idea of concurrent international action may not be replaced by the idea of temporising international inaction.
Without waiting for the others, we begin and continue the struggle nationally, in the full confidence that our initiative will give an impetus to the struggle in other countries; but if this should not occur, it would be hopeless to think -- as historical experience and theoretical considerations testify -- that, for example, a revolutionary Russia could hold out in the face of a conservative Europe".
(L. Trotsky: Article in "Nashe Slovo" (Our Word), No. 87; April 12th., 1916, cited in: J. V. Stalin: "The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists", in: 'Works", Volume 6; Moscow; 1953; p. 390-1).
In the autumn of 1916 Lenin reiterated his opposition to Trotsky's slogan of a United States of Europe:
"As early as 1902, he (i.e., the British econornist John Hobson -- Ed.) had an excellent insight into the meaning and significance of a 'United States of Europe'' (be it said for the benefit of Trotsky the Kautskyian!) and of all that is now being glossed over by the hypocritical Kautskians of various countries, namely, that the opportunists (social-chauvinists) are working hand in hand with the imperialist bourgeoisie precisely towards creating an imperialist Europe on the backs of Asia and Africa".
(V. I. Lenin: 'Imperialism and the Split in Socialism", in: "Selected Works", Volume 11; London; l943; p. 752).
Trotsky, however, continued -- even after the Russian October Revolution of 1917 -- to hold that the construction of socialism in Europe was possible only on an all-European basis. In the postscript to a collection of articles published in 1922 under the title of "A Peace Programme", he wrote:
"The assertion reiterated several times in the 'Peace Programme' that a proletarian revolution cannot culminate victoriously within national bounds may perhaps seem to some readers to have been refuted by the nearly five years' experience of our Soviet Republic. But such a conclusion would be unwarranted. . . We have not arrived, or even begun to arrive, at tho creation of a socialist society. . . Real progress of a socialist economy in Russia will become possible only after the victory of the proletariat in the major European countries." (L. Trotsky: Postscript to 'A Peace Programme , cited by: J. V. Stalin: "The Social-Democratic Deviation in our Party; in: "Works", Volume 8; Moscow; l954; p. 271-2).
The "Peace" Slogan-The First of Trotsky's Two Slogans
The policy put forward by Trotsky in the pages of "Nashe Slovo" in relation to the imperialist war may be summarised in two slogans:
firstly, that of "revolutionary struggle for peace" (or "revolutionary struggle against the war", called by Lenin the "peace slogan":
"Phrase-mongers like Trotsky (See No. 105 of the 'Nashe Slovo') defend, in opposition to us, the peace slogan".
(V. I. Lenin: 'The 'Peace' Slogan Appraised", in: "Collected Works"", Volume 18; London; n.d.; p. 262).
'Revolutionary struggle against the war ' . . is an example of the high-flown phraseology with which Trotsky always justifies opportunism".
(V. I. Lenin: "Defeat of One's Own Government in the Imperialist Uar", in: "Selected Works", Volume 5; London 1935; p. 3142).
Lenin opposed the "peace" slogan throughout the war:
"The peace slogan is in my judgment incorrect at the present moment. This is a philistine's, a preacher's, slogan. The proletarian slogan must be civil war".
(V. I. Lenin: Letter to A. G. Shlyapnikov, October 17th., 19314, in: "Collected Works', Volume 18; n.d.; p. 75).
"Propaganda of peace at the present time, if not accompanied by a call for revolutionary mass action, is only capable of spreading illusions, of demoralising the proletariat by imbuing it with belief in the humanitarianism of the bourgeoisie, and of making it a plaything in the hands of the secret diplomacy of the belligerent countries. In particular, the ilea that a so-called democratic peace is possible without a series of revolutions is profoundly mistaken."
(V. I. Lenin: Conference of the Sections of the RSDLP Abroad," in: "Selected Works", Volume 5; London 1935; p. 135).
"To accept the peace slogan per Se, and to repeat it, would be encouraging the 'pompous air of powerless (what is worse hypocritical) phrasemongers'; that would mean deceiving the people with the illusion that the present governments, the present ruling 'classes, are capable before they are . . eliminated by a number of revolutions of granting a peace even half way satisfactory to democracy and the working class. Nothing is more harmful than such a deception."
(V. I. Lenin: 'The Peace Question', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 18; London; n.d.; p. 266).
In September 1915 Trotsky carried forward his opposition to the Leninist policy towards the war at the International Socialist Conference at Zimmerwald ( Switzerland). The Bolshevik resolution was rejected by a majority of the delegates, including Trotsky. As he expresses it himself:
"Lenin was on the extreme left at the Conference. In many questions he was in a minority of one, even within the Zimmerwald left wing, to which I did not formally belong."
(L. Trotsky: "My Life"; New York; 1970; p. 250).
In these circumstances, the Bolsheviks agreed to sign a compromise manifesto drafted by Trotsky:
"The revolutionary wing, led by Lenin, and the pacifist wing, which comprised the majority of the delegates, agreed with difficulty on a conmon manifesto of which I had prpared the draft".
(L. Trotsky: ibid p. 250).
The central point of this manifesto was "the struggle for peace":
"It is necessary to take up this struggle for peace, for a peace without annexations or war indemnities. . . .
It is the task and the duty of the Socialists of the belligerent countries to take up this struggle with full force".
Manifesto Of the International Specialist Conference, Zimmerwald, cited in: V. I Lenin: Collected Works', Vo1ume 18; London; Ibid.; p. 475).
Lenin commented on this manifests after the conference:
"Passing to 'the struggle for peace' . .here also we find inconsistency, timidity, failure to say everything that ought to be said. . . It does not name directly, openly and clearly the revolutionary methods of struggle".
(V. I. Lenin: 'The First Step', in: "Collected Works", Volume 18; London; n.d.; p. 343).
"Neither Victory nor Defeat"- Trotsky's Second Slogan
Secondly, in opposition to Lenin's declaration that a revolutionary struggle against "one's own imperialists in wartime was facilitated by, and facilitated, the military defeat of "one's own" imperialists in the war, Trotsky put forward the slogan of "Neither victory nor defeat!":
"'Bukvoyed (i.e., Ryazonov -- Ed.) and Trotsky defend the slogan 'Neither victery nor defeat!"
(V. I. Lenin: "Defeat Of One's Own Governrnent in the Imperialist War", in: Selected Works', Volume 5; London l935; p. 145-6).
In an Open Letter addressed to the Bolsheviks in "Nashe Slovo" in the summer of l9l5, Trotsky denounced Lenin's policy of "revolutionary defeatism" as:
"An uncalled-for and unjustifiable concession to the political methodology of social-patriotism which substitutes for the revolutionary struggle against the war and the conditions that cause it, what, under present conditions, is an extremely arbitrary orientation towards the lesser evil".
(L. Trotsky: in: "Nashe Slovo", No. 105, cited in V. I. Lenin: "Defeat of One's Own Government in the Imperialist War", in: 'Selected Works", Volume 5; London; l935; p. 142).
Lenin replied to Trotsky's Open Letter in August l9l5, in his article "Defeat of One's Government in the Imperialist War":
"This is an example of the high-flown phraseology with which Trotsky always justifies opportunism.
Making shift with phrases, Trotsky has lost his way amidst three pine trees. It seems to him that to desire Russia's defeat means desiring Germany's victory. . .
To help people who are unable to think, the Berne resolution made it clear that in all imperialist ceuntries the proletariat must now desire the defeat of its own government. Bukvoyed and Trotsky preferred to evade this truth. . Had Bukvoyed and Trotsky thought a little, they would have realised that they adopt the point 'of view of a war of governments and the bourgeoisie, i.e., that they cringe before the 'political methodology of 'social-patriotism', to use Trotsky's affected language.
Revolution in wartime is civil war; and the transformation of war between governments into civil war is, on the one hand, facilitated by military reverses ('defeats') of governments; on the other hand, it is impossible really to strive for such a transformation without thereby facilitating defeat.
The very reason the chauvinists. . .repudiate the 'slogan' of defeat is that this slogan alone implies a consistent appeal for revolutionary action against one's own government in wartime. Without such action, millions of the r-r-revolutionary phrases like war against 'war and the conditions, and so forth' are not worth a penny. . . .
To repudiate the 'defeat' slogan means reducing one's revolutionary actions to an empty phrase or to mere hypocrisy. .. .
The slogan "Neither victory nor defeat" . . is nothing but a paraphrase of the 'defence of the fatherland' slogan. . . . .
On closer examination, this slogan will be found to mean 'civil peace', renunciation of the class struggle by the oppressed classes in all belligerent 'countries, since class struggle is impossible without . . facilitating the defeat of one's own country. Those who accept the slogan 'Neither victory nor defeat', can only hypocritically be in favour of the class struggle, of 'breaking civil peace'; those in practice, renounce an independent proletarian policy because they subordinate the proletariat of all belligerent countries to the absolutely bourgeois task of safeguarding imperialist governments against defeat. .
Those who are in favour of the slogan 'Neither victory nor defeat' are consciously or unconsciusly chauvinists, at best they are conciliatory petty bourgeois; at all events they are enemies of proletarian policy, partisans of the present governments, of the present ruling classes. . . .
Those who stand for the slogan 'Neither victory nor defeat' are in fact on the side of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists, for they 'do not believe' in the possibility of international revolutionary action of the working class against its own governments, and they do not wish to help the development of such action which, though no easy task, it is true, is the only task worthy of a proletarian, the only socialist task'."
(V. I. Lenin: "Defeat of One's Own Government in the Imperialist War", in: "Selected Works", Volume 5; London; 1935; p. l42-3, l45, 146-7).
In April 1915 Rosa Luxemburg, in prison, wrote, under the pseudonym "Junius", a pamphlet entitled 'The Crisis of German Social Democracy. ' It was published a year later, in April 1916. Rosa Luxemburg, like Trotsky opposed Lenin's policy of "revolutionary defeatism":
"What shall be the practical attitude of social democracy in the present war? Shall it declare: since this is an imperialist war, since we do not enjoy in our country any socialist self-determination, its existence or non-existence is of no consequence to us, and we will surrender it to the enemy? Passive fatalism can never be the role of a revolutionary party like social democracy. . . .
Yes, socialists should defend their country in great historical crises".
(R.Luxemburg: "The Crisis of German Social Democracy", in: "Rosa Luxemburg Speaks'; Now York; 1970; p. 311, 3l4,).
and like Trotsky, she put forward the slogan of "Neither victory nor defeat":
"Here lies the great fault of German social democracy..... . . It was their duty . to proclaim to the people of Germany that in this war victory and defeat would be equally fatal".
(R. Luxemburg: ibid.; p. 314).
suggesting that the defence of the country "against defeat" should be carried on under the slogan she had consistently opposed as a leader of the Social-Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, the Slogan of "national self-determination":
"Instead of covering this imperialist war with a lying mantle of national self-defence, social democracy should have demanded the right of national self-determination seriously".
(R. Luxemburg: ibid.; p. 311-12).
Lenin replied to Rosa Luxemburg's pamphlet in his article "The Pamphlet by Junius", published in August 1916:
"We find the same error in Junius' arguments about which is better, victory or defeat? His conclusion is that both are equally bad. . . This is the point of view not of the revolutionary proletariat, but of the pacifist petty bourgeois.. . .
Another fallacious argument advanced by Junius is in connection with the question of defence of the fatherland.
Junius . . falls into the very strange error of trying to drag a national programme into the present non-national war. It sounds almost incredible, but it is true.
He proposes to 'oppose' the imperialist war with a national programme".
(V. I. Lenin: "The Pamphlet by Junius"; in: "Collected 'Works', Volume 19; London; l942; p. 212, 207, 209).
True, Rosa Luxemburg, unlike the open social-chauvinists, supported the concept of class struggle apainst one's own government during the war, not, however, in relation to the slogan of "turn the imperialist war into civil war", but as 'the best defence against a foreign enemy":
"The centuries have proven that not the state of siege, but relentless class struggle . . is the best protection and the best defence against a foreign enemy".
(R. Luxemburg: ibid.; p. 304).
Lenin commented:
"In saying that class struggle is the best means of defence against invasian, Junius applied Marxian dialectics only half way, taking one step on the right road and immediately deviating from it. . . Civil war against the bourgeoisie is also a form of class struggle, and only this form of class struggle would have saved Europe (the whole of Europe, not only one country) from the peril of invasion.
Junius came very close to the correct solution of the problem and to the correct slogan: civil war against the bourgeoisi for socialism; but, as if afraid to speak the whole truth, he turned back to the phantasy of a 'national war' in 1914, 1915 and 1916. . ..
Junius has not completely rid himself of the 'environment' of the German Social-Democrats, even the Lefts, who are afraid to follow revolutionary slogans to their logical conclusion."
(V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 210, 212).
Lenin stood' firmly for the organisational separation of revolutionary internationalism from both open and concealed (ie. Centrist) social-chauvinism:
"To keep united with opportunism at the present time means precisely to subjugate the working class to ‘its’ bourgeoisie, to make an alliance with it for the oppression of other nations and for the struggle for the privileges of a great nation; at the same time it means splitting the revolutionary proletariat of all countries".
(V. I. Lenin: 'Socialism and War', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 18; London; n.d.; p. 230-1).
"We must declare the idea of unity with the Organisation Committee an illusion detrimental to the workers' cause".
(V. I. Lenin: 'And Now What?", in: ibid.; p. 109).
"We shall not be for unity with Chkheidze's fraction (as desired both by Trotsky, by the 0rgansation Committee, and by Plekhanov and Co.; . for this would mean to cover up and defend the 'Nashe Dyelo".
(V. I. Lenin: Letter to Aleksendro Kollontai, summer 1915, in: ibid.; p. 208).
In contrast to Lenin, Trotsky stood consistently for the unity of what he termed the "internationalist" groups, a category which included the concealed social-chauvinists of the Centre (the Organisation Committee, the Menshevik Duma fraction and the group around Trotsky).
At the beginning of 1915, "Nashe Slovo" addressed an appeal to the Bolshevik Central Committee and to the Menshevik Organisation Committee proposing a conference of all the groups which took a "negative attitude' towards socialchauvinism. In its reply, dated March 1915, the Organisation Committee said:
'To the conference must be invited the foreign representatives of all those party centres and groups which were . . present at the Brussels Conference of the International Socialist Bureau before the war'.
(Letter of Organisation Committee, March 12th., 1915, cited in: V. I. Lenin: The Question of the Unity of Internationalists", in: "Collected Works", Volume 18; London; n.d.; p. 177).
Lenin commented:
"Thus, the Organisation Committee declines on principle to confer with the internationalists, since it wishes to confer also with the social-patriots (it is known that Plekhanov's and Alexinsky's policies were represented at Brussels).
We must not confer, it says, without the social-patriots, we must confer with them!"
(V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 177, 178).
Nevertheless, Trotsky continued his efforts to bring about organisational unity between the Bolsheviks end the concealed social-chauvinists of the Centre. In June 1915 Trotsky wrote an Open Letter to the editors of the Bolshevik magazine "Kommunist": , published in No. 105 of "Nashe Slovo" in which he said:
"I am proud of the conduct of our Duma members (the Chkheidze group); I regard them as the most important agency of internationalist education of the proletariat in Russia, and for that very reason I deem it the task of every revolutionary Social-Democrat to extend to them every support and to raise their authority in the International".
(L. Trotsky: Open Letter to the Editors of "Kommunist", cited in: V. I. Lenin: "Collected Works", Volume 18; London; n.d., p. 435)
Lenin commented on Trotsky's unprincipled conciliationism in various articles:
"The elements that are grouped around the 'Nashe Slovo' are vacillating between platonic sympathy for internationalism and a tendency for unity at any price with the "Nasha Zarya" and the Organisation Committee".
(V. I. Lenin: "Conference of the Foreign Sections of the RSDLP", in: Collected Works, Volume l8; London; n .d.; p.150).
"'Nashe Slovo' . . raises a revolt against social-nationalism while standing on its knees before it, since it fails to unmask the most dangerous defenders of the bourgeois current (like Kautsky); it does not declare war against opportunism but, on the contrary, passes it over in silence; it does not undertake, and does not point out, any real steps towards liberating socialism from its shameful patriotic captivity. By saying that neither unity nor a split with those who joined the bourgeoisie is imperative, the 'Nashe Slovo' practically surrenders to the opportunists".
(V. I. Lenin: "The Collapse of Platonic Internationalism", in: ibid.; p.183).
"Trotsky always, entirely disagrees with the social-chauvinists in principle, but agrees with them in everything in practice."
(V. I. Lenin: 'State of Affairs within Russian Social-Democracy", in: Ibid.; p. 205-6).
'We shall not be for unity with Chkheidze's fraction (As desired . .by Trotsky . .) for this would mean to cover up and defend the 'Nashe Dyelo'...
Roland-Holst, as well as Rakovsky . .and Trotsky too, are in my judgment all most harmful 'Kautskyists', inasmuch as they are all, in one form or another, for unity with the opportunists, . . are embellishing opportunism, they all (each in his way) advance eclecticism instead of revolutionary Marxism".
(V. I. Lenin: Letters to Aleksandra Kollontai, summer 1915, in: ibid.; p. 208, 209).
"In Russia Trotsky . . fights for unity with the opportunist and chauvinist group "Nashe Zarya'".
(V. I. Lenin: 'Socialism and War", in: ibid.; p.232).
"Martov and Trotsky in Russia are causing the greatest harm to the labour movement by their insistence upon a fictitious unity, thus hindering, the now ripened imminent unification of the opposition in all countries and the creation of the Third International".
(V. I. Lenin: 'The Tasks of the Opposition in France", in: 'Collected Works", Volume 19; London; 1942; p. 32).
"What are our differences with Trotsky?. . In brief -- he is a Kautskyite, that is, he stands for unity with the Kautskyites in the International and with Chkheidze's parliamentary group in Russia. We are absolutely against such unity".
(V. I. Lenin: Letter to Henrietta Roland-Holst, Morch 8th., 1916, in: "Collected Works", Volume 43; Moscow; 1969; p. 515-l6).
"What a swine this Trotsky is -- Left phrases and a bloc with the Right. . . He ought to be exposed".
(V. I. Lenin: Letter to Aleksendra Kollontai, February 17th., 1917, in: "Collected Works", Volume 35; Moscow, 1966; p. 285).
In January 1917 Trotsky landed in New York, and joined the staff of a Russian magazine published there under the editorship of Nikolai Bukharin and Aleksandra Kollontai, -"Novy Nir" (New World) . Typically, he formed a bloc with the right-wing members of the staff against the Left:
"Trotsky arrived, and this scoundrel at once ganged up with the Right wing of 'Novy Mir’ against the Left Zimmerwaldists!! That's it!! That's Trotsky for you!! Always true to himself - twists, swindles, poses as a Left, helps the Right, so long as he can."
(V. I. Lenin: Letter to Inessa Armand, February 19th., 1917, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 35; Moscow; 1966; p.288)
In "Navy Mir", Trotsky continued to put forward his theory of "permanent revolution", arguing that if the German working class failed to rise along with the Russian working class, the workers’ government of a revolutionary Russia must wage war against the German ruling class:
"If the conservative social-patriotic organisation should prevent the German working class from rising against its ruling classes in the coming epoch, then of course the Russian working class would defend its revolution with arms in its hands. The revolutionary workers' government would wage war against the Hohenzollerns, summoning the brother proletariat of Germany to rise against the common enemy."
(L. Trotsky: Article in "Novy Mir", March 21st., 1917, cited in: L. Trotsky: "History of the Russian Revolution"; Volume 1; London; 1967; p. 438).
3. From "February Revolution" to October Revolution
From the first days of 1917 strikes spread throughout the main cities of tsarist Russia. By March 10 th; these had developed in Petrograd into a political general strike, with the demonstrating workers carrying Bolshevik slogans: "'Down with the tsar.!", "Down with the war.!" and "Bread.!"
The practical work of the Bolshevik Party in Russia at this time was directed by the Bureau of the Central Committee, headed by Vyacheslav Molotov. On March 11th. the Bureau issued a manifesto calling for an armed uprising against tsarism and the formation of a Provisional-Government.
On March 12 th; an elected Soviet of Workers' Deputies came into being in Petrograd as an action comnittee to carry out the uprising and in the following days Soviets were established in Moscow and other cities. On March 13 th, the Petrograd Soviet revived its "Izvestia" ("News").
When the tsar ordered troops to suppress the rising by force, the soldiers -- mostly peasant in uniform -- refused to obey the orders of their officers and joined the revolutionary workers, thus bringing into being a revolutionary alliance of workers and peasants. The workers and soldiers now began to disarm the police and to arm themselves with their weapons. On March 14 th, the Petrograd Soviet was expanded into a "Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers’ Deputies".
On March 15th. the tsar, Nicholas II, abdicated.
The revolution of March 1917 (known as the "February Revolution" under the old-style calendar) had been accomplished by the workers and peasants. Its character was that of a bourgeois-democratic revolution directed against the tsarist autocracy.
As soon as the capitalist class realised that the bourgeois-democratic revolution was unavoidable, they proceeded to manoeuvre in an effort to minimise its’ scope -- and above all to prevent its development into a socialist revolution.
On March 12th., the day after the tsar had dissolved the Fourth State Duma, its liberal capitalist members set up an "Executive Committee of the Imperial Duma", headed by the President of the Duma, the monarchist landlord Mikhail Rodzyanko.
On March 15th. this Executive Committee set up a "Provisional-Government", headed by Prince Georgi Lvov as Prime Minister and including among its Ministers Pavel Miliukov (leader of the Constitutional Democrats) as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aleksendr Guchkov (leader of the Octobrists) as Minister of War, and Aleksandr Karensky (a prominent Socialist-Revolutionary) as Minister of Justice.
The capitalist class endeavoured for a few days to save the monarchy, by persuading the tsar to abdicate in favour of his brother Mikhail. But this proved untenable in view of popular feeling against the monarchy, and Mikhail abdicated on the following day, March 16th.
The capitalists, then turned their efforts to attempting to turn Russia into a capitalist parliamentary republic.
On March 17th. the new government issued a manifesto "To the Citizens"; setting out its programme:
"1. Complete and immediate amnesty for all political and religious offences, including terrorist acts, military revolts, agrarian insurrections, etc.
2.Freedom of speech, press, assembly, union, strikes, and the extension of all political liberties to persons in the military service within the limits required by considerations of technical military necessity.
3. Abolition of all feudal estate and national restrictions.
4. Immediate preparation for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly on the basis of universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage. This Constituent Assembly shall determine the form of State and the constitution of the country.
5. Formation of a people's militia with elected officers subordinated to the organs of local self-government and taking the place of the police.
6. Elections to the local organs of self-government on the basis of universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage.
7. The troops who participated in the revolutionary movement are not to be disarmed and are to remain in Petrograd.
8. While maintaining a rigid military discipline in the service, all obstacles are to be eliminated preventing soldiers from exercising the public rights enjoyed by other citizens".
(Manifesto of Provisional Government, May 17th., 1917, cited in: V. I. Lenin: Collected Works, Volume 20, Book 1; London; 1929; p. 348)
Lenin commented:
'In its first proclamation to the people (March 17), the government uttered not a word about the main and basic question of the present moment, peace. It keeps secret the predatory treaties made by tsarism with England, France, Italy, Japan, etc. It wishes to conceal from the people the truth about its war programme, and the fact that it is for war, for victory over Germany. . . .
The new government cannot give the people bread. And no amount of freedom will satisfy masses suffering hunger. . . .
The entire Manifesto of the new government . . .inspires me with the greatest distrust, for it consists only of promises, and does not carry into life any of the most essential measures that could and should be fully realised right now"
(V. I. Lenin: Theses of March l7th, 1917; in ibid; p.24, 25).
Although there was a large spontaneous element in the "February Revolution", the Bolsheviks, played a leading role in the uprising itself. Despite this, in the majority of cases a majority of the members of the Soviets and of their Executive Committees were Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries; the Bolsheviks were, in the period following the "February Revolution" in a small minority in most of the Soviets, including those of Petrograd and Moscow.
A number of factors were responsible for this position: the industrial working class had been diluted during the war by large numbers of peasants from the villages, while Bolshevik leaders such as Lenin and Stalin were in exile.
As a result of this, on March 18th. the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet issued a proclamation calling upon the workers to support the capitalist Provisional Government. Lenin commented:
"The proclamation issued by the Soviet of Workers' Deputies ... is a most remarkable document. It proves that the Petrograd proletariat, at the time it issued its proclamation, at any rate, was under the preponderant influence of the petty-bourgeois politicians.
The proclamation declares that every democrat must 'support' the new government and that the Soviet of Workers' Deputies requests and authorises Kerensky to participate in the Provisional Government. . .These steps are a classic example of betrayal of the cause of the revolution and the cause of the proletariat."
(V. I. Lenin: "Letters from Afar"', in: ibid.; p. 4l, 42).
At the same time the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet set up a ‘Contact Commission', headed by Aleksandr Skobolev, the official aim of which was to maintain contact with, and "control", the Provisional Government.
Lenin summed up the political situation resulting from the February Revolution in the following words:
"The first stage of the revolution . . , owing to the insufficient class consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, led to the assumption of power by the bourgeoisie."
(V. I. Lenin: "The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution", in: "Selected Works", Volume 6; London; 1946; p. 22) .
The victory of the "February Revolution" created a new political situation in Russia which called for a new political line on the part of the Russian Socia1-Democratic Labour Party.
As Stalin expressed it in November 1924:
"This was the greatest turning point in the history of Russia and an unprecedented turning point in the history Of our Party. The old, pre-revolutionary platform Of direct overthrow of the government was clear and definite, but it was no longer suitable for the new conditions of struggle . . Under the now conditions of the struggle, the Party hod to adopt a new orientation. The Party (its majority) groped its way towards this new orientation".
(J. V. Stalin "Trotskyism or Leninism?"; in Works Volume 6; Moscow; 1953); p. 347, 348).
At the time of the "February Revolution" the Bureau of the Control Committee of the RSDLP, centred in Petrograd, was led by Vyacheslav Molotov.
On March 18th., 1917 the Bureau issued, in the name of the Central Committee, a manifesto to "All Citizens of Russia", calling for the formation of a Provisional Revolutionary Government.
"Citizens! The fortresses of Russian tsarism have.. fallen. . . . It is the task of the working class and the revolutionary army to create a Provisional Revolutionary Government which is to head the new republican order now in the process of birth.
The Provisional Revolutionary Government must take it upon itself to create temporary laws defending all the rights and liberties of the people, to confiscate the lands of the monasteries and the landowners, the crown lands and the appanages, to introduce the 8-hour working day and to convoke a Constituent Assembly on the basis a universal, direct and equal suffrage, with no discrimination as to sex, nationality or religion, and with the secret ballot.
The Provisional Revolutionary Government must take it upon itself to secure provisions for the population and the army; for this purpose it must confiscate all the stores prepared by the former government and the municipalities.....
It is the task of the people and its revolutionary government to suppress all counter-revolutionary plots against the people.
It is the immediate and urgent task of the Provisional Revolutionary Government to establish relations with the proletariat of the belligerent countries for the purpose 0f . . terminating the bloody war carnage imposed upon the enslaved peoples against their will.
The workers of shops and factories, also the rising troops, must immediately elect their representatives to the Provisional Revolutionary Government. . .
Forward under the red banner of the revolution!
Long live the Democratic Republic!
Long live the revolutionary working class!
Long live the revolutionary people and the insurgent army!"
(Manifesto of CC, RSDLP, March 18th., 1917, cited in: V. I. Lenin: "Collected Works"; Volume 20, Book 2; London; 1929; p. 378-79).
The manifesto was published in the first issue of "Pravda", which reappeared on the same day.
Among the Bolsheviks liberated from exile in Siberia by the "February Revolution" were Josef Stalin and Lev Kamenev, both of whom returned to Petrograd. Kamenev joined the editorial board of "Pravda" on March 23rd., Stalin two days later on March 28 th.:
Kamenev immediately upheld a chauvinist line on the war, contending like the Menshevik leaders that with the victory of the "February Revolution" the working class should adopt a position of "revolutionary defencism": He wrote in "Pravda" of March 28th.:
"The soldiers, the peasants and the workers of Russia who went to war obeying the pull of the now overthrown Tsar. . have freed themselves; the Tsar's banners have been replaced by the red banners of the revolution!. . .
When an army faces an army, it would be the most absurd policy to propose to one of them to lay down arms and go home. This . .would be a policy of slavery which a free people would repudiate with scorn. No, we will firmly hold our posts, we will answer a bullet by a bullet and a shell with a shell. . . .
A revolutionary soldier or officer, having overthrown the yoke of tsarism, will not vacate a trench to leave it to a German soldier or officer who has not mustered up courage to overthrow the yoke of his own government. We must not allow any disorganisation of the military forces of the revolution! ....
Russia is bound by alliances to England, France and other countries. It cannot act on the questions of peace without them."
(L. Kamenev: "Without Secret Diplomacy"; cited in "Collected Works", Volume 20, Book 2; London; 1929, p. 379; 380).
Stalin rejected this policy of chauvinist "revolutionary defenciism". He wrote in "Pravda" on the following day, March 29 th :
"The present war is an imperialist war. Its principal aim is the seizure (annexation) of foreign, chiefly agrarian, territories by capitalistically developed states.. . .
It would be deplorable if the Russian revolutionary democracy, which was able to overthrow the detested tsarist regime, were to succumb to the false alarm raised by the imperialist bourgeoisie".
(J. V. Stalin: "The War", in: "Works"; Volume 3; Moscow; 1953; p.5; 7).
The majority of the Bureau, headed by Stalin and Molotov, correctly saw the Provisional Government as an organ of the capitalist class, and the Soviets as the embryo of a Provisional Government. A resolution of the Bureau published in "Pravda" on April 8 th declared:
"The Provisional Government set up by the moderate bourgeois classes of society and associated in interests with Anglo-French capital is incapable of solving the problems raised by the revolution. Its resistance to the further extension and deepening of the revolution is being paralysed only by the growth of the revolutionary forces themselves and by their organisation. Their rallying centre must be the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers' Deputies in the cities and the Soviets of Peasants’ and Agricultural Workers' Deputies in the countryside as the embryo of a revolutionary government, prepared in the further process of development, at a definite moment of the revolution, to establish the full power of the proletariat in alliance with the revolutionary democracy".
(Resolution of Bureau of CC, RSDLP; cited in: N. Popov: "Outline History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union"', Part 1; London; n .d.; p. 353-54).
However, in "groping" towards a correct political line in the new situation, the majority of the Bureau made a tactical error. Instead of putting forward the clear slogan of "All power to the Soviets!', they adopted a policy of "putting pressure on the Provisional Government" to perform actions which, as an organ of the capital class, it was incapable of doing:
"The solution is to bring pressure on the Provisional Government to make it declare its consent to start peace negotiations irnmediately.
The workers, soldiers and peasants must arrange meetings and demonstrations and demand that the Provisional Government shall come out openly and publicly in an effort to induce all the belligerent powers to start peace negotiations immediately, on the basis of recognition of the right of nations to self-determination".
(J. V. Stalin: ibid.; p. 8).
On which Lenin commented forthrightly the day after his return to Russia:
"The "Pravda" demands that the government renounce annexations. To demand that a government of capitalists renounce annexations is balderdash".
(V. I. Lenin Speech at a Caucus of the Bolshevik Members of the All-Russian Conference of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, April 17, 1917, in Collected Works", Volume 20, Book 1; London; 1929; p. 98).
This incorrect tactical line corresponded closely with the tactical line of Kamenev, who said:
"Our slogan is -- pressure on the Provisional Government with the aim of forcing it openly, before world democracy, and immediately to come forth with an attempt to induce all the belligerent countries forthwith to start negotiations concerning the means of stopping the World War".
(L. Kamenev: "Without Secret Diplomacy", cited in: V. I. Lenin: "Collected Works"; Volume 20, Book 2; London; 1929; p. 380).
Stalin himself analysed this mistaken tactical policy in November 1924:
"The Party (its majority) groped its way towards this new orientation. It adopted the policy of pressure on the Provisional Government through the Soviets on the question of peace and did not venture to step forward at once from the old slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry to the new slogan of power to the Soviets. The aim of this halfway policy was to enable the Soviets to discern the actual imperialist nature of the Provisional Government on the basis of the concrete questions of peace and in this way to wrest the Soviets from the Provisional Government. But this was a profoundly mistaken position, for it gave rise to pacifist illusions, brought grist to the mill of defencism, and hindered the revolutionary education of the masses. At that time I shared this mistaken position with the Party comrades and fully abandoned it only in the middle of April, when I associated myself with Lenin's theses".
(J. V. Stalin: "Trotskyism or Leninism" , in: Works", Volume 3; Moscow; 1953; p. 348).
As soon as the "February Revolution" broke out, Lenin began attempts to return to Russia. The governments of the Allied powers refused him permission to travel through their countries but eventually, as a result of negotiations between Fritz Platten, Secretary of the Swiss Socialist Party, and the German government, 32 Russian political emigres (19 of which were Bolsheviks, among them Lenin) were permitted to travel through Germany in a sealed railway carriage accorded extra-territorial rights. The German government, of course, calculated that the return of these revolutionaries to Russia would be detrimental to the Russian war effort.
Lenin arrived in Petrograd on the evening- of April 16 th; and was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd of workers and soldiers.
On the following day he reported to the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet on the circumstances of his journey through Germany.
Later on April 17th., Lenin spoke at a meeting of the Bolshevik delegates to the First Congress of Soviets, presenting his theses on the new situation in Russia following the "February Revolution" -- the "April Theses". To sum up, Lenin held that, politically, the "February Revolution" was a bourgeois-democratic revolution which transferred power from the tsarist autocracy to the dual power of the democratic dictatorship of the working class and peasantry (in the shape of the Soviets) and of the capitalist class (in the shape of the Provisional Government). Politically, therefore, the 'February Revolution" represented the completion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution:
"Before the March revolution of 1917, state power in Russia was in the hands of one old class, namely, the feudal noble landlord class, headed by Nicholas Romanov.
After that revolution, state power is in the hands of another class, a new one, namely, the bourgeoisie. . . .
The passing of state power from one class to another is the first, the main, the basic principle of a revolution, both in the strictly scientific and in the practical meaning of that term.
To that extent, the bourgeois or the bourgeois democratic, revolution in Russia is completed.
But at this point we hear the noise of objectors, who readily call themselves 'old Bolsheviks' : Haven't we always maintained, they say, that a bourgeois-democratic revolution is culminated only in a 'revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry'? . . . .
The Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies’ --here you have ‘revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry' already realised in life'.
(V. I Lenin: 'Letters on Tactics’ in: ibid.; p. 119, 120)
Economically and socially, however, particularly in so far as the agrarian revolution (the transfer of the land to the working peasantry) is concerned, the “February Revolution” did not complete the bourgeois-democratic revolution, Economically and socially, the bourgeois-democratic revolution was not completed until the “October Revolution", the political content of which was proletarian-socialist.
“Is the agrarian revolution, which is a phase of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, completed? On the contrary, is it not a fact that it has not yet been?”
(V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 119-120).
“The bourgeois-democratic content of the revolution means purging the social relations (systems and institutions) of the country of mediavalism, serfdom, feudalism. . . .
‘We solved the problems (i.e., economic and social problems -- Ed.) of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in passing, as a ‘by-product’ of the main and real proletarian-revolutionary socialist work”.
(V. I. Lenin: “The Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution”; in: "Selected Works”; Volume 6; London; 1946; p. 501; 503.
Lenin thus maintained that the Bolshevik strategy and tactics relating to the first, bourgeois-democratic stage of the revolutionary process in Russia had been confirmed by the "February Revolution”, but in a “more multicoloured” Way than could have been anticipated:
“The Bolsheviks’ slogans and ideas have been generally confirmed by history; but as to the concrete situation, things have turned out to be different, more original, more unique, more multicoloured than could have been anticipated by any one”.
(V. I. Lenin: “Letters on Tactics", in: "Collected Works”, Volume 20, Book 1; London; 1929; p. 120).
After the "October Revolution” the question naturally arose among Trotsky’s disciples as to how it had come about that the socialist revolution in Russia had been brought about in accordance with a political line advanced by Lenin, who had consistently opposed Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution".
Trotsky's answer was simple, if completely mythical: in May 1917 the Bolshevik Party, on Lenin's initiative, had “rearmed itself” ideologically by accepting Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution"; thus history had "confirmed" the correctness of Trotsky's theory of “permanent revolution”:
"Bolshevism under the leadership of Lenin (though not without internal struggle) accomplished its ideological rearmanent on this most important question in the spring of 1917, that is, before the seizure of power".
(L. Trotsky: Note in "The Year 1905;”(January 1922), cited in: L. Trotsky: 'The Permanent Revolution"; New York; 1970; p. 236).
"Precisely in the period between January 9 and the October strike (in 1905 -- Ed.) the author formed those opinions, which later received the name: 'theory of the permanent revolution’ . . . . .
This appraisal was confirmed as completely correct, though after a lapse of twelve years".
(L. Trotsky: Forward to "The Year 1905" (January 1922), cited in: L. Trotsky: ibid.; p. 235).
"I by no means consider that in my disagreements with the Bolsheviks I was wrong on all points.. . .
I consider that my assessment of the motive forces of the revolution was absolutely right.. . .
My polemical articles against the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks . . devoted to an analysis of the internal forces of the revolution and its prospects . . I could republish even now without amendment, since they fully and completely coincide with the position of our Party, beginning with 1917".
(L. Trotsky: Letter to N.S. Olminsky, December 1921 cited in: N. S. Olminsky: Foreword to "Lenin on Trotsky" (1925), cited in: J. V. Stalin: Reply to the Discussion on the Report an "The Social--Democratic Deviation in Our Party', l5th Conference of CPSU (B.), November 3rd., 1926; in “Works”;, Volume 3; Moscow; 1954;p. 349-50).
In fact, of course, Lenin took pains to dissociate himself from Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution” after his return to Russia in April 1917:
"Trotskyism: 'No Tsar but a workers' government’. This, surely is wrong".
(V. I. Lenin: Report on the Political Situation, Petrograd City Conference of the RSDLP, April 27th, 1917, in: "Collected Works", Volume 20, Book 1; London;
l929, p. 207).
"Had we said: 'No Tsar, but a Dictatorship of the Proletariat' -- it would have meant a leap over the petty bourgeoisie.”
(V.I. Lenin: Concluding Remarks in Connection with the Report on the Political Situation, 7th. Conference of the RSDLP, May 7th., 1917, in: ibid.; p. 287).
Lenin did not put forward in April 1917 the strategy of direct advance to the dictatorship of the working class (in alliance with the poor peasantry) as a corrected strategy for the realisation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
On the contrary, the bourgeois-democratic revolution, as the first stage of the revolutionary process in Russia, had already been realised, politically, in the “February Revolution”. The strategy of direct advance to the dictatorship of the working class (in alliance with the poor peasantry) was put forward as a new strategy for the new situation following the "February Revolution", a new strategy for the second stage of the revolutionary process.
As Lenin expressed it in his “April Theses”:
"The present situation in Russia. . .represents a transition from the first stage of the revolution to its second stage which is to place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest strata of the peasantry”.
(V. I. Lenin: Speech at a Caucus of the Bolshevik Members of the All-Russian Conference of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, April 17th., 1917, in: ibid.; p. 97).
Trotsky's myth -- that Lenin put forward in April 1917 a "corrected” strategy for the realisation of the bourgeois--democratic revolution similar to that embodied in Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution” -- is based on a denial of the fact that the 'February Revolution" constituted, politically, a bourgeois-democratic revolution.
In his “History of the Russian Revolution", Trotsky admits this fact:
'The insurrection triumphed. But to whom did it hand over the power snatched from the monarchy? We come here to the central problem of the February revolution. Why and how did the power turn up in the hands of the liberal bourgeoisie?"
(L. Trotsky: "History of the Russian Revolution", Volume 1; London; 1967; p. l55).
But in his "The Permanent Revolution”, Trotsky deliberately confuses the political bourgeois-democratic revolution of March with the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary economic and social changes that followed the revolution of November in order to present the latter as a "bourgeois-democratic revolution" which resulted in the dictatorship of the proletariat:
'The bourgeois-democratic revolution was realised during the first period after October. . But, as we know, it was not realised in the form of a democratic dictator-ship (i.e., of the working class and peasantry –but in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.. . . .
The two lines, the 'permanent' and Lenin's . . were completely fused by the October Revolution”.
(L. Trotsky: “The Permanent Revolution"; New York; 1970; p. 229, 234).
In November 1926 Stalin was justifiably sarcastic about Trotsky's claim that in May 1917 the Party had "rearmed itself" with Trotsky's theory of 'permanent revolution":
'Trotsky cannot but know that Lenin fought against the theory of permanent revolution to the end of his life. But that does not worry Trotsky.
It turns out . . that the theory of permanent revolution 'fully and completely coincided with the position of our Party, beginning with 1917'. . ..
But …how could Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution have coincided with the position of our Party when it is known that our Party, in the person of Lenin, combated this theory all the time? . .
Either our Party did not have a theory of its own, and was later compelled by the course of events to accept Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution; or it did have a theory of its own, but that theory was imperceptibly ousted by Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, 'beginning with 1917'. . . .
Surely the Bolsheviks had some theory, some estimate of the revolution, some estimate of its motive forces. etc?. . . .
What happened to Leninism, to the theory of Bolshevism, to the Bolshevik estimate of our revolution and its motive forces, etc.?…….
And so, once upon a time there were people known as the Bolsheviks who somehow managed, 'beginning' with 1903, to 'weld' together a party, but who had no revolutionary theory. So they drifted and drifted, ‘beginning' with 1903, until somehow they managed to reach the year 1917. Then, having espied Trotsky with his theory of permanent revolution,' they decided to 'rearm themselves' and 'having rearmed themselves', they lost the last remnants of Leninism, of Lenin's theory of revolution, thus bringing about the 'full coincidence’ of the theory of permanent revolution with the 'position' of our Party.
That is a very interesting fairy-tale, comrades. It, if you like, is one of the splendid conjuring tricks you may see at the circus. But this is not a circus; it is a conference of our Party. Nor, after all, have we hired Trotsky as a circus artist”.
(J. V. Stalin: Reply to the Discussion on the Report "The Social-Democratic Deviation in our Party", l5th. Conference of CPSU (B.), November 3rd., 1926, in:
"Works", Volume 3; Moscow; 1954; p. 350, 351, 353-54).
Within the Party the principal opposition to Lenin's "April Theses" was led by Trotsky's brother-in-law Lev Kamenev.
On April 21st., 1917, Kamenev published in "Pravda” an article-- entitled "Our Differences " in which he denounced Lenin's "personal opinion" as "unacceptable" on the grounds that he was advocating an immediate socialist revolution before the bourgeois-democratic revolution had been completed.
"In yesterday's issue of the 'Pravda' Comrade Lenin published his 'theses'. They represent the personal opinion of Comrade Lenin. . . The policy of the “Pravda” was clearly formulated in the resolutions prepared by the Bureau of the Central Committee. . . .
Pending new decisions of the Central Committee and of the All-Russian Conference of our Party, those resolutions remain our platform which we will defend . . against Comrade Lenin's criticism.. .
As regards Comrade Lenin’s general line, it appears to us unacceptable inasmuch, as it proceeds from the assumption that the bourgeois-democratic revolution has been completed and it builds on the immediate transformation of this revolution into a socialist revolution. . . .
In a broad discussion we hope to carry our point of view as the only possible one for revolutionary Social-Democracy in so far as it wishes to be and must remain to the very end the one and only party of the revolutionary masses of the proletariat without turning into a group of Communist propagandists".
(L. Kamenev: "Our Differences”; cited in: V. I. Lenin: Collected Works", Volume 20, Book 1; London; 1929; p. 380-81)
Lenin replied:
"There are two major errors in this.
1. The question of a 'completed bourgeois-democratic revolution is stated wrongly. . . . .
Reality shows us both the passing of the power into the hands of the bourgeoisie (a 'completed' bourgeois-democratic revolution of the ordinary type) and, by the side of the actual government, the existence of a parallel government which represents the 'revolutionary- democratic-dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry'. . .
Is this reality embraced in the old Bolshevik formula of Comrade Kamenev which says that ‘the bourgeois democratic revolution is not completed'?
No, the formula . . is dead. . . .
Anyone who is guided in his activities by the simple formula 'the bourgeois-democratic revolution is not completed' vouchsafes, as it were, the certainty of the petty bourgeoisie being independent of the bourgeoisie....
In doing so, he at once helplessly surrenders to the-petty bourgeoisie. . . .
The mistake made by Comrade Kamenev is that in 1917 he only sees the past of the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. In reality, however, its future has already begun, for the interests and the policy of the wage earners and the petty proprietors have already taken different lines.. . . .
This brings me to the second mistake in the remarks of Comrade Kamenev quoted above: He reproaches me, saying that my line 'builds' on the immediate transformation of this bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution.
This is not true. . . .
I declared in plain language that in this respect I only build on 'patient' explaining (is it necessary to be patient to bring about a change which can be realised ‘immediately').
(V. I. Lenin: “Letters on Tactics”; in: "Collected Works”, Volume 20 , Book 1 London; 1929; p. 125, 126, 127).
An opposition group in the Moscow City Committee, headed Aleksei Rykov and Viktor Nogin, opposed the basis of Lenin's theses on the grounds that Russia was too industrially undeveloped for socialist construction:
Lenin replied:
“Comrade Rykov says that Socialism must first come from other countries with greater industria1 development. But this is not so. It is hard to tell who will begin and who will end. This is not Marxism, but a parody on Marxism”.
(V. I. Lenin: Concluding Remarks in Connection with the Report on the Political Situation, May 7th. Conference of RSDLP, May 7th., 1917, in: ibid.; p. 287).
Another group of members of the Party – including I. P. Goldenberg, V. Bazarov, B. V. Avilov and Y N. Steklov, -- left the Bolshevik Party altogether in protest against Lenin's theses and founded the paper "Novaya Zhizn" (New Life), which supported the unification of Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and “Novaya Zhizn"-ists into a single party based on the openly Menshevik view that the Socialist revolution "Must be preceded by a more or less prolonged period of capitalism."
At the Petrograd City Conference of the Party, held from April 27th; to May 5th; 1917, a resolution in support of the political line laid down in Lenin's "April Theses" was carried.
On May 1st., 1917 (April 18th ; under the old sty1e calendar) Foreign Minister Pavel Miliukov sent a note to the Allied Governments emphasising the determination of the Provisional Government to carry the war to a victorious conclusion and to remain loyal to the tsarist government's treaties with the Allies.
'The declarations of the Provisional Government naturally cannot offer the slightest cause to assume that the accomplished upheaval will result in a weakening of Russia’s role in the common struggle of the Allies. Quite the contrary. The effort of the whole people to carry the World War through to a decisive victory has only been strengthened. . Naturally, the Provisional Government. . . in protecting the rights of our fatherland, will hold faithfully to the obligations which we have assumed towards our allies. . The government is now, as before, firmly convinced, that the present war will be victoriously concluded in complete accord with the Allies”.
(Provisional Government, Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Note to Allied Governments of May 1st., 1917, cited in: V. I. Lenin: "Collected Works”, Volume 20, Book 1; London; 1929; p. 371).
The publication of the note within Russia gave rise to mass demonstrations in Petrograd over the next four days, in which armed soldiers took a prominent part -- attempting at times to occupy public buildings. Among the demonstrators the slogans “Down with Miliukov" and “Down with Guchkov” were raised everywhere.
The Central Committee of the Party was concerned that this spontaneous movement might develop along insurrectionary lines which, in the existing situation, could only harm the revolutionary movement; on May 4th., therefore, it adopted a resolution drafted by Lenin calling upon all Party members to exert every effort to keep the demonstrations peaceful:
"Party agitators and speakers must refute the despicable lies that we threaten with civil war. . . At the present moment, when the capitalists and their government cannot and dare not use violence against the masses . . any thought of civil war is naive, senseless, monstrous. . . .
All Party agitators, in factories, in regiments, in the streets, etc. must advocate these views and this proposition (i.e., withdrawal of support by the Soviets from the Provisional Government -- Ed.) by means of peaceful discussions and peaceful demonstrations, as well as meetings everywhere”.
(V. I. Lenin: Resolution of CC, RSDLP, May 4th., 1917, in: ibid.; p. 245, 246).
These demonstrations proved sufficient to force the resignation of Guchkov as Minister of War May 13th; and of Miliukov as Minister of Foreign Affairs on May 15th.
On May 14th the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet voted in favour of a coalition Provisional Government, in which the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary parties would be formally represented.
The First Coalition Provisional Government came into being on May l8th with Prince Georgi Lvov continuing as Prime Minister. Aleksandr Tereshchenko replaced Miliukov as Minister of Foreign Affairs; Aleksandr Kerensky and Viktor Chernov (of the Socialist Revolutionaries) became Minister of War and Minister of Agriculture respectively; Aleksandr Skobelev and Iraklii Tseretelli (of the Mensheviks) became Minister of Labour and Minister of Posts and Telegraphs respectively.
In the following month Lenin commented on the formal entry of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries into the Provisional Government:
'The entrance of Tseretelli, Chernov and Co. into the cabinet has changed to an insignificant degree only the form of the compact between the Petrograd Soviet and the government of the capitalists. ..
Day by day it becomes ever clearer that Tseretelli, Chernov and Co. are simply hostages of the capitalists, have become the sides of the capitalists who are actually stifling the revolution; Kerensky has sunk to the point where he uses violence against the masses. . .
The Coalition Cabinet represents only a transition period in the development of the basic class contradictions in our revolution. . . This cannot last very long”.
(V. I. Lenin: Postcript to Pamphlet 'The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution", in: ibid.; p. 159, 160).
The Seventh Conference of the Russian Social-Democrotic Labour Party (the “April Conference”) was held in Petrograd from May 7th. to 12th., 1917, attended by 133 voting delegates representing 80,000 Party members.
The Report on the Political Situation was given by Lenin, and the opposition to Lenin’s political line was led by Lev Kamenev and Aleksei Rykov.
Kamenev directed his main attack against the slogan 'Down with the Provisional Government!'", implying that this was a Leninist slogan whereas it had been put forward during the 'April Days" by the Petrograd Committee of the Party in violation of the line of the Central Committee. In place of this (for the moment) incorrect slogan, Kamenev urged that the Party should put forward the completely unrealistic demand for control of the Provisional Government by the Soviets".
Lenin replied:
“We say that the slogan 'Down with the Provisional Government' is an adventurer's slogan. That is why we have advocated peaceful demonstrations. . . The Petrograd Committee, however, turned a trifle to the Left. In a case of this sort, such a step was a grave crime.
Now about control. . . . . .
Comrade Kamenev . . views control as a political act. . . We do not accept control. . .
The Provisional Government must be overthrown, but not now, and not in the ordinary way".
(V. I. Lenin: Concluding Remarks in connection with the Report on the Political Situation, 7th. Conference RSDLP, May 7th., 1917,in: "Collected Works”, Volume 20, Book 1; London; 1929; p. 285-86, 287).
Rykov opposed Lenin's political line on the grounds that Russia was too industrially undeveloped to move towards a socialist revolution.
Lenin replied:
"Comrade Rykov. . . . says that Socialism must come first from other countries with greater industrial development. But this is not so. It is hard to tell who will begin and who will end. This is not Marxism, but a parody on Marxism.'
(V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 287).
By a majority the congress approved a series of resolutions endorsing the Leninist line.
The Leninist political line on the national question in particular, that the Party must advocate the right of oppressed nations to self-determination to the point of secession -- was presented in the Report on the National Question given by Stalin. This slogan was opposed by Felix Dzherzhinsky and Yuri Piatakov, the latter demanding:
"The only effective method of solving it (i.e., the national question -- Ed.) is the method of a socialist revolution under the slogan 'Down with boundaries.’ for only thus can one do away with imperialism --this new factor leading to a sharpening of national oppression. .
Whereas (1) 'the right of nations to self-determination' . . is a mere phrase without any definite meaning; ....
and whereas (2) this phrase is interpreted as meaning much more than is thought of in the ranks of revolutionary Social-Democracy,. . . .
the Conference . . assumes that paragraph 9 of our programme (i.e., support for the right of nations to self-determination -- Ed.) should be eliminated."
(Y. Piatakov: Resolution on National Question submitted to 7th. Conference, RSDLF; cited in: V. I.Lenin: “Collected Works", Volume 20, Book 2; London; 1929; p.411, 412).
Lenin replied:
'Ever since 1903, when our Party adopted its programme, we have been encountering the desperate opposition of the Poles. . . And the position of the Polish Social-Democracy is as strange and monstrous an error now as it was then. These people wish to reduce the stand of our Party to that of the chauvinists.. . . . .
In Russia we must stress the right of separation for the subject nations, while in Poland we must stress the right of such nations to unite. The right to unite implies the right to separate. . . .
Comrade Piatakov's standpoint is a repetition of Rosa Luxemburg's standpoint . . Theoretically he is against the right of separation. . What Comrade Piatakov says is incredible confusion.. . .When one says that the national question has been settled, one speaks of Western Europe. Comrade Piatakov applies this where it does not belong, to Eastern Europe, and we find ourselves in a ridiculous position. . . .
Comrade Piatakov simply rejects our slogan. The method of accomplishing a socialist revolution under the slogan 'Down with the boundaries' is an utter absurdity. . . We maintain that the state is necessary, and the existence of a state presupposes boundaries. Even the Soviets are confronted with the question of boundaries . . .What does it mean, 'Down with the boundaries'? This is the beginning of anarchy . . .
He who does not accept this point of view is an annexationist, a chauvinist."
(V. I. Lenin: Speech on the National Question, 7th. Conference RSDLP, in: "Collected Works", Volume 20, Book 1; London; 1929; p. 310, 312, 313, 3l4).
The conference discussed the question of the Party’s participation in the Third (and last) "Zimmerwald Conference", due to be held in Stockholm ( Sweden) in May 1917 (but later postponed until September).
In his "April Theses" Lenin had already demanded a break with the “Zimmerwald International", proposing that the Party should remain within it only for purposes of information. At the conference, however, this policy was opposed by a considerable body of delegates headed by Grigori Zinoviev, who proposed:
"Our party remains in the Zimmerwald bloc with the aim of defending the tactics of the Zimmerwald Left Wing there. . . .
The conference decides to take part in the international conference of the Zimmerwaldists scheduled for May 31 and authorises the Central Committee to organise a delegation to that conference".
(Resolution on "The Situation within the International and the Tasks of the RSDLP", 7th. Conference RSDLP, cited in: V. I. Lenin: "Collected Works", Volume 20, Book 2; London; 1929; p. 407).
Zinoviev’s resolution was carried by the conference against the opposition of Lenin, who described Zinoviev’s tactics as:
“..arch-opportunist and pernicious".
(V. I. Lenin: Speech at 7th. Conference, RSDLP, cited in: "History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)"; Moscow; 1941; p. 189)
The conference also discussed the question of the Party's participation in an "international socialist conference" to discuss "peace terms", also scheduled for Stockholm in May. On May 6th, the Danish Social-Democrat Frederik Bergjberg had personally addressed the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet on the “Stockholm Conference". The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had accepted the invitation to participate in the conference; the Bolsheviks had rejected the invitation.
The question was placed on the agenda of the conference at the request of Viktor Nogin, who proposed that a Bolshevik delegation should attend the “Stockholm Conference”.
Lenin replied:
"I cannot agree with Comrade Nogin . . Back of this whole comedy of a would-be Socialist congress there are actually the political maneuvers of German imperialism. The German capitalists use the German social-chauvinists for the purpose of inviting the social-chauvinists of all countries to the conference. because they want to fool the working masses. . . . .
Borgjberg is an agent of the German government.. . .
We must expose this whole comedy of the Socialist conference, expose all these congresses as comedies intended to cover up the deals made by the diplomats behind the backs of the masses."
(V. I. Lenin: Speech on the Proposed Calling of an International Socialist Conference, 7th. Conference RSDLP, May 8 1917, in: "Collected Works", Volume 20, Book 1; London; 1929; p. 287, 288, 290).
The conference adopted a resolution along these lines.
The conference adopted a series of resolutions in accordance with Lenin's political line:
"On the War”,
”On the Attitude towards the Provisional Government”;
"On the Agrarian Question”;
“'On a Coalition Cabinet",
“'On Uniting the Internationalists against the Petty-bourgeois Defencist Bloc'”,
“On the Present Political Situation" ;
and “On the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies”.
The Conference elected a new Central Committee, consisting of Lenin, Stalin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Nilyutin, Nogin, Sverdlov, Smilga and Fedorov, and instructed it to bring up to date the programme of the Party adopted in 1903.
When news of the “February Revolution” reached America, Trotsky made inmediate arrangements to return to Russia. Sailing from New York in a Norwegian ship at the end of March, he was taken off the ship at Halifax ( Canada) by British naval police and confined for a month in an internment camp for German prisoners of war at Amherst.
At the end of April he was released from internment, and resumed his journey. Landing in Norway, he crossed Scandinavia to reach Petrograd on May 17th., 1917.
He went almost immediately to the Smolny Institute, a former private school for girls which was now the head-quarters of the Petrograd Soviet. In view of his leading role in the Soviet of 1905, he was made an associate member of the Executive of the Soviet, without the right to vote.
He joined a group called the “Inter-Regional Organisation" (Mezhrayontsi), which had been founded in 1913 and to the publications of which he had contributed from abroad. The Inter-Regional Organisation was a centrist group, which prided itself on being neither Bolshevik nor Menshevik, and its influence was confined to a few working-class districts of Petrograd. In the early summer of 1917 its leading members included Anatoly Lunacharsky, David Riazanov, Dmitri Manuilsky, Mikhail Pokrovsky, Adolphe Joffe and Lev Karahkhan.
Now Trotsky took a leading role in the organisation, and in founding its organ 'Vperyod' (Forward).
According to Trotsky,
“Whoever lived through the year 1917 as a member of the central kernel of the Bolsheviks knows that there was never a hint of any disagreement between Lenin and me from the very first day. . . .
From the earliest days of my arrival, I stated . . . . . that I was ready to join the Bolshevik organisation immediately in view of the absence of any disagreements whatever but that it was necessary to decide the question of the quickest possible way of attracting the 'Mezhrayontsi' organisation into the party. . . .
Among the membership of the “Mezhrayontsi” organisation there were elements which tried to impede the fusion, advancing this or that condition, etc."
(L. Trotsky: “The Stalin School of Falsification"; New York; 1972; p. 5, 6).
According to Lenin, however, Trotsky himself was precisely one of the 'elements which tried to impede fusion'.
On May 23rd., a meeting took place between representatives of the Bolsheviks (including Lenin) and representatives of the Inter-Regional Organisation (including Trotsky) to explore the possibility of fusion.
As Trotsky’s biographer puts it:
"At the meeting of 23 May he (i.e., Lenin -- Ed.) asked Trotsky and Trotsky's friends to join the Bolshevik party immediately. He offered them positions on the leading bodies and on the editorial staff of 'Pravda'. He put no conditions to them. He did not ask Trotsky to renounce anything of his past; he did not even mention past controversies. . . .
Trotsky would have had to be much more free from pride than he was to accept Lenin's proposals immediately. He and his friends should not be asked to call themselves Bolsheviks. . . They ought to join hands in a new party, with a new name, at a joint congress of their organisations”.
(I. Deutscher: "The Prophet Armed: Trotsky; 1879-192l”; London; 1970; p. 257-8).
Lenin’s own notes of the meeting say:
"Trotsky (who took the floor out of turn immediately after me) . . . .
I cannot call myself a Bolshevik. . . .
We cannot be asked to recognise Bolshevism. . .
The old factional name is undesirable”.
(V. I. Lenin: "Leniniskii Sbornik” (Lenin Miscellany) Volume 4; Moscow; 1925; p. 303).
The meeting, therefore, broke up without reaching any agreement.
Not until August, three months before the October Revolution, did the Inter-Regional Organisaion join the Bolshevik Party, while Trotsky was in prison!
On July 18th., 1917 the newspaper "'Zhivoye Slovo" (Living Word) published a statement from Grigori Alexnsky asserting that he had documentary evidence that Lenin was "a spy in the pay of German imperialism". On the same day military cadets wrecked the printing plant and editorial offices of "Pravda", preventing the publication of Lenin’s reply to the slander.
On July 19th. government troops occupied the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Party, and the government issued an order for the arrest of Lenin, Zinoviev and Kameonev.
A movement demanding that Lenin surrender to the arrest order was led by Trotsky.
As Trotsky's sympathetic biographer Isaac Deutscher expresses it:
"Lenin . . made up his mind that he would not allow himself to be imprisoned but would go into hiding. . . . .
.. Trotsky took a less grave view and Lenin's decision seemed to him unfortunate. . . he thought that Lenin had every interest in laying his record before the public, and that in this way he could serve his cause better than by flight, which would merely add to any adverse appearances by which people might judge him."
(I. Deutscher: "The Prophet Armed: Trotsky: 1879-l921"; London; 1970; p. 274).
To this demand Lenin replied:
"Comrades yielding to the 'Soviet atmosphere' are, often inclined towards appearing before the courts.
Those who are closer to the working masses apparently incline towards not appearing.. .
The court is an organ of power. . . .
The power that is active is the military dictatorship. Under such conditions it is ridiculous even to speak of ‘the courts'. It is not a question of 'courts', but of an episode in the civil war. This is what those in favour of appearing before the courts unfortunately do not want to understand. . . .
Not a trial but a campaign of persecution against the internationalists, this is what the authorities need. . . .
Let the internationalists work underground as far as it is in their power, but let them not commit the folly of voluntarily appearing before the courts'."
(V. I. Lenin: "The Question of the Bolshevik Leaders appearing before the Courts", in ibid.; p. 34, 35).
The Bolshevik viewpoint on the question of the attitude to be adopted towards the warrant of arrest issued for the Bolshevik leaders was put at the Sixth Congress of the Party in August by Stalin:
"There is no guarantee that if they do appear they will not be subjected to brutal violence. If the court were democratically organised and if a guarantee were given that violence would not be committed it would be a different matter."
(J. V. Stalin: Speech in Reply to the Discussion on the Report of the Central Cornittee, 6th. Congress RSDLP, in: "Works", Volume 3; Moscow; 193; p. 182).
Feeling that his political reputation was suffering because no warrant had been issued for his own arrest, Trotsky wrote an Open Letter to the Provisional Government pleading that he too should be made liable to arrest:
"On 23 July, four days after Lenin had gone into hiding, Trotsky therefore addressed the following Open Letter to the Provisional Government:
'Citizen Ministers --
You can have no logical grounds for exempting me from the effect of the decree by dint of which Lenin, Zinoviev and Kamenev are subject to arrest. . . You can have no reason to doubt that I am just as irreconcilable an opponent of the general policy of the Provisional Government as the above-mentioned Comrades’."
(I. Deutscher: ibid.; p. 276-77).
The Provisional Government obliged Trotsky by arresting him on August 5 th, and incarcerating him in the Kresty prison 3 from which he was released on bail on September 17th.
The Sixth Congress of the RSDLP took place secretly in Petrograd from August 8 th - 16 th, 1917, attended by 157 voting delegates representing 40,000 members.
In Lenin's absence, both the Report of the Central Committee and the Report on the Political Situation were given by Stalin. In the latter, Stalin said:
"Some comrades say that since capitalism is poorly developed in our country, it would be utopian to raise the question of a socialist revolution.. . It would be rank pedantry to demand that Russia should 'wait' with socialist changes until Europe 'begins'. That country "begins" which has the greater opportunities. . . .
Overthrow of the dictatorship of the imperialist bourgeoisie -- that is what the immediate slogan of the Party must be.
The peaceful period of the revolution has ended. A period of clashes and explosions has begun.. . .
The characteristic feature of the moment is that the counter-revolutionary measures are being implemented through the agency of 'Socialists'. It is only because it has created such a screen that the counter-revolution may continue to exist for another month or two. But since the forces of revolution are developing, explosions are bound to occur, and the moment will come when the workers will raise and rally around them the poorer strata of the peasantry, will raise the standard of workers' revolution and usher in an era of socialist revolution in Europe".
(J. V. Stalin: Report on the Political Situation, Sixth Congress RSDLP, in: 'Works", Volume 3; Moscow; 1953; p. 185, 186, 189, 190).
Nikolai Bukharin put forward in the discussion on the Report on the Political Situation a theory of the further development of the revolution based on Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution". Bukharin held that the revolution in its further development, would consist of two phases, the first phase being essentially a peasant revolution, the second phase that of a revolution of the working class in which the peasant would not be the ally of the working class, in which the only ally of the Russian working class would be the working classes of Western Europe, that is:
"The first phase, with the participation of thc peasantry anxious to obtain land; the second phase, after the satiated peasantry has fallen away, the phase of the proletarian revolution, when the Russian proletariat will be supported only by proletarian elements and by the proletariat of Western Europe'".
(N. Bukharin: Speech at 6th. Congress, RSDLP, cited in: N. Popov: "Outline History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Part 1; London; n.d.; p. 383).
Stalin opposed Bukharin's theory as 'not properly thought out' and "fundamentally wrong":
'What is the prospect Bukharin held out? His analysis is fundamentally wrong. In his opinion, in the first stage we are moving towards a peasant revolution. But it is bound to concur, to coincide with a workers' revolution. It cannot be that the working class, which constitutes the vanguard of the revolution, wil1 not at the same time fight for its own demands. I therefore consider that Bukharin's scheme has not been properly thought out.
The second stage, according to Bukharin, will be a proletarian revolution supported by Western Europe, without the peasants, who will have received land and will be satisfied. But against whom would this revolution be directed? Bukharin's gimcrack scheme furnishes no reply to this question".
(J. V. Stalin: Reply to the Discussion on the Report on the Political Situation, 6th. Congress, RSDLP; in ibid.; p. 196).
Evgenii Preobrazhensky moved an amendment to the congress resolution on the political situation, an amendment also based on an aspect of Trotsky’s theory of "permanent revolution". He proposed that the seizure of power should be undertaken:
"For the purpose of directing it towards peace and, in the event of a proletarian revolution in the West, towards socialism".
(E. Preobrazhensky: Amendment to Resolution on the Political Situation, 6th. Congress RSDLP, cited in H. Popov: ibid.; p. 381).
Stalin strongly opposed this amendment:
"I am against such an amendment. The possibility is not excluded that Russia will be the country that will lay the road to socialism. . . We must discard the antiquated idea that only Europe can show us the way".
(J. V. Stalin: Reply to Preobrazhensky on Clause 9 of the Resolution "On the Political Situation", 6th. Congress RSDLP, in: ibid.; p. 199, 200).
Preobrazhensky’s amendment was rejected, and the resolution adopted by the congress declared:
"The correct slogan at the present time can be only complete liquidation of the dictatorship of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie. Only the revolutionary proletariat, provided it is supported by the poorest peasantry, is strong enough to carry out this task. . . .
The task of those revolutionary classes will then be to strain every effort to take state power into their own hands and direct it, in alliance with the revolutionary proletariat of the advanced countries, towards peace and the Socialist reconstruction of society".
(Resolution on the Political Situation, 6th. Congress RSDLP, cited in: V. I. Lenin: "Collected Works", Volume 21, Book 2; London; n.d.; p. 304).
The congress approved a resolution on the economic situation, the main points of which were the confiscation of the landed estates, the nationalisation of the land, the nationalisation of the banks and large-scale industrial enterprises, and workers' control over production and distribution.
It also approved resolutions on the trade union movement and on youth leagues, setting out the aim that the Party should win the leading influence in all these bodies. It also endorsed Lenin's decision not to appear for trial:
"Considering that the present methods of persecution by the police and secret service and the activities of the public prosecutor are re-establishing the practices of the Shcheglovitov regime, . . and feeling that under such conditions there is absolutely no guarantee either of the impartiality of the court procedure, or even of the elementary safety of those summoned before the court".
(Resolution on the Failure of Lenin to Appear in Court, 6th. Congress RSDLP, cited in: V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 312).
The congress also adopted new Party Rules, based on the principles of democratic centralism, and admitted the Mezhrayontsi (the Inter-Regional Organisation) into the Party. In this way Trotsky, as a member of the Inter-Regional Organisation, became a member of the Bolshevik Party while himself in prison, less than three months before the "October Revolution".
Finally, the congress issued a Manifesto to all the workers, soldiers and peasants of Russia, which ended:
"Firmly, courageously and calmly, without giving in to provocations, gather strength and form fighting columns! Under the banner of the Party, proletarians and soldiers! Under our banner, oppressed of the villages!
"Long live the revolutionary proletariat!"
"Long live the alliance of the workers and Down with the counter-revolution and its 'Moscow Conference' !"
"Long live the workers' world revolution!"
"Long live Socialism!"
"Long Live the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks)!""
(Manifesto of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, Sixth Congress, cited in ibid.; p. 316-317).
As has been said, the 7 th Conference of the Party in May had resolved that the Party should not participate in the "international socialist conference in Stockholm (scheduled originally for May but postponed till the autumn) but should expose it as a manoeuvre of the German social-chauvinists.
On August 19 th , however, Lev Kamenev said in the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets:
"Now when our revolution has retreated to the second line of trenches, it is fitting to support this conference. Now, when the Stockholm Conference has become the banner of the struggle of the proletariat against imperialism, . . we naturally must support it".
L. Kamenev: Speech to CEC, August 19th., 1917, cited in: V. I. Lenin: "Collected Works", Volume 21, Book 1; London; nd; p. 290).
Lenin denounced Kamenev's statement with indignation:
"What right had Comrade Kamenev to forget that there is a decision of the Central Committee of the Party against participating at Stockholm? If this decision has not been abrogated by a congress or by a new decision of the Central Committee, it is law for the Party. . . .
Not only had Kamenev no right to make this speech, but . . he directly violated the decision of the Party; he spoke directly against the Party. . . .
Kamenev . . did not mention that the Stockholm Conference will include social-imperialists, that it is shameful for a revolutionary-Social-Democrat to have anything to do with such people. . . .
To go to confer with social-imperialists, with Ministers, with hangmen's sides in Russia -- this is a shame and a betrayal. . . . .
Not a revolutionary banner, but a banner of deals, compromises, forgiveness for social-imperialism, bankers' negotiations concerning the division of annexations -- this is the banner which is really beginning to wave over Stockholm. . . .
We have decided to build the Third International. We must accomplish this in spite of all difficulties, Not a step backward to deals with social-imperialists and renegades from Socialism.'"
(V. I. Lenin: "On Kamenev's Speech in the Central Executive Committee concerning the Stockholm Conference", in: ibid.; p94; 95, 96).
The following month, Lenin returned to his attack upon the Stockholm Conference:
"The Stockholm Conference . . failed. Its failure was caused by the fact that the Anglo-French imperialists at present are unwilling to conduct peace negotiations, while the German imperialists are willing.. . .
The Stockholm Conference is known to have been called and to be supported by persons who support their governments. . ..
The 'Novaya Zhizn' deceives the workers when it imbues them with confidence ~ the social-chauvinists. . .
We, on the other hand, turn away from the comedy enacted at Stockholm by the social-chauvinists and among the social-chauvinists, in order to open the eyes of the masses, in order to express their interests, to call them to revolution, . . for a struggle on the basis of principles and for a complete brook with social-chauvinism. . . .
The Stockholm Conference, even if it takes place, which is very unlikely, will be an attempt on the part of the German imperialists to sound out the ground as to the feasibility of a certain exchange of annexations".
(V. I. Lenin: "On the Stockholm Conference", in: ibid; p. 121, 123, 124, 125).
In fact, the "Stockholm Conference" never took place, owing to the refusal of the British and French Governments to allow their social-chauvinists to attend. On September 3 rd , the Latvian capital Riga was surrendered to the German armies.
A powerful campaign was then launched in all the media controlled by the counter-revolutionary capitalist class blaming the fall of Riga on the demoralisation of the soldiers brought about by Bolshevik propaganda and agitation.
The Bolsheviks replied that this was not the reason for the fall of Riga, but that the city had been deliberately surrendered to the German armies in order to provide a pretext for a counter-revolutionary conspiracy:
"After the Moscow Conference came the surrender of Riga and the demand for repressive measures. . ..
The counter-revolution needed a 'Bolshevik plot' in order to clear the way for Kornilov. . . .
The counter-revolutionary higher army officers surrendered . . Riga in August in order to exploit the 'defeats’ at the front for the purpose of achieving the 'complete' triumph of counter-revolution."
(J. V. Stalin: "We Demand!", in: "Works", Volume 3; Moscow; 1953; p. 277, 278).
On September 5 th negotiations took place at army headquarters at the front between Commander-in-Chief General Lavr Kornilov and Boris Savinkoy, Deputy Minister of War in the Provisional Government, at which, on Kerensky's instructions, Savinkov requested Kornilov to despatch army units to Petrograd:
"On the instructions of the Prime Minister, I requested you (Kornilov) to send the Cavalry Corps to ensure the establishment of martial law in Petrograd and the suppression of any attempt at revolt".
(B. Savinkov: Statement cited in J. V. Stalin: "The Plot against the Revolution", in: ibid.; p. 367).
On September 7th. General Kornilov ordered an army corps, some Cossack detachments and the so-called 'savage Division' to move on Petrograd. The orders given to the commander of this force, General Krymov, were to occupy the city, disarm the units of the Petrograd garrison which joined the Bolshevik movement, disarm the population of Petrograd and disperse the Soviets.
"Occupy the city, disarm the units of the Petrograd garrison which joined the Bolshevik movement, disarm the population of Petrograd and disperse the Soviets.. . . .
On the execution of this mission General Krymov was to send a brigade reinforced with artillery to Oranienbaum, which on its arrival was to call upon the Kronstadt garrison to dismantle the fortress and to cross to the mainland".
(L. Kornilov: Explanatory Memorandum, cited in: J. V. Stalin: ibid.;p. 367).
The aim of the military coup was to set up a dictatorial government headed by Kornilov, with the participation of Aleksandr Kerensky (as Vice-Chairman), Boris Savinkov, Generel Mikhail Alekseev, and Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak. (Ibid.; p. 370)
As Stalin commented later:
" A compact was concluded (i.e., between the Provisional Government and General Kornilov -- Ed.) to organise a conspiracy against the Bolsheviks, that is, against the working class, against the revolutionary army and the peasantry. It was a compact for conspiracy against the revolution!
That is what we have been saying from the very first day of the Kornilov revolt".
(J. V. Stalin: "Comments", in: ibid.; p. 350).
"The Kerensky Government not only knew of this diabolical plan, but itself took part in elaborating it and, together with Kornilov, was preparing to carry it out. . .
The 'Kornilov affair’ was not a 'revolt' against the Provisional Government, . . but a regular conspiracy against the revolution, an organised and thoroughly planned conspiracy. . . .
Its organisers and instigators were the counter-revolutionary elements among the generals, representatives of the Cadet Party, representatives of the 'public men' in Moscow, the more ‘initiated’ members of the Provisional Government, and -- last but not least! -- certain representatives of certain embassies. . . .
Kornilov had the support of the Russian and the British and French imperialist bourgeoisie".
(J. V. Stalin: 'The Plot against the Revolution", in: ibid.; p. 367, 373, 379).
On September 8 th, "demand" was sent to Kerensky in the name of Kornilov demanding that the former hand over dictatorial powers to the General. On the same day the "Cadet" Ministers resigned from the Provisional Government.
On the following day Kerensky -- compelled for political reasons to keep his participation in the plot secret --issued an "appeal" to the population for "resistance" to Kornilov, and appointed Savinkov as Governor-General of Petrograd under a state of siege.
On September 10th , on the initiative of the Bolsheviks a broad Committee for Struggle against Counter-Revolution was set up in the capital. Detachments of armed workers ("Red Guards") were formed for the defence of the city, and agitators (mostly Bolshevik soldiers) were sent to meet the advancing troops. The work of these agitators, in the existing circumstances, proved so successful that by September 12th, virtually all the rank-and-file soldiers had deserted Kornilov.
The political line put forward by Lenin in connection with the Kornilov "revolt" was to organise active struggle against the main enemy, the Kornilov forces, while on a campaign of exposure of the Kerensky government:
"We will fight, we are fighting against Kornilov, even as Kerensky’s troops do, but we do not support Kerensky. On the contrary, we expose his weakness. There is the difference. . . .
We are changing the form of our struggle against Kerensky. . . We shall not overthrow Kerensky right now; we shall approach the task of struggling against him in a different way, namely, we shall point out to the people (which struggles against Kornilov) the weakness and vacillation of Kerensky."
(V. I. Lenin "Letter to the Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, September 12th., 1917 in "Collected Works", Volume 21, Book 1; London; n .d., p. 137, 138).
On September l4th, General Krymov committed suicide, and, on the initiative of Kerensky, a five-man government called a "Directory" was set up as a new Provisional Government.
As Stalin commented:
"A Directory was the political form the Kornilov-Kerensky 'collective dictatorship' was to have been clothed in.
It should now be clear to everyone that in creating a Directory after the failure of the Kornilov 'revolt' Kerensky was establishing this same Kornilov dictatorship by other means".
(J. V. Stalin: 'The Plot against the Revolution", in: ibid.; p. 370).
The Kornilov revolt, together with the completely successful struggle led by the Bolsheviks against it, gave a great stimulus to the development of the socialist revolutionary forces.
"The Kornilov revolt was an attempt on the very life of the revolution. That is unquestionable. But in attempting to kill the revolution and stirring all the forces of society into motion, it thereby, on the one hand, gave a spur to the revolution, stimulated it to greater activity and organisation, and, on the other hand, revealed the true nature of the classes and parties, tore the mask from their faces and gave us a glimpse of their true countenances.
We owe it to the Kornilov revolt that the almost defunct Soviets in the rear and the Committees at the front instantaneously sprang to life and became active.
It is a fact that even the five-man ‘Directory' set up by Kerensky had to dispense with official representatives of the Cadets."
(J. V. Stalin: "The Break with the Cadets, in: ibid.; p. 296, 297)
As a result of the collapse of the Kornilov "revolt", the Provisional Government found itself for the moment virtually without any state machinery of force at its disposal. In those circumstances Lenin declared on September 4 th , that for a short time -- perhaps only for a few days-- the revolution could advance peacefully by the formation (under the revived slogan of "All Power to the Soviets") of a Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary Soviet Government.
"There has now arrived such a sharp and original turn in the Russian revolution that we, as a party, can offer a voluntary compromise -- true, not to the bourgeoisie, our direct and main class enemy, but to our nearest adversaries, the 'ruling' petty-bourgeois democratic parties, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. . . . . .
The compromise on our part is our return to the pre-July demand of all power to the Soviets, a government of S-Rs and Mensheviks responsible to the Soviets.
Now, and only now, perhaps only for a few days or for a week or two, such a government could be created and established in a perfectly peaceful way. In all probability it could secure a peaceful forward march of the whole Russian Revolution, and unusually good chances for big strides forward by the world movement towards peace and towards the victory of Socialism.
Only for the sake of this peaceful development of the revolution -- a possibility that is extremely rare in history and extremely valuable . . -- can and must the Bolsheviks, partisans of a world revolution, partisans of revolutionary methods, agree to such a compromise, in my opinion.
The compromise would consist in this that the Bolsheviks .. . would refrain from immediately advancing the demand for the passing, of power to the proletariat and the poorest peasants, from revolutionary methods of struggle for the realisation of this demand. The condition which is self-evident . . would be full freedom of propaganda and the convocation of the Constituent Assembly without any new procrastination."
(V. I. Lenin: "On Compromises". in: 'Collected Works', Volume 21, Book 1; London; n.d.; p. l53-4). Two days later, on September 16 th Lenin concluded that the time in which a peaceful development of the revolution might occur had probably already passed:
"Perhaps those few days during which a peaceful development was still possible, have already passed. Yes, to all appearances they have already passed.".
(V. I. Lenin; ibid.; p. 157).
With the defeat of the Kornilov "revolt", the political situation changed rapidly, as has been said.
The incident had exposed completely the counter-revolutionary character of the Provisional Government and of the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders. The masses of workers and peasants swung overwhelmingly behind the Bolsheviks. A section of the Mensheviks (the so-called "Internationalists") and a section of the Socialist-Revolutionaries (the so-called 'Left-Socialist-Revolutionaries") departed the open counter-revolutionary leaders and forged a practical bloc with the Bolsheviks.
The incident also brought a great revival to the Soviets, and their bolshevisation. On September l3th the Petrograd Soviet adopted a revolutionary resolution moved by the Moscow Soviet followed suit on September 18th. In these circumstances, the Party revived the slogan of "All Power to the Soviets!"
"'All Power to the Soviets!' - such is the slogan of the new movement".
(J. V. Stalin "All Power to the Soviets!'" ; in: "Works", Volume 2 Moscow; 1953; p. 320).
On September 22 nd, the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionary Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet, headed by Nicholas Chkheidze, resigned, and on September 24 th, Trotsky was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet:
In his presidential address to the Petrograd Soviet on September 24 th, Trotsky said:
"We shall conduct the work of the Petrograd Soviet in a spirit of lawfulness and of full freedom for all parties. The hand of the Presidium will never lend itself to the suppression of a minority". (L. Trotsky: Presidential Address to Petrograd Soviet, September 24 th , 1917, cited in: I. Deutscher: "The Prophet Armed: Trotsky: 1879-1921"; London; 1970; p. 287).
Thus, in the name of "protecting the rights of the minorities" under 'proportional representation', on the initiative of Trotsky the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, now in a minority in the Soviet, were voted back on to the Presidium,
"Despite Lenin’s objections, all parties were represented in the new Presidium of the Soviet in proportion to their strength."
(I. Deutscher: ibid.; p. 287).
Lenin denounced with indignation:
"such glaring errors of the Bolsheviks as giving seats to the Mensheviks in the Presidium of the Soviets, etc."
(V. I. Lenin "The Crisis Has Matured", in 'Collected Works", Volume 21, Book 1; London; n.d. ; p. 278) .
At the end of September Lenin wrote to the Central Committee, the Petrograd Committee and the Moscow Committee of the Party demanding the immediate preparation of a revolutionary insurrection:
"Having obtained a majority in the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers' Deputies of both capitals, the Bolsheviks can and must take power into their hands. . . .
The majority of the people is with us. . ..
Why must the Bolsheviks assume power right now?
Because the impending surrender of Petrograd will make our chances a hundred times worse. . .
What we are concerned with is not the ‘day’ of the uprising.. . .
What matters is that we must make the task clear to the Party, place on the order of the day the armed uprising in Petrograd and Moscow (including their regions) . . .
No apparatus? There is an apparatus: the Soviets and democratic organisations. . . It is precisely now that to offer peace to the people means to win.
Assume power at once in Moscow and in Petrograd. . we will win absolutely and unquestionably".
(V. I. Lenin: "The Bolsheviks Must Assume Power", in: "Collected Works", Volume 21, Book 1; London; n.d.; p. 221, 222, 223).
A day or so later Lenin followed the above letter with a further letter to the Central Committee:
"We have back of us the majority of a class that is the vanguard of the revolution, the vanguard of the people, and is capable of drawing the masses along.
We have back of us a majority of the people.. . . .
We have the advantageous position of a party which knows its road perfectly well. . . . . .
Victory is assured to us, for the people are now very close to desperation, and we are showing the whole people a sure way out. . .
We have before us all, the objective prerequisites for a successful uprising. .
Delay is impossible. The revolution is perishing.
Having put the question this way, having concentrated our entire fraction in the factories and barracks, we shall correctly estimate the best moment to begin the uprising.
And in order to treat uprising in that Marxist way, i.e., as an art, we must at the same time, without losing a single moment, organise the staff of the insurrectionary detachment; designate the forces; move the loyal regiments to the most important points; surround the Aleksandrinsky Theatre; occupy Peter and Paul Fortress; arrest the general staff and the government; move against the military cadets, the Savage Division, etc., such detachments as will die rather than allow the enemy to move to the centre of the city; we must mobilise the armed workers, call them to a last desperate bottle, occupy at once the telegraph and telephone stations, place our staff of the uprising at the central telephone station, connect it by wire with all the factories, the regiments, the points of armed fighting, etc,"
(V. I. Lenin: "Marxism and Uprising", in: ibid.; p. 226, 227, 228-9).
Already by the last day of the "Democratic Conference", October 5 th , Lenin had become convinced that, in view of the development of the revolution, it had been a mistake for the Bolsheviks to participate in this "hideous fraud":
"The more one reflects on the meaning of the so-called Democratic Conference, . . the more firmly convinced one becomes that our Party has committed a mistake by participating in it. . . .
A new revolution is obviously growing in the country, a revolution . . of the proletariat and the majority of the peasants, the poorest peasantry, against the bourgeoisie, against its ally, Anglo-French finance capital, against its governmental apparatus headed by the Bonapartist Kerensky.
We should have boycotted the Democratic Conference; we all erred by not doing so."
(V. I. Lenin: "From a Publicist’s Diary", in: "Collected Works", Volume 21, Book 1;. London; n.d. p. 249, 253).
On this basis, Lenin proceeded to fight for a policy of boycotting the new fraud, the Pre-parliament:
"This pre-parliament . . is in substance a Bonapartist fraud. . . .
The tactics of participating in the pre-parliament., are incorrect. They do not correspond to the objective interrelation of classes, to the objective conditions of the moment..
We must boycott the pre-parliament. We must leave it and go to the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers’ and Peasants' Deputies, to the trade unions, to the masses in general . . .We must give them a correct and clear slogan to disperse the Bonapartist gang of Kerensky with his forged pre-parliament."
(V.I.Lenin ibid.; p. 252 253).
However, before Lenin’s letter had been received, on October 3 rd the Central Committee of the Party had convened a meeting of the Central Committee extended to include members of the Petrograd Committee and the Bolshevik delegates to the Democratic Conference. Stalin and Trotsky reported in favour of boycotting the Pre-parliament, while Lev Kamenev and Viktor Nogin reported in favour of participation, and were supported by David Riazanov and Aleksei Rykov. The conference adopted a resolution in favour of participation by 77 votes to 50.
On October 6 th , Lenin demanded a reversal of this decision:
"Trotsky was for the boycott. Bravo, Comrade Trotsky!
Boycottism was defeated in the fraction of the Bolsheviks who came to the Democratic Conference.
Long live the boycott!
We cannot and must not reconcile ourselves to participation under any condition.
We must at all costs strive to have the boycott question solved in the plenum of the Central Committee and at an extraordinary party congress. .
There is not the slightest doubt that in the ‘top’ of our Party we note vacillations that may become ruinous, because the struggle is developing."
(V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 254).
The Central Committee of the Party did, in fact, convene a Party Congress for October 30th., 1917. In his theses intended for this congress, Lenin wrote:
"The participation of our Party in the 'preparliament' . . is an obvious error and a deviation from the proletarian-revolutionary road. . . .
When the revolution is thus rising, to go to a make-believe parliament, concocted to deceive the people, means to facilitate this deception, to make the cause of preparing the revolution more difficult. . . .
The Party congress, therefore, must recall, the members of our Party from the pre-parliament, declare a boycott against it"'.
(V. I. Lenin: 'Theses . . for a Resolution and Instructions to Those Elected to the Party Congress", in: 'Collected Works", Volume 21, Book 2; London; nd.; p. 61).
However, the convocation of the congress proved unnecessary, and was cancelled by the Central Committee. On October 18 th , the Central Committee adopted a resolution to boycott the pre-parliament, against only one dissentient vote. The dissentient, Lev Kamenev, asked that a statement by him be attached to the minutes of the meeting:
"I think that your decision to withdraw from the very first session of the 'Soviet of the Russian Republic' predetermines the tactics of the Party during the next period in a direction which I personally consider quite dangerous for the Party".
(L. Kamenev: Statement to CC, RSDLP, October 18th., 1917, cited in: V. I. Lenin: in: "Collected Works"; Volume 21; Book 1; London; n.d.; p. 302).
On the opening day of the Pre-parliament, October 20th., Trotsky read a declaration on behalf of the Bolsheviks:
"We, the fraction of Social-Democrats-Bolsheviks, declare: with this government of traitors to the people and with this council of counter-revolutionary connivance we have-nothing in common. We do not wish to cover up, directly or indirectly, not even for a single day, that work which is being carried out behind the official screen and which is fatal to the people. . .
In withdrawing from the Provisional Council we appeal to the vigilance and courage of the workers, soldiers and peasants of all Russia.
We appeal to the people.
All power to the Soviets!
All the land to the people!
Long live the immediate, honourable, democratic peace!
Long live the Constituent Assembly! "
(Declaration of the Bolshevik Fraction Read in the Pre-parliament, October 20 th 1917, cited in: V. I. Lenin: "Collected Works", Volume 21, Book 2; London n.d.; p. 324).
The Bolsheviks then walked out of the Pre-parliament.
Two days after the Bolsheviks walked out of the Pre-parliament, there took place, on October 23 rd, the famous session of the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Party at which the decision to launch the insurrection was taken.
Twelve of the twenty-one members of the CC were present, including Lenin disguised in wig and spectacles.
The minutes of the meeting recorded the main points only of Lenin's statement:
"Lenin states that since the beginning of September a certain indifference towards the question has been noted. He says that this is inadmissible, if we earnestly raise the slogan of seizure of power by the Soviets. It is, therefore, high time to turn attention to the technical side of the question. Much time has obviously been lost.
Nevertheless, the question is very urgent and the decisive moment is near. . . .
The absenteeism and the indifference of the masses can be explained by the fact that the masses are tired of words and resolutions.
The majority is now with us. Politically, the situation has become entirely ripe for the transfer of power."
(Minutes of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, October 23, 1917, cited in: V. I. Lenin: "Collected Works", Volume 21, B k 2; London; n.d.; p. 106).
Lenin then moved a resolution which ended:
"Recognising thus that an armed uprising is inevitable and the time perfectly ripe, the Central Committee proposes to all the organisations of the Party to act accordingly and to discuss and decide from this point of view all the practical questions".
(Resolution of Central Committee, RSDLP, October 23 rd 1917, cited in: ibid; p; 107).
The resolution was carried by ten votes to two – the dissentients being Grigori Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev.
On October 24 th, Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev sent a joint memorandum to the principal organisations of the Party attacking the Central Committee’s decision of the previous day to launch an insurrection:
"The Congress of Soviets has been called for November 2. . . It must become the centre of the consolidation around the Soviets of all proletarian and demi-proletarian organisations. . . As yet there is no firm organisational connection between these organisations and the Soviets. . . But such a connection is in any case a preliminary condition for the actual carrying out of the slogan "All power to the Soviets?. . . .
Under these conditions it would be a serious historical untruth to formulate the question of the transfer of power into the hands of the proletarian party in the terms: either now or never.
No. The party of the proletariat will grow.. . . And there is only one way in which the proletarian party can interrupt its successes, and that is if under present conditions it takes upon itself to initiate an uprising and thus expose the proletarians to the blows of the entire consolidated counter-revolution, supported by the petty-bourgeois democracy.
Against this pernicious policy we raise our voices in warning."
(G. Zinoviev & L. Kamenev Statement to Party Organisations October 24th, 1917, cited in V. I. Lenin: "Collected Works", Volume 21, Book 2; London; nd.; p. 332).
A few days later the statement was distributed in leaflet form in Petrograd.
Trotsky’s opposition to Lenin's call to insurrection was more subtle than that of Kamenev and Zinoviev.
Whereas the latter openly opposed Lenin’s demands for immediate preparations for insurrection, Trotsky supported these demands in words. He insisted however, in the name of "Soviet constitutionalism" that the actual call to insurrection should be issued not by the Petrograd Soviet, and certainly not by the Party, but by the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets.
As Trotsky's sympathetic biographer Isaac Deutscher expresses it:
"Trotsky was approaching the problem from his new point of vantage as President of the Petrograd Soviet. He agreed with Lenin on the chances and the urgency of insurrection. But he disagreed with him over method, especially over the idea that the party should stage the insurrection in its own name and on its own responsibility. He took less seriously than Lenin the threat of an immediate counter-revolution. Unlike Lenin, he was confident that the pressure of the Bolshevik majority in the Soviets would not allow the old Central Executive to delay much longer the All-Russian Congress. . . . . .
Lenin . . refused to let insurrection wait until the Congress convened, because he was convinced that the Menshevik Executive would delay the Congress to the Greek Calends, and that the insurrection would never take place as it would be forestalled by a successful counter-revolution.. . .
The difference between Lenin and Trotsky centred on whether the rising itself ought to be conceived in terms of Soviet constitutionalism. The tactical risk inherent in Trotsky’s attitude was that it imposed certain delays upon the whole plan of action...
Lenin . . viewed Trotsky's attitude in the matter of insurrection with uneasiness, and even suspicion. He wondered whether, by insisting that the rising should be linked with the Congress of the Soviets, Trotsky was not biding his time and delaying action until it would be too late. If this had been the case, then Trotsky would have been, from Lenin's viewpoint, an even more dangerous opponent than Kamenev and Zinoviev, whose attitude had at least the negative merit that it was unequivocal and that it flatly contradicted the whole trend of Bolshevik policy. Trotsky's attitude, on the contrary, seemed to follow from the party’s policy and therefore carried more conviction with the Bolsheviks; the Central Committee was in fact inclined to adopt it. In his letters, Lenin therefore sometimes controverted Trotsky's view almost as strongly as Zinoviev's and Kamencv's, without, however, mentioning Trotsky by name. To wait for the rising until the Congress of Soviets, he wrote, was just as treasonable as to wait for Kerensky to convoke the Constituent Assembly, as Zinoviev and Kamenev wanted to do."
(I. Deutscher: "The Prophet Armed Trotsky: 1879-1921"; London; 1970; pp. 290-29l, 294-95).
Lenin's objections to Trotsky's line on this question were twofold:
Firstly: it would mean dangerous delay in calling the insurrection;
Secondly: since the calling of the Second Congress of Soviets was constitutionally in the hands of the Central Executive Committee (C.E.C) - elected at the First Congress of Soviets in June and dominated by Mensheviks and SocialistRevolutionaries -- it would mean permitting counterrevolutionaries, and not the revolutionary vanguard Party, to "fix the date of the insurrection", or even to postpone it indefinitely.
In this connection, it must be remembered that the First Congress of Soviets had instructed the C.E.C. to summon a new congress "within three months", i.e. not later than September. The C.E.C however, justifiably fearing that the Bolsheviks would have a majority at the congress, violated this instruction. Only under the extreme pressure of the Bolsheviks at the time of the Democratic Conference did the C.E.C. reluctantly agree to convoke the congress for November 2 nd . On October 31 st, however, it postponed the congress to November 7 th.
Lenin saw Trotsky's line as either -- and he left the question open – "absolute idiocy" or "complete betrayal", and he attacked it continuously up to the moment of the insurrection itself:
On October l0th :
"The general political situation causes me great anxiety . . The government has an army, and is preparing itself systematically.
And what do we do? We only pass resolutions. We lose time. We set 'dates' (November 2, the Soviet Congress - is it not ridiculous to put it off so long? Is it not ridiculous to rely on that?"
(V. I. Lenin: Letter to I.T. Smilga, October 10th., 1917; in: 'Collected Works', Volume 21, Book 1; London; n.d.; p. 265).
On October 12th:
'Yes, the leaders of the Central Executive Committee are pursuing tactics whose sole logic is the defence of the bourgeoisie and the landowners. And there is not the slightest doubt that the Bolsheviks, were they to allow themselves to be caught in the trap of constitutional illusions, of ‘faith’ in the Congress of Soviets. . . . of waiting' for the Congress of Soviets, etc. -- that such Bolsheviks would prove miserable traitors to the proletarian cause. . . .
The crisis has matured. The whole future of the Russian Revolution is at stake. The whole honour of the Bolshevik Party is in question. .
We must . . admit the truth, that in our Central Committee and at the top of our Party there is a tendency in favour of awaiting the Congress of Soviets, against the immediate seizure of power, against an immediate uprising. We must overcome this tendency or opinion.
Otherwise the Bolsheviks would cover themselves with shame forever; they would be reduced to nothing as a party.
For to miss such a moment and to 'await' the Congress of Soviets is either absolute idiocy or complete betrayal.. . .
To 'await' the Congress of Soviets is absolute idiocy, for this means losing weeks, whereas weeks and even days now decide everything. . .
To 'await' the Congress of Soviets is idiocy, for the Congress will give nothing, it can give nothing!. . .
First vanquish Kerensky, then call the Congress.
The victory of the uprising is now secure for the Bolsheviks . . if we do not 'await' the Soviet Congress. . . .
To refrain from seizing power at present, to ‘wait’, to 'chatter' in the Centra1 Committee, to confine ourselves . . to 'fighting for the Congress' means to ruin the revolution."
(V. I. Lenin: 'The Crisis has Matured", in: ibid.; p. 275, 276, 277, 278).
Only when Lenin took the extreme step of resigning from the Central Committee in order to fight for his line in the lower organs of the Party (on October l2th) did a majority accept Lenin's line on this question:
"I am compelled to tender my resignation from the Central Committee which I hereby do, leaving myself the freedom of propaganda in the lower ranks of the Party and at the Party Congress.
For it is my deepest conviction that if we 'await’ the Congress of Soviets and let the present moment pass, we ruin the revolution."
(V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 278).
Although Lenin withdrew his resignation when the Central Committee voted for a boycott of the Pre-parliament, Trotsky continued to fight for his line and Lenin continued to fight against it:
On October 16-20:
"Events indicate our task so clearly to us that hesitation actually becomes a crime.. . . To ‘wait’ under such conditions is a crime.
The Bolsheviks have no right to wait for the Congress of Soviets; they must take power immediately.
To wait for the Congress of Soviets means to play a childish game of formality, a shameful game of formality; it means to betray the revolution."
(V. I. Lenin: Letter to the Central Committee, Moscow Committee, Petrograd Committee, and the Bolshevik Members of the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets, October 16-20, 1917; in: "Collected Works", Volume 21, Book 2; London; n.d.; p. 69).
On October 21st:
"We must not wait for the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which the Central Executive Committee may postpone till November; we must not tarry.. . .
Near Petrograd and in Petrograd -- this is where this uprising can and must be decided upon and carried out . . as quickly as possible.. . ..
Delay means death."
(V. I. Lenin: Letter to Bolshevik Comrades Participating in the Regional Congress of the Soviets of the Northern Region, October 21st., 1917,in: ibid.; p. 91).
On November 6th.; (i.e, on the eve of the insurrection):
"The situation is extremely critical. It is as clear as can be that delaying the uprising now really means death.
With all my power I wish to persuade the comrades that now everything hangs on a hair, that on the order of the day are questions that are not solved by conferences, by congresses (even by Congresses of Soviets), but only . . by the struggle of armed masses.
The bourgeois onslaught of the Kornilovists, the removal of Verkhovsky, show that we must not wait. We must at any price, this evening, tonight, arrest the Minister, having disarmed (defeated if they offer resistance) the military cadets, etc.
We must not wait! We may lose everything!. . .
History will not forgive delay by revolutionists who could be victorious today (and will surely be victorious today!), while they risk losing much tomorrow, they risk losing all.
If we seize power today, we seize it not against the Soviets but for them.
It would be a disaster or formalism to wait for the uncertain voting of November 7. The people have a right and a duty to decide such questions not by voting but by force.. . . .
The government is tottering. We must deal it the death blow at any cost.
To delay action is the same as death".
(V. I. Lenin: Letter to the Members of the Central Committee, November 6th., 1917, in: ibid.; p. 144-145).
Trotsky later felt it expedient to deny the charge that he had sought to accommodate the insurrection to the Second Congress of Soviets:
"We should search in vain among the minutes or among any memoirs whatever, for any indication of a proposal of Trotsky to 'accommodate the insurrection necessarily to the Second Congress of Soviets'.
(L. Trotsky: "History of the Russian Revolution", Volume 3; London; 1967; p. 332).
Elsewhere in the same work, however, Trotsky makes his own position at the time quite clear.
He reports his declaration 'In the name of the Petrograd Soviet" on November 1st
"I declare in the name of the Soviet that no armed actions have been settled upon by us.. . . .
The Petrograd Soviet is going to propose to the Congress of Soviets that they seize the power."
(L. Trotsky: Speech to Petrograd Soviet, November 1st., 1917; cited in: L. Trotsky: ibid.; p. 102, 103).
and comments:
"The Soviet was sufficiently powerful to announce openly its programme of state revolution and even set the date".
(L. Trotsky: ibid.; p. 103).
Trotsky also reports his speech at an emergency session of the Petrograd Soviet on November 6th., 1917 (the day before the insurrection began):
"An armed conflict today or tomorrow is not included in our plan -- on the threshold of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. We think that the Congress will carry out our slogan with greater power and authority'"
(L. Trotsky: Speech in Petrograd Soviet, November 6th., 1917, cited in: L. Trotsky: ibid.; p. 331-2).
Stalin later referred to:
"the mistake made by the Petrograd Soviet in openly fixing and announcing the date of the uprising. (November 7)."
(J.V. Stalin: "Trotskyism or Leninism? , in: "Works", Volume 6; Moscow, 1953; p. 362).
To which Trotsky replied:
"Where, and when, and from which side, did the Soviet publish abroad the date of the insurrection?"
(L. Trotsky: ibid.; p. 333).
and answers himself:
"It was not the insurrection, but the opening of the Congress of Soviets, which was publicly and in advance set for the 7th. . . 'It flowed from the logic of things’, we wrote subsequently, ‘that we appointed the insurrection for November 7th.' .. . .
On the second anniversary of the revolution the author of this book, referring, in the sense just explained, to the fact that:
'the October insurrection was, so to speak, appointed in advance for a definite date, for November 7th., and was accomplished upon exactly that date’, added:
"We should seek in vain in history for another example of an insurrection which was accommodated in advance by the course of things to a definite date".
(L. Trotsky: ibid.; p. 333-34).
Thus Trotsky, here was admitting the justice of Lenin's comment:
"To 'call' the Congress of Soviets for November 2, in order to decide upon the seizure of power -- is there any difference between this and a foolishly "appointed" uprising?"
(V. I. Lenin: "The Crisis has Matured", in: 'Collected Works", Volume 21, Book l, London; n.d.; p. 277).
According to Trotsky, Lenin’s original plan for the insurrection (to which he adhered up to November 6th.) was that it should be called "'in the name of the Party", and endorsed by the Congress of Soviets when this met:
Lenin's plan, he says,
"presupposed that the preparation and completion of the revolution were to be carried out through party channels and in the name of the party, and afterwards the seal of sanction was to be placed on the victory by the Congress of Soviets."
(L. Trotsky: "Lessons of October"; London; 1971; p. 45).
"In the first weeks he (i.e. Lenin -- Ed.) was decidedly in favour of the independent initiative of the Party".
(L. Trotsky: "History of the Russian Revolution";, Volume 3; London; 1967; p.265-6).
And Trotsky complains, for example, of the resolution drafted by Lenin which was also approved by the Central Committee at its meeting on October 23 rd :
"The task of insurrection he presented directly as the task of the party. The difficult task of bringing its preparation into accord with the Soviets is as yet not touched upon. The All-Russian Congress of Soviets does not get a word".
(L. Trotsky: ibid; p. l43).
Trotsky "kindly" attributes Lenin’s "wrong estimates" to his absence from Petrograd":
"Lenin, who was not in Petrograd, could not appraise the full significance of this fact (i.e., the invalidation by the Petrograd Soviet of Kerensky's order transferring two-thirds of the garrison to the front --Ed.) . . . .
Lenin’s counsel . . flowed precisely from the fact that in his underground refuge he had no opportunity to estimate the radical turn."
(L. Trotsky: "Lessons of October" London; 1971; p. 47-48).
"Lenin's isolation . . deprived him of the possibility of making timely estimates of episodic factors and temporary changes.. . .
If Lenin had been in Petrograd and had carried through at the beginning of October his decision in favour of an immediate insurrection without reference to the Congress of Soviets, he could undoubtedly have given the carrying out of his own plan a political setting which would have reduced its disadvantageous features to a minimum. But it is at least equally probable that he would himself in that case have come round to the plan actually carried out".
(L. Trotsky: "History of the Russian Revolution", Volume 3; London; 1967; p. 327-8).
In fact, Lenin's basic plan was that the insurrection should be planned, timed and led by the Party, through either the Petrograd or the Moscow Soviet -- both of which were now led by the Party -- but not through the Second Congess of Soviets, the calling of which was dependent upon the Central Executive Committee led by Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. As Stalin comments:
"According to Trotsky, it appears that Lenin's view was that the Party should take power in October ‘independently’ of and behind the back of the Soviet'.
Later in, criticising this nonsense, which he ascribes to Lenin, Trotsky 'cuts capers' and finally delivers the following condescending utterance:
"That would have been a mistake".
Trotsky is here uttering a falsehood about Lenin, he is misrepresenting Lenin's views on the role of the Soviets in the uprising. A pile of documents can be cited showing that Lenin proposed that power be taken through the Soviets, either the Petrograd or the Moscow Soviets, and not behind the back of the Soviets.".
(J.V. Stalin: "Trotskyism or Leninism?", in: 'Works', Volume 6; Moscow; 1953; p. 359-60).
Trotsky's myth goes on to say that the Central Committee "rejected Lenin's plan for the insurrection" and "adopted Trotsky's plan that the insurrection should be called by the Second Congress of Soviets. Only on the evening of November 6 th , according to Trotsky was Lenin convinced of the "incorrectness" of his "conspiratorial plan";
"The Central Committee did not adopt this (i.e., Lenin's -- Ed.) proposal the insurrection was led into Soviet channels".
(L. Trotsky: 'Lessons October; London 1971; p. 45).
"When he (i.e., Lenin -- Ed ) arrived in Smolny (i.e., on the evening November 6 th , the day before the insurrection -- Ed.) . . I understood that only at that moment had he finally become reconciled to the fact that we had refused the seizure of power by way of a conspirative plan".
(L. Trotsky: "History of the Russian Revolution", Volume 3; London,.1967; P. 345)
As Stalin points out, however, the Central Committee of the Party did not adapt Trotsky’s plan that the insurrection should be called by the Second Congress Of Soviets. In fact, the insurrection had been carried through before the Congress met.
"Lenin proposed that power be taken before November 7 th, for two reasons.
Firstly, because the counter-revolutionaries might have surrendered Petrograd (i.e., to the German armies -- Ed ) at any moment, which would have drained the blood of the developing uprising.
Secondly, because the mistake made by the Petrograd Soviet in openly fixing and announcing the day of the uprising (November 7) could not be rectified in any other way than by actually launching the uprising before the legal date set for it. The fact of the matter is that Lenin regarded insurrection as an art, and he could not help knowing that the enemy, informed about the date of the uprising (owing to the carelessness of the Petrograd Soviet) would certainly try to prepare for that day.
Consequently, it was necessary to forestall the enemy, i.e., without fail to launch the uprising before the legal date. This is the chief explanation for the passion with which Lenin in his letters scourged those who made a fetish of the date -- November 7. Events show that Lenin was absolutely right. It is well known that the uprising was launched prior to the All Russian Congress of Soviets. It is well known that power was actually taken before the opening of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, and it was taken not by the Congress of Soviets, but by the Petrograd Soviet, by the Revolutionary Military Committee. The Congress of Soviets merely took over power from the Petrograd Soviet. That is why Trotsky's lengthy arguments about the importance of Soviet legality are quite beside the point".
(J. V. Stalin: ibid; p. 362).
On October 29th., 1917 an extended session of the Central Committee of the RSDLP was held, in which participated representatives of the Petrograd Committee, the Petrograd Regional Committee, the Military Organisation, the Bolshevik Fraction of the Petrograd Soviet, trade unions and factory committees.
Lenin reported on the Central Committee meeting of October 23 rd, and read the resolution on insurrection adapted by that meeting.
Representatives then reported on the situation existing, in their particular sectors.
In the discussion on the present situation, the resolution was strongly opposed by Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev.
Kamenev said:
"This resolution . . shows how not to carry out an uprising: during this week nothing has been done.. . .
The results for the week indicate that there are no factors favouring a rising. . We have no apparatus for an uprising; our enemies have a much stronger apparatus, and it has probably further increased during this week. . . In preparing for the Constituent Assembly we do not at all embrace the road of parliamentarism. . . Two tactics are fighting here: the tactic of conspiracy and the tactic of faith in the moving forces of the Russian Revolution".
(L.Kamenev: Speech at Extended Meeting of CC, RSDLP, October 29th., 1917; in: Minutes, cited in: V. I. Lenin: "Collected Works", Volume 21, Book 2: London; n.d.; p. 337).
Zinoviev said:
"The Constituent Assembly will take place in an atmosphere that is revolutionary to the highest degree. Meanwhile, we shall strengthen our forces. The possibility is not eliminated that we, together with the Left S-Rs, shall be in the majority there. ….We have no right to risk, to stake everything on one card.. . . .
If the congress takes place on the 2 nd, we must propose that it should not disband until the constituent assembly convenes. There must be a defensive, waiting tactic. . . It is necessary to reconsider, if possible, the resolution of the CC. . We must definitely tell ourselves that we do not plan an uprising within the next five years".
(G. Zinoviev: Speech at Extended Meeting of CC, RSDLP, October 29th., 1917, in Ibid; p. 36, 337).
Stalin spoke strongly in favour of confirmation of the Central Committee resolution of October 23rd., and this was finally done by 19 votes against 2 -- the dissentients again being Kamenev and Zinoviev.
The Central Committee then continued in session alone, and set up a Military Centre of the Central Committee consisting of Stalin, Sverdlov, Bubnov, Dzerzhinsky and Uritsky.
After the meeting had concluded, Kamenev sent a letter to the Central Committee tendering his resignation from it:
"Not being able to support the point of view expressed in the latest decisions of the CC which define the character of its work, and considering that this position is leading the party of the proletariat to defeat, I ask the CC to recognise that I am no longer a member of the CC". (L. Kamenev: Letter to CC, RSDLP, October 29th., 1917, cited in: V. I. Lenin: Ibid. ; p. 260).
From October 24-26 th , 1917 the Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies of the Northern Region took place in Petrograd. Since the overwhelming majority of the delegates were Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets -- still dominated by Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries -- declared the congress unofficial, and the small Menshevik fraction declared themselves present "for purposes of information only".
The congress declared itself in favour of the immediate transfer of power to the Soviets, the immediate transfer of land to the peasants, an immediate offer of peace and the convening of the Constituent Assembly at the appointed time.
On October 29 -30 th Lenin - wrote a long, "Letter to Comrades" in which he refuted point by point the arguments of Kamenev and Zinoviev against the immediate launching of an insurrection.
On October 31st, Kamenev, on behalf of Zinoviev and himself, published a statement in the newspaper "Novaya Zhizn" (New Life) in which he declared that they felt themselves obliged:
"To declare themselves against any attempt to take the initiative of an armed uprising which would be doomed to defeat and which would have the most dangerous effect on the party, the proletariat, the fate of the revolution. To stake everything on the card of an uprising within the next few days would be tantamount to making a step of desperation";
(L. Kamenev: "L. Kamenev About the Uprising", in "Novaya Zhizn", October 31st., 1917, cited in: V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 261).
Lenin thundered immediately at the treachery of the "strikebreakers of the Revolution":
"On the eve of the critical day . . two 'outstanding Bolsheviks' attack an unpublished decision of the Party centre in the non-Party press, in a paper which as far as this given problem is concerned goes hand in hand with the bourgeoisie against the workers’ party. . . .
I will fight with all my power both in the Central Committee and at the congress to expel them both from the Party.
I cannot judge from afar how much damage was done to the cause by the strike-breaking action in the non-Party press. Very great practical damage has undoubtedly been caused. To remedy the situation, it is first of all necessary to re-establish the unity of the Bolshevik front by excluding the strike-breakers."
(V. I. Lenin: Letter to the Members of the Bolshevik Party, October 31st., 1917, in: ibid.; p. 129-30, 131).
On the following day he wrote to the Central Committee of the Party:
"A self-respecting Party cannot tolerate strike-breaking and strike-breakers in its midst. This is obvious. The more we think about Zinoviev's and Kamenev's appearance in the non-Party press, the more obvious it becomes that their action has all the elements of strike-breaking in it.
We cannot refute the gossipy lie of Zinoviev and Kamenev without doing the cause still more harm. Therein lies the boundless meanness, the absolute treacherousness of these two persons, that in the face of the capitalists they have betrayed the strikers’ plans. For once we keep silent in the press, everybody will guess how things stand. . . . .
There can be and must be only one answer to this: an immediate decision of the Central Committee saying that:
‘Recognising in Zinoviev's and Kamenev's appearance in the non-Party press all the elements of strikebreaking, the Central Committee expels both from the Party'. . . .
The more 'outstanding' the strike-breakers, the more imperative it is to punish them immediately with expulsion."
(V. I. Lenin: Letter to the Central Committee of the RSDLP, November 1st, 1917; in ibid. p. 133, 135, 136).
The Central Committee Meeting of November 2nd. At its meeting on November 2nd., the Central Committee accepted Kamenev’s resignation from the CC. It adopted a resolution to the effect:
"that no member of the CC shall have the right to speak against the adopted decisions of the CC",
(Minutes of Meeting of CC, RSDLP, November 2nd., 1917, cited in: V. I. Lenin: "Collected Works", Volume 21, Book 2; London; n.d.; p. 261).
and a more specific resolution imposing:
"Upon Kamenev and Zinoviev the obligation not to make any statements against the decisions of the CC and the line of work laid out by it".
(Ibid.; p. 261).
On November 5 th , the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet appointed commissars for all the military detachments under its command. On the same day the Peter and Paul fortress, the last important obstacle to insurrection, declared for the Petrograd Soviet.
In the early morning of November 6 th, the Provisional Government attempted to launch a counter-offensive against the revolutionary forces by issuing orders for the arrest of the members of the Revolutionary Military Committee and for the suppression of the central organ of the Bolsheviks, "Rabochy Put" (Workers Path).
By 10 a.m. detachments of Red Guards had placed a guard on the printing plant and editorial offices of the newspaper, and at 11 a.m. the paper came out with a call for the immediate overthrow of the Provisional Government.
In the late evening of November 6 th , Lenin arrived at the Smolny which, as the headquarters both of the Petrograd Soviet and of the Bolshevik Party, had become the directing centre of the insurrection. Throughout the night, revolutionary soldiers and workers came to the Smolny and were armed with weapons supplied by the army units from the city's arsenals.
From dawn on November 7th revolutionary troops and Red Guards occupied the Petrograd railway stations, post offices, telegraph offices, telephone exchanges, government offices and the state bank The Pre-Parliament was dispersed. The cruiser "Aurora", controlled by revolutionary sailors, trained its guns on the Winter Palace, the only territory remaining to the Provisional Government.
During the day the Revolutionary Military Committee issued a manifesto: " To the Citizens of Russia" drafted by Lenin:
"The Provisional Government has been overthrown. The power of state has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers' Deputies, the Revolutionary Military Committee, which stands at the head of the Petrograd Proletariat and garrison.
The cause for which the people have fought - the immediate proposal of a democratic peace, the abolition of landed proprietorship, workers' control over production and the creation of a Soviet government -- is assured.
Long live the revolution of the workers, soldiers, and peasants!"
(V. I. Lenin: "Manifesto of Revolutionary Military Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, November 7 th , 1917, in: V. I. Lenin & J. V. Stalin: "'1917: Selected Writings and Speeches"; Moscow; 1938; p. 613).
In one respect the manifesto was slightly premature, for it was not until the evening of November 7th. that revolutionary workers, soldiers and sailors took the Winter Palace by storm and arrested those members of the Provisional Government who had not fled (Kerensky had escaped earlier in the day by car, accompanied by a U.S. Embassy car flying the Stars and Stripes).
At 11 p.m. on November 7 th the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets opened in the Smolny.
As Stalin points out:
"It is well known that the uprising was launched prior to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. It is well known that power was actually taken before the opening of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, and it was taken not by the Congress of Soviets, but by the Petrograd Soviet, by the Revolutionary Military Committee. The Congress of Soviets merely took over power from the Petrograd Soviet".
(J. V. Stalin: "Trotskyisn Or Leninism?", in: "Works", Volume 6; Moscow; 1953; p. 362).
The Role of Trotsky in the October Revolution
As Stalin points out, Trotsky, as President of the Petrograd Soviet and of its Revolutionary Military Committee, played an important role in thc"October Revolution":
"I amfar from denying Trotsky's undoubtedly important role in the uprising.. . . .
It cannot be denied that Trotsky fought well in the period of October . . But Trotsky was not the only one who fought well in the period of October. Even people like the Left Socialist revolutionaries, who then stood side by side with the Bolsheviks, also fought well".
(J. V. Stalin: "Trotskyism or Leninism?", in: "Works', Volume 6; Moscow; 1933; p. 342, 344).
In his myth about the "October Revolution", however, Trotsky was concerned to understimate the leading role of the Party in the revolution, to underestimate the role of Lenin (whose tactics for the insurrection were, he alleges, incorrect), and to overestimate the role of the Military Revolutionary Committee Of the Petrograd Soviet and of himself as Chairman of that Committee.
Thus, Trotsky quotes with obvious approval one of the earlier editions of Lenin's "Collected Works", in which the editors say in a note on Trotsky:
"After the Petrograd Soviet went Bolshevik he was elected its President and in that capacity organised and led the insurrection of November 7 th".
(Cited by: L. Trotsky "History of the Russian Revolution", Volume 3; London; 1967; p. 344).
The amendment of this estimation is, alleges Trotsky, due to the fact that:
"The bureaucratic revision of history of the party and the revolution is taking place under Stalin's direct supervision".
(L. Trotsky. Ibid.; p. 343).
Stalin certainly denied the "special role" of Trotsky in the "October Revolution" claimed by Trotsky and his supporters:
"The Trotskyites are vigorously spreading rumours that Trotsky inspired and was the sole leader of the October uprising. . Trotsky himself, by consistently avoiding mention of the Party, the Central Committee and the Petrograd Committee of the Party, by saying nothing about the leading role of these organisations in the uprising and vigorously pushing himself forward as the central figure in the October uprising, voluntarily or involuntarily helps to spread the rumours about the special role he is supposed to have played in the uprising. ..
…I must say, however, that Trotsky did not play any special role in the October uprising, nor could he do so; being chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, he merely carried out the will of the approrpiate Party bodies, which directed every step that Trotsky took.
On October 29 (at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Party -- Ed.) a practical centre was elected for the organisational leadership of the uprising. Who was elected to this centre?
The following five: Sverdlov, Stalin, Dzerzhinzky, Bubnov, Uritsky.
The functions of this practica1 centre: to direct all the practical organs of the uprising in conformity with the directives of the Central Committee. Thus, as you see, something 'terrible' happened at the meeting of the Central Committee, i.e , 'strange to relate' the 'inspirer', the ‘chief figure', the 'sole 1eader' of the uprising, Trotsky, was not elected to the practica1 centre, which was called upon to direct the uprising. . . And yet, strictly speaking, there is nothing strange about it, for neither in the party, nor in the October uprising, did Trotsky play any special role, nor could he do so, for he was a relatively new man in our Party in the period of October... He, like all the responsible workers, merely carried out the will of the Central Committee and of its organs. . . This talk about Trotsky's specia1
role is a legend that is being spread by obliging 'Party' gossips.
This of course, does not mean that the October uprising did not have its inspirer. It did have its inspirer and leader, but his was Lenin, and none other than Lenin, that same Lenin whose resolutions the Central Committee adopted when deciding the question of the uprising, that same Lenin who, in spite of what Trotsky says, was not prevented by being in hiding from being the actual inspirer of the uprising. . . .
What sort of a 'history' of October is it that begins and ends with attempts to discredit the chief leader of the October uprising, to discredit the Party, which organised and carried out the uprising? Trotsky by his literary pronouncements is making another (yet another!) attempt to create the conditions for substituting Trotskyism for Leninism.".
(J. V. Stalin: 'Trotskyism or Leninism?", in: "Works," Volume 6; Moscow; 1953; p. 341-3, 363, 364).
Trotsky, in his rep1y, confirms Stalin's charge that he is concerned to underestimate the leading role of the Party in the insurrection. He admits that "the practical centre" of the Central Committee was set up :
"at Lenin’s suggestion",
(L. Trotsky: 'History of the Russian Revo1ution;", Volume 3; London; 1967 p. 339).
But he denies that it or any other party organ guided the insurrection. The insurrection, he declares, was guided by the Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, with Trotsky as its chairman, alone:
"The Military Revolutionary Committee from the moment of its birth had the direct leadership not only of the garrison, but of the Red Guard. . .. No place remained for any other directing centre. . .. .
There was but one revolutionary centre, that affiliated with the Soviet -- that is, the Military Revolutionary Committee".
(L. Trotsky: ibid.) p. 340, 341).
The Character of the "October Revolution"
Lenin characterised the "October Revolution" as a proletarian-socialist revolution in its main, political content -- since by it the working class in alliance with, and leading, the peasantry seized political poor from the capitalist class. But he characterised it as a bourgeois-democratic revolution in its’ economic content -- since it completed the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary tasks which the "February Revolution" did not carry out.
"The immediate and direct aim of the revolution in Russia was a bourgeois-democratic aim, namely to destroy the relics of medievalism and abolish them completely.. . . .
We brought the bourgeois-democratic revolution to completion has done before.
We are progressing towards the socialist revolution, consciously, deliberately and undeviatingly, knowing that no Chinese wall separates it from the bourgeois-democratic revolution.. . . . .
But . . we solved the problems of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in passing, as a "by-product" of the main and real proletarian-revolutionary socialist work".
(V. I. Lenin: "The Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution", in: "Selected Works", Volume 6; London; 1946; p. 500; 501; 503.)
"The October Revolution overthrew the bourgeoisie and transferred power to the proletariat but did not immediately lead to:
the completion of the bourgeois revolution, in general and: the isolation of the kulaks in the countryside, in particular -
these were spread over a certain period of time but this does not mean that our fundamenta1 slogan at the second stage of the revolution – "together with the poor peasantry, against capitalism in town and country, while neutralising the middle peasantry, for the power of the proletariat" -
-- was wrong . . . .
The strategic slogans of the Party can be appraised only from the point of view of a Marxist analysis of the class forces and of the correct disposition of the revolutionary forces. . . . .
Is it possible for the overthrow of the power of the bourgoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat to be effected within the framework of the bourgeois revolution? . . .
How can it be asserted that the kulaks (who, of course, are also peasants) could support the overthrow of the bourgoisie and the transfer of power to the proletariat'? .
One of the main tasks of the October Revolution was to complete the bourgeois revolution. . . .and since the October Revolution did complete the bourgeois revolution it was bound to meet with the sympathy of all the peasants . . But can it be asserted on these grounds that the completion of the bourgeois revolution was not a derivative phenomenon in the course of the October Revolution but its essence or its principal aim? . . .
And if the main theme of a strategic slogan is the question of the transfer of power from one class to another, is it not clear from this that the question of the completion of the bourgeois revolution by the proletarian power must not be confused with the question of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and achieving this proletarian power, i.e., with the question that is the main theme at the second stage of the revolution? .
In order to complete the bourgeois revolution it was necessary in October:
first to overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie and to set up the power of the proletariat, for only such a power is capable of completing the bourgeois revolution. But in order to set up the power of the proletariat in October it was essential to prepare and organise for October the appropriate political army, an army capable of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and of establishing the power of the proletariat, and there is no need to prove that such a political army could be prepared and organised by us only under the slogan:
Alliance of the proletariat with the poor peasantry against the bourgeoisie, for the dictatorship of the proletariat".
(J. V. Stalin: "The Party's Three Fundamental Slogans on the Peasant Question", in "Works"; Volume 9; Moscow; 1954; p. 2O8-O9; 210, 211-12).
For the autumn of 1913, however, the continuing revolution developed uninterruptedly into a proletarian-socialist revolution in its economic content.
"Until the organisation of the Committees of Poor Peasants, i.e., down to the summer and even the autumn of 1918, our revolution was to a large extent a bourgeois revolution . . . But from the moment the Committees of Poor Peasants began to be organised, our revolution became a proletarian revolution. . It was only when the October revolution in the countryside began and was accomplished in the summer of 1913 that we found our real proletarian base; it was only then that our revolution became a proletarian revolution in fact, and not merely by virtue of proclamations, promises and declarations."
(V. I. Lenin: Report of the Central Committe of the Russian Communist (Bolsheviks) at the Eighth Party Congress, in: "Selected Works", Volume 3; London; 1943; 10. 37, 33).
"In November 1917 we seized power together with the peasantry as a whole. This was a bourgeois revolution in as much as the class war in the rural districts had not yet developed."
(V. I. Lenin: "Work in the Rural Districts", in: ibid.; p. 171).
4. TROTSKY, STALIN AND THE RED ARMY - CIVIL WAR IN THE USSR
A common perception amongst progressives is that Trotsky “saved” the revolution, indeed “made” the revolution, during the Civil War following the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks. Largely because Trotsky “made” the new Red Army. This is certainly the view of those like Trotsky himself. Trotsky presents himself as being guarded from Stalin’s ruthless attacks, by Lenin. According to Trotsky for example:
“Stalin stayed in Tsarityn for a few months ..Lenin watched the conflict develop with alarm. … He knew Stalin better than I did, and obviously suspected that the stubbornness of Tsartisyn was being secretly staged by Stalin”;
Trotsky, Lev “My Life”; New York; 1970; p. 441.
At the same time according to Trotsky, Lenin really was just very distant from the details of the Civil War and could not have known what was needed – were it not for the all-informed Trotsky:
“Lenin was too much absorbed .. to make trips to the front. I stayed at the fronts most of the time… After half an hour talk with me, our mutual understandings and complete solidarity were restored… a few days later.. Lenin was making a speech… “When Comrade Trotsky informed me that in our military department the offices are numbered in tens of thousands, I gained a proper understanding of what constitutes the secret sue of our enemy.. of how to build communism out of the bricks that the capitalists had gathered to use against us”;
Ibid; p,. 446-7.
Naturally his followers such as Erich Wollenberg and more recently, Tony Cliff echo Trotsky, writing for example that:
“ Trotsky’s building of the Red Army is rightly considered a gigantic achievement. By combining contradictory elements he produced a mighty army out of a void…in the train Trotsky demonstrated how the sword and the pen could act together in complete harmony…“
Cliff, T; Trotsky 1917-1923 - The Sword of the Revolution; London; 1990; p. 11, 95;
However, these Heroic Myths are simply not consistent with the facts.
It is telling for instance, that when from Trotsky writes a long memo to the Central Committee, where Trotsky is urging on his own plans for the Southern Frontier as follows:
“13. The division of the southern front into a south-eastern and a southern one consolidates organizationally the fundamental strategic mistake. At present between the commander in chief and the two southern groups there no longer stands one person responsible for the southern front…
14. Despite the formal release of the commander in chief from the obligations of the original plan, the de facto situation remains such that even essential changes (the transfer of Budenny’s corps, the movement of the army to the west etc) are evaluated in the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Military Tribunal as “assaults” on the basic plan and implemented with extreme delay…. Conclusion .. It is essential to realise the actual extent of the danger. It is essential to order the commander in chief to take steps that will really save Tula from perdition”
Lenin would simply write on this above memo as follows:
“Nothing but bad nerves; - was not discussed at the plenum; it is strange to raise it now”;
Memo Trotsky to Central Committee dated 1st October 1919; In: Edited, Pipes R; The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive; New Haven; 1996; p. 73.
It is very telling that the editor of these new files from the archives writes:
“Trotsky’s note to the Central Committee holds interest for two reasons. First it shows how little familiarity Trotsky had with the operational plans of the Red Army, which he nominally headed. Written less than two months before the Red Army would decisively defeat General Denikin (and save Tula) it reveals that Trotsky either was unaware of the actual preparing for the Soviet counter-offensive or misunderstood them. Second Lenin’s cavalier dismissal of this advice indicates that he did not hold Trotsky’s military abilities in high esteem”;
Ibid; p. 69-70
Both Lenin’s Collected Works for this period, and the papers known as the “Trotsky Papers 1917-1922”, [“The Trotsky Papers 1917-1922”; Ed J.M.Meijer; 1971; The Hague]
show a further wealth of detail that Lenin was very well aware of events in the Civil war. It is evident that he was frequently directing Trotsky in numerous ways; or asking for very specific details that are only consistent with a deep understanding of the situation.
Finally, it is evident that Lenin was frequently consulting Stalin, and even urging him to intervene in areas where Trotsky’s command was failing. Resorting to Stalin to pull Trotsky’s military chestnuts out of the fire, became a habit of Lenin.
When the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Bolshevik party overthrew the Provisional Government in Petrograd on the 8th November 1917, they set up the Council of Peoples Commissars (Sovnarkom). Recognising its debt to the soldiers and sailors, they struck a Committee on Army and Naval Affairs. The seizure of power could never have taken place without the army and navy militants who:
“Prepared by the Bolsheviks, carried out fighting orders with precision and fought side by side with Red Guards. The navy did not lag behind the army. Since Kronstadt was a stronghold of the Bolshevik Party, and has long since refused to recognise the authority of the Provisional Government. The cruiser Aurora trained its guns on the Winter Palace, and on October 25th their thunder ushered in a new era, the year of the Great Socialist Revolution”;
Editors: A Commission of the CC of the CPSU(B); “A Short History of the Communist Party Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)”; Moscow; 1939; p.208.
Already on the 8th October, the Second Congress of Soviets had adopted the Decree on Peace:
“The congress called on the belligerent countries to conclude an immediate armistice for a period of not less than three months to permit negotiations for peace.”
“Short History CPSU(B)”; Ibid; p. 209.
On the 10 November Lenin signed an order to demobilize the Imperial Army – until then still at war with Germany in the First World War. The army was 12 million strong, and Mikhail Kedrov oversaw the demobilization as deputy Army Commissar. By mid December Sovnarkom’s Appeal for Peace had not received any answer from the remaining warring nations. It was also clear the counter-revolutionaries were organising military forces. The Congress of Demobilization was still taking place, when Army Commissar Nikolai Podvoiskii , the first Narkomvoen (i.e. Commissar for Military & Naval Affairs – until March 13th 1918 when at his own request he stepped down from this post – Footnote no.3; Ibid; Meijer; p. 7) discussed with the Bolsheviks party Military Organisation the formation of a new army.
Initially Kedrov argued for an army based purely on industrial workers and peasants who had “proven loyalty” to the Bolshevik Party. But finally a proposal was agreed to that the army would be made up of “the labouring classes, workers and peasants with a firm proletarian core”; Cited von Hagen, Mark: “Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship. The Red Army & The Soviet socialist state 1917-1930”; Ithaca 1990; p.9.
But by January 1918, mass desertions from the army were rife, and soldiers committees were unilaterally dissolving units. Soldiers seized arms and went home. Luckily, since 1917, the soviets had been organising Red Guards and militias. It was these that had seized State Power for the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Bolsheviks, when they overthrew the Provisional Government. It was also these Red Guards that defended Petrograd on November 10th 1917, from the counter-revolution led by General Petr Krasnov and former minister-president Alexsandr Kerensky.
Engels had advocated a militia-like army, while the Paris Commune of 1870 had actually put this into practice. These examples inspired militia leaders like Valentin Trifonov who advocated that the Red Guards become formally, a peoples’ militia, as the backbone of the army. On January 15th, Sovnarkom struck the All-Russian Collegium to Organise a Worker-Peasant Red Army, which declared in the “Declaration of the Rights of the Laboring and Exploited”, the arming of all labourers and the formation of a socialist red army of workers and peasants. Guided by the movement from below, the army was envisaged as being a volunteer army from below:
“Like everything in our revolution, the formation of a socialist army cannot await instructions from above. It must be formed from below, by the people themselves; therefore all organisations – factory and volost’ committees, local party organisations, trade unions, local soviets, and all Red Guard staff – immediately must set themselves to the task of organising the Socialist Army”;
Cited von Hagen; Ibid p.21-22.
The general model was of the Paris Commune and its fully volunteer army. The soldiers committees, rejecting any question of an officer leadership, discarded all traces of an officer layer. All military courts had been abolished by Sovnarkom in November, and replaced by comrade courts (tovarish-cheskie sudy). Also on December 1, 197, the Petrograd Military District abolished all ranks and insignia, and privileges for officers, and started the election of officers. It is on the face of it, surprising then that some 8,000 generals and officers of the Imperial army would wish to volunteer to serve the Soviet state. These officers were received with great suspicion, and the term “military specialists” pointed out their expertise, without drawing attention to their prior allegiances. In order to create a new ‘communist’ officer corps, Sovnarkom initiated courses for Red Commanders in December. By end of 1918, there were 13,000 red commanders through the state.
The first test of the new state defence forces came in Estonia, in 1918 at Narva – when the German army battled with the Red Guards. In the absence of central professional leadership, and the refusal of the Red Guards to accept any orders unless given by elected commanders, the rout was inevitable. Immediately after this, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was finally signed, and the Red Army was under pressure to adopt professional standards.
Brest-Litovsk and the Left Opposition
The objective situation of the fledgling socialist state was precarious. It was necessary to ensure that the unilaterally declared Peace proclaimed by the USSR, was accepted by the foreign warring armies:
“But the position of the Soviet Government could not be deemed fully secure as long as Russia was in a state of war with Germany and Austria. In order finally to consolidate the Soviet power, the war had to be ended. … The Soviet Government called upon "all the belligerent peoples and their governments to start immediate negotiations for a just, democratic peace." But the "allies" -- Great Britain and France -- refused to accept the proposal of the Soviet Government. .. The Soviet Government, in compliance with the will of the Soviets, decided to start negotiations with Germany and Austria. The negotiations began on December 3 in Brest-Litovsk. On December 5 an armistice was signed. … It became clear in the course of the negotiations that the German imperialists were out to seize huge portions of the territory of the former tsarist empire, and to turn Poland, the Ukraine and the Baltic countries into dependencies of Germany. To continue the war under such conditions would have meant staking the very existence of the new-born Soviet Republic. The working class and the peasantry were confronted with the necessity of accepting onerous terms of peace, of retreating before the most dangerous marauder of the time -- German imperialism -- in order to secure a respite in which to strengthen the Soviet power and to create a new army, the Red Army, which would be able to defend the country from enemy attack.“
"Short History of the CPSU(B)": Ibid; p.215;
Lenin’s proposal to sign an armistice with Germany and Austria, provoked a storm of antagonism of Ultra-Leftists in alliance with Russian ultra-nationalists. The opposition united under the name of the “Left Communists”, and was led by Trotsky:
“All the counter-revolutionaries, from the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries to the most arrant Whiteguards, conducted a frenzied campaign against the conclusion of peace. Their policy was clear: they wanted to wreck the peace negotiations, provoke a German offensive and thus imperil the still weak Soviet power and endanger the gains of the workers and peasants. Their allies in this sinister scheme were Trotsky and his accomplice Bukharin, the latter, together with Radek and Pyatakov, heading a group which was hostile to the Party but camouflaged itself under the name of "Left Communists." Trotsky and the group of "Left Communists" began a fierce struggle within the Party against Lenin, demanding the continuation of the war. These people were clearly playing into the hands of the German imperialists and the counter-revolutionaries within the country, for they were working to expose the young Soviet Republic, which had not yet any army, to the blows of German imperialism.“
“Short History of the CPSUB“; Ibid; p.216.
Trotsky, in disobeying the Central Committee’s instructions, provoked a crisis by refusing to sign the treaty, while the German imperialists used this provocation as an excuse to storm deeper into USSR territory:
“On February 10, 1918, the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk were broken off. Although Lenin and Stalin, in the name of the Central Committee of the Party, had insisted that peace be signed, Trotsky, who was chairman of the Soviet delegation at Brest-Litovsk, treacherously violated the direct instructions of the Bolshevik Party. He announced that the Soviet Republic refused to conclude peace on the terms proposed by Germany. At the same time he informed the Germans that the Soviet Republic would not fight and would continue to demobilize the army….The German government broke the armistice and assumed the offensive. The remnants of our old army crumbled and scattered before the onslaught of the German troops. The Germans advanced swiftly, seizing enormous territory and threatening Petrograd. German imperialism invaded the Soviet land with the object of overthrowing the Soviet power and converting our country into its colony. The ruins of the old tsarist army could not withstand the armed hosts of German imperialism, and steadily retreated under their blows.”
“Short History of the CPSUB“; Ibid; p. 216.
Fortunately the rally of the Red Army at Narva, was able to “check” the advance. This then became known as the “birthday of the Red Army”:
“The Soviet Government issued the call -- "The Socialist fatherland is in danger!" And in response the working class energetically began to form regiments of the Red Army. The young detachments of the new army -- the army of the revolutionary people -- heroically resisted the German marauders who were armed to the teeth. At Narva and Pskov the German invaders met with a resolute repulse. Their advance on Petrograd was checked. February 23 -- the day the forces of German imperialism were repulsed -- is regarded as the birthday of the Red Army.”
Short History of the CPSUB“; Ibid p. 217.
As a consequence of the actions of the USSR delegate to the talks, Trotsky, the USSR was in an even more serious situation than before:
“On February 18, 1918, the Central Committee of the Party had approved Lenin's proposal to send a telegram to the German government offering to conclude an immediate peace. But in order to secure more advantageous terms, the Germans continued to advance, and only on February 22 did the German government express its willingness to sign peace. The terms were now far more onerous than those originally proposed. Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov had to wage a stubborn fight on the Central Committee against Trotsky, Bukharin and the other Trotskyites before they secured a decision in favour of the conclusion of peace. Bukharin and Trotsky, Lenin declared, "actually helped the German imperialists and hindered the growth and development of the revolution in Germany." (Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. XXII, p. 307.) On February 23, the Central Committee decided to accept the terms of the German Command and to sign the peace treaty. The treachery of Trotsky and Bukharin cost the Soviet Republic dearly. Latvia, Estonia, not to mention Poland, passed into German hands; the Ukraine was severed from the Soviet Republic and converted into a vassal of the German state. The Soviet Republic undertook to pay an indemnity to the Germans.”
“Short History of the CPSUB“; p. 217.
Because of the controversy with the Left Opposition, Lenin insisted that the decision to sign a Peace Accord be brought back for the approval or otherwise of the Seventh Party Congress:
“In order that the Party might pronounce its final decision on the question of peace the Seventh Party Congress was summoned. The congress opened on March 6, 1918. This was the first congress held after our Party had taken power. It was attended by 46 delegates with vote and 58 delegates with voice but no vote, representing 145,000 Party members…. reporting at this congress on the Brest-Litovsk Peace, Lenin said that ". . . the severe crisis which our Party is now experiencing, owing to the formation of a Left opposition within it, is one of the gravest crises the Russian revolution has experienced." (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VII, pp. 293-94.). The resolution submitted by Lenin on the subject of the Brest-Litovsk Peace was adopted by 30 votes against 12, with 4 abstentions…. .
On the day following the adoption of this resolution, Lenin wrote an article entitled "A Distressful Peace," in which he said: "Intolerably severe are the terms of peace. Nevertheless, history will claim its own. . . . Let us set to work to organize, organize and organize. Despite all trials, the future is ours."
(Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. XXII, p. 288.)”
“Short History of the CPSUB“; Ibid; p.218.
Obviously, the treaty was a retreat. But was it needed, and what was the result of signing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty?
“The Peace of Brest-Litovsk gave the Party a respite in which to consolidate the Soviet power and to organize the economic life of the country. The peace made it possible to take advantage of the conflicts within the imperialist camp (the war of Austria and Germany with the Entente, which was still in progress) to disintegrate the forces of the enemy, to organize a Soviet economic system and to create a Red Army. The peace made it possible for the proletariat to retain the support of the peasantry and to accumulate strength for the defeat of the Whiteguard generals in the Civil War.”
“Short History of the CPSUB“; Ibid; p. 219.
First Steps to a Professional Red Army
In the wake of this enforced “respite”, Sovnarkom began to reorganize the army.
“The Narva defeat marked the first retreat from the principles of the commune in matters of defense.”
Von Hagen M; ”Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship”; Ibid; p. 64.
As part of the re-organisation, Lev Trotsky was appointed as commander in chief of the army, in place of the collegium. He was therefore the second Bolshevik Commissar for war, following Podvoiskii as discussed above.
Given the dearth of trained communist commanders, Trotsky moved to ensure that Sovnarkom would approve the recruitment of former Tsarist officers. Undoubtedly this was correct. What was incorrect was the lack of supervision and the favouring of these element over the political cadre. Inevitably, this was going to cause conflict with the soldiers committees. Trotsky had to appeal to the All Russian Central Executive Committee (VtsIK), who stated that all commanders in the Red Army would be only appointed by higher-ranking commanders. But even this compromise was still resisted, and elected commanders were still in position up to 1919. In a compromise known as “dual command” (dvoenachalie), each commander had to have a political equivalent – the commissar, and each order had to be signed by both. It was now that the All-Russian Bureau of Military Commissars (Vsebiurvoenkom) identified the soldiers committees as an obstacle in ensuring authority in the army, and moves were taken to disband them.
General Forces Ranged against the Bolsheviks Internally and Externally
The encirclement of the USSR by the capitalist states, facilitated the foreign incursions into the USSR, which directly and indirectly aided the counter-revolutionary white forces.
“By the summer of 1919, without declaration of war, the armed forces of fourteen states had invaded the territory of Soviet Russia. The countries involved were:
Great Britain , Serbia, France, China, Japan, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, USA, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Turkey.
Fighting side by side with the anti-Soviet invaders were the counter-revolutionary White armies led by former Czarist generals striving to restore the feudal aristocracy which the Russian people had overthrown”;
Sayers M & Kahn AE; The Great Conspiracy”; Boston; 1946; p.79.
The overthrown landowning classes were in conspiracy with the West for the defeat of the Bolsheviks:
“Overthrown by the October Socialist Revolution, the Russian landlords and capitalist began to conspire with the capitalists of other countries for the organisation of military intervention against the Land of the Soviet…. The Soviet Government proclaimed the Socialist fatherland in danger and called upon the people to rise in its defence. The Bolshevik Party rallied the workers and peasants for a patriotic war against the foreign invaders and the bourgeois and landlord Whiteguards”.
Alexandrov GF et al: “Joseph Stalin – A Short Biography”; Moscow 1952; p.59.
Following the end of the First World War, various regiments inside Russian territory were left stranded. The Czech regiment was on its way to their home in trains. But the provocation of Trotsky enlisting them into the Red Army, and their prior contacts with the Western imperial agents sparked some of the first shots of the Civil War. The conspiracy was shown clearly by the timing of the assaults:
“The revolt of the Czechoslovaks, .. was timed to coincide with the revolts engineered by White Guards and Socialist-Revolutionaries in 23 cities on the Volga, a revolt of the Left SR in Moscow, and a landing of the British troops in Murmansk”;
Alexandrov Ibid; p. 59-60.
“Thus, already in the first half of 1918, two definite forces took shape that were prepared to embark upon the overthrow of the Soviet power, namely, the foreign imperialists of the Entente and the counter-revolutionaries at home. . . The conditions of the struggle against the Soviet power dictated a union of the two anti-Soviet forces, foreign and domestic. And this union was effected in the first half of 1918. . . . The imperialists of Great Britain, France, Japan and America started their military intervention without any declaration of war, although the intervention was a war, a war against Russia, and the worst kind of war at that. These "civilized" marauders secretly and stealthily made their way to Russian shores and landed their troops on Russia's territory. . . The British and French landed troops in the north, occupied Archangel and Murmansk, supported a local Whiteguard revolt, overthrew the Soviets and set up a White "Government of North Russia." The Japanese landed troops in Vladivostok, seized the Maritime Province, dispersed the Soviets and supported the Whiteguard rebels, who subsequently restored the bourgeois system. In the North Caucasus, Generals Kornilov, Alexeyev and Denikin, with the support of the British and French, formed a Whiteguard "Volunteer Army," raised a revolt of the upper classes of the Cossacks and started hostilities against the Soviets. On the Don, Generals Krasnov and Mamontov, with the secret support of the German imperialists (the Germans hesitated to support them openly owing to the peace treaty between Germany and Russia), raised a revolt of Don Cossacks, occupied the Don region and started hostilities against the Soviets. In the Middle Volga region and in Siberia, the British and French instigated a revolt of the Czechoslovak Corps. This corps, which consisted of prisoners of war, had received permission from the Soviet Government to return home through Siberia and the Far East. But on the way it was used by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and by the British and French for a revolt against the Soviet Government. The revolt of the corps served as a signal for a revolt of the kulaks in the Volga region and in Siberia, and of the workers of the Votkinsk and Izhevsk Works, who were under the influence of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. A Whiteguard-Socialist-Revolutionary government was set up in the Volga region, in Samara, and a Whiteguard government of Siberia, in Omsk.“
“Short History of the CPSU(B)”; p. 226.
Three Fronts faced the Bolsheviks, and at the same time there were three major periods of the Civil War:
“The war was fought across three main fronts - the eastern, the southern and the northwestern. It can also be roughly split into three periods. The first period lasted from the Revolution until the Armistice. The conflict began with dissenting Russian groups, the main force was the newly formed Volunteer Army in the Don region which was joined later by the Czecho-Slovak Legion in Siberia. In the east there were also two anti-Bolshevik administrations, Komuch in Samara and the nationalist Siberian government centred in Omsk. Most of the fighting in this first period was sporadic, involving only small groups amid a fluid and rapidly shifting strategic scene. The main antagonists were the Czecho-Slovaks, known simply as the Czech Legion, and the pro-Bolshevik Latvians.
The second period of the war was the key stage, it lasted only from March to November 1919. At first the White armies advancing from the south (Anton Denikin), the northwest (Nikolai Nikolaevich Yudenich) and the east (Aleksandr Vasilevich Kolchak) were successful, forcing the new Red Army back and advancing on Moscow. However under . the Red Army … pushed back Kolchak's forces from June and the armies of Denikin and Yudenich from October. The fighting power of Kolchak and Denikin was broken almost simultaneously in mid-November.
The final period of the conflict was the extended defeat of the White forces in the Crimea. Petr Nikolaevich Wrangel had gathered the remnants of the armies of Denikin and they had fortified their positions in the Crimea. With the Red Army fighting in Poland in the Polish-Soviet war from 1919 (or even earlier) the Whites held their positions until that struggle was over. When the full force of the Red Army was turned on them they were soon overwhelmed, and the remaining troops were evacuated to Constantinople in November 1920.” http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Russian-Civil-War
All of these military threats, forced further steps towards a professional army, and on April 22 1918, VtsIK decreed an obligatory military training for all workers and peasants.
“The party proclaimed the country an armed camp and placed its economic cultural and political life on a war footing. The Soviet Government announced that “the socialist fatherland is in danger”, and called upon the people to rise in its defence. Lenin issued the slogan , “All for the front!” – and hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants volunteered for service in the Red Army and left for the front.”
“Short History USSR”; Ibid; p. 228.
Von Hagen confirms these figures, citing some 500,000 new recruits and over 700,000 citizens trained by The Universal Military Training Demonstration (Vsevobuch) (ibid p. 36).
Vsevobuch was led by L.E.Mar’iasin. It retained the model of a volunteer militia rather than a regular army. But as the Civil War erupted in the East – foreign troops had landed in Vladivostok and in the North – the anti-Bolshevik risings stirred VtsIK into conscription. This was a difficult task however, in a war weary peasantry, and even proletariat. As food crises developed in the countryside, mutinies were more frequent.
As this crisis developed, VtsIK realised that the political commissar was the vital element, to solving of the army morale crisis. The first All-Russian Congress of Commissars in June, emphasised this saying it:
“declared the commissar to be the direct representative of Soviet power and as such, an inviolable person. Any insult or other act of violence against a commissar while he was executing his official responsibility was equivalent to “the most serious crime against the Soviet regime”. The commissars demanded control over all comrades’ courts and the “cultural enlightenment life” of the army”;
Von Hagen Ibid p. 32.
Led by Nikolaii Podvoiskii, the Vesbiurvoenkom and Vsevobuch were instrumental in exerting this new authority of the commisars. The Fifth Congress of Soviets took place in July 1918 – amidst the Moscow uprising led by the Left Social Revolutionaries. Fortunately this revolt was soon suppressed. Consistent with the themes of labour discipline put for the by Lenin in his article, “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government”, the Congress moved to reaffirm the new principles of the Red Army:
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> “Obligatory service, centralized demonstration and an end to local autonomy and arbitrary makeshift structures, the recruitment of military specialists; the death penalty for traitors, and the creation of a cohort of Red Commanders eventually to replace the (tsarist) military specialists, and the prominent status of commissars”;
von Hagen Ibid p. 34.
It was during this period that what became known as “war Communism came into effect. This was the introduction of the grain monopoly and several other industries. The term emphasises the linkage between the political actions of the Bolsheviks and the war conditions embraced by the White counter-revolutionaries:
“The Soviet Government introduced War Communism. It took under its control the middle-sized and small industries, in addition to large-scale industry, so as to accumulate goods for the supply of the army and the agricultural population. It introduced a state monopoly of the grain trade, prohibited private trading in grain and established the surplus-appropriation system, under which all surplus produce in the hands of the peasants was to be registered and acquired by the state at fixed prices, so as to accumulate stores of grain for the provisioning of the army and the workers. Lastly, it introduced universal labour service for all classes. By making physical labour compulsory for the bourgeoisie and thus releasing workers for other duties of greater importance to the front, the Party was giving practical effect to the principle".
“Short History of the CPSU(B); Ibid; p.229.
These directly military steps at the congress were largely favoured by Trotsky. However the seeds of later conflicts lay in his tendency to favour the former Tsarist officers, rather than the commissar. Trotsky’s leadership of the army was still facing much opposition.
Trotsky as War Commissar
The major opposition to Trotsky’s leadership revolved around his espousal of the ex-Tsarist military specialists, and his attacks on the commissars for their questioning of these specialists’ authority. His credibility was not helped by the treachery of ex-Tsarist General Mikhail Murav’ev:
“In July the commander of the Western Front Murav’ev, raised a mutiny against Soviet power under the banner of solidarity with the recent Left SR uprising in Moscow. Murav’ev had already been arrested once for abusing his authority; Trotsky had arranged not only his release but his promotion to command of the Eastern Front. Murav’ev was killed resisting his second arrest… Iokaim Vatsetis the hero of the Latvian infantry division that had just put down the Left SR uprising in Moscow [of July 6-7 1918 –ed], rushed off to Simbirsk to replace Murav’ev and reorganize the Eastern Front. Vatsetis arrived at HQ to find bureaucratic chaos… Vatsetis accused the Supreme Military Council – namely, Trotsky and Chief of Staff Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich – of reducing Soviet Russia to a state of “utter defenselessness”.
Von Hagen Ibid; p. 37.
Trotsky’s response to his decline in credibility did not endear him to the commissars. Trotsky accused the commissars of eroding a military discipline. He attracted more criticism when he ordered the shooting of Commissar Panteleev in 1918:
“Trotsky’s authority declined markedly in the wake of the Murav’ev incident. He sought to deflect criticism from himself and the military specialists by blaming the commissars for the army’s poor performance; but he won the lasting enmity of the commissars after he ordered the court-martial and shooting of one of their number. Commissar Panteleev, for desertion. Though he had warned all commissars a few weeks earlier that they would be the first persons shot if their units retreated without authorisation, still the first execution sent shock waves through the ranks. Trotsky quickly developed a reputation as a commander who placed military expediency over political reliability and who listened too much to the military specialists who surrounded him in increasing numbers.” Von Hagen; Ibid; p. 37.
In fact, although Trotsky prided himself on setting discipline, it was only after Vatsetis arrived in the Eastern Front that several field tribunals were set up, that tried cases of sabotage and treason (von Hagen Ibid; p. 37). Even then, the Cheka special investigations forces [All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combat of Counter-Revolution and Sabotage], and the introduction of the death penalty were needed to defeat the White forces:
“The treachery of some military specialists and the frequently poor morale and fighting ability of the conscripts prevented the Red Army from halting the White advance during the summer months. The introduction of the death penalty and the field tribunals and the special detachments of the Cheka began to turn the tide.”
Von Hagen Ibid; p. 38.
Even as late as August 15 th, Trotsky was finding it necessary to reassure Lenin that:
“I consider it necessary to confirm once again that our troops are good ones and fighting with a will… as regards our organisation we have effected a great improvement… (but) the command apparatus is weak. Hence mishaps, and on occasion, panic retreats for no reason etc”;
Message Trotsky to Lenin; In Meijer Ibid; p. 81.
In spite of this reassurance, Lenin was sending messages the next day insisting that Skljanski (Trotsky’s second in command) attack “malpractice and criminal acts” in the army (Meijer Ibid; p. 83); and on the 18 th August that Lenin was:
“astonished and alarmed at the slowing down of the operation against Kazan’. What is particularly bad is the report of our having the fullest possible opportunity of destroying the enemy with your artillery”;
Message Lenin to Trotsky; in Meijer Ibid; p. 91.
Repetitively, the charge was brought against Trotsky by numerous commissars and Red Commanders, that he favoured in a blind manner the old Tsarist ex-generals. After an article in Pravda on this by a amber of the Central Executive Committee A.Kamenskij, Trotsky was even more defensive. Kamenskij was a Trotskyite, and thus no ‘hay’ can be made of any putative ‘Stalinist’ attempt to undermine him here. (See Letter to the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party by Trotsky of December 25 th 1918; in Miejer Ibid; p. 205-209; & footnote no.1).
It was in a desperate climate, with losses on many fronts, that the Central Committee began the call up of large numbers of Communist Party members, and only now in September:
“For the first time the Red troops halted the White advance. The Central Committee credited the September victories to the energetic organising efforts undertaken by the Party members sent to the front as commissars, commanders and rank and file Red Army men”:
Ibid p. 3.
Even by September, the situation remained tense. the Soviet Government decreed martial law for the whole country. And although the Eastern fronts were succeeding, almost immediately the South erupted under the White armies of General Anton Denikin.
Now, 1,134,356 men were called up in the largest recruitment of the entire Civil War, between October and December 1918.
Stalin’s Mission to Southern Front at Tsaritsyn
Before Stalin was sent South, he had already drawn attention to the inaction in the East, and especially the attempt of the Germans to capture Certovo Station, controlling supply lines to Rostov. On the Sovnarkom’s initiative, Stalin was put in charge of the capture of Certkovo (Meijer J.M. Editor & Annotator, “The Trotsky Papers 1917-1922”; Hague 1964; p. 43). Given the evidence of serious deficiencies of the Eastern command under Trotsky, the Southern Front was created by the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic with its’ own revolutionary military council:
“which included one military specialist, the former general Pavel Sytin, and three commissars J.V.Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov and Sergei Minin. Almost at once conflicts erupted between the military specialists and the commissars”;
von Hagen Ibid p. 39.
“At the end of May Sovnarkom had put Stalin in overall charge of supply in the South of Russia and had given him extraordinary powers”;
Meijer J.M; Ibid; footnote No 1 p. 49.
The context of this contentious mission (both then and now) is important to grasp. Tsaritsyn (later named Stalingrad) was a gateway to two granaries for the USSR state, the Ukraine and Siberia:
“The workers in Moscow and Petrograd were receiving a bare two ounces of bread a day. The republic was cut off from the granaries of the Ukraine and Siberia. The Southwest , the Volga region, and the North Caucasus , was the only area from which grain could still be obtained, and the road to them lay by way of the Volga, through Tsaritsyn. Only by procuring grain could the revolution be saved. … Stalin left for the South invested by the CC with extraordinary power to direct the mobilisation of food supplies in the South.. On June 6, 1918, Stalin arrived in Tsaritsyn…. The capture of Tsaritisyn would have cut off the republic from its last sources of grain supply and from the oil of Baku, and would have enabled the Whites to link the counter-revolutionaries in the Don region with Kolchak and the Czechoslovak counter-revolution for a general advance on Moscow”;
Alexandrov Ibid; pp. 60-61.
“The German imperialists did their utmost to isolate, weaken and destroy Soviet Russia. They snatched from it the Ukraine -- true, it was in accordance with a "treaty" with the Whiteguard Ukrainian Rada (Council) -- brought in their troops at the request of the Rada and began mercilessly to rob and oppress the Ukrainian people, forbidding them to maintain any connections whatever with Soviet Russia. They severed Transcaucasia from Soviet Russia, sent German and Turkish troops there at the request of the Georgian and Azerbaidjan nationalists and began to play the masters in Tiflis and in Baku. They supplied, not openly, it is true, abundant arms and provisions to General Krasnov, who had raised a revolt against the Soviet Government on the Don. Soviet Russia was thus cut off from her principal sources of food, raw material and fuel. …..”
Short History CPSU(B) p.227-8
However the aim of the White General Krasnov to cut off Moscow from the rear was not fulfilled:
“Although the country was in a difficult position, and the young Red Army was not yet consolidated, the measures of defence adopted soon yielded their first fruits. General Krasnov was forced back from Tsaritsyn, whose capture he had regarded as certain, and driven beyond the River Don. General Denikin's operations were localized within a small area in the North Caucasus, while General Kornilov was killed in action against the Red Army. The Czechoslovaks and the Whiteguard-Socialist-Revolutionary bands were ousted from Kazan, Simbirsk and Samara and driven to the Urals. A revolt in Yaroslavl headed by the Whiteguard Savinkov and organized by Lockhart, chief of the British Mission in Moscow, was suppressed, and Lockhart himself arrested. The Socialist-Revolutionaries, who had assassinated Comrades Uritsky and Volodarsky and had made a villainous attempt on the life of Lenin, were subjected to a Red terror in retaliation for their White terror against the Bolsheviks, and were completely routed in every important city in Central Russia.”
“Short History CPSU(B)”; Ibid; p.227-8; 228-229.
In a separate web appendix, we publish the full correspondence of Stalin with Lenin on the situation in Tsaritsyn [See http://www.allianceML.com/STALIN-TXT/JVSCIVILWAR.html ]; but here we will only cite the extent to which Stalin’s involvement in Tsaristyn was driven by the matter of disruption and plain disorder, hampering supplies back to the rear:
“Arrived in Tsaristyn on the 6 th. Despite the confusion in every sphere of economic life, order can be established.
In Tsaritsyn, Astrakhan and Saratov the grain monopolies and fixed process were abolished by the Soviets, and there is chaos and profiteering. Have secured the introduction of rationing and fixed prices in Tsaritsyn. The same must be done in Astrakhan and Saratov, otherwise all grain will flow away though this profiteering channels. Let the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commisars also demand that these Soviets put an end to profiteering. Rail transport is dislocated owing to the efforts of the multiplicity of collegiums and revolutionary committees. I have been obliged to appoint special commisars; they are already establishing order despite the protests of the collegiums. The commissars are discovering heaps of locomotive in places there they did not suspect their existence. Investigation has shown that eight or more trains a day can be sent by the Tsartisy-Povorino-Balshov-Kozlov-Ryazan-Moscow line. Am now accumulating train in Tsaritsyn. Within a week we shall proclaim a “Grain Week” and shall dispatch to Moscow right away about one million poods..”; ]
Stalin JV: Telegram to V.I.Lenin; Dated June 7 th, 1918; In “Works”; Volume 4; p. 118-119; Moscow 1953.
Stalin complained of Trotsky’s management directly to Lenin:
“Comrade Lenin, Just a few words.
1) If Trotsky is going to hand out credentials right & left without thinking – to Trifnov (Don Region); to Avtonomv (Kuban region); to Koppe (Stavropol), to members of the French Mission (who deserve to be arrested), etc – it may be safely said that within a month everything here in the North Caucasus will go to pieces, and we shall lose this region altogether. Trotsky is behaving in the same way Antonov did at one time. Knock it into his head that he must make no appointments without the knowledge of the local people, otherwise the result will be to discredit the Soviet power.
2) If you don’t let us have the aeroplanes & airmen, armoured cars & 6 inch guns, the Tsaritsyn Front will be lost for a long time;
3) There is plenty of grain in the South, but to get we need a smoothly working machine which does not meet with obstacles from troop trains army commanders & so on. More, the military must assist the food agents. The food question is naturally bound up with the military question. For the good of the work, I need military powers. I have already written about this, but have had no reply. Very well, in that case I shall myself without any formalities, dismiss army commanders and commissars who are ruing the work. The interest of this work dictate this, and of course, not having a paper from Trotsky is not going to deter me”.
July 10 th: Stalin JV: Letter to V.I.Lenin; in Works Volume 4; Ibid p. 123.
By dint of correcting the imbalance towards "military experts”, Stalin turned the situation:
“One favourable factor on the Tsaritsyn-Gashun Front is the complete elimination of the muddle due to the detachment principle, and the timely removal of the so-called experts (staunch supporters either of the Cossacks or of the British & French) have made it possible to win the sympathy of the military units and establish iron discipline in them”;
Letter to Lenin dated August 4 th 1918; Works Stalin; Ibid; p. 126.
By September 6 th the offensive for Tsaritsyn was successful (Stalin 'Works'; Volume 7 Telegram to Council of Peoples Commissars; Volume 4; p. 131.
That it was after the arrival of Stalin, that matters were turned around is acknowledged in Trotsky’s own papers, albeit indirectly. On June 7, Stalin informed Lenin and Christian Rakovskji, an “unrepentant Trotskyite” [Meijer Ibid footnote 6; p.49] from Caricyn (Tsaristyn), that Batajsk had been captured had been captured. Rakovskji wrote to Trotsky informing him of this, and that Sytin had already confirmed that the situation just one day after Stalin’s arrival, was untenable:
“The sole line of communication of the these troops with Great-Russia, and that a circuitous one, across the Caspian Sea to Astrachan’ cannot even be regarded as satisfactory”;
Message to Trotsky 7 th June 1918; Meijer Ibid; p. 47.
Stalin had found it necessary to stay in Tsaritsyn for some time, until by September 1918 the Front was secure. By this time, Stalin had been interviewed by Iszvestia on September 21 1918, and said:
“First of all Comrade Stalin said, two gratifying facts should be noted: One is the promotion to administrative posts in the rear area of working men with an ability not only for agitating in favour of a Soviet power, but also for the building the state on a new, communist basis; the second is the appearance of a new corps of commanders consisting of officers promoted from the ranks who have had practical experience in the imperialist war, and who enjoy the full confidence of the Red Army men….”
Stalin JV: “The Southern Front. Izvestia Interview”; September 21 1918; Volume 4; Ibid; p. 133-5.
There is little doubt that Trotsky’s management of that Front had been clearly exposed.
Trotsky now insisted upon Stalin’s recall by threatening Vorsohilov’s court martial on October 4, 1918 (Trotsky “My Life”; p.443; Note Trotsky to Lenin 4.10.1918; in Meijer Ibid; p. 135-137). In fact as Meijer (Footnote no. 2; Ibid p. 136) makes clear, Trotsky’s action was precipitated by a telegram from Voroshilov and Stalin to Lenin on 3 rd October complaining of Trotsky’s work.
Trotsky’s’ charges were that after Stalin’s arrival, Trotsky’s commands from the centre (Trotsky “My Life”; Ibid p. 442). On Trotsky’s promptings, the Orgburo and the RSVR supported Sytin and removed Stalin. However by the time of his recall, Stalin had both secured Tsaritsyn and formed the nucleus of the Tenth army under Voroshilov. Alexandrov points out that he achieved this by:
“Ruthlessly breaking down the resistance of the counter-revolutionary military experts appointed and supported by Trotsky, and taking swift and vigorous measures to reorganize the scattered detachments”;
Ibid; p. 61.
Sytin was left in charge, until in October was removed from the command of the Southern Front (Meijer Ibid; p. 48). In the month of October, Stalin’s speeches on the Southern Front were given prominence in both Iszvestia and Pravda. These are reprinted on the Alliance web-pages
However there were further repercussions. Upon Stalin’s return to Moscow, he met with Lenin and Sverdlow, and reported further victories in the Tsaristyn area. Stalin pointed out to them that he had persuaded Vosroshilov and Minin to stay on, subject strictly to the central command. Further, in a letter from either Lenin or Sverdlov – it is stated:
“(Stalin) would like very much to work on the Southern Front; he expresses great apprehension that people whose knowledge of this Front is poor may commit errors, of which he cite numerous examples. … He is not putting any stipulation about the removal of Sytin and Mechonosin… In informing you Lev Davydyc, … I ask you to think them over and let me have a reply, as to whether you agree to talk matters over with Stalin personally, and secondly, whether you consider it possible under specific circumstances to put aside former differences and range to work together with as Stalin so much desires”;
Attributed by different sources to either Lenin or Sverdlow: Communication to Trotsky 23.10.1918; In Meijer Ibid; p. 159-161.
Trotsky had no choice but to accede to Lenin’s obvious pressure to meet Stalin. However, Stalin did not return to the Southern Front. Instead his next military mission was his appointment to the Defense Council on November 30 th, and then a special mission to investigate military failures in Perm’.
In the meantime, Voroshilov wrote urgently to Lenin complaining of the inability to obtain small arms and shells (See Telegram to Trotsky from Lenin 24 October 1918) to which Trotsky cavalierly replied that the “Crisis” was due to the “incredible, completely rabid expenditure of ammunition” at Tsartisyn (See Telegram Trotsky to Lenin 25 October 1918; Meijer Ibid; p. 163).
Typically of Trotsky, after he ridicules legitimate grievances, he then “discovers” the problem for himself, as instanced in a lengthy analysis of the problem [Memorandum to Lenin; copied to Krasin and Serpuchov; November 29, 1918; In Meijer Ibid; p. 187-191; p. 193]. The systemic problem of which Vosroshilov was complaining, was due to the small scale of the factories responsible, and the hostility of their former owners.
It is clear that the military commisars, and the Red Commanders had become ever more frustrated with the military leadership. This comes across loudly from the note of A.Egorov (Chairman of the Higher Credentials Commision of the Peoples Commissariat for Military Affairs), as early as 20 th August 1918 to Lenin and Trotsky, where he chastises the command in rather simple and blunt terms, as though in a nursery school, as follows:
“Practical military art and so the theory of it, bases itself wholly on the experience of the past… the necessity and the feasibility of a single command for directing warfare, in a word that the military leader must be given full power has been demonstrated by long experience.. Only a single uniform purpose can direct operations… the military axioms indicated above .. fail to find application in the military operations of the armies of the Republic.. A survey of all the operations in progress on the various fronts indicates that they contain no definite, uniform conception or purpose”;
Egorov A to Lenin, cced Trotsky: Meijer Ibid; p. 90-97.
The Food Shortage
Morale fell drastically. Even many party members, as well as regular soldiers, now deserted, and Trotsky ordered summary executions of these soldiers and the arrest of all rural soviet chairmen in whose jurisdiction deserters were found (von Hagen; Ibid p. 46).
The problem of desertions was eased as the army men were given concessions: tax relief to the families of Red Army men and provision of free apartments to their families.
But as the Sixth Congress of Soviets in November 1918, turned more determinedly back to the peasant masses, these problems reversed. For many of the problems, had their roots in food shortages and privation in both the countryside and correspondingly the army. Illustrating the extent of this crisis are Lenin’s “Theses On The Current Situation”, of 26 May 1918. Again the seriousness of Stalin’s intervention at Tsaritsyn in June, is highlighted by an appreciation of the situation.
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The Theses start by announcing the transformation of the Commissariat of War into the Commisariat for War and Food. The theses go on to outline a clear policy of a general martial law, and a stiffened army discipline, and call-ups to the army, and good relations with the peasantry:
“1) The Commissariat for War to be converted into a Commissariat for War and Food - i.e., 9/10 of the work of the Commissariat for War to be concentrated on re-organising the army for the war for grain and on waging this war - for three months: June-August.
2) Martial law to be declared throughout the country during this period.
3) The army to be mobilised, selecting its sound elements, and 19-year-olds to be called up, at any rate in certain regions, for systematic military operations to fight for, win, collect and transport grain and fuel.
4) Shooting for indiscipline to be introduced.
5) The success of detachments to be measured by success in obtaining grain and by practical results in collecting grain surpluses.
6) The tasks of the military campaign should be formulated as follows:
a) the collection of stocks of grain for feeding the population;
b) ditto-for three months' food reserve for war;
c) safeguarding stocks of coal, collecting them and increasing output.
7) The detachments of the active army (active against kulaks, etc.) to consist of from one-third to one-half (in each detachment) of workers and poor peasants of the famine-stricken gubernias.
8) Each detachment to be issued two kinds of instruction:
a) ideological-political, on the importance of victory over famine and the kulaks, on the dictatorship of the proletariat as the working people's power;
b) military-organisational, on the internal organisation of the detachments, on discipline, on control and written documents of control for each operation, etc.
9) A collective liability of the whole detachment to be introduced, for example the threat of shooting every tenth man-for each case of plunder.
10) All means of transport belonging to rich persons in the towns to be mobilised for work In transporting grain; well-to-do classes to be mobilised to act as clerks and stewards.
11) If signs of demoralisation of the detachments become threateningly frequent, the "sick" detachments to be sent back after a month, i.e., exchanged, to the place from which they came, for report and "treatment".
12) The following to be adopted both in the Council of People's Commissars and In the Central Executive Committee:
(a) declaration that the country is in a state of grave danger as regards food;
(b) martial law;
(c) mobilisation of the army, together with its re-organisation as mentioned above, for the campaign for grain;
(d) in each uyezd and volost with grain surpluses, immediate compilation of a list of rich owners of land (kulaks), grain traders, etc., making them personally responsible for the collection of all grain surpluses;
(e) the appointment to each military detachment-at the rate of at least one out of approximately ten men- of persons with a party recommendation of the R.C.P., the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries or the trade unions.
13) In implementing the grain monopoly the most vigorous measures for assistance to the rural poor to be made obligatory without shrinking from any financial sacrifices, and measures for free distribution among them of part of the grain surpluses collected from the kulaks, side by side with ruthless suppression of kulaks who withhold grain surpluses.”
Lenin ’ s Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 Volume
Continued Professional Development of the Army – Partisans or Guerillas
After Lenin’s Theses of May, clearer signs of ensuring the solidarity of the peasants appeared. Rural soviets were being urged now to mend relations with the poor and middle peasants. Army units composed only of poor peasants were now formed. Steadily the ‘militarization’ – or professionalisation of the army proceeded.
The conflicts between commissars and military specialists were numerous in 1918, as in 1918 75% of the Red Army commanders were from the old army. Another layer of authority was the Cheka, which again blurred clear lines of authority. Further divisions at rank-and-file level also now erupted as the party recruits, who insisted on reporting to their own communist party cells in the local party and armies. The commissars were being cramped on two sides now – from the Military specialists at one end, and form the other end separate Party organisations. At the same time elements of the party members were ‘lording’ it over the other recruits.
The old Red Guard militias had slowly evolved into another voluntarist model, of the rural partisans or guerrillas. These also maintained elections of commanders and anti-authoritarian principles, and represented in a sense the peasant based self-defence units as central authority had broken down in many parts.
At first, while these partisans were fighting against the German and Austrian occupying forces, or against the Whites of hetman Petlurya in Ukraine, several commanders and some commissars (including Voroshilov, Stalin, and Budyenni) had initially supported them. But as these partisans resisted attempts to integrate into the Red army, and proved unreliable in joint actions, and moreover appointed SR and anarchist political advisers, matters changed. A strong anarchist, rural petit-bourgeois element with some forces led by Nestor Makhno, proved further illustrations of the need for discipline.
“The partisans were very similar to the Red Guards. In this sense the rural partisan forces were inspired by the larger revolutionary repudiation of super ordinate authority which had brought the Bolsheviks to power in 1917; indeed, at first several Red commanders and some commissars including such influential ones as Voroshilov, Stalin & Budennyi defined the partisans as truly revolutionary fighting forces. As long as the partisans were waging their struggle against the German & Austrian occupation forces in 1918 or against the hetman’s regime in the Ukraine, especially when the red Army was still organising its first units, the Soviet Government welcomed their aid, even if it already looked on their practices with some misgivings. By late 1918 and early 1919, the attitude of the center had changed decisively…. The partisans were resisting all attempts to integrate them into the Red Army’s forces.”
von Hagen, Mark: “Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship. The Red Army & The Soviet socialist state 1917-1930”; Ithaca 1990; p.52-3.
Disaster at Perm – and Stalin’s Mission to Perm
Trotsky does not contest that Stalin and the head of the Cheka – Felix Djersinksi - were ordered to the Front to investigate shortcomings of the army. Ass Lenin put it:
“The news from Perm’ area is extremely alarming. Perm’ is in danger…… Perm is in a dangerous position. I consider it essential that reinforcements be dispatched….”
Lenin To Trotsky; in Meijer Ibid; 13 th December 1918; 14 th December 1918; Pages 195; 197).
By the December 31 1918, Lenin was writing as follows:
“A number of Party reports have come in form the Perm’ area about the catastrophic state of the army and about drunkenness. I am forwarding them to you. You are asked to go there. I had thought of sending Stalin; I am afraid that Smilga will be lenient with Lasevic who, it is said, is also drinking and is not fit state to restore order. Telegraph your opinion”;
Telegram to Trotsky & Kozlov; In Meijer Ibid; p. 229.
Trotsky had no option but to accede to Stalin’s mission, while trying to defend Lasevic with another promotion:
“I entirely share your apprehension as to the excessive softness of the comrade who has left. I agree to the journey of Stalin with full authority from the Party and the Military Revolutionary Council of the Republic, for the purpose of restoring order, purging the commissar personnel and severely punishing offenders. I recommend that Lasevic be appointed Member of the Military Revolutionary Council on the Northern Front..”
Telegram Trotsky to Lenin: January 1, 1919; in Meijer Ibid; p. 229-31.
“The investigation has begun. We shall keep you regularly informed of its progress. Meanwhile.. one urgent need of the Third Army.. The fact is that of the Third Army (more than 30,000 men), there remain only about 11,000 weary and battered soldiers who can scarcely contain the enemy’s onslaught. The troops sent by the Commander-in-chief are unreliable, in part even hostile, and require thorough sifting. To save the remnants of the Third Army and to prevent a swift enemy advance on Vyatka (according to all reports from the command of the front and the Third Army this is very real danger) it is absolutely essential urgently to transfer at least three thoroughly reliable regiments from Russia and place them at the disposal of the army commander. We urgently request you to exert pressure on the appropriate military authorities to this end.”;
Stalin JV & Dzerzhinsky F: Letter to V.I.Lenin From the Eastern Front”; January 5 th 1919. Works; Volume 4; 190-193.
From this time on, increasingly there are concerns being raised by Lenin, at Trotsky's management:
“I am very disturbed as to whether you have not got absorbed in the Ukraine to the detriment of the over-all strategic task on which Vecetis insists and which consists in launching a rapid, determined, and general offensive against Krasnov. I am afraid that we are behindhand with this and that the latest success of Krasnsov’s forces are Caricyn (Tsaritsyn) will result again in our putting off our offensive and letting the moment slip by”:
Telegram Lenin to Trotsky; 3 January 191; in Meijer Ibid; p. 237.
Although Trotsky defended his Ukraine actions, and blamed “Stalin’s protection of the Tsaritsyn trend the most dangerous sort of ulcer, worse than any act of perfidy or treachery on the part of the military specialists” [January 11 th 1919 Telegram to Lenin: In Meijer Ibid; p. 251), Lenin cannot have been overly impressed with this.
For because by January 31 1919, Felix Dzerzhinsky (Head of the Cheka) & Stalin had provided a very detailed exposure of the fall of Perm’ [Stalin’s Works Volume 4; Report to Lenin; Ibid; pp194-199; & Report to Comrade Lenin by the Commission of the party CC and the Council of Defence on the reasons for the fall of Perm in December 1918: p 202-232.
In brief the main findings were that:
“Disaster was inevitable… apparent by end of November, when the enemy.. surrounded the Third Army… and launched a fierce attack on Khusva. .. The morale and efficiency of the army were deplorable owing to the weariness of the units, .. the there were no reserves whatever. The rear was totally insecure ( a series of demolitions of the railway track in the rear of the army). The food supply of the army was haphazard and uncertain (at the most difficult moment, when a furious assault was launched against the 29 th division, its units were in action for five days literally without bread or other food).
Although it occupied a flank position , the Third army was not secured against envelopment form the North.. As to the extreme right flank, the neighbouring army, the Second, being immobilized by a vague directive form the Commander-in-chief (Trotsky-ed) .. and compelled to remain immobile for 10 days, was not in a position to render timely support to the Third Army by advancing at the most crucial moment before the surrender of Khushva (close of November)……… in 20 days, the army in its disorderly retreat retreated more than 300 versts… losing in this period 18,000 men, scores of guns and hundreds of machine guns…….Strictly speaking it was not a retreat still less could it be called an organised withdrawal of units to new positions; it was an absolutely disorderly flight of an utterly routed and completely demoralized army… The noisy laments of the Revolutionary Military Councils and Third Army HQ that the disaster was a “surprise only prove that these institutions were out of touch with the army, had no inkling of the fatal significance of the events at Khusha and Lysva and were incapable of directing the army’s actions”;
The Commission: Stalin & Dzerzhinsky; Report to Comrade Lenin by the Commission of the Party CC and the Council of defence On the Reasons for the Fall of Perm’ in December 1918; in “works”; Volume 4; Ibid; p. 202-232.
Following this clear instance of Stalin’s military analytical superiority, Lenin again proposes to resort to Stalin’s help over this period in a number of different fronts. There had been a long series of problems related to food shortages to the army, and sabotage of the rail links ensuring food distribution, at each crisis point Lenin got rapidly involved: “ 29.1.1920; To Military Council of the 5 th Army – Smirnov:
Pjakes reports that there is manifest sabotage on the part of the railway workers. The Omsk railway works , which employ 3,000 workers, have produced no locomotives and four railway wagons in the space of a month: there are suspicions of sabotage by the Izevsk workers; I am surprised that you are putting up with this and do not punish sabotage with shooting; also the delay over the transfer here of locomotives is manifest sabotage; please take the most resolute measures.
Lenin “.
Meijer Ibid: Volume 2: number 444 of documents; pp 21-22.
And shortly thereafter Lenin upbraids Trotsky as follows:
“ 1.2.1920;
Lenin to Trotsky
The situation with regard to railway transport is quite catastrophic; Grain supplies no longer get through. Genuine emergency measures are required to save the situation. For a period of 2 months, measures of the following kind must be put into force….
1. The individual bread ration is to be reduced for those not engaged on transport work; & increased for those engaged on it;
2. Three quarters of the senior Party workers fro all departments except the Commissariats of Supply and of Military Affairs, are to be drafted to railway transport…”
Chairman of the Council of Defence V. Ulyanov Lenin.”
Meijer, Ibid; Volume 2; Document 445; p. 23.
In response to emergency crisises, Lenin again turned to … Stalin:
“3-4 February 1920;
The CC considers it essential in order to save the situation that you should go at once to the right flank of the Caucasus Front via Debal’cevo where Sorin is at the moment. At the same time, you must take urgent measures to transfer substantial reinforcements and Party workers from the Southwestern Front. In order to put matters on a proper footing you will be made a member of the Military Revolutionary Council of the Caucasus Front while continuing at the same time to belong to the Military Revolutionary Council of the South-Western Front.
Lenin, Trotsky;”
Document 446. Meijer Ibid; Volume 2; pp26-27.
In reply to this, Stalin [then in Kursk] tried to argue that:
“my profound conviction is that my journey would not bring about any change in the situation; that it is not journeys by individuals that are needed but the transfer of cavalry reserves, the Southwest being without them”;
Document 447; In Meijer Ibid; p, 27.
Lenin agreed provided:
“ that the next weeks, you concentrate all your attention and energy on serving the Caucasus Front, subordinating to it the interests of the South Western Front”;
Document 448; Ibid; p.29.
Although this has been variously presented by Trotsky as insubordination or even ‘laziness’, it is likely that Stalin was at least unwilling to simply pull Trotsky’s chestnuts out of the fire, and then end up being again side-lined. However the situation in the army was soon to change.
There were later Stalin missions to Petrograd, and to the Crimea, which are dealt with in Part Two of this article.
The Eight Party Congress – The Military Opposition
Many, including Trotsky and Old Bolsheviks like Mikhail Frunze (a commander on the Eastern Front) had complained of the unruliness of the partisan elements. But this was only one aspect of things going wrong, and Trotsky was under scrutiny. Matters came to a head at the Eight Party Congress of 18 March 1919. It was at this meeting that the lessons of recent defeats would be drawn.
As the Short History of the CPSU(B) puts it, the 8 th Congress was a “turning point” in the party, on the question of the peasantry:
“The Eighth Congress marked a turning point in the policy of the Party towards the middle peasants. Lenin's report and the decisions of the congress laid down a new line of the Party on this question. The congress demanded that the Party organizations and all Communists should draw a strict distinction and division between the middle peasant and the kulak, and should strive to win the former over to the side of the working class by paying close attention to his needs. The backwardness of the middle peasants had to be overcome by persuasion and not by compulsion and coercion…..
The policy adopted by the congress towards the middle peasants, who formed the bulk of the peasantry, played a decisive part in ensuring success in the Civil War against foreign intervention and its Whiteguard henchmen. In the autumn of 1919, when the peasants had to choose between the Soviet power and Denikin, they supported the Soviets, and the proletarian dictatorship was able to vanquish its most dangerous enemy.“
Short History of the CPSU(B); Ibid; p. 234-5.
The Eighth Party Congress took place in a climate when it was clear that there had been some serious defeats under Trotsky’s Command. The failed defence of the city of Perm was a case in point:
“At the end of December the city of Perm fell to Kolchak’s armies and threatened the Boshevik stronghold of Vlatka. .. the response to the military defeat.. the string of failures had emboldened Trotsky’s critics to attack him directly. “
von Hagen Ibid; p. 55.
The meeting brought to a head all the varying tensions about discipline and of leadership, and was the end of the Paris Commune model for organisation:
“The defeat of the Military opposition at the Eight Party Congress was the definitive defeat of the commune model in the Soviet Republic until the end of the Civil War.”
von Hagen Ibid; p. 65.
At the 8 th Party Congress on 18 March 1919, some 403 delegates attended, of whom 40 represented the 31000 party members in the Red Army. Trotsky was ill, but Grigorii Sokol’nikov presented the Theses of the Commissariat – largely drafted by Trotsky. These largely declared the need to eliminate vestiges of volunteer army organising and to tighten discipline. However, his defence on behalf of the military specialists was not well received.
At the Congress, the so-called Military opposition took shape. Vladimir Smirnov presented their theses:
“The Military opposition contended that the commissars deserved more than a narrow control function, because they already had more combat experience than many military specialists”;
von Hagen Ibid; p. 59.
The peasant question was closely tied to the building of the Red Army. That serious discontented was being voiced by the Military Opposition was clear:
“The problems connected with the building up of the Red Army held a special place in the deliberations of the congress, where the so-called "Military Opposition" appeared in the field. This "Military Opposition" comprised quite a number of former members of the now shattered group of "Left Communists"; but it also included some Party workers who had never participated in any opposition, but were dissatisfied with the way Trotsky was conducting the affairs of the army. The majority of the delegates from the army were distinctly hostile to Trotsky; they resented his veneration for the military experts of the old tsarist army, some of whom were betraying us outright in the Civil War, and his arrogant and hostile attitude towards the old Bolshevik cadres in the army. Instances of Trotsky's "practices" were cited at the congress. For example, he had attempted to shoot a number of prominent army Communists serving at the front, just because they had incurred his displeasure. This was directly playing into the hands of the enemy. It was only the intervention of the Central Committee and the protests of military men that saved the lives of these comrades. But while fighting Trotsky's distortions of the military policy of the Party, the "Military Opposition" held incorrect views on a number of points concerning the building up of the army. Lenin and Stalin vigorously came out against the "Military Opposition," because the latter defended the survivals of the guerrilla spirit and resisted the creation of a regular Red Army, the utilization of the military experts of the old army and the establishment of that iron discipline without which no army can be a real army".
Short History of the CPSU(B); Ibid; p. 235.
The Congress Military policies decided, were essentially two-fold:
Firstly correcting the work of Trotsky and calling for professional change – this was a rebuke of Trotsky;
And Secondly, rejecting the leftist path of the Military opposition:
“While rejecting a number of proposals made by the "Military Opposition," the congress dealt a blow at Trotsky by demanding an improvement in the work of the central military institutions and the enhancement of the role of the Communists in the army.”
Short History CPSU(B); Ibid; p. 235.
The Central Committee struck a special committee of three Central Committee members (Stalin, Grigori Zinoviev and the military commissar of the Petrograd labour Commune Boris Pozern) and two members of the Military Opposition (Emel’ian Iaroslovaskii and G.I. Safarov). As far as Stalin’s participation at both the Congress, and the special meeting is concerned, on March 21, 1919 – Stalin had vigorously opposed the continued vestiges of ‘volunteerism’, that were reflected in Smirnov’s espousal of a volunteer army:
“All the questions touched upon here boil down to one: is Russia to have, or not to have, a strictly disciplined regular army?
Six months ago, after the collapse of the old, tsarist army, we had a new, a volunteer army, an army which was badly organized, which had a collective control, and which did not always obey orders. This was at a time when an Entente offensive was looming. The army was made up principally, if not exclusively, of workers. Because of the lack of discipline in this volunteer army, because it did not always obey orders, because of the disorganization in the control of the army, we sustained defeats and surrendered Kazan to the enemy, while Krasnov was successfully advancing from the South. . . . The facts show that a volunteer army cannot stand the test of criticism, that we shall not be able to defend our Republic unless we create another army, a regular army, one infused with the spirit of discipline, possessing a competent political department and able and ready to rise at the first command and march against the enemy.
I must say that those non-working-class elements -- the peasants -- who constitute the majority in our army will not voluntarily fight for socialism. A whole number of facts bear this out. The series of mutinies in the rear and at the fronts, the series of excesses at the fronts show that the non-proletarian elements comprising the majority of our army are not disposed to fight for communism voluntarily. Hence our task is to re-educate these elements, infusing them with a spirit of iron discipline, to get them to follow the lead of the proletariat at the front as well as in the rear, to compel them to fight for our common socialist cause, and, in the course of the war, to complete the building of a real regular army, which is alone capable of defending the country.
That is how the question stands.
. . . Either we create a real workers' and peasants' army, a strictly disciplined regular army, and defend the Republic, or we do not, and in that event our cause will be lost.
. . . Smirnov's project is unacceptable, because it can only undermine discipline in the army and make it impossible to build a regular army. “
J. V. Stalin, Excerpt From A Speech On The Military Question Delivered At The Eighth Congress Of The R.C.P.(B.). Works; Vol. 4, pp. 258-59. Moscow, 1953;
or at http://www.marx2mao.org//Stalin/SPQ19.html
It cannot be denied by even the most vigorous admirer of Trotsky, that Trotsky had been rebuked. For, in his papers is found an extract of the Minutes of the Meeting of the CC of the RCP held on 25 th March 1919, where Trotsky is instructed to meet on a monthly basis with party workers:
“Comrade Zinoviev announced that the Military Section of the Congress had succeeded in attaining unanimity, thanks to our having made a concession of a kind, and adopted resolutions which it was decided not to make public at the Congress, namely: <!--[if !supportLists]-->
1) On the reorganization of the All Russian General Staff;
2) On Field HQ;
3) On an obligatory monthly conference between Comrade Trotsky and Party workers.
Cmde Zinoviev considered that the Congress had , by token of its entire line of conduct on the military question, administered a serious caution and that, in consequence of this, it was inadmissible that all its direction should be treated with insufficient heed, and that, for this reason, it was essential for Comrade Lenin to talk things over with Comrade Trotsky… . .
The Meeting Decided that:
A written approach be made to Comrade Trotsky, this is to be in 3 sections:
1) Comrade Zinoviev statement;
2) The unpublished resolutions together with an explanation as to why they constitute the expression of the genuine wishes of the Congress;
3) The resolution of the Political Buro of the CC”;
Minutes of Meeting of the CC, RCP (Bolsheviks); new convocation held on 25 th March 1919: Present Comrades, Lenin, Zinoviev, Krestinskji, Bukharin, Stalin, Tomski, Kamenev, Dzerinskji, Beleborodov, Muranov, Evdokimo, Serebrjakov, Stasova.
In Meijer Ibid; p. 319-321.
Typically of Trotsky, a rather long-winded reply that attempts to exculpate himself form any criticism followed, with imputations of psychological disease to Voroshilov, in March (undated) [In Meijer Ibid; p. 325-335].
5. Socialism in one country
5.1. The Early Views of Marx and Engels On "Socialism In One Country"
Marx and Engels had one primary theoretical purpose in the years leading from 1845-1848 - this was to clarify their analysis of class society. As a part way to achieving this, they wrote the famous work, "The German Ideology".
In this work, their primary purpose was to achieve a self-clarification. In his famous later note of 1859, Marx observed that:
"Frederick Engels, with whom I maintained a constant exchange of ideas by correspondence since the publication of his brilliant essay on the critique of economic categories (printed in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher, arrived by another road (compare his ‘Lage der arbeitenden Klasse’, in England ) at the same result as I, and when in the spring of 1845 he too came to live in Brussels, we decided to set forth together our conception as opposed to the ideological one of German philosophy, in fact to settle accounts with our former philosophical conscience. The intention was carried out in the form of a critique of post-Hegelian philosophy. The manuscript [The German Ideology], two large octavo volumes, had long ago reached the publishers in Westphalia when we were informed that owing to changed circumstances it could not be printed. We abandoned the manuscript to the gnawing criticism of the mice all the more willingly since we had achieved our main purpose -- self-clarification."
Karl Marx: 1859 "Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy"; or at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/pol-econ/preface.htm
In that joint work, Marx and Engels explicitly advocated the necessity of an international communist movement - "Empirically communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples "all at once" and "simultaneously which pre-supposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with them".
The full citation is as follows:
"5. Development of the Productive Forces as a Material Premise of Communism].
"This "estrangement" ["entfremdung"](to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. In order to become an "unendurable" power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity "propertyless", and moreover, in contradiction to an existing world of wealth and culture, both of these premises presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which at the same time implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise, because without it privation, want is merely made general, and with want the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be restored; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established, which on the one side produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the "propertyless" mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally puts world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones. Without this, (1) communism could only exist as a local phenomenon; (2) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as universal, hence unendurable powers: they would have remained home-bred "conditions" surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism. Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples "all at once" and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with them.
‘Communism’ -
Moreover, the mass of workers, who are nothing but workers - labour power on a mass scale cut off from capital or from even a limited satisfaction [of their needs] and, hence, as a result of competition their utterly precarious position, the no longer merely temporary loss of work as a secure source of life — presupposes the world market. The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a "world-historical" existence. World-historical existence of individuals i.e. existence of individuals which is directly linked up with world history.
[18] Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence."
Karl Marx & Frederick Engels: "The German ideology. (I). Feuerbach. Section [5] Development of the Productive Forces as a Material Premise of Communism"; In Collected Works; Volume 5; Moscow 1976; pp. 48-9. A version is to be found at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#a3
SUMMARY: There can be no doubt that early on, before their full maturity, both Marx and Engels thought that the revolution had to be virtually simultaneous in several countries around the world.
5.2. In What Sense is the "Revolution Permanent"?
It is relevant to examine the views of Marx and Engels on how the movement should revive itself after the defeat of the 1848-9 revolutions.
Again this was an early period in their political careers. Nonetheless, by now, they had not only participated in extraordinary theoretical achievements, but they had also been in the thick of mass movements. They had now a practical experience that allowed them to begin to formulate more precisely the theory of the mechanics of the proletarian revolution. In other words the practical implementation of the strategy and tactics of the revolution itself - How was the revolution to be brought forward?
They had already laid down principles in their theoretical works and in the great Communist Manifesto of 1848. But now they had a mass collective experience that they could analyse and draw upon. It was now 1850. Marx and Engels were mulling over the 1848 revolutions and the collective and international failure to ignite a proletarian revolution from the democratic sparks.
In their famous advice given to the Communist League, Marx and Engels used the word " permanent", to stress that the long term CLASS interests of the proletariat must always be considered - irrespective of what class alliances were necessary for the proletariat to undertake in achieving any short term goals.
Trotsky later warped this notion into an insistence that the proletariat dispense with any class alliances (specifically the peasantry in Russia); and that the Russian state could not be maintained as "socialist" in isolation.
Marx and Engels delineated clear differences in the ultimate aims of the proletariat - versus the progressive but entirely short lived aims of the petty-bourgeois democrats. These latter aims, are of a benefit to the workers. But the proletariat is interested in a revolution transcending the short-term aims. It has a more far reaching aim. It is in this sense that the revolution must be "permanent".
However, it is still true that mixed in with this notion, in 1850 Marx and Engels do still convey the sense that an international solution must be found. This is highlighted in the following citation:
"The domination and speedy increase of capital is further to be counteracted partly by restricting the right of inheritance and partly by transferring as much employment as possible to the state. As far as the workers are concerned, it is above all certain that they are to remain wage-workers as before; the democratic petty bourgeois only desire better wages and a more secure existence for the workers and hope to achieve this through partial employment by the state and through charity measures; in short, they hope to bribe the workers by more or less concealed alms and to sap their revolutionary vigour by making their position tolerable for the moment. The demands of the petty-bourgeois democracy here summarised are not put forward by all of their factions and only very few of their members consider these demands in their aggregate as a definite aim. The further individual people or factions among them go, the more of these demands will they make their own, and those few who see their own programme in what has been outlined above would believe that thereby they have put forward the utmost that can be demanded from the revolution. But these demands can in no wise suffice for the party of the proletariat. While the democratic petty bourgeois wish to bring the revolution to a conclusion as quickly as possible, and with the achievement, at most, of the above demands, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent, until all more or less possessing classes are forced out of their position of dominance, the proletariat has conquered state power, and the association of proletarians, not only in one country but in all the dominant countries of the world, has advanced so far that competition among the proletarians in these countries has ceased and that at least the decisive productive forces are concentrated in the hands of the proletarians. For us the issue cannot be the alteration of private property but only its abolition, not the smoothing over of class antagonisms but the abolition of classes, not the improvement of existing society but the foundation of a new one. That, during the further development of the revolution, the petty-bourgeois democrats will for a moment obtain predominating influence in Germany is not open to doubt. The question is, therefore, what is to be the attitude of the proletariat and in particular of the League towards them:
1. During the continuance of the present conditions where the petty-bourgeois democrats are likewise oppressed;
2. In the next revolutionary struggle, which will give them the upper hand;
3. After this struggle, during the period of their preponderance over the overthrown classes and the proletariat."
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: "Address of the Central Authority To The League"; [Communist League]; March 1850; Collected Works; In Volume 10; Moscow 1978; pp. 277-287; Quote from p. 281. [Emphasis - Alliance Editor]. Also a version is at: http://www.marx2mao.org//M&E/ACL50.html
In the highlighted section, it is perfectly clear that Marx and Engels still adhere to their "early" viewpoint expressed before in both the German Ideology" and the "Principles of Communism" - that an international revolution is required for an ultimate successful end.
But there is now, no sense that a simultaneous revolution is required. The sense instead is that the ultimate goal must simply not be forgotten ("UNTIL all more or less possessing classes have been forced out of their position of dominance") .
Of even more central concern to this article however, is the form of alliances that the proletariat should make with the democratically minded petty-bourgeoisie.
In other words, Marx and Engels pose the question of whether there should be an alliance of the proletarians with the "petty-bourgeois democrats"; for what period of time; and how to move to the second stage of revolution - i.e. to the socialist revolution ("2. In the next struggle which will give them the upper hand").
Marx and Engels are quite clear that the aims of the petty-democrats are different from those of the workers. The petty-bourgeois democrats wish only to have democracy for their own purposes:
"Far from desiring to transform the whole of society for the revolutionary proletarians, the democratic petty bourgeois strive for a change in social conditions by means of which the existing society will be made as tolerable and comfortable as possible for them. Hence they demand above all a diminution of state expenditure by curtailing the bureaucracy and shifting the bulk of the taxes on to the big landowners and bourgeois. Further, they demand the abolition of the pressure of big capital on small, through public credit institutions and laws against usury, by which means it will be possible for them and the peasants to obtain advances, on favourable conditions from the state instead of from the capitalists; they also demand the establishment of bourgeois property relations in the countryside by the complete abolition of feudalism. To accomplish all this they need a democratic form of government, either constitutional or republican, that will give them and their allies, the peasants, a majority; also a democratic communal structure that will give them direct control over communal property and a number of functions now performed by the bureaucrats."
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: "Address of the Central Authority To The League"; [Communist League]; March 1850; In Volume 10; Collected Works; pp. 277-287; Quote from p. 280. Also a version is at: http://www.marx2mao.org//M&E/ACL50.html
Nonetheless, even a temporary bourgeois democratic structure, will benefit the workers, and assists them to move on to the next stage. The formula that encapsulates the advice of Marx and Engels was:
"The relation of the revolutionary workers' party to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it marches together with them against the faction which it aims at overthrowing, it opposes them in everything whereby they seek to consolidate their position in their own interests."
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: "Address of the Central Authority To The League"; [Communist League]; March 1850; In Volume 10; Collected Works; pp. 277-287; Quote from p. 280. Also a version is at: http://www.marx2mao.org//M&E/ACL50.html
Marx and Engels end this article, by exhorting the workers to remain on guard and NOT to cease their struggle independent of the "democratic petty bourgeois":
"If the German workers are not able to attain power and achieve their own class interests without completely going through a lengthy revolutionary development, they at least know for a certainty this time that the first act of this approaching revolutionary drama will coincide with the direct victory of their own class in France and will be very much accelerated by it.
But they themselves must do the utmost for their final victory by it clear to themselves what their class interests are, by taking up their position as an independent party as soon as possible and by not allowing themselves to be misled for a single moment by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeois into refraining from the independent organization of the party of the proletariat. Their battle cry must be: The Revolution in Permanence. "
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: "Address of the Central Authority To The League"; [Communist League]; March 1850; In Volume 10; Collected Works; Quote from p. 287. A Version is also at: http://www.marx2mao.org//M&E/ACL50.html
Summary : Already in this text, the emphasis has entirely shifted, from a "simultaneous" revolution in several countries to one of a dogged persistence with the revolutionary agenda, in order to spread it world-wide.
The later relevance this article assumed, followed Trotsky's distortion of its main message. Trotsky did this in order to serve his own ends, to justify the "Theory of the Permanent Revolution".
We shall examine this distortion, after we have seen the later positions of Marx and Engels upon "Socialism in One Country".
5.3. The Later Positions of Marx and Engels on Socialism In One Country
It is difficult for even the most ardent Trotskyite to deny, that Marx and Engels took a more sophisticated and clear-sighted view later in their careers on many issues, than they had taken earlier on.
It is interesting that even Marx and Engels themselves were somewhat disparaging about at least sections of their earlier work. In 1888 Engels said this in a preface to "Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy":
"Before sending these lines to press, I have once again ferreted out and looked over the old manuscript of 1845-46. The section dealing with Feuerbach is not completed. The finished portion consists of an exposition of the materialist conception of history which proves only how incomplete our knowledge of economic history still was at the time."
Frederick Engels: 1888 Preface to: "Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy" ; In Selected works: Volume 3: p. 357; http://www.marx2mao.org//M&E/LF86.html#fw
One case in point appears to be the matter of Socialism in One Country.
For there is clear evidence that in later years, both Marx and Engels had considerably modified their earlier view, of the need for a "simultaneous" and far-reaching revolution in several countries at once.
In the following letter written in 1882, Engels makes clear to Kautsky that the pace of revolution varies from country to country. In the context here, Engels is explicitly relating this thought to countries lacking independence, such as Italy, but especially he means Ireland and Poland:
"Now it is historically impossible for a great people to discuss this or that internal question in any way seriously so long as national independence is lacking. Prior to 1859 there was no question of socialism in Italy; even the republicans were few in number, although they constituted the most vigorous element. Not until 1861 did the republicans begin to expand, subsequently yielding their best elements to the socialists. Similarly in Germany. Lassalle was on the point of giving up the cause for lost when he was lucky enough to be shot. It was not until 1866, the year that actually decided Little Germany's Greater Prussian unity, that both the Lassallean and the so-called Eisenach parties acquired any significance, and it was not until 1870, when the Bonapartist urge to interfere had been eliminated for good, that the cause gathered momentum. If we still had the old Federal Diet, where would our party be now? Similarly in Hungary. It wasn't until 1860 that it was drawn into the modern movement - sharp practice above, socialism below.
Generally speaking an international movement of the proletariat is possible only as between independent nations. What little republican internationalism there was in the years 1830-48 was grouped round the France that was to liberate Europe, and French chauvinism was thus raised to such a pitch that we are still hampered at every turn by France's mission as universal liberator and hence by its natural right to take the lead ......................
So long as Poland remains partitioned and subjugated, therefore, there can be no development either of a powerful socialist party within the country itself or of genuine international intercourse between Poles other than the émigrés and the rest of the proletarian parties in Germany, etc."
Letter Engels to Kautsky; 7 February 1882; In Marx and Engels; Collected Works; Volume 46; Moscow; 1992; pp. 191-195.
(For Full letter See Appendix; carried at: on Web-pages of Alliance).
In yet another letter to Kautsky, also in 1882, Engels broaches the question of the colonial revolution in relation to English colonial policy. Engels disclaims precise description of how events will unfold, however he projects colonial revolutions where the "natives" are ruled. Of these countries he estimates that a revolution might begin in India - decidedly different to his anticipations of an earlier 1847:
"You ask me what the English workers think of colonial policy. Well, exactly what they think of any policy - the same as what the middle classes think. There is, after all, no labour party here, only conservatives and liberal radicals, and the workers cheerfully go snacks in England's monopoly of the world market and colonies. As I see it, the actual colonies, i.e. the countries occupied by European settlers, such as Canada, the Cape, Australia, will all become independent; on the other hand, countries that are merely ruled and are inhabited by natives, such as India, Algeria and the Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish possessions, will have to be temporarily taken over by the proletariat and guided as rapidly as possible towards independence. How this process will develop is difficult to say. India may, indeed very probably will, start a revolution and, since a proletariat that is effecting its own emancipation cannot wage a colonial war, it would have to be given its head, which would obviously entail a great deal of destruction, but after all that sort of thing is inseparable from any revolution. The same thing could also happen elsewhere, say in Algeria or Egypt, and would certainly suit us best. We shall have enough on our hands at home. Once Europe has been reorganised, and North America, the resulting power will be so colossal and the example set will be such that the semi-civilised countries will follow suit quite of their own accord; their economic needs alone will see to that. What social and political phases those countries will then have to traverse before they likewise acquire a socialist organisation is something about which I do not believe we can profitably speculate at present. Only one thing is certain, namely that a victorious proletariat cannot forcibly confer any boon whatever on another country without undermining its own victory in the process. Which does not, of course, in any way preclude defensive wars of various kinds."
Letter Engels to Kautsky, 12 September 1882; In Marx and Engels Collected Works: Volume 46; Moscow 1992; pp. 320-323.
(For Full letter See Appendix; carried at: on Web-pages of Alliance).
It cannot be over-looked that the army and military specialist of the Marxist-Leninist movement – General Engels – advises against the export of revolution": Only one thing is certain, namely that a victorious proletariat cannot forcibly confer any boon whatever on another country without undermining its own victory in the process. And then there are the numerous works where both Marx and Engels examine Russia. These illustrate their changed view in more detail.
5.4. Marx and Engels on the Russian Prospects for Revolution
It is apparent that Marx and Engels were extremely well informed about the position of the Russian movement and of Russian society in general. A bourgeois canard is still about that Marx and Engels "Got it wrong because they did not foresee that the proletarian revolution would begin FIRST in a backward country like Russia, and not in a fully developed capitalist country, like Britain or Germany."
It is certainly true that early on in their writing, both Marx & Engels not only hoped for, but also thought it most likely - that revolution would break out in countries where capitalism was fully developed. But by the middle, and especially the end of their lives and careers, they had both correctly predicted that the weak link was likely to be Russia. This is linked to this article’s theme, since Marx and Engels predicted that the revolution would break out in Russia, and only then would be emulated following the stimulus in Western Europe.
Again, this was a departure in two respects from the prognosis for revolution given by them in the early part of their career. Engels for example wrote:
"Apart from Germany and Austria the country on which we should focus our attention remains Russia., The government there, just as in this country is the chief ally of the movement. But a much better one than our Bismarck, Stieber and Tessendorf. The Russian court party, which is now firmly in the saddle, tries to take back all its concessions made during the years of the "new era" that was ushered in 1861, and with genuinely Russian methods at that. So now again, only "sons of the upper classes" are to be allowed to study, and in order to carry this policy out all others are made to fail in the graduation examinations. In 1873 alone this was the fate that awaited 24,000 young people whose entire careers were blocked, as they were expressly forbidden to become even elementary school-teachers. And yet people are surprised at the spread of "nihilism" in Russia. … It almost looks like the next dance is going to start in Russia. And if this happens while the inevitable war between the German-Prussian Empire and Russia is in progress- which is very likely - repercussions in Germany are also inevitable."
Written London October 15 th, 1875; Engels, Frederick; "Letter to August Bebel in Leipzig; In: "Marx-Engels: Selected Correspondence"; Moscow; 1982; p.282.
After the folding of the First International (See Alliance issue -----------), there was a question as to when it would be right to form the Second International. In discussing this timing, Engels argued that the proletarian powder should be kept dry, until the battle began. He believed that this battle would begin in Russia, and that this would give the signal for the International’s "official" re-birth. This would be an action orientated, and not merely theoretical manifestation:
"We think that the time for … a new formally reorganised International would only call forth new persecution in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy and Spain… On the other hand the International actually continues to exist. There is a connection between the revolutionary workers in all countries, as far as that is feasible. Every socialist journal is an international center…. When the time for rallying of forces arrives it will therefore be a matter of but a moment and require no lengthy preparation… The names of the champions of the people in any country are well known in all the others and a manifesto signed and endorsed by all of them would create an immense impression… for that very reason such a demonstration must kept for the moment when it can have a decisive effect, i.e.; when events in Europe make it necessary. Otherwise the effect in the future will be spoiled and the whole thing will be only a shot in the air. Such events are however maturing in Russia where the vanguard of the battle will engage in battle. This and its inevitable impact on Germany is what one must in our opinion wait for., and then will also come the time for a grand demonstration and the establishment of an official, formal International which however can no longer be a propaganda society but only a society for action".
Written London February 10 th, 1882; Engels, Frederick; "Letter to Johann Phillip Becker in Geneva; In: "Marx-Engels: Selected Correspondence"; Moscow; 1982; p.328-329.
But perhaps the best illustration that Engels thought the revolution would start in Russia, comes from correspondence with Vera Zasulich. Engels clearly displays an exuberant optimism in the Russian revolution. Now it may be true that he was some 20 years too early! But, after all, he had clearly identified the motive forces of the "Old Mole" in Russia. He even made clear that so serious was the situation in Russia, that in a "certain" sense this might be a relatively unique situation – one where some degree of Blanquist theory, might be relevant.
"I am proud to know that there is a party among the youth of Russia which frankly and without equivocation accepts the great economic and historical theories of Marx and has definitely broken with all the anarchist and also the few existing Slavophil tendencies of its predecessors…. What I know or believe I know about the situation in Russia makes me think that the Russians are fast approaching their 1789. The revolution must break out any day. In these circumstances the country is like a charged mine which only needs a single match to be applied to it. Especially since March 13 (Editor- the assassination of Tsar Alexander 3 rd) This is one of the exceptional cases where it is possible for handful of people to make a revolution, i.e., by giving a small impetus to cause a whole system (to use a metaphor of Plekhanov’s) which is in more than labile equilibrium, to come crashing down, and by an action insignificant of itself to release explosive forces that afterwards becomes uncontrollable. Well, if ever Blanquism – the fantastic idea of overturning an entire society by the action of a small group of conspirators – had a certain raison d’être, that is certainly so now in St.Petersburg. Once the spark has been put to the powder… the people who laid the spark to the mine will be swept along by the explosion …. Suppose these people imagine they can seize power, what harm does it do? .. To me the important thing is the impulse in Russia should be given, that the revolution should break out. Whether this or that faction gives the signal, whether it happens under this flag or that is a matter of complete indifference to me. If it were a palace conspiracy it would be swept away tomorrow. In a country where the situation is so strained, where the revolutionary elements have accumulated to such a degree, where the economic conditions of the people become daily more impossible, where every stage of social development is represented, from the primitive commune to the modern large scale industry and high finance, where all these contradictions are arbitrarily held in check by an unexampled despotism, a despotism which is becoming more and more unbearable to the a youth in whom the dignity and intelligence of such a nation are united-when 1789 has once been launched in such a country, 1793 will not be far away." Written London April 23 1885;
Engels, Frederick; "Letter to Vera Ivanovna Zasulich in Geneva"; In: "Marx-Engels: Selected Correspondence"; Moscow; 1982; pp.361-363.
Lenin, naturally, made a particular study of the views of Marx and Engels upon Russia. He clearly saw the same inter-relation between Russian revolution and European revolution that Marx and Engels had. Here are some notes in his famous encyclopaedic "Notebooks on Imperialism" – and are drawn from two articles of Engels. A Postscript to the Engels article "On Social Relations In Russia" (1894) - ends with this:
"It - the revolution in Russia – will not only rescue the great mass of the nation, the peasants, from the isolation of their villages, which constitute their ‘ mir’, their world, and lead them to the big stage, where they will get to know the outside world and thereby themselves, their own position and the means of salvation from their present state of want, but it will also give a new impetus and new, better conditions of struggle for the workers’ movement of the West, and hasten the victory of the modern industrial proletariat, with out which present day Russia cannot find her way, whether through the village commune or through capitalism, to a socialist transformation of society."
Lenin, Vladimir.I ; "Notes on Engels’ ‘On Social relations In Russia’; Cited Lenin; "Collected Works"; ‘Notebooks on Imperialism’; Volume 39; Moscow; 1968; p.506.
"VI. The internal situation of Russia is "almost desperate"… "This European China" (21)… the ruin of the peasants after 1861… "This path of (of economic & social revolution = capitalism-in Russia) "is for the time being predominantly a destructive path" (21). Impoverishment of the soil, deforestation etc; in Russia. Russia’s credit falling. "It is not France that needs Russia, but rather Russia that needs France… If she had a little sense France could obtain from France whatever she liked. Instead, France crawls on her belly before the Tsar. . Russia lives by exporting rye-mainly to Germany. "As soon as Germany begins to eat white bread instead of black, the present official Tsarist and big-bourgeois Russia will at once be bankrupt".
Lenin’s Notes on Engels’ article: Cited Lenin; "Collected Works"; ‘Notebooks on Imperialism’; Volume 39; Moscow; 1968; "Can Europe Disarm?" pp.501-502.
And it was necessary for Lenin in other places, to point out in contrast to those who argued in 1905, that the Bolsheviks should not harbor "Jacobin" prospects for the 1905 revolution, that Russia was "too backward" for the proletarian revolution"; that Marx and Engels had argued against such a step as the first proletarian revolution, etc; etc; ....:
"Take Marx’s letter of September 27 1877. He is quite enthusiastic about the Eastern crisis:
" Russia has long been standing on the threshold of an upheaval, all the elements of it are prepared……. The gallant Turks have hastened the explosion by years with the thrashing they have inflicted…. The upheaval will begin secundum artem (according to the rules of the art) with some playing at constitutionalism et puis il ya aura un beau taupage (and then there will be a fine row). If Mother Nature is not particularly unfavorable to us, we shall yet live to see the fun!" (Marx was then fifty-nine years)."
Lenin, Vladimir.I.; "Preface to The Russian Translation of Letters By Johanne Becker, Joseph Dietzgen, Frederick Engels, Marl Marx and others to Friedrich Sorge and Others"; (April 1907); In Collected Works"; Volume 12; Moscow; 1962; p.376.
"Or take Marx’s letter of November 5 th 1880. He was delighted with the success of Capital in Russia, and took the parts of the members of the Narodnaya Volya organization against the newly arisen General Redistribution Group. Marx correctly perceived the anarchistic elements in their views. Not knowing the future evolution of the General-Redistribution Narodniks into Social-Democrats, Marx attacked them with all his trenchant sarcasm:
"These gentlemen are against all political-revolutionary action. Russia is to make a somersault into the anarchist-communist-atheist millenium! Meanwhile, they are preparing for this leap with the most tedious doctrinarism, whose so-called "principes cournat la rue depuis le feu Bakounine".
We can gather from this how Marx would have appreciated the significance for Russia of 1905 and the succeeding years of Social-Democracy’s "political-revolutionary" action".
Lenin V.I: "Preface to The Russian Translation of Letters By Johanne Becker, Joseph Dietzgen, Frederick Engels, Marl Marx and others to Friedrich Sorge and Others"; (April 1907); In Collected Works"; Volume 12; Moscow; 1962; p.376.
"There is a letter by Engels dated April 6 th 1887:
"On the other hand it seems as if a crisis is impending in Russia. The recent attentates rather upset the apple cart. "The army is full of discontented conspiring officers (Lenin adds: Engels at that time was impressed by the revolutionary struggle of the Narodnaya Volya organization; he set his hopes on the officers and did not yet see the revolutionary spirit of the Russian soldiers and sailors, which was manifested so magnificently eighteen years later..) I do not think things will last another year; and once it (the revolution breaks out in Russia, then hurrah!"
A letter of April 23 1887:
"in Germany there is persecution after persecution of socialist. It looks as if Bismarck wants to have everything ready so that the moment the revolution breaks out in Russia, which is now only a question of months, Germany could immediately follow her example."
Lenin V.I: "Preface to The Russian Translation of Letters By Johanne Becker, Joseph Dietzgen, Frederick Engels, Marl Marx and others to Friedrich Sorge and Others"; (April 1907); In Collected Works"; Volume 12; Moscow; 1962; p.377. http://www.marx2mao.org//Lenin/PRTL07.html
"Yes, Marx and Engels made many and frequent mistakes in determining the proximity of revolution in their hopes in the victory of revolution (e.g. in 1848 in Germany), in their faith in the imminence of a German "republic" (to die for the republic" wrote Engels of that period recalling his sentiments as a participant in the military campaign for a Reich constitution in 1848-9)….. But such errors – the errors of the giant of revolutionary thought, who sought to raise, and did raise, the proletariat of the whole world above the level of petty commonplace and trivial tasks - are a thousand times more noble and magnificent and historically more valuable and true than the trite wisdom of official liberalism, which lauds, shouts, appeals and holds forth about the vanity of revolutionary vanities, the futility of the revolutionary struggle and the charms of the counter-revolutionary "constitutional" fantasies." Lenin V.I: "Preface to The Russian Translation of Letters By Johanne Becker, Joseph Dietzgen, Frederick Engels, Marl Marx and others to Friedrich Sorge and Others"; (April 1907); In Collected Works"; Volume 12; Moscow; 1962; p.377-378. http://www.marx2mao.org//Lenin/PRTL07.html
Summary : There is therefore no justification for the view that Marx and Engels got it wrong by not foreseeing the Russian revolution. Moreover, their views in this regard buttress the fact that they had moved well beyond their early understanding of an absolute necessity of a "simultaneous" world revolution.
5.5. The Distortion of Marx and Engels by Trotsky: The Theory of the "Permanent Revolution"; and Lenin and Stalin's Critique of it.
In November and December 1904, Trotsky Wrote a brochure on the necessity for the working class to play the-leading role in the capitalist revolution in Russia which, the following year, he entitled “Before the 9th. January” . This being the date, under the old Russian calendar, in 1905 when the first Russian revolution began with the shooting down by the. tsar's troops of an unarmed workers’ demonstration.
When he was in Munich, Trotsky was accustomed to stay at the home of Aleksandr Helfand a Russian Jew who then claimed to be a Marxist. Helfand published his own political review "Aus der Weltpolitik" (World Politics) and wrote articles for other magazine s especially Kautsky's "Neue Zeit" (New Life) and the "new "Iskra" under' the pen-name "Parvus”.
When Trotsky visited Munich in January 1905, he had the proofs of the brochure with him. Parvus was impressed with its contents and decided to put the weight of his, authority behind Trotsky by writing a preface to it. In this preface he stated a conclusion which Trotsky still hesitated to draw:
"In Russia only the workers can accomplish a revolutionary insurrection. . . The revolutionary provisional government will be a government of workers' democracy."
(Parvus Preface to: L, Trotsky: "Do 9 Yanvara"; Geneva; 1905).
In April 1905 Lenin commented on Parvus's theory that the capitalist revolution in Russia could result in a government of the working class, as it had been put forward in the brochure written by:
“the windbag Trotsky".
Lenin: " Social-Democracy and the Provisional Revolutionary Government", in. "Selected Works", Volume 3; London; 1946; p. 35).
Lenin declared about the theory, that:
"This cannot be . . . This cannot be, because, only a revolutionary dictatorship relying on the overwhelming majority of the people can be at all durable. . . The Russian proletariat, however, at present constitutes a minority of the population in Russia. It can become the great overwhelming majority only if it combines with the mass of semi-proletarians, semi-small proprietors, i.e. with the mass of the petty-bourgeois urban and rural poor. And such a composition of the social basis of the possible and desirable revolutionary-democratic dictatorship will of course... find its reflection in the composition of. the revolutionary government. With such a composition of the participation or even the predominance of the most diversified representatives of revolutionary democracy in such a government will be inevitable".
(V. I. Lenin; ibid.; p. 35).
In 1905, Leon Trotsky had been one of the leaders of the St.Petersburg Soviet. He was then held in prison on charges of plotting insurrection.
While in prison, Trotsky wrote " Results and Prospects" which was published in St.Petersburg in 1906 as the final chapter of his book "Our Revolution" a collection of essays on the Russian Revolution of December 1905.
In this essay Trotsky gave a fundamental statement of his views on the capitalist revolution the "theory of permanent revolution",
The term permanent revolution" was derived from the analysis of Marx and Engels in 1850 (see above):
"While the democratic petty bourgeois wish to bring the revolution to a conclusion as quickly as possible and with the achievement at most of the above demands it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent, until all more or' less possessing classes have been displaced from domination until the proletariat has conquered state power. . . Their (i.e., --the-German workers' ---Ed.) battle-cry must be: the permanent revolution".
K. Marx and F. Engels: Address of the Central Council to the Communist League, in: Ibid;
Lenin broadly accepted this concept of the permanant revolution, although after Trotsky's publication, Marxists preferred to use the term "un-interrupted revolution" or "continuous revolution" in order to avoid confusion with Trotsky's perversion of the term in connection with his anti-Leninist theory of the capitalist revolution. In September 1905, Lenin wrote:
"From the democratic revolution we shall at once., according to the degree of our strength, the strength of the class conscious and organised proletariat, begin to pass over to the-socialist revolution. We stand for continuous revolution".
V.I. Lenin: "The Attitude of Social-Democracy towards the Peasant Movement', in: "Selected Works", Volume 3; London; 1946; p. 145.
Trotsky's theory of the capitalist revolution, as put forward in "Results and Prospects" was as follows:
1) The working class will be the active force in the capitalist revolution with the peasantry as supporters:
"The struggle for the emancipation of Russia from the incubus of absolutism which is stifling it has become converted into a single combat between absolutism and the industrial proletariat, a single combat in which the peasants may render considerable support but cannot play a leading role.. .. .
Many sections of the working masses, particularly in the countryside, will be drawn into the revolution and become politically organised only after the advance-guard of the revolution, the urban proletariat, stands at the helm of the state.. . .
The proletariat in power will stand before the peasants as the. class which has emancipated it.. . . advance-guard of the revolution, the urban proletariat, stands at the helm of the state.. . .
The proletariat in power will stand before the peasants as the. class which has emancipated it.. . .
The Russian peasantry in the first and, most difficult period of the revolution will be interested in the maintenance of a proletarian regime (workers' democracy)".
(L. Trotsky: "Results and Prospects", in: "The Permanent Revolution''; New York; 1970; p. 66, 70, 71-72).
2. Because the peasantry in the capitalist revolution is destined to play only an auxiliary role of supporters rather than allies of the working class, the democratic- revolution will place in power -- not an alliance of the' working class and peasantry, "the democratic dictatorship of the working class and peasantry- - but the working class, establishing the dictatorship of the working class, a revolutionary Workers' government:
"The idea of a proletarian and peasant dictatorship' is unrealisable. . ..
There can be no talk of any special form of proletarian dictatorship in the bourgeois revolution, of democratic proletarian dictatorship (or dictatorship of the proletariat and Peasantry). . .
Victory in this struggle must transfer power to the class
That has led the struggle, i.e., the Social- democratic Proletariat.
The question, therefore, is not one of a
'revolutionary provisional government' -- an empty
phrase but of a revolutionary workers' government, the conquest of power by the Russian proletariat.".
(L. Trotsky: ibid.; p. 73, 80, 121-22).
3. Once in power the working class will be compelled to proceed with the construction of a socialist Society:
"The proletariat, once having taken power, will fight for it to the very end. Collectivism will become not only the inevitable way forward from the position in which the party in power will find itself, but will also be a means of preserving this position with the support of the., proletariat……..
The political domination of the proletariat is incompatible with its economic enslavement . No matter under what political flag the proletariat has come to power, it is obliged to take the path of socialist
policy.
(L. Trotsky: ibid.; p. 80, 101).
4. But the, construction of socialism will inevitably bring the working class into hostile collision with the peasantry and urban petty bourgeoisie:
"Every passing day will deepen the policy of the proletariat in power,, and more and more define its class' character. Side by side with that, the revolutionary ties betwee n the proletariat and the nation will be broken. . . .
The primitiveness of the peasantry turns its hostile face towards the proletariat.
The cooling-off of the peasantry, its political passivity, and all the more active opposition of its upper sections, cannot but have an influence on a section of the intellectuals and the petty-bourgeoisie of the towns.
Thus, the more definite and determined the policy of the proletariat in power becomes, the narrower and more shaky does the ground beneath its feet become.. . .
The, two main features of proletarian policy which will meet opposition from the allies of the proletariat are collectivism and internationalism" (L., Trotsky: ibid.; p. 76-77).
5. Thus, the working class in power now isolated from and opposed by the masses of the peasantry and urban petty bourgeoisie will inevitably be overthrown by the forces of reaction -- unless the working classes of Western Europe establish proletarian dictatorships which render direct state aid to the working-class of Russia:
"Left to it’s own resources.., the working class of Russia : will inevitably be crushed by the counter-- revolution the moment the peasantry turns its back on it. It will have no alternative but to link the fate of its political rule and, hence, the fate of the whole Russian revolution, with the fate of the socialist revolution in Europe."
(L. Trotsky: ibid.; p. 115).
"Without the direct State support of the European proletariat the working class of Russia cannot remain in power and convert its
temporary domination into a lasting socialistic dictatorship.
Of this there cannot for one moment be any doubt."
(L. Trotsky: ibid.; p. 105)
6. The Russian working class government will, therefore, be forced to use its state power actively to initiate socialist revolutions in Western Europe and beyond:
"This immediately gives the events now unfolding an international character... . The political emancipation of Russia led by the working transfer to it colossal power and resources, and. .. will make it the initiator of the liquidation of world capitalism. . .
If the Russian Proletariat, having temporarily obtained power, does not on its own initiative carry revolution on to European soil, it will be compelled to do so by the forces of European feudal-bourgeois reaction.
The colossal state-political power given it by a temporary conjuncture of circumstances in the Russian bourgeois revolution it will cast into the scales of the class struggle of the entire capitalist world".
(L. Trotsky; ibid.; p. 108, 115).
Trotsky continued to put forward his theory of "permanent revolution" throughout his life. In his book "The Permanent Revolution", published in Berlin in Russian in 1930, he says:
"I came out against the formula 'democratic dictatorship of the Proletariat and the peasantry'.. . .
The theory of the permanent revolution.. which originated in 1905, . .".pointed out that the democratic tasks. of the backward bourgeois nations lead directly, in our epoch, to the dictatorship of the proletariat . . . .
The socialist revolution begins on national foundations but it cannot be completed within these foundations. .
The difference between the 'permanent' and the Leninist standpoint expressed itself politically in the counter-posing, of the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat relying on the peasantry to the slogan of the democratic dictatorship of ‘the proletariat and the peasantry.. . . .
The world division of labour, the dependence of Soviet industry upon foreign technology, the dependence of the productive forces of the advanced countries of Europe upon Asiatic raw material, etc., make the
construction of an independent.. socialist society in any single country impossible."..
(L. Trotsky: "The Permanent Revolution"; New York;'
1970; P. 128,132, 133, 189, 280).
As we have seen, Lenin analysed the revolutionary process in tsarist Russia as essentially one of two successive stages --
Firstly, the stage of democratic revolution;
Secondly, the stage of socialist revolution, but with the possibility of uninterrupted transition from the first stage to the second if the working class were able to win the leading role in the first stage.
The resemblance of Lenin's viewpoint to that of Marx and Engels is quickly apparent, by a simple comparison of his viewpoint with the advice that Marx and Engels gave to the Communist League as cited above.
The Trotskyite theory of "permanent revolution" rejected Lenin's concept of two stages in the revolutionary process in tsarist Russia, and postulated a single stage, that of the proletarian-socialist revolution leading directly to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Lenin saw the revolutionary process in colonial-type countries also as essentially one of two successive stages -- Firstly, the stage of national- democratic revolution, secondly, the stage of socialist revolution, but with the possibility of uninterrupted transition from the first stage to the second if the working class were able to win the leading role in the first stage.
Trotsky logically extended his theory of "permanent revolution" to colonial-type countries, here also postulating a single stage in the revolutionary process, that of proletarian- socialist revolution leading directly to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
"In order that the proletariat of the Eastern countries may open the road to victory, the pedantic reactionary theory of Stalin . . . on 'stages' and 'steps' must be eliminated at the very outset, must be cast aside, broken up and swept away with a broom. With regard to . . . . the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks
of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship. of the proletariat. The Comintern's endeavour to foist upon the Eastern countries the slogan of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, finally and long ago exhausted by history, can have only a reactionary effect".
(L. Trotsky: ibid.; p. 248, 276, 278).
Lenin was, of course, strongly opposed to what he called:
"Trotsky's “absurdly 'Left' theory of 'permanent revolution'" .
(V. I. Lenin: "Violation of Unity under Cover of Cries for Unity", in: "Selected "Works" Volume London;. 1943; p. 207).
Analysing Trotsky's "Results and Prospects" in 1907 Lenin pointed out:
"Trotsky's major mistake is that he ignores the bourgeois character of the revolution and has no clear conception of the transition from this revolution to the socialist revolution".
(V. I. Lenin: "The Aim of the Proletarian Struggle in our Revolution', in: "Collected Works", Volume 15; Moscow; 1962; p. 371).
At the end of 1910, we find Lenin saying:
"Trotsky distorts Bolshevism, because he has never been able to form any definite views on the role of the proletariat in the Russian bourgeois revolution".
(V.I. Lenin: "'The Historical Meaning of the Internal Party Struggle in Russia", in: "Selected Works", Volume 3; London; 1946; p. 505).
And in November 1915, Lenin says:
"Trotsky repeats his ‘original’ theory of
1905 and refuses to stop and think why, for ten whole years, life passed by this beautiful theory.
Trotsky's original theory takes, from the Bolsheviks their call for a decisive revolutionary struggle and for the conquest of political power by the proletariat, and from the Mensheviks it takes the 'repudiation' of the role of the peasantry.. . .
Trotsky is in fact helping the liberal labour politicians in Russia who by the 'repudiation' of the role of the peasantry mean refusal to arouse the peasants to revolution."
(V. I. Lenin: "Two Lines of the Revolution", in:
"Selected Works', Volume 5; London,; 1935; P. 162, 163).
In November and December 1924 Stalin made a more comprehensive theoretical analysis of Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution":
"Trotskyism is :the theory of 'permanent' (uninterrupted) revolution. But what is 'permanent revolution in its Trotskyist interpretation? It is
revolution that fails to take the poor peasantry into account as a revolutionary force. Trotsky's 'Permanent' revolution is, as Lenin said, ‘skipping’ the peasant movement, playing at the seizure of power'.
Why is it dangerous? Because, such a revolution, if an attempt had been made to bring it about, would inevitably have ended in failure, for it would have divorced from the Russian proletariat its ally, the poor peasantry. This explains the struggle that Leninism has been waging again Trotskyism over since l905".
(J. V, Stalin: "Trotskyism or Leninism?", in: “Works", Volume 6; Moscow; 1953; p. 364-65).
"What is the dictatorship of tbe proletariat according to Trotsky?
The dictatorship, of the proletariat is a power which comes ‘into hostile collision’ with ‘the broad masses, of the peasantry’ and seeks, the solution of its 'contradictions’ only ‘in the arena of the world proletarian revolution’.
What difference is there between this ‘theory of permanent revolution and the well-known theory of Menshevism which repudiates the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat?
Essentially, there is no difference. . .
'Permanent revolution' is not a mere underestimation of the revolutionary potentialities of the peasant movement. 'Permanent revolution' is an underestimation of the peasant movement which leads to the repudiation of Lenin's theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Trotsky's 'permanent revolution’ is a variety of Menshevism.
Trotsky’s, ‘permanent revolution’ . . . means that the victory of socialism in one country, in this case Russia , is impossible ‘without direct state support from the European proletariat', i.e., before the
European proletariat has conquered power.
What is there in common between this 'theory’, and Lenin's thesis on the possibility of the victory of socialism in one capitalist country taken separately"?
Clearly, there is nothing in common.
What does Trotsky's assertion that a revolutionary Russia could not hold out in the face of a conservative Europe signify?
It can signify only this: firstly, that Trotsky does not appreciate the inherent strength of our revolution; secondly, that Trotsky does not understand the inestimable importance of the moral support which is given to our revolution by the workers of the East and the peasants of the East; thirdly, that Trotsky does not perceive the internal infirmity which is consuming imperialism today. . .
Trotsky's 'permanent revolution’ is the repudiation of Lenin's theory of proletarian revolution; and conversely, Lenin's theory of the proletarian revolution is the repudiation of the theory of 'permanent revolution' . . .
Hitherto only one aspect of the theory of 'permanent Revolution’, has usually been noted -- lack of faith in the revolutionary potentialities of the peasant movement. Now, in fairness, this must be supplemented
by another aspect -- lack of faith in the strength and capacity of the proletariat in Russia.
What difference is there between Trotsky's theory and the ordinary Menshevik theory that the victory of socialism in one country, and in a backward country at that, is impossible without the preliminary victory of the proletarian revolution in the principal countries of Western Europe?
Essentially, there is no difference.
There can be no doubt at all. Trotsky’s theory of 'permanent revolution' is a variety of Menshevism . . . .
'Honeyed speeches and rotten diplomacy cannot hide the yawning chasm which lies between the theory of 'permanent revolution and Leninism."
(J. V. Stalin: “The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists", in: “Works”; Ibid; p. 385-61, 389, 392, 395-96, 397).
To show the extent to which he held on to his old anti-Leninist ideas, Trotsky published in 1922 a new edition of his book, The Year 1905, adding a preface in which he argued the correctness of his political line. After five years of socialist power, he stated:
`It was precisely during the interval between January 9 and the October strike of 1905 that the views on the character of the revolutionary development of Russia which came to be known as the theory of `permanent revolution' crystallized in the author's mind .... precisely in order to ensure its victory, the proletarian vanguard would be forced in the very early stages of its rule to make deep inroads not only into feudal property but into bourgeois property as well. In this it would come into hostile collision not only with all the bourgeois groupings which supported the proletariat during the first stages of its revolutionary struggle, but also with the broad masses of the peasantry with whose assistance it came into power. The contradictions in the position of a workers' government in a backward country with an overwhelmingly peasant population could be solved only on an international scale, in the arena of world proletarian revolution.' Quoted in Stalin, The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists. Leninism: Selected Writings (New York: International Publishers, 1942), p. 15. Stalin's emphasis.
For those who think that this contradicted the fact that the dictatorship of the proletariat had been maintained for five years, Trotsky responded in a 1922 `Postscript' to his pamphlet A Program of Peace:
`The fact that the workers' state has maintained itself against the entire world in a single and, moreover, backward country testifies to the colossal power of the proletariat which in other more advanced, more civilised countries, will truly be able to achieve miracles. But having defended ourselves as a state in the political and military sense, we have not arrived at, nor even approached socialist society .... Trade negotiations with bourgeois states, concessions, the Geneva Conference and so on are far too graphic evidence of the impossibility of isolated socialist construction within a national state-framework .... the genuine rise of socialist economy in Russia will become possible only after the victory of the proletariat in the most important countries of Europe.' Trotsky, Postscript 1922, What is A Peace Programme? (Columbo, Ceylon: Lanka Samasamaja, 1956), pp. 20-21. Also partially quoted in Stalin, The October Revolution, p. 21.
Here is the obvious meaning: the Soviet workers are not capable of accomplishing miracles by building socialism; but the day that Belgians, Dutch, Luxemburgers and other Germans rise up, then the world will see real marvels. Trotsky put all of his hope in the proletariat of the `more advanced and more civilized' countries. But he paid no particular attention to the fact that in 1922, only the Russian proletariat proved to be truly revolutionary, to the end, while the revolutionary wave that existed in 1918 in Western Europe was already, for the most part, history.
From 1902, and continually, Trotsky fought the line that Lenin had drawn for the democratic revolution and the socialist revolution in Russia. By reaffirming, just before Lenin died, that the dictatorship of the proletariat had to come into open contradiction with the peasant masses and that, consequently, there was no salvation for Soviet socialism outside of the victorious revolution in the `more civilized' countries, Trotsky was trying to substitute his own program for Lenin's.
Behind the leftist verbiage of `world revolution', Trotsky took up the fundamental idea of the Mensheviks: it was impossible to build socialism in the Soviet Union. The Mensheviks openly said that neither the masses nor the objective conditions were ripe for socialism. As for Trotsky, he said that the proletariat, as class-in-itself, and the mass of individualist peasants, would inevitably enter into conflict. Without the outside support of a victorious European revolution, the Soviet working class would be incapable of building socialism. With this conclusion, Trotsky returned to the fold of his Menshevik friends.
In 1923, during his struggle for the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, Trotsky launched his second campaign. He tried to clear out the Bolshevik Party's old cadres and replace them with young ones, whom he hoped to be able to manipulate. In preparation for the seizure of the Party's leadership, Trotsky returned, almost to a word, to his 1904 anti-Leninist ideas for the Party.
At that time, Trotsky had attacked with the greatest vehemence Lenin's entire concept of the Bolshevik Party and its leadership. His 1923 attacks against the Bolshevik leadership are clear evidence of the persistence of his petit-bourgeois ideals.
In 1904, Trotsky the individualist fought virulently against the Leninist concept of the Party. He called Lenin a `fanatical secessionist', a `revolutionary bourgeois democrat', an `organization fetichist', a partisan of the `army mentality' and of `organizational pettiness', a `dictator wanting to substitute himself for the central committee', a `dictator wanting to impose dictatorship on the proletariat' for whom `any mixture of elements thinking differently is a pathological phenomenon'. Trotsky, Nos tâches politiques (Paris: Pierre Belfond, 1970), pp. 39--41, 128, 159, 195, 198, 204.
Note that this hatred was directed, not at the infamous Stalin, but, rather, at his revered master, Lenin. That book, published by Trotsky in 1904, is crucial to understanding his ideology. He made himself known as an unrepentent bourgeois individualist. All the slanders and insults that he would direct twenty-five years later against Stalin, he had already hurled in that work against Lenin.
Trotsky did everything he could to depict Stalin as a dictator ruling over the Party. Yet, when Lenin created the Bolshevik Party, Trotsky accused him of creating an `Orthodox theocracy' and an `autocratic-Asiatic centralism'. Ibid. , pp. 97, 170.
Trotsky always claimed that Stalin had adopted a cynical, pragmatic attitude towards Marxism, which he reduced to ready-made formulas. Writing about One step forward, two steps back, Trotsky wrote:
`One cannot show more cynicism for the ideological heritage of the proletariat as does Comrade Lenin! For him, Marxism is not a scientific method of analysis.' Ibid. , p. 160.
In his 1904 work, Trotsky invented the term `substitutionism' to attack the Leninist party and its leadership.
`The ``professional revolutionary'' group acted in the place of the proletariat.' Ibid. , p. 103.
`The organization substitutes itself for the Party, the Central Committee for the organization and its financing and the dictator for the Central Committee.' Ibid. , p. 128.
So, in 1923, often using the same words that he used against Lenin, Trotsky attacked the Leninist concept of party and leadership: `the old generation accustomed itself to think and to decide, as it still does, for the party'. Trotsky noted `A certain tendency of the apparatus to think and to decide for the whole organization'. Leon Trotsky, The New Course. The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1923--1925) (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975), pp. 71, 128.
In 1904, Trotsky attacked the Leninist concept of the Party by affirming that it `separated the conscious activity from the executive activity. (There is) a Center and, underneath, there are only disciplined executives of technical functions.' In his bourgeois individualist worldview, Trotsky rejected the hierarchy and the different levels of responsibility and discipline. His ideal was `the global political personality, who imposes on all `centers' his will in all possible forms, including boycott'! Trotsky, Nos tâches, pp. 140--141.
This is the motto of an individualist, of an anarchist.
Trotsky again used this criticism against the Party: `the apparatus manifests a growing tendency to counterpose a few thousand comrades, who form the leading cadres, to the rest of the mass, whom they look upon only as an object of action'. Trotsky, The New Course, p. 71.
In 1904, Trotsky accused Lenin of being a bureaucrat making the Party degenerate into a revolutionary-bourgeois organization. Lenin was blinded by `the bureaucratic logic of such and such ``organizational plan'' ', but `the fiasco of organizational fetichism' was certain. `The head of the reactionary wing of our Party, comrade Lenin, gives social-democracy a definition that is a theoretical attack against the class nature of our Party.' Lenin `formulated a tendency for the Party, the revolutionary-bourgeois tendency'. Trotsky, Nos tâches, pp. 192, 195, 204.
In 1923, Trotsky wrote the same thing against Stalin, but using a more moderate tone: `bureaucratization threatens to ... provoke a more or less opportunistic degeneration of the Old Guard'. Trotsky, The New Course, p. 72.
In 1904, the bureaucrat Lenin was accused of `terrorizing' the Party:
`The task of Iskra (Lenin's newspaper) was to theoretically terrorize the intelligentsia. For social-democrats educated in this school, orthodoxy is something close to the absolute `Truth' that inspired the Jacobins (French revolutionary democrats). Orthodox Truth foresees everything. Those who contest are excluded; those who doubt are on the verge of being excluded.' Trotsky, Nos tâches, p. 190.
In 1923, Trotsky called for `replacing the mummified bureaucrats' so that `from now on nobody will dare terrorize the party'. Trotsky, The New Course, pp. 126--127.
To conclude, this 1923 text shows that Trotsky was also unscrupulously ambitious. In 1923, to seize power in the Bolshevik Party, Trotsky wanted to `liquidate' the old Bolshevik guard, who knew only too well his fanatical struggle against Lenin's ideas. No old Bolshevik was ready to abandon Leninism for Trotskyism. Hence Trotsky's tactics: he declared the old Bolsheviks to be `degenerating' and flattered the youth who were not familiar with his anti-Leninist past. Under the slogan of `democratization' of the party, Trotsky wanted to install youth who supported him in the leadership.
Yet, ten years later, when men such as Zinoviev and Kamenev would openly show their opportunistic personalities, Trotsky declared that they represented `the old Bolshevik guard' persecuted by Stalin: he allied himself with these opportunists, invoking the glorious past of the `old guard'!
Trotsky's position within the Party continued to weaken in 1924--1925, and he attacked the Party leadership with increasing rage.
Starting from the idea that it was impossible to build socialism in a single country, Trotsky concluded that Bukharin's 1925--1926 political line, the current focus of his hatred, represented kulak (rich peasants; see chapter 4) interests and the new bourgeois, called Nep-man. Power was becoming kulak power. Discussion started yet again about the `disintegration' of the Bolshevik Party. Since they were evolving towards disintegration and kulak power, Trotsky appropriated himself the right to create factions and to work clandestinely within the Party.
The debate was led openly and honestly for five years. When the discussion was closed in 1927 by a Party vote, those who defended the theses of impossibility of building socialism in the Soviet Union and the right to form factions received between one and one and a half per cent of the votes. Trotsky was expelled from the Party, sent to Siberia and, finally, banished from the Soviet Union.
6. Collectivisation
To understand the collectivization, the prevailing situation in the Soviet countryside in the twenties must be recalled.
From 1921, the Bolsheviks had concentrated their efforts on the principal objective, which was the re-establishment of industry on a socialist footing.
At the same time, they attempted to rebuild the productive forces in the countryside, by encouraging individual production and small-scale capitalism, which they tried to control and lead towards various co-operative forms.
These objectives were obtained towards 1927--1928. Davies noted:
`Between 1922 and 1926, the New Economic Policy, by and large, was a brilliant success .... The production of the peasant economy in 1926 was equal to that of the whole of agriculture, including the landowners' estates, before the revolution. Grain production reached approximately the pre-war level, and the production of potatoes apparently exceeded that level by as much as 75 per cent .... The number of livestock ... in 1928 exceeded (the 1914 level) by 7--10 per cent in the case of cattle and pigs .... the proportion of sown area and of gross agricultural production devoted to grain was lower in 1928 than in 1913 --- a good general indicator of agricultural progress.' R. W. Davies, The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia I: The Socialist Offensive; The Collectivisation of Soviet Agriculture, 1929--1930 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 4--5.
The socialist revolution had brought great gains to the peasant masses. The peasants without land had received plots. Overly large families were able to divide. In 1927, there were 24 to 25 million peasant families, as opposed to 19.5 in 1917. The number of persons per family had dropped from 6.1 to 5.3. Direct taxes and rent were significantly lower than under the old régime. The peasants kept and consumed a much greater share of their harvests. `Grain for the towns, the army, industry and export in 1926/27 amounted to only 10 million tons as compared with 18.8 million tons in 1909--13 (average).' Ibid. , pp. 16--18.
At the same time the Bolsheviks encouraged the peasants to form all sorts of co-operatives and they created the first experimental kolkhozy (collective farms). The point was to determine how, in the future, peasants could be led to socialism, although the schedule was still unclear. However, on the whole, there existed by 1927 very few socialistic elements in the countryside, where the dominant presence were the peasants individually working their plots of land. In 1927, 38 per cent of the peasants had been regrouped in consumers' co-operatives, but it was the rich peasants who led them. These co-operatives received 50 per cent of the farm subsidies, the rest being invested in private holdings, in general kulak. Lynne Viola, The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivisation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 22.
Weakness of the party in the countryside
It must be understood that at the beginning of socialist construction, the Bolshevik Party had little hold on the countryside.
In 1917, there were, in the whole of the USSR, 16,700 Bolshevik peasants. During the next four years of Civil War, a large number of young peasants were admitted into the Party to lead the peasant masses. In 1921, there were 185,300. But they were mostly sons of peasants who had enlisted in the Red Army. Once peace prevailed, the political ideas of these young fighters had to be checked. Lenin organized the first verification purge, as a necessary extension of the first massive recruitment campaign. It had to be determined who corresponded to the minimal definition of a Communist. Of 200,000 peasants, 44.7 per cent were excluded. Ibid. , p. 13.
On October 1, 1928, of 1,360,000 party members or candidate members, 198,000 (14.5 per cent) were peasants or agricultural workers by present occupation. Davies, op. cit. , p. 51.
In the countryside, there was one Party member for every 420 inhabitants, and 20,700 Party cells, one for every four villages. This small figure takes on real significance when it is compared to the `cadres' of Tsarist reaction, the Orthodox pops and other religious members at that time, as they numbered 60,000! Ibid. , p. 54.
The rural youth formed the greatest reserve of the Party. In 1928, there were a million young peasants in Komsomol. Ibid. , p. 52.
The soldiers who had served in the Red Army during the Civil War and the 180,000 sons of peasants who, each year, entered the army, where they received a Communist education, were in general supporters of the régime. Ibid. , p. 53.
The character of the Russian peasant
Here was the problem that the Bolshevik Party had to confront.
The countryside was still essentially controlled by the privileged classes and by Tsarist and Orthodox ideology. The peasant masses remained in their state of backwardness and continued to work mostly with wooden tools. Often the kulaks would seize power in the co-operatives, credit pools and even rural Soviets. Under Stolypin, bourgeois agricultural specialists had set themselves up in the countryside. They continued to have great influence as proponents of modern private agricultural production. Ninety per cent of the land continued to be run according to the traditional communal village system, in which the rich peasants predominated. Viola, op. cit. , pp. 19, 22.
The extreme poverty and extreme ignorance that characterized the peasant masses were among the worst `enemies' of the Bolsheviks. It was relatively simple to defeat the Tsar and the landowners. But how could barbarism, mental exhaustion and superstition be defeated? The Civil War had completely disrupted the countryside; ten years of socialist régime had introduced the first elements of mass culture and a minimal Communist leadership. But the traditional characteristics of the peasantry were still there, as influential as ever.
Dr. Émile Joseph Dillon lived in Russia from 1877 to 1914. Professor at several Russian universities, he was also the chief editor of a Russian newspaper. He had traveled to all areas of the empire. He knew the ministers, the nobility, the bureaucrats and the successive generations of revolutionaries. His testimony about the Russian peasantry warrants a few thoughts.
He first described the material misery in which the majority of the peasantry lived:
`(T)he Russian peasant ... goes to bed at six and even five o'clock in the winter, because he cannot afford money to buy petroleum enough for artificial light. He has no meat, no eggs, no butter, no milk, often no cabbage, and lives mainly on black bread and potatoes. Lives? He starves on an insufficient quantity of them.' Émile Joseph Dillon, quoted in Webb, op. cit. , p. 809.
Then Dillon wrote about the cultural and political backwardnesss in which the peasants were held:
`(T)he agricultural population ... was mediaeval in its institutions, Asiatic in its strivings and prehistoric in its conceptions of life. The peasants believed that the Japanese had won the Manchurian campaign by assuming the form of microbes, getting into the boots of the Russian soldiers, biting their legs, and bringing about their death. When there was an epidemic in a district they often killed the doctors `for poisoning the wells and spreading the disease'. They still burn witches with delight, disinter the dead to lay a ghost, strip unfaithful wives stark naked, tie them to carts and whip them through the village .... And when the only restraints that keep such a multitude in order are suddenly removed the consequences to the community are bound to be catastrophic .... Between the people and anarchism for generations there stood the frail partition formed by its primitive ideas of God and the Tsar; and since the Manchurian campaign these were rapidly melting away.' Ibid. , pp. 808--809.
In 1927, after the spontaneous evolution of the free market, 7 per cent of peasants, i.e. 2,700,000 peasants, were once again without land. Each year, one quarter of a million poor lost their land. Furthermore, the landless men were no longer accepted in the traditional village commune. In 1927, there were still 27 million peasants who had neither horse nor cart. These poor peasants formed 35 per cent of the peasant population.
The great majority were formed of middle peasants: 51 to 53 per cent. But they still worked with their primitive instruments. In 1929, 60 per cent of families in the Ukraine had no form of machinery; 71 per cent of the families in the North Caucasus, 87.5 per cent in the Lower Volga and 92.5 per cent in the Central Black-Earth Region were in the same situation. These were the grain-producing regions.
In the whole of the Soviet Union, between 5 and 7 per cent of peasants succeeded in enriching themselves: these were the kulaks. Jean Elleinstein, Le socialisme dans un seul pays (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1973), vol. 2, pp. 67--69. Davies, opcit, pp. 9, 171.
After the 1927 census, 3.2 per cent of families had on average 2.3 draft animals and 2.5 cows, compared to an average of between 1 and 1.1. There was a total of 950,000 families (3.8 per cent) who hired agricultural workers or rented out means of production. Davies, op. cit. , pp. 25--26.
Who controlled the market wheat?
The supply of market wheat had to be guaranteed to ensure that the rapidly expanding cities could be fed and that the country could be industrialized.
Since most of the peasants were no longer exploited by the landowners, they consumed a large part of their wheat. The sales on extra-rural markets were only 73.2 per cent of what they were in 1913. Ibid. , p. 17.
But the source of commercial grain had also undergone tremendous change. Before the revolution, 72 per cent of the grain had come from large exploitations (landowners and kulaks). In 1926, on the other hand, the poor and middle peasants produced 74 per cent of the market wheat. In fact, they consumed 89 per cent of their production, bringing only 11 per cent to market. The large socialist enterprises, the kolkhozy (collective farms) and the sovkhozy (state farms) only represented 1.7 per cent of the total wheat production and 6 per cent of the market wheat. But they sold 47.2 per cent of their production, almost half of their harvest.
In 1926, the kulaks, a rising force, controlled 20 per cent of the market wheat. Stalin, On the Grain Front. Leninism, p. 59.
According to another statistic, in the European part of the USSR, the kulaks and the upper part of the middle peasants, i.e. about 10 to 11 per cent of families, made 56 per cent of the sales in 1927--1928. Davies, op. cit. , p. 27.
In 1927, the balance of forces between the socialist economy and the capitalist economy could be summed up as follows: collectivized agriculture brought 0.57 million tonnes of wheat to market, the kulaks 2.13 million. Stalin, Problems of Agrarian Policy in the U.S.S.R. Leninism, p. 155.
The social force controling the market wheat could dictate whether workers and city dwellers could eat, hence whether industrialization could take place. The resulting struggle became merciless.
To accrue sufficient assets for industrialization, the State had paid a relatively low price for wheat since the beginning of the twenties.
In the fall of 1924, after a quite meager harvest, the State did not succeed in buying the grain at a fixed rate. The kulaks and private merchants bought the grain on the open market, speculating on a price hike in the spring and summer.
In May 1925, the State had to double its buying prices of December 1924. That year, the USSR had a good harvest. Industrial development in the cities increased the demand for grain. Buying prices paid by the State remained high from October to December 1925. But since there was a lack of light machinery products, the better-off peasants refused to sell their wheat. The State was forced to capitulate, abandoning its plans for grain exports, reducing industrial equipment imports and reducing industrial credit. Davies, op. cit. , pp. 29--30.
These were the first signs of a grave crisis and of a confrontation between social classes.
In 1926, the grain harvest reached 76.8 million tonnes, compared to 72.5 the previous year. The State bought grain at a lower price than in 1925. Ibid. , pp. 31, 419.
In 1927, the grain harvest fell to the 1925 level. In the cities, the situation was hardly positive. Unemployment was high and increased with the arrival of ruined peasants. The differences between worker and technician salaries increased. Private merchants, who still controlled half the meat sold in the city, blatantly enriched themselves. The Soviet Union was once again threatened with war, after London's decision to break diplomatic ties with Moscow.
The social struggle to come was reflected inside the Party. Bukharin, at the time Stalin's main ally in the leadership, stressed the importance of advancing socialism using market relations. In 1925, he called on peasants to `enrich themselves', and admitted that `we shall move forward at a snail's pace'. Stalin, in a June 2, 1925 letter to him, wrote: `the slogan enrich yourself is not ours, it is wrong .... Our slogan is socialist accumulation'. Ibid. , p. 32.
The bourgeois economist Kondratiev was at the time the most influential specialist in the People's Commissariats for Agriculture and for Finance. He advocated further economic differentiation in the countryside, lower taxes for the rich peasants, reduction in the ` insupportable rate of development of industry' and reorientation of resources from heavy industry to light industry. Ibid. , p. 33.
Shayanov, a bourgeois economist belonging to another school, called for `vertical co-operatives', first for the sale, then for the industrial processing of agricultural products, instead of an orientation towards production co-operatives, i.e. kolkhozy. This political line would have weakened the economic basis of socialism and would have developed new capitalist forces in the countryside and in light industry. By protecting capitalism at the production level, the rural bourgeoisie would have also dominated the sales co-operatives.
Bukharin was directly influenced by these two specialists, particularly when he declared in February 1925, `collective farms are not the main line, not the high road, not the chief path by which the peasant will come to socialism'. Ibid. , p. 34.
In 1927, the countryside saw a poor harvest. The amount of grain sold to the cities dropped dramatically. The kulaks, who had reinforced their position, hoarded their wheat to speculate on shortages so that they could force a significant price hike. Bukharin thought that the official buying prices should be raised and that industrialization should be slowed down. According to Davies, `Nearly all of the non-party economists supported these conclusions'. Ibid. , p. 41.
Stalin understood that socialism was threatened from three sides. Hunger riots could take place in the cities. The kulaks in the countryside could strengthen their position, thereby making socialist industrialization impossible. Finally, foreign military interventions were in the offing.
According to Kalinin, the Soviet President, a Politburo commission on the kolkhozy established in 1927 under Molotov's leadership brought about a `mental revolution'. Ibid. , p. 38.
Its work led to the adoption of a resolution by the Fifteenth Congress of the Party, in December 1927:
`Where is the way out? The way out is in the passing of small disintegrated peasant farms into large-scaled amalgamated farms, on the basis of communal tillage of the soil; in passing to collective tillage of the soil on the basis of the new higher technique. The way out is to amalgamate the petty and tiny peasant farms gradually but steadily, not by means of pressure but by example and conviction, into large-scale undertakings on the basis of communal, fraternal collective tillage of the soil, applying scientific methods for the intensification of agriculture.' Webb, op. cit. , p. 245, n. 1.
Again in 1927, it was decided to focus on the political line of limiting the exploiting tendencies of the rural bourgeoisie. The government imposed new taxes on the revenues of the kulaks. The latter had to meet higher quotas during grain collection. The village Soviet could seize their unused land. The number of workers they could hire was limited. Davies, op.cit. , pp. 46, 49--50. Nicolaï Boukharine, 
uvres choisies en un volume (Moscow: Éditions du Progrès, 1988), p. 424.
... or betting on the individual peasant?
In 1928, as in 1927, the grain harvest was 3.5 to 4.5 million tonnes less than in 1926, due to very bad climatic conditions. In January 1928, the Politburo unanimously decided to take exceptional measures, by seizing wheat from the kulaks and the well-to-do peasants, to avoid famine in the cities. `Worker discontent was increasing. Tension was rising in the countryside. The situation seemed hopeless. Whatever the cost, the city needed bread', wrote two Bukharinists in 1988. G. Bourdiougov and V. Kozlov, Épisodes d'une biographie politique. Introduction to Boukharine, op. cit. , p. 15.
The Party leadership around Stalin could see only one way out: develop the kolkhozian movement as fast as possible.
Bukharin was opposed. On July 1, 1928, he sent a letter to Stalin. The kolkhozy, he wrote, could not be the way out, since it would take several years to put them in place, particularly since they cannot be immediately supplied with machines. `Individual peasant holdings must be encouraged and relations must be normalized with the peasantry'. Ibid. , p. 16.
The development of individual enterprise became the basis for Bukharin's political line. He claimed to agree that the State should expropriate a part of individual production to further the development of industry, but that this should take place using market mechanisms. Stalin would state in October of that year: `there are people in the ranks of our party who are striving, perhaps without themselves realizing it, to adapt our socialist construction to the tastes and needs of our ``Soviet'' bourgeoisie.' Stalin, The Right Danger. Leninism, p. 79.
The situation in the cities was getting worse. In 1928 and 1929, bread had to be rationed, then sugar, tea and meat. Between October 1, 1927 and 1929, the prices of agricultural products rose by 25.9 per cent. The price of wheat on the free market rose by 289 per cent. Davies, op. cit. , p. 47.
Early in 1929, Bukharin spoke of the links in the single chain of socialist economy, and added:
` (T)he kulak co-operative nests will, similarly, through the banks, etc., grow into the same system ....
`Here and there the class struggle in the rural districts breaks out in its former manifestations, and, as a rule, the outbreaks are provoked by the kulak elements. However, such incidents, as a rule, occur in those places where the local Soviet apparatus is weak. As this apparatus improves, as all the lower units of the Soviet government become stronger, as the local, village party and Young Communist organizations improve and become stronger, such phenomena, it is perfectly obvious, will become more and more rare and will finally disappear leaving no trace.' Stalin, The Right Danger, pp. 95, 99.
Bukharin was already following a social-democratic policy of `class peace' and was blind to the relentless struggle of the kulaks to oppose collectivization by all means. He saw the `weaknesses' of the Party and State apparatuses as the reason for the class war, without understanding that they were heavily infiltrated and influenced by the kulaks. The purge of these apparatuses would itself be a class struggle linked to the offensive against the kulaks.
At the Central Committee Plenary in April 1929, Bukharin proposed to import wheat, putting an end to the exceptional measures against `the peasantry', to increase the prices for agricultural products, to uphold `revolutionary legality', to reduce the rate of industrialization and to accelerate the development of the means of agricultural production. Kaganovich responded:
`You have made no new propositions, and you are incapable since they are non-existent, because we are facing a class enemy that is attacking us, that refuses to give its wheat surplus for the socialist industrialization and that declares: give me a tractor, give me electoral rights, and then you will get wheat.' Bourdiougov and Kozlov, op. cit. , pp. 26--27.
The bourgeoisie has always maintained that the Soviet collectivization `destroyed the dynamic forces in the countryside' and caused a permanent stagnation of agriculture. It describes the kulaks as individual `dynamic and entrepeneurial' peasants. This is nothing but an ideological fable destined to tarnish socialism and glorify exploitation. To understand the class struggle that took place in the USSR, it is necessary to try to have a more realistic image of the Russian kulak.
At the end of the nineteenth century, a specialist on Russian peasant life wrote as follows:
`Every village commune has always three or four regular kulaks, as also some half dozen smaller fry of the same kidney .... They want neither skill nor industry; only promptitude to turn to their own profit the needs, the sorrows, the sufferings and the misfortunes of others.
`The distinctive characteristic of this class ... is the hard, unflinching cruelty of a thoroughly educated man who has made his way from poverty to wealth, and has come to consider money-making, by whatever means, as the only pursuit to which a rational being should devote himself.' Stepniak, quoted in Webb, op. cit. , pp. 563--564.
And É. J. Dillon, from the U.S., who had a profound knowledge of old Russia, wrote:
` And of all the human monsters I have ever met in my travels, I cannot recall so malignant and odious as the Russian kulak.' Dillon, quoted in Webb, op. cit. , p. 565.
The kolkhozy surpass the kulaks
If the kulaks, who represented already 5 per cent of the peasantry, had succeeded in extending their economic base and definitively imposing themselves as the dominant force in the countryside, the socialist power in the cities would not have been able to maintain itself, faced with this encirclement by bourgeois forces. Eighty-two per cent of the Soviet population was peasant. If the Bolshevik Party had no longer succeeded in feeding the workers at relatively low prices, the very basis of working class power would have been threatened.
Hence it was necessary to accelerate the collectivization of certain sectors in the countryside in order to increase, on a socialist basis, the production of market wheat. It was essential for the success of accelerated industrialization that a relatively low price for market wheat be maintained. A rising rural bourgeoisie would never have accepted such a policy. Only the poor and middle peasants, organized in co-operatives, could support it. And only industrialization could ensure the defence of the first socialist country. Industrialization would allow the modernization of the countryside, increasing productivity and improving the cultural level. To give a solid material base for socialism in the countryside would require building tractors, trucks and threshers. To succeed would imply increasing the rate of industrialization.
On October 1, 1927, there were 286,000 peasant families in the kolkhozy. They numbered 1,008,000 on June 1, 1929. Davies, op. cit. , p. 109.
During the four months of June through October, the percentage of kolkhoz peasants rose from 4 per cent to 7.5 per cent. Viola, op. cit. , p. 27.
During 1929, collectivized agriculture produced 2.2 million tonnes of market wheat, as much as the kulaks did two years previously. Stalin foresaw that during the course of the next year, it would bring 6.6 million tonnes to the cities.
`Now we are able to carry on a determined offensive against the kulaks, to break their resistance, to eliminate them as a class and substitute for their output the output of the collective farms and state farms.' Stalin, Problems of Agrarian Policy in the U.S.S.R., p. 163.
Once the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party had called for accelerating the collectization, a spontaneous movement developed, brought to the regions by activists, youth, old soldiers of the Red Army and the local apparatuses of the Party.
Early in October, 7.5 per cent of the peasants had already joined kolkhozy and the movement was growing. The Party, which had given the general direction towards collectivization, became conscious of a mass movement, which it was not organizing:
`The main fact of our social-economic life at the present time ..., is the enormous growth of the collective farm movement.
`Now, the kulaks are being expropriated by the masses of poor and middle peasants themselves, by the masses who are putting solid collectivization into practice.' Ibid. , pp. 145, 163.
During the ratification of the First Five-Year Plan, in April, the Party had planned on a collectivization level of 10 per cent by 1932-1933. The kolkhozy and the sovkhozy would then produce 15.5 per cent of the grain. That would suffice to oust the kulaks. Davies, op. cit. , p. 112.
But in June, the Party Secretary in North Caucasus, Andreev, affirmed that already 11.8 per cent of families had entered kolkhozy and that a number of 22 per cent could be reached by the end of 1929. Ibid. , p. 121.
On January 1, 1930, 18.1 per cent of the peasant families were members of a kolkhoz. A month later, they accounted for 31.7 per cent. Ibid.
`Collectivization quickly assumed a dynamic of its own, achieved largely as a result of the initiative of rural cadres. The center was in peril of losing control of the campaign'. Viola, op. cit. , p. 91.
The objectives set by the Central Committee in its January 5, 1930 resolution were strongly `corrected' in the upward direction by regional committees. The district committees did the same and set a breath-taking pace. In January 1930, the regions of Ural, Lower Volga and Middle Volga already registered collectivization figures between 39 and 56 per cent. Several regions adopted a plan for complete collectivization within one year, some within a few months. Ibid. , pp. 93--94.
A Soviet commentator wrote: `If the centre intended to include 15 per cent of households, the region raised the plan to 25 per cent, the okrug to 40 per cent and the district posed itself the task of reaching 60 per cent'. Davies, op. cit. , p. 218.
(The okrug was an administrative entity that disappeared in 1930. There were, at the beginning of that year, 13 regions divided into 207 okrugs, subdivided into 2,811 districts and 71,870 village Soviets.) Ibid. , p. xx.
This frenetic race towards collectivization was accompanied by a `dekulakization' movement: kulaks were expropriated, sometimes exiled. What was happening was a new step in the fierce battle between poor peasants and rich peasants. For centuries, the poor had been systematically beaten and crushed when, out of sheer desperation, they dared revolt and rebel. But this time, for the first time, the legal force of the State was on their side. A student working in a kolkhoz in 1930 told the U.S. citizen Hindus:
`This was war, and is war. The koolak had to be got out of the way as completely as an enemy at the front. He is the enemy at the front. He is the enemy of the kolkhoz.' Ibid. , p. 173.
Preobrazhensky, who had upheld Trotsky to the hilt, now enthusiastically supported the battle for collectivization:
`The working masses in the countryside have been exploited for centuries. Now, after a chain of bloody defeats beginning with the peasant uprisings of the Middle Ages, their powerful movement for the first time in human history has a chance of victory.' Ibid. , p. 274.
It should be said that the radicalism in the countryside was also stimulated by the general mobilization and agitation in the country undergoing industrialization.
The essential rôle of the most oppressed masses
Numerous anti-Communist books tell us that the collectivization was `imposed' by the leadership of the Party and by Stalin and implemented with terror. This is a lie. The essential impulse during the violent episodes of collectivization came from the most oppressed of the peasant masses. A peasant from the Black-Earth region declared:
`I have lived my whole life among the batraks (agricultural workers). The October revolution gave me land, I got credit from year to year, I got a poor horse, I can't work the land, my children are ragged and hungry, I simply can't manage to improve my farm in spite of the help of the Soviet authorities. I think there's only one way out: join a tractor column, back it up and get it going.' Ibid. , p. 160.
`Although centrally initiated and endorsed, collectivization became, to a great extent, a series of ad hoc policy responses to the unbridled initiatives of regional and district rural party and government organs. Collectivization and collective farming were shaped less by Stalin and the central authorities than by the undisciplined and irresponsible activity of rural officials, the experimentation of collective farm leaders left to fend for themselves, and the realities of a backward countryside.' Viola, op. cit. , pp. 215--216.
Viola correctly emphasizes the base's internal dynamic. But her interpretation of the facts is one-sided. She misses the mass line consistently followed by Stalin and the Bolshevik Party. The Party set the general direction, and, on this basis, the base and the intermediate cadres were allowed to experiment. The results from the base would then serve for the elaboration of new directives, corrections and rectifications.
`The state ruled by circular, it ruled by decree, but it had neither the organizational infrastructure nor the manpower to enforce its voice or to ensure correct implementation of its policy in the administration of the countryside .... The roots of the Stalin system in the countryside do not lie in the expansion of state controls but in the very absence of such controls and of an orderly system of administration, which, in turn, resulted as the primary instrument of rule in the countryside.' Ibid. , p. 216.
This conclusion, drawn from a careful observation of the real progress of collectivization, requires two comments.
The thesis of `Communist totalitarianism' exercised by an `omnipresent Party bureaucracy' has no real bearing with the actual Soviet power under Stalin. It is a slogan showing the bourgeoisie's hatred of real socialism. In 1929--1933, the Soviet State did not have the technical means, the required qualified personnel, nor the sufficient Communist leadership to direct collectivization in a planned and orderly manner: to describe it as an all-powerful and totalitarian State is absurd.
In the countryside, the essential urge for collectivization came from the most oppressed peasants. The Party prepared and initiated the collectivization, and Communists from the cities gave it leadership, but this gigantic upheaval of peasant habits and traditions could not have succeeded if the poorest peasants had not been convinced of its necessity. Viola's judgment according to which `repression became the principal instrument of power' does not correspond to reality. The primary instrument was mobilization, consciousness raising, education and organization of the masses of peasants. This constructive work, of course, required `repression', i.e. it took place and could not have taken place except through bitter class struggle against the men and the habits of the old régime.
Be they fascists or Trotskyists, all anti-Communists affirm that Stalin was the representative of an all-powerful bureaucracy that suffocated the base. This is the opposite of the truth. To apply its revolutionary line, the Bolshevik leadership often called on the revolutionary forces at the base to short-circuit parts of the bureaucratic apparatus.
`The revolution was not implemented through regular administrative channels; instead the state appealed directly to the party rank and file and key sectors of the working class in order to circumvent rural officialdom. The mass recruitments of workers and other urban cadres and the circumvention of the bureaucracy served as a breakthrough policy in order to lay the foundations of a new system.' Ibid. , p. 215.
The organizational line on collectivization
How did Stalin and the leadership of the Bolshevik Party react to the spontaneous and violent collectivization and `dekulakization' tide?
They basically tried to lead, discipline and rectify the existing movement, both politically and practically.
The Party leadership did everything in its power to ensure that the great collectivization revolution could take place in optimal conditions and at the least cost. But it could not prevent deep antagonisms from bursting or `blowing up', given the countryside's backward state.
The Party apparatus in the countryside
To understand the Bolshevik Party's line during the collectivization, it is important to keep in mind that on the eve of 1930, the State and Party apparatus in the countryside was extremely weak --- the exact opposite of the `terrible totalitarian machine' imagined by anti-Communists. The weakness of the Communist apparatus was one of the conditions that allowed the kulaks to throw all their forces into a vicious battle against the new society.
On January 1, 1930, there were 339,000 Communists among a rural population of about 120 million people! Twenty-eight Communists for a region of 10,000 inhabitants. Ibid. , p. 29.
Party cells only existed in 23,458 of 70,849 village Soviets and, according to the Central Volga Regional Secretary, Khataevich, some village Soviets were `a direct agency of the kulaks'. Davies, op. cit. , p. 226.
The old kulaks and the old Tsarist civil servants, who better understood how public life took place, had done their best to infiltrate the Party. The Party nucleus was composed of young peasants who had fought in the Red Army during the Civil War. This political experience had fixed their way of seeing and acting. They had the habit of commanding and hardly knew what political education and mobilization meant.
`The rural administrative structure was burdensome, the line of command confused, and the demarcation of responsibility and function blurred and poorly defined. Consequently, rural policy implementation often tended either to the extreme of inertia or, as in the civil war days, to campaign-style polities.' Viola, op. cit. , p. 29.
It was with this apparatus, which often sabotaged or distorted the instructions of the Central Committee, that the battle against the kulaks and the old society had to take place. Kaganovich pointed out that `if we formulate it sharply and strongly, in essence we have to create a party organization in the countryside, capable of managing the great movement for collectivization'. Davies, op. cit. , pp. 225--226.
Extraordinary organizational measures
Faced with the base's radicalism, with a violent wave of anarchistic collectivization, the Party leadership first tried to get a firm grasp of what exactly was happening.
Given the weaknesses and the untrustworthiness of the Party apparatus in the countryside, the Central Committee took several extraordinary organizational measures.
First at the central level.
Starting mid-February 1930, three members of the Central Committee, Ordzhonikidze, Kaganovich and Yakovlev, were sent to the countryside to conduct inquiries.
Then, three important national assemblies were called, under the leadership of the Central Committee, to focus the accumulated experience. The February 11 assembly dealt with problems of collectivization in regions with national minorities. The February 21 assembly dealt with regions with a deficit of wheat. Finally, the February 24 assembly analyzed the errors and excesses that took place during collectivization.
Then, at the base level, in the countryside.
Two hundred and fifty thousand Communists were mobilized in the cities to go to the countryside and help out with collectivization.
These militants worked under the leadership of the `headquarters' of collectivization, specially created at the okrug and district levels. The `headquarters' were in turn advised by officials sent by the Regional Committee or the Central Committee. Ibid. , p. 205.
For example, in the Tambov okrug, militants would participate in conferences and short courses at the okrug level, then at the district level, before entering the field. According to their instructions, militants had to follow `methods of mass work': first convince local activists, village Soviets and meetings of poor peasants, then small mixed groups of poor and middle peasants and, finally, organize a general meeting of the village, excluding, of course, the kulaks. A firm warning was given that `administrative compulsion must not be used to get the middle peasants to join the kolhoz'. Ibid. , p. 206.
In the same Tambov okrug, during the winter of 1929--30, conferences and courses lasting from 2 to 10 days were organized for 10,000 peasants, kolkhozian women, poor peasants and Presidents of Soviets.
During the first few weeks of 1930, Ukraine organized 3,977 short courses for 275,000 peasants. In the fall of 1929, thirty thousand activists were trained on Sundays, during their time off, by the Red Army, which took on another contingent of 100,000 people during the first months of 1930. Furthermore, the Red Army trained a large number of tractor drivers, agricultural specialists and cinema and radio operators. Ibid. , pp. 206--207.
Most of the people coming from the towns worked for a few months in the countryside. Hence, in February 1930, the mobilization of 7,200 urban Soviet members was decreed, to work at least one year in the countryside. But men in the Red Army and industrial workers were permanently transferred to the kolkhozes.
It was in November 1929 that the most famous campaign, the `25,000', was launched.
The Central Committee called on 25,000 experienced industrial workers from the large factories to go to the countryside and to help out with collectivization. More than 70,000 presented themselves and 28,000 were selected: political militants, youth who had fought in the Civil War, Party and Komsomol members.
These workers were conscious of the leading rôle of the working class in the socialist transformations in the countryside. Viola writes:
`(They) looked to the Stalin revolution for the final victory of socialism after years of war, hardship, and deprivation .... They saw the revolution as a solution to backwardness, seemingly endemic food shortages, and capitalist encirclement.' Viola, op. cit. , p. 211.
Before leaving, it was explained to them that they were the eyes and the ears of the Central Committee: thanks to their physical presence on the front lines, the leadership hoped to acquire a materialist understanding of the upheavals in the countryside and the problems of collectivization. They were also told to discuss with the peasants their organizational experience, acquired as industrial workers, since the old tradition of individual work constituted a serious handicap for the collective use of the land. Finally, they were told that they would have to judge the Communist quality of the Party functionaries and, if necessary, purge the Party of foreign and undesirable elements.
It was during the month of January 1930 that the 25,000 arrived on the front line of collectivization. The detailed analysis of their activities and of the rôle that they played can give a realistic idea of the collectivization, that great revolutionary class struggle. These workers maintained regular correspondence with their factories and their unions; these letters give a precise idea of what was happening in the villages.
The 25,000 against the bureaucracy
Upon arrival, the 25,000 immediately had to fight against the bureaucracy of the local apparatus and against the excesses committed during the collectivization.
`Regardless of their position, the 25,000ers were unanimous in their criticism of district-level organs participating in collectivization .... The workers claimed that it was the district organs which were responsible for the race for percentages in collectivization.' Ibid. , p. 103.
Zakharov, one of the 25,000, wrote that no preparatory work had been done among the peasants. Consequently, they were not prepared for collectivization. Ibid.
Many complained of the illegal acts and of the brutality of rural cadres. Makovskaya attacked `the bureaucratic attitude of the cadres towards the peasants', and she said that the functionaries spoke of collectivization `with revolver in hand'. Ibid. , p. 109.
Baryshev affirmed that a great number of middle peasants had been `dekulakized'. Naumov allied himself with the peasants attacking the Party cadres who `appropriated for themselves the goods confiscated from the kulaks'. Viola concluded that the 25,000ers `viewed rural officials as crude, undisciplined, often corrupt, and, in not a few cases, as agents or representatives of socially dangerous class aliens'. Ibid. , p. 141.
By opposing the bureaucrats and their excesses, they succeeded in winning the confidence of the peasant masses. Ibid. , p. 135.
These details are important, since these workers can be considered to have been direct envoys from Stalin. It was precisely the `Stalinists' who fought bureaucracy and excesses most consistently and who defended a correct line for collectivization.
Next, the 25,000 played a leading rôle in the struggle against the kulaks.
They first confronted the terrible army of rumors and defamations, called `kulak agit-prop'. The illiterate peasant masses, living in barbaric conditions, subject to the influence of the pops (Orthodox priests), could easily be manipulated. The Pop claimed that the Reign of the Anti-Christ had come. The Kulak added that those who entered the kolkhoz made a pact with the Anti-Christ. Ibid. , p. 154.
Among the 25,000, many were attacked and beaten. Several dozen were murdered, shot or finished off with an axe by the kulaks.
The 25,000 and the organization of agricultural production
But the essential contribution of the 25,000 in the countryside was the introduction of a completely new system of production management, way of life and style of work.
The poor peasants, on the frontline for collectivization, did not have the slightest idea about the organization of collective production. They hated their exploitation and, for that reason, were solid allies of the working class. But as individual producers, they could not create a new mode of production: this is one of the reasons that the dictatorship of the proletariat was necessary. The dictatorship of the proletariat expressed itself through the ideological and organizational leadership of the working class and of the Communist Party over the poor and middle peasants.
The workers introduced regular work days, with morning roll call. They invented systems of payment by piecework and wage levels. Everywhere, they had to introduce order and discipline. Often, a kolkhoz did not even know its borders. There was no inventory of machinery, tools or spare parts. Machines were not maintained, there were no stables, nor fodder reserves. The workers introduced production conferences where the kolkhozians exchanged practical knowledge, they organized Socialist Competition between different brigades, and they set up workers' tribunals where violations of rules and negligence were judged.
The 25,000 workers were also the living link between the proletariat and the kolkhozian peasantry. At the request of `their' worker, large factories would send agricultural equipment, spare parts, generators, books, newspapers and other items impossible to find in the countryside. Worker brigades came from the city to do certain technical or reparatory tasks or to help with the harvest.
The worker also became schoolmaster. He taught technical knowledge. Often, he had to accomplish accounting tasks while training, on the job, new accountants. He gave elementary political and agricultural courses. Sometimes he looked after literacy campaigns.
The contribution of the 25,000 to collectivization was enormous. During the twenties, `Poverty, illiteracy and a chronic predisposition to periodic famine characterized much of the rural landscape'. Ibid. , p. 172.
The 25,000 helped elaborate the organizational structures of socialist agriculture for the next quarter century to come. `(A) new system of agricultural production was indeed established, and this, although not without its problems, did end the periodic crises which characterized earlier market relations between the cities and the countryside'. Ibid. , p. 216.
The political direction of collectivization
At the same time as these organizational measures, the Central Committee elaborated political measures and directives to give direction to the collectivization.
It is first important to note that vivid and prolonged discussions took place within the Party about the speed and scale of collectivization.
In October 1929, the Khoper okrug in the Lower Volta Region, which had registered 2.2 per cent of collectivized families in June, had already reached 55 per cent. A Kolkhoztsentr (the Union of kolkhozy) commission, which was suspicious of the speed and scale of the collectivization, was sent to conduct an enquiry. Baranov, its vice-president, declared:
`The local authorities are operating a system of shock-work and a campaign approach. All the work of setting up kolkhozy is carried out under the slogan `The more the better'. The directives of the okrug are sometimes twisted into the slogan `Those who do not join the kolkhoz are enemies of Soviet power'. There has been no extensive activity among the masses .... In some cases sweeping promises of tractors and loans were made --- `You'll get everything --- join the kolkhoz'.' Davies, op. cit. , pp. 152--153.
On the other hand, in Pravda, Sheboldaev, the Party Secretary for the Lower Volta Region, defended the rapid expansion of the Khoper collectivization. He `hailed the ``tremendous uplift and enthusiasm'' of collective ploughing, and declared that only 5 to 10 per cent opposed collectivization', which had become `a big mass movement, going far beyond the framework of our notions of work on collectivization'. Ibid. , p. 154.
Contradictory opinions existed in all units, included in this Khoper vanguard unit. On November 2, 1929, the newspaper Krasnyi Khoper reported with enthusiasm the collective ploughing and the formation of new kolkhozy. But in the same issue, a article warned against hurried collectivization and the use of threats to push poor peasants into the kolkhozy. Another article affirmed that in certain areas, kulaks had pushed an entire village into the kolkhoz to discredit collectivization. Ibid. , p. 155.
During the November 1929 Central Committee Plenum, Sheboldaev defended the Khoper experience with its `horse columns'. Given the absence of tractors, `simple unification and aggregation of farms would increase labor productivity'. He declared that the Khoper collectivization was `a spontaneous movement of the masses of poor and middle peasants' and that only 10 to 12 per cent voted against.
`(T)he party cannot take the attitude of `restraining' this movement. This would be wrong from a political and an economic point of view. The party must do everything possible to put itself at the head of this movement and lead it into organised channels. At present this mass movement has undoubtedly overwhelmed the local authorities, and hence there is a danger that it will be discredited.' Ibid. , pp. 161--162.
Sheboldaev affirmed that 25 per cent of the families were already collectivized and that towards the end of 1930 or mid-1931, collectivization would essentially be complete. Ibid.
Kossior, who spoke at the Plenum about the situation in Ukraine, reported that in dozens of villages, collectivization was `blown up and artificially created; the population did not participate in it and knew nothing about it'. But ` ``the very many dark sides'' (could not) block from view the general picture of collectivization as a whole'. Ibid. , p. 165.
It is therefore clear that many contradictory opinions were expressed within the Party, at the time that the movement for collectivization was started up in the countryside. Revolutionaries had the duty to find and protect the wish of the most oppressed masses to get rid of their age-old political, cultural and technical backwardness. The masses had to be encouraged to advance in the struggle, the only method to weaken and destroy the deeply rooted social and economic relations. Right opportunism did everything it possibly could to slow down this difficult and contradictory consciousness-raising. Nevertheless, it was also possible to push collectivization too fast, by rejecting in practice all the Party's principles. This tendency not only included leftism, which came from habits picked up during the Civil War --- when it was normal to `command' the Revolution --- but also bureaucracy, which wanted to please the leadership with `great achievements'; in addition the exaggerations could also come from the counter-revolution, which wanted to compromise collectivization by pushing it to the absurd.
The Central Committee Resolution of November 17, 1929, officially launching the collectivization, summarized discussions within the Party.
It began by noting that the number of peasant families in the kolkhozy rose from 445,000 in 1927--1928 to 1,040,000 one year later. The share of the kolkhozy in market grain rose from 4.5 per cent to 12.9 per cent in the same period.
`This unprecedented rate of collectivization, which exceeds the most optimistic projections attests to the fact that the true masses of the middle peasant household, convinced in practice of the advantages of the collective forms of agriculture, have joined the movement ....
`The decisive breakthrough in the attitude of the poor and middle peasant masses toward the kolkhozes ... signifies a new historical stage in the building of socialism in our country.' Robert H. McNeal, editor, Resolutions and decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Volume 3, The Stalin Years: 1929--1953 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), p. 23.
The progress of collectivization was made possible by putting into practice the Party's line for building socialism on all fronts.
`These significant successes of the kolkhoz movement are a direct result of the consistent implementation of the general party line, which has secured a powerful growth of industry, a strengthening of the union of the working class with the basic masses of the peasantry, the formation of a co-operative community, the strengthening of the masses' political activism, and the growth of the material and cultural resources of the proletarian state.' Ibid. , p. 29.
The Central Committee insisted that this impressive advance was not made `in all tranquility', but that it was taking place with the most bitter class struggle.
`(T)he intensification of the class struggle and the stubborn resistance of capitalist elements against an advancing socialism in a situation of capitalist encirclement of our country, are reinforcing the pressure of petty bourgeois elements on the least stable element of the party, giving rise to an ideology of capitulation in the face of difficulties, to desertion, and attempts to reach an understanding with the kulak and capitalist elements of town and countryside ....
`This is precisely what is at the root of the Bukharin group's complete incomprehension of the intensification of the class struggle that has taken place; the underestimation of the kulak and the NEP-man elements' power to resist, the anti-leninist theory of the kulak's `growing' into socialism, and resistance to the policy of attacking the capitalist elements in the countryside.' Ibid. , p. 27.
`The rightists declared the planned rates for collectivization and for building sovkhozes to be unrealistic; they declared that the necessary material and technical prerequisistes were lacking and that the poor and middle peasantry did not want to switch to collective forms of agriculture. In actual fact, we are experiencing such a turbulent growth of collectivization and such a headlong rush to socialist forms of agriculture on the part of the poor and middle peasant holdings that the kolkhoz movement has already reached the point of transition to total collectivization of entire districts ....
`(T)he right opportunists ..., objectively speaking, were serving as spokesmen for the economic and political interests of petty bourgeois elements and kulak-capitalist groups.' Ibid. , p. 25.
The Central Committee indicated that changes in the form of class struggle had to be followed carefully: if, before, the kulaks did everything they possibly could to prevent the kolkhoz movement from starting up, now they sought to destroy it from within.
`The widespread development of the kolkhoz movement is taking place in a situation of intensified class struggle in the countryside and of a change in its forms and methods. Along with the kulaks' intensification of their direct and open struggle against collectivization, which has gone to the point of outright terror (murder, arson, and wrecking), they are increasingly going over to camouflaged and covert forms of struggle and exploitation, penetrating the kolkhozes and even the kolkhoz management bodies in order to corrupt and explode them from the inside.' Ibid. , p. 29.
For this reason, profound political work had to be undertaken to form a hard kernel that could lead the kolkhoz down the socialist path.
`(T)he party must assure through persistent and regular work the rallying of a farm labourer and poor peasant nucleus on the kolkhozes.' Ibid.
These successes could not make the Party forget the `new difficulties and short-comings' to be resolved. The plenum enumerated them:
`(T)he low level of the kolkhozes' technical base; the inadequate standards of organization and low labour productivity at kolkhozes; the acute shortage of kolkhoz cadres and the near total lack of the needed specialists; the blighted social make-up at a portion of the kolkhoz; the fact that the forms of management are poorly adapted to the scale of the kolkhoz movement, that direction lags behind the rate and the scope of the movement, and the fact that the agencies directing the kolkhoz movement are often patently unsatisfactory.' Ibid.
The Central Committee decided upon the immediate startup of the construction of two new tractor factories with a capacity of 50,000 units each and of two new combine factories, the expansion of factories making complex agricultural equipment and of chemical factories, and the development of Machine Tractor Stations. Ibid. , pp. 30--31.
`Kolkhoz construction is unthinkable without a rigorous improvement in the cultural standards of the kolkhoz populace'. This is what had to be done: intensify literacy campaigns, build libraries, intensify kolkhoz courses and various types of study by correspondence, enroll children in schools, intensify cultural and political work among women, organize crèches and public kitchens to reduce their burden, build roads and cultural centers, introduce radio and cinema, telephone and mail services to the countryside, publish a general press and a specialized press designed for the peasants, etc. Ibid. , p. 34.
Finally, the Central Committee evoked the danger of Left deviations. The radicalism of poor peasants may lead to an underestimation of the alliance with the middle peasants. Ibid. , p. 28.
`(T)he Central Committee plenum warns against underestimating the difficulties of kolkhoz construction and in particular against a formal and bureaucratic approach to it and to the evaluation of its results'. Ibid. , p. 37.
The January 5, 1930 resolution
Six weeks later, the Central Committee met again to evaluate the incredible development of the kolkhozian movement. On January 5, 1930, it adopted an important decision, entitled, `On the Rate of Collectivization and State Assistance to Kolkhoz Construction'. Ibid. , pp. 40--43.
It first remarked that more than 30 million hectares were already sown on a collective basis, already surpassing the 24 million hectares that were sought at the end of the Five-Year Plan. `Thus we have the material basis for replacing large-scale kulak production by large-scale production in the kolkhozes .... we can resolve the task of collectivizing the overwhelming majority of the peasant farms' by the end of the First Plan. The collectivization of the most important grain-growing regions could be finished between autumn 1930 and spring 1932. Ibid. , pp. 40--41.
The Party had to support the spontaneous movement at the base and actively intervene to lead and to guide. `The party organizations must head and shape the kolkhoz movement, which is developing spontaneously from below, so as to ensure the organization of genuinely collective production in the kolkhozes'. Ibid. , p. 42.
The resolution warned against leftist errors. One should not `underestimate the role of the horse' and get rid of horses in the hope of receiving tractors. Ibid. , p. 41.
Not everything had to be collectivized. `(T)he artel is the most widespread form of kolkhoz, in which the basic instruments of production (livestock and dead stock, farm buildings, commercial herds) are collectivized'. Ibid. , p. 42.
Finally:
`(T)he Central Committee with all seriousness warns party organizations against guiding the kolkhoz movement `by decree' from above; this could give rise to the danger of replacing genuine socialist emulation in the organization of kolkhozes by mere playing at collectivization.' Ibid. , p. 43.
For collectivization to succeed, the poor and middle peasants had to be convinced of the superiority of collective work of the soil, which would allow the wide-scale introduction of machinery. Furthermore, socialist industry had to be capable of producing the tractors and machines that would constitute the material support for collectivization. Finally, a correct attitude had to be defined for the kulaks, the irreconcilable adversaries of socialism in the countryside. This last problem led to significant discussions within the Party.
The question was posed as follows, just before the political changes in favor of the kolkhozy. Mikoyan said on March 1, 1929:
`In spite of the political authority of the party in the countryside the kulak in the economic sphere is more authoritative: his farm is better, his horse is better, his machines are better and he is listened to on economic matters .... the middle peasant leans towards the economic authority of the kulak. And his authority will be strong as long as we have no large kolkhozy.' Davies, op. cit. , p. 62.
Kulak rumors and indoctrination
Kulak authority was based to a great extent on the cultural backwardness, illiteracy, superstition and medieval religious beliefs of the majority of peasants. Hence, the kulak's most powerful weapon, also the most difficult to confront, was rumor and indoctrination.
In 1928--1929, identical rumors were found throughout the Soviet territory. In the kolkhoz, women and children would be collectivized. In the kolkhoz, everyone would sleep under a single gigantic blanket. The Bolshevik government would force women to cut their hair so that it could be exported. The Bolsheviks would mark women on the forehead for identification. They would Russify local populations. Viola, op. cit. , p. 154.
All sorts of other terrifying `information' was heard. In the kolkhozy, a special machine would burn the old so that they would not eat any more wheat. Children would be taken away from their parents and sent to crèches. Four thousand women would be sent to China to pay for the Chinese Eastern Railway. The kolkhozians would be the first ones sent in a war. Then a rumor announced that soon the White Armies would return. Believers were told about the next coming of the Anti-Christ and that the world would end in two years. Viola, op. cit. , p. 154. Davies, op. cit. , pp. 212--213.
In the Tambov okrug, the kulaks carefully mixed rumor and political propaganda. They said that
`(S)etting up the kolkhozy is a kind of serf labour (barshchina) where the peasant will again have to work under the rod ...; the Soviet government should enrich the peasants first and then push through the establishment of kolkhozy, and not do what it is doing now, which is to try to make a rich farm out of ruined farms which have no grain.' Davies, op. cit. , p. 221.
Here we see the budding alliance between the kulaks and Bukharin: the kulaks did not openly oppose Soviet power nor even the kolkhozy: but, the peasants should first be allowed to enrich themselves, and we can always see later about collectivization. Just as Bukharin spoke of the `feudal exploitation of the peasantry', the kulaks denounced `serfdom'.
What should be done with the kulaks?
How should the kulak be treated? In June 1929, Karpinsky, a senior member of the Party, wrote that the kulaks should be allowed to join kolkhozy when collectivization included the majority of families, if they put all their means of production into the indivisible fund. This position was upheld by Kaminsky, the president of the All-Union Kolkhoz Council. The same point of view was held by the leadership. But the majority of delegates, local Party leaders, were `categorically opposed' to the admission of kulaks into kolkhozy. A delegate stated:
`(I)f he gets into the kolkhoz somehow or other he will turn an association for the joint working of the land into an association for working over Soviet power.' Ibid. , pp. 138--139.
In July 1929, the Secretary for the Central Volga Region, Khataevich, declared that
`(I)ndividual kulak elements may be admitted to collective associations if they completely renounce their personal ownership of means of production, if the kolkhozy have a solid poor-peasant and middle-peasant nucleus and if correct leadership is assured.' Ibid. , p. 140.
However, there were already several cases that were going in the opposite direction. In Kazakhstan, in August 1928, 700 bai, semi-feudal lords, and their families, were exiled. Each family owned at least one hundred cattle, which were distributed to the already-constituted kolkhozy and to peasants who were being encouraged to join kolkhozy. In February 1929, a Siberian regional Party conference decided not to allow kulaks. In June, the North Caucasus made the same decision. Ibid. , pp. 140--141.
The September 17 issue of Pravda presented a major report on the kolkhoz Red Land Improver in Lower Volga. Established in 1924, this model kolkhoz received 300,000 rubles, credit from the State. But in 1929, its socialized property amounted to only 1,800 rubles. The funds had been used for personal gain. The president of the kolkhoz was a Socialist Revolutionary; the leadership included former traders, the son of a priest and four other former Socialist Revolutionaries. Ibid. , p. 144.
Molotov summarized the affair by; `kulak-SR elements will often hide behind the kolkhoz smokescreen'; a `merciless struggle' was necessary against the kulak, as was the improvement of the organization of the poor peasants and of the alliance between the poor and middle peasants. Ibid. , p. 145.
In November 1929, Azizyan, a journalist specializing in agriculture, analyzed the motivations kulaks had for entering kolkhozy: they wanted to avoid being taxed and having to make obligatory shipments of wheat; to keep the best land; to keep their tools and machines; and to ensure the education of their children. Ibid. , p. 183.
At the same time, another journalist reported that `the weak half of the human race' sympathized with the kulaks while collective farmers were quite uncompromising, saying `send them out of the village into the steppe' and `put them in quarantine for fifty years'. Ibid. , p. 184.
The Central Committee resolution of January 5, 1930 drew conclusions from these debates and affirmed that it was now capable of `passing in its practical work from a policy of limiting the exploitative tendencies of the kulaks to a policy of liquidating the kulaks as a class .... the inadmissibility of allowing kulaks to join kolkhozes (was presupposed). McNeal, op. cit. , pp. 41--42
After this resolution, which announced the end of capitalist relations in the countryside, the kulaks threw themselves into a struggle to the end. To sabotage collectivization, they burnt crops, set barns, houses and other buildings on fire and killed militant Bolsheviks.
Most importantly, the kulaks wanted to prevent collective farms from starting up, by killing an essential part of the productive forces in the countryside, horses and oxen. All the work on the land was done with draft animals. The kulaks killed half of them. Rather than cede their cattle to the collectives, they butchered them and incited the middle peasants to do the same.
Of the 34 million horses in the country in 1928, there remained only 15 million in 1932. A terse Bolshevik spoke of the liquidation of the horses as a class. Of the 70.5 million head of cattle, there only remained 40.7 million in 1932. Only 11.6 million pigs out of 26 million survived the collectivization period. Charles Bettelheim. L'économie soviétique (Paris: Éditions Recueil Sirey, 1950), p. 87.
This destruction of the productive forces had, of course, disastrous consequences: in 1932, there was a great famine, caused in part by the sabotage and destruction done by the kulaks. But anti-Communists blame Stalin and the `forced collectivization' for the deaths caused by the criminal actions of the kulaks.
The resolution on dekulakization
In January 1930, a spontaneous movement to expropriate the kulaks began to take place. On January 28, 1930, Kosior described it as ` ``a broad mass movement of poor peasants, middle peasants and batraks'', called upon party organisations not to restrain it but to organise it to deliver ``a really crushing blow against the political influence, and particularly against the economic prospects, of the kulak stratum of the village.'' ' Davies, op. cit. , p. 228.
A few days before, Odintsev, vice-chairman of the Kolkhoztsentr of the Russian Republic, said: `We must deal with the kulak like we dealt with the bourgeoisie in 1918'. Ibid. , pp. 232--233.
Krylenko admitted a month later that `a spontaneous movement to dekulakization took place locally; it was properly organized only in a few places'. Ibid. , p. 231.
On January 30, 1930, the Central Committee took important decisions to lead the spontaneous dekulakization by publishing a resolution entitled, `On Measures for the Elimination of Kulak Households in Districts of Comprehensive Collectivisation'. Ibid. , p. 233.
The total number of kulak families, divided into three categories, was at most 3--5 per cent in the grain-growing regions and 2--3 per cent in the other regions.
(I)
`The counter-revolutionary activ'. Whether a kulak belonged this category was to be determined by the OGPU (political police), and the resolution set a limit of 63,000 for the whole of the USSR. Their means of production and personal property were to be confiscated; the heads of families were to be sentenced on the spot to imprisonment or confinement in a concentration camp; those among them who were `organisers of terrorist acts, counter-revolutionary demonstrations and insurrectionary organisations' could be sentenced to death. Members of their families were to be exiled as for Category II.
(II)
`The remaining elements of the kulak aktiv', especially the richest kulaks, large-scale kulaks and former semi-landowners. They `manifested less active opposition to the Soviet state but were arch-exploiters and naturally supported the counter-revolutionaries'. Lists of kulak households in this category were to be prepared by district soviets and approved by okrug executive committees on the basis of decisions by meetings of collective farmers and of groups of poor peasants and batraks, guided by instructions from village soviets, within an upper limit for the whole USSR of 150,000 households. The means of production and part of the property of the families on these lists were to be confiscated; they could retain the most essential domestic goods, some means of production, a minimum amount of food and up to 500 rubles per family. They were then to be exiled to remote areas of the Northern region, Siberia, the Urals and Kazakhstan, or to remote districts of their own region.
(III)
The majority of kulaks were probably `reliable in their attitude to Soviet power'. They numbered between 396,000 and 852,000 households. Only part of the means of production were confiscated and they were installed in new land within the administrative district. Ibid. , pp. 235--236.
The next day, on January 31, a Bolshevik editorial explained that the liquidation of the kulaks as a class was `the last decisive struggle with internal capitalism, which must be carried out to the end; nothing must stand in the way; the kulaks as a class will not leave the historical stage without the most savage opposition'. Ibid. , p. 228.
The kulak offensive picks up strength
In Siberia, one thousand acts of terrorism by kulaks were recorded in the first six months of 1930. Between February 1 and March 10, 19 `insurrectionary counter-revolutionary organisations' and 465 `kulak anti-Soviet groupings', including more than 4,000 kulaks, were exposed. According to Soviet historians, `in the period from January to March 15, 1930, the kulaks organised in the whole country (excluding Ukraine) 1,678 armed demonstrations, accompanied by the murder of party and soviet officials and kolkhoz activists, and by the destruction of kolkhozy and collective farmers'. In the Sal'sk okrug in the North Caucausus, riots took place for one week in February 1930. Soviet and Party buildings were burnt down and collective stores were destroyed. The kulaks who were waiting to leave for exile put forward the slogan: `For Soviet power, without communists and kolkhozy'. Calls were made for the dissolution of Party cells and kolkhozy, as well as the liberation of arrested kulaks and the restitution of their confiscated property. Elsewhere, slogans of `Down with the kolkhoz' and `Long live Lenin and Soviet power' were shouted. Ibid. , pp. 258--259.
By the end of 1930, in the three categories, 330,000 kulak families had been expropriated; most of this took place between February and April. We do not know the number of category I kulaks that were exiled, but it is likely that the 63,000 `criminal elements' were the first to be hit; the number of executions of this category is not known either. The exiled from category II numbered 77,975 at the end of 1930. Ibid. , pp. 247--248.
The majority of the expropriations were in the third category; some were reinstalled in the same village, most in the same district.
Kautsky and the `kulak revolution'
When the kulaks threw themselves into their final struggle against socialism, they received unexpected international support. In 1930, Belgian, German and French social-democracy mobilized against Bolshevism, just as a catastrophic crisis was hitting the imperialist countries. In 1930, Kautsky wrote Bolshevism at a Deadlock, in which he affirmed that a democratic revolution was necessary in the Soviet Union, against the `Soviet aristocracy'. Karl Kautsky, Bolshevism at a Deadlock (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1931), pp. 97--98.
He hoped for a `victorious peasant revolt against the Bolshevik régime' in the Soviet Union. Ibid. , p. 150.
He wrote of the `degeneration of Bolshevism into ... Fascism ... in the last twelve years'! Ibid. , pp. 139--140.
Hence, starting from 1930, social democracy was already toying with the theme `
'. This was the same social-democracy that upheld colonialism, that did its utmost to save capitalism after the 1929 crisis, that sustained and organized anti-worker and antipopular repression and, most significantly, that later collaborated with the Nazis!
Kautsky made a `claim for democracy for all'. Ibid. , p. 124.
He called for a wide united front with the Russian right for a `democratic, Parliamentary Republic', claiming that `middle-class democracy in Russia has less interest in capitalism than Western Europe'. Ibid. , p. 173.
Kautsky perfectly summarized the social-democratic line of the 1930s, struggling against the Soviet Union: a `democratic revolution' against the `Soviet aristocracy', against the `fascist disintegration of Bolshevism', for `democracy for all', for a `democratic, Parliamentary Republic'. Those who followed the debates in 1989 will recognize the program and the slogans used by the right-wing forces in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
`Dizzy with success'
By March 1, 1930, 57.2 per cent of all peasant families had joined kolkhozy. In the Central Black Earth Region, the figure reached 83.3 per cent, in the North Caucasus 79.4 per cent and in the Ural 75.6 per cent. The Moscow Region counted 74.2 per cent of collectivized families; Bauman, the Party Secretary, called for complete collectivization for March 10. The Lower Volga counted 70.1 per cent collectivized families, Central Volga 60.3 per cent and Ukraine 60.8 per cent. Davies, op. cit. , pp. 262--263, 442.
This impulsive development of the kolkhozian movement, as well as the violent reaction of the kulaks, who were followed by some of the middle peasants, once again provoked violent discussions and encouraged opposing opinions within the Party.
No later than January 31, Stalin and Molotov sent a telegram to the Party bureau in Central Asia, instructing, `advance cause of collectivization to extent that masses really involved'. Ibid. , p. 239.
On February 4, on orders from the Central Committee, the Central Volga Committee sent instructions to local organizations, stating that `collectivization must be carried out on the basis of the development of broad mass work among poor peasants and middle peasants, with a decisive struggle against the slightest attempts to drive the middle and poor peasants into the kolkhozy by the use of administrative methods'. Ibid. , p. 240.
On February 11, during the Central Committee conference of leading party officials from Central Asia and Transcaucasus, Molotov warned against `kolkhozy on paper'. Following that conference, the administrative methods used in Uzbekistan and in the Chechen region were criticized, as was the lack of preparation of the masses. Ibid. , p. 265.
On February 13, the North Caucasus Committee replaced a number of heads of districts and village soviets, accusing them of `the criminal use of administrative methods, distortion of the class line, completely ignoring directives of the higher organs of power, impermissibly weak work of the soviets and complete absence of mass work, crudeness and a high-handed attitude in dealing with the population'. On February 18, the Committee criticized the complete and forced collectivization of cows, chickens, gardens and child daycare centers, as well as the disobedience to instructions about dekulakization. These criticisms were approved by Stalin. Ibid. , p. 264.
On March 2, 1930, Stalin published an important article entitled, `Dizzy with success'.
Stalin affirmed that in certain cases, an `anti-Leninist frame of mind' ignored the ` voluntary character of the collective farm movement'. Peasants had to be persuaded, through their own experience, `of the power and importance of the new, collective organization of farming'. Stalin, Dizzy with Success: Problems of the Collective Farm Movement. Leninism, p. 170.
In Turkestan, there had been threats of using the army if the peasants refused to enter the kolkhozy. Furthermore, the different conditions in different regions had not been taken into account.
`(N)ot infrequently efforts are made to substitute for preparatory work in organizing collective farms the bureaucratic decreeing of a collective farm movement from above, paper resolutions on the growth of collective farms, the formation of collective farms on paper --- of farms which do not yet exist, but regarding the ``existence'' of which there is a pile of boastful resolutions.' Ibid. , p. 171.
In addition, some had tried to `socialize' everything, and had made `ludicrous attempts to lift oneself by one's own bootstraps'. This `stupid and harmful precipitancy' could only `in practice bring grist to the mill of our class enemies'. Ibid. , pp. 171--172.
The main form of the kolkhozian movement should be the agricultural artel.
`In the agricultural artel the principal means of production, chiefly those used in grain growing, are socialized; labor, the use of the land, machines and other implements, draught animals, farm buildings. But in the artel, household land (small vegetable gardens, small orchards), dwellings, a certain part of the dairy cattle, small livestock, poultry, etc., are not socialized. The artel is the main link of the collective farm movement because it is the most expedient form for solving the grain problem. And the grain problem is the main link in the whole system of agriculture.' Ibid. , p. 172.
On March 10, a Central Committee resolution took up these points, indicating that `in some districts the percentage of `dekulakized' has risen to 15 per cent'. Davies, op. cit. , p. 273.
A Central Committee resolution examined the cases of `dekulakized' sent to Siberia. Of the 46,261 examined cases, six per cent had been improperly exiled. In three months, 70,000 families were rehabilitated in the five regions for which we have information. Ibid. , pp. 280--281.
This figure should be compared with the 330,000 families that had been expropriated, in the three categories, by the end of 1930.
Hindus, a U.S. citizen of Russian origin, was in his native village when Stalin's article arrived. Here is his testimony:
`In the market places peasants gathered in groups and read it aloud and discussed it long and violently, and some of them were so overjoyed that they bought all the vodka they could pay for and got drunk.' Ibid. , p. 271.
`Stalin became a temporary folk hero with the appearance of his ``Dizzyness with success''.' Viola, op. cit. , p. 116.
At the time that Stalin wrote his article, 59 per cent of the peasants had joined kolkhozy. He obviously hoped that most would remain. `Hence the task of our party: to consolidate the successes achieved and to utilize them systematically for the purpose of advancing further'. Stalin, Dizzy with Success, p. 169.
A decree dated April 3 included several special measures destined to consolidate the existing kolkhozy. The collective farmers could keep a certain number of animals and work a plot of land for themselves. Credit of 500 million rubles was set aside for the kolkhozy for that year alone. Some debts and payments of kolkhozy and kolkhozians were dropped. Tax reductions were announced for the next two years. Davies, op. cit. , p. 281.
In the end of March, Molotov warned against retreat. He insisted that, as far as possible, the level of collectivization be retained while the errors were rectified: `Our approach ... is to manoeuvre, and by securing a certain level of organization not entirely voluntarily, consolidate the kolkhozy'. Molotov underlined that the `Bolshevik voluntary principle' differed from the `SR-kulak voluntary principle', which presupposed equality of conditions for the kolkhoz and for individual peasants. Ibid. , p. 276.
But it was necessary to firmly correct leftist and bureaucratic errors. On April 4, Bauman, the Moscow Committee Secretary, one of the bastions of `leftism', resigned from the Politburo. His replacement, Kaganovich, then replaced 153 district and okrug leaders. Ibid. , p. 280.
Right opportunism rears its head
In a rural world dominated by small producers, Stalin's criticism of such blatant errors was clearly dangerous. Enthusiasm easily transformed itself into defeatism, and right opportunism, always present, reared its head when leftist errors were criticized. For many local leaders, there was a feeling of panic and disarray; their morale and their confidence was severely shaken. Some claimed that Stalin's article had destroyed several viable kolkhozy, that he made too many concessions to the kulaks and that he was taking a step backwards towards capitalism. Ibid. , pp. 319--320.
Within the party as a whole, right-opportunist tendencies, beaten in 1929--1930, were still present. Some, afraid of the bitterness and the violence of the class struggle in the countryside, took advantage of the criticism of the excesses of collectivization to start criticizing, once again, the very concept of collectivization. Syrtsov had belonged to Bukharin's right-opportunist group in 1927--1928. In July 1930, he was promoted to the rank of substitute member of the Politburo. On February 20, 1930, he wrote of the `production apathy and production nihilism which have appeared with a considerable section of the peasantry on entering the kolkhozy'. He attacked the `centralization and bureaucratism' prevalent in the kolkhoz movement, called for `developing the initiative of the peasant on a new basis'. Ibid. , p. 300.
This capitulationist position favored a change of course that would help the kulaks. In August 1930, Syrtsov warned against further collectivization and stated that the kolkhozy were not worth anything if they did not have a solid technical basis. At the same time, he stated his skepticism about the perspectives of the Stalingrad tractor factory. In December 1930, he was expelled from the Central Committee. Ibid. , p. 375.
All the anti-Party and counter-revolutionary elements tried to change the criticism of the excesses into a criticism of Stalin and the Party leadership. Alternately attacking the Leninist leadership with right-wing and `leftist' arguments, they tried to put forward anti-Communist positions.
During a meeting of the Timiryazev Agriculture Academy in Moscow, a man cried out, `Where was the CC during the excesses?' A Pravda editorial dated May 27 `condemned as `demagogy' all attempts to ` discredit the Leninist leadership of the party' '. Ibid. , pp. 322--323.
A man named Mamaev, during a discussion period, wrote: `the question involuntarily arises --- whose head got dizzy? ... one should speak about one's own disease, not teach the lower party masses about it'. Mamaev denounced `the mass application of repressive measures to the middle and poor peasants'. The countryside would only be ready for collectivization when mechanization was possible. He then criticized the `comprehensive bureaucratisation' in the party and condemned the `artificial inflaming of the class struggle'. Mamaev was correctly denounced as `an agent of the kulaks within the party'. Ibid. , pp. 325--327.
Expelled from the Soviet Union, Trotsky systematically chose positions opposed to those taken by the Party. In February 1930, he denounced the accelerated collectivization and dekulakization as a `bureaucratic adventure'. Attempting to establish socialism in one country, based on the equipment of a backward peasant, is doomed to failure, he cried out. `In March, he condemned Stalin for failing to admit that the `utopian reactionary character of ``100 per cent collectivisation'' ' lay in `the compulsory organisation of huge collective farms without the technological basis that could alone insure their superiority over small ones' '. He asserted that the kolkhozy `will fall apart while waiting for the technical base'. Ibid. , pp. 327--328.
Trotsky's `leftist' criticisms were no longer distinguishable from those of the right opportunists.
Rakovsky, the main Trotskyist who remained in the Soviet Union, in internal exile, called for the overthrow of the `centrist leadership' headed by Stalin. The kolkhozians would explode and would constitute one front of the campaign against the socialist state. The kulak should not be discouraged from producing by limiting his means. Industrial products should be imported for the peasants and the Soviet industrialization program should be slowed down. Rakovsky recognized that his propositions resembled those of the right-wing, but `the distinction between ourselves and the Rights is the distinction between an army retreating in order and deserters fleeing from the battlefield'. Ibid. , pp. 335--336.
Finally, the collectivization rate fell from 57.2 per cent on March 1, 1930 to 21.9 per cent on August 1, rising again to 25.9 per cent in January 1931.
In the Central Black Earth Region, the numbers fell from 83.3 per cent on March 1 to 15.4 per cent on July 1. The Moscow Region saw a drop from 74.2 per cent to 7.5 per cent on May 1. The quality of political and ideological work was clearly reflected in the number of peasants who withdrew from the kolkhozy. Lower Volga, starting from 70.1 per cent on March 1, dropped to 35.4 per cent on August 1 and rose again to 57.5 per cent on January 1, 1931. North Caucasus obtained the best results: 79.4 per cent on March 1, 50.2 per cent on July 1 and 60.0 per cent on January 1, 1931. Ibid. , pp. 442--443, Table 17.
However, for the most part, the gains of the first large wave of collectivization were remarkable.
The collectivization rate greatly exceeded what was planned for the end of the first Five-Year Plan, in 1933. In May 1930, after the massive departures from kolkhozy, there were still six million families, as opposed to one million in June 1929. The typical kolkhoz contained 70 families instead of 18 in June 1929. The collectivization rate was higher, and the kolkhoz were for the most part artels, instead of TOZy (Associations for the Joint Cultivation of Land). The number of dairy cattle increased from 2.11 million in January 1930 to 4.77 million in May 1930. In the kolkhozy, there were 81,957 Party members on June 1, 1929; they numbered 313,200 in May 1930. With the great collectivization wave, the kolkhozy consisted mainly of landless and poor peasants. However, a large number of middle peasants had joined. In May, 32.7 per cent of the leading members were former middle peasants. Ibid. , pp. 285--286, 288.
In May 1930, the fixed assets of the kolkhozes were valued at 510 million rubles, 175 million coming from the expropriation of the kulaks. Ibid. , p. 251.
Despite the major upheavals provoked by collectivization, the 1930 harvest was excellent. Good climactic conditions had contributed, and these might have led the Party into under-estimating the difficulties still to come.
Grain production amounted to, depending on the figures, between 77.2 and 83.5 million tonnes, compared to 71.7 in 1929. Ibid. , p. 419.
Thanks to national planning, mechanized agriculture, particularly of cotton and beets, rose by 20 per cent. However, because of the slaughter of a large number of animals, animal production decreased from 5.68 million rubles to 4.40, a drop of 22 per cent.
In 1930, the entire collective sector (kolkhozy, sovkhozy and individual plots of kolkhozians) generated 28.4 per cent of the gross agricultural production, compared to 7.6 per cent the previous year. Ibid. , pp. 337--339.
Grain delivery to the cities increased from 7.47 million tonnes in 1929--1930 to 9.09 million in 1930--1931, i.e. 21.7 per cent. But, given the tremendous development of industry, the number of people receiving bread rations increased from 26 to 33 million, i.e. 27 per cent. Ibid. , pp. 360--361.
The consumption of agricultural products slightly decreased in the countryside, passing from 60.55 rubles per person in 1928, to 61.95 in 1929, and to 58.62 in 1930. But the consumption of industrial products passed from 28.29 rubles in 1928, to 32.30 the next year, and to 32.33 in 1930. The total consumption of the rural population evolved from an index of 100 in 1928, to 105.4 in 1929, and to 102.4 in 1930. The standard of living in the countryside therefore slightly increased, while it had decreased similarly in the city. The total consumption per person in the city evolved from 100 in 1928, to 97.6 in 1929, and to 97.5 the following year. Ibid. , pp. 369--370.
These figures contradict the accusations made by Bukharin and the right wing, according to whom Stalin had organized `the feudal-bureaucratic exploitation' of the peasantry: the entire working population made enormous sacrifices to build socialism and to industrialize, and the sacrifices asked of the workers were often greater than the sacrifices asked of the peasants.
To feed the cities and succeed with the industrialization, the Soviet state followed a policy of extremely low prices for grain. But in 1930, peasant revenues considerably increased from sales on free markets and from seasonal work. As Davies wrote:
`The state secured essential supplies of agricultural products at prices far below the market level. But, taking collections and market sales together, the prices received by the agricultural producer increased far more rapidly than the prices of industrial goods. The terms of trade turned in favour of agriculture.' Ibid. , p. 369.
`The centralized control of agricultural production seemed to have had some success in its primary aim of securing food supplies for the urban population and agricultural raw materials for industry.' Ibid. , p. 371.
The rise of socialist agriculture
In October 1930, 78 per cent of peasant families were still individual producers, directed towards the market. The October 21 issue of Pravda wrote:
`(I)n the circumstances of the present autumn when there has been a good harvest ... in the circumstances of high speculative prices for grain, meat and vegetables at the markets, certain middle peasant households are rapidly transformed into well-to-do and kulak house-holds.' Ibid. , p. 358.
The second wave of collectivization
Between September and December 1930, a propaganda campaign for the kolkhozy was launched. The leadership of kolkhozy distributed activity reports to individual peasants in their area. Special meetings were called for those who had left the kolkhozy in March. In September, 5,625 `recruitment commissions', composed of kolkhozians, went to districts with low collectivization rates to persuade the peasants. In the Central Black Earth region, 3.5 million individual peasants were invited to general assemblies of kolkhozy, where annual reports were presented.
Kulaks who were sabotaging the collectivization continued to be exiled, particularly in Ukraine, where, in the beginning of 1931, the total number of exiled of the three categories was 75,000. Ibid. , pp. 378--379.
But the fall 1930 collectivization campaign was carefully led by the Party leadership: it was not led with the same rigor and forcefulness as the first wave, and there was no centralized campaign to exile the kulaks. Ibid. , p. 380.
From September 1 to December 31, 1930, 1,120,000 families joined the kolkhozy, just over half in the grain producing regions. So 25.9 per cent of families opted for collectivized agriculture. Ibid. , pp. 441--442.
By allocating the best land and different kinds of benefits to the kolkhozians, the economic pressure on the individual peasants increased during 1931 and 1932. At the same time, the kulaks made their last desperate attempts to destroy the kolkhozy.
The second great wave of collectivization took place in 1931 and brought the number of collectivized families from 23.6 per cent to 57.1 per cent. During the next three years, there was a slight annual increase of 4.6 per cent.
From 1934 to 1935, the collectivization level passed from 71.4 per cent to 83.2 per cent, essentially finishing the collectivization of agriculture. Bettelheim, op. cit. , p. 66.
Economic and social creativity
It is often claimed that the 1930 collectivization was imposed by force on the peasant masses. We wish to underscore the extraordinary social and economic creativity of this period, a revolutionary creativity shown by the masses, intellectual cadres and Party leaders. Most of the basic traits of the socialist agricultural system were `invented' during the 1929--1931 struggle. Davies recognized this:
`This was a learning process on a vast scale, and in an extremely brief period of time, in which party leaders and their advisers, local party officials, the peasants and economic regularities all contributed to the outcome .... Major features of the kolkhoz system established in 1929--30 endured until Stalin's death, and for some time after it.' R. W. Davies, The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia II: The Soviet Collective Farm, 1929--1930 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 13--14.
First, the kolkhoz was conceived as the organizational form that would allow the introduction of large-scale mechanized production in a backward agricultural country. The kolkhozy were designed for grain production and industrial agriculture, particularly cotton and beets. The production from the kolkhozy was supplied to the state at very low prices, which helped with the socialist industrialization: the sums spent by the state to feed the city populations and to supply industry with agricultural raw materials were kept very low. The kolkhozians received compensation, thanks to the considerable revenue generated by sale on the free market and by supplementary work.
Next, the Tractor Machine Station system was created to introduce machines in the countryside. Bettelheim wrote:
`Given the juridical basis for collectivization, agriculture benefited from massive investments that totally transformed the technical conditions of farms.
`This complete upheaval of agricultural technique was only possible thanks to the replacement of small- and medium-scale agriculture by large-scale agriculture.' Bettelheim, op. cit. , p. 73.
But how were modern techniques introduced in the kolkhozy? The question was not simple.
During the summer of 1927, Markevich created at Shevchenko an original system, the Tractor Machine Stations (TMS), that centralized control of machines and made them available to the kolkhozy.
In the beginning of 1929, there were two Tractor Machine Stations, both state property, with 100 tractors. There were also 50 `tractor columns', belonging to grain cooperatives, each with 20 tractors. The 147 large kolkhozy had 800 tractors; the majority of the 20,000 tractors were dispersed on the small kolkhozy. Davies, op. cit. , p. 15.
In July 1929, most of the tractors were therefore in the hands of agricultural cooperatives or kolkhozy. During a conference, some proposed that tractors and machines be sold to the kolkhozy: if the peasants did not directly own the tractors, then they would not mobilize to find the funds. But the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection criticized in August 1929 the experiences with tractors belonging to cooperatives. This system made it impossible to do serious planning, the population was not adequately prepared, and, since there were not sufficient repair shops, breakdowns often occurred due to lack of maintenance. Ibid. , pp. 20--21.
In February 1930, the Party abandoned the giant kolkhozy experience, popular until then among the activists, to take up the village--kolkhoz as the basis for collectivization. In September 1930, the Party decided to centralize the tractors used in kolkhozy by creating Tractor Machine Stations, which would be state property. Ibid. , pp. 25, 27.
Markevich proposed to use 200 tractors for every 40 to 50,000 hectares of arable land, along with a repair shop. He underlined that it was necessary for agricultural technology to be managed by a `unified organizational centre' for the entire Soviet Union. Important districts had to be chosen, technology used around the world had to be studied in order to find the best kind of machines, machines had to be standardized and the management of machines had to be centralized. The TMS should be the property of this center. Ibid. , pp. 16--18.
As early as spring 1930, this system showed its superiority. The TMS only served 8 per cent of the kolkhozy, but 62 per cent of the peasants in those kolkhozy remained during the `retreat'. The centralized harvest was greatly simplified by this system, since the kolkhozy simply gave one quarter of their harvest to the TMS as payment. Ibid. , p. 28--29.
TMS workers were considered industrial workers. Representing the working class in the countryside, they had great influence among the kolkhozians in the areas of political and technical education and of organization. In 1930, 25,000 tractor drivers received their education. In the spring of 1931, courses were organized for 200,000 young peasants who would enter the TMS, including 150,000 tractor drivers. Ibid. , pp. 29, 32.
Third, an ingenious system for payment of the kolkhozians was devised, called `work-days'.
A decree dated February 28, 1933 placed the different agricultural tasks in seven different renumeration categories, whose value, expressed in `work-days', varied from 0.5 to 1.5. In other words, the most difficult or arduous work was paid three times as dearly as the easiest or lightest work. The kolkhoz' revenue was distributed, at the end of the year, to the kolkhozians according to the number of work-days they had effected. The average revenue per family, in the cereal regions, was 600.2 kilograms of grain and 108 rubles in 1932. In 1937, it was 1,741.7 kilograms of grain and 376 rubles. Bettelheim, op. cit. , pp. 102, 112.
Finally, a balance was found between collective labor and the individual activity of the kolkhozian peasants. The legal status of the kolkhozy, made official on February 7, 1935, fixed the basic principles, defined through five years of struggle and experience. Ibid. , pp. 61--65.
In 1937, the individual parcels of land cultivated by kolkhozians represented 3.9 per cent of the cultivated surface, but the kolkhozians derived 20 per cent of their revenue from them. Each family could own three horned animals, one of which could be a cow, one sow with piglets, ten sheep and an unlimited number of foul and rabbits. Ibid. , pp. 67--68.
Investments in the countryside
At the end of 1930, the Tractor Machine Stations controlled 31,114 tractors. According to the Plan, they should have controlled 60,000 in 1931. This figure was not attained, but by 1932, the TMS did have 82,700 tractors. The rest of the 148,500 units were on the sovkhozy.
The total number of tractors increased steadily during the thirties: from 210,900 in 1933, to 276,400 in 1934, jumping to 360,300 in 1935, and to 422,700 in 1936. In 1940, the USSR had 522,000 tractors. Ibid. , pp. 76--78.
Another statistic indicates the number of tractors in units of 15 horsepower. It shows the extraordinary efforts made during the years 1930--1932.
In the beginning of 1929, the rural part of the Soviet Union held 18,000 tractors --- counted as units of 15 horsepower ---, 14 000 trucks and 2 (two!) combines. At the beginning of 1933, there were 148,000 tractors, 14,000 trucks and as many combines. At the beginning of the war, in 1941, the kolkhozy and the sovkhozy used, using the same units, 684,000 tractors, 228,000 trucks and 182,000 combines. Progrès, op. cit. , p. 142.
Despite all the bourgeoisie's hue and cry about the repression suffered by the rich peasants during the collectivization, in less than one decade, the Russian peasants left the Middle Ages and joined the twentieth century. Their cultural and technical development was phenomenal.
This progress properly reflected the sustained rise in investment in agriculture. It increased from 379 million rubles in 1928, to 2,590 million in 1930, to 3,645 million in 1931, stayed at the same level for two years, reaching its highest levels at 4,661 million in 1934 and 4,983 million in 1935. Bettelheim, op. cit. , p. 74.
These figures deny the theory according to which Soviet agriculture was `exploited' by the city: never could a capitalist economy have made such large investments in the countryside. Agriculture's share in the total investment increased from 6.5 per cent in 1923--1924 to 20 per cent during the crucial years 1931 and 1932; in 1935, its share was 18 per cent. Ibid.
The breakthrough of socialist agriculture
Starting in 1933, agricultural production rose most years. The year before collectivization, the cereal harvest attained 71.7 million tonnes. In 1930, there was an exceptional harvest of 83.5 million tonnes. In 1931 and 1932, the Soviet Union was in the depth of the crisis, due to socio-economic upheavals, to desperate kulak resistance, to the little support that could be given to peasants in these crucial years of industrial investment, to the slow introduction of machines and to drought. Grain production fell to 69.5 and to 69.9 million tonnes. Then, there were three successive harvests from 1933 to 1935 of 89.8, 89.4 and 90.1 million tonnes. Particularly bad climactic conditions produced the worst harvest, in 1936, of 69.3 million tonnes, but its effects were mitigated by reserves and good planning of distribution. The next year, there was a record harvest of 120.9 million tonnes, followed by high levels of 95.0, 105.0 and 118.8 million between 1938 and 1940. Ibid. , p. 82.
Socialist agriculture dramatically rose as soon as the considerable industrial and agricultural investments had an effect. The total value of agricultural production stagnated between 1928 and 1934, oscillating between 13.1 billion rubles and 14.7 billion rubles. Then it rose to 16.2 billion in 1935, to 20.1 billion in 1937, and 23.2 billion in 1940. Ibid. , p. 89.
A peasant population rising from 120.7 to 132 million people between 1926 and 1940 was able to feed an urban population that increased from 26.3 to 61 million in the same period. Ibid. , p. 93.
The kolkhozian consumption in 1938 had increased, in terms of percentage of peasant consumption under the former régime, to: bread and flour, 125; potatoes, 180; fruit and vegetables, 147; milk and dairy products, 148; meat and sausage, 179. Ibid. , p. 113, n. 1.
The collectivization of the countryside halted the spontaneous tendency of small-scale merchant production to polarize society into rich and poor, into exploiters and exploited. The kulaks, the rural bourgeois, were repressed and eliminated as a social class. The development of a rural bourgeoisie in a country where 80 per cent of the population still lived in the countryside would have asphyxiated and killed Soviet socialism. The collectivization prevented that from happening.
Collectivization and a planned economy allowed the Soviet Union to survive the total, barbaric war waged against it by the German Nazis. During the first years of the war, wheat consumption was reduced by one half but, thanks to planning, the available quantities were equitably distributed. The regions occupied and ravaged by the Nazis represented 47 per cent of the area of cultivated land. The fascists destroyed 98,000 collective enterprises. But between 1942 and 1944, 12 million hectares of newly cultivated land were sown in the eastern part of the country. Ibid. , p. 83, 90.
Thanks to the superiority of the socialist system, agricultural production was able to reach the 1940 level by 1948. Ibid. , p. 85.
In a few years, a completely new system of organization of work, a complete upheaval of technique and a profound cultural revolution won the hearts of the peasants. Bettelheim noted:
`(T)he overwhelming majority of peasants were very attached to the new system of exploitation. The proof came during the war, since in the regions occupied by the German troops, despite the efforts made by the Nazi authorities, the kolkhozian form of exploitation was maintained.' Ibid. , pp. 113--114.
This opinion by someone who favored the Communist system can be completed with the testimony of Alexander Zinoviev, an opponent of Stalin. As a child, Zinoviev was a witness to the collectivization.
`When I returned to the village, even much later, I often asked my mother and other kolkhozians if they would have accepted an individual farm if they were offered the possibility. They all refused categorically.' Zinoviev, op. cit. , p. 53.
`(The village school) had only seven grades, but acted as the bridge to the region's technical schools, which trained the veterinarians, agronomists, mechanics, tractor drivers, accountants and other specialists needed for the new `agriculture'. In Chukhloma, there was a secondary school with ten grades that offered better perspectives to its finishing students. All these institutions and professions were the result of an unprecedented cultural revolution. The collectivization directly contributed to this upheaval. Besides these more or less trained specialists, the villages hosted technicians from the cities; these technicians had a secondary or higher education. The structure of the rural population became closer to that of urban society .... I was a witness to this evolution during my childhood .... This extremely rapid change of rural society gave the new system huge support from the masses of the population. All this despite the horrors of the collectivization and the industrialization.' Ibid. , p. 56.
The extraordinary achievements of the Soviet régime ensured it `a colossal support' from the workers and `a disgust of the horrors' from the exploiting classes: Zinoviev constantly wavers between these two positions. Student after the war, Zinoviev recalls a discussion that he had with another anti-Communist student:
`If there had been no collectivization and no industrialization, could we have won the war against the Germans?
`No.
`Without the Stalinist hardships, could we have have kept the country in an orderly state?
`No.
`If we had not built up industry and armaments, could we have preserved the security and independence of our State?
`No.
`So, what do you propose?
`Nothing.' Ibid. , p. 236.
The collectivization `genocide'
During the eighties, the Right took up several themes that the Nazis had developed during the pyschological war against the Soviet Union. Since 1945, efforts to rehabilitate Nazism have generally started with affirmations such as `Stalinism was at least as barbaric as Nazism'. Ernst Nolte, followed by Jürgen Habermas, claimed in 1986 that the extermination of the kulaks by Stalin could be compared to the extermination of the Jews by Hitler!
` Auschwitz is not primarily a result of traditional anti-semitism. It was in its core not merely a `genocide' but was above all a reaction born out of the anxiety of the annihilating occurrences of the Russian Revolution. This copy was far more irrational than the original.' Stefan Merl, ,,Ausrottung`` der Bourgeoisie und der Kulaken in Sowjetruss land? Geschichte und Gesellschaft 13 (1987), p. 368.
Hence the Nazis were tormented by the `anxiety' that the Stalinist crimes created; and the extermination of the Jews was a `reaction' to this `anxiety'. Hitler, in his time, made similar declarations: the invasion of the Soviet Union was a `self-defence' measure against Judeo-Bolshevism. And some still wonder why fascism is rising in Germany.
The Soviet term, `liquidation of the kulaks as a class', indicates perfectly clearly that it is the capitalist exploitation organized by the kulaks that is to be eliminated and not the physical liquidation of the kulaks as persons. Playing with the word `liquidation', academic hacks such as Nolte and Conquest claim that the exiled kulaks were `exterminated'.
Stefan Merl, a German researcher, describes the precarious conditions in which the first kulaks were expropriated and sent to Siberia, during the first wave of collectivization in January--March 1930.
`With the beginning of spring, the situation in the receiving camps aggravated. Epidemics were widespread, leaving many victims, particularly among the children. For this reason, all children were removed from the camps in April 1930 and sent back to their native villages. At that time, some 400,000 persons had already been deported to the North; until the summer of 1930, probably 20,000 to 40,000 persons died'. Ibid. , p. 376.
Here, Merl informs us that a great number of the `victims of the Stalinist terror during the collectivization' died because of epidemics and that the Party promptly reacted to protect children.
Merl estimated that the fall 1930 transports `took place in less barbaric conditions'. The majority were sent to Siberia and Kazakhstan, `regions where there existed a considerable deficit of labor ....' Merl, op. cit. , p. 377.
During the years 1930--1935, the Soviet Union was short of labor, especially in newly developed regions. The régime tried to use all available forces. It is difficult to see why it would have `killed' men who had been working the land in Siberia or Kazakhstan for the previous year or two. Nevertheless, Merl estimates that the 100,000 heads of family of the first category, sent to the Gulag system, are all dead. But the Party only placed 63,000 kulaks in the first category and only those guilty of terrorist and counter-revolutionary acts should be executed. Merl continues:
`Another 100,000 persons probably lost their lives, at the beginning of 1930, due to expulsion from their houses, deportation towards the North and executions'. Then he adjusts the number by another 100,000 persons, `dead in the deportation regions at the end of the thirties'. Once again, no precision or indication. Ibid.
Merl's number of 300,000 dead is based on very approximate estimates and many of these deaths were the result of natural causes, old age and disease, and general conditions in the country.
Nevertheless, he is forced to defend these `weak' estimates when confronted by a crypto-fascist such as Conquest, who `calculated' that 6,500,000 kulaks were `massacred' during the collectivization, 3,500,000 in the Siberian camps! Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-Famine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 306. Stefan Merl, Wie viele Opfer forderte die ,,Liquidierung der Kulaken als Klasse``? Geschichte und Gesellschaft 14 (1988), p. 534.
Conquest is a major `authority' in the right wing. But Merl noted that Conquest's writings show a `frightening lack of criticism of sources'. Conquest `uses writings from obscure émigrés taking up information transmitted by second or third hand .... Often, what he presents as `facts' are only verified by a single questionable source.' Ibid. , p. 535.
`The number of victims put forward by Conquest is more than double the number of deportees, according to his ``proof''.' Ibid. , p. 537.
For a long time, writings by authors who are not Communists, such as Merl, allowed one to refute Conquest's gross slanders.
But in 1990, Zemskov and Dugin, two Soviet historians, published detailed statistics of the Fulag. Hence the exact figures are now available and they refute most of Conquest's lies.
During the most violent period of the collectivization, in 1930--1931, the peasants expropriated 381,026 kulaks and sent their families to unplowed land to the East. These included 1,803,392 persons. As of 1 January 1932, there were 1,317,022 people in the new establishments. The difference is of 486,000. The disorganization helping, many of the deported were able to escape during the trip, which often took three months or more. (To give an idea, of the 1,317,022 settled, 207,010 were able to flee during the year 1932.) Nicolas Werth, `Goulag: les vrais chiffres'. L'Histoire 169 (September 1993), pp. 38--51. More details can be found in J. Arch Getty, Gábor T. Rittersporn and Viktor N. Zemskov. Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-war Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence. The America Historical Review, October 1993, pp. 1017--1049.
Others, whose case was reviewed, were allowed to return home. An undetermined number, that we have estimated at 100,000, died during the travels, mainly because of epidemics. The considerable number of deaths during displacements must be seen in the context of that epoch: a weak administration, precarious living conditions for the entire population, sometimes chaotic class struggles among the peasant population overtaken by leftism. Of course, for each death during displacement, the Right affirms that the guilty party is the Party, is Stalin. But in fact the contrary is true. The Party's position is clearly stated in one of the numerous reports about this problem, this one dated 20 December 1931 by the person responsible for a work camp at Novossibirsk.
`The high mortality observed for convoys nos 18 to 23 coming from the North Caucasus --- 2,421 persons out of 10,086 upon departure --- can be explained by the following reasons:
`1. A negligent, criminal approach to the selection of deported contingents, among whom were many children, aged over 65 years of age and sick people;
`2. The non-respect of directives about the right for deportees to bring with them provisions for two months of transfer.
`3. The lack of clean water, which forced the deported to drink unclean water. Many are dead of dysentery and of other epidemics.' Werth, op. cit. , p. 44.
All these deaths are classed under the heading `Stalinist crimes'. But this report shows that two of the causes of death were linked to the non-respect of Party directives and the third had to do with the deplorable sanitary conditions and habits in the entire country.
Conquest `calculated' that 3,500,000 kulaks were `exterminated' in the camps. Conquest, op. cit. , p. 306.
But the total number of dekulakized in the colonies never exceeded 1,317,022! And between 1932 and 1935, the number of departures exceeded by 299,389 the number of arrivals. From 1932 to the end of 1940, the exact number of deaths, essentially due to natural causes, was 389,521. And this number does not just include dekulakized, since after 1935 other categories were in the colonies as well.
What can one say about Conquest's affirmation of 6,500,000 `massacred' kulaks during the different phases of the collectivization? Only part of the 63,000 first category counter-revolutionaries were executed. The number of dead during deportations, largely due to famine and epidemics, was approximately 100,000. Between 1932 and 1940, we can estimate that 200,000 kulaks died in the colonies of natural causes. The executions and these deaths took place during the greatest class struggle that the Russian countryside ever saw, a struggle that radically transformed a backward and primitive countryside. In this giant upheaval, 120 million peasants were pulled out of the Middle Ages, of illiteracy and obscurantism. It was the reactionary forces, who wanted to maintain exploitation and degrading and inhuman work and living conditions, who received the blows. Repressing the bourgeoisie and the reactionaries was absolutely necessary for collectivization to take place: only collective labor made socialist mechanization possible, thereby allowing the peasant masses to lead a free, proud and educated life.
Through their hatred of socialism, Western intellectuals spread Conquest's absurd lies about 6,500,000 `exterminated' kulaks. They took up the defence of bourgeois democracy, of imperialist democracy. In Mozambique, Renamo, organized by the CIA and the security services of South Africa, has massacred and starved 900,000 villagers since 1980. The goal: prevent Mozambique from becoming an independent country with a socialist direction. In Mozambique, Western intellectuals did not need to invent cadavers, all they needed to do was write about imperialist barbarity. But these 900,000 deaths are a non-fact: no-one talks about them.
Unita, also openly financed and supported by the CIA and South Africa, killed more than one million Angolans during the civil war against the MPLA nationalist government. After having lost the 1992 elections, Savimbi, the CIA man, took up his destructive war yet again.
`The Angolan tragedy threatens the life of 3 million people .... Savimbi refused to accept the government's electoral victory of 129 seats against 91 and has plunged Angola yet again in a ferocious conflict that has taken another 100,000 lives (in the last twelve months).' Time, 18 October 1993, European edition, p. 50. Translated from the French translation.
One hundred thousand Africans, of course, are nothing. How many Western intellectuals who still like to scream about the collectivization have simply not noticed that two million Mozambican and Angolan peasants were massacred by the West to prevent these countries from becoming truly independent and escaping from the clutches of international capital?
7. Collectivization and the 'Ukrainian Holocaust'
Lies about the collectivization have always been, for the bourgeoisie, powerful weapons in the psychological war against the Soviet Union.
We analyze the development of one of the most `popular' lies, the holocaust supposedly perpetrated by Stalin against the Ukrainian people. This brilliantly elaborated lie was created by Hitler. In his 1926 Mein Kampf, he had already indicated that Ukraine belonged to German `lebensraum'. The campaign waged by the Nazis in 1934--1935 about the Bolshevik `genocide' in Ukraine was to prepare people's minds for the planned `liberation' of Ukraine. We will see why this lie outlived its Nazi creators to become a U.S. weapon. Here are how fabrications of `millions of victims of Stalinism' are born.
On February 18, 1935, the Hearst press in the U.S. began the publication of a series of articles by Thomas Walker. (Hearst was a huge press magnate and a Nazi sympathizer.) Great traveler and journalist, Walker had supposedly crisscrossed the Soviet Union for several years. The February 25 headline of the Chicago American read, `Six Million Perish in Soviet Famine: Peasants' Crops Seized, They and Their Animals Starve.' In the middle of the page, another headline read, `Reporter Risks Life to Get Photographs Showing Starvation.' At the bottom of the page, `Famine --- Crime Against Humanity'. Douglas Tottle, Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard (Toronto: Progress Books, 1987), pp. 5--6.
At the time, Louis Fischer was working in Moscow for the U.S. newspaper The Nation. This scoop by a completely unknown colleague intrigued him greatly. He did some research and shared his findings with the newspaper's readers:
`Mr. Walker, we are informed, ``entered Russia last spring,'' that is the spring of 1934. He saw famine. He photographed its victims. He got heartrending, first-hand accounts of hunger's ravages. Now hunger in Russia is ``hot'' news. Why did Mr. Hearst keep these sensational articles for ten months before printing them ....
`I consulted Soviet authorities who had official information from Moscow. Thomas Walker was in the Soviet Union once. He received a transit visa from the Soviet Consul in London on September 29, 1934. He entered the USSR from Poland by train at Negoreloye on October 12, 1934. (Not the spring of 1934 as he says.) He was in Moscow on the thirteenth. He remained in Moscow from Saturday, the thirteenth, to Thursday, the eighteenth, and then boarded a trans-Siberian train which brought him to the Soviet-Manchurian border on October 25, 1934 .... It would have been physically impossible for Mr. Walker, in the five days between October 13 and October 18, to cover one-third of the points he ``describes'' from personal experience. My hypothesis is that he stayed long enough in Moscow to gather from embittered foreigners the Ukrainian ``local color'' he needed to give his articles the fake verisimilitude they possess.'
Fischer had a friend, Lindsay Parrott, also American, who visited the Ukraine in the beginning of 1934. He noticed no traces of the famine mentioned in Hearst's press. On the contrary, the 1933 harvest was successful. Fischer concluded:
`The Hearst organizations and the Nazis are beginning to work more and more closely together. But I have not noticed that the Hearst press printed Mr. Parrott's stories about a prosperous Soviet Ukraine. Mr. Parrott is Mr. Hearst's correspondent in Moscow.' The Nation 140 (36), 13 March 1935, quoted in Tottle, op. cit. , p. 8.
Underneath a photograph of a little girl and a `frog-like' child, Walter wrote:
`FRIGHTFUL --- Below Kharhov (sic), in a typical peasant's hut, dirt floor, thatched roof and one piece of furniture, a bench, was a very thin girl and her 2 1/2 year old brother (shown above). This younger child crawled about the floor like a frog and its poor little body was so deformed from lack of nourishment that it did not resemble a human being.' Tottle, op. cit. , p. 9.
Douglas Tottle, a Canadian union worker and journalist, found the picture of this same `frog-like' child, dated spring 1934, in a 1922 publication about the famine of that year.
Another photo by Walker was identified as that of a soldier in the Austrian cavalry, beside a dead horse, taken during the First World War. James Casey, Daily Worker, 21 February 1935, quoted in Tottle, op. cit. , p. 9.
Poor Walker: his reporting was fake, his photographs were fake, even his name was assumed. His real name was Robert Green. He had escaped from the Colorado state prison after having done two years out of eight. Then he went to do his false reporting in the Soviet Union. Upon his return to the States, he was arrested, where he admitted in front of the court that he had never set foot in the Ukraine.
The multi-millionnaire William Randolph Heast met Hitler at the end of the summer of 1934 to finalize an agreement under which Germany would buy its international news from the Hearst-owned company International News Service. At the time, the Nazi press had already started up a propaganda campaign about the `Ukrainian famine'. Hearst took it up quickly, thanks to his great explorer, Walker. Tottle, op. cit. , pp. 13, 15.
Other similar reports on the famine would show up in Hearst's press. For example, Fred Beal started to write. A U.S. worker sentenced to twenty years of prison after a strike, he fled to the Soviet Union in 1930 and worked for two years in the Kharkov Tractor Works. In 1933, he wrote a little book called Foreign workers in a Soviet Tractor Plant, favorably describing the efforts of the Soviet people. At the end of 1933, he returned to the U.S., where unemployment and prison awaited him. In 1934, he started to write about the Ukrainian famine, and soon his prison sentence was dramatically reduced. When his `eyewitness account' was published by Hearst in June 1935, J. Wolynec, another U.S. worker who had worked for five years in the same Kharkov factory, exposed the lies that showed up throughout the text. Although Beal pretended to have heard several conversations, Wolynec noted that Beal spoke neither Russian nor Ukrainian. In 1948, Beal offered his services to the far-right as an eyewitness against Communists, in front of the McCarthy Committee. Ibid. , pp. 19--21.
In 1935, Dr. Ewald Ammende published a book, Muss Russland hungern? (1936 English title: Human Life in Russia) Its sources: the German Nazi press, the Italian fascist press, the Ukrainian émigré press and `travelers' and `experts', cited with no details. He published photos that he claimed `are among the most important sources for the actual facts of the Russian position'. Ibid. , pp. 23--24.
There are also photos belonging to Dr. Ditloff, who was until August 1933 Director of the German Government Agricultural Concession --- Drusag in the North Caucasus. Ditloff claimed to have taken the photos in the summer of 1933 `and they demonstrate the conditions ... (in) the Hunger Zone'. Ibid. , p. 25.
Given that he was by then a civil servant of the Nazi government, how could Ditloff have freely moved from the Caucasus to the Ukraine to hunt pictures? Among Ditloff's photos, seven, including that of the `frog-like' child, had also been published by Walker. Another photo presented two skeletal-like boys, symbols of the 1933 Ukrainian famine. The same picture was shown in Peter Ustinov's televised series Russia: it comes from a documentary film about the 1922 Russian famine! Another of Ammende's photos was published by the Nazi paper Volkischer Beobachter, dated August 18, 1933. This photo was also identified among books dating back to 1922.
Ammende had worked in the Volga region in 1913. During the 1917--1918 Civil War, he had held positions in the pro-German counter-revolutionary governments of Estonia and Latvia. Then he worked in liaison with the Skoropadsky government set up by the German army in the Ukraine in March 1918. He claimed to have participated in the humanitarian aid campaigns during the 1921--1922 Russian famine, hence his familiarity with the photos of the period. For years, Ammende served as General Secretary of the so-called European Nationalities Congress, close to the Nazi Party, which included regrouped émigrés from the Soviet Union. At the end of 1933, Ammende was appointed Honorary Secretary of the Interconfessional and International Relief Committee for the Russian Famine Areas, which was led by the pro-fascist Cardinal Innitzer of Vienna. Ammende was therefore closely tied to the Nazi anti-Soviet campaign.
When Reagan started up his anti-Communist crusade at the beginning of the eighties, Professor James E. Mace of Harvard University thought it opportune to re-edit and re-publish Ammende's book under the title Human Life in Russia. That was in 1984. So all the Nazi lies and the fake photographic evidence, including Walker's pseudo-reporting on the Ukraine, were granted the `academic respectability' associated with the Harvard name.
The preceding year, far-right Ukrainian émigrés in the U.S. published The Great Famine in Ukraine: The Unknown Holocaust. Douglas Tottle was able to check that the photos in this book dated to 1921--1922. Hence the photo on the cover comes from Dr. F. Nansen's International Committee for Russian Relief publication Information 22, Geneva, April 30, 1922, p. 6! Ibid. , pp. 4--31.
Neo-Nazi revisionism around the world `revises' history to justify, above all, the barbaric crimes of fascism against Communists and the Soviet Union. First, it denies the crimes that they themselves committed against the Jews. Neo-Nazis deny the existence of extermination camps where millions of Jews were slaughtered. They then invent `holocausts', supposedly perpetrated by Communists and by Comrade Stalin. With this lie, they justify the bestial crimes that the Nazis committed in the Soviet Union. For this, revisionism at the service of the anti-Communist struggle, they receive the full support of Reagan, Bush, Thatcher and company.
Thousands of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators succeeded in entering the U.S. after the Second World War. During the McCarthy period, they testified as victims of `communist barbary'. They reinvented the famine-genocide myth in a two-volume book, Black Deeds of the Kremlin, published in 1953 and 1955 by the Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror and the Democratic Organization of Ukrainians Formerly Persecuted by the Soviet Regime in the USA. This book, dear to Robert Conquest, who cites it regularly, contains a glorification of Petliura, responsible for the massacre of tens of thousands of Jews in 1918--1920, as well as a homage to Shukhevych, the fascist commander of the Nazi-organized Nachtigall Battalion and later the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
Black Deeds also contains a series of photos of the 1932--1933 famine-genocide. They are all fakes. Deliberate fakes. One picture is captioned `A little cannibal'. It appeared in issue 22 of the Information bulletin of the International Committee for Russian Relief in 1922, with the original caption `Cannibal from Zaporozhe: has eaten his sister'. On page 155, Black Deeds included a picture of four soldiers and an officer who had just executed some men. The caption reads `The Execution of Kurkuls [Kulaks]'. Small detail: the soldiers are wearing Tsarist uniforms! Hence, Tsarist executions are given as proof of the `crimes of Stalin'. Ibid. , pp. 38--44.
One of the authors of volume I of Black Deeds was Alexander Hay-Holowko, who was Minister of Propaganda for Bandera's `government' of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in Western Ukraine. During the brief existence of this fascist clique, Nationalist mobs and Ukrainian auxiliary troops killed some thousands of Jews, Poles and Bolsheviks in the Lvov region. Hay-Holowko, who now resides in Vancouver, also served in the SS.
Among the persons cited as `sponsors' of the book is Anatole Bilotserkiwsky, alias Anton Shpak, a former officer in the Nazi police at Bila Tserkva. According to witnesses and documents Shpak/Bilotserkiwsky and others personally took part in the execution of two thousand predominantly Jewish civilians. Ibid. , p. 41.
In January 1964, Dana Dalrymple published an article in Soviet Studies, entitled `The Soviet Famine of 1932--1934'. He claimed that there were 5,500,000 dead, the average of 20 various estimates.
One question immediately comes to mind: what are these sources of the `estimates' used by the professor?
One of the sources is Thomas Walker, who made the famous `trip' to Ukraine, where he `presumably could speak Russian', according to Dalrymple.
Another source was Nicolas Prychodko, a Nazi collaborator who worked for the Nazi-controlled `Minister of Culture and Education' in Kiev. Prychodko was evacuated West by the Nazis during their retreat from Ukraine. He provided the figure of seven million dead.
These are followed by Otto Schiller, Nazi civil servant charged with the reorganization of agriculture in Nazi-occupied Ukraine. His text, published in Berlin in 1943 and claiming 7,500,000 dead, was cited by Dalrymple.
The next source was Ewald Ammende, the Nazi who had not been in Russia since 1922. In two letters published in July and August 1934 in the New York Times, Ammende spoke of 7,500,000 dead and pretended that in July of that year, people were dying in the streets of Kiev. A few days later, the NYT correspondent, Harold Denny, gave the lie to Ammende: `Your correspondent was in Kiev for several days last July about the time people were supposed to be dying there, and neither in the city, nor in the surrounding countryside was there hunger.' Several weeks later, Denny reported: `Nowhere was famine found. Nowhere even the fear of it. There is food, including bread, in the local open markets. The peasants were smiling too, and generous with their foodstuffs'. New York Times, quoted in Tottle, op. cit. , p. 50.
Next, Frederick Birchall spoke of more than four million dead in a 1933 article. At that moment, he was, in Berlin, one of the first U.S. journalists to publicly support the Hitler régime.
Sources six through eight are William H. Chamberlin, twice, and Eugene Lyons, both anti-Communist journalists. After the war both were prominent members of the American Committee for the Liberation from Bolshevism (AMCOMLIB), better known as Radio Liberty. AMCOMLIB funds were raised by `Crusade for Freedom', which received 90 per cent of its funds from the CIA. Chamberlin gave a first estimate of four million and a second one of 7,500,000 dead, the latter number based on an `estimate of foreign residents in Ukraine'. Lyons' five million dead were also the result of noise and rumors, based on `estimates made by foreigners and Russians in Moscow'.
The highest figure (ten million) was provided, with no details, by Richard Stallet of Hearst's pro-Nazi press. In 1932, the Ukrainian population was 25 million inhabitants. Tottle, op. cit. , p. 51.
Among the twenty sources in Dalrymple's `academic' work, three come from anti-Soviet articles in Hearst's pro-Nazi press and five come from far-right publications from the McCarthy era (1949--1953). Dalrymple used two German fascist authors, a former Ukrainian collaborator, a right-wing Russian émigré, two CIA collaborators, and a journalist who liked Hitler. A great number of the figures come from unidentified `foreign residents in the Soviet Union'.
The two lowest estimates, dated 1933, came from U.S. journalists in Moscow, known for their professionalism, Ralph Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune and Walter Duranty of the New York Times. The first spoke of one million and the second of two million dead of famine.
Two professors to the rescue of Ukrainian Nazis
To help the new anti-Communist crusade and to justify their insane military buildup, U.S. right-wingers promoted in 1983 a great commemoration campaign of the `50th anniversary of famine-genocide in Ukraine'. To ensure that the terrifying menace to the West was properly understood, proof was needed that Communism meant genocide. This proof was provided by the Nazis and collaborators. Two U.S. professors covered them up with their academic credentials: James E. Mace, co-author of Famine in the Soviet Ukraine, and Walter Dushnyck, who wrote 50 Years Ago: The Famine Holocaust in Ukraine --- Terror and Misery as Instruments of Soviet Russian Imperialism, prefaced by Dana Dalrymple. The Harvard work contains 44 alleged 1932--1933 famine photos. Twenty-four come from two Nazi texts written by Laubenheimer, who credited most of the photos to Ditloff and began his presentation with a citation from Hitler's Mein Kampf:
`If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity and this planet will, as it did millions of years ago, move through the ether devoid of men.' Ibid. , p. 61.
The majority of the Ditloff--Laubenheimer pictures are utter fakes coming from the immediate World War I era and the 1921--1922 famine, or else portray misrepresented and undocumented scenes which do not describe conditions of famine-holocaust. Ibid.
The second professor, Dushnyck, participated as a cadre in the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which became active at the end of the thirties.
Dushnyck invented a `scientific' method to calculate the dead during the `famine-genocide'; Mace followed his method:
`(T)aking the data according to the 1926 census ... and the January 17, 1939 census ... and the average increase before the collectivization ... (2.36 per cent per year), it can be calculated that Ukraine ... lost 7,500,000 people between the two censuses.' Ibid. , pp. 69--71.
These calculations are meaningless.
The world war, the civil wars and the great famine of 1920--1922 all provoked a drop in the birth rate. The new generation born in that period reached physical maturity, 16 years of age, around 1930. The structure of the population would necessarily lead to a drop in the birthrate in the thirties.
Free abortion had also dramatically reduced the birthrate during the thirties, to the point where the government banned it in 1936 to increase the population.
The years 1929--1933 were characterized by great, violent struggles in the countryside, accompanied by times of famine. Economic and social conditions of this kind reduce the birthrate.
The number of people registered as Ukrainians changed through inter-ethnic marriages, changes in the declared nationality and by migrations.
The borders of the Ukraine were not even the same in 1926 and 1939. The Kuban Cossaks, between 2 and 3 million people, were registered as Ukrainian in 1926, but were reclassified as Russian at the end of the twenties. This new classification explains by itself 25 to 40 per cent of the `victims of the famine-genocide' calculated by Dushnyck--Mace. Ibid. , p. 71.
Let us add that, according to the official figures, the population of Ukraine increased by 3,339,000 persons between 1926 and 1939. Compare those figures with the increase of the Jewish population under real genocidal conditions, organized by the Nazis. Ibid. , p. 74.
To test the validity of the `Dushnyck method', Douglas Tottle tried out an exercise with figures for the province of Saskatchewan in Canada, where the thirties saw great farmers' struggles. The repression was often violent. Tottle tried to `calculate' the number of statistical `victims' of the `depression-genocide', caused by the 1930's Great Depression and Western Canadian drought, complicated by the right-wing Canadian governments' policies and use of force:
This `scientific method', which any respectable person would call a grotesque farce for Canada, is widely accepted in right-wing publications as `proof' of the `Stalinist terror'.
The `famine-genocide' campaign that the Nazis started in 1933 reached its apogee half a century later, in 1983, with the film Harvest of Despair, for the masses, and in 1986, with the book Harvest of Sorrow, by Robert Conquest, for the intelligentsia.
The films Harvest of Despair, about the Ukrainian `genocide', and The Killing Fields, about the Kampuchean `genocide', were the two most important works created by Reagan's entourage to instill in people's minds that Communism is synonymous with genocide.
Harvest of Despair won a Gold Medal and the Grand Trophy Award Bowl at the 28th International Film and TV Festival in New York in 1985.
The most important eyewitness accounts about the `genocide' appearing in the film are made by German Nazis and their fomer collaborators.
Stepan Skrypnyk was the editor-in-chief of the Nazi journal Volyn during the German occupation. In three weeks, with the blessing of the Hitlerite authorities, he was promoted from simple layman to bishop in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and in the name of `Christian morality', put forward vicious propaganda for Die Neue Ordnung, the Hitlerite New Order. Fleeing the Red Army, he sought refuge in the U.S.
The German Hans von Herwath, another eyewitness, worked in the Soviet Union in the service that recruited, among the Soviet prisoners, mercenaries for General Vlasov's Russian Nazi army.
His compatriot Andor Henke, also appearing in the film, was a Nazi diplomat.
To illustrate the `famine-genocide' of 1932--1933, the authors used sequences from pre-1917 news films, bits of the films Czar Hunger (1921--1922) and Arsenal (1929), then sequences from Siege of Leningrad, filmed during the Second World War.
When the film's producers were publicly attacked by Tottle in 1986, Marco Carinnik, who was behind the film and had done most of the research, made a public declaration, quoted in the Toronto Star:
`Carynnik said that none of the archival footage is of the Ukrainian famine and that very few photos from `32-33' appear that can be traced as authentic. A dramatic shot at the film's end of an emaciated girl, which has also been used in the film's promotional material, is not from the 1932--1933 famine, Carynnik said.
` `` I made the point that this sort of inaccuracy cannot be allowed,'' he said in an interview. `` I was ignored.'' ' Ibid. , p. 79.
Harvest of Sorrow: Conquest and the reconversion of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators
In January 1978, David Leigh published an article in the London Guardian, in which he revealed that Robert Conquest had worked for the disinformation services, officially called the Information Research Department (IRD), of the British secret service. In British embassies, the IRD head is responsible for providing `doctored' information to journalists and public figures. The two most important targets were the Third World and the Soviet Union. Leigh claimed:
`Robert Conquest ... frequently critical of the Soviet Union was one of those who worked for IRD. He was in the FO [Foreign Office] until 1956.' Ibid. , p. 86.
At the suggestion of the IRD, Conquest wrote a book about the Soviet Union; one third of the edition was bought by Praeger, which regularly publishes and distributes books at the request of the CIA.
In 1986, Conquest contributed significantly to Reagan's propaganda campaign for ordinary U.S. citizens about a possible occupation of the U.S. by the Red Army! Conquest's book, co-authored by Manchip White, was entitled, What To Do When the Russians Come: A Survivalist's Handbook.
In his book The Great Terror (1968, revised 1973), Conquest estimated the number of dead during the 1932-1933 collectivization at five to six million, half in Ukraine. During the Reagan years, anti-Communist hysteria needed figures exceeding those of the six million Jews exterminated by the Nazis. In 1983, Conquest thought it opportune to extend the famine conditions to 1937 and to revise his `estimates' to 14 million dead.
His 1986 book Harvest of Sorrow is a pseudo-academic version of history, as presented by the Ukrainian far-right and Cold warriors.
Conquest claims that the Ukrainian far-right led an `anti-German and anti-Soviet' struggle, repeating the lie that these criminal gangs invented after their defeat as they sought to emigrate to the U.S.
Conquest, dealing with Ukrainian history, mentions the Nazi occupation in one sentence, as a period between two waves of Red terror! Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow, op. cit. , p. 334.
He completely erased from his history the bestial terror that the Ukrainian fascists undertook during the German occupation, since they are the best sources for the `famine-genocide'.
Roman Shukhevych was the commander of the Nachtigall Batallion, composed of Ukrainian nationalists wearing the German uniform. This battallion occupied Lvov on June 30, 1941 and took part in the three-day massacre of Jews in the region. In 1943 Shukhevyvh was named commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the Banderivtsy, or UPA), armed henchmen of the OUN fascist Stepan Bandera, who after the war pretended that they had fought Germans and Reds. Tottle, op. cit. , pp. 111-112.
All their `tales' of battles that they had fought against the Germans turned out to be false. They claimed to have executed Victor Lutze, the Chief of Staff of the German SA. But, in fact, he was killed in an automobile accident near Berlin. Ibid. , p. 112.
They claimed to have done battle against 10,000 German soldiers in Volnia and Polyssa, during the summer of 1943. Historian Reuben Ainsztein proved that during the course of this battle, 5000 Ukrainian nationalists had participated at the sides of 10,000 German soldiers, in the great campaign of encirclement and attempted annihilation of the partisan army led by the famous Bolshevik Alexei Fyodorov ! Ibid. , p. 113.
Ainsztein noted:
`(T)he UPA gangs, which became known as the Banderovtsy, proved themselves under the command of Shukhevych, now known as Taras Chuprynka, the most dangerous and cruel enemies of surviving Jews, Polish peasants and settlers, and all anti-German partisans.' Ibid.
The Ukrainian, 14th Waffen SS Galizien Division (also known as the Halychyna Division), was created in May 1943. In his call to Ukrainians to join it, Kubijovych, the head of the Nazi-authorized Ukrainian Central Committee, declared:
`The long-awaited moment has arrived when the Ukrainian people again have the opportunity to come out with guns to give battle with its most grievous foe --- Muscovite--Jewish Bolshevism. The Fuehrer of the Great German Reich has agreed to the formation of a separate Ukrainian volunteer military unit.' Ibid. , p. 115.
Before, the Nazis had imposed their direct authority on Ukraine, leaving no autonomy to their Ukrainian allies. It was on the basis of this rivalry between German and Ukrainian fascists that the Ukrainian nationalists would later build their myth of `opposition to the Germans'.
Pushed back by the Red Army, the Nazis changed tactics in 1943, giving a more important rôle to the Ukrainian killers. The creation of a `Ukrainian' division of the Waffen SS was seen as a victory for `Ukrainian nationalism'.
On May 16, 1944, the head of the SS, Himmler, congratulated the German officers of the Galizien Division for having cleansed Ukraine of all its Jews.
Wasyl Veryha, a veteran of the 14th Waffen SS Division, wrote in 1968:
`(T)he personnel trained in the division [14th Waffen SS] had become the backbone of the UPA, ... the UPA command also sent groups of its people to the division to receive proper training .... This reinforced the UPA which was left on the Native land [after the Nazi retreat], in particular its commanders and instructors.' Ibid. , p. 118.
Although the Melnyk and Bandera tendencies of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists were at odds with each other and even fought each other, we can see here how they collaborated against the Communists under the leadership of the German Nazis.
The Nazi officer Scholtze revealed in front of the Nuremberg tribunal that Kanaris, the head of German intelligence, had `personally instructed the Abwehr to set up an underground network to continue the struggle against Soviet power in the Ukraine. Competent agents were left behind specially to direct the Nationalist movement'. Ibid.
Note that Mandel's Trotskyist group always supported the `anti-Stalinist' armed struggle that the OUN fascist thugs led between 1944 and 1952.
After the war, John Loftus was an attorney for the U.S. Justice Department Office of Special Investigations, in charge of detecting Nazis who were trying to enter the United States. In his book The Belarus Secret, he affirms that his service was opposed to the entry of Ukrainian Nazis. But Frank Wisner, in charge of the U.S. administration's Office of Policy Coordination, a particularly important secret service at the time, systematically allowed former Ukrainian, Croatian and Hungarian Nazis to enter. Wisner, who would later play an important rôle at the head of the CIA, asserted: `The OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) and the partisan army it created in 1942 (sic), UPA, fought bitterly against both the Germans and the Soviet Russians'. Ibid. , pp. 121--122.
Here one sees how the U.S. intelligence services, immediately after the war, took up the Ukrainian Nazis' version of history in order to use the anti-Communists in the clandestine struggle against the Soviet Union. Loftus commented:
`This was a complete fabrication. The CIC (U.S. Counter-Intelligence Corps) had an agent who photographed eleven volumes of the secret internal files of OUN--Bandera. These files clearly show how most of its members worked for the Gestapo or SS as policemen, executioners, partisan hunters and municipal officials.' Ibid. , p. 122.
In the United States, former Ukrainian Nazi collaborators created `research institutes' from which they spread their revision of the history of the Second World War. Loftus wrote:
`Funding for these `research institutes,' which were little more than front groups for ex-Nazi intelligence officers, came from the American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism, now known as Radio Liberty. The committee was actually a front for OPC.' Ibid. , p. 128.
`Against Hitler and against Stalin': it was around these words that former Hitlerites and the CIA united their efforts. For uninformed people, the formula `against fascism and against communism' may seem to be a `third path', but it surely is not. It is the formula that united, after the defeat of the Nazis, former partisans of the disintegrating Greater Germany and their U.S. successors, who were striving for world hegemony. Since Hitler was now just part of the past, the far-right in Germany, Ukraine, Croatia, etc., joined up with the U.S. far-right. They united their efforts against socialism and against the Soviet Union, which had borne the brunt of the anti-fascist war. To rally the bourgeois forces, they spread lies about socialism, claiming that it was worse than Nazism. The formula `against Hitler and against Stalin' served to invent Stalin's `crimes' and `holocausts', to better cover up and even deny Hitler's monstrous crimes and holocausts. In 1986, the Veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the very ones who pretended to have fought `against Hitler and against Stalin', published a book entitled, Why is One Holocaust Worth More than Others?, written by a former member of the UPA, Yurij Chumatskyj. Regretting that `revisionist historians who claim there was no plan to exterminate Jews, there were no mass gassings and that fewer than one million Jews died of all causes during World War II, are persecuted', Chumatskyj continues:
`(A)ccording to Zionists' statements Hitler killed six million Jews but Stalin, supported by the Jewish state apparatus, was able to kill ten times more Christians'. Ibid. , p. 129.
The title of the crucial part --- Chapter 12 --- of Harvest of Sorrow is `The Famine Rages'. It contains an impressive list of 237 references. A more careful look shows that more than half of the these references come from extreme-right-wing Ukrainian émigrés. The Ukrainian fascist book Black Deeds of the Kremlin is cited 55 times! No wonder that Conquest uses the version of history provided by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators and the U.S. secret services.
In the same chapter, Conquest cites 18 times the book The Ninth Circle by Olexa Woropay, published in 1953 by the youth movement of Stepan Bandera's fascist organization. The author presents a detailed biography for the thirties, but does not mention what he did during the Nazi occupation! A barely concealed admission of his Nazi past. He took up his biography again in 1948, in Muenster, where many Ukrainian fascists took refuge. It is there that he interviewed Ukrainians about the famine-genocide of 1932--1933. None of the `witnesses' is identified, which makes the book worthless from a scientific point of view. Given that he said nothing about what he did during the war, it is probable that those who `revealed the truth about Stalin' were Ukrainian Nazi collaborators who had fled. Ibid. , pp. 58--59.
Beal, who wrote for Hearst's pro-Nazi 1930's press, and later collaborated with the Cold War McCarthyite House Committee on Un-American Activities, was cited five times.
Kravchenko, the anti-Communist émigré, is a source ten times; Lev Kopelev, another Russian émigré, five times.
Among the included `scientific' references is Vasily Grossman's novel, referenced by Conquest fifteen times!
Then, Conquest cites interviews from Harvard's Refugee Interview Project, which was financed by the CIA. He cites the McCarthy-era Congressional Commission on Communist Aggression as well as Ewald Ammende's 1935 Nazi book. Conquest also refers five times to Eugene Lyons and to William Chamberlin, two men who, following World War II, were on the Board of Trustees of Radio Liberty, the CIA Central European radio network.
On page 244, Conquest wrote: `One American, in a village twenty miles south of Kiev, found ... they were cooking a mess that defied analysis'. The reference given is the New York Evening Journal, February 28, 1933. In fact, it is a Thomas Walker article in Hearst's press, published in 1935! Conquest deliberately ante-dated the newspaper to make it correspond to the 1933 famine. Conquest did not name the American: he was afraid that some might recall that Thomas Walker was a fake who never set foot in Ukraine. Conquest is a forgerer.
To justify the use of émigré books recording rumors, Conquest claimed `truth can thus only percolate in the form of hearsay' and that `basically the best, though not infallible, source is rumor'. J. Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933--1938 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 5.
This statement gives fascist slanders, disinformation and lies academic respectability.
The causes of famine in the Ukraine
There was famine in the Ukraine in 1932--1933. But it was provoked mainly by the struggle to the bitter end that the Ukrainian far-right was leading against socialism and the collectivization of agriculture.
During the thirties, the far-right, linked with the Hitlerites, had already fully exploited the propaganda theme of `deliberately provoked famine to exterminate the Ukrainian people'. But after the Second World War, this propaganda was `adjusted' with the main goal of covering up the barbaric crimes committed by German and Ukrainian Nazis, to protect fascism and to mobilise Western forces against Communism.
In fact, since the beginning of the fifties, the reality of the extermination of six million Jews had imposed itself on the world conscience. The world right-wing forces needed a greater number of deaths `caused by communist terror'. So in 1953, the year of triumphant McCarthyism, a spectacular increase in the number of deaths in Ukraine took place, twenty years previous. Since the Jews had been killed in a scientific, deliberate and systematic manner, the `extermination' of the Ukrainian people also had to take the form of a genocide committed in cold blood. And the far-right, which vehemently denies the holocaust of the Jews, invented the Ukrainian genocide!
The 1932-1933 Ukrainian famine had four causes.
First of all, it was provoked by civil war led by the kulaks and the nostalgic reactionary elements of Tsarism against the collectivization of agriculture.
Frederick Schuman traveled as a tourist in Ukraine during the famine period. Once he became professor at Williams College, he published a book in 1957 about the Soviet Union. He spoke about famine.
`Their [kulak] opposition took the initial form of slaughtering their cattle and horses in preference to having them collectivized. The result was a grievous blow to Soviet agriculture, for most of the cattle and horses were owned by the kulaks. Between 1928 and 1933 the number of horses in the USSR declined from almost 30,000,000 to less than 15,000,000; of horned cattle from 70,000,000 (including 31,000,0000 cows) to 38,000,000 (including 20,000,000 cows); of sheep and goats from 147,000,000 to 50,000,000; and of hogs from 20,000,000 to 12,000,000. Soviet rural economy had not recovered from this staggering loss by 1941.
`... Some [kulaks] murdered officials, set the torch to the property of the collectives, and even burned their own crops and seed grain. More refused to sow or reap, perhaps on the assumption that the authorities would make concessions and would in any case feed them.
`The aftermath was the `` Ukraine famine'' of 1932--33 .... Lurid accounts, mostly fictional, appeared in the Nazi press in Germany and in the Hearst press in the United States, often illustrated with photographs that turned out to have been taken along the Volga in 1921 .... The ``famine'' was not, in its later stages, a result of food shortage, despite the sharp reduction of seed grain and harvests flowing from special requisitions in the spring of 1932 which were apparently occasioned by fear of war in Japan. Most of the victims were kulaks who had refused to sow their fields or had destroyed their crops.' Tottle, op. cit. , pp. 93--94.
It is interesting to note that this eyewitness account was confirmed by a 1934 article by Isaac Mazepa, leader of the Ukrainian Nationalist movement, former Premier under Petliura in 1918. He boasted that in Ukraine, the right had succeeded in 1930--1932 in widely sabotaging the agricultural works.
`At first there were disturbances in the kolkhosi [collective farms] or else the Communist officials and their agents were killed, but later a system of passive resistance was favored which aimed at the systematic frustation of the Bolsheviks' plans for the sowing and gathering of the harvest .... The catastrophe of 1932 was the hardest blow that Soviet Ukraine had to face since the famine of 1921--1922. The autumn and spring sowing campaigns both failed. Whole tracts were left unsown, in addition when the crop was being gathered ... in many areas, especially in the south, 20, 40 and even 50 per cent was left in the fields, and was either not collected at all or was ruined in the threshing.' Ibid. , p. 94.
The second cause of the famine was the drought that hit certain areas of Ukraine in 1930, 1931 and 1932. For Professor James E. Mace, who defends the Ukrainian far-right line at Harvard, it is a fable created by the Soviet régime. However, in his A History of Ukraine, Mikhail Hrushevsky, described by the Nationalists themselves as ` Ukraine's leading historian', writing of the year 1932, claimed that `Again a year of drought coincided with chaotic agricultural conditions'. Ibid. , p. 91.
Professor Nicholas Riasnovsky, who taught at the Russian Research Center at Harvard, wrote that the years 1931 and 1932 saw drought conditions. Professor Michael Florinsky, who struggled against the Bolsheviks during the Civil War, noted: `Severe droughts in 1930 and 1931, especially in the Ukraine, aggravated the plight of farming and created near famine conditions'. Ibid. , p. 92.
The third cause of the famine was a typhoid epidemic that ravaged Ukraine and North Caucausus. Dr. Hans Blumenfeld, internationally respected city planner and recipient of the Order of Canada, worked as an architect in Makayevka, Ukraine during the famine. He wrote:
`There is no doubt that the famine claimed many victims. I have no basis on which to estimate their number .... Probably most deaths in 1933 were due to epidemics of typhus, typhoid fever, and dysentery. Waterborne diseases were frequent in Makeyevka; I narrowly survived an attack of typhus fever.' Ibid. , p. 96.
Horsley Grant, the man who made the absurd estimate of 15 million dead under the famine --- 60 per cent of an ethnic Ukrainian population of 25 million in 1932 --- noted at the same time that `the peak of the typhus epidemic coincided with the famine .... it is not possible to separate which of the two causes was more important in causing casualties.' Ibid. , p. 97.
The fourth cause of the famine was the inevitable disorder provoked by the reorganization of agriculture and the equally profound upheaval in economic and social relations: lack of experience, improvization and confusion in orders, lack of preparation and leftist radicalism among some of the poorer peasants and some of the civil servants.
The numbers of one to two million dead for the famine are clearly important. These human losses are largely due to the ferocious opposition of the exploiting classes to the reorganization and modernization of agriculture on a socialist basis. But the bourgeoisie would make Stalin and socialism responsible for these deaths. The figure of one to two million should also be compared to the nine million dead caused by the 1921--1922 famine, essentially provoked by the military intervention of eight imperialist powers and by the support that they gave to reactionary armed groups.
The famine did not last beyond the period prior to the 1933 harvest. Extraordinary measures were taken by the Soviet government to guarantee the success of the harvest that year. In the spring, thirty-five million poods of seeds, food and fodder were sent to Ukraine. The organization and management of kolkhozy was improved and several thousand supplementary tractors, combines and trucks were delivered.
Hans Blumenfeld presented, in his autobiography, a résumé of what he experienced during the famine in Ukraine:
`[The famine was caused by] a conjunction of a number of factors. First, the hot dry summer of 1932, which I had experienced in northern Vyatka, had resulted in crop failure in the semiarid regions of the south. Second, the struggle for collectivization had disrupted agriculture. Collectivization was not an orderly process following bureaucratic rules. It consisted of actions by the poor peasants, encouraged by the Party. The poor peasants were eager to expropriate the ``kulaks,'' but less eager to organize a cooperative economy. By 1930 the Party had already sent out cadres to stem and correct excesses .... After having exercised restraint in 1930, the Party put on a drive again in 1932. As a result, in that year the kulak economy ceased to produce, and the new collective economy did not yet produce fully. First claim on the inadequate product went to urban industry and to the armed forces; as the future of the entire nation, including the peasants, depended on them, it could hardly be otherwise ....
`In 1933 rainfall was adequate. The Party sent its best cadres to help organize work in the kolkhozes. They succeeded; after the harvest of 1933 the situation improved radically and with amazing speed. I had the feeling that we had been pulling a heavy cart uphill, uncertain if we would succeed; but in the fall of 1933 we had gone over the top and from then on we could move forward at an accelerating pace.' Ibid.
Hans Blumenfeld underscored that the famine also struck the Russian regions of Lower Volga and North Caucasus.
`This disproves the ``fact'' of anti-Ukrainian genocide parallel to Hitler's anti-semitic holocaust. To anyone familiar with the Soviet Union's desperate manpower shortage in those years, the notion that its leaders would deliberately reduce that scarce resource is absurd ....' Ibid. , p. 100.
The Japanese armies occupied Manchuria in 1931 and took up position along the Soviet border. Hitler came to power in 1933.
The programs of industrial and agricultural reorganization undertaken by the Soviet Union in 1928--1933 came just in time. Only their success, at a cost of total mobilization of all forces, allowed the victorious resistance to the Nazis.
One of history's ironies is that the Nazis started to believe their own lies about the Ukrainian genocide and about the fragility of the Soviet system.
`Two sobering years of bloody war in Russia provided cruel proof of the falsity of the tale about sub-humans. As early as August 1942 in its ``Reports from the Reich'' the SD (Sicherheits Dienst) noted that the feeling was growing among the German people that we have been victims of delusion. The main and startling impression is of the vast mass of Soviet weapons, their technical quality, and the gigantic Soviet effort of industrialization --- all in sharp contrast to the previous picture of the Soviet Union. ``People are asking themselves how Bolshevism has managed to produce all this.'' ' Ibid. , p. 99.
The U.S. professor William Mandel wrote in 1985:
`In the largest eastern portion of the Ukraine, which had been Soviet for twenty years loyalty was overwhelming and active. There were half a million organized Soviet guerillas ... and 4,500,000 ethnic Ukrainians fought in the Soviet army. Clearly that army would have been fundamentally weakened if there had been basic disaffections among so large a component.' Ibid. , p. 101.
Historian Roman Szporluk admits that the `zones of operation' of `organized Ukrainian Nationalism ... was limited to the former Polish territories', i.e. to Galicia. Under Polish occupation, the fascist Ukrainian movement had a base until 1939. Ibid.
The Ukrainian holocaust lie was invented by the Hitlerites as part of their preparation of the conquest of Ukranian territories. But as soon as they set foot on Ukrainian soil, the Nazi `liberators' met ferocious resistance. Alexei Fyodorov led a group of partisans that eliminated 25,000 Nazis during the war. His book The Underground Committee Carries On admirably shows the attitude of the Ukrainian people to the Nazis. Its reading is highly recommended as an antidote to those who talk about the `Stalinist Ukrainian genocide'. Alexei Fyodorov, The Underground Committee Carries On ( Moscow: Progress Publishers).
8. Industrialization
At the end of the Civil War, the Bolsheviks inherited a completely ruined country whose industry had been ravaged by eight years of military operations. The banks and large companies were nationalized and, with extraordinary effort, the Soviet Union reconstructed the industrial apparatus.
In 1928, the production of steel, coal, cement, industrial looms and machine tools had reached or surpassed the pre-war level. It was then that the Soviet Union set itself the impossible challenge: to lay down the basis of modern industry in a national Five Year Plan, essentially using the country's inner resources. To succeed, the country was set on a war footing to undertake a forced march towards industrialization.
Socialist industrialization was the key to building socialism in the Soviet Union. Everything depended on its success.
Industrialization was to lay the material basis for socialism. It would allow the radical transformation of agriculture, using machinery and modern techniques. It would offer material and cultural well-being to the workers. It would provide the means for a real cultural revolution. It would produce the infrastructure of a modern, efficient state. And it alone would give the working people the modern arms necessary to defend its independence against the most advanced imperialist powers.
On February 4, 1931, Stalin explained why the country had to maintain the extremely rapid rate of industrialization:
`Do you want our socialist fatherland to be beaten and lose its independence
`We are fifty to a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do this or they crush us.' Stalin, The Tasks of Business Executives. Leninism, p. 200.
During the thirties, the German fascists, like the British and French imperialists, drew in full color the `terror' which accompanied the `forced industrialization'. They all sought revenge for their defeat in 1918--1921, when they intervened militarily in the Soviet Union. They all wanted a Soviet Union that was easy to crush.
In asking for extraordinary efforts from the workers, Stalin held his eye on the terrifying menace of war and imperialist aggression that hovered over the first socialist country.
The giant effort to industrialize the country during the years 1928--1932 was called Stalin's Industrial Revolution by Hirokai Kuromiya. It is also called `the second revolution' or the `revolution from above'. The most conscious and energetic revolutionaries were at the head of the State and, from this position, they mobilized and provided discipline to tens of millions of worker-peasants, who had up to that point been left in the shadows of illiteracy and religious obscurantism. The central thesis of Kuromiya's book is that Stalin succeeded in mobilizing the workers for an accelerated industrialization by presenting it as a class war of the oppressed against the old exploiting classes and against the saboteurs found in their own ranks.
To be able to direct this giant industrialization effort, the Party had to grow. The number of members rose from 1,300,000 in 1928 to 1,670,000 in 1930. During the same period, the percentage of members of working class background rose from 57 to 65 per cent. Eighty per cent of the new recruits were shock workers: they were in general relatively young workers who had received technical training, Komsomol activists, who had distinguished themselves as model workers, who helped rationalize production to obtain higher productivity. Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin's Industrial Revolution: Politics and Workers, 1928--1932 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 115, 319.
This refutes the fable of `bureaucratization' of the Stalinist party: the party reinforced its worker base and its capacity to fight.
Industrialization was accompanied by extraordinary upheavals. Millions of illiterate peasants were pulled out of the Middle Ages and hurled into the world of modern machinery. `(B)y the end of 1932, the industrial labor force doubled from 1928 to more than six million.' Ibid. , p. 290.
Over the same period of four years and for all sectors, 12.5 million people had found a new occupation in the city; 8.5 million among them had been former peasants. Ibid. , p. 306.
Despising socialism, the bourgeoisie loves to stress the `forced' character of the industrialization. Those who lived through or observed the socialist industrialization through the eyes of the working masses emphasize these essential traits: heroism at work and the enthusiasm and combative character of the working masses.
During the First Five Year Plan, Anna Louise Strong, a young U.S. journalist hired by the Soviet Moscow News newspaper, traveled the country. When in 1956, Khrushchev made his insidious attack on Stalin, she recalled certain essential facts. Speaking of the First Five Year Plan, she made the following judgment: `never in history was so great an advance so swift'. Anna Louise Strong, The Stalin Era (Publisher unknown, 1956), p. 33.
In 1929, first year of the Plan, the enthusiasm of the working masses was such that even an old specialist of ancient Russia, who spat out his spite for the Bolsheviks in 1918, had to recognize that the country was unrecognizable. Dr. Émile Joseph Dillon had lived in Russia from 1877 to 1914 and had taught at several Russian universities. When he left in 1918, he had written:
`In the Bolshevik movement there is not the vestige of a constructive or social idea .... For Bolshevism is Tsardom upside down. To capitalists it metes out treatment as bad as that which the Tsars dealt to serfs.' Webb, op. cit. , p. 810.
Ten years later, in 1928, Dr. Dillon revisited the USSR, and was lost in amazement at what he saw:
`Everywhere people are thinking, working, combining, making scientific discoveries and industrial inventions .... Nothing like it; nothing approaching it in variety, intensity, tenacity of purpose has ever yet been witnessed. Revolutionary endeavour is melting colossal obstacles and fusing heterogeneous elements into one great people; not indeed a nation in the old-world meaning but a strong people cemented by quasi-religious enthusiasm .... The Bolsheviks then have accomplished much of what they aimed at, and more than seemed attainable by any human organisation under the adverse conditions with which they had to cope. They have mobilised well over 150,000,000 of listless dead-and-alive human beings, and infused into them a new spirit.' Ibid. , pp. 810--811.
Anna Louise Strong remembered how the miracles of industrialization took place.
`The Kharkov (Tractor) Works had a special problem. It was built ``outside the plan.'' (In 1929,) Peasants joined collective farms faster than expected. Kharkov, proudly Ukrainian, built its own plant ``outside the Five-Year Plan ....'' All steel, bricks, cement, labor were already assigned for five years. Kharkov could get steel only by inducing some steel plant to produce ``above the plan.'' To fill the shortage of unskilled labor, tens of thousands of people --- office workers, students, professors --- volunteered on free days .... ``Every morning, at half-past six, we see the special train come in,'' said Mr. Raskin. ``They come with bands and banners, a different crowd each day and always jolly.'' It was said that half the unskilled labor that built the Plant was done by volunteers.' Strong, op. cit. , pp. 28--29.
In 1929, since agricultural collectivization had developed in an unexpected manner, the Kharkov Tractor Works was not the only `correction' to the Plan. The Putilov factory in Leningrad produced 1,115 tractors in 1927 and 3,050 in 1928. After heated discussions at the factory, a plan was drawn up to produce 10,000 tractors for 1930! In fact, 8,935 were produced.
The miracle of industrialization in a decade was influenced not only by the upheavals taking place in the backward countryside, but also by the growing menace of war.
The Magnitogorsk steel works was designed for annual production of 656,000 tonnes. In 1930, a plan was drawn up to produce 2,500,000. Kuromiya, op. cit. , p. 145.
But the plans for steel production were soon revised upwards: in 1931, the Japanese army occupied Manchuria and was threatening the Siberian borders. The next year, the Nazis, in power in Berlin, were publishing their claims to Ukraine. John Scott was a U.S. engineer, working in Magnitogorsk. He evoked the heroic efforts of workers and the decisive importance for the defence of the Soviet Union.
`By 1942 the Ural industrial district became the stronghold of Soviet resistance. Its mines, mills, and shops, its fields and forests, are supplying the Red Army with immense quantities of military materials of all kinds, spare parts, replacements, and other manufactured products to keep Stalin's mechanized divisions in the field.
`The Ural industrial region covers an area of some five hundred miles square almost in the center of the largest country in the world. Within this area Nature placed rich deposits of iron, coal, copper, aluminum, lead, asbestos, manganese, potash, gold, silver, platinum, zinc, and petroleum, as well as rich forests and hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land. Until 1930 these fabulous riches were practically undeveloped. During the decade from 1930 to 1940 some two hundred industrial aggregates of all kinds were constructed and put into operation in the Urals. This herculean task was accomplished thanks to the political sagacity of Joseph Stalin and his relentless perseverance in forcing through the realization of his construction program despite fantastic costs and fierce difficulties ....
`(Stalin favored heavy industry.) He further asserted that new industries must be concentrated in the Urals and Siberia thousands of miles away from the nearest frontiers, out of reach of any enemy bombers. Whole new industries must be created. Russia had hitherto been dependent on other countries for almost its entire supply of rubber, chemicals, machine tools, tractors, and many other things. These commodities could and must be produced in the Soviet Union in order to ensure the technical and military independence of the country.
`Bukharin and many other old Bolsheviks disagreed with Stalin. They held that light industries should be built first; the Soviet people should be furnished with consumers' goods before they embarked on a total industrialization program. Step by step, one after another these dissenting voices were silenced. Stalin won. Russia embarked on the most gigantic industrialization plan the world had ever seen.
`In 1932 fifty-six per cent of the Soviet Union's national income was invested in capital outlay. This was an extraordinary achievement. In the United States in 1860--1870, when we were building our railroads and blast furnaces, the maximum recapitalization for any one year was in the neighborhood of twelve per cent of the national income. Moreover, American industrialization was largely financed by European capital, while the man power for the industrial construction world poured in from China, Ireland, Poland, and other European countries. Soviet industrialization was achieved almost without the aid of foreign capital.' John Scott, Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's city of steel, enlarged edition ( Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press), pp. 256--257.
The hard life and the sacrifices of industrialization were consciously and enthusiastically accepted by the majority of workers. They had their noses to the grindstone, but they knew that it was for themselves, for a future with dignity and freedom for all workers. Hiroaki Kuromiya wrote:
`Paradoxical as it may appear, the forced accumulation was a source not only of privation and unrest but also of Soviet heroism .... Soviet youth in the 1930s found heroism in working in factories and on construction sites like Magnitogorsk and Kuznetsk.' Kuromiya, op. cit. , pp. 305--306.
`(T)he rapid industrialization drive of the First Five-Year Plan symbolized the grandiose and dramatic goal of building a new society. Promoted against the background of the Depression and mass unemployment in the West, the Soviet industrialization drive did evoke heroic, romantic, and enthusiastic ``superhuman'' efforts. ``The word `enthusiasm,' like many others, has been devalued by inflation,'' Ilya Ehrenburg has written, ``yet there is no other word to fit the days of the First Five Year Plan; it was enthusiasm pure and simple that inspired the young people to daily and spectacular feats.'' According to another contemporary, ``those days were a really romantic, intoxicating time'': ``People were creating by their own hands what had appeared a mere dream before and were convinced in practice that these dreamlike plans were an entirely realistic thing.'' ' Ibid. , p. 316.
Kuromiya showed how Stalin presented industrialization as a class war of the oppressed against the old ruling classes.
This idea is correct. Nevertheless, through untold numbers of literary and historical works, we are told to sympathize with those who were repressed during the class wars of industrialization and collectivization. We are told that repression is `always inhuman' and that a civilized nation is not allowed to hurt a social group, even if it was exploiting.
What can be said against this so-called `humanist' argument?
How did the industrialization of the `civilized world' made? How did the London and Paris bankers and industries create their industrial base? Could their industrialization have been possible without the pillage of the India? Pillage accompanied by the extermination of more than sixty million American Indians? Would it have been possible without the slave trade in Africans, that monstrous bloodbath? UNESCO experts estimate the African losses at 210 million persons, killed during raids or on ships, or sold as slaves. Could our industrialization have been possible without colonization, which made entire peoples prisoners in their own native lands?
And those who industrialized this little corner of the world called Europe, at the cost of millions of `indigenous' deaths, tell us that the Bolshevik repression against the possessing classes was an abomination? Those who industrialized their countries by chasing peasants off the land with guns, who massacred women and children with working days of fourteen hours, who imposed slave wages, always with the threat of unemployment and famine, they dare go on at book length about the `forced' industrialization of the Soviet Union?
If Soviet industrialization could only take place by repressing the rich and reactionary five per cent, capitalist industrialization consisted of the terror exercised by the rich five per cent against the working masses, both in their own countries and in dominated ones.
Industrialization was a class war against the old exploiting classes, which did everything they possibly could to prevent the success of the socialist experience. It was often accomplished through bitter struggle within the working class itself: illiterate peasants were torn out of their traditional world and hurled into modern production, bringing with them all their prejudices and their retrograde concepts. The old reflexes of the working class itself, used to being exploited by a boss and used to resisting him, had to be replaced by a new attitude to work, now that the workers themselves were the masters of society.
On this subject, we have vivid testimony about the class struggle inside one of the Soviet factories, written by a U.S. engineer, John Scott, who worked long years at Magnitogorsk.
Scott was not Communist and often criticized the Bolshevik system. But when reporting what he experienced in the strategic complex of Magnitogorsk, he made us understand several essential problems that Stalin had to confront.
Scott described the ease with which a counter-revolutionary who served in the White Armies but showed himself to be dynamic and intelligent could pass as a proletarian element and climb the ranks of the Party. His work also showed that the majority of active counter-revolutionaries were potential spies for imperialist powers. It was not at all easy to distinguish conscious counter-revolutionaries from corrupted bureaucrats and `followers' who were just looking for an easy life.
Scott also explained that the 1937--1938 purge was not solely a `negative' undertaking, as it is presented in the West: it was mostly a massive political mobilization that reinforced the antifascist conscience of the workers, that made bureaucrats improve the quality of their work and that allowed a considerable development of industrial production. The purge was part of the great preparation of the popular masses for resisting the coming imperialist invasions. The facts refute Khrushchev's slanderous declaration that Stalin did not adequately prepare the country for war.
Here is John Scott's testimony about Magnitogorsk.
`Shevchenko ... was running (in 1936) the coke plant with its two thousand workers. He was a gruff man, exceedingly energetic, hard-hitting, and often rude and vulgar ....
`With certain limitations ..., Shevchenko was not a bad plant director. The workers respected him, and when he gave an order they jumped ....
`Shevchenko came from a little village in the Ukraine. In 1920, Denikin's White Army occupied the territory, and young Shevchenko, a youth of nineteen, was enlisted as a gendarme. Later Denikin was driven back into the Black Sea, and the Reds took over the country. In the interests of self-preservation Shevchenko lost his past, moved to another section of the country, and got a job in a mill. He was very energetic and active, and within a surprisingly short time had changed from the pogrom-inspiring gendarme into a promising trade-union functionary in a large factory. He was ultra-proletarian, worked well, and was not afraid to cut corners and push his way up at the expense of his fellows. Then he joined the party, and one thing led to another --- the Red Directors Institute, important trade-union work, and finally in 1931 he was sent to Magnitogorsk as assistant chief of construction work ....
`In 1935 ... a worker arrived from some town in the Ukraine and began to tell stories about Shevchenko's activities there in 1920. Shevchenko gave the man money and a good job, but still the story leaked out ....
`One night he threw a party which was unprecedented in Magnitogorsk .... Shevchenko and his pals were busy the rest of the night and most of the next consuming the remains ....
`One day ... Shevchenko was removed from his post, along with a half-dozen of his leading personnel .... Shevchenko was tried fifteen months later and got ten years.
`Shevchenko was at least fifty per cent bandit --- a dishonest and unscrupulous careerist. His personal aims and ideals differed completely from those of the founders of Socialism. However, in all probability, Shevchenko was not a Japanese spy, as his indictment stated, did not have terrorist intentions against the leaders of the party and the government, and did not deliberately bring about the explosion (that killed four workers in 1935).
`The `Shevchenko' band was composed of some twenty men, all of who received long sentences. Some, like Shevchenko, were crooks and careerists. Some were actual counter-revolutionaries who set out deliberately to do what they could to overthrow the Soviet power and were not particular with whom they cooperated. Others were just unfortunate in having worked under a chief who fell foul of the NKVD.
`Nicolai Mikhailovich Udkin, one of Shevchenko's colleagues, was the eldest son in a well-to-do Ukrainian family. He felt strongly that the Ukraine had been conquered, raped, and was now being exploited by a group of Bolsheviks ... who were ruining the country .... He felt, furthermore, that the capitalist system worked much better than the Socialist system ....
`Here was a man who was at least a potential menace to the Soviet power, a man who might have been willing to cooperate with the Germans for the `liberation of the Ukraine' in 1941. He, also, got ten years.' Scott, op. cit. , pp. 175--180.
`During the course of the purge hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats shook in their boots. Officials and administrators who had formerly come to work at ten, gone home at four-thirty, and shrugged their shoulders at complaints, difficulties, and failures, began to stay at work from dawn till dark, to worry about the success or failure of their units, and to fight in a very real and earnest fashion for plan fulfillment, for economy, and for the well-being of their workers and employees, about whom they had previously lost not a wink of sleep.' Ibid. , pp. 195--196.
`By and large, production increased from 1938 to 1941. By late 1938 the immediate negative effects of the purge had nearly disappeared. The industrial aggregates of Magnitogorsk were producing close to capacity, and every furnace, every mill, every worker, was being made to feel the pressure and the tension which spread through every phase of Soviet life after Munich. `The capitalist attack on the Soviet Union, prepared for years, is about to take place ...' boomed the Soviet press, the radio, schoolteachers, stump speakers, and party, trade-union, and Komsomol functionaries, at countless meetings.
` Russia's defence budget nearly doubled every year. Immense quantities of strategic materials, machines, fuels, foods, and spare parts were stored away. The Red Army increased in size from roughly two million in 1938 to six or seven million in the spring of 1941. Railroad and factory construction work in the Urals, in Central Asia, and in Siberia was pressed forward.
`All these enterprises consumed the small but growing surplus which the Magnitogorsk workers had begun to get back in the form of bicycles, wrist watches, radio sets, and good sausage and other manufactured food products from 1935 till 1938.' Ibid. , pp. 253--254.
But now, how terrible these repressions against workers were in reality? A good examples gives the book: Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist industrialization, Pluto Press, London , 1986. Keep in mind, that Filtzer is an anti-stalinist.
He writes for example:
“Nevertheless, when workers got fed up with conditions at one site, they were free to quit and go look for something better. And this was no mere "freedom to starve"; Stalin's forced industrialization meant that plenty of jobs were available, even if low-paid. Or, if workers didn't want to move, they might simply take days off or show up late.
Nominally, by 1932, absentees were to be fired; quitters (and discharged absentees) were to barred from housing and rations, and were to be blacklisted from new employment. See, for example Decree of the Central Executive Committee and Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, "On Firing for Unexcused Absenteeism," 15 Nov 1932
Source: "Pravda," 16 Nov 1932, p. 1
In reality, these sanctions were widely ignored, partly because they were unenforceable: an attempt in 1930 to impose "labor books" (labor passports, required for getting new jobs, listing all previous work and the conditions for discharge) had been quietly frustrated by shopfloor resistance. In addition, managers, desperate for additional workers, would hire them without too rigid an examination of their past. Some workers deliberately showed up late in order to force their firing, so that they could get a better job elsewhere.
In late 1938, however, after he had exterminated his former political opponents, Comrade Stalin was ready to settle accounts with the workers.
His first measure was a requirement for labor books. Unlike the 1930 law, this one was enforced; society by now was thoroughly cowed.
Decree of SNK SSSR, 20 Dec 1938, "O vvedenii Trudovykh knizhek", Pravda, 21 December 1938.
Now that labor books gave the government leverage, this was followed by a major revision of the labor code: Resolution of the SNK SSSR, CK VKP(b), and VCSPS "On Measures for the regulation of labor discipline, improvement in the practice of state social insurance, and struggle against abuses in that matter," 28 Dec 1938.
This restated the 1930 and 1932 penalties for quitting and absenteeism (mandatory firing, blacklisting, and loss of social benefits, eg housing, food rations, and social insurance). Managers who failed to obey and enforce these laws were subject to dismissal and criminal prosecution.
On 8 January 1939, the government made clear that an unauthorized lateness of 20 minutes (or taking a break 20 minutes too long, or leaving 20 minutes early) counted as absenteeism, grounds for mandatory dismissal (Pravda, 9 Jan 1939). Transportation breakdowns (a common event) were no excuse; a doctor's certificate was required, and doctors who gave certificates too easily themselves faced prosecution and prison.
Some workers still found it worthwhile to be absent and force a mandatory dismissal, so that they could seek work in a place where labor books were not closely read. Stalin put an end to this with a remarkable law, Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, 26 June 1940
"On the Transfer to the Eight-Hour Working Day, the Seven-day Work Week, and on the Prohibition of Unauthorized Departure by Laborers and Office Workers from Factories and Offices"
This replaced the civil sanctions of the 28 Dec. 1938 decree with mandatory criminal penalties: 2-4 months imprisonment for quitting a job, and 6 months of probation and 25% pay confiscation for an unauthorized tardiness of 20 minutes. Both managers and prosecutors were themselves subject to criminal prosecution if they did not enforce this law strictly.
Comment from the Ideology Dept:
To the petit-bourgeois mentality, these laws might suggest that Comrade Stalin was anti-labor. Nothing could be further from the truth. The difference between the Soviet Union and capitalist societies is that Soviet workers are building their own future, while Western workers are exploited for the advantage of greedy capitalists. As testimony from trade unions reveals, Soviet workers themselves were fed up at the frustration of their efforts by slackers, parasites, and self-seekers. They were grateful for this evidence that the Soviet Government took their concerns seriously. Source: http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/labor-discip.html
Of course such forms of repressions are not very nice, but they are much less then those repressions against workers in capitalist countries. But you must see, that those ‘repressions’ against workers were necessary during these time. Most of the workers were unskilled, because they were always peasants and are not accustomed to have a regular working day.
But does this mean that workers had no rights to protect themselves? This is of course pure nonesence!
In order to keep production norms up in both terms of quantity and quality, a mass movement was popularized by the party known as the Stakhanovite This was not just a simple movement created to speed up production as the bourgeoise historians claim. It emphasized reorganizing the division of labor, and developing teamwork to achieve their goal. This include the redesign innovation of machinery and machine processes by the workers themselves(with opposition from engineers and managers as Stalin said in his Economic problems of Socialism) A bourgeois U.S. scholar, David Granick, in his study "The Red Executive" defended the movement against Western charges that it was mainly a form of speedup. "Primarily, it was aimed at motivating workers to use improved techniques on the job," he wrote, "and to innovate new ones. Its emphasis was thoroughly modern, being on rationalization rather than on sweating." The production increases were enormous thanks to the Stakhanovite movement. The labor productivity increases 82% in 1929 up from 41%.
The 5 year plan was not initiated single handedly from above. A form of mass initiative was made by workers themselves in criticizing the 5 year plan and drawing up plans of their own. This form of "counter planning" , as it was known, was first advanced by shock workers in the Karl Marx Works of Leningrad. In 1930 these workers as well as many of their comrades throughout the country participated in the elaboration of counter plans and became acquainted with the organization and management of production. Many of them acquired an inclination for planning and enrolled at higher educational institutions offering specialized training in this field. Also like the Stakhanovite movement, it did not pass happily by plant managers:
"All the workers, all are called to the production conference. And then begins the so-called 'counterplanning,' in a very crude form, which quickly ends in a fiasco. They read off the plan. Here, our chief administration has given us such and such information, such and such indices, of course we have to meet them, we all understand that this has to be done. Thus, the agitation proceeds further. This we have to do, we have to fulfill and over fulfill. 'I hope that some of the workers -- this is said by some engineer or a representative of the party organization -- will bring forth counterproposals.' Now everyone wants to manifest his 'activity.' Some 'butterfly,' some milkmaid gets up in her place and says 'I think we should promise Comrade Stalin to over fulfill by 100 percent.' She takes no account of materials, no account of supply. Then a second stands up and says 'We should all promise 100 percent and I personally promise 150 percent" In short, it piles up higher and higher, and the engineers and economists scratch their heads. Nevertheless, this is called 'counterplanning,' a manifestation of the new socialist morality and higher socialist enthusiasm. All this goes to the top and there, you understand, there is confusion, downright confusion, a complete muddle." Joseph Berliner ( see: http://antitrot.tripod.com/main.htm ).
The May 31 election was the most important, most general and most effective anti bureaucratic campaign that the Party ever effected. during the May 1937 electoral campaign, for the 54,000 Party base organizations for which we have data, 55 per cent of the directing committees were replaced. In the Leningrad region, 48 per cent of the members of the local committees were replaced.
However serious problems continued to remain unshaken by these events. For one thing at the Regional level, which constituted the main level of decision making, very little changed. In the rural areas, certain individuals and clans were able to entrench themselves and hold virtual monopoly powers.
At the same time the dictatorship strengthened itself in terms of economic growth , political power of the working class was manifest began to manifest in both the party as well as the factory level. Beginning in the NEP era, "one- man management" was the principle laid by Lenin for running the different workplaces to meet production norms. This began to change in the 1930's after economic development was able to slow down. The workplace director played a very serious and contradictory role in the the management process. They had greater responsibility than the managers in capitalist countries (since they had to keep things in accordance with the 5 year plan) yet at the same time had fewer powers than their capitalist counterparts.
The factory directors had power to assign workers to different roles in the internal division of labor, to punish lateness and absenteeism with fines, but they did not have the power as their capitalist counterparts to fire a worker. The importance of this distinction was noted by Martin Nicholas in his "Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR" This was a concrete meaning of the phrase that labor power in the USSR was no longer a commodity bought and sold like any other: its price (wages) was no longer depressed by the existence of a relative surplus army of unemployed and the inalienable right of commodity buyers to refuse to buy -- the right to not hire and to lay off -- was no longer recognized. Except during wartime, workers were free to quit; but managers could not fire them except by proving some criminal offense against them. Thus, lacking the whip hand, the managers were weak.
Also the workers had power to counter act a director who abused his authority.As the British bourgeois scholar Mary McAuley writes (in "Labour Disputes in the Soviet Union," Oxford 1969), there were special courts to hear industrial disputes to which only workers had access; managerial personnel could appear there only as defendants and were barred from initiating cases (pp. 54-55). Even before matters came to court, there were ways that the workers on the shop floor could let a troublesome director know who was boss. One of these avenues, the production meeting, is described by the bourgeois scholar David Granick in his book, "The Red Executive":
"Management is operating under severe ideological and practical handicaps in its efforts to keep down worker criticism. One factory director . . . implied that production meetings were a real ordeal for him. But at a question as to whether workers dared to criticize openly, he said, 'Any director who suppressed criticism would be severely punished. He would not only be removed, he would be tried.'" (New York, 1960, p. 230)
Walter Reuther, later the anti-Communist president of the United Auto Workers, who worked in a Soviet auto factory in the 1930s said.
"Here are no bosses to drive fear into the workers. No one to drive them in mad speed-ups. Here the workers are in control. Even the shop superintendent had no more right in these meetings than any other worker. I have witnessed many times already when the superintendent spoke too long. The workers in the hall decided he had already consumed enough time and the floor was given to a lathe hand to who told of his problems and offered suggestions. Imagine this at Ford or Briggs. This is what the outside world calls the "ruthless dictatorship in Russia". I tell you ... in all countries we have thus far been in we have never found such genuine proletarian democracy... (quoted from Phillip Bonosky, Brother Bill McKie: Building the Union at Ford [ New York: International Publishers, 1953]).
The Soviet people were able to relax greatly after the long industrialization process. In his book "Life and Terror in Stalinist Russia" Robert Thurston uses the example of the soviet legal system to prove (although not a communist) to us that life in the USSR was actually becoming more "liberal" in protecting citizens rights and freedoms. For many years the Soviet Government had to keep a strict legal laws because of the conditions of the time; there were huge influxes of homeless workers and peasantry wandering from city to city. This overwhelmed the Soviet authorities who had to deal with border lines and these unidentified people crossing them. Thurston notes how once the things got going again, the Soviet Government reformed their judicial system greatly for a short time up to the purges. Thurston's book also shows us how much the Soviets relied on western capitalist models for their judicial systems as fields in education and industry.
A good example of how Soviet Life in factories is organized shows Myra Page in her book Soviet Main Street (read: http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/page/1933/mainstreet/index.htm )
In chapter VI she decribes a factory election:
“THIS is a big day in the Podolsk machine plant. For several weeks flaming banners, stretched along factory and club walls, hanging from rafters above the machines, have called, "All out to the Trade Union Elections!" Eleven thousand workers, in their section and department meetings, have thrashed out their union's work and leadership, this past year, written up their suggestions for their wall newspapers, drawn up their plans, and, finally, chosen and instructed their delegates to today's conference, where the annual elections of the factory committee will take place.
The factory band plays revolutionary airs as the delegates, six hundred and forty-two in all, gradually fill the ground floor of their club auditorium. Walls and stage are hung with banners, in the galleries are several hundred who have come to listen in on the proceedings.
Our old friend, Andree Budnikov, is one of the delegates from the foundry. We spy Jack's red head among the youth. There are many familiar faces among the mass listening with dose attention to the report of the trade union secretary, Comrade Buklov. No one interrupts him, yet it is clear, that his listeners are not satisfied with his report. True, there have been several successes during the last twelve months, like the opening of the new foundry, the building of apartments and barracks in the new workers' town, and the completion of the factory's large dining hall which will serve, when running at full capacity, some twenty-five thousand hot meals a day.
Put why does Buklov dwell on this? What about the other side, the tasks that still lie ahead? Surely he knows that things are not going as they should with the production of "Number 31," the new industrial type of sewing machine; that many union members are behind in their dues, clamouring for more nurseries, and the union committees in some departments have gone to sleep on the job! Why doesn't he practice more self-criticism bring forth his proposals on how to meet the problems uppermost now in every worker's mind?
Well, Buklov is a good fellow, and has done his best. His job has proven too big, for him. It is clear that he must go back to his machine and another worker more fitted for the post be chosen in his place.
There are other reports and greetings: from the chairman of the regional metal union to its Podolsk local, from the factory committee's control commission on the audit of union books. Comrade Kleminson takes the platform. As the delegates see his solid frame, clothed in his familiar khaki outfit with belted jacket and high boots, his black eyes alert, gleaming at them, they lean forward. This is going to be more like Kleminson, hard-working, capable secretary of the factory's unit of the Communist Party, has the confidence of every worker, both Party and non-Party.
He speaks quietly, yet his voice carries easily to the farthest corner. "Comrades, we have come here to practice real bolshevik self-criticism of ourselves and our union work this last year, and to find the means of doing better work in the next." One after another, he takes up problems, making his points in a direct manner. Soon he comes to production. "In our struggle to master technique, to place our plant on a hundred pet cent efficiency basis, we've made much progress. Is it enough? Only about sixty per cent of the plant has gone over to the new wage system. And what about the quality of our products? Yet we know every sewing machine we turn out is a propaganda weapon for us, for socialism--good or bad.
"When a machine works well, the village woman using it says,'Aye, there're good workers for you. We'll have to match them.' When a machine works badly, breaks down soon through some fault in its make, what then? The peasants say,'Yes, you tell us to do our work on the collective farm as well as the factory workers. What sort of example have they set?' "
This strikes home. In his report to his department each delegate will repeat this to his fellows: we want better and more products from the farms: it's up to us to furnish them with more and better machines. In that way, everybody's living goes up. It's up to us, the workers, to show the peasants in practice how to build.
Ivan Semenov, a small, wiry man speaks with animation. "This is direct worker's criticism I'm going to make, straight from the bench. In our department, organized a short time ago, where No. 31 is produced, things are far from good. We're short of materials and measuring instruments. We lack enough skilled hands. Above all, the work is poorly organized. This must be changed. Everybody knows these industrial, machines--the means of production--are our most important work. Why should women, stay at home, sewing on foot machines, when we can free them for industry, develop more clothing factories, and meet the demand for machine-made clothes? Workers on No. 31 want to turn out bolshevik machines, without defects, and our full quota. We say to the union, Party and factory administration see that we get the help necessary to do ~this. Then you'll find what can be done."
Anna Krasinova's hoarse voice rushes across the hall. "Is our union paying enough attention to women workers? Why, hasn't the factory committee seen to it that the new nursery is open long before this? We got to have more places to put our kids."
Questions written on countless slips of paper are passed forward to the platform, for the factory committee go read and answer. A factory committee member, from he department of technical propaganda and workers suggestions, challenges: "Do you know that damages and waste in the factory amounted to neatly two million rubles! With his sum we could build six more dormitories. Since the November holidays," he continues, "absences from work have increased. Is this the way to fulfill our program? Union mass work needs to be strengthened. About seven hundred taking part in the club's cultural activities: that means many departments have only a few who join in."
Criticisms and demands come, hour after hour. The conference continues through another evening, so that all who want to take part can do so. Resolutions giving the union's program for the coming year, are adopted and the factory committee elected; consisting of forty-nine men and women workers, eight of whom are freed for their term of office from work at the machine. In Buklov's place is elected a fitter, Peter Sergeyev. After supper in the new public dining hall, delegates return to the club auditorium to see a Moscow troupe present Armoured Train.
On the way home we two Americans agree that this has been a real experience for us in working class democracy. Certainly unlike any A. F. of L. union meeting or convention had ever taken part in! In them the fakers had always put the lid on discussion, railroaded through their slate, and tried to browbeat or throw out any who dared criticize or bring forward good programs.
But then, as my companion comments, this is at business unionism as promoted by Green and Woll, but unionism with a clear, working class purpose.
Before us still glows the scarlet runner which had hung over the club stage: "Our Trade Unions are Training Schools in Communism." http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/page/1933/mainstreet/ch06.htm
Another good example gives Max Seydewitz. He wrote in the middle 30ies the book “Stalin or Trotsky”. The German version you can read here: http://www.offen-siv.com/Lesenswertes/stal_tro.shtml
There he cites the Austromarxist (!) Otto Bauer:
“Otto Bauer, who concede Trotsky in some questions of the ruling of the bureaucracy, writes in “der Trotzkismus und die Trotzkistenprozesse”, published in “Kampf” no. 3, May 1937: Union meetings in huge factories of the Soviet Union look very different today compared to those some years earlier. At that time, when workers came from the villages, were without selvconfidence, without any routine of democratic acitivites in their company, they were listening silently and confinding the reports of their directors. Today they are factory workes, with many skills and experience who learn to critizise their managers and to oppose their appeals and accounts. The same changes you can see in the kolchoses. The peasant, who learns to control modern technik, also learns to use the rights of democratic self-administration.” (Translatetd by me)
Further he goes on:
“In Hitler’s Germany there is no freedom of speech or intellectual freedom. The German people are punished for every critical word with great terror. Workes in factories are nothing more than “followers”, who have to follow the orders of their managers silently and readily. The workers have no chance to say their opnion of how to arrange the production of their company or to say something about economical and cultural relations in their working place.
… they are … for ever slaves …. In Soviet Union the former ruling classes have no freedom of speech. They are liquidated as class, because they are needless and destructive for socialist economy. The workers in factories and the peasants in kolchoses have rights of codermination and discussion of their working place and of the whole economical relationships. In this important area of dayly life, workers and peasants have full democracy in the Sovietunion, which differ from the condition of German factories like day and night, and which goes even further then the democracy in bourgeois-democratic countries. (Translatetd by me)
And don’t forget other rights that workers had: free medical healthcare, free educationsystem, a high developed culture and so on!
But how is it with the problem of the wage-differences?
Of cource there were wage differences, sometime very huge one (for example the party maximum was abolished). But who thinks, that there was a bureaucratic class which expoited the workers, like capitalist, because, they had some privileges knows nothing about Soviet Union (and you should not forget: bureaucracy is like an instrument of the ruling class, and plays no own role in society. But more about that, later).
But let’s see how the wage system was in the Soviet Union:
"Striking it rich" is impossible. "Keeping up with the Joneses" is bad form. Excelling the Ivanoviches in socialist competition to cut production costs, increase output, and raise profits beyond the Plan is always the order of the day. Conspicuous success in such endeavors means prizes, bonuses, honors, and fame. This elite bears little resemblance to any known aristocracy, plutocracy, or theocracy." Schuman, Frederick L. Soviet Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946, p. 581
"No private person may legitimately make a penny of profit out of this system of state and cooperative industry and trade, banking and transport. There are no individual shareholders in the state industrial enterprises; and the financial columns of the Russian newspapers are restricted to brief quotations of the rates of the state loans. All the normal means of acquiring large personal fortunes are thus pretty effectively blocked up in Russia; and if there are some Nepmen, or private traders who have become ruble millionaires through lucky dealings in commerce or speculation, they are certainly neither a numerous nor a conspicuous class." Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 131
"The new class of state managers, or "red directors" of factories, who have replaced the former capitalist owners, are mostly Communists and former workers. But by the very nature of their position they must look at industrial life from a rather different angle from that of the workers. Although they make no personal profit out of the enterprises which they manage, they are supposed to turn in a profit for the state." Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 174
"But the general view of the Social Democratic and Anarchist critics of the Soviet regime, that there is a deep rift between a few Communist officeholders at the top and the working masses at the bottom, is, in my opinion, distorted, exaggerated, and quite at variance with the actual facts of the Russian situation." Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 177
"The difference in the standard of life is only determined by the ability of the single man. The external glamour of life, enjoyed in all other countries by a few big businessmen or rich heirs, has been sacrificed to a feeling of security guaranteed by no other state to its citizens. In order to remove the fear of the vacuum endured by 90% of the citizens, the enjoyment of the other 10% must be curtailed. Then the worker will not be filled any more by hate and jealousy, nor the owner by hate and fear of revolts.
Such a state without classes must necessarily be a state without races. Privileges for any race or color are explicitly denied by the Constitution. " Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 167
"On the whole the men who remain in top leadership are the ablest of the 12 million government employees. Although shouldering more responsibility they do not receive salaries anywhere near as large as those of corporation presidents in the United States. They do receive decorations and they may have cities named after them. They are all provided with automobiles, expense accounts and good houses or apartments." Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 39
"Even more important than these liberties is the fact that they labor not for the private profit of employers (save for the small proportion employed in private industry), but for the profit of the whole community. State industries, like private, must show a profit to keep going, but the public use of that profit robs it of the driving force of exploitation. The liberties enjoyed by workers in Russia, whether or not in unions (less than 10 percent are outside), go far beyond those of workers in other countries, not only in their participation in controlling working conditions and wages, but in the privileges they get as a class. The eight-hour day is universal in practice, alone of all countries in the world, with a six-hour day in dangerous occupations like mining. Reduction of the eight-hour day to seven hours is already planned for all industries. Every worker gets a two-week vacation with pay, while office workers and workers in dangerous trades, get a month. No worker can be dismissed from his job without the consent of his union. His rent, his admission to places of entertainment or education, his transportation- -all these he gets at lower prices than others. When unemployed he gets a small allowance from his union, free rent, free transportation, and free admission to places of entertainment and instruction. Education and medical aid are free to all workers--or for small fees--extensive services being especially organized for and by them.
...There is in Russia no privileged class based on wealth.
Practically all rents for land or buildings are paid to the state or to cooperatives; only a little of it goes to line private pockets. Money may be loaned at simple interest, the rate being limited. Money deposited with the state earns a rate of interest even higher than in capitalist countries. But nobody is getting rich off the interest on his savings and loans, for all incomes are both limited at their source, and, when much above the average, are heavily taxed. Persons with
higher incomes are also obliged to pay higher prices for some necessities- -especially rent. Inheritance of property is now theoretically unlimited, but so heavily taxed as in effect to destroy all above a moderate amount.
The new bourgeoisie, which has grown-up with the new economic policy--private traders, richer peasants...- -is too small to constitute a noteworthy exception to the general absence of a wealthy class. And they are being increasingly restricted, despite the assertions to the contrary by the Communist Opposition and others. The statistics of private versus public enterprises show it. Earnings and incomes throughout Soviet Russia vary from the minimum of bare subsistence, 15 or 20 rubles a month, to 10 or 15 times that amount. Few incomes run above that figure (300 rubles a month, $150), the highest in all Russia being those of a few concessionaires and foreign specialists on salaries ($5000-$10,000) . Even the few traders and concessionaires who have gotten rich are unable to invest money productively in Russia, except in state loans. None can be invested for exploitation. There is practically no chance for anyone to get rich under the Soviet system except a comparatively few traders, concessionaires, or the winners of some of the big state lotteries--and it is hard for any of them to stay rich under the heavy taxation." Baldwin, Roger. Liberty Under the Soviets, New York: Vanguard Press, 1928, p. 29-30
"...Even to tourists in Russia the absence of any moneyed class is at once apparent.... No fine shops, no gay restaurants, no private motors--none of the trappings of wealth that lend color and variety to the life of bourgeois countries. Instead, a somewhat monotonous drabness and shabbiness, more than compensated for by the thought of its significance to the masses." Baldwin, Roger. Liberty Under the Soviets, New York: Vanguard Press, 1928, p. 30
"And to anyone who accepts the view of social action as a struggle of classes, the political democracy of capitalist countries is only an instrument for the rule in the last analysis of a comparatively small class--the big property owners. ...Tested by it, the Soviet system clearly represents the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population-- the workers and peasants--as opposed to propertied classes,..." Baldwin, Roger. Liberty Under the Soviets, New York: Vanguard Press, 1928, p. 35
"One should keep in mind, however, that big incomes are still extremely rare. Earning power may vary in the Soviet Union, according to artistic or technical proficiency, but the extremes, as Louis Fisher has pointed out, are very close. No such "spread" is conceivable in the USSR as exists in Britain or America between say, a clerk in a factory and its owner. Among all the 165 million Russians, there are probably not ten men who earn $25,000 per year." Gunther, John. Inside Europe. New York, London: Harper & Brothers, c1940, p. 567
"Yes, you're right, we have not yet built communist society. It is not so easy to build such a society. You are probably aware of the difference between socialist society and communist society. In socialist society certain inequalities in property still exist. But in socialist society there is no longer unemployment, no exploitation, no oppression of nationalities. In socialist society everyone is obliged to work, although he does not in return for his labor receive according to his requirements, but according to the quantity and quality of the work he has performed. That is why wages, and, moreover, unequal, differentiated wages, still exist. Only when we have succeeded in creating a system under which in return for their labor people will receive from society, not according to the quantity and quality of the labor they perform, but according to their requirements, will it be possible to say that we have built communist society." Stalin, J. The Stalin-Howard Interview. New York: International Publishers, 1936, p. 11
"The railways, the length of whose permanent ways, in 1913, on the territory now administered by the USSR, was about 36,500 miles, had increased to about 48,200 miles. For the whole of the former territory of Russia the mean increase in the workers wages was 16.9% over pre-war figures. (Figures arrived at by taking purchasing-power into account)" Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 155
"Now the 1928 Five-Year Plan, supported by colossal figures, ended in four years by an achievement of 93 percent of its objectives. As regards heavy industry, the achievement in four years amounted to 108 percent. National production trebled between 1928 and 1934. Pre-war production was quadrupled by the end of 1933. From 1928 to 1932 the number of workmen employed increased from 9,500,000 to 13,800,000 (an increase in important industries of 1,800,000, in agriculture of 1,100,000, and in commercial employees of 450,000) and, naturally, unemployment has become a thing of the past there.
The part played by industry in total production, that is to say in relation to agricultural production, was 42 percent in 1913, 48 percent in 1928, and 70 percent in 1932.
The part played by the socialist industry in total industry at the end of four years was 99.93%.
The national revenue has increased during the four years by 85 percent. At the end of the Plan, it was more than 45 billion rubles. A year later 49 billion (1/2% being capitalist and foreign elements).
The amount of the workers' and employees' wages rose from 8 billion to 30 billion rubles.
The number of persons able to read and to write has risen, for the whole of the USSR, from 67 percent at the end of 1930, to 90 percent at the end of 1933.
Pause a moment and compare these figures, which testify to a progress unique in the annals of the human race, with the virtuous prophecies which figure above--Insolvency, Deadlock, Catastrophe, Breakdown--all of which were uttered at a time when the Plan was almost realized already--in spite of universal opposition." Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 194-195
"When he says that there are inequalities of wages and privileges comparable with those under Tsarism he lies. You all know it. No man has a sum of privileges in excess of any other. And wages vary, but the worst-paid worker is not much less well-off than the best paid. Remember, this is a transitional stage. We are on the way to our Communist goal. Trotsky offers instead years of fruitless waiting for political revolutions whose opportunity may well not be seizable. He offers the workers of the world an abstraction. " Edelman, Maurice. G.P.U. Justice. London: G. Allen & Unwin, ltd.,1938, p. 136-148
An economic miracle
During the industrialization, the Soviet workers achieved economic miracles that still stagger the imagination.
Here is how Kuromiya concluded his study of the Stalinist industrialization:
`The breakthrough wrought by the revolution of 1928--31 laid the foundations of the remarkable industrial expansion in the 1930s that would sustain the country in the Second World War. By the end of 1932 ..., the gross industrial output ... had more than doubled since 1928 .... as the capital projects of the First Five-Year Plan were brought into operation one after another in the mid-1930s, industrial production expanded enormously. During 1934--36 ..., ``the official index showed a rise of 88 per cent for total gross industrial production ....'' In the decade from 1927/28 to 1937 ..., gross industrial production leapt from 18,300 million rubles to 95,500 million; pig iron output rose from 3.3 million tons to 14.5; coal from 35.4 million metric tons to 128.0; electric power from 5.1 billion kilowatt hours to 36.2; machine tools from 2,098 units to 36,120. Even discounting the exaggeration, it may be safely said that the achievements were dazzling.' Kuromiya, op. cit. , p. 287.
Lenin expressed his confidence in the capacity of the Soviet people to build socialism in one country by declaring, `Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country'. Lenin, Our Foreign and Domestic Position and the Tasks of the Party. Works, vol. 31, p. 419.
With this viewpoint, in 1920 Lenin proposed a general plan of electrification that foresaw, over the next fifteen years, the construction of 30 electrical power plants generating 1.75 million kW. But, thanks to the will and tenacity of Stalin and the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, in 1935, the Soviet Union had a generating capacity of 4.07 million kW. Lenin's ambitious dream had been surpassed by 133 per cent by Stalin! L'Office central de statistique près le Conseil des ministres de l'U.R.S.S. Les Progrès du pouvoir soviétique depuis 40 ans en chiffres: Recueil statistique (Moscow: Éditions en langues étrangères, 1958), p. 75.
Incredible rebuttal to all those educated renegades who read in scientific books that socialist construction in one country, particularly a peasant one, is not possible. The theory of the `impossibility of socialism in the USSR', spread by the Mensheviks and the Trotskyists was a mere lamentation showing the pessimism and the capitulationist spirit among the petite bourgeoisie. As the socialist cause progressed, their hatred for real socialism, that thing that should not exist, only sharpened.
The increase in fixed assets between 1913 and 1940 gives a precise idea of the incredible effort supplied by the Soviet people. Starting from an index of 100 for the year preceding the war, the fixed assets for industry reached 136 at the beginning of the First Five-Year Plan in 1928. On the eve of the Second World War, twelve years later, in 1940, the index had risen to 1,085 points, i.e. an eight-fold increase in twelve years. The fixed assets for agriculture evolved from 100 to 141, just before the collectivization in 1928, to reach 333 points in 1940. Ibid. , p. 26.
For eleven years, from 1930 to 1940, the Soviet Union saw an average increase in industrial production of 16.5 per cent. Ibid. , p. 30.
During industrialization, the main effort was focused on creating the material conditions for freedom and independence for the Socialist homeland. At the same time, the socialist régime laid down the basis for future well-being and prosperity. The greatest part of the increase in national revenue was destined for accumulation. One could hardly think about improving the material standard of living in the short term. Yes, the life for workers and peasants was hard.
Accrued capital passed from 3.6 billion rubles in 1928, representing 14.3 per cent of the national revenue, to 17.7 billion in 1932, i.e. 44.2 per cent of the national revenue! Consumer spending, on the other hand, slightly dropped: from 23.1 billion in 1930 to 22.3 billion two years later. According to Kuromiya, `The real wages of Moscow industrial workers in 1932 were only 53 percent of the 1928 level'. Kuromiya, op. cit. , pp. 304--305. [but it was mor than during Tsarist era]
While industrial assets increased ten-fold from the pre-war period, the housing construction index had only reached 225 points in 1940. Housing conditions had hardly improved. Progrès , op. cit. , p. 26.
It is not true that industrialization took place at the cost of a `feudal-military exploitation of the peasantry', as claimed Bukharin: socialist industrialization, which clearly could not take place through the exploitation of colonies, was achieved through the sacrifices of all workers, industrial, peasant and intellectual.
Was Stalin `unfeeling towards the terrible difficulties of the life of workers'? Stalin understood perfectly well the primary need of the physical survival of the Socialist homeland and of its people before a substantial and lasting improvement of the standard of living could take place. Build housing? The Nazi aggressors destroyed and burnt 1,710 cities and towns and more than 70,000 villages and hamlets, leaving 25 million people without shelter. Ibid. , p. 31.
In 1921, the Soviet Union was a ruined country, its independence under threat from all the imperialist powers. After twenty years of titanic efforts, the workers built a country that could stand up to the most developed capitalist power in Europe, Hitler's Germany. That old and future Nazis lash out against the `forced' industrialization and the `terrible suffering imposed on the people' is quite understandable. But what person in India, Brazil, Nigeria or Egypt would not stop to think? Since the independences from the colonial powers, what has been the lot of the ninety per cent of workers in the Third World? And who profited from this suffering? Did the workers in these countries knowingly accept these sacrifices, as was the case in the Soviet Union? And did the sacrifices of the Indian, Brazilian, Nigerian or Egyptian worker allow the creation of an independent economic system, capable of resisting the most vicious imperialism, as did the Soviet worker in the twenties and thirties?
9. Cult of Personality (Bill Bland)
On 14 February 1956 Nikita Khrushchev (Soviet revisionist politician (1894-1971); First Secretary of Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1953-64); Premier (1958-64); then First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, publicly, but obliquely, attacked Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Party:
"It is of paramount importance to re-establish and to strengthen in every way the Leninist principle of collective leadership. The Central Committee . . . vigorously condemns the cult of the individual as being alien to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism".
(N.S. Khrushchev: Report to the Central Committee, 20th Congress of the CPSU, February 1056; London; 1956; p. 80-81).
In his 'secret speech' to the same Congress on 25 February (leaked to the US State Department but not published within the Soviet Union) Khrushchev attacked Stalin more directly, asserting that
"The cult of the individual acquired such monstrous size chiefly because Stalin himself, using all conceivable methods, supported the glorification of his own person".
(Russian Institute, Columbia University (Ed.): 'The Anti-Stalin Campaign and International Communism'; New York; 1956; p. 69).
Yet many witnesses testify to Stalin's simplicity and modesty.
The French writer Henri Barbusse (French writer (1873-1935) describes the simplicity of Stalin's life-style:
"One goes up to the first floor, were white curtains hang over three of the windows. These three windows are Stalin's home. In the tiny hall a long military cloak hangs on a peg beneath a cap. In addition to this hall there are three bedrooms and a dining room. The bedrooms are as simply furnished as those of a respectable, second-class hotel. The eldest son, Jasheka, sleeps at night in the dining room, on a divan which is converted into a bed; the younger sleeps in a tiny recess, a sort of alcove opening out of it. . . .
Each month he earns the five hundred roubles, which constitute the meagre maximum salary of the officials of the Communist Party (amounting to between £20 and £25 in English money). . .
This frank and brilliant man is . . . a simple man. . . . He does not employ thirty-two secretaries, Like Mr. Lloyd George; he has only one. . . .
Stalin systematically gives credit for all progress made to Lenin, whereas the credit has been in very large measure his own".
(H. Barbusse: 'Stalin: A New World seen through One Man'; London; 1935; p. vii, viii, 291, 294).
True, Stalin had the use of a dacha, or country cottage, but here too his life was equally simple, as his daughter Svetlana" relates:
"It was the same with the dacha at Kuntsevo. .
My father lived on the ground floor. He lived in one room and made it do for everything. He slept on the sofa, made up at night as a bed".
(S. Alliluyeva: "Letters to a Friend"; London; 1967; p. 28).
The Albanian leader Enver Hoxha (Albanian Marxist-Leninist politician (1908-85); leader of the Communist Party of Albania (Later the f)arty of Labour of Albania)(1941-85); Prime Minister (1944-54); Minister of Foreign Affairs (1946-54); - describes Stalin as 'modest' and considerate':
"Stalin was no tyrant, no despot. He was a man of principle; he was just, modest and very kindly and considerate towards people, the cadres and his colleagues."
(E. Hoxha: 'With Stalin: Memoirs'; Tirana; 1979; p. 14-15).
The British Fabians Sidney and Beatrice Webb (Sidney Webb, British economist (1859-1947; Beatrice Webb, British economist and sociologist (1858-1943), in their monumental work 'Soviet Communism": A New Civilisation', emphatically reject the notion that Stalin exercised dictatorial power:
"Sometimes it is asserted that . . . the whole state is governed by the will of a single person, Josef Stalin.
First let it be noted that, unlike Mussolini, Hitler and other modern dictators, Stalin is not invested by law with any authority over his fellow-citizens. He has not even the extensive power, which . . . the American Constitution entrusts for four years to every successive president. . . . Stalin is not, and never has been, . . . the President of the USSR. . . . He is not even a People's Commissar, or member of the Cabinet. . . . He is . . . the General Secretary of the Party. .
We do not think that the Party is governed by the will of a single person, or that Stalin is the sort of person to claim or desire such a position. He has himself very explicitly denied any such personal dictatorship in terms which . . certainly accord with our own impression of the facts.
The Communist Party in the USSR has adopted for its own organisation the pattern which we have described. . . . In this pattern individual dictatorship has no place. Personal decisions are distrusted, and elaborately guarded against. In order to avoid the mistakes due to bias, anger, jealousy, vanity and other distempers . . . it is desirable that the individual will should always be controlled by the necessity of gaining the assent of colleagues of equal grade, who have candidly discussed the matter and who have to make themselves jointly responsible for the decision. . Stalin . . . has . . . frequently pointed out that he does no more than carry out the decisions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. . .
The plain truth is that, surveying the administration of the USSR during the past decade under the alleged dictatorship of Stalin, the principal decisions have manifested neither the promptitude nor the timeliness, nor yet the fearless obstinacy that have often been claimed as the merits of a dictatorship. On the contrary, the action of the Party has frequently been taken after consideration so prolonged, and as the outcome of discussion sometimes so heated and embittered, as to bear upon their formulation the marks of hesitancy and lack of assurance. . .
These policies have borne . . . the stigmata of committee control".
(S. & B. Webb: 'Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation'; London; 19 ; p. 4231, 432, 433, 435).
Perhaps Barbusse, Hoxha and the Webbs may be considered biased witnesses. Yet observers who are highly critical of Stalin agree with the testimony of the former.
The American diplomat Joseph Davies (American lawyer and diplomat (1876-1958); Chairman (1915-16) and Vice-Chairman (19l6-18) of Federal Trade Commission; Ambassador to Moscow (1936-38), to Belgium (1938-39).remarked on Stalin's simple, kindly manner:
"I was startled to see the door . . . open and Mr. Stalin come into the room alone. . . . His demeanor is kindly, his manner almost depreciatingly simple. .
He greeted me cordially with a smile and with great simplicity, but also with a real dignity. . . . His brown eye is exceedingly kindly and gentle. A child would like to sit in his lap and a dog would sidle up to him".
(J. E. Davies: 'Mission to Moscow'; London; 1940; p. 222, 230).
Isaac Don Levine- [Russian born American newspaper correspondent (1892-1981)]
- writes in his hostile biography of Stalin:
"Stalin does not seek honours. He loathes pomp. He is averse to public displays. He could have all the nominal regalia in the chest of a great state. But he prefers the background."
(J. D. Levine: 'Stalin: A Biography'; London; 1931; p. 248-49).
Another hostile critic, Louis Fischer, [American writer (1896-1970)] testifies to Stalin's 'capacity to listen':
"Stalin . . inspires the Party with his will-power and calm. Individuals in contact with him admire his capacity to listen and his skill in improving on the suggestions and drafts of highly intelligent subordinates".
(L. Fischer: Article in: 'The Nation', Volume 137 (9 August 1933); p. 154).
Eugene Lyons , [Russian-born American writer (1898-1985)] in his biography entitled 'Stalin: Czar of All the Russias', describes Stalin’s simple way of life:
"Stalin lives in a modest apartment of three rooms. . . . In his everyday life his tastes remained simple almost to the point of crudeness. . . . Even those who hated him with a desperate hate and blamed him for sadistic cruelties never accused him of excesses in his -private life. .
Those who measure 'success' by millions of dollars, yachts and mistresses find it hard to understand power relished in austerity. .
There was nothing remotely ogre-like in his looks or conduct, nothing theatrical in his manner. A pleasant, earnest, ageing man -- evidently willing to be friendly to the first foreigner whom, he had admitted to his presence in years. 'He's a thoroughly likeable person', I remember thinking as we sat there, and thinking it in astonishment".
(E. Lyons: 'Stalin: Czar of All the Russias'; Philadelphia; 1940; p. 196, 200).
Lyons asked Stalin "Are you a dictator?":
"Stalin smiled, implying that the question was on the preposterous side. 'No', he said slowly, 'I am no dictator. Those who use the word do not understand the Soviet system of government and the methods of the Communist Party, No one man or group of men can dictate. Decisions are made by the Party and acted upon by its organs, the Central Committee and the Politburo".
(E. Lyons: ibid.; p. 203).
The Finnish revisionist Arvo Tuominen- [Finnish revisionist politician (1894-1981)]-- strongly hostile to Stalin, comments in his book 'The Bells of the Kremlin' on Stalin's personal self-effacement:
"In his speeches and writings Stalin always withdrew into the background, speaking only of communism, the Soviet power and the Party, and stressing that he was really a representative of the idea and the organisation, nothing more. . I never noticed any signs of vainglory in Stalin".
(A. Tuominen: 'The Bells of the Kremlin'; Hanover (New Hampshire, USA); 1983; p. 155, 163).
and expresses surprise at the contrast between the real Stalin and the propaganda picture spread of him:
"During my many years in Moscow I never stopped marvelling at the contrast between the man and the colossal likenesses that had been made of him. That medium-sized, slightly pock-marked Caucasian with a moustache was as far removed as could be from that stereotype of a dictator. But at the same time the propaganda was proclaiming his superhuman abilities".
(A. Tuominen: ibid., p. 155).
The Soviet marshal Georgy Zhukov [Soviet military officer (1869-1974); Chief of Staff (1941); Marshal (1943); Minister of Defence (1955-57)]:- speaks of Stalin's 'lack of affectation':
"Free of affectation and mannerisms, he (Stalin –Ed) won the heart of everyone he talked with".
(C. K. Zhukov: 'The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov'; London; 1971; p. 283).
Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva-[Stalin's daughter (1926- )] - is gullible enough to accept almost every slander circulated about her father, but even she dismisses the charge that he himself engineered the 'cult' of his personality. She describes a train trip with Stalin from the Crimea to Moscow in 1948:
"As we pulled in at the various stations we'd go for a stroll along the platform. My father walked as far as the engine, giving greetings to the railway workers as he went. You couldn't see a single passenger. It was a special train and no one was allowed on the platform. . . . Who ever thought such a thing up? Who had contrived all these stratagems? Not he. It was the system of which he himself was a prisoner and in which he suffered from loneliness, emptiness and lack of human companionship. . .
Nowadays when I read or hear somewhere that my father used to consider himself practically a god, it amazes me that people who knew him well can even say such a thing. . . .
He never thought of himself as a god".
(S. Alliluyeva: 'Letters to a Friend'; London; 1968; p. 202-03, 213).
She describes the grief of the servants at the dacha when Stalin died:
"These men and women who were servants of my father loved him. In little things he wasn't hard to please. On the contrary, he was courteous, unassuming and direct with those who waited on him. .
Men, women, everyone, started crying all over again. .
No one was making a show of loyalty or grief. All of them had known one another for years. . .
No one in this room looked on him as a god or a superman, a genius or a demon. They loved and respected him for the most ordinary human qualities, those qualities of which servants are the best judges of all".
(S. Alliluyeva: ibid,; p. 20, 22).
Furthermore, the facts show that on numerous occasions Stalin himself denounced and ridiculed the 'cult of the individual' as contrary to Marxism-Leninism. For example,
June 1926:
"I must say in all conscience, comrades, that I do not deserve a good half of the flattering things that have been said here about me. I am, it appears, a hero of the October Revolution, the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet, the leader of the Communist International, a legendary warrior-knight and all the rest of it. This is absurd, comrades, and quite unnecessary exaggeration. It is the sort of thing that is usually said at the graveside of a departed revolutionary. But I have no intention of dying yet.
I really was, and still am, one of the pupils of the advanced workers of the Tiflis railway workshops".
(J. V. Stalin: 'Works’, Volume 8; Moscow; 1954; p. 182).
October 1927:
"And what is Stalin? Stalin is only a minor figure".
(J. V. Stalin: 'Works’. Volume 10; Moscow; Moscow; 1954; p. 177).
December 1929:
"Your congratulations and greetings I place to the credit of the great Party of the working class which bore me and reared me in its own image and likeness. And just because I place them to the credit of our glorious Leninist Party, I make bold to tender you my Bolshevik thanks".
(J. V. Stalin: 'Works', Volume 12; Moscow; 1955; p. 146).
April 1930:
"There are some who think that the article 'Dizzy with Success was the result of Stalin's personal initiative. That, of course, is nonsense. It is not in order that personal initiative in a matter like this be taken by anyone, whoever he might be, that we have a Central Committee".
(J. V. Stalin: 'Works', ibid.; p. 218).
August 1930:
"You speak of your devotion' to me. . . Iwould advise you to discard the ‘principle' of devotion to persons. It is not the Bolshevik way. Be devoted to the working class, its Party, its state. That is a fine and useful thing. But do not confuse it with devotion to persons, this vain and useless bauble of weak-minded intellectuals".
(J. V. Stalin: 'Works', Volume 13; Moscow; 1955; p. 20).
December 1931:
"As for myself, I am just a pupil of Lenin's, and the aim of my life is to be a worthy pupil of his. . . .
Marxism does not deny at all the role played by outstanding individuals or that history is made by people. But . . great people are worth anything at all only to the extent that they are able correctly to understand these conditions, to understand how to change them. If they fail to understand these conditions and want to alter them according to the promptings of their imagination, they will find themselves in the situation of Don Quixote.
Individual persons cannot decide. Decisions of individuals are always, or nearly always, one-sided decisions. . . . In every collective body, there are people whose opinion must be reckoned with. . . . From the experience of three revolutions we know that out of every 100 decisions taken by individual persons without being tested and corrected collectively, approximately 90 are one-sided. .
Never under any circumstances would our workers now tolerate power in the hands of one person. With us personages of the greatest authority are reduced to nonentities, become mere ciphers, as soon as the masses of the workers lose confidence in them".
(J.V. Stalin: ibid.; p. 107-08, 109, 113).
February 1933:
"I have received your letter ceding me your second Order as a reward for my work. I thank you very much for your warm words and comradely present. I know what you are depriving yourself of in my favour and appreciate your sentiments. Nevertheless, I cannot accept your second Order. I cannot and must not accept it, not only because it can only belong to you, as you alone have earned it, but also because I have been amply rewarded as it is by the attention and respect of comrades and, consequently, have no right to rob you.
Orders were instituted not for those who are well known as it is, but mainly for heroic people who are little known and who need to be made known to all.
Besides, I must tell you that I already have two Orders. 'That is more than one needs, I assure you."
(J. V. Stalin: ibid.; p. 241).
May 1933:
"Robins: I consider it a great honour to have an opportunity of paying you a visit.
Stalin: There is nothing particular in that. You are exaggerating.
Robins: What is most interesting to me is that throughout Russia
I have found the names Lenin-Stalin, Lenin-Stalin, Lenin-Stalin, linked together.
Stalin: That, too, is an exaggeration. How can I be compared to Lenin?"
(J. V. Stalin: ibid.; p. 267)
February 1938:
"I am absolutely against the publication of 'Stories of the Childhood of Stalin'. The book abounds with a mass of inexactitudes of fact, of alterations, of exaggerations and of unmerited praise.
But . . the important thing resides in the fact that the book has a tendency to engrave on the minds of Soviet children (and people in general) the personality cult of leaders, of infallible heroes. This is dangerous and detrimental. The theory of 'heroes' and the 'crowd' is not a Bolshevik, but a Social-Revolutionary (i.e. Anarchist) theory.
I suggest we burn this book".
(J. V. Stalin: ibid.; p. 327).
Thus, the 'cult of the individual' as built up around Stalin was contrary to Marxism-Leninism, and its practice was contrary to the expressed wishes of Stalin.
This raises an important question.
When I expressed at a previous meeting of the Stalin Society the view that the Marxist-Leninists were in a minority in the Soviet leadership from the late 1920s, there were loud murmurs of dissent from some members.
But we have seen that, although Stalin expressed strong opposition to the 'cult of personality', the 'cult of personality' continued.
It therefore follows irrefutably that:
1) either Stalin was unable to stop it,
or
2) he did not want to stop it and so was a petty-minded, lying, non-Marxist-Leninist, hypocrite.
The Initiators of the 'Cult'
But if the 'cult of personality' around Stalin was not built up by Stalin, but against his wishes, by whom was it built up?
The facts show that the most fervent exponents of the 'cult of personality' around Stalin were revisionists and concealed revisionists like Karl Radek[Soviet revisionist politician (1885-1939); pleaded guilty at his public trial to terrorism and treason (1937); murdered in prison by fellow-prisoner (1939) ], Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan[Soviet revisionist politician (1895-1978); Politburo member (1935-78); People's Commissar for Trade (1926-31), for Supply (1931-34), for Food Industry (1934-38), for Foreign Trade (1938-49); Deputy Premier (1946-64); President (1964-65)].
Roy Medvedev[Soviet revisionist historian (1925- )] points out that:
"The first issue of 'Pravda;' for 1934 carried a huge two-page article by Radek, heaping orgiastic praise on Stalin. The former Trotskyite, who had led the opposition to Stalin for many years, now called him 'Lenin's best pupil, the model of the Leninist Party, bone of its bone, blood of its blood'. . . . He is as far-sighted as Lenin', and so on and on. This seems to have been the first large article in the press specifically devoted to the adulation of Stalin, and it was quickly reissued as a pamphlet in 225,000 copies, an enormous figure for the time".
(R. A. Medvedev: 'Let history Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism'; London; 1972; p. 148).
At his public trial in January 1937 Radek admitted to terrorism and treason:
"Vyshinsky: What did Mrachovsky [Soviet Trotskyist politicIan (1883-1936);
pleaded guilty to terrorism aud treason at his public trial in August 1936 and was sentenced to death.] reply'?
Radek: He replied quite definitely that the struggle had entered
the terrorist phase. . In April 1933 Mrachovsky asked me whether I would mention any Trotskyite in Leningrad who would undertake the organisation of a terrorist group there.
Vyshinsky: Against whom?
Radek: Against Kirov [Sergei Kirov, Soviet Marxist-Leninist politician
(1886-1934); Secretary of CPSU in Azerbaijan (1921-36), in Leningrad (1926-34); Member of Politburo (1930-34); assassinated by terrorist 1934)]:-, of course. .
Vyshinsky: In 1934-35 your position was that of organised, systematic
perpetration of terrorist acts?
Radek: Yes. . We would inevitably have to bring the social structure of the
USSR into line with the victorious fascist countries . . . a pseudonym for the restoration of capitalism. It was clear to us that this meant fasicsm . . . serving foreign finance capital. It was planned to surrender the Ukraine to Germany and the Maritime province and the Amur region to Japan' "
(Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Centre; Moscow; 1937; p. 88, 90, 103, 115).
It was Khrushchev who introduced the term 'vozhd' ('leader', corresponding to the German word 'F'uhrer'). At the Moscow Party Conference in January 1932, Khrushchev finished his speech by saying:
"The Moscow Bolsheviks, rallied around the Leninist Central Committee as never before, and around the 'vozhd' of our Party, Comrade Stalin, are cheerfully and confidently marching toward new victories in the battles for socialism, for world proletarian revolution".
('Rabochaya Moskva', 26 January 1932, cited in: L. Pistrak: 'The Grand Tactician: Khrushchev's Rise to Power'; London; 1961; p. 159).
At the 17th Party Conference in January 1934 it was Khrushchev, and Khrushchev alone, who called Stalin:
"vozhd' of genius".
(XVII s'ezd Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (B.); p, 145, cited in: L.Pistrak: ibid.; p. 160).
In August 1936, during the treason trial of Lev Kamenev [Soviet Trotskyist politician (1883-1936); admitted to treason at his public trial (1936); sentenced to death and executed (1936)] and Grigory Zinoviev [Soviet Trotskyist politician (1883-1936); President of Communist International (1919-26); admitted to treason at his public trial (1936); sentenced to death and executed (1936)], Khrushchev, in his capacity as Moscow Party Secretary, said:
"Miserable pygmies! They lifted their hands against the greatest of all men, . . our wise 'vozhd', Comrade Stalin! . . Thou, Comrade Stalin, hast raised the great banner of Marxism-Leninism high over the entire world and carried it forward. We assure thee, Comrade Stalin, that the Moscow Bolshevik organisation -- the faithful supporter of the Stalinist Central Committee – will increase Stalinist vigilance still more, will extirpate the Trotskyite-Zinovievite remnants, and close the ranks of the Party and non-Party Bolsheviks even more around the Stalinist Central Committee and the great Stalin".
('Pravda', 23 August 1936, cited in: L. Pistrak: ibid; p. 162).
At the Eighth All-Union Congress of Soviets in November 1936 it was again Khrushchev who proposed that the new Soviet Constitution, which was before the Congress for approval, should be called the 'Stalinist Constitution' because:
"it was written from beginning to end by Comrade Stalin himself".
('Pravda', 30 November 1936, cited in: L. Pistrak: ibid.; p. 161).
It has to be noted that Vyacheslav Molotov, [Soviet Marxist-Leninist politician (1890-1986); Member of Politburo (1926-53); Prime Minster (1930-41); Deputy Prime Minister (1941-57); Minister of Foreign Affairs (1939-49, 1953-56); Ambassador to Mongolia (1957-60)] then Prime Minister, and Andrey Zhdanov [Soviet Marxist-Leninist politician (1896-1948); Member of Politburo (1935-48)], then Party Secretary in Leningrad, did not mention any special role by Stalin in the drafting of the Constitution.
In the same speech Khrushchev coined the term 'Stalinism'
"Our Constitution is the Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism that has conquered one sixth of the globe".
(Ibid.).
Khrushchev's speech in Moscow to an audience of 200,000 at the time of the treason trial of Grigori Pyatakov;[ Soviet Trotskyist politician (1890-1937); Assistant People's Commissar for Heavy Industry (I931-37); admitted to treason at his public trial (1937); sentenced to death and executed (1937)] and Karl Radek in January 1937 was in a similar vein:
"By lifting their hands against Comrade Stalin they lifted them against all the best that humanity possesses. For Stalin is hope; he is expectation; he is the beacon that guides all progressive mankind. Stalin is our banner! Stalin is our will! Stalin is our victory!"
(‘pravda', 31 January 1937), cited in: L. Pistrak: ibid,; p., 162).
Stalin was described by Khrushchev in March 1939 as:
"our great genius, our beloved Stalin",
('Visti VTsVK', 3 March 1939, cited in: L. Pistrak: ibid,; p. 164).
at the 18th Congress of the Party in March 1939 as:
"The greatest genius of humanity, teacher and 'vozhd', who leads us towards Communism, our very own Stalin."
(XVIJI s'ezd Vsesoiueznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (B.), p. 174, cited in: L. Pistrak: ibid,; p. 164).
and in May 1945 as:
"great Marshal of the Victory",
('Pravda Ukrainy', 13 May 1945, cited in: L. Pistrak: ibid.; p. 164).
On the occasion of the celebration of Stalin's fiftieth birthday in December 1929, Anastas Mikoyan accompanied his congratulations with the demand:
"That we, meeting the rightful demand of the masses, begin finally to work on his biography and make it available to the Party and to all working people in our country". ('Izvestia', 21 December 1929, cited in: L. Pistrak: ibid,; p. 164).
Ten years later, on the occasion of Stalin's sixtieth birthday in December 1939, Mikoyan was still urging the creation of a:
"scientific biography of Stalin";
('Pravda', 21 December 1939, cited in: L. Pistrak: ibid,.; p. 158).
The biography was eventually published in 1947, compiled by:
" G. F. A1exandrov, M. R. Galaktionov, V. S. Kruzhkov, M. B. Mitin, V. D. Mochalov and P. N. Pospelov". ('Joseph Stalin: A Short Biography'; Moscow; 1947).
However, in his 'secret speech' to the 20th Congress of: the CPSU in 1956, basing himself on the 'cult of the individual' which he and his colleagues had built up around Stalin, Khrushchev attributed the authorship of the book to Stalin himself:
''One of the most characteristic examples of Stalin’s self-glorification and of his lack of even elementary modesty is the edition of his 'Short Biography'. . .
This book is an example of the most dissolute flattery".
(Russian Institute, Columbia University (Ed.): op. cit.; p. 69).
The Motives for Building up the 'Cult of the Individual'
Of course, many Soviet citizens admired Stalin and expressed this admiration. But clearly, the 'cult of the individual' around Stalin was built up mainly by the concealed revisionists, against Stalin’s wishes, in order :
Firstly, to disguise the fact that the Party and the Communist International were dominated by concealed revisionists and to present the fiction that these were dominated personally by Stalin; thus blame for breaches of socialist legality and for deviations from Marxist-Leninist principles on their part could later be laid on Stalin;
Secondly, to provide a pretext for attacking Stalin at a later date (under the guise of carrying out a programme of ‘democratisation’, which was in fact a programme of dismatling socialism".
That Stalin himself was not unaware of the fact that the concealed revisionists were the main force behind the ‘cult of personality’ was reported by the Finnish revisionist Tuominen in 1935, who describes how, when he was informed that busts of him had been given prominent places in Moscow's leading art gallery, the Tretyakov, Stalin exclaimed:
"That's downright sabotage!".
(A. Touminen: op. cit.; p. 164).
The German writer Lion Feuchtwanger [Lion Feuchtwanger, German writer (1884-1958)] in 1936 confirms that Stalin suspected that the 'cult of personality' was being fostered by 'wreckers' with the aim of discrediting him:
"It is manifestly irksome to Stalin to be worshipped as he is, and from time to time he makes fun of it.
Of all the men I know who have power, Stalin is the most unpretentious. I spoke frankly to him about the vulgar and excessive cult made of him, and he replied with equal candour.
He thinks it is possible even that 'wreckers' may be behind it in an attempt to discredit him".
(L. Feuchtwanger: 'Moscow 1937'; London; 1937; p. 93, 94-94).
To conclude, the attack made by the revisionists, on the 'cult of personality' in the Soviet Union was an attack not only upon Stalin personally as a leading Marxist-Leninist, a leading defender of socialism, but was the first stage in an attack upon Marxism~Leninism and the socialist system in the Soviet Union.
Perhaps the best comment on it is the sarcastic toast which the Finnish revisionist Tuominen records is having been proposed by Stalin at a New Year Party in 1935:
"Comrades! I want to propose a toast to our patriarch, life and sun, liberator of nations, architect of socialism (he rattled off all the appelations applied to him in those days), Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, and I hope this is the first and last speech made to that genius this evening".
(A. Tuominen: op. cit.; p. 162).
10. Purges
No episode in Soviet history has provoked more rage from the old bourgeois world than the purge of 1937--1938. The unnuanced denunciation of the purge can be read in identical terms in a neo-Nazi pamphlet, in a work with academic pretentions by Zbigniew Brzezinski, in a Trotskyist pamphlet or in a book by the Belgian army chief ideologue.
Let us just consider the last, Henri Bernard, a former Belgian Secret Service officer, professor emeritus at the Belgian Royal Military College. He published in 1982 a book called Le communisme et l'aveuglement occidental (Communism and Western Blindness). In this work, Bernard mobilizes the sane forces of the West against an imminent Russian invasion. Regarding the history of the USSR, Bernard's opinion about the 1937 purge is interesting on many counts:
`Stalin would use methods that would have appalled Lenin. The Georgian had no trace of human sentiment. Starting with Kirov's assassination (in 1934), the Soviet Union underwent a bloodbath, presenting the spectacle of the Revolution devouring its own sons. Stalin, said Deutscher, offered to the people a régime made of terror and illusions. Hence, the new liberal measures corresponded with the flow of blood of the years 1936--1939. It was the time of those terrible purges, of that `dreadful spasm'. The interminable series of trials started. The `old guard' of heroic times would be annihilated. The main accused of all these trials was Trotsky, who was absent. He continued without fail to lead the struggle against Stalin, unmasking his methods and denouncing his collusion with Hitler.' Bernard, op. cit. , pp. 50, 52--53.
So, the historian of the Belgian Army likes to quote Trotsky and Trotskyists, he defends the `old Bolshevik guard', and he even has a kind word for Lenin; but under Stalin, the inhuman monster, blind and dreadful terror dominated.
Before describing the conditions that led the Bolsheviks to purge the Party in 1937--1938, let us consider what a bourgeois specialist who respects the facts knows about this period of Soviet history.
Gábor Tamás Rittersporn, born in Budapest, Hungary, published a study of the purges in 1988 (English version, 1991), under the title Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications. He forthrightly states his opposition to communism and states that `we have no intention of denying in any way, much less of justifying, the very real horrors of the age we are about to treat of; we would surely be among the first to bring them to light if that was still necessary'. Gábor Tamás Rittersporn, Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications: Social Tensions and Political Conflict in the USSR, 1933--1953 (Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1991), p. 23.
However, the official bourgeois version is so grotesque and its untruthfulness so obvious that in the long run it could lead to a complete rejection of the standard Western interpretation of the Soviet Revolution. Rittersporn admirably defined the problems he encountered when trying to correct some of the most grotesque bourgeois lies.
`If ... one tries to publish a tentative analysis of some almost totally unknown material, and to use it to throw new light on the history of the Soviet Union in the 1930s and the part that Stalin played in it, one discovers that opinion tolerates challenges to the received wisdom far less than one would have thought .... The traditional image of the ``Stalin phenomenon'' is in truth so powerful, and the political and ideological value-judgments which underlie it are so deeply emotional, that any attempt to correct it must also inevitably appear to be taking a stand for or against the generally accepted norms that it implies ....
`To claim to show that the traditional representation of the ``Stalin period'' is in many ways quite inaccurate is tantamount to issuing a hopeless challenge to the time-honoured patterns of thought which we are used to applying to political realities in the USSR, indeed against the common patterns of speech itself .... Research of this kind can be justified above all by the extreme inconsistency of the writing devoted to what historical orthodoxy considers to be a major event --- the ``Great Purge'' of 1936--1938.
`Strange as it may seem, there are few periods of Soviet history that have been studied so superficially.' Ibid. , pp. 1--2.
`There is ... every reason to believe that if the elementary rules of source analysis have tended to be so long ignored in an important area of Soviet studies, it is because the motives of delving in this period of the Soviet past have differed markedly from the usual ones of historical research.
`In fact even the most cursory reading of the ``classic'' works makes it hard to avoid the impression that in many respects these are often more inspired by the state of mind prevailing in some circles in the West, than by the reality of Soviet life under Stalin. The defence of hallowed Western values against all sorts of real or imaginary threats from Russia; the assertion of genuine historical experiences as well as of all sorts of ideological assumptions.' Ibid. , p. 23.
In other words, Rittersporn is saying: Look, I can prove that most of the current ideas about Stalin are absolutely false. But to say this requires a giant hurdle. If you state, even timidly, certain undeniable truths about the Soviet Union in the thirties, you are immediately labeled `Stalinist'. Bourgeois propaganda has spread a false but very powerful image of Stalin, an image that is almost impossible to correct, since emotions run so high as soon as the subject is broached. The books about the purges written by great Western specialists, such as Conquest, Deutscher, Schapiro and Fainsod, are worthless, superficial, and written with the utmost contempt for the most elementary rules learnt by a first-year history student. In fact, these works are written to give an academic and scientific cover for the anti-Communist policies of the Western leaders. They present under a scientific cover the defence of capitalist interests and values and the ideological preconceptions of the big bourgeoisie.
Here is how the purge was presented by the Communists who thought that it was necessary to undertake it in 1937--1938. Here is the central thesis developed by Stalin in his March 3, 1937 report, which initiated the purge.
Stalin affirmed that certain Party leaders `proved to be so careless, complacent and naive', J. V. Stalin, Report and Speech in Reply to Debate at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (3--5 March 1937). Works (London: Red Star Press, 1976), vol. 14, p. 241.
and lacked vigilance with respect to the enemies and the anti-Communists infiltrated in the Party. Stalin spoke of the assassination of Kirov, number two in the Bolshevik Party at the time:
`The foul murder of Comrade Kirov was the first serious warning which showed that the enemies of the people would resort to duplicity, and resorting to duplicity would disguise themselves as Bolsheviks, as Party members, in order to worm their way into our confidence and gain access to our organizations ....
`The trial of the ``Zinovievite--Trotskyite bloc'' (in 1936) broadened the lessons of the preceding trials and strikingly demonstrated that the Zinovievites and Trotskyites had united around themselves all the hostile bourgeois elements, that they had become transformed into an espionage, diversionist and terrorist agency of the German secret police, that duplicity and camouflage are the only means by which the Zinovievites and Trotskyites can penetrate into our organizations, that vigilance and political insight are the surest means of preventing such penetration.' Ibid. , pp. 242--243.
`(T)he further forward we advance, the greater the successes we achieve, the greater will be the fury of the remnants of the defeated exploiting classes, the more ready will they be to resort to sharper forms of struggle, the more will they seek to harm the Soviet state, and the more will they clutch at the most desperate means of struggle as the last resort of the doomed.' Ibid. , p. 264.
How did the class enemy problem pose itself?
So, in truth, who were these enemies of the people, infiltrated in the Bolshevik Party? We give four important examples.
During the Civil War that killed nine million, the bourgeoisie fought the Bolsheviks with arms. Defeated, what could it do? Commit suicide? Drown its sorrow in vodka? Convert to Bolshevism? There were better options. As soon as it became clear that the Bolshevik Revolution was victorious, elements of the bourgeoisie consciously infiltrated the Party, to combat it from within and to prepare the conditions for a bourgeois coup d'état.
Boris Bazhanov wrote a very instructive book about this subject, called Avec Staline dans le Kremlin (With Stalin in the Kremlin). Bazhanov was born in 1900, so he was 17 to 19 years old during the revolution in Ukraine, his native region. In his book, Bazhanov proudly published a photocopy of a document, dated August 9, 1923, naming him assistant to Stalin. The decision of the organization bureau reads: `Comrade Bazhanov is named assistant to Comrade Stalin, Secretary of the CC'. Bazhanov made this comment: `Soldier of the anti-Bolshevik army, I had imposed upon myself the difficult and perilous task of penetrating right into the heart of the enemy headquarters. I had succeeded'. Boris Bajanov, Avec Staline dans le Kremlin (Paris: Les Éditions de France, 1930), pp. 2--3.
The young Bazhanov, as Stalin's assistant, had become Secretary of the Politburo and had to take notes of the meetings. He was 23 years old. In his book, written in 1930, he explained how his political career started, when he saw the Bolshevik Army arrive in Kiev. He was 19 years old.
`The Bolsheviks seized it in 1919, sowing terror. To spit at them in their face would have only given me 10 bullets. I took another path. To save the élite of my city, I covered myself with the mask of communist ideology.' Ibid. , p. 7.
`Starting in 1920, the open struggle against the Bolshevik plague ended. To fight against it from outside had become impossible. It had to be mined from within. A Trojan Horse had to be infiltrated into the communist fortress .... All the threads of the dictatorship converged in the single knot of the Politburo. The coup d'état would have to come from there.' Ibid. , pp. 4--5.
During the years 1923--1924, Bazhanov attended all the meetings of the Politburo. He was able to hold on to different positions until his flight in 1928.
Many other bourgeois intellectuals had the genius of this young nineteen-year-old Ukrainian.
The workers and the peasants who made the Revolution by shedding their blood had little culture or education. They could defeat the bourgeoisie with their courage, their heroism, their hatred of oppression. But to organize the new society, culture and education were necessary. Intellectuals from the old society, both young and old, sufficiently able and flexible people, recognized the opportunities. They decided to change arms and battle tactics. They would confront these uncouth brutes by working for them. Boris Bazhanov's path was exemplary.
Consider another testimonial work. The career of its author, George Solomon, is even more interesting. Solomon was a Bolshevik Party cadre, named in July 1919 assistant to the People's Commissar for Commerce and Industry. He was an intimate friend of Krassin, an old Bolshevik, who was simultaneously Commissar of Railroads and Communications and Commissar of Commerce and Industry. In short, we have two members of the `old guard of the heroic times' so dear to Henri Bernard of the Belgian Military Academy.
In December 1919, Solomon returned from Stockholm to Petrograd, where he hurried to see his friend Krassin and ask him about the political situation. According to Solomon, the response was:
`You want a résumé of the situation? ... it is ... the immediate installation of socialism ... an imposed utopia, including the most extreme of stupidities. They have all become crazy, Lenin included! ... forgotten the laws of natural evolution, forgotten our warnings about the danger of trying the socialist experience under the actual conditions .... As for Lenin ... he suffers from permanent delirium .... in fact we are living under a completely autocratic régime.' George Solomon, Parmi les maîtres rouges, Série Anticommuniste du Centre International de Lutte Active Contre le Communisme (Paris: Éditions Spes, 1930), p. 19.
This analysis in no way differs from that of the Mensheviks: Russia is not ready for socialism, and those who want to introduce it will have to use autocratic methods.
In the beginning of 1918, Solomon and Krassin were together in Stockholm. The Germans had started up the offensive and had occupied Ukraine. Anti-Bolshevik insurrections were more and more frequent. It was not at all clear who was going to rule Russia, the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks and their industrialist friends. Solomon summarized his conversations with Krassin.
`We had understood that the new régime had introduced a series of absurd measures, by destroying the technical forces, by demoralizing the technical experts and by substituting worker committees for them .... we understood that the line of annihilating the bourgeoisie was no less absurd .... This bourgeoisie was destined to still bring us many positive elements .... this class ... needed to fill its historic and civilizing rôle.' Ibid. , p 36.
Solomon and Krassin appeared to hesitate as to whether they should join the `real' Marxists, the Mensheviks, with whom they shared concern for the bourgeoisie, which was to bring progress. What could be done without it? Surely not develop the country with `factories run by committees of ignorant workers'? Ibid. , p. 19.
But Bolshevik power stabilized:
`(A) gradual change ... took place in our assessment of the situation. We asked ourselves if we had the right to remain aloof .... Should we not, in the interests of the people that we wanted to serve, give the Soviets our support and our experience, in order to bring to this task some sane elements? Would we not have a better chance to fight against this policy of general destruction that marked the Bolsheviks' activity We could also oppose the total destruction of the bourgeoisie .... We thought that the restoration of normal diplomatic relations with the West ... would necessarily force our leaders to fall in line with other nations and ... that the tendency towards immediate and direct communism would start to shrink and ultimately disappear forever ....
`Given these new thoughts, we decided, Krassin and myself, to join the Soviets.' Ibid. , pp. 36--37.
So, according to Solomon, he and Krassin formulated a secret program that they followed by reaching the post of Minister and vice-Minister under Lenin: they opposed all measures of the dictatorship of the proletariat, they protected as much as they could the bourgeoisie and they intended to create links with the imperialist world, all to `progressively and completely erase' the Communist line of the Party! Good Bolshevik, Comrade Solomon.
On August 1, 1923, during a visit to Belgium, he joined the other side. His testimony appeared in 1930, published by the Belgo-French `International Centre for the Active Struggle Against Communism' (CILACC). Solomon the old Bolshevik now had set ideas:
`(T)he Moscow government (is) formed of a small group of men who, with the help of the G.P.U., inflicts slavery and terror on our great and admirable country ....' Ibid. , p. 348.
`Already the Soviet despots see themselves as surrounded everywhere by anger, the great collective anger. Seized by crazed terror .... They become more and more vicious, shedding rivers of human blood.' Ibid. , p. 351.
These are the same terms used by the Mensheviks a few years earlier. They would soon be taken up by Trotsky and, fifty years later, the Belgian Army's chief ideologue would say things no better. It is important to note that the terms `crazed terror', `slavery' and `rivers of blood' were used by the `old Bolshevik' Solomon to describe the situation in the Soviet Union under Lenin and during the liberal period of 1924--1929, before collectivization. All the slanders of `terrorist and bloodthirsty régime', hurled by the bourgeoisie against the Soviet régime under Stalin, were hurled, word for word, against Lenin's Soviet Union.
Solomon presented an interesting case of an `old Bolshevik' who was fundamentally opposed to Lenin's project, but who chose to disrupt and `distort' it from the inside. Already in 1918, some Bolsheviks had, in front of Lenin, accused Solomon of being a bourgeois, a speculator and a German spy. Solomon denied everything in a self-righteous manner. But it is interesting to note that as soon as he left the Soviet Union, he publicly declared himself to be an avowed anti-Communist.
Bazhanov's book, mentioned above, contains another particularly interesting passage. He spoke of the contacts that he had with superior officers in the Red Army:
`( Frunze) was perhaps the only man among the communist leaders who wished the liquidation of the régime and Russia's return to a more human existence.
`At the beginning of the revolution, Frunze was Bolshevik. But he entered the army, fell under the influence of old officers and generals, acquired their traditions and became, to the core, a soldier. As his passion for the army grew, so did his hatred for communism. But he knew how to shut up and hide his thoughts ....
`(H)e felt that his ambition was to replay in the future the rôle of Napoleon ....
` Frunze had a well defined plan. He sought most of all to eliminate the Party's power within the Red Army. To start with, he succeeded in abolishing the commissars who, as representatives of the Party, were above the commanders .... Then, energetically following his plans for a Bonapartist coup d'état, Frunze carefully chose for the various commander positions real military men in whom he could place his trust .... so that the army could succeed in its coup d'état, an exceptional situation was required, a situation that war, for example, might have brought ....
`His ability to give a Communist flavor to each of his acts was remarkable. Nevertheless, Stalin found him out.' Bajanov, op. cit. , pp. 105--109.
It is difficult to ascertain whether Bazhanov's judgment of Frunze was correct. But his text clearly showed that in 1926, people were already speculating about militarist and Bonapartist tendencies within the army to put an end to the Soviet régime. Tokaev would write in 1935, `the Frunze Central Military Aerodrome (was) one of the centres of (Stalin's) irreconcilable enemies'. G. A. Tokaev, Comrade X (London: The Harvill Press, 1956), p. 33.
When Tukhachevsky was arrested and shot in 1937, he was accused of exactly the same intentions that were imputed to Frunze by Bazhanov in 1930.
In 1939, Alexander Zinoviev, a brilliant student, was seventeen years old. `I could see the differences between the reality and the ideals of communism, I made Stalin responsible for this difference'. Zinoviev, op. cit. , p. 105.
This sentence perfectly describes petit-bourgeois idealism, which is quite willing to accept Communist ideals, but abstracts itself from social and economic reality, as well as from the international context under which the working class built socialism. Petit-bourgeois idealists reject Communist ideals when they must face the bitterness of class struggle and the material difficulties they meet when building socialism. `I was already a confirmed anti-Stalinist at the age of seventeen', claimed Zinoviev. Ibid. , p. 104.
`I considered myself a neo-anarchist'. Ibid. , p. 126.
He passionately read Bakunin and Kropotkin's works, then those of Zheliabov and the populists. Ibid. , pp. 110, 118.
The October Revolution was made in fact `so that apparatchiks ... could have their state car for personal use, live in sumptuous apartments and dachas;' it aimed at `setting up a centralized and bureaucratic State'. Ibid. , pp. 111, 113.
`The idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat was nonsense'. Ibid. , p. 115.
`The idea of killing Stalin filled my thoughts and feelings .... I already had a penchant for terrorism .... We studied the ``technical'' possibilities of an attack ...: during the parade in Red Square ... we would provoke a diversion that would allow me, armed with a pistol and grenades, to attack the leaders.' Ibid. , pp. 118, 120.
Soon after, with his friend Alexey, he prepared a new attack `programmed for November 7, 1939'. Ibid. , p. 122.
Zinoviev entered a philosophy department in an élite school.
`Upon entry ... I understood that sooner or later I would have to join the CP .... I had no intention of openly expressing my convictions: I would only get myself in trouble ....
`I had already chosen my course. I wanted to be a revolutionary struggling for a new society .... I therefore decided to hide myself for a time and to hide my real nature from my entourage, except for a few intimate friends.' Ibid. , p. 116.
These four cases give us an idea of the great difficulty that the Soviet leadership had to face against relentless enemies, hidden and acting in secret, enemies that did everything they possibly could to undermine and destroy the Party and Soviet power from within.
The struggle against opportunism in the Party
During the twenties and thirties, Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders led many struggles against opportunist tendencies within the Party. The refutation of anti-Leninist ideas coming from Trotsky, then Zinoviev and Kamenev, finally Bukharin, played a central rôle. These ideological and political struggles were led correctly, according to Leninist principles, firmly and patiently.
The Bolshevik Party led a decisive ideological and political struggle against Trotsky during the period 1922--1937, over the question of the possibility of building socialism in one country, the Soviet Union. Using `leftist' ideology, Trotsky pretended that socialist construction was impossible in the Soviet Union, given the absence of a victorious revolution in a large industrialized country. This defeatist and capitulationist thesis was the one held since 1918 by the Mensheviks, who had concluded that it was impossible to build socialism in a backward peasant country. Many texts by Bolshevik leaders, essentially by Stalin and Bukharin, show that this struggle was correctly led.
In 1926--1927, Zinoviev and Kamenev joined Trotsky in his struggle against the Party. Together, they formed the United Opposition. The latter denounced the rise of the kulak class, criticized `bureaucratism' and organized clandestine factions within the Party. When Ossovsky defended the right to form `opposition parties', Trotsky and Kamenev voted in the Politburo against his exclusion. Zinoviev took up Trotsky's `impossibility of building socialism in one country', a theory that he had violently fought against only two years previous, and spoke of the danger of the degeneration of the Party. Edward Hallett Carr. Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926--1929, Volume 2 (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1971), pp. 7, 10--12, 20.
Trotsky invented in 1927 the `Soviet thermidor', analogous with the French counter-revolution where the right-wing Jacobins executed the left-wing Jacobins.
Then Trotsky explained that at the beginning of World War I, when the German army was 80 kilometres (50 miles) from Paris, Clémenceau overthrew the weak government of Painlevé to organize an effective defence without concessions. Trotsky was insinuating that in the case of imperialist attack, he would implement a Clémenceau-like coup d'état. Ibid. , pp. 28--29.
Through these acts and his writings, the opposition was thoroughly discredited and, during a vote, received only 6000 votes as against 725,000. Ibid. , p. 42.
On December 27, 1927, the Central Committee declared that the opposition had allied itself with anti-Soviet forces and that those who held its positions would be expelled from the Party. All the Trotskyist and Zinovievite leaders were expelled. Ibid. , p. 49.
However, in June 1928, several Zinovievites recanted and were re-integrated, as were their leaders Zinoviev, Kamenev and Evdokimov. Ibid. , p. 60.
A large number of Trotskyists were also re-integrated, including Preobrazhensky and Radek. Ibid. , p. 67.
Trotsky, however, maintained his irreconcilable opposition to the Party and was expelled from the Soviet Union.
The next great ideological struggle was led against Bukharin's rightist deviation during the collectivization. Bukharin put forward a social-democratic line, based on the idea of class re-conciliation. In fact, he was protecting the development of the kulaks in the countryside and represented their interests. He insisted on a slowing down of the industrialization of the country. Bukharin was torn asunder by the bitterness of the class struggle in the countryside, whose `horrors' he described and denounced.
During this struggle, former `Left Opposition' members made unprincipled alliances with Bukharin in order to overthrow Stalin and the Marxist-Leninist leadership. On July 11, 1928, during the violent debates that took place before the collectivization, Bukharin held a clandestine meeting with Kamenev. He stated that he was ready to `give up Stalin for Kamenev and Zinoviev', and hoped for `a bloc to remove Stalin'. Ibid. , p. 65.
In September 1928, Kamenev contacted some Trotskyists, asking them to rejoin the Party and to wait `till the crisis matures'. Ibid. , p. 73, n. 3.
After the success of the collectivization of 1932--1933, Bukharin's defeatist theories were completely discredited.
By that time, Zinoviev and Kamenev had started up once again their struggle against the Party line, in particular by supporting the counter-revolutionary program put forward by Riutin in 1931--1932. They were expelled a second time from the Party and exiled in Siberia.
From 1933 on, the leadership thought that the hardest battles for industrialization and collectivization were behind them. In May 1933, Stalin and Molotov signed a decision to liberate 50 per cent of the people sent to work camps during the collectivization. In November 1934, the kolkhoz management system took its definite form, the kolkhozians having the right to cultivate for themselves a private plot and to raise livestock. Getty, op. cit. , p. 94.
The social and economic atmosphere relaxed throughout the country.
The general direction of the Party had proven correct. Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin and a number of Trotskyists recognized that they had erred. The Party leadership thought that the striking victories in building socialism would encourage these former opposition leaders to criticize their wrong ideas and to accept Leninist ones. It hoped that all the leading cadres would apply Leninist principles of criticism and self-criticism, the materialist and dialectical method that allows each Communist to improve their political education and to assess their understanding, in order to reinforce the political unity of the Party. For that reason, almost all the leaders of the three opportunist movements, the Trotskyists Pyatakov, Radek, Smirnov and Preobrazhensky, as well as Zinoviev and Kamenev and Bukharin, who in fact had remained in an important position, were invited to the 17th Congress, where they made speeches.
That Congress was the congress of victory and unity.
In his report to the Seventeenth Congress, presented on January 26, 1934, Stalin enumerated the impressive achievements in industrialization, collectivization and cultural development. After having noted the political victory over the Trotskyist group and over the bourgeois nationalists, he stated:
`The anti-Leninist group of the Right deviators has been smashed and scattered. Its organizers have long ago renounced their views and are now trying in every way to expiate the sins they committed against the Party.' Stalin, Report to the Seventeenth Party Congress on the Work of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.). Selected Works, p. 404.
During the congress, all the old opponents acknowledged the tremendous successes achieved since 1930. In his concluding speech, Stalin stated:
`(I)t has been revealed that there is extraordinary ideological, political and organizational solidarity in the ranks of the Party.' Stalin, Instead of a Reply to the Discussion, Works, vol. 13, p. 404.
Stalin was convinced that the former deviationists would in the future work loyally to build socialism.
`We have smashed the enemies of the Party .... But remnants of their ideology still live in the minds of individual members of the Party, and not infrequently they find expression.'
And he underscored the persistence of `the survivals of capitalism in economic life' and `Still less ... in the minds of people'. `That is why we cannot say that the fight is ended and that there is no longer any need for the policy of the socialist offensive.' Stalin, Report, op. cit. , pp. 405--406.
A detailed study of the ideological and political struggle that took place in the Bolshevik leadership from 1922 to 1934 refutes many well-ingrained lies and prejudices. It is patently false that Stalin did not allow other leaders to express themselves freely and that he ruled like a `tyrant' over the Party. Debates and struggles took place openly and over an extended period of time. Fundamentally different ideas confronted each other violently, and socialism's very future was at stake. Both in theory and in practice, the leadership around Stalin showed that it followed a Leninist line and the different opportunist factions expressed the interests of the old and new bourgeoisies. Stalin was not only careful and patient in the struggle, he even allowed opponents who claimed that they had understood their errors to return to the leadership. Stalin really believed in the honesty of the self-criticisms presented by his former opponents.
The trials and struggle against revisionism and enemy infiltration
On December 1, 1934, Kirov, number two in the Party, was assassinated in his office in the Party Headquarters in Leningrad. The assassin, Nikolayev, had entered simply by showing his Party card. He had been expelled from the Party, but had kept his card.
The counter-revolutionaries in the prisons and in the camps started up their typical slanderous campaign:
`It was Stalin who killed Kirov'! This `interpretation' of Kirov's murder was spread in the West by the dissident Orlov in 1953. At the time, Orlov was in Spain! In a book that he published after he left for the West in 1938, Orlov wrote about hearsay that he picked up during his brief stays in Moscow. But it was only fifteen years later, during the Cold War, that the dissident Orlov would have sufficient insight to make his sensational revelation.
Tokaev, a member of a clandestine anti-Communist organization, wrote that Kirov was killed by an opposition group and that he, Tokaev, had carefully followed the preparations for the assassination. Liuskov, a member of the NKVD who fled to Japan, confirmed that Stalin had nothing to do with this assassination. Ibid. , p. 207.
Kirov 's assassination took place just as the Party leadership thought that the most difficult struggles were behind them and that Party unity had been re-established. Stalin's first reaction was disorganized and reflected panic. The leadership thought that the assassination of the number two man in the Party meant the beginning of a coup d'état. A new decree was immediately published, calling for the use of summary procedures for the arrest and execution of terrorists. This draconian measure was the result of the feeling of mortal danger for the socialist régime.
At first, the Party looked for the guilty within traditional enemy circles, the Whites. A few of them were executed.
Then, the police found Nikolayev's journal. In it, there was no reference to an opposition movement that had prepared the attack. The inquiry finally concluded that Zinoviev's group had `influenced' Nikolayev and his friends, but found no evidence of direct implication of Zinoviev, who was sent back to internal exile.
The Party's reaction showed great disarray. The thesis by which Stalin `prepared' the attack to implement his `diabolical plan' to exterminate the opposition is not verified by the facts.
Before I will go further to the purges, I will prove that Stalin didn’t plan the assassination of Kirov:
In his secret speech to the 20th Congress of the CPSU in February 1956, the revisionist First Secretary of the CPSU Nikita KHRUSHCHEV recounted a garbled version of the murder of Kirov in such a way as to imply that Stalin had been responsible for organising it:
"It must be asserted that to this day the circumstances surrounding Kirov's murder hide many things which are inexplicable and mysterious and demand a most careful examination. There are reasons for the suspicion that the killer of Kirov, Nikolayev, was assisted by someone from among the people whose duty it was to protect the person of Kirov. Before the killing, Nikolayev was arrested on the grounds of suspicious behaviour, but he was released and not even searched. It was an unusually suspicious circumstance that when the Chekist assigned to protect Kirov was being brought for an interrogation, on December 2 1934, he was killed in a car 'accident' in which no other occupants of the car were harmed. After the murder of Kirov, top functionaries of the NKVD were given very light sentences, but in 1937 they were shot. We can assume they were shot in order to cover the traces of the organisers of Kirov's killing".
(Nikita S. Khrushchev: Secret Speech to 20th Congress, CPSU (February 1956), in: 'The Dethronement of Stalin'; op. cit.; p. 12).
Even Robert Conquest, who maintains that:
"Stalin's guilt (of organising the murder of Kirov -- Ed.) is indeed scarcely in doubt".
(Robert Conquest: Preface to: 'Stalin and the Kirov Murder'; London; 1989. ; p. vii).
feels compelled to admit that:
"Though Khrushchev adds the odd detail, what he reveals does not differ essentially from the evidence of Yagoda and Bulanov at the 1938 trial".
(Robert Conquest (1989): ibid.; p. 113).
In October 1961, at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev again referred (this time publicly) to 'suspicious' features of the murder of Kirov:
"Great efforts are still needed to find out who was really to blame for his ( Kirov's - Ed.) death. The deeper we study the materials connected with Kirov's death, the more questions arise. Noteworthy is the fact that Kirov's killer had twice before been detained by Chekists (security men) near the Smolny, and that arms had been found on him. But he was released both times on someone's instructions. And the next thing this man was in the Smolny, armed, in the corridor through which Kirov usually passed. And for some reason or other, at the moment of assassination Kirov's chief bodyguard was far behind him, although instructions did not authorise him to be at such a distance away from Kirov.
Equally strange is the following fact: When Kirov's chief bodyguard was being escorted for questioning - and he was to be questioned by Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov - the vehicle, as the driver said afterwards, was deliberately involved in an accident by those who were taking the man for interrogation. They said that he had died as a result of the accident, although he was in fact killed by those who were escorting him.
In this way, the man who guarded Kirov was killed. Later, those who had killed him were shot. This was no accident, apparently, but a carefully planned crime. Who could have done this? A thorough inquiry is now being made into the circumstances of this complicated case.
As it turned out, the driver of the vehicle in which Kirov's chief bodyguard was being taken for questioning is still alive. He has said that an NKVD man sat with him in his cabin during the journey. They went in a lorry. (It is, of course, very strange why a lorry should have been used to take the man for questioning, as if no other vehicle could have been found for the purpose).
Evidently, everything had been planned in advance, in detail. Two other NKVD men were in the back of the lorry together with Kirov's chief bodyguard.
Continuing his story, the driver said that when they were driving along a street, the man sitting next to him suddenly wrested the steering wheel from his hands and directed the vehicle straight at a house. The driver had regained control of the wheel and steered the lorry so that it hit the wall of the building only sideways. He had been later -told that Kirov's chief bodyguard had lost his life in the accident.
Why did he lose his life while none of the other people in the vehicle suffered? Why were both the officials of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs who escorted Kirov's chief bodyguard later shot? This means that someone had to have them killed in order to cover up all the traces.
Many, very many circumstances of this and other similar cases are still obscure".
(Nikita S. Khrushchev: Report on the Programme of the CPSU, delivered to 22nd Congress of the CPSU (October 1961); London; 1961; p. 111-12).
As Robert Conquest comments:
'Once again, the story was not incompatible with the Yagoda-Bulanov
version. . . .
Khrushchev . effectively repeated the accusations against Yagoda,
Zaporozhets and the NKVD".
(Robert Conqest (1989): op. cit.; p. 115, 116).
However, although no direct accusation was made, the implication of Khrushchev's diatribe was that:
". . . the true culprit or culprits had yet to be named",
(Robert Conqest (1989): op. cit.; p. 115).
and that these were headed by Stalin.
Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, refers to the
" . . . transparent hints"
(Sevetlana Alliluyeva: 'Twenty Letters to a Friend'; London; 1968; p.147.
that Stalin had organised the murder of Kirov.
In 1956-57 the Politburo of the Central Committe of the Party set up a Commission of Inquiry into the murder of Kirov:
"It took a large amount of evidence - 200 volumes is the f igure mentioned. Hundreds of witnesses were called, and the commission had access to all the secret archives. . . *
The Commission went to look at the scene of Borisov's accident, and heard the driver's evidence".
(Robert Conquest (1989): ibid.; p. 115).
However, one must presume that it proved impossible to reconcile the draft report with hypothesis desired by the revisionist leaders -- that Stalin had master-minded Kirov's murder -- for
". . . none of this was made public, and it is unoffically reported that the Commission's report was simply shelved".
(Robert Conquest (1989): ibid.; p. 115).
"The Commission's report has never been made public".
(Alan Bullock: 'Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives'; London; 1991; p. 520).
In addition to the Commission of the 1950s, there were
" . . . at least two investigations in the 1960s, the PELSHE Commission and the SHVERNIK Commission".
(J. Arch Getty & Roberta T. Manning (Eds.): Perspectives'; Cambridge; 1993; p. 46).
In 1989 a further Commission -- the YAKOVLEV Commission -- was organised, charged with filling the 'gaps' left by the earlier inquiries:
"A. Yakovlev's Politburo Commission . . . appointed an intra-agency investigative team consisting of personnel from the USSR Procurator's Office, the Military Procuracy, the KGB and various archival administrations. For two years, this team conducted interviews, reviewed
thousands of documents, and attempted to check all possible scenarios; their work has added another fifteen volumes to the thirty-year old efforts. . . . The team's charter was to show Stalin's complicity . . . It had little political incentive to let him off the hook; quite the contrary. Nevertheless, members of the working team concluded that in this affair, no materials objectively support Stalin's participation or NKVD participation in the organisation and carrying out of Kirov's murder'. The team concludes that only 'one-sided, superficial, unverified facts, rumours and conjectures' support Stalin complicity".
(J. Arch Getty & Roberta T. Manning (Eds.): op. cit.; p. 46-47).
True, Olga Shatunovskaia:
"has recently written that the Kirov investigation in the 1960s had uncovered
convincing evidence that Stalin was behind the assassination …. and claimed that materials from the 1960 investigation have since been removed by Party Control Commission (KPK) personnel in order to change that investigation's conclusion".
(J. Arch Getty & Roberta T. Manning (Eds.): ibid.; p. 46).
And yet:
" . . . in 1989 investigators checked the earlier commission's documents against KPK and KGB files and concluded that nothing is missing from the earlier collection. They also found that as a Khrushchev-backed KPK investigator back in 1960, Shatunovskaia . . . at that time agreed with the conclusion that Stalin had not organised the killing".
(J. Arch Getty & Roberta T. Manning (Eds.): ibid.; p. 46).
The myth that Stalin masterminded the murder of Kirov first appeared in the West in 1953 as a propaganda weapon in the 'Cold War':
"Before the Cold War, no serious authority argued that Stalin was behind the assassination (of Kirov -- Ed.). The KGB defector Aleksandr ORLOV* was the first to make such a claim in his dubious 1953 account. Boris Nikolaevsky repeated the story in his influential 1956 essays (his 1936 'Letter of an Old Bolshevik' had not accused Stalin".
(J. Arch Getty: op. cit.; p. 207).
The usual motive attached to the myth was that Kirov was a 'moderate' political opponent of Stalin:
"The standard view of Stalinist pre-purge politics in the thirties, derived from an oral tradition, runs roughly as follows. At the end of the first Five-Year Plan (1932), a majority of the Politburo favoured relaxation and reconciliation with political opponents. Led by the Leningrad party chief, Serge Kirov, this group of Stalinist 'moderates' opposed Stalin's plans to apply the death penalty to . . . adherents of the 'Ryutin Platform'. . . .
After that, Stalin planned to eliminate the popular Kirov.
This scenario of the Kirov affair comes to us almost entirely from two sources: . . . Boris J. Nikolaevsky and NKVD defector Aleksander Orlov.
. . Virtually all versions of the story inside and outside the USSR can be traced to one of these two original presentations".
(J. Arch Getty & Roberta T. Manning (Eds.): op. cit.; p. 42-43).
On Orlov, the revisionist historian Roy MEDVEDEV writes:
"It is obvious, in short, that Orlov's 1956 article is a clumsy fabrication"
(Roy A. Medvedev: 'Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism'; London; 1972; p. 318).
while BUKHARIN's widow Anna LARINA writes of Nikolaevsky:
"I consider both the 'Letter of an Old Bolshevik' and the interview' with Nikolaevsky to be spurious documents".
(Anna Larina: "This I cannot forget; The Memoirs of Nikolai Bukharin's Wife'; London; 1993; p. 276).
In fact, most historians agree that there is no evidence that Kirov was a 'moderate' or had any political differences with Stalin:
"Kirov's speech to the 1934 Party Congress, . . . actually praised the secret police's use of forced labour and ridiculed the opposition. . . . Kirov was identified with Stalin, and the parts of his speech producing general ovations were the parts in which he praised Stalin and abused the opposition. . . . Careful scrutiny of Kirov's speeches and writings reveal little difference between them and Stalin's utterances, and Soviet scholars familiar with closed party archives scoff at the notion that Kirov was a moderate, an opponent of Stalin or the leader of any bloc. .
The Politburo Commission's examination of the Ryutin group did not find any evidence that Stalin demanded their execution in 1932, or that Kirov opposed it".
(J. Arch Getty & Roberta T. Manning (Eds.): op. cit.; p. 45).
"Stalin and Kirov were allies and . . . Kirov's death was not the occasion for any change in policy . . . .
Virtually no evidence suggests that Kirov favoured or advocated any specific policy line other than Stalin's General Line. . . .
Stalin chose Kirov for the sensitive Leningraad party leadership position and trusted him with delicate 'trouble-shooter' missions".
(J. Arch Getty: op. cit.; p. 92, 93, 94).
Indeed, documents recently released with the intention of charging Stalin with organising Kirov's murder have, paradoxically, tended to establish his non-involvement:
"Recent revelations, intended to show Stalin's personal participation in the repression, have paradoxically produced documents and factual evidence that dispprove or contradict key elements of this story. The traditional understanding of Stalin's motive, means and opportunity to arrange Kirov's assassination. . . . can no longer be comfortably reconciled with the sources now available".
(J. Arch Getty & Roberta T. Manning (Eds.): op. cit.; p. 43-44).
And other anti-Soviet defectors agree. For example, Grigory TOLKAEV
" . . . believed that the assassination was really the work of misguided young oppositionists",
(J. Arch Getty: op. cit.; p. 207).
while Genrikh LIUSHKOV
" . . . an KNVD defector who outranked Orlov protectors ….. . told his Japanese that Stalin was not involved".
(J. Arch Getty: op. cit.; p. 207).
To sum up.
" . . . neither the sources, circumstances nor consequences of the crime suggest Stalin's complicity. . . . There is no good reason to believe that Stalin connived at Kirov's assassination".
(J. Arch Getty: op. cit.; p. 210).
Trotsky and counter-revolution
It was clear in 1936 to anyone who was carefully analyzing the class struggle on the international scale that Trotsky had degenerated to the point where he was a pawn of all sorts of anti-Communist forces. Full of himself, he assigned himself a planetary and historic rôle, more and more grandiose as the clique around him became insignificant. All his energy focused on one thing: the destruction of the Bolshevik Party, thereby allowing Trotsky and the Trotskyists to seize power. In fact, knowing in detail the Bolshevik Party and its history, Trotsky became one of the world's specialists in the anti-Bolshevik struggle.
To show his idea, we present here some of the public declarations that Trotsky made before the re-opening of the Kirov affair in June 1936. They throw new light on Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov and all those who plotted with Trotsky.
`Destroy the communist movement'
Trotsky declared in 1934 that Stalin and the Communist Parties were responsible for Hitler's rise to power; to overthrow Hitler, the Communist Parties had to be destroyed `mercilessly'!
`Hitler's victory ... (arose) ... by the despicable and criminal policy of the Cominterm. ``No Stalin --- no victory for Hitler.'' ' Leon Trotsky, Are There No Limits to the Fall? A Summary of the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (18 January 1934). Writings of Leon Trotsky (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973), vol. 6, p. 210.
`(T)he Stalinist Cominterm, as well as the Stalinist diplomacy, assisted Hitler into the saddle from either side.' Ibid. , p. 215.
`(T)he Cominterm bureaucracy, together with social-democracy, is doing everything it possibly can to transform Europe, in fact the entire world, into a fascist concentration camp.' Leon Trotsky, Que signifie la capitulation de Rakovsky? (31 March 1934). La lutte, pp. 59--60.
`(T)he Cominterm provided one of the most important conditions for the victory of fascism. ... to overthrow Hitler it is necessary to finish with the Cominterm.' Trotsky, Are There No Limits to the Fall?, p. 212.
`Workers, learn to despise this bureaucratic rabble!' Ibid. , p. 216.
`(The workers must) drive the theory and practice of bureaucratic adventurism out of the ranks of the workers' movement!' Ibid. , p. 217.
So, early in 1934, Hitler in power less than a year, Trotsky claimed that to overthrow fascism, the international Communist movement had to be destroyed! Perfect example of the `anti-fascist unity' of which Trotskyists speak so demagogically. Recall that during the same period, Trotsky claimed that the German Communist Party had refused `the policies of the united front with the Social Democracy' Ibid. , p. 211.
and that, consequently, it was responsible, by its `outrageous sectarism', for Hitler's coming to power. In fact, it was the German Social-Democratic Party that, because of its policy of unconditional defence of the German capitalist régime, refused any anti-fascist and anti-capitalist unity. And Trotsky proposed to `mercilessly extirpate' the only force that had truly fought against Nazism!
Still in 1934, to incite the more backward masses against the Bolshevik Party, Trotsky put forward his famous thesis that the Soviet Union resembled, in numerous ways, a fascist state.
`(I)n the last period the Soviet bureaucracy has familiarized itself with many traits of victorious fascism, first of all by getting rid of the control of the party and establishing the cult of the leader.' Trotsky, On the Eve of the Seventeenth Congress (20 January 1934). Writings, vol. 6, pp. 223-224.
Capitalist restoration is impossible
In the beginning of 1935, Trotsky's position was the following: the restoration of capitalism in the USSR is impossible; the economic and political base of the Soviet régime is safe, but the summit, i.e. the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, is the most corrupt, the most anti-democratic and the most reactionary part of society.
Hence, Trotsky took under his wing all the anti-Communist forces that were struggling `against the most corrupt part' of the Bolshevik Party. Within the Party, Trotsky systematically defended opportunists, careerists and defeatists whose actions undermined the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Here is what Trotsky wrote at the end of 1934, just after Kirov's assassination, just after Zinoviev and Kamenev were excluded from the Party and sentenced to internal exile.
`(H)ow could it come to pass that at a time like this, after all the economic successes, after the ``abolition'' --- according to official assurances --- of classes in the USSR and the ``construction'' of the socialist society, how could it come to pass that Old Bolsheviks ... could have posed for their task the restoration of capitalism
`Only utter imbeciles would be capable of thinking that capitalist relations, that is to say, the private ownership of the means of production, including the land, can be reestablished in the USSR by peaceful methods and lead to the régime of bourgeois democracy. As a matter of fact, even if it were possible in general, capitalism could not be regenerated in Russia except as the result of a savage counterrevolutionary coup d'etat that would cost ten times as many victims as the October Revolution and the civil war.' Trotsky, The Stalinist Bureaucracy and the Kirov Assassination: A Reply to Friends in America (28 December 1934). Writings, vol. 7, p. 116.
This passage leads one to think. Trotsky led a relentless struggle from 1922 to 1927 within the leadership of the Party, claiming that it was impossible to build socialism in one country, the Soviet Union. But, this unscrupulous individual declared in 1934 that socialism was so solidly established in the Soviet Union that overthrowing it would claim tens of millions of lives!
Then, Trotsky claimed to defend the `Old Bolsheviks'. But the `Old Bolsheviks' Zinoviev and Kamenev were diametrically opposed to the `Old Bolsheviks' Stalin, Kirov, Molotov, Kaganovich and Zhdanov. The latter showed that in the bitter class struggle taking place in the Soviet Union, the opportunist positions of Zinoviev and Kamenev opened up the way for the old exploiting classes and for the new bureaucrats.
Trotsky used the age-old bourgeois argument: `he is an old revolutionary, how could he have changed sides?' Khrushchev would take up this slogan in his Secret Report. Nikita S. Khrushchev. The Crimes of the Stalin Era: Special Report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Secret Report). The New Leader (New York), 1957, p. S32.
However, Kautsky, once hailed as the spiritual child of Marx and Engels, became, after the death of the founders of scientific socialism, the main Marxist renegade. Martov was one of the Marxist pioneers in Russia and participated in the creation of the first revolutionary organizations; nevertheless, he became a Menshevik leader and fought against socialist revolution right from October 1917. And what about the `Old Bolsheviks' Khrushchev and Mikoyan, who effectively set the Soviet Union on the path of capitalist restoration.
Trotsky claimed that counter-revolution was impossible without a bloodbath that would cost tens of million lives. He pretended that capitalism could not be retored `from inside', by the internal political degeneration of the Party, by enemy infiltration, by bureaucratization, by the social-democratization of the Party. However, Lenin insisted on this possibility.
Politically, Kamenev and Zinoviev were precursors of Khrushchev. Nevertheless, to ridicule the vigilance against opportunists such as Kamenev, Trotsky used an argument that would be taken up, almost word for word, by Khrushchev in his `Secret Report':
`(The) ``liquidation'' (of the former ruling classes) concurrently with the economic successes of the new society must necessarily lead to the mitigation and the withering away of the dictatorship'. Trotsky, The Stalinist Bureaucracy and the Kirov Assassination, p. 117.
Just as a clandestine organization succeeded in killing the number two of the socialist régime, Trotsky declared that the dictatorship of the proletariat should logically begin to disappear. At the same time that he was pointing a dagger at the heart of the Bolsheviks who were defending the Soviet régime, Trotsky was calling for leniency toward the plotters.
In the same essay, Trotsky painted the terrorists in a favorable light. Trotsky declared that Kirov's assassination was `a new fact that must be considered of great symptomatic importance'. He explained:
`(A) terrorist act prepared beforehand and committed by order of a definite organization is ... inconceivable unless there exists a political atmosphere favorable to it. The hostility to the leaders in power must have been widespread and must have assumed the sharpest forms for a terrorist group to crystallize out within the ranks of the party youth ....
`If ... discontent is spreading within the masses of the people ... which isolated the bureaucracy as a whole; if the youth itself feels that it is spurned, oppressed and deprived of the chance for independent development, the atmosphere for terroristic groupings is created.' Ibid. , pp. 121--122.
Trotsky, while keeping a public distance from individual terrorism, said all he could in favor of Kirov's assassination! You see, the plot and the assassination were proof of a `general atmosphere of hostility that isolated the entire bureaucracy'. Kirov's assassination proved that `the youth feels oppressed and deprived of the chance for independent development' --- this last remark was a direct encouragement for the reactionary youth, who did in fact feel `oppressed' and `deprived of the chance for independent development'.
In support of terror and insurrection
Trotsky finished by calling for individual terrorism and armed insurrection to destroy the `Stalinist' power. Hence, as early as 1935, Trotsky acted as an open counter-revolutionary, as an irreconcilable anti-Communist. Here is a portion of a 1935 text, which he wrote one and a half years before the Great Purge of 1937.
`Stalin ... is the living incarnation of a bureaucratic Thermidor. In his hands, the terror has been and still remains an instrument designed to crush the Party, the unions and the Soviets, and to establish a personal dictatorship that only lacks the imperial crown ....
`The insane atrocities provoked by the bureaucratic collectivization methods, or the cowardly reprisals against the best elements of the proletarian vanguard, have inevitably provoked exasperation, hatred and a spirit of vengeance. This atmosphere generates a readiness among the youth to commit individual acts of terror ....
`Only the successes of the world proletariat can revive the Soviet proletariat's belief in itself. The essential condition of the revolution's victory is the unification of the international revolutionary vanguard under the flag of the Fourth International. The struggle for this banner must be conducted in the Soviet Union, with prudence but without compromise .... The proletariat that made three revolutions will lift up its head one more time. The bureaucratic absurdity will try to resist? The proletariat will find a big enough broom. And we will help it.' Leon Trotsky, Pour sa propre sauvegarde, la bureaucratie entretient la terreur (26 September 1935). L'appareil policier du stalinisme (Paris: Union générale d'éditions, 1976), pp. 85--87.
Hence, Trotsky discretely encouraged `individual terror' and openly called for `a fourth revolution'.
In this text, Trotsky claimed that Stalin `crushed' the Bolshevik Party, the unions and the Soviets. Such an `atrocious' counter-revolution, declared Trotsky, would necessarily provoke hatred among the youth, a spirit of vengeance and terrorism. This was a thinly veiled call for the assassination of Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders. Trotsky declared that the activity of his acolytes in the Soviet Union had to follow the strictest rules of a conspiracy; it was clear that he would not directly call for individual terror. But he made it clear that such individual terror would `inevitably' be provoked by the Stalinist crimes. For conspiratorial language, difficult to be clearer.
If there were any doubt among his followers that they had to follow the armed path, Trotsky added: in Russia, we led an armed revolution in 1905, another one in February 1917 and a third one in October 1917. We are now preparing a fourth revolution against the `Stalinists'. If they should dare resist, we will treat them as we treated the Tsarists and the bourgeois in 1905 and 1917. By calling for an armed revolution in the Soviet Union, Trotsky became the spokesperson for all the defeated reactionary classes, from the kulaks, who had suffered such `senseless atrocities' at the hands of the `bureaucrats' during the collectivization, to the Tsarists, including the bourgeois and the White officers! To drag some workers into his anti-Communist enterprise, Trotsky promised them `the success of the world proletariat' that would `give back the confidence to the Soviet proletariat'.
After reading these texts, it is clear that any Soviet Communist who learned of clandestine links between Trotsky and existing members of the Party would have to immediately denounce those members to the state security. All those who maintained clandestine relations with Trotsky were part of a counter-revolutionary plot aiming to destroy the very foundations of Soviet power, notwithstanding the `leftist' arguments they used to justify their anti-Communist subversion.
The Moscow Show Trails
In this part, I won’t cite the protocols of the trails. I will deal with the question, if this trails were faked or if they were real.
So let us cite those, who were witnesses of the trails.
The trial against the Trotskyite-Zinovievist centre 19-24 August 1936.
(The Zinoviev-Kamenev process)
“The Moscow Trial was Fair” by D. N. Pritt. D. N. Pritt, The Moscow Trial was Fair, London 1936, > http://www.geocities.com/redcomrades/mo-trial.html , 2005-07-21.
“I studied the legal procedure in criminal cases in Soviet Russia somewhat carefully in 1932, and concluded (as published at the time in "Twelve Studies in Soviet Russia") that the procedure gave the ordinal accused a very fair trial. Having learnt from my legal friends in Moscow on my return this summer that the principal changes realised or shortly impending were all in the direction of giving greater independence to the Bar and the judges and greater facilities to the accused, I was particularly interested to be able to attend the trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev and others which took place on August 1936. Here was, born the point of view of a lawyer, a politician, or an ordinary citizen, a very good test of the system. The charge was a serious one. A group of men, almost all having earned high merit for their services at various stages of the anxious and crowded history of Soviet Russia, still not two decades old, almost all having been under some measure of suspicion for counter-revolutionary or deviationist activities, and most of them having had such activities condoned in the past on assurances of the loyalty in the future, were now charged with long, cold-blooded, deliberate conspiracy to bring about the assassination of Kirov (who was actually murdered in December, 1934), of Stalin, of Voroshilov and other prominent leaders. Their purpose, it seemed, was merely to seize power for themselves, without any pretence that they had any substantial following in the country and without any real policy or philosophy to replace the existing Soviet Socialism. With all its difficulties and shortcomings, with all the opposition, military or commercial, of the outside world, Soviet Socialism has raised a terribly backward Asiatic State in some 19 years to a State of world importance, of great industrial strength, and above all of a standard of living which, starting somewhere about the level of the more depressed peoples of India, has already overtaken that of many races of Eastern Europe and will soon claim comparison with that of the most favoured of Western industrial people.
And the charge against the men was not merely made. It was admitted, admitted by men the majority of whom were shown by their records to be possessed of physical and moral courage well adapted to protect them from confessing under pressure. And at no stage was any suggestion made by any of them that any sort of improper treatment had been used to persuade them to confess. The first thing that struck me, as an English lawyer, was the almost free-and-easy dameanour of the prisoners. They all looked well; they all got up and spoke, even at length, whenever they wanted to do so (for the matter of that, they strolled out, with a guard, when they wanted to). The one or two witnesses who were called by the prosecution were cross-examined by the prisoners who were affected by their evidence, with the same freedom as would have been the case in England. The prisoners voluntarily renounced counsel; they could have had counsel without fee had they wished, but they preferred to dispense with them. And having regard to their pleas of guilty and to their own ability to speak, amounting in most cases to real eloquence, they probably did not suffer by their decision, able as some of my Moscow colleagues are. The most striking novelty, perhaps, to an English lawyer, was the easy way in which first one and then another prisoner would intervene in the course of the examination of one of their co-defendants, without any objection from the Court or from the prosecutor, so that one got the impression of a quick and vivid debate between four people, the prosecutor and three prisoners, all talking together, if not actually at the same moment -- a method which, whilst impossible with a jury, is certainly conducive to clearing up disputes of fact with some rapidity. Far more important, however, if less striking, were the final speeches. In accordance with Soviet law, the prisoners had the last word -- 15 speeches after the last chance of the prosecution to say anything.The Public prosecutor, Vyshinsky, spoke first. He spoke for four or five hours. He looked like a very intelligent and rather mild-mannered English business man. He spoke with vigour and clarity. He seldom raised his voice. He never ranted, or shouted, or thumped the table. He rarely looked at the public or played for effect. He said strong things; he called the defendants bandits, and mad dogs, and suggested that they ought to be exterminated. Even in as grave a case as this, some English Attorney-Generals might not have spoken so strongly; but in many cases less grave many English prosecuting counsel have used much harsher words. He was not interrupted by the Court or by any of the accused. His speech was clapped by the public, and no attempt was made to prevent the applause. That seems odd to the English mind, but where there is no jury it cannot do much harm, and it was noticeable throughout that the Court’s efforts, by the use of a little bell, to repress the laughter that was caused either by the prisoners’ sallies or by any other incident were not immediately successful. But now came the final test. The 15 guilty men, who had sought to overthrow the whole Soviet State, now had their rights to speak; and they spoke. Some at great length, some shortly, some argumentatively, others with some measures of pleading; most with eloquence, some with emotion; some consciously addressing the public in the crowded hall, some turning to the court. But they all said what they had to say. They met with no interruption from the prosecutor, with no more than a rare short word or two from the court; and the public itself sat quiet, manifesting none of the hatred it must have felt. They spoke without any embarrassment or hindrance. The executive authorities of U.S.S.R. may have taken, by the successful prosecution of this case, a very big step towards eradicating counter-revolutionary activities. But it is equally clear that the judicature and the prosecuting attorney of U.S.S.R. have taken at least as great a step towards establishing their reputation among the legal systems of the modern world.”
The Swedish embassy in Moscow
It may be of interest to know what the Swedish embassy in Moscow reported to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Stockholm about the situation in the Soviet Union during the days of trial in August 1936. Let us render two short commentaries from long reports to the department. Consider that the documents were written by authentic rightists with all the corresponding, preconceived ideas against the Soviet Union and Socialism. The first one relates to the political situation in the country.
“Submitted to the Royal by His Majesty’s diplomatic representation
Moscow , 24 th September 1936
Eric Gyllenstierna (Ambassador)
Confidential
Concerning the inquisition within the Communist party
(11 pages, this being the final part of page 10, my note, M.S.)
Perhaps it should be noted towards the end –although it could be an act of exaggeration– that the cock-and-bull stories, which have been so freely disseminated in the foreign press and could give a naïve general population the impression that the whole Soviet realm were in the process of collapse, that these and similar media excesses are devoid of any support in reality, even if one could, in singular instances, imagine tracing some connection between the battle paintings by the foreign press and certain facts in the Soviet Union.” (Correspondence from the Swedish Embassy in Moscow to the Swedish Department of Foreign Affairs in Stockholm. Riksarkivet, Stockholm.)
The inflammatory propaganda by the Capitalist countries against the Soviet Union during the days of the trial took such proportions in organised campaigns in the press that the Swedish Moscow embassy felt compelled to deny them to the Department of Foreign Affairs, in order to avoid to great errors of judgement of the Soviet Union. The next quotation concerns the process of trial itself and the guilt of the accused. After having been indignant for the trial against these people who were so nice, the Ambassador Gyllenstierna still had to conclude that the terrorism indeed was part of the picture.
“ Moscow 25 th September 1936
Légation de Suède
The great trial of conspiracy
Confidential.
(8 pages, this being page 3, my note, M. S.)
By that it is not implied, of course, that the accused (Zinoviev and Kamenev, my note M. S.) can be freed from every suspicion of having nurtured more or less well defined plans for the overthrow of the present, hated leaders of government with Stalin on top to grip the power for themselves. That the application of such plans in a certain conspiracy activity to the extent of using terrorism has at least been talked over by the inner circles of those dissatisfied individuals, also appears probable.
Eric Gyllenstierna (Ambassador)“ (Ibid.)
Court Proceedings against the Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Centre January 23-30 1937
(The Pyatakov-Radek trial)
US ambassador Joseph Davies about the Pyatakov-Radek process
A witness to the trial who has left a very extensive material about this and other subjects concerning the situation in the Soviet Union 1936 to 1938 is Joseph E. Davies, the US ambassador to Moscow during this period. Davies has written a book, which we strongly recommend. It was published in New York 1941 with the title “ Mission to Moscow”. The book is “A record of confidential dispatches to the State Department, official and personal correspondence, current diary and journal entries, including notes and comment up to October 1941” written by Davies in his correspondence with President Roosevelt, the Foreign office and his family back in the USA. Ambassador Davies also wrote a small brochure prior to the first anniversary of the Second World War 1942 with the title Our Debt to Our Soviet Ally. The brochure treats the Soviet union and the Second World War and urges the USA to open a second war front in Europe against Nazi Germany.
Joseph Davies was not a professional diplomat but a lawyer, capitalist and businessman. He was a man from the capitalist establishment of the USA and a personal friend of President Franklin Roosevelt. Davies was a great admirer of the American democracy and an outright anti-Socialist. In his farewell speech to the Embassy staff when his mission to Moscow ended he said, inter alia ”the dignity of manhood and womanhood, the sanctity of human life and liberty, the self-respect of the human spirit, are the best product which civilisation has brought into this world. These are found in the United States of America to a degree that is found no place else in the world. I don’t care how much totalitarian states or dictatorships may provide in material benefits or social benefits to childhood or old age. If liberty and freedom have to be sacrificed, then the price is too high to pay” (Joseph E. Davies, Mission to Moscow, New York 1941, p 645.)
What makes Davies interesting is that he during his stay in the Soviet Union made a genuine effort to get to learn about the country and the Socialist government. He asked from the government of the Soviet Union to be allowed to travel around the country, which was granted with all possible support. Ambassador Davies travelled criss cross over the whole country examining a uncountable cities, factories, cooperative farms, schools, hospitals etc. He described what he saw in an objective vocabulary to the Foreign office and in letters to his family in the USA.
Davies letter to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
Concerning the trial against the Pyatakov-Radek group Davies wrote on 17 th February 1937 a “Strictly Confidential” letter to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
“With an interpreter at my side, I followed the testimony carefully. Naturally I must confess that I was predisposed against the credibility of the testimony of these defendants. The unanimity of their confessions, the fact of their long imprisonment (incommunicado) with the possibility of duress and coercion extending to themselves or their families, all gave me grave doubts as to the reliability that could attach to their statements. Viewed objectively, however, and based upon my experience in the trial of cases and the application of the tests of credibility which past experience had afforded me, I arrived at the reluctant conclusion that the state had established its case, at least to the extent of proving the existence of a widespread conspiracy and plot among the political leaders against the Soviet government, and which under their statutes established the crimes set forth in the indictment”. (Ibid, p 43.)
Conquest and the treason trial
It may be of interest to know what the bourgeoisie has got to say about the treason trial in February 1937. As usual, the main book of the bourgeoisie is The great terror by the police agent Robert Conquest. Other so called authors in Sweden and other countries who tackle this subject are just apprentices of Conquest. It is impossible here to mention all lies in Conquest’s description of the trial. We have to content ourselves with his description of the case against Pyatakov.
Conquest writes: ”The sacrifice of Pyatakov is perhaps the clearest sign of Stalin’s motives. He had been, it was true, an oppositionist, and an important one. But he had abandoned opposition in 1928 and had worked with complete loyalty ever since…What was there to be said against him? … He had been a major critic of Stalin’s in the 1920s. He had made it clear that he regarded his rise to power as unfortunate. Above all, he was even now, whatever his own desires, leadership timber.” (Robert Conquest, The Great Terror – Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties.New York 1968, pp 156-157.)
We have already read about Pyatakov’s “complete loyalty” in the minutes of the trial. But even Conquests allegation that Pyatakov “still” would be “leadership timber” has nothing to do with reality. At this time the opposition had been politically vanquished long ago and had no political influence in the Soviet Union. That, for example, is the opinion of the Swedish Ambassador to Moscow, Eric Gyllenstierna in a letter to the Swedish Department of Foreign Affairs dated 28 January 1937 commenting the Pyatakov-Radek trial. Gyllenstierna confirms, that “there cannot be question of any political opposition which represents a real danger for those in power”. (Correspondence from the Swedish embassy in Moscow to the Swedish Department of Foreign Affairs in Stockholm. Riksarkivet, Stockholm.)
According to conquest, the treason trial was just a way for Stalin to get rid of yet some potential rivals, naturally, in order to remain in power himself! For those who have knowledge of Pyatakov’s testimony at the public trial, Conquest’s writings appear ridiculous. Littlepage’s book from 1939 also crushes Conquest’s lies, revealing Pyatakov as a thief and saboteur. Still, the myths of Conquest are the ones given publicity in mass media influencing people who are unprepared. Such are the myths served by the upper class to the people. Within the circles of the same upper class the language was and is different. Let us consider a confidential document by the Swedish ambassador to Moscow, Eric Gyllenstierna, to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Stockholm.
Ambassador Gyllenstierna about the Pyatakov trial
“Légation de Suède
Some comments on the confessions in the latest Trotsky trial. (6 pages)
Moscow , February 3 rd 1937
Confidential”
(page 3:)
“It was striking, that the accused, with few exceptions, in spite of the long period of detention and the exacting mental –and probably in most cases also physical– torture they had undergone, did not appear particularly depressed or dejected. Rather, they seemed to be lively and alert; one or two among them even had a faint smile on his lips.”
(page 4:)
“It is difficult to find a psychologically satisfying explanation to the behaviour of the accused and their efforts to produce the best possible collaboration with the prosecutor. Like during earlier trials of the same kind, one has been lost in different guesses about this. As you may know, even the hypothesis has been put forth that the accused have been subjected to some narcotic or hypnotic influence –a hypothesis which, lacking any evidence, will be left without consideration for the time being.
The most commonly accepted explanation is that the hope of saving one’s own life, or at least that of some close family member, has been decisive for the strangely passive behaviour of the accused vis-à-vis the prosecutor, and the grotesque enthusiasm for confessions would derive from a pure instinct of survival. As for myself, I have doubts about this explanation. The experience from the Zinoviev and other similar trials should have provided the insight, that not event the most frenetical self accusations and blaming of the co-accused sufficed to move the court to mildness in the punishment.
Moreover, it did not appear as if the majority of the accused, when stating their confessions, were motivated by a fawning eagerness to please the court and those in power. Their entire conduct, as I have endeavoured to hint, contradicts this assumption. --- Suffice, it is not worth the while to try and penetrate to the bottom of this mystery of confessions. It is and will probably remain an unsolvable, psychological riddle.
Eric Gyllenstierna.”(Ibid.)
Gyllenstierna 1937 and Arch Getty 1999
According to Ambassador Gyllenstierna the accused in the Pyatakov trial were “lively and alert; one or two among them even had a faint smile on his lips” when they were interrogated and confessed their crimes. The accused could, moreover, talked freely and confessed their crimes which for the Ambassador was “an unsolvable, psychological riddle.” It never fell Gyllenstierna in that the accused were in fact guilty and that they choose to confess their crimes confronted by the strong evidence of the prosecutor. But Gyllenstierna is not the only one. With few exceptions the whole of the united bourgeois class and its scribes were, just as they are now, completely perplex at the confession by the accused. When the subject has been brought up during the years as when new research has been presented or a new book published, new theories have been formulated just to explain away the fact that the accused were in fact guilty of they crimes they had been accused of.
The last in the series of sometimes totally unprecedented theories without any foundation except the imagination of the author can be read in Arch Getty’s latest book The Road to Terror, Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. Professor Getty who has been one of the few serious bourgeois researchers of the topic of Soviet Union’s history, has in this instance concerning the confessions of the accused in the political trials hit his head against the wall.
Professor Getty cannot accept the simple fact that the accused were guilty. Such things are not “as they should be” in the academic circles where Getty belongs, where an inimical and prejudiced attitude towards the Soviet Union and a sanctification of Trotsky are completely dominating. Getty has consequently built his own theory to explain the confession of the accused. It is what he calls “a confession ritual”. (Getty & Naumov 1999, pp 323-324.)
For Getty the confessions were just part of a ritual constituting the basis of all phenomena occurring in the Bolshevik party since Lenin’s time. The aim of the ritual was to subject all party members to the superiority of the party or the nomenclature and to confess crimes when it was demanded of them, even when they were innocent. According to Getty the innocent lied about themselves and allowed themselves to be dishonoured in front off all comrades, all the working people of the Soviet Union and the whole world and for all eternity and allowed themselves to be condemned to death and be shot just to show respect to the nomenclature and for the unity of the party! And those who did not accept Getty’s confession ritual and refused to accept guilt for crimes which they had not committed were condemned to death anyhow! It is far fetched to say the least, not to say ridiculous. It can be conceived, of course, that a deranged person would have been thinking along such lines, but that all the accused would declare themselves guilty in spite of their innocence, only a confused researcher can accept. Such a one cannot be searching for truth but rather the verification of one’s own theory.
Getty’s intrigues and follies
Furthermore, one has to point out that most of the accused in the Moscow trials were former functionaries in high positions in the Communist party, people in the so called party establishment, the nomenclature. Why then would one part of that nomenclature strike against another part if there were no crimes nor any ones guilty? In spite of hundreds of tiresome pages of documents and intricate theories turning history into a mace of intrigues and follies of many kinds, Getty fails to give a reply to this question in The Road to Terror. What finally creeps out is –like always– that all was of Stalin’s making anyhow, he was behind everything with his craving for power and he struck in fear of losing control over the political system. And Getty goes to the extreme of ending his book by telling that, “there was no worker’s revolution” in the Soviet Union and that “the nomenklatura survived socialism and did in fact inherit the country” and ”become not only the ”new” governing elit of the 1990s but the legal owners of the country’s assets and property”. (Ibid. p 586)
Is this history? To make us believe that all is so simple, that the nomenclature present 60 years ago is the same which in 1990 sold the country to the capital? To make a 60 years long leap and close the eyes for everything that happened in the meantime just to make one’s “theory” land? To close one’s eyes for all class struggle in the fight for Socialism and a society without classes. And not the least to close the eyes to the greatest tragedy of mankind, World War II against Nazism and Fascism. A war which to a great extent was fought and won by the Soviet Union and where many of the best Communists and young people gave their lives for freedom not just for their own country but for the whole mankind. A war which had demanded a decade of work fighting against time and which had left vast areas of the Soviet Union in ashes and with enormous social and economical problems. Can one disregard all this? Could it be that the greatest tragedy of mankind had no influence on the social development of the country where it had taken place? With The Road to Terror Getty has created an acceptable product for the ruling capitalist class. He questions some old lies about the Soviet Union which are impossible to defend after the archives have been opened. But he knows to tell new mendacious theories slandering the Soviet Union and casting suspicion on it.
Bukharin-Rykov’s treason trial 2-13 th March 1938
The Swedish Moscow embassy about the Bukharin-Rykov process
The benevolent and admiring attitude of today’s bourgeois towards the condemned in Moscow in March 1938 has nothing in common with the reports by the Swedish Moscow embassy to the Swedish Department of foreign affairs at that time. And then we should not forget that the Swedish Department of foreign affairs and the embassies have always been populated by rightists, people from the upper crust of the Swedish bourgeoisie. People from the embassy informed the Swedish Department of foreign affairs by mail that those found guilty were indeed involved in a conspiracy to topple the Soviet government and take over state power.
“Légation de Suede
What has been shown by the latest Trotsky process.
Moscow 30 th March 1938
Confidential
To His Excellency the Minister for foreign affairs
To which extent the accused in the recently finished process against the “right and Trotsky bloc” have been guilty to that of what they have been accused has never been fully investigated. If truth has difficulties in being heard in the world then that applies especially to Russia, where objectivity has always been a rare bird and in case it appeared at all, it has been trampled under the feet. During the factual discussion still going on in the foreign circles present here, it seems an opinion has crystallised in a certain direction. After having taken part of the accusations against the twenty one revolutionary veterans many have had to admit that the accusations, in spite of improbabilities and material inconsistencies in a number of aspects, still contain a significant kernel of truth to the extent that those now condemned are determined to eliminate the click in charge and that those now condemned are spirited by a strong will to eliminate the click in power at the first occasion, and that they have taken preliminary steps to realise their aims.” (Correspondence from the Swedish Embassy in Moscow to the Swedish Department of Foreign Affairs in Stockholm, Riksarkivet, Stockholm.)
Also, of the general atmosphere in the Soviet society after the Moscow trials, which was described and is described as chaos with millions people purged and sentenced to dead, the Embassy has given a different picture.
“Legation de Suède
About the terrorist purge.
Moscow 14 July 1938
Confidential
His Excellency
Mr Sandler, Minister for Foreign Affairs.
There may be a relationship with the high Summer temperature that sensational stories from the Soviet Union addressing terrorism, of course, at this time starting to spread in the foreign press. Doubtless there is now, as there has always been during the last twenty years, more than enough for exceptional stories from this country, but it is certain that these stories would get another appearance if they were rendered realistically rather than ornamented by an alien, tendentious imagination. As for the reports by the foreign press from here, one must say that to a little, genuine kernel, a strong dose of journalist sensation is given, and the main ingredients are probably in most cases misunderstandings and an active imagination, coupled with a strong political tendency from those who are biased against the Soviet land.” (Ibid.)
Having gone through some “clarifying examples” and told of “unsuitable” persons and persons with “a mediocre capacity” or such who “are not up to the mark” or the corrupt people’s commissary who ”has been transferred from the commissariat to jail” the ambassador continues to the cause of the purges. According to the raporteur the opponents of the regime are given leave (“in reality relatively few in number”), but to a greater extent they are thrown out those who have distinguished themselves for abuse of power, disorder and incompetence and shown themselves to be substandard and damaging. The Soviet government aspired to a rejuvenation of the administration with people from the working classes which was in fact done and the Swedish embassy report confirms that “what is happening here in reality cannot and should not be regarded as signs of dissolution and degeneration but on the contrary signs of a Socialist consolidation”. We may add, that this was very important. The war was already coming with the invasion of Austria and soon the Nazis were to invade the Soviet Union. In this situation the government had to be able to rely on the civilian, military and economic administrations. The ambassador’s report continues,
“But the important aspect of the, if one may say so, epidemic terror in the Soviet country, lies, as we have had reason to remind repeatedly, not in these single falls from high positions, which for an exterior observer naturally may offer a more shattering spectacle but in reality relatively few in number and representative mainly for the smallest group in society which is concerned by the terror. The importance lies in the ever since 1935 with varying force on-going mass purges through all branches of the administration, civilian, military, economic etc. and all strata of society. This procedure of purge which has not precedent is meant to eliminate the opponents of the present government, to which group belong the people in the highest positions and for that reason have had the deepest fall, and to purge as far as possible who either through corruption and abuse of power or incompetence have shown themselves to be substandard and damaging. This violent procedure is driven by a conscious effort to on the one hand social renovation and on the other a rejuvenation of the whole administration, an effort to introduce personnel taken from those social groups which have essentially carried the revolution and nowadays have reasonable demands on enjoying the fruits of the new order. This means first and foremost the endeavour to select the ones, so to say, who have been brought up and educated in unmixed Soviet circumstances, the young age groups from the ranks of workers and peasants, who nowadays through the numerous high schools of different kinds, howsoever they may be otherwise, are thrown out into life and demand a place in the sun and the right to act … This should, in my opinion, be of importance even for practical reasons to note and even to remember, since this shows that what is happening here at present in reality cannot and should not be considered signs of dissolution and degeneration but on the contrary should be considered a socio-political consolidation, albeit from our points of view highly strange. And they are strange for the natural reason that the conditions prevailing in this country –historical, ethnographic, geographic etc.— are certainly strange.” (Ibid.)
Ambassador Joseph Davies about the Bukharin-Rykov process
A person who was present in the court-room all days during the trial was the US ambassador at the time Joseph Davies. On behalf of his government he had to acquire a thorough knowledge of the whole process and report on about the circumstances around the accused and the credibility of the trial. We cite Joseph Davies from his book Mission to Moscow. The first quotation is from Davie’s letter of 8 th March 1938 to his daughter Emlen who was then in the USA but who had earlier lived with her family in Moscow.
“Bukharin treason trial
Mach 8, 1938
Dear “Bijou”:
For the last week, I have been attending daily sessions of the Bukharin treason trial. No doubt you have been following it in the press. It is terrific. I found it of much intellectual interest, because it brings back into play all the old faculties involved in assessing the credibility of witnesses and sifting the wheat from the chaff-the truth from the false-which I was called upon to use for so many years in the trial of cases, myself.
All the fundamental weaknesses and vices of human nature-personal ambitions at their worst-are shown up in the proceedings. They disclose the outlines of a plot which come very near to being successful in bringing about the overthrow of this government.
This testimony now makes clear what we could not understand and what happened last spring and summer. You will recall that the folks at the chancery were telling us of extraordinary activity around the Kremlin, when the gates were closed to public; that there were indications of much agitation and a changing of the character of the soldiers on guard. The new guards, you will remember we were told, consisted almost entirely of soldiers recruited from Georgia, Stalin’s native land.
The extraordinary testimony of Krestinsky, Bukharin, and the rest would appear to indicate that the Kremlin’s fears were well justified. For it now seems that a plot existed in the beginning of November, 1936, to project a coup d’état, with Tukhachevsky at its head, for May of the following year. Apparently it was touch and go at that time whether it actually would be staged.
But the government acted with great vigor and speed. The Red Army generals were shot and the whole party organisation was purged and thoroughly cleansed. Then it came out that quite a few of those at the top were seriously infected with the virus of the conspiracy to overthrow the government, and actually working with the Secret Service organisations of Germany and Japan.
The situation explains the present official attitude of hostility toward foreigners, the closing of various foreign consulates in the country, and the like. Quite frankly, we can’t blame the powers-that-be much for reacting in this way if they believed what is now being divulged at the trial.
Again, it should be remembered that it cannot be conclusively assumed because these facts were adduced through statements of confessed criminals that they were therefore untrue.
I must stop now as the trial reconvenes at 11 A.M. and I’ll have to run.” (Davies 1941, p 269. )
Letter to the US secretary of state for foreign affairs
This is how a senior lawyer from the West writes about the Bukharin trial. Let us now quote ambassador Davies’ confidential dispatch no. 1039 of 17 th March 1938 to his superior the US secretary or state for foreign affairs.
“So-called Bukharin mass treason trial
No. 1039
Moscow , March 17, 1938
To the honorable the secretary of state
Confidential
“Notwithstanding a prejudice arising from the confession evidence and a prejudice against a judicial system which affords practically no protection for the accused, after daily observation of the witnesses, their manner of testifying, the unconscious corroborations which developed, and other facts in the course of trial, together with others of which a judicial notice could be taken, it is my opinion so far as the political defendants are concerned sufficient crimes under Soviet law, among those charged in the indictment, were established by the proof and beyond a reasonable doubt to justify the verdict of guilty of treason and the adjudication of the punishment provided by Soviet criminal statutes. The opinion of those diplomats who attended the trial most regularly was general that the case had established the fact that there was a formidable political opposition and an exceedingly serious plot, which explained to the diplomats many of the hitherto unexplained developments of the last six months in the Soviet Union. The only difference of opinion that seemed to exist was the degree to which the plot had been implemented by different defendants and the degree to which the conspiracy had become centralised.” (Ibid, p 271.)
The Nazis occupy Europe
Ambassador Joseph Davies understood the size of the crimes of the accused, the consequences of which could have been awfully dramatic. The Nazis were in fact marching in Europe and in the midst of the judicial proceedings 11 th March 1938 Nazi Germany occupied Austria. Soon Czechoslovakia would follow, then Poland and then the whole of Europe. And in the Soviet Union which Nazi Germany had promised to the capitalist world to crush, the very principal aim of the Nazis, there was a group of highly positioned politicians who collaborated with the Nazis in order to kill the government in power and to partition the country and divide it between themselves and Nazi Germany!
The government of the Soviet Union and Stalin’s correct actions stopped a looming catastrophe for the Socialist Soviet Union and for the Slavish people. Hitler’s threat to annihilate the Slavish people was no mere boasting. Consider that during more than three years war and the occupation of Ukraine, Byelorussian and other areas of Western Soviet Union the Nazi armies killed more than 25 million people. The purging of the traitors was a question of life and death for the Soviet Union and decisive for the victory of the country in World war II.
The projection of it was decisive for the extermination of Nazism and the possibility of the world to enjoy the liberty and democracy we have today. Had the Nazis conquered The Soviet Union, they could have taken the whole world. But not only we Communists realise this and declare it openly. Honest bourgeois too, in this case, put themselves on the same side of the barricades as we ourselves.
The treason trials crushed Hitler’s fifth columnists in Russia
Let us once more render a quotation from ambassador Joseph Davie’s book Mission to Moscow. He treats the activities of the fifth columnists in Soviet Union. The fifth columnists is the name given to traitors serving an exterior enemy. The term emanates from the attacks of the Fascists against Madrid during the Spanish civil war. The Fascists advanced in four columns and proclaimed that they had a fifth one, which would attack the defenders in their back. Let us hear what ambassador Davies had to say about the “fifth columnists” in the Soviet Union. Note that this chapter of Mission to Moscow was written during the Summer of 1941 but is inserted in the book right after the confidential despatch to the US state secretary for defence 17 th March 1938.
Ambassador Joseph Davies:
“Fifth Columnists in Russia.
A study in hindsight – 1941
Note: Although this was written after the German invasion of Russia in the summer 1941 it is inserted here because this seems the logical place to illustrate how the treason trials destroyed Hitler’s Fifth Column in Russia.-J.E.D.
Passing through Chicago, on my way home from the June commencement of my old University, I was asked to talk to the University Club and combined Wisconsin societies. It was just three days after Hitler had invaded Russia. Someone in the audience asked: “What about Fifth Columnists in Russia?” Off the anvil, I said: “There aren’t any-they shot them.”
On the train that day, that thought lingered in my mind. It was rather extraordinary, when one stopped to think of it, that in this last Nazi invasion, not a word had appeared of “inside work” back of the Russian lines. There was no so-called “internal aggression” in Russia co-operating with the German High Command. Hitler’s march into Prague in 1939 was accompanied by the active military support of Henlein’s organisations in Czechoslovakia. The same was true of his invasion of Norway. There were no Sudeten Henleins, no Slovakian Tisos, no Belgian De Grelles, no Norwegian Quislings in the Soviet picture.
Thinking over the things, there came a flash in my mind of a possible new significance to some of the things that happened in Russian when I was there. Upon my arrival in Washington, I hastened to reread my old diary entries and, with the permission of the State Department, went through some of my official reports.
None of us in Russia in 1937 and 1938 were thinking in terms of “Fifth Column” activities. The phrase was not current. It is comparatively recent that we have found in our language phrases descriptive of Nazi technique such as “Fifth Column” and “internal aggression”.
Generally speaking, the well informed suspected such methods might be employed by Hitler; but it was one of those things which many thought just couldn’t really happen. It is only within the last two years, through the Dies Committee and the F.B.I., that there have been uncovered the activities of German organisations in this country and in South America, and that we have seen the actual work of German agents operating with traitors in Norway, Czechoslovakia, and Austria, who betrayed their country from within in co-operation with a planned Hitler attack.
These activities and methods, apparently, existed in Russia, as a part of the German plan against the Soviets, as long ago as 1935.
It was in 1936 that Hitler made his now famous Nuremberg speech, in which he clearly indicated his designs upon the Ukraine.
The Soviet government, it now appears, was even then acutely aware of the plans of the German high military and political commands and of the “inside work” being done in Russia, preparatory to German attack upon Russia.
As I ruminated over this situation, I suddenly saw the picture as I should have seen it at the time. The story had been told in the so-called treason or purge trials of 1937 and 1938 which I had attended and listened to. In re-examining the record of these cases and also what I had written at the time from this new angle, I found that practically every device of German Fifth Columnist activity, as we now know it, was disclosed and laid bare by the confessions and testimony elicited at these trials of self-confessed “Quislings” in Russia.
It was clear that the Soviet government believed that these activities existed, was thoroughly alarmed, and had proceeded to crush them vigorously. By 1941, when the German invasion came, they had wiped out any Fifth Column which had been organised.
Another fact which was difficult to understand at the time, but which takes on a new significance in view of developments, was the manner in which the Soviet government was “bearing down” on consular agencies of Germany and Italy in 1937 and 1938. It was done in a very highhanded manner. There was a callous and almost brutal disregard of the sensibilities of the countries involved. The reason assigned by the Soviet government was that these consulates were engaged upon internal, political, and subversive activities; and that because of these facts they had to be closed up. The announcements of the trials and executions (purges), all over Russia that year, invariably charged the defendants with being guilty of treasonable and subversive activity in aiding “a foreign power” to overthrow the Soviet state.”
Ambassador Joseph Davies then goes on with his account by going through some court cases in the treason trials and finishes the chapter with the words:
“The testimony in these cases involve and incriminated General Tukhachevsky and many high leaders in the army and in the navy. Shortly after the Radek trial these men were arrested. Under the leadership of Tukhachevsky these men were charged with having entered into an agreement to co-operate with the German High Command in an attack upon the Soviet state. Numerous subversive activities conducted in the army were disclosed by the testimony. Many of the highest officers in the army, according to the testimony, had either been corrupted or otherwise induced to enter into this conspiracy. According to the testimony, complete co-operation had been established in each branch of the service, the political revolutionary group, the military group, and the High Commands of Germany and Japan.
Such was the story, as it was brought out in these trials, as to what had actually occurred. There can be no doubt but what the Kremlin authorities were greatly alarmed by these disclosures and the confessions of these defendants. The speed with which the government acted and the thoroughness with which they proceeded indicated that they believed them to be true. They proceeded to clean house and acted with the greatest of energy and precision. Voroshilov, Commander in Chief of the Red Army, said:
It is easier for a burglar to break into the house if he has an accomplice to let him in. We have taken care of the accomplices.
General Tukhachevsky did not go to the coronation in London as he had planned. He was reported to have been sent down to command the army of the Volga district; but it was understood at the time that he had been removed from the train and arrested before he arrived at his command. Within a few weeks thereafter, on June 11, he, along with eleven other officers of the High Command, were shot pursuant to judgement, after a trial by military court-martial, the proceedings of which were not made public. All of these trials, purges and liquidations, which seemed so violent at the time and shocked the world, are now quite clearly a part of a vigorous and determined effort of the Stalin government to protect itself from not only revolution from within but from attack from without. They went to work thoroughly to clean up and clean out all treasonable elements within the country. All doubts were resolved in favour of the government.
There were no Fifth Columnists in Russia in 1941 – they had shot them. The purge had cleansed the country and rid it of treason.” (Ibid, pp 272-280)
Ambassador Davie’s account is more important today than ever. It poses the question about the purges in the correct light. But it raises other questions too, which are never treated by bourgeois historical writers. An important question in this context is how it was at all possible for the Nazis to vanquish the great military power France, which had additionally got an English army to help it! The treachery of the French upper class against its country and other issues from the period between the two World Wars are questions which beg an explanation.
Sabotage
On September 23, 1936 a wave of explosions hit the Siberian mines, the second in nine months. There were 12 dead. Three days later, Yagoda became Commissar of Communications and Yezhov chief of the NKVD. At least until that time, Stalin had sustained the more or less liberal policies of Yagoda.
Investigations in Siberia led to the arrest of Pyatakov, an old Trotskyist, assistant to Ordzhonikidze, Commissar of Heavy Industry since 1932. Close to Stalin, Ordzhonikidze had followed a policy of using and re-educating bourgeois specialists. Hence, in February 1936, he had amnestied nine `bourgeois engineers', condemned in 1930 during an major trial on sabotage.
On the question of industry, there had been for several years debates and divisions within the Party. Radicals, led by Molotov, opposed most of the bourgeois specialists, in whom they had little political trust. They had long called for a purge. Ordzhonikidze, on the other hand, said that they were needed and that their specialties had to be used.
This recurring debate about old specialists with a suspect past resurfaced with the sabotage in the Siberian mines. Inquiries revealed that Pyatakov, Ordzhonikidze's assistant, had widely used bourgeois specialists to sabotage the mines.
In January 1937, the trial of Pyatakov, Radek and other old Trotskyists was held; they admitted their clandestine activities. For Ordzhonikidze, the blow was so hard that he committed suicide.
Of course, several bourgeois authors have claimed that the accusations of systematic sabotage were completely invented, that these were frameups whose sole rôle was to eliminate political opponents. But there was a U.S. engineer who worked between 1928 and 1937 as a leading cadre in the mines of Ural and Siberia, many of which had been sabotaged. The testimony of this apolitical technician John Littlepage is interesting on many counts.
Littlepage described how, as soon as he arrived in the Soviet mines in 1928, he became aware of the scope of industrial sabotage, the method of struggle preferred by enemies of the Soviet régime. There was therefore a large base fighting against the Bolshevik leadership, and if some well-placed Party cadres were encouraging or simply protecting the saboteurs, they could seriously weaken the régime. Here is Littlepage's description.
`One day in 1928 I went into a power-station at the Kochbar gold-mines. I just happened to drop my hand on one of the main bearings of a large Diesel engine as I walked by, and felt something gritty in the oil. I had the engine stopped immediately, and we removed from the oil reservoir about two pints of quartz sand, which could have been placed there only by design. On several other occasions in the new milling plants at Kochkar we found sand inside such equipment as speed-reducers, which are entirely enclosed, and can be reached only by removing the hand-hold covers.
`Such petty industrial sabotage was --- and still is --- so common in all branches of Soviet industry that Russian engineers can do little about it, and were surprised at my own concern when I first encountered it ....
`Why, I have been asked, is sabotage of this description so common in Soviet Russia, and so rare in most other countries? Do Russians have a peculiar bent for industrial wrecking?
`People who ask such questions apparently haven't realized that the authorities in Russia have been --- and still are --- fighting a whole series of open or disguised civil wars. In the beginning they fought and dispossessed the aristocracy, the bankers and landowners and merchants of the Tsarist régime .... they later fought and dispossessed the little independent farmers and the little retail merchants and the nomad herders in Asia.
`Of course it's all for their own good, say the Communists. But many of these people can't see things that way, and remain bitter enemies of the Communists and their ideas, even after they have been put back to work in State industries. From these groups have come a considerable number of disgruntled workers who dislike Communists so much that they would gladly damage any of their enterprises if they could.' John D. Littlepage and Demaree Bess, In Search of Soviet Gold (London: George E. Harrap & Co., 1939), pp. 188-189.
During his work in the Kalata mines, in the Ural region, Littlepage was confronted by deliberate sabotage by engineers and Party cadres. It was clear to him that these acts were a deliberate attempt to weaken the Bolshevik régime, and that such blatant sabotage could only take place with the approval of the highest authorities in the Ural Region. Here is his important summary:
`Conditions were reported to be especially bad in the copper-mines of the Ural Mountain region, at that time Russia's most promising mineral-producing area, which had been selected for a lion's share of the funds available for production. American mining engineers had been engaged by the dozens for use in this area, and hundreds of American foremen had likewise been brought over for instructional purposes in mines and mills. Four or five American mining engineers had been assigned to each of the large copper-mines in the Urals, and American metallurgists as well.
`These men had all been selected carefully; they had excellent records in the United States. But, with very few exceptions, they had proved disappointing in the results they were obtaining in Russia. When Serebrovsky was given control of copper- and lead-mines, as well as gold, he wanted to find out why these imported experts weren't producing as they should; and in January 1931 he sent me off, together with an American metallurgist and a Russian Communist manager, to investigate conditions in the Ural mines, and try to find out what was wrong and how to correct it ....
`We discovered, in the first place, that the American engineers and metallurgists were not getting any co-operation at all; no attempt had been made to provide them with competent interpreters .... They had carefully surveyed the properties to which they were assigned and drawn up recommendations for exploitation which could have been immediately useful if applied. But these recommendations had either never been translated into Russian or had been stuck into pigeonholes and never brought out again ....
`The mining methods used were so obviously wrong that a first-year engineering student could have pointed out most of their faults. Areas too large for control were being opened up, and ore was being removed without the proper timbering and filling. In an effort to speed up production before suitable preparations had been completed several of the best mines had been badly damaged, and some ore bodies were on the verge of being lost beyond recovery ....
`I shall never forget the situation we found at Kalata. Here, in the Northern Urals, was one of the most important copper properties in Russia, consisting of six mines, a flotation concentrator, and a smelter, with blast and reverberatory furnaces. Seven American mining engineers of the first rank, drawing very large salaries, had been assigned to this place some time before. Any one of them, if he had been given the opportunity, could have put this property in good running order in a few weeks.
`But at the time our commission arrived they were completely tied down by red tape. Their recommendations were ignored; they were assigned no particular work; they were unable to convey their ideas to Russian engineers through ignorance of the language and lack of competent interpreters .... Of course, they knew what was technically wrong with the mines and mills at Kalata, and why production was a small fraction of what it should have been with the amount of equipment and personnel available.
`Our commission visited practically all the big copper-mines in the Urals and gave them a thorough inspection ....
`(I)n spite of the deplorable conditions I have described there had been few howls in the Soviet newspapers about ``wreckers'' in the Ural copper-mines. This was a curious circumstance, because the Communists were accustomed to attribute to deliberate sabotage much of the confusion and disorder in industry at the time. But the Communists in the Urals, who controlled the copper-mines, had kept surprisingly quiet about them.
`In July 1931, after Serebrovsky had examined the report of conditions made by our commission, he decided to send me back to Kalata as chief engineer, to see if we couldn't do something with this big property. He sent along with me a Russian Communist manager, who had no special knowledge of mining, but who was given complete authority, and apparently was instructed to allow me free rein ....
`The seven American engineers brightened up considerably when they discovered we really had sufficient authority to cut through the red tape and give them a chance to work. They ... went down into the mines alongside their workmen, in the American mining tradition. Before long things were picking up fast, and within five months production rose by 90 per cent.
`The Communist manager was an earnest fellow; he tried hard to understand what we were doing and how we did it. But the Russian engineers at these mines, almost without exception, were sullen and obstructive. They objected to every improvement we suggested. I wasn't used to this sort of thing; the Russian engineers in gold-mines where I had worked had never acted like this.
`However, I succeeded in getting my methods tried out in these mines, because the Communist manager who had come with me supported every recommendation I made. And when the methods worked the Russian engineers finally fell into line, and seemed to get the idea ....
`At the end of five months I decided I could safely leave this property .... Mines and plant had been thoroughly reorganized; there seemed to be no good reason why production could not be maintained at the highly satisfactory rate we had established.
`I drew up detailed instructions for future operations .... I explained these things to the Russian engineers and to the Communist manager, who was beginning to get some notion of mining. The latter assured me that my ideas would be followed to the letter.' Ibid. , pp. 89--94.
`(I)n the spring of 1932 ... Soon after my return to Moscow I was informed that the copper-mines at Kalata were in very bad condition; production had fallen even lower than it was before I had reorganized the mines in the previous year. This report dumbfounded me; I couldn't understand how matters could have become so bad in this short time, when they had seemed to be going so well before I left.
`Serebrovsky asked me to go back to Kalata to see what could be done. When I reached there I found a depressing scene. The Americans had all finished their two-year contracts, which had not been renewed, so they had gone home. A few months before I arrived the Communist manager ... had been removed by a commission which had been sent in from Sverdlovsk, Communist headquarters in the Urals. The commission had reported that he was ignorant and inefficient, although there was nothing in his record to show it, and had appointed the chairman of the investigating commission to succeed him --- a curious sort of procedure.
`During my previous stay at the mines we had speeded up capacity of the blast furnaces to seventy-eight metric tons per square metre per day; they had now been permitted to drop back to their old output of forty to forty-five tons. Worst of all, thousands of tons of high-grade ore had been irretrievably lost by the introduction into two mines of methods which I had specifically warned against during my previous visit ....
`But I now learned that almost immediately after the Russian engineers were sent home the same Russian engineers whom I had warned about the danger had applied this method in the remaining mines (despite his written opposition, as the method was not universally applicable), with the result that the mines caved in and much ore was lost beyond recovery ....
`I set to work to try to recover some of the lost ground ....
`Then one day I discovered that the new manager was secretly countermanding almost every order I gave ....
`I reported exactly what I had discovered at Kalata to Serebrovsky ....
`In a short time the mine manager and some of the engineers were put on trial for sabotage. The manager got ten years ... and the engineers lesser terms ....
`I was satisfied at the time that there was something bigger in all this than the little group of men at Kalata; but I naturally couldn't warn Serebrovsky against prominent members of his own Communist Party .... But I was so sure that something was wrong high up in the political administration of the Ural Mountains ....
`It seemed clear to me at the time that the selection of this commission had their conduct at Kalata traced straight back to the Communist high command in Sverdlovsk, whose members must be charged either with criminal negligence or actual participation in the events which had occurred in these mines.
`However, the chief secretary of the Communist Party in the Urals, a man named Kabakoff, had occupied this post since 1922 ... he was considered so powerful that he was privately described as the ``Bolshevik Viceroy of the Urals.'' ....
`(T)here was nothing to justify the reputation he appeared to have. Under his long rule the Ural area, which is one of the richest mining regions in Russia, and which was given almost unlimited capital for exploitation, never produced anything like what it should have done.
`This commission at Kalata, whose members later admitted they had come there with wrecking intentions, had been sent directly from Kabakoff's headquarters .... I told some of my Russian acquaintances at the time that it seemed to me there was a lot more going on in the Urals than had yet been revealed, and that it came from somewhere high up.
`All these incidents became clearer, so far as I was concerned, after the conspiracy trial in January 1937, when Piatakoff, together with several of his associates, confessed in open court that they had engaged in organized sabotage of mines, railways, and other industrial enterprises since the beginning of 1931. A few weeks after this trial ... the chief secretary of the Party in the Urals, Kabakoff, who had been a close associate of Piatakoff's, was arrested on charges of complicity in this same conspiracy.' Ibid. , pp. 97--101.
The opinion given here by Littlepage about Kabakov is worth remembering, since Khrushchev, in his infamous 1956 Secret Report, cited him as an example of worthy leader, `who had been a party member since 1914' and victim of `repressions ... which were based on nothing tangible'! Khrushchev, Secret Report, op. cit. , p. S32.
Since Littlepage visited so many mining regions, he was able to notice that this form of bitter class struggle, industrial sabotage, had developed all over the Soviet Union.
Here is how he described what he saw in Kazakhstan between 1932 and 1937, the year of the purge.
`(In October 1932,) An SOS had been sent out from the famous Ridder lead-zinc mines in Eastern Kazakstan, near the Chinese border ....
`(I was instructed) to take over the mines as chief engineer, and to apply whatever methods I considered best. At the same time the Communist managers apparently received instructions to give me a free hand and all possible assistance.
`The Government had spent large sums of money on modern American machinery and equipment for these mines, as for almost all others in Russia at that time .... But ... the engineers had been so ignorant of this equipment and the workmen so careless and stupid in handling any kind of machinery that much of these expensive importations were ruined beyond repair.' Littlepage and Bess, op. cit. , pp. 106--107.
`Two of the younger Russian engineers there impressed me as particularly capable, and I took a great deal of pains to explain to them how things had gone wrong before, and how we had managed to get them going along the right track again. It seemed to me that these young fellows, with the training I had been able to give them, could provide the leadership necessary to keep the mines operating as they should.' Ibid. , p. 111.
`The Ridder mines ... had gone on fairly well for two or three years after I had reorganized them in 1932. The two young engineers who had impressed me so favorably had carried out the instructions I had left them with noteworthy success ....
`Then an investigating commission had appeared from Alma Ata ...\ similar to the one sent to the mines at Kalata. From that time on, although the same engineers had remained in the mines, an entirely different system was introduced throughout, which any competent engineer could have foretold would cause the loss of a large part of the ore body in a few months. They had even mined pillars which we had left to protect the main working shafts, so that the ground close by had settled ....
`(T)he engineers of whom I had spoken were no longer at work in the mines when I arrived there in 1937, and I understood they had been arrested for alleged complicity in a nation-wide conspiracy to sabotage Soviet industries which had been disclosed in a trial of leading conspirators in January.
`When I had submitted my report I was shown the written confessions of the engineers I had befriended in 1932. They admitted that they had been drawn into a conspiracy against the Stalin régime by opposition Communists who convinced them that they were strong enough to overthrow Stalin and his associates and take over control of the Soviet Government. The conspirators proved to them, they said, that they had many supporters among Communists in high places. These engineers, although they themselves were not Communists, decided they would have to back one side or the other, and they picked the losing side.
`According to their confessions, the `investigating commission' had consisted of conspirators, who traveled around from mine to mine lining up supporters. After they had been persuaded to join the conspiracy the engineers at Ridder had taken my written instructions as the basis for wrecking the mines. They had deliberately introduced methods which I had warned against, and in this way had brought the mines close to destruction.' Ibid. , pp. 112--114.
`I never followed the subtleties of political ideas and man
uvres .... (But) I am firmly convinced that Stalin and his associates were a long time getting round to the discovery that disgruntled Communist revolutionaries were the most dangerous enemies they had ....
`My experience confirms the official explanation which, when it is stripped of a lot of high-flown and outlandish verbiage, comes down to the simple assertion that `outs' among the Communists conspired to overthrow the `ins', and resorted to underground conspiracy and industrial sabotage because the Soviet system has stifled all legitimate means for waging a political struggle.
`This Communist feud developed into such a big affair that many non-Communists were dragged into it, and had to pick one side or the other .... Disgruntled little persons of all kinds were in a mood to support any kind of underground opposition movement, simply because they were discontented with things as they stood.' Ibid. , pp. 274--275.
During the January 1937 Trial, Pyatakov, the old Trotskyist, was convicted as the most highly placed person responsible of industrial sabotage. In fact, Littlepage actually had the opportunity to see Pyatakov implicated in clandestine activity. Here is what he wrote:
`In the spring of 1931 ..., Serebrovsky ... told me a large purchasing commission was headed for Berlin, under the direction of Yuri Piatakoff, who ... was then the Vice-Commissar of Heavy Industry ....
`I ... arrived in Berlin at about the same time as the commission ....
`Among other things, the commission had put out bids for several dozen mine-hoists, ranging from one hundred to one thousand horse-power. Ordinarily these hoists consist of drums, shafting, beams, gears, etc., placed on a foundation of I- or H-beams.
`The commission had asked for quotations on the basis of pfennigs per kilogramme. Several concerns put in bids, but there was a considerable difference --- about five or six pfennigs per kilogramme --- between most of the bids and those made by two concerns which bid lowest. The difference made me examine the specifications closely, and I discovered that the firms which had made the lowest bids had substituted cast-iron bases for the light steel required in the original specifications, so that if their bids had been accepted the Russians would have actually paid more, because the cast-iron base would be so much heavier than the lighter steel one, but on the basis of pfennigs per kilogramme they would appear to pay less.
`This seemed to be nothing other than a trick, and I was naturally pleased to make such a discovery. I reported my findings to the Russian members of the commission with considerable self-satisfaction. To my astonishment the Russians were not at all pleased. They even brought considerable pressure upon me to approve the deal, telling me I had misunderstood what was wanted ....
`I ... wasn't able to understand their attitude ....
`It might very well be graft, I thought.' Ibid. , pp. 95--96.
During his trial, Pyatakov made the following declarations to the tribunal:
`In 1931 I was in Berlin of official business .... In the middle of the summer of 1931 Ivan Nikitich Smirnov told me in Berlin that the Trotskyite fight against the Soviet government and the Party leadership was being renewed with new vigour, that he --- Smirnov --- had had an interview in Berlin with Trotsky's son, Sedov, who on Trotsky's instruction gave him a new line ....
`Smirnov ... conveyed to me that Sedov wanted very much to see me ....
`I agreed to this meeting ....
`Sedov said ... that there was being formed, or already been formed ... a Trotskyite centre .... The possibility was being sounded of restoring the united organization with the Zinovievites.
`Sedov also said that he knew for a fact the Rights also, in the persons of Tomsky, Bukharin and Rykov, had not laid down their arms, that they had only quietened down temporarily, and that the necessary connections should be established with them too ....
`Sedov said that only one thing was required of me, namely that I should place as many orders as possible with two German firms, Borsig and Demag, and that he, Sedov, would arrange to receive the necessary sums from them, bearing in mind that I would not be particularly exacting as to prices. If this were deciphered it was clear that the additions to prices that would be made on the Soviet orders would pass wholly or in part into Trotsky's hands for his counter-revolutionary purposes.' People's Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R. Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Centre (Moscow, 1937), pp. 21--27.
Littlepage made the following comment:
`This passage in Piatakoff's confession is a plausible explanation, in my opinion, of what was going on in Berlin in 1931, when my suspicions were roused because the Russians working with Piatakoff tried to induce me to approve the purchase of mine-hoists which were not only too expensive, but would have been useless in the mines for which they were intended. I had found it hard to believe that these men were ordinary grafters .... But they had been seasoned political conspirators before the Revolution, and had taken risks of the same degree for the sake of their so-called cause.' Littlepage and Bess, op. cit. , p. 102.
Another American engineer, John Scott, who worked at Magnitogorsk, recorded similar events in his book Behind the Urals. When describing the 1937 Purge, he wrote that there was serious, sometimes criminal negligence on the part of the people responsible. The machines at Magnitogorsk were deliberately sabotaged by ex-kulaks who had become workers. A bourgeois engineer, Scott analyzed the purge as follows:
`Many people in Magnitogorsk, arrested and indicted for political crimes, were just thieves, embezzlers, and bandits ....' Scott, op. cit. , p. 184.
`The purge struck Magnitogorsk in 1937 with great force. Thousands were arrested ....
`The October Revolution earned the enmity of the old aristocracy, the officers of the old Czarist army and of the various White armies, State employees from pre-war days, business men of all kinds, small landlords, and kulaks. All of these people had ample reason to hate the Soviet power, for it had deprived them of something which they had before. Besides being internally dangerous, these men and women were potentially good material for clever foreign agents to work with ....
`Geographical conditions were such that no matter what kind of government was in power in the Soviet Union, poor, thickly populated countries like Japan and Italy and aggressive powers like Germany would leave no stone unturned in their attempts to infiltrate it with their agents, in order to establish their organizations and assert their influence .... These agents bred purges ....
`A large number of spies, saboteurs, and fifth-columnists were exiled or shot during the purge; but many more innocent men and women were made to suffer.' Ibid. , pp. 188--189.
The February 1937 decision to purge
Early in 1937, a crucial meeting of the Bolshevik Party Central Committee took place. It decided that a purge was necessary and how it should be carried out. Stalin subsequently published an important document. At the time of the plenum, the police had gathered sufficient evidence to prove that Bukharin was aware of the conspiratorial activities of the anti-Party groups unmasked during the trials of Zinoviev and Pyatakov. Bukharin was confronted with these accusations during the plenum. Unlike the other groups, Bukharin's group was at the very heart of the Party and his political influence was great.
Some claim that Stalin's report sounded the signal that set off `terror' and `arbitrary criminality'. Let us look at the real contents of this document.
His first thesis claimed that lack of revolutionary vigilance and political naïveté had spread throughout the Party. Kirov's murder was the first serious warning, from which not all the necessary conclusions had been drawn. The trial of Zinoviev and the Trotskyists revealed that these elements were ready to do anything to destroy the régime. However, economic successes had created within the Party a feeling of self-satisfaction and victory. Cadres had forgotten capitalist encirclement and the increasing bitterness of the class struggle at the international level. Many had become submerged by little management questions and no longer preoccupied themselves with the major lines of national and international struggle.
Stalin said:
`Comrades, from the reports and the debates on these reports heard at this Plenum it is evident that we are dealing with the following three main facts.
`First, the wrecking, diversionists and espionage work of the agents of foreign countries, among who, a rather active role was played by the Trotskyites, affected more or less all, or nearly all, our organisations --- economic, administrative and Party.
`Second, the agents of foreign countries, among them the Trotskyites, not only penetrated into our lower organisations, but also into a number of responsible positions.
`Third, some of our leading comrades, at the centre and in the districts, not only failed to discern the real face of these wreckers, diversionists, spies and assassins, but proved to be so careless, complacent and naive that not infrequently they themselves helped to promote agents of foreign powers to responsible positions.' Stalin, Report and Speech in Reply to Debate at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U., p. 241.
From these remarks, Stalin drew two conclusions.
First, political credulity and naïveté had to be eliminated and revolutionary vigilance had to be reinforced. The remnants of the defeated exploiting classes would resort to sharper forms of class struggle and would clutch at the most desperate forms of struggle as the last resort of the doomed. Ibid. , p. 264.
In 1956, in his Secret Report, Khrushchev referred to this passage. He claimed that Stalin justified `mass terror' by putting forth the formulation that `as we march forward toward socialism class war must ... sharpen'. Khrushchev, op. cit. , p. S24.
This is a patent falsehood. The most `intense' class struggle was the generalized civil war that drew great masses against each other, as in 1918--1920. Stalin talked about the remnants of the old classes that, in a desperate situation, would resort to the sharpest forms of struggle: attacks, assassinations, sabotage.
Stalin's second conclusion was that to reinforce vigilance, the political education of Party cadres had to be improved. He proposed a political education system of four to eight months for all cadres, from cell leaders all the way to the highest leaders.
Stalin's first report, presented on March 3, focused on the ideological struggle so that members of the Central Committee could take note of the gravity of the situation and understand the scope of subversive work that had taken place within the Party. His speech on March 5 focused on other forms of deviation, particularly leftism and bureaucracy.
Stalin began by explicitly warning against the tendency to arbitrarily extend the purge and repression.
`Does that mean that we must strike at and uproot, not only real Trotskyites, but also those who at some time or other wavered in the direction of Trotskyism and then, long ago, abandoned Trotskyism; not only those who, at some time or other, had occasion to walk down a street through which some Trotskyite had passed? At all events, such voices were heard at this Plenum .... You cannot measure everyone with the same yardstick. Such a wholesale approach can only hinder the fight against the real Trotskyite wreckers and spies.' Stalin, op. cit. , p. 278.
In preparation for the war, the Party certainly had to be purged of infiltrated enemies; nevertheless, Stalin warned against an arbitrary extension of the purge, which would harm the struggle against the real enemies.
The Party was not just menaced by the subversive work of infiltrated enemies, but also by serious deviations by cadres, in particular the tendency to form closed cliques of friends and to cut oneself off from militants and from the masses through bureaucratic methods.
First, Stalin attacked the `family atmosphere', in which `there can be no place for criticism of defects in the work, or for self-criticism by leaders of the work'. Ibid. , p. 280.
`Most often, workers are not chosen for objective reasons, but for causal, subjective, philistine, petty-bourgeois reasons. Most often, so-called acquaintances, friends, fellow-townsmen, personally devoted people, masters in the art of praising their chiefs are chosen.' Ibid. , pp. 279--280.
Finally, Stalin criticized bureaucracy, which, on certain questions, was `positively unprecedented'. Ibid. , p. 296.
During investigations, many ordinary workers were excluded from the Party for `passivity'. Most of these expulsions were not justified and should have been annuled a long time ago. Yet, many leaders held a bureaucratic attitude towards these unjustly expelled Communists. Ibid. , p. 294.
`(S)ome of our Party leaders suffer from a lack of concern for people, for members of the Party, for workers .... because they have no individual approach in appraising Party members and Party workers they usually act in a haphazard way .... only those who are in fact profoundly anti-Party can have such an approach to members of the Party.' Ibid. , pp. 292--293.
Bureucracy also prevented Party leaders from learning from the masses. Nevertheless, to correctly lead the Party and the country, Communist leaders had to base themselves on the experiences of the masses.
Finally, bureaucracy made the control of leaders by Party masses impossible. Leaders had to report on their work at conferences and listen to criticisms from their base. During elections, several candidates had to be presented and, after a discussion of each, the vote should take place with a secret ballot. Ibid. , pp. 282--283.
The 1937--1938 Purge
The actual purge was decided upon after the revelation of the Tukhachevsky military conspiracy. The discovery of such a plot at the head of the Red Army, a plot that had links with opportunist factions within the Party, provoked a complete panic.
The Bolshevik Party's strategy assumed that war with fascism was inevitable. Given that some of the most important figures in the Red Army and some of the leading figures in the Party were secretly collaborating on plans for a coup d'état showed how important the interior danger and its links with the external menace were. Stalin was extremely lucid and perfectly conscious that the confrontation between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union would cost millions of Soviet lives. The decision to physically eliminate the Fifth Column was not the sign of a `dictator's paranoia', as Nazi propaganda claimed. Rather, it showed the determination of Stalin and the Bolshevik Party to confront fascism in a struggle to the end. By exterminating the Fifth Column, Stalin thought about saving several million Soviet lives, which would be the extra cost to pay should external aggression be able to profit from sabotage, provocation or internal treason.
In the previous chapter, we saw that the campaign waged against bureaucracy in the Party, especially at the intermediate levels, was amplified in 1937. During this campaign, Yaroslavsky harshly attacked the bureaucratic apparatus. He claimed that in Sverdlovsk, half of the members of the Presidiums of governmental institutions were co-opted. The Moscow Soviet only met once a year. Some leaders did not even know by sight their subordinates. Yaroslavsky stated:
`This party apparat, which should be helping the party, not infrequently puts itself between the party masses and the party leaders, and still further increases the alienation of the leaders from the masses.' Getty, op. cit. , p. 137.
`(T)he center was trying to unleash criticism of the middle-level apparat by the rank-and-file activists. Without official sanction and pressure from above, it would have been impossible for the rank and file, on their own, to organize and sustain such a movement against their immediate superiors.' Ibid. , p. 155.
The bureaucratic and arbitrary attitude of the men in the provincial apparatuses was reinforced by the fact that the latter had a virtual monopoly on administrative experience. The Bolshevik leadership encouraged the base to struggle against these bureaucratic and bourgeois tendencies. Getty wrote:
`Populist control from below was not naive; rather, it was a vain but sincere attempt to use the rank and file to break open the closed regional machines.' Ibid. , p. 162.
In the beginning of 1937, a satrap like Rumiantsev, who ran the Western Region, a territory as large as a Western European country, could not be dethroned by criticism from the base. He was expelled from above, for having been linked to a military plot, as a collaborator of Uborevich.
`The two radical currents of the 1930s had converged in July 1937, and the resulting turbulence destroyed the bureaucracy. Zhdanov's party-revival campaign and Ezhov's hunt for enemies fused to create a chaotic ``populist terror'' that now swept the party ....
`Antibureaucratic populism and police terror destroyed the offices as well as the officeholders. Radicalism had turned the political machine inside out and destroyed the party bureaucracy.' Ibid. , pp. 170--171.
The struggle against Nazi infiltration and against the military conspiracy therefore fused with the struggle against bureaucracy and feudal fiefs. There was a revolutionary purge from below and from above.
The purge started with a cadre decision, signed on July 2, 1937 by Stalin and Molotov.
Yezhov then signed the execution orders condemning to death 75,950 individuals whose irreconcilable hostility to the Soviet régime was known: common criminals, kulaks, counter-revolutionaries, spies and anti-Soviet elements. The cases had to be examined by a troika including the Party Secretary, the President of the local Soviet and the Chief of the NKVD. But starting in September 1937, the leaders of the purge at the regional level and the leadership's special envoys were already introducing demands to increase the quota of anti-Soviet elements to be executed.
The purge was often characterized by inefficiency and anarchy. On the verge of being arrested by the NKVD in Minsk, Colonel Kutsner took the train to Moscow, where he became Professor at the Frunze Academy! Getty cited testimony by Grigorenko and Ginzburg, two of Stalin's adversaries: `a person who felt that his arrest was imminent could go to another town and, as a rule, avoid being arrested'. Ibid. , p. 178.
Regional Party Secretaries tried to show their vigilance by denouncing and expelling a large number of lower cadres and ordinary members. Ibid.
Opponents hiding within the party led conspiracies to expell the greatest possible number of loyal Communist cadres. About this question, one opponent testified:
`We endeavored to expel as many people from the party as possible. We expelled people when there were no grounds for explusion (sic). We had one aim in view --- to increase the number of embittered people and thus increase the number of our allies.' Ibid. , p. 177.
To lead a giant, complex country, still trying to catch up on its backwardness, was an extremely difficult task. In many strategic domains, Stalin concentrated on elaborating general guidelines. He then gave the task to be effected to one of his adjuncts. To put into application the guidelines on the purge, he replaced the liberal Yagoda, who had toyed with some of the opponents' plots, by Yezhov, an Old Bolshevik of worker origin.
But only three months after the beginning of the purge led by Yezhov, there were already signs that Stalin was not satisfied by the way the operation was being carried out. In October, Stalin intervened to affirm that the economic leaders were trustworthy. In December 1937, the twentieth anniversary of the NKVD was celebrated. A cult of the NKVD, the `vanguard of party and revolution', had been developing for some time in the press. Stalin did not even wait for the next central meeting. At the end of December, three Deputy Commissars of the NKVD were fired. Ibid. , p. 185.
In January 1938, the Central Committee published a resolution on how the purge was taking place. It reaffirmed the necessity of vigilance and repression against enemies and spies. But it most criticized the `false vigilance' of some Party Secretaries who were attacking the base to protect their own position. It starts as follows:
`The VKP(b) Central Committee plenum considers it necessary to direct the attention of party organizations and their leaders to the fact that while carrying out their major effort to purge their ranks of trotskyite-rightist agents of fascism they are committing serious errors and perversions which interfere with the business of purging the party of double dealers, spies, and wreckers. Despite the frequent directives and warnings of the VKP(b) Central Committee, in many cases the party organizations adopt a completely incorrect approach and expel Communists from the party in a criminally frivolous way.' On Errors of Party Organizations in Expelling Communists from the Party, on Formal Bureaucratic Attitudes toward the Appeals of Those Expelled from the VKP(b), and on Measures to Eliminate These Short-comings (18 January 1938). McNeal, op. cit. , p. 188.
The resolution shows two major organizational and political problems that made the purge deviate from its aims: the presence of Communists who were only concerned about their careers, and the presence, among the cadres, of infiltrated enemies.
`(A)mong Communists there exist, still unrevealed and unmasked, certain careerist Communists who are striving to become prominent and to be promoted by recommending expulsions from the party, through the repression of party members, who are striving to insure themselves against possible charges of inadequate vigilance through the indiscriminate repression of party members ....
`This sort of careerist communist, anxious to curry favour, indiscriminately spreads panic about enemies of the people and at party meetings is always ready to raise a hue and cry about expelling members from the party on various formalistic grounds or entirely without such grounds ....
`Furthermore, numerous instances are known of disguised enemies of the people, wreckers and double dealers, organizing, for provocational ends, the submission of slanderous depositions against party members and, under the semblance of `heightening vigilance,' seeking to expel from the VKP(b) ranks honest and devoted Communists, in this way diverting the blow from themselves and retaining their own positions in the party's ranks ....
`(They) try through measures of repression to beat up our bolshevik cadres and to sow excess suspicion in our ranks.' Ibid. , pp. 190--192.
We would like now to draw attention to Khrushchev's criminal swindle. In his Secret Report, he devoted an entire chapter in the denunciation of the `Great Purge'.
`Using Stalin's formulation, namely, that the closer we are to socialism the more enemies we will have ... the provocateurs who had infiltrated the state-security organs together with consciousless careerists began to protect with the party name the mass terror against ... cadres'. Khrushchev, Secret Report, p. S26.
The reader will note that those are precisely the two kinds of hostile elements that Stalin warned against in January 1938! In fact, `Stalin's formulation' was invented by Khrushchev. Yes, some Communists were unjustly hit, and crimes were committed during the purge. But, with great foresight, Stalin had already denounced these problems when the operation had only been running for six months. Eighteen years later, Khrushchev would use as pretext the criminal activities of these provocateurs and careerists, denounced at the time by Stalin, to denigrate the purge itself and to insult Stalin!
We return to the January 1938 resolution. Here are some of its conclusions:
`It is time to understand that bolshevik vigilance consists essentially in the ability to unmask an enemy regarless of how clever and artful he may be, regardless of how he decks himself out, and not in discriminate or `on the off-chance' expulsions, by the tens and hundreds, of everyone who comes within reach.
`(Directions are) to end mass indiscriminate expulsions from the party and to institute a genuinely individualized and differentiated approach to questions of expulsion from the party or of restoring expelled persons to the rights of party membership ....
`(Directions are) to remove from their party posts and to hold accountable to the party those party leaders who do not carry out the directives of the VKP(b) Central Committee, who expel VKP(b) members and candidate members from the party without carefully verifying all the materials, and who take an arbitrary attitude in their dealings with party members.' Ibid. , p. 194.
Tokaev thought it probable that anti-Communist opponents had provoked excesses during the purge to discredit and weaken the Party. He wrote:
`The fear of being suspected of lack of vigilance drove local fanatics to denounce not only Bukharinists, but also Malenkovists, Yezhovists, even Stalinists. It is of course not impossible that they were also egged on to do so by concealed oppositionists ...! Beria ... at a closed joint session of the Central Committee and the Central Control Committee of the Party, held in the autumn of 1938 ... declared that if Yezhov were not a deliberate Nazi agent, he was certainly an involuntary one. He had turned the central offices of the NKVD into a breeding ground for fascist agents.' Tokaev, op. cit. , p. 119.
`Gardinashvili, one of my close contacts, (had a) conversation (with Beria) just before Beria was appointed Head of the police. Gardinashvili asked Beria if Stalin was blind to the dismay caused by so many executions --- was he unaware that the reign of terror had gone so far that it was defeating itself; men in high positions were wondering whether Nazi agents had not penetrated the NKVD, using their position to discredit our country.
`Beria's realistic reply was that Stalin was well aware of this but was faced with a technical difficulty: the speedy restoration of `normality' in a centrally controlled State of the size of the U.S.S.R. was an immense task ....
`In addition, there was the real danger of war, and the Government therefore had to be very cautious about relaxations.' Ibid. , p. 101.
Quotas (Thanks to Grover Furr)
In his famous "Secret Speech" to the 20th Party Congress in February 1956, Khrushchev said:
“The vicious practice was condoned of having the NKVD prepare lists of persons whose cases were under the jurisdiction of the Military Collegium and whose sentences were prepared in advance. Yezhov would send these lists to Stalin personally for his approval of the proposed punishment. In 1937-1938, 383 such lists containing the names of many thousands of party, Soviet, Komsomol, Army and economic workers were sent to Stalin. He approved these lists.” (New Leader edition)
These lists exist, and have been edited and published, first on CD and now on the Internet, as the “Stalinist ‘Shooting’ Lists”, at http://www.memo.ru/history/vkvs/ But this is a tendentious and inaccurate name, for these were not lists of persons “to be shot” at all.
Like Khrushchev did, the very anti-Stalin editors of these lists do in fact call the lists “sentences” prepared in advance. But their own research disproves this claim. The lists give the sentences that the prosecution would seek if the individual was convicted – that is, the sentence the Prosecution would ask the court to apply.
Many examples are given of people who were not convicted, or who were convicted of lesser offenses, and so not shot. Snegov, whom Khrushchev mentions by name later in this speech (37/52, and see below) is on the lists at least twice.
• At http://stalin.memo.ru/spiski/pg13026.htm , No. 383;
• At http://stalin.memo.ru/spiski/pg05245.htm , No. 133.
In this last reference Snegov is specifically put into “1st Category”, meaning: maximum sentence of death. A brief summary of the Prosecutor’s evidence against him is provided, and there seems to have been a lot of it. Nevertheless Snegov was not sentenced to death, but instead to a long term in a labor camp.
So Khrushchev knew that Stalin was not “sentencing” anybody, but rather reviewing the lists in case he had any objections. Khrushchev knew this, because the note from Kruglov, Minister of Internal Affairs (MVD) to Khrushchev of February 3, 1954 has survived. It says nothing about “sentences prepared in advance,” but gives the truth:
These lists were compiled in 1937 and 1938 by the NKVD of the USSR and PRESENTED TO THE CC OF THE ACP(B) FOR REVIEW RIGHT AWAY. [Emphasis added, GF]
-http://www.memo.ru/history/vkvs/images/intro1.htm
The Prosecutor went to trial not only with evidence, but with a sentence to recommend to the judges in case of conviction. It appears that the names of Party members, but not of non-Party members, were sent on to the Politburo for review.
Khrushchev concealed the fact that not Stalin, but he himself, was deeply involved in selecting the persons for inclusion on these lists, and for choosing the category of punishment proposed for them. Khrushchev mentions that the NKVD prepared the lists. But he does not mention the fact that the NKVD acted together with the Party leadership, and that a great many of the names on these lists – perhaps more than from any other region of the USSR – originated in the areas under Khrushchev’s own power.
Until January 1938 Khrushchev was First Secretary of the Party in Moscow and Moscow oblast’ (province). After that he was First Secretary in the Ukraine.
The letter to Stalin (see section 4) asking for permission to shoot 8500 people is dated July 10, 1937, the same date as the first of the “shooting lists” from Moscow:
http://www.memo.ru/history/vkvs/spiski/pg02049.htm
In the same letter Khrushchev also confirms his own participation in the troika responsible for selecting these names, along with the head of the directorate of the NKVD for Moscow, Redens, and the assistant prosecutor Maslov (Khrushchev does admit that “when necessary” he was replaced by the second secretary Volkov).
Stalin and his close associates first suspected, then determined, that Yezhov was repressing innocent people. So Yezhov was removed -- evidently with great difficulty, for Stalin was NOT the "supreme dictator" that the anticommunists make him out to be.
Then investigation teams, made up of Politburo members, were sent throughout the USSR. They discovered HUGE, massive illegal executions and imprisonments by Yezhov and lots of others associated with him.
It was for engaging in these massive illegal executions that CC and Politburo members like Postyshev and Eikhe were arrested, tried, and eventually executed. I write much, much more about all this in my book.
Stalin STOPPED the massive illegal executions, which were carried out by the Yezhov and the Rightists among the C.C. members.
Mass Executions and Mass Graves
One of the most perverse “arguments” against the Stalin era are mass graves found in Soviet Union.
Except that, as near as I can tell, there is scant evidence to support that charge. Not so in Nazi Germany, where the victims' bodies were found stacked like firewood.
But where are all the mass graves in the former Soviet Union?
In “Review of PBS Series: Stalin (May - June 1990)“ done by the Progressive Labour Party (http://www.plp.org/cd_sup/pbsstal1.html ) you can read:
„Part One opens with Stalin's portrait superimposed upon drawings of skeletons and skulls, and then upon mass graves. A Soviet archeologist describes the murders as though he witnessed them. However, there has been no independent study of these mass graves near Minsk, in a part of Byelorusssia (one of the USSR's republics, now the independent state of Belarus) which was the scene of literally millions of murders by the Nazis in 1941-44. In other words: there is no evidence that these killings were not Nazi killings.
The book mentions the very similar mass graves uncovered by the Nazis in 1943 in Vinnitsa, in the Nazi-occupied Ukraine, which were certainly either mainly or totally of Nazi victims. The only source for this conclusion -- that the victims were killed by the Soviets -- is a Nazi propaganda report, which is contradicted by post-war evidence. A German soldier swore to both American and Soviet interrogators in 1945 that these were graves of Nazi victims whom he saw the Nazis kill; but this well-known source is never even mentioned. The fact that the Soviets have recently "admitted" these were victims of Stalin's time suggests that they may be doing the same with these other mass graves.
The point here is not that there were not many killings during the `30s -- there were -- but that these anti- Communist Soviet and Western writers attribute these mass murders to Stalin without the evidence they would unquestionably demand if, say, somebody were alleging they were done by Americans.“
A recent offering from the Los Angeles Times proves illuminating. The title of the frontpage piece, "Skeletons of History in Russian Graves" (John Daniszewski, November 18, 2002), implied that evidence of mass murders was readily available, but a careful reading of the text of the article reveals a different story.
The article concerns the activities of "a small team investigating what it says is a newly discovered Stalinist killing field outside St. Petersburg." The group, a non-governmental organization known as Memorial, claims that the Soviet state sponsored the "killing of tens of millions of Soviet citizens from the earliest days of the Bolsheviks until the death of Josef Stalin in 1953, and some even later." In St. Petersburg, according to Memorial, victims from Kresty Prison and from the local NKVD headquarters were loaded into vehicles in the
dead of night, driven out into the woods, and then summarily executed.
Now you would think that if tens of millions were executed in the USSR, a city like St. Petersburg, being one of the largest and most strategic population centers, would have supplied a good number of those victims. So you would expect that the primary killing grounds for that city would yield an unfathomable number of corpses. But you would be mistaken.
According to the Times, Memorial has concluded, "now that more than 50 graves have been found ... [that] there can be little doubt that this was the NKVD's main graveyard in St. Petersburg during the 1937-38 period known as the Great Terror." And it only took Memorial "14 years of deduction, investigation and detective work ... to find the first remains."
It's kind of funny, but I seem to remember that a guy named George Bush ordered about 50 executions in the state of Texas during the 1997-98 period, but I don't recall anyone referring to that as the Great Terror. And everyone knows where those bodies are buried.
Anyway, Memorial "presumes" that there are actually "many layers below, but it says it is not interested in disturbing the dead by doing a complete excavation." Of course not. Why would you want to get an accurate count when you can just presume? And besides, Memorial already knows how many victims there were. They have devised an accurate system for estimating the death toll: they just make it up.
For the site in the forest near Toksovo, Memorial has arbitrarily arrived at a figure of 32,000. That is, I should note, only about 640 times the actual number of bodies that have been recovered. And here is how Memorial deduced that figure: "Memorial's estimate of 32,000 victims in Toksovo is based on subtraction. About 40,000 people in what was then Leningrad and its surrounding region were killed in the Great Terror, but the one known grave of the victims is believed to hold only about 8,000."
It's interesting to note that the other known grave site is "believed to hold" 8,000 corpses, just as the Toksovo site is "presumed" to hold another 32,000. In fact though, there is precious little evidence that either site holds anywhere near that many victims. There is little evidence to indicate that there are any substantial mass graves in the vicinity of one of the largest population centers in the FSU.
So the question remains: where are the tens of millions of bodies of the victims killed during the Great Terror? They shouldn't be all that difficult to locate -- what with the archives having been opened up and all. (see: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Stalinist/message/5150 )
Removal of Yezhov and the “Corrections”
For the crimes made during the purges, Yezhov was arrested and shot in 1940
"You could say he [Yezhov] overreached himself and committed all kinds of follies. When a man is afraid of losing his job and turns overzealous. ..that is called careerism. It is tremendously important because it keeps growing and is one of the main defects of our time. By that time Yezhov had sunk to a point of degeneration. ... They started to accuse Yezhov when he began to set arrest quotas by regions, on down to districts. No fewer than 2000 must be liquidated in such and such region, no fewer than 50 in such and such district.... That's the reason why he was shot. His official conduct, of course, had not been subjected to oversight... . Closer oversight was needed. Oversight was inadequate."
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 262
"...Indeed, at the end of 1938 Stalin removed Yezhov, disavowed the latter's excesses, ordered the arrest of the purgers, and released a number of those "falsely arrested." Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 419
"Beria boldly told Stalin that Yezhov, who had succeeded Yagoda the year before as Chief of the Commissariat of the Interior...had passed all bounds of reason and discrimination in his conduct of the Purge;..." Duranty, Walter. Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 229
"In charge of this stage were young, rough, and ignorant examining prosecutors. These were the Yezhov boys." Krivitsky, Walter G. I was Stalin's Agent, London: H. Hamilton, 1939, p. 207
CHUEV: Did Stalin himself have any doubts about 1937? Did he speak of any extremes or excesses?
MOLOTOV: How could he not have had doubts? And not just doubts. Yezhov, chief of state security, was executed by firing squad.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 264
IVANOVICH, SHOTA: Solzhenitsyn writes that Stalin himself placed Yezhov in that job and made him slaughter the party's key workers.
MOLOTOV: That's not so. Yezhov was a rather prominent worker who had been promoted accordingly. Short in stature, slightly built, he was nevertheless a highly energetic, outstanding worker. But when he was placed in a position of enormous power and given sweeping directives, it put a strain on him, and he began to carry out repressions according to a production plan. Before him, Yagoda had paid for this. But overnight a man does not show himself in everything. The trees were felled, the chips began to fly, so to speak. Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 294-295
"Yezhov had been a rather fine fellow, too. But power intoxicated him and swept him off his feet. He tried to show off and curry favor. That's when careerism begins. False evidence, previously set quotas of enemies:
"The numbers of repressed persons are not high enough!" So everyone tries harder. And what kind of work is that?" Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 340
"Early in 1938, however, Stalin became disturbed by the mounting fury of the Ezhovshchina. His purpose of liquidating the old Bolsheviks and the veterans of the Revolution and the Civil War, and other sources of opposition, had been achieved. But under Yezhov the purge had spread like a malignant plague. Everywhere people were spying and informing against each other and everywhere arrests were on the increase. Terror was raging out of control. Stalin saw the need to call a halt. He showed the same sense of timing and the same authority, which he had displayed nearly eight years earlier with his article "Dizziness From Success."
In January 1938 a central committee passed a resolution which heralded what was to be called the "Great Change." The title of the resolution was "Concerning the Mistakes of Party Organizations in Excluding Communists from the Party, Concerning Formal-Bureaucratic Attitudes Towards the Appeals of Excluded Members of the Bolshevik Party, and Concerning Measures to Eliminate These Deficiencies. " The new orders were passed quickly to the party secretaries at every level and to the command points of the NKVD, and emanating from the Kremlin in Moscow. They were promptly obeyed. The new enemy was identified now as the Communist-careerist . He had taken advantage of the purge to denounce his superiors and to gain promotion. He was guilty of spreading suspicion and of undermining the party. A purge of careerists was launched. At the same time mass repressions diminished and the rehabilitation of victimized party members began.
The real halt to the great purge came, however, in July 1938, when Beria was appointed Yezhov's deputy. He took charge of the NKVD at once, although Yezhov was not removed until December 1938, when he was made Commissar for Inland Water Transport. Soon afterwards he was shot.
Many NKVD officers were tried and executed for extracting confessions from innocent people, while others were relegated to labor camps. Loyal party members, emerging from the long nightmare, were
relieved by the purging of the NKVD. It confirmed their belief that fascists had insinuated themselves into the security forces and the government and that they were responsible for the cruel persecutions and injustices of the Ezhovshchina. This explanation was encouraged officially, and it absolved Stalin and the Politburo of responsibility. Directly controlling every branch of Soviet society and deeply involved in the buildup of the armed forces and conduct of foreign policy, Stalin could not maintain detailed control over the purge. He was aware that the NKVD had arrested many who were not guilty and that of the 7 to 14 million people serving sentences of forced labor in the GULAG camps many
were innocent of any taint of disloyalty.. .. He resented this waste of human material. The aircraft designer Yakovlev recorded a conversation with him in 1940, in which Stalin exclaimed: "Yezhov was a rat; in 1938 he killed many innocent people. We shot him for that!" Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 288
"In 1939 Garanin, like Kashketin, was shot on charges of "espionage" and "wrecking." Many prison camp directors were removed and even shot. This was a result of Yezhov's ouster from the leadership of the NKVD."
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 512
"Yagoda and Yezhov were both "scum," thought Stalin. Yezhov was "a rat who killed many innocent people," Stalin told Yakovlev, the aircraft designer. "We had to shoot him," he confided to Kavtaradze. After the war, Stalin admitted: "One can't believe a lot of the evidence from 1937. Yezhov couldn't run the NKVD properly and anti-Soviet elements penetrated it. They destroyed some honest people, our best cadres."
Montefiore, Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Knopf, 2004, p. 324
Under Beria many of the NKVD officers and First Secretaries responsible for thousands of executions and deportations were tried and often executed themselves for executing innocent people and using torture against those arrested. Transcripts of the trials of some of these policemen who used torture have been published. Many people convicted and either imprisoned, deported, or sent to the camps were freed. Beria reportedly said later that he had been called on to "liquidate the Yezhovshchina." Stalin told aircraft designer Yakovlev that Yezhov had been executed for killing many innocent people. ]Lubianka B, Nos. 344; 363; 375; Mukhin, Ubiystvo 637; Yakovlev] cited in: Grover Furr: Stalin and the struggle for democratic reform – part one http://clogic.eserver.org/2005/furr.html
For our purposes here, however, the key question is: Why did Stalin give in to the First Secretaries' demands that they be given the life-and-death "troika" powers? Though there are no excuses, there were certainly reasons.
109. No government can ever be prepared against simultaneous treason by the highest-ranking military commanders, high-ranking figures in both the national and important regional governments, and the head of the secret and border police.
110. A serious set of conspiracies, involving both current and former high-level party leaders who had ties all over the vast country, had just been uncovered. Most ominous was the involvement of military figures at the very highest levels, with the disclosure of secret military plans to the fascist enemy. The military conspirators had had contacts all over the USSR. The conspiracy also involved the very highest levels of the NKVD, including Genrikh Yagoda, who had headed it from 1934 till 1936 and had been second-in-command for some years before 1934. It simply could not be known how widespread the conspiracy was, and how many people were involved. The prudent course was to suspect the worst.
111. The Politburo and Stalin himself were at the apex of two large hierarchies, of both the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet government. What they knew about the state of affairs in the country reflected what their subordinates told them. Over the course of the next twelve months they repressed many of the First Secretaries, over half of whom were arrested. For the most part, the precise charges against most of these men, and the dossiers of their interrogations and trials, have yet to be declassified, even in post-Soviet, anti-communist Russia. But we now have enough of the investigative evidence that reached Stalin and the Politburo to get some idea of the alarming situation they faced. (Lubianka B)
112. The Bolshevik Party was set up in a democratic centralist fashion. Despite his status and popularity in the country, Stalin (like any Party leader) could be voted out by a majority of the Central Committee. He was in no position to ignore urgent appeals by a large number of C.C. members.
113. To illustrate Stalin's inability to stop the First Secretaries from flouting the principles of democratic election Zhukov quotes one incident from the still unpublished transcript of the October 1937 C.C. Plenum. …
if Stalin had refused the appeals of the First Secretaries for the extraordinary "troika" powers, he -- Stalin -- would have most likely been voted out, arrested as a counter-revolutionary and executed. ". . . [T]oday Stalin might be numbered among the victims of the repression of 1937 and 'Memorial' and the commission of A.N.Yakovlev would have long since been petitioning for his rehabilitation." (Zhukov, KP 16 Nov. 02) (Ibid.)
In November 1938 Lavrentii Beria effectively replaced Yezhov as head of the NKVD. The "troikas" were abolished. Extra-judicial executions stopped, and those responsible for many of the terrible excesses were themselves tried and executed or imprisoned. (Ibid.)
On November 11, 1938, Stalin and Molotov signed a clear decision, putting an end to the excesses that took place during the purges.
`The general operations --- to crush and destroy enemy elements --- conducted by the NKVD in 1937--1938, during which investigation and hearing procedures were simplified, showed numerous and grave defects in the work of the NKVD and prosecutor. Furthermore, enemies of the people and foreign secret service spies penetrated the NKVD, both at the local and central level. They tried by all means to disrupt investigations. Agents consciously deformed Soviet laws, conducted massive and unjustified arrests and, at the same time, protected their acolytes, particularly those who had infiltrated the NKVD.
`The completely unacceptable defects observed in the work of the NKVD and prosecutors were only possible because enemies of the people had infiltrated themselves in the NKVD and prosecutor offices, used every possible method to separate the work of the NKVD and prosecutors from the Party organs, to avoid Party control and leadership and to facilitate for themselves and for their acolytes the continuation of their anti-Soviet activities.
`The Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) resolves:
`1. To prohibit the NKVD and prosecutors from conducting any massive arrest or deportation operation ....
`The CPC and the CC of the CPSU(b) warn all NKVD and prosecutor office employees that the slightest deviation from Soviet laws and from Party and Government directives by any employee, whoever that person might be, will result in severe legal proceedings.
`V. Molotov, J. Stalin.' Nouvelles de Moscou 26 (30 June 1992), p. 15.
There is still much controversy about the number of people that were affected by the Great Purge. This subject has been a favorite topic for propaganda. According to Rittersporn, in 1937--1938, during the `Great Purge', there were 278,818 expulsions from the Party. This number was much smaller than during the preceding years. In 1933, there were 854,330 expulsions; in 1934, there were 342,294, and in 1935 the number was 281,872. In 1936, there were 95,145. Rittersporn, op. cit. , p. 12.
However, we should underscore that this purge was completely different from the previous periods. The `Great Purge' focused mainly on cadres. During the preceding years, elements that had nothing to do with Communism, common criminals, drunkards and undisciplined elements constituted the majority of the expelled.
According to Getty, from November 1936 to March 1939, there were fewer than 180,000 expulsions from the Party. Getty, op. cit. , p. 176.
This number takes into account reintegrated individuals.
Even before the 1938 Plenum, there were 53,700 appeals against expulsions. In August 1938, there were 101,233 appeals. At that time, out of a total of 154,933 appeals, the Party committees had already examined 85,273, of which 54 per cent were readmitted. Ibid. , p. 190.
No other information could better give the lie to the statement that the purge was blind terror and without appeal, organized by an irrational dictator.
Conquest claims that there were 7 to 9 million arrests in 1937--1938. At that time, the number of industrial workers was less than 8 million. This number, Conquest `bases this on the memoirs of ex-prisoners who assert that between 4 and 5.5 per cent of the Soviet population were incarcerated or deported during those years'. Rittersporn, op. cit. , p. 12.
These figures are sheer fantasy, invented by enemies of socialism who were firmly committed to harming the régime by all means. Their `estimates' are based on no serious sources.
`Lacking evidence, all estimates are equally worthless, and it is hard to disagree with Brzezinski's observation that it is impossible to make any estimates without erring in the hundreds of thousands or even millions.' Getty, op. cit. , pp. 257--258, n. 16.
We would now like to address the Gulag and the more general problem of the number of imprisoned and dead in the corrective work camps, the word Gulag meaning Principal Administration of the camps.
Armed with the science of statistics and extrapolation, Robert Conquest makes brilliant calculations: 5 million interned in the Gulag at the beginning of 1934; more than 7 million arrested during the 1937--1938 purges, that makes 12 million; from this number one million executed and two million dead of different causes during those two years. That makes exactly 9 million politically detained in 1939 `not counting the common law'. Conquest's figures and those that refute his claims all come from Nicolas Werth, `Goulag: les vrais chiffres', op. cit. . See also Getty, Rittersporn and Zemskov, op. cit. .
Now, given the size of the repression, Conquest starts to count cadavers. Between 1939 and 1953, there was an average annual mortality `of around 10 per cent'. But, during all these years, the number of detained remained stable, around 8 million. That means that during those years, 12 million persons were assassinated in the Gulag by Stalinism.
The Medvedez brothers, those `Communists' of the Bukharin--Gorbachev school, essentially confirmed those revealing figures.
There were `12 to 13 million people thought to have been in concentration camps during Stalin's time'. Under Khrushchev, who reawoke hopes for `democratization', things went much better, of course: in the Gulag, there were only some 2 million common law criminals left. Roy A. Medvedev and Zhores A. Medvedev, Khrushchev: The Years in Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), p. 19.
Up to now, no problem. Everything was going just fine for our anti-Communists. Their word was taken for granted.
Then the USSR split up and Gorbachev's disciples were able to grab the Soviet archives. In 1990, the Soviet historians Zemskov and Dugin published the unedited statistics for the Gulag. They contain the arrivals and departures, right down to the last person.
Unexpected consequence: These accounting books made it possible to remove Conquest's scientific mask.
Liquidation of the old Bolsheviks
One of the best-known slanders claims that the purge was intended to eliminate the `Old Bolshevik Guard'. Even a vicious enemy of Bolshevism like Brzezinski can take up the same line. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Failure (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989), p. 89.
In 1934, there were 182,600 `Old Bolsheviks' in the Party, i.e. members who joined in 1920 at the latest. In 1939, there were 125,000. The great majority, 69 per cent, were still in the Party. There was during those five years a drop of 57,000 individuals, i.e. 31 per cent. Some died of natural causes, others were expelled, others were executed. It is clear that if `Old Bolsheviks' fell during the Purge, it was not because they were `Old Bolsheviks', but because of their political behavior. Ibid. , p. 176.
We conclude with the words of Professor J. Arch Getty who, at the end of his remarkable book, Origins of the Great Purges, writes:
`The evidence suggests that the Ezhovshchina --- which is what most people really mean by the ``Great Purges'' --- should be redefined. It was not the result of a petrified bureaucracy's stamping out dissent and annihilating old radical revolutionaries. In fact, it may have been just the opposite. It is not inconsistent with the evidence to argue that the Ezhovshchina was rather a radical, even hysterical, reaction to bureaucracy. The entrenched officeholders were destroyed from above and below in a chaotic wave of voluntarism and revolutionary puritanism.' Ibid. , p. 206.
But what is with this so called ‚freinds’ of Lenin, who were shot, like Bukharin, Zinowjew, Trotsky. Well in the chapters above we have seen, that they never were friends of Lenins, and no real Bolsheviks.
The term of the ‘Leninist Guard’ is nothing more than a romantistic self view of some party cadres who really or pretended were assigned to work with Lenin together. The composition of the group wasn’t defined and so some self-called ‘Leninist’, especially Trotsky, began to worm into the party. And again, in the chapters above we have seen, that such neo-bolsheviks and want-to-be-Leninist like Trotsky, Sinowjew, Kamanev oder Bukharin never were supported by Lenin.
But what is with the so called supporters of Stalin? Like Orjonikidse, Andrejew, Beria, Kaganovich, Kalinin, Kirow, Litvinov, Mikojan, Zhdanov, Voroshilov, Sverdlov, Shvernik, Dziersinsky? What is with other Lenin supporters like Krupskaya (Lenins wife), Ulyanova (his sister), Kollonati, Ivanov, Shkirayatov, Awanessow, Jerman, Jakovlev, Lebedeva, Artjom, Mjasnikov, Schaumjan, Dshaparidse, Wolodarsky, Podovoisky, Sapunov, Nogin, Jaroslavsky, Skvorozov-Stepanov, Ussijevitsch, Sluzkaja, and so on.
These people realy belong to the ‘Leninist Guard’. They, and many others made the revolution and not such scums like Trotsky, Zinovjev, Kamanev, Pjatakov, Radek or Bukharin!
And from 1912 to 1917 Stalin was chosen by the party, at Lenin’s nomination, to lead all the underground work in Russia. Thus most of the above mentioned revolutionaries had functioned successfully under Stalin’s leadership in the difficult and dangerous period leading to the Revolution.
When the first Politburo was formed in May 1917, to be a four man steering committee for the Revolution, Stalin (not Trotsky) was chosen bye the Party to be on it. He was elected to to every subsequent Politburo until his death in 1953.
In 1922 again on Lenin’s nomination, Stalin was elected General Secretary of the Party.
And please do not forget: The differences in the party were discussed in the party democratically and fairly. Stalin won, Trotsky, Zinovjev, Kamenev and co had NO influence. They lost and were useless. So why should anybody shot them, if they had not done counterrevolutionary things? Why?
Puring the Red Army
It is interesting to see how Western propaganda, via Robert Conquest, has lied about the purges of the Red Army. Conquest says in his book The Great Terror that in 1937 there were 70,000 officers and political commissars in the Red Army and that 50% of them (i.e., 15,000 officers and 20,000 commissars) were arrested by the political police and were either executed or imprisoned for life in labour camps. In this allegation of Conquest’s, as in his whole book, there is not one word of truth. The historian Roger Reese, in his work The Red Army and the Great Purges, gives the facts which show the real significance of the 1937-38 purges for the army. The number of people in the leadership of the Red Army and air force, i.e., officers and political commissars, was 144,300 in 1937, increasing to 282,300 by 1939. During the 1937-38 purges, 34,300 officers and political commissars were expelled for political reasons. By May 1940, however, 11,596 had already been rehabilitated and restored to their posts. This meant that during the 1937-38 purges, 22,705 officers and political commissars were dismissed (close to 13,000 army officers, 4,700 air force officers and 5,000 political commissars), which amounts to 7.7% of all officers and commissars – not 50% as Conquest alleges. Of this 7.7%, some were convicted as traitors, but the great majority of them, it would appear from historical material available, simply returned to civilian life. (Mario Sousa: Lies concerning the history of the Soviet Unionhttp://mariosousa.se/LiesconcerningthehistoryoftheSovietUnion.html )
But what is with the organisation of the Red Army? Could the Red Army defend the Soviet Union against a possible war at the end of 1938?
Best summary about military defence of the Soviet Union gives Joseph Davies. In his “Overview of the Soviet Union” (June 1938) he summarizes:
“The military strength of the USSR is imposant. Both in quality and number the arrays are excellent.” (Joseph Davies: Als US-Botschafter in der UdSSR, Zürich 1943, p. 324, translation bye me. See also pages 317, 318, 369 – 376)
So it is a lie, that the Soviet Union was unprepared for WW2:
Khrushchev claimed that in the years 1936--1941, Stalin poorly prepared the country for war. Here are his statements.
`Stalin put forward the thesis that the tragedy ... was the result of the result of the ``unexpected'' attack of the Germans against the Soviet Union. But, comrades, this is completely untrue. As soon as Hitler came to power in Germany he assigned to himself the task of liquidating Communism ....
`Many facts from the prewar period clearly showed that Hitler was going all out to begin a war against the Soviet state ....
`Had our industry been mobilized properly and in time to supply the Army with the necessary matériel, our wartime losses would have been decidedly smaller ....
`(O) ur Army was badly armed ....
`Soviet science and technology produced excellent models of tanks and artillery peoces before the war. But mass production of all this was not organized'. Khrushchev, Secret Report, pp. S36, S38.
That the participants in the Twentieth Congress could listen to these slanders without indignant protests coming from every part says a lot about the political degeneration that had already taken place. In the room, there were dozens of marshals and generals who knew to what extent those statements were ridiculous. At the time, they did not say anything. Their narrow professionalism, their exclusive militarism, their refusal of political struggle within the Army, their refusal of the ideological and political leadership of the Party over the Army: these factors all brought them closer to Khrushchev's revisionism. Zhukov, Vasilevsky, Rokossovsky, all great military leaders, never accepted the necessity of the Army Purge in 1937--1938. Nor did they understand the political implications of Bukharin's trial. Hence they supported Khrushchev when he replaced Marxism-Leninism with theses taken from the Mensheviks, the Trotskyists and the Bukharinists. There is the explanation for the marshals' silence over Khrushchev's lies about the Second World War. They refuted these lies later on in their memoirs, when there were no longer any political implications and when these questions had only become academic.
In his 1970 Memoirs, Zhukov correctly underscored, against Khrushchev's allegations, that the real defence policy began with Stalin's decision to industrialize in 1928.
`We could have put off a steep rise in the heavy industry for some five or seven years and given the people more consumer goods, and sooner. Our people had earned this right a thousand times. This path to development was highly attractive.' Zhukov, op. cit. , p. 107.
Stalin prepared the defence of the Soviet Union by having more than 9,000 factories built between 1928 and 1941 and by making the strategic decision to set up to the East a powerful industrial base. Ibid. , p. 137.
With respect to the industrialization policy, Zhukov gave tribute to the `wisdom and acumen of the Party line, finally indicated by history'. Ibid. , pp. 107.
In 1921, in almost all areas of military production, they had to start from nothing. During the years of the First and Second Five Year Plans, the Party had planned that the war industries would grow faster than other branches of industry. Ibid. , p. 138.
Here are the significant numbers for the first two plans.
The annual production of tanks for 1930 was 740 units. It rose to 2,271 units in 1938. Ibid. , p. 139.
For the same period, annual plane construction rose from 860 to 5,500 units. Ibid. , p. 140.
During the Third Five-Year Plan, between 1938 and 1940, industrial production increased 13 per cent annually, but defence industry production rose by 39 per cent. La grande guerre nationale, op. cit. , p. 33.
The breathing space offered by the Germano-Soviet Pact was used by Stalin to push military production to the hilt. Zhukov testified:
`Experienced Party workers and prominent experts were assigned to large defence enterprises as CC Party organizers, to help the plants have everything needed and ensure attainment of targets. I must say that Stalin himself worked much with defence enterprises --- he was personally acquainted with dozens of directors, Party leaders, and chief engineers; he often met with them, demanding fulfilment of plans with a persistence typical of him.' Zhukov, op. cit. , p. 191.
The military deliveries that took place between January 1, 1939 and June 22, 1941 are impressive.
Artillery received 92,578 units, including 29,637 canons and 52,407 mortars. New mortars, 82mm and 120mm, were introduced just before the war. Zhukov, op. cit. , pp. 198--199. La grande guerre nationale, op. cit. , p. 33.
The Air Force received 17,745 fighter aircraft, including 3,719 new models. In the area of aviation:
`The measures taken between 1939 and 1941 created the conditions necessary to quickly obtain during the war quantitative and qualitative superiority'. Zhukov, op. cit. , p. 201. La grande guerre nationale, op. cit. , p. 33.
The Red Army received more that 7,000 tanks. In 1940, production of the medium-size T-34 tank and heavy KV tank, superior to the German tanks, began. There were already 1,851 produced when war broke out. Zhukov, op. cit. , pp. 197. La grande guerre nationale, op. cit. , p. 33.
Referring to these achievements, as if to express his disdain for Khrushchev's accusations, Zhukov made a telling self-criticism:
`Recalling what we military leaders demanded of industry in the very last months of peace, I can see that we did not always take full stock of the country's real economic possibilities.' Zhukov, op. cit. , p. 192.
The actual military preparation was also pushed to the hilt by Stalin. The military confrontations in May--August 1939 with Japan and in December 1939--March 1940 with Finland were directly linked with the anti-fascist resistance. These combat experiences were carefully analyzed to strengthen the Red Army's weaknesses.
In March 1940, a Central Committee meeting examined the operations against Finland. Zhukov related:
`Discussions were sharp. The system of combat training and educating troops was strongly criticized.' Ibid. , p. 180.
In May, Zhukov paid a visit to Stalin:
` ``Now that you have this combat experience,'' Stalin said, ``take upon yourself the command of the Kiev Military District and use this experience for training the troops.'' ' Ibid. , p. 170.
For Stalin, Kiev was of significant military importance. He expected that the main attack in the German attack would focus on Kiev.
`Stalin was convinced that in the war against the Soviet Union the Nazis would first try to seize the Ukraine and the Donets Coal Basin in order to deprive the country of its most important economic regions and lay hands on the Ukrainian grain, Donets coal and, later, Caucasian oil. During the discussion of the operational plan in the spring of 1941, Stalin said: ``Nazi Germany will not be able to wage a major lengthy war without those vital resources.'' ' Ibid. , p. 211.
In summer and fall 1940, Zhukov made his troops undergo intense combat preparation. He noted that he had with him capable young officers and generals. He made them learn the lessons resulting from German operations against France. Ibid. , p. 173.
From December 23, 1940 to January 13, 1941, all leading officers were brought together for a large conference. At the center of debates: the future war with Germany. The experience that the fascists had accumulated with large tank corps was carefully examined. The day after the conference, a great operational and strategic exercise took place on a map. Stalin attended. Zhukov wrote:
`The strategic situation was based on probable developments in the western frontier zone in the event of a German attack on the Soviet Union.' Ibid. , p. 184.
Zhukov led the German aggression, Pavlov the Soviet resistance. Zhukov noted:
`The game abounded in dramatic situations for the eastern side. They proved to be in many ways similar to what really happened after June 22, 1941, when fascist Germany attacked the Soviet Union'. Pavlov had lost the war against the Nazis. Stalin rebuked him in no uncertain terms:
`The officer commanding a district must be an expert in the art of war and he must be able to find correct solutions in any conditions, which is what you failed to do in this game.' Ibid. , pp. 185--186.
Building of fortified sectors along the new Western border began in 1940. By the beginning of the war, 2,500 cement installations had been built. There were 140,000 men working on them every day.
`Stalin was also pushing us with that work', wrote Zhukov. Ibid. , p. 213.
The Eighteenth Congress of the Party, February 15--20, 1941, dealt entirely with preparing industry and transportion for the war. Delegates coming from all over the Soviet Union elected a number of extra military members to the Central Committee. Zhiline, op. cit. , p. 212. Zhukov, op. cit. , p. 209.
Early in March 1941, Timoshenko and Zhukov asked Stalin to call up the infantry reservists. Stalin refused, not wanting to give the Germans a pretext for provoking war. Finally, late in March, he accepted to call up 800,000 reservists, who were sent to the borders. Zhukov, op. cit. , p. 196.
In April, the Chiefs of Staff informed Stalin that the troops from the Baltic, Byelorussia, Kiev and Odessa Military Regions would not be sufficient to push back the attack. Stalin decided to advance 28 border divisions, grouped into four armies, and insisted on the importance of not provoking the Nazis. Ibid. , 217--218.
On May 5, 1941, in the Kremlin Great Palace, Stalin spoke to officers coming out of the military academies. His main theme: `the Germans are wrong in thinking that it's an ideal, invincible army.' Ibid. , p. 225.
All these facts allow one to refute the standard slanders against Stalin:
`He prepared the army for the offensive, but not for the defensive'; `He believed in the Germano-Soviet Pact and in Hitler, his accomplice'; `He did not believe that there would be a war with the Nazis'. The purpose of these slanders is to denigrate the historic achievements of the Communists and, consequently, to increase the prestige of their opponents, the Nazis.
Zhukov, who played a crucial rôle in Khrushchev's seizure of power between 1953 and 1957, still insisted, in his Memoirs, on giving the lie to Khrushchev's Secret Report. He concluded as follows about the country's preparation for war:
`It seems to me that the country's defence was managed correctly in its basic and principal features and orientations. For many years everything possible or almost everything was done in the economic and social aspects. As to the period between 1939 and the middle of 1941, the people and Party exerted particular effort to strengthen defence.
`Our highly developed industry, the kolkhoz system, universal literacy, the unity of nations, the strength of the socialist state, the people's great patriotism, the Party leadership which was ready to unite the front and rear in one whole --- this was the splendid foundation of our immense country's defensive capacity, the underlying cause of the great victory we won in the fight against fascism. The fact that in spite of enormous difficulties and losses during the four years of the war, Soviet industry turned out a collosal amount of armaments --- almost 490 thousand guns and mortars, over 102 thousand tanks and self-propelled guns, over 137 thousand military aircraft --- shows that the foundations of the economy from the military, the defence standpoint, were laid correctly and firmly.' Ibid. , p. 226.
`In basic matters --- matters which in the end decide a country's fate in war and determine whether it is to be victory or defeat --- the Party and the people prepared their Motherland for defence.' Ibid. , p. 227.
The Tukhachevsky trial and the anti-Communist conspiracy within the army
On May 26, 1937, Marshal Tukhachevsky and Commanders Yakir, Uborevich, Eideman, Kork, Putna, Feldman and Primakov were arrested and tried in front of a military tribunal. Their execution was announced on July 12.
They had been under suspicion since the beginning of May. On May 8, the political commissar system, used during the Civil War, was reintroduced in the army. Its reintroduction reflected the Party's fear of Bonapartist tendencies within the army. Getty, op. cit. , p. 167.
A May 13, 1927 Commissar of Defence directive ended the control that the political commissars had over the highest officers. The military commander was given the responsibility for `general political leadership for the purpose of complete coordination of military and political affairs in the unit'. The `political assistant' was to be responsible for `all party-political work' and was to report to the commander on the political condition of the unit. Carr, op. cit. , p. 325.
The Tolmachev Military Political Academy in Leningrad and the commissars of the military district of Byelorussia protested against `the depreciation and diminution of the rôle of the party-political organs'. Ibid. , p. 327.
Blomberg, a superior German officer, made a report after his visit to the USSR in 1928. He noted: `Purely military points of view step more and more into the foreground; everything else is subordinated to them'. Ibid. , p. 320.
Since many soldiers came from the countryside, kulak influence was substantial. Unshlikht, a superior officer, claimed in 1928 and 1929 that the danger of Right deviation was greater in the Army than in the Party's civil organizations. Ibid. , p. 331.
In 1930, ten per cent of the officer corps, i.e. 4500 military, were former Tsarist officers. During the purge of institutions in the fall of 1929, Unshlikht had not allowed a massive movement against the former Tsarist officers in the Army. Ibid. , p. 317.
These factors all show that bourgeois influence was still strong during the twenties and the thirties in the army, making it one of the least reliable parts of the socialist system.
V. Likhachev was an officer in the Red Army in the Soviet Far East in 1937--1938. His book, Dal'nevostochnyi zagovor (Far-Eastern conspiracy), showed that there did in fact exist a large conspiracy within the army. Getty, op. cit. , p. 255, n. 84.
Journalist Alexander Werth wrote in his book Moscow 41 a chapter entitled, `Trial of Tukhachevsky'. He wrote:
`I am also pretty sure that the purge in the Red Army had a great deal to do with Stalin's belief in an imminent war with Germany. What did Tukhachevsky stand for? People of the French Deuxieme Bureau told me long ago that Tukhachevsky was pro-German. And the Czechs told me the extraordinary story of Tukhachevsky's visit to Prague, when towards the end of the banquet --- he had got rather drunk --- he blurted out that an agreement with Hitler was the only hope for both Czechoslovakia and Russia. And he then proceeded to abuse Stalin. The Czechs did not fail to report this to the Kremlin, and that was the end of Tukhachevsky --- and of so many of his followers.' Alexander Werth, quoted in Harpal Brar, Perestroika: The Complete Collapse of Revisionism (London: Harpal Brar, 1992), p. 161.
The U.S. Ambassador Moscow, Joseph Davies, wrote his impressions on on June 28 and July 4, 1937:
`(T)he best judgment seems to believe that in all probability there was a definite conspiracy in the making looking to a coup d'état by the army --- not necessarily anti-Stalin, but antipolitical and antiparty, and that Stalin struck with characteristic speed, boldness and strength.' Joseph Davies, op. cit. , p. 99.
`Had a fine talk with Litvinov. I told him quite frankly the reactions in U.S. and western Europe to the purges; and to the executions of the Red Army generals; that it definitely was bad ....
`Litvinov was very frank. He stated that they had to ``make sure'' through these purges that there was no treason left which could co-operate with Berlin or Tokyo; that someday the world would understand that what they had done was to protect the government from ``menacing treason.'' In fact, he said they were doing the whole world a service in protecting themselves against the menace of Hitler and Nazi world domination, and thereby preserving the Soviet Union strong as a bulwark against the Nazi threat. That the world would appreciate what a very great man Stalin was.' Ibid. , p. 103.
In 1937, Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov was working for the Central Commitee of the Bolshevik Party. A bourgeois nationalist, he had close ties to opposition leaders and with the Central Committee members from the Caucausus. In his book The Reign of Stalin, he regrets that Tukhachevsky did not seize power in 1937. He claims that early in 1937, after his trip to England, Tukhachevsky spoke to his superior officers as follows:
`The great thing about His Britannic Majesty's Army is that there could not be a Scotland Yard agent at its head (allusion to the rôle played by state security in the USSR). As for cobblers (allusion to Stalin's father), they belong in the supply depots, and they don't need a Party card. The British don't talk readily about patriotism, because it seems to them natural to be simply British. There is no political ``line'' in Britain, right, left or centre; there is just British policy, which every peer and worker, every conservative and member of the Labour Party, every officer and soldier, is equally zealous in serving .... The British soldier is completely ignorant of Party history and production figures, but on the other hand he knows the geography of the world as well as he knows his own barracks .... The King is loaded with honours, but he has no personal power .... Two qualities are called for in an officer --- courage and professional competence.' Alexander Uralov (Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov), The Reign of Stalin (Westport, Conn.: Hyperion Press, p. 1975), p. 50.
Robert Coulondre was the French Ambassador to Moscow in 1936--1938. In his memoirs, he recalled the Terror of the French Revolution that crushed the aristocrats in 1792 and prepared the French people for war against the reactionary European states. At the time, the enemies of the French Revolution, particularly England and Russia, had interpreted the revolutionary terror as a precursor of the disintegration of the régime. In fact, the opposite was true. The same thing, Coulondre wrote, was taking place with the Soviet Revolution.
`Soon after Tukhachevsky's arrest, the minister of Lithuania, who knew a number of Bolshevik leaders, told me that the marshal, upset by the brakes imposed by the Communist Party on the development of Russian military power, in particular of a sound organization of the army, had in fact become the head of a movement that wanted to strangle the Party and institute a military dictatorship ....
`My correspondence can testify that I gave the ``Soviet terror'' its correct interpretation. It should not be concluded, I constantly wrote, that the régime is falling apart or that the Russian forces are tiring. It is in fact the opposite, the crisis of a country that is growing too quickly.' Robert Coulondre, De Staline à Hitler: Souvenirs de deux ambassades, 1936--1939 (Paris: Hachette, 1950), pp. 182--184.
Churchill wrote in his memoirs that Benes `had received an offer from Hitler to respect in all circumstances the integrity of Czechoslovakia in return for a guarantee that she would remain neutral in the event of a Franco-German war.'
`In the autumn of 1936, a message from a high military source in Germany was conveyed to President Benes to the effect that if he wanted to take advantage of the Fuehrer's offer, he had better be quick, because events would shortly take place in Russia rendering any help he could give to Germany insignificant.
`While Benes was pondering over this disturbing hint, he became aware that communications were passing through the Soviet Embassy in Prague between important personages in Russia and the German Government. This was a part of the so-called military and Old-Guard Communist conspiracy to overthrow Stalin and introduce a new régime based on a pro-German policy. President Benes lost no time in communicating all he could find out to Stalin. Thereafter there followed the merciless, but perhaps not needless, military and political purge in Soviet Russia ....
`The Russian Army was purged of its pro-German elements at a heavy cost to its military efficiency. The bias of the Soviet Government was turned in a marked manner against Germany .... The situation was, of course, thoroughly understood by Hitler; but I am not aware that the British and French Governments were equally enlightened. To Mr.\ Chamberlain and the British and French General Staffs the purge of 1937 presented itself mainly as a tearing to pieces internally of the Russian Army, and a picture of the Soviet Union as riven asunder by ferocious hatreds and vengeance.' Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), pp. 288--289.
The Trotskyist Deutscher rarely missed an opportunity to denigrate and slander Stalin. However, despite the fact that he claimed that there was only an `imaginary conspiracy' as basis for the Moscow trials, he did have this to say about Tukhachevsky's execution:
`(A)ll the non-Stalinist versions concur in the following: the generals did indeed plan a coup d'état .... The main part of the coup was to be a palace revolt in the Kremlin, culminating in the assassination of Stalin. A decisive military operation outside the Kremlin, an assault on the headquarters of the G.P.U., was also prepared. Tukhachevsky was the moving spirit of the conspiracy .... He was, indeed, the only man among all the military and civilian leaders of that time who showed in many respects a resemblance to the original Bonaparte and could have played the Russian First Consul. The chief political commissar of the army, Gamarnik, who later committed suicide, was initiated into the plot. General Yakir, the commander of Leningrad, was to secure the co-operation of his garrison. Generals Uberovich, commander of the western military district, Kork, commander of the Military Academy in Moscow, Primakow, Budienny's deputy in the command of the cavalry, and a few other generals were also in the plot.' I. Deutscher, Stalin: A Political Biography, second edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 379.
Deutscher, an important anti-Communist, even when he accepted the veracity of the Tukhachevsky plot, made sure that he underlined the `good intentions' of those who wanted `to save the army and the country from the insane terror of the purges' and he assured his readers that Tukhachevsky was in no way acting `in Germany's interest'. Ibid. , p. x, n. 1.
The Nazi Léon Degrelle, in a 1977 book, referred to Tukhachevsky in the following terms:
`Who would have thought during the crimes of the Terror during the French Revolution that soon after a Bonaparte would come out and raise France up from the abyss with an iron fist? A few years later, and Bonaparte almost created the United Europe.
`A Russian Bonaparte could also rise up. The young Marshal Tukhachevsky executed by Stalin on Benes' advice, was of the right stature in 1937.' Louise Narvaez, Degrelle m'a dit, Postface by Degrelle (Brussels: Éditions du Baucens, 1977), pp. 360--361.
On May 8, 1943, Göbbels noted in his journal some comments made by Hitler. They show that the Nazis perfectly understood the importance of taking advantage of opposition and defeatist currents within the Red Army.
`The Führer explained one more time the Tukhachevsky case and stated that we erred completely at the time when we thought that Stalin had ruined the Red Army. The opposite is true: Stalin got rid of all the opposition circles within the army and thereby succeeded in making sure that there would no longer be any defeatist currents within that army ....
`With respect to us, Stalin also has the advantage of not having any social opposition, since Bolshevism has eliminated it through the purges of the last twenty-five years .... Bolshevism has eliminated this danger in time and can henceforth focus all of its strength on its enemy.' J. Göbbels, Tagebücher aus den Jahren 1942--1943, (Zurich, 1948), p. 322. Quoted in Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, La seconde guerre mondiale: caractères fondamentaux de la politique et de la stratégie, vol. 1, pp. 213--214.
We also present Molotov's opinion. Apart from Kaganovich, Molotov was the only member of the Politburo in 1953 who never renounced his revolutionary past. During the 1980s, he recalled the situation in 1937, when the Purge started:
`An atmosphere of extreme tension reigned during this period; it was necessary to act without mercy. I think that it was justified. If Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Rykov and Zinoviev had started up their opposition in wartime, there would have been an extremely difficult struggle; the number of victims would have been colossal. Colossal. The two sides would have been condemned to disaster. They had links that went right up to Hitler. That far. Trotsky had similar links, without doubt. Hitler was an adventurist, as was Trotsky, they had traits in common. And the rightists, Bukharin and Rykov, had links with them. And, of course, many of the military leaders.' F. Chueva, Sto sorok besed s MOLOTOVYM (One hundred forty conversations with Molotov) (Moscow: Terra, 1991), p. 413.
The militarist and Bonapartist tendency
In a study financed by the U.S. army and conducted by the Rand Corporation, Roman Kolkowicz analyzed, from the reactionary point of view found in military security services, the relations between the Party and the Army in the Soviet Union. It is interesting to note how he supported all the tendencies towards professionalism, apolitism, militarism and privileges in the Red Army, right from the twenties. Of course, Kolkowicz attacked Stalin for having repressed the bourgeois and military tendencies.
After describing how Stalin defined the status of the army in the socialist society in the twenties, Kolkowicz wroted:
`The Red Army emerged from this process as an adjunct of the ruling Party elite; its officers were denied the full authority necessary to the practice of the military profession; they were kept in a perennial state of uncertainty about their careers; and the military community, which tends toward exclusiveness, was forcibly kept open through an elaborate system of control and indoctrination ....
`Stalin ... embarked on a massive program intended to provide the Soviet army with modern weapons, equipment, and logistics. But he remained wary of the military's tendency toward elitism and exclusiveness, a propensity that grew with its professional renascence. So overwhelming did his distrust become that, at a time of acute danger of war in Europe, Stalin struck at the military in the massive purges of 1937 ....
`Hemmed in on all sides by secret police, political organs, and Party and Komsomol organizations, the military's freedom of action was severely circumscribed.' Roman Kolkowicz, The Soviet Military and the Communist Party (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1967), pp. 343--344.
Note what the U.S. army most `hates' in the Red Army: political education (`endoctrination') and political control (by political organs, Party, Komsomol and security forces). On the other hand, the U.S. army views favorably the tendencies towards autonomy and privileges for superior officers (`elitism') and militarism (`exclusivity').
The purges are analyzed by Kolkowicz as a step in the Party struggle, directed by Stalin, against the `professionalists' and Bonapartists among the superior officers. These bourgeois currents were only able to impose themselves at Stalin's death.
`(W)ith Stalin's death and the division of the Party leadership that followed, the control mechanisms were weakened, and the military's own interests and values emerged into the open. In the person of Marshal Zhukov, broad sectors of the military had their spokesman. Zhukov was able to rid the establishment of the political organs' pervasive controls; he introduced strict discipline and the separation of ranks; he demanded the rehabilitation of purged military leaders and the punishment of their tormentors.' Ibid. , p. 344.
Zhukov gave Khrushchev armed support in the two coups d'état of 1953 (the Beria affair) and 1957 (the Molotov--Malenkov--Kaganovich affair).
A clandestine anti-Communist organization in the Red Army
In general, the purges within the Red Army are presented as acts of foolish, arbitrary, blind repression; the accusations were all set-ups, diabolically prepared to ensure Stalin's personal dictatorship.
What is the truth?
A concrete and very interesting example can give us some essential aspects.
A colonel in the Soviet Army, G. A. Tokaev, defected to the British in 1948. He wrote a book called Comrade X, a real gold mine for those who want to try to understand the complexity of the struggle within the Bolshevik Party. Aeronautical engineer, Tokaev was from 1937 to 1948 the Political Secretary of the largest Party branch of the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy. He was therefore a leading cadre. Tokaev, op. cit. , pp. 83--84.
When he entered the Party in 1933 at the age of 22, Tokaev was already a member of a clandestine anti-Communist organization. At the head of his organization was a leading officer of the Red Army, an influential member of the Bolshevik Party Central Committee! Tokaev's group held secret conferences, adopted resolutions and sent emissaries around the country.
Throughout the book, published in 1956, he developed the political ideas of his clandestine group. Reading the main points adopted by this clandestine anti-Communist organization is very instructive.
Tokaev first presented himself as a ` revolutionary democrat and liberal'. Ibid. , p. 1.
We were, he claimed, `the enemy of any man who thought to divide the world into `us' and `them', into communists and anti-communists'. Ibid. , p. 5.
Tokaev's group `proclaimed the ideal of universal brotherhood' and `regarded Christianity as one of the great systems of universal human values'. Ibid. , p. 220.
Tokaev's group was partisan to the bourgeois régime set up by the February Revolution. The `February Revolution represented at least a flicker of democracy ... (that) pointed to a latent belief in democracy among the common people'. Ibid. , p. 75.
The exile Menshevik newspaper, Sozialistichesky Vestnik was circulated within Tokaev's group, as was the book The Dawn of the Red Terror by the Menshevik G. Aaronson . Ibid. , p. 8.
Tokaev recognized the link between his anti-Communist organization and the social-democrat International. ` The revolutionary democratic movement is close to the democratic socialists. I have worked in close co-operation with many convinced socialists, such as Kurt Schumacher .... Such names as Attlee, Bevin, Spaak and Blum mean something to humanity'. Ibid. , p. 45.
Tokaev also fought for the `human rights' of all anti-Communists. `In our view ... there was no more urgent and important matter for the U.S.S.R. than the struggle for the human rights of the individual'. Ibid. , p. 15.
Multi-partyism and the division of the U.S.S.R. into independent republics were two essential points of the conspirators' program.
Tokaev's group, the majority of whose members seem to have been nationalists from the Caucasus region, expressed his support for Yenukidze's plan, which aimed at destroying Stalinism `root and branch' and replacing Stalin's `reactionary U.S.S.R.' by a `free union of free peoples'. The country was to be divided into ten natural regions: The North Caucasian United States, The Ukraine Democratic Republic, The Moscow Democratic Republic, The Siberian Democratic Republic, etc. Ibid. , p. 21.
While preparing in 1939 a plan to overthrow Stalin's government, Tokaev's group was ready to `seek outside support, particularly from the parties of the Second International .... a new Constituent Assembly would be elected and its first measure would be to terminate one Party rule'. Ibid. , p. 160.
Tokaev's clandestine group was clearly engaged in a struggle to the end with the Party leadership. In the summer of 1935, `We of the opposition, whether army or civilian, fully realised that we had entered a life-or-death struggle'. Ibid. , p. 17.
Finally, Tokaev considered `Britain the freest and most democratic country in the world'. Ibid. , p. 189.
After World War II, `My friends and I had become great admirers of the United States'. Ibid. , p. 274.
Astoundingly, this is, almost point by point, Gorbachev's program. Starting in 1985, the ideas that were being defended in 1931--1941 by clandestine anti-Communist organizations resurfaced at the head of the Party. Gorbachev denounced the division of the world between socialism and capitalism and converted himself to `universal values'. The rapprochement with social-democracy was initiated by Gorbachev in 1986. Multi-partyism became reality in the USSR in 1989. Yeltsin just reminded French Prime Minister Chirac that the February Revolution brought `democratic hope' to Russia. The transformation of the `reactionary U.S.S.R.' into a `Union of Free Republics' has been achieved.
But in 1935 when Tokaev was fighting for the program applied 50 years later by Gorbachev, he was fully conscious that he was engaged in a struggle to the end with the Bolshevik leadership.
`(I)n the summer of 1935 ... We of the opposition, whether army or civilian, fully realised that we had entered a life-or-death struggle.' Ibid. , p. 17.
Who belonged to Tokaev's clandestine group?
They were mostly Red Army officers, often young officers coming out of military academies. His leader, Comrade X --- the real name is never given --- was a member of the Central Committee during the thirties and forties.
Riz, lieutenant-captain in the navy, was the head of the clandestine movement in the Black Sea flottila. Expelled from the Party four times, he was reintegrated four times. Ibid. , p. 6.
Generals Osepyan, Deputy Head of the Political Administration of the Armed Forces (!), and Alksnis were among the main leaders of the clandestine organization. They were all close to General Kashirin. All three were arrested and executed during the Tukhachevsky affair. Ibid. , p. 118.
A few more names. Lieutenant-Colonel Gaï, killed in 1936 in an armed confrontation with the police. Ibid. , p. 22.
Colonel Kosmodemyansky, who `had made heroic but untimely attempts to shake off the Stalin oligarchy'. Ibid. , p. 215.
Colonel-General Todorsky, Chief of the Zhukovsky Academy, and Smolensky, Divisional Commissar, Deputy Chief of the Academy, responsible for political affairs. Ibid. , p. 28.
In Ukraine, the group supported Nikolai Generalov, whom Tokaev met in 1931 during a clandestine meeting in Moscow, and Lentzer. The two were arrested in Dniepropetrovsk in 1936. Ibid. , pp. 9, 47.
Katya Okman, the daughter of an Old Bolshevik, entered into conflict with the Party at the beginning of the Revolution, and Klava Yeryomenko, Ukrainian widow of a naval aviation officer at Sebastopol, assured links throughout the country.
During the purge of the Bukharin group (`right deviationist') and that of Marshal Tukhachevsky, most of Tokaev's group was arrested and shot: `circles close to Comrade X had been almost completely wiped out. Most of them had been arrested in connection with the `Right-wing deviationists' '. Ibid. , p. 84.
Our situation, wrote Tokaev, had become tragic. One of the cadres, Belinsky, remarked that we had made a mistake in believing that Stalin was an incapable who would never be able to achieve industrialization and cultural development. Riz replied that he was wrong, that it was a struggle between generations and that the after-Stalin had to be prepared. Ibid. , pp. 74--75.
Despite having an anti-Communist platform, Tokaev's clandestine organization maintained close links with `reformist-communist' factions within the Party.
In June 1935, Tokaev was sent to the south. He made a few comments about Yenukidze and Sheboldayev, two `Stalinist' Bolsheviks, commonly considered as typical victims of Stalin's arbitrariness.
`One of my tasks was to try to ward off an attack against a number of Sea of Azov, Black Sea and North Caucasian opposition leaders, the chief of whom was B. P. Sheboldayev, First Secretary of the Regional Committee of the Party and a member of the Central Committee itself. Not that our movement was completely at one with the Sheboldayev--Yenukidze group, but we knew what they were doing and Comrade X considered it our revolutionary duty to help them at a critical moment .... We disagreed on details, but these were nevertheless brave and honorable men, who had many a time saved members of our group, and who had a considerable chance of success.' Ibid. , p. 6.
`(In 1935), my personal contacts made it possible for me to get at certain top-secret files belonging to the Party Central Office and relating to `Abu' Yenukidze and his group. The papers would help us to find out just how much the Stalinists knew about all those working against them ....
`(Yanukdize) was a committed communist of the right-wing ....
`The open conflict between Stalin and Yenukidze really dated from the law of December 1st, 1934, which followed immediately on the assassination of Kirov.' Ibid. , pp. 17--18.
`Yenukidze (tolerated) under him a handful ... of men who were technically efficient and useful to the community but who were anti-communists.' Ibid. , p. 20.
Yenukidze was placed under house arrest in mid-1935. Lieutenant-Colonel Gaï, a leader of Tokaev's organization, organized his escape. At Rostov-on-Don, they held a conference with Sheboldayev, First Secretary of the Regional Committee for Sea of Azon--Black Sea, with Pivovarov, the President of the Soviet of the Region and with Larin, the Prime Minister. Then Yenukidze and Gaï continued to the south, but they were ambushed by the NKVD near Baku. Gaï shot two men, but was himself killed. Ibid. , p. 22.
Tokaev's opposition group also had links with Bukharin's group.
Tokaev claimed that his group maintained close contact with another faction at the head of the Party, that of the Chief of Security, Yagoda. `(W)e knew the power of ... NKVD bosses Yagoda or Beria ... in their roles not of servants, but of enemies of the régime'. Ibid. , p. 7.
Tokaev wrote that Yagoda protected many of their men who were in danger. When Yagoda was arrested, all the links that Tokaev's group had with the leadership of state security were broken. For their clandestine movement, this was a tremendous loss.
`The NKVD now headed by Yezhov, took another step forward. The Little Politbureau had penetrated the Yenukidze--Sheboldayev and the Yagoda--Zelinsky conspiracies, and broken through the opposition's links within the central institutions of the political police'. Yagoda `was removed from the NKVD, and we lost a strong link in our opposition intelligence service'. Ibid. , p. 63.
What were the intentions, the projects and the activities of Tokaev's group?
Well before 1934, wrote Tokaev, `our group had planned to assassinate Kirov and Kalinin, the President of the Soviet Union. Finally, it was another group that assassinated Kirov, a group with which we were in contact.' Ibid. , p. 2.
`In 1934 there was a plot to start a revolution by arresting the whole of the Stalinist-packed 17th Congress of the Party'. Ibid. , p. 37.
A comrade from the group, Klava Yeryomenko, proposed in mid-1936 to kill Stalin. She knew officers of Stalin's bodyguard. Comrade X had refused, and `pointed out that there had already been no less than fifteen attempts to assassinate Stalin, none had got near to success, each had cost many brave lives'. Ibid. , pp. 48--49.
`In August, 1936 ... My own conclusion was that the time for delay was past. We must make immediate preparations for an armed uprising. I was sure then, as I am today, that if Comrade X had chosen to send out a call to arms, he would have been joined at once by many of the big men of the U.S.S.R. In 1936, Alksnis , Yegorov, Osepyan and Kashirin would have joined him'. Ibid. , p. 48.
Note that all these generals were executed after the Tukhachevsky conspiracy. Tokaev thought that they had in 1936 sufficiently many men in the army to succeed in a coup d'état, which, Bukharin still being alive, would have had support from the peasantry.
One of `our pilots', recalled Tokaev, submitted to Comrade X and to Alksnis and Osepyan his plan to bomb the Lenin Mausoleum and the Politburo. Ibid. , p. 34.
On November 20, 1936, in Moscow, Comrade X, during a clandestine meeting of five members, proposed to Demokratov to assassinate Yezhov during the Eighth Extraordinary Congress of the Soviets. Ibid. , p. 64.
`In April (1939) we held a congress of underground oppositionist leaders to review the position at home and abroad. Apart from revolutionary democrats there were present two socialists and two Right-wing military oppositionists, one of whom called himself a popular democrat-decentralist. We passed a resolution for the first time defining Stalinism as counter-revolutionary fascism, a betrayal of the working class .... The resolution was immediately communicated to prominent personalities of both Party and Government and similar conferences were organised in other centres .... we went to assess the chances of an armed uprising against Stalin'. Ibid. , p. 156.
Note that the theme ' was shared in the thirties by Soviet military conspirators, Trotskyists, social-democrats and the Western Catholic right-wing.
Soon after, Tokaev was discussing with Smolninsky, a clandestine name for a leading officer of the Leningrad district, the possibility of a attempt against Zhdanov. Ibid. , pp. 156--157.
Still in 1939, on the eve of the war, there was another meeting, where the conspirators discussed the question of assassinating Stalin in the case of war. They decided it was inopportune because they no longer had enough men to run the country and because the masses would not have followed them. Ibid. , p. 159--160.
When war broke out, the Party leadership proposed to Tokaev, who spoke German, to lead the partisan war behind the Nazi lines. The partisans, of course, were subject to terrible risks. At the time, Comrade X decided that Tokaev could not accept: `We were, as far as we could, to remain in the main centres, to be ready to take over power if the Stalin régime broke down'. Ibid. , p. 183.
`Comrade X was convinced that it was touch and go for Stalin. The pity of it was that we could not see Hitler as the liberator. Therefore, said Comrade X, we must be prepared for Stalin's régime to collapse, but we should do nothing whatever to weaken it'. This point was discussed during a clandestine meeting on July 5, 1941. Ibid. , p. 188.
After the war, in 1947, Tokaev was in charge of discussions with the German professor Tank, who specialized in aeronautics, in order to persuade him to come work in the Soviet Union. `Tank ... was indeed prepared to work on a jet fighter for the U.S.S.R.... I discussed the matter with a number of key men. We agreed that while it was wrong to assume that Soviet aircraft designers could not design a jet bomber, it was not in the interests of the country that they should .... The U.S.S.R. as we saw it was not really threatened by external enemies; therefore our own efforts must be directed towards weakening, not strengthening, the Soviet monopolistic imperialism in the hope of thus making a democratic revolution possible'. Ibid. , p. 352.
Tokaev recognized here that economic sabotage was a political form of struggle for power.
These examples give an idea of the conspiratorial nature of a clandestine military group, hidden within the Bolshevik Party, whose survivors would see their `ideals' recognized with the arrival in power of Khrushchev, and implemented under Gorbachev.
11. THE FIGHT AGAINST BUREAUCRACY IN THE SOVIET UNION.
The first question presents the first problem. ‘Bureaucracy’ is a vague term, with a hundred possible meanings. Herein lies its advantage for critics of the Soviet Union. It leaves the reader with a ‘carte blanche’ to assume whatever negative things about the Soviet he might like. Lenin and Stalin certainly never hesitated to complain about the state of bureaucracy in the USSR, but presumably they used the term in a completely different way to the average bourgeois historian, for whom the term is nothing less than a convenient blanket dismissal of the Soviet Union and communism. It could imply a lack of democracy; it could imply corruption; it could imply inefficiency through excessive red tape; it could imply excessive centralism; it could imply that the USSR was run by pure paperwork with insufficient ‘action’; and so on.
The Cambridge International Dictionary gives us the following:
"Bureaucracy: a system for controlling or managing a country, company or organisation that is operated by a large number of officials who are employed to follow rules carefully, or the officials, or the system of rules." - not particularly helpful.
Sidney and Beatrice Webb, in their comprehensive study ‘Soviet Communism - A New Civilisation’ refer to "the great, and, as it is often suggested, the growing evil of bureaucracy. By this it is meant (apart from the increasing number of those paid at a rate considerably above the incomes of the mass of the people) the habit in officials of ignoring or being irritated by the desires or feelings of the public, and even of those of the members of the official’s own organisation; together with the multiplication of forms to be filled up, and regulations to be observed, which surround everything with a maze of complications against which the citizen feels helpless." (p.1211-2)
Lenin’s concept of ‘bureaucracy’ was inertia, lack of zeal and dishonesty in the party and state apparatus. For the purposes of this discussion, we shall use Lenin’s definition, which is in itself fairly broad.
2. To what extent did bureaucracy exist in the USSR and how did it manifest itself?
Bureaucracy is the torment of nearly all organisations, and something that requires constant vigilance to overcome. As Marxist-Leninists - not anarchists - we have accepted the necessity of organisation, of leadership, of political structure and so on, but these things lend themselves alarmingly easily to any bureaucratic abuse that members, especially leaders, may want to engage in.
The point is that bureaucratic behaviour can occur very easily, and in an organisation comprising hundreds of thousands of people (such as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), in a country of close to 200 million population, largely uneducated, with thousands of officials and managers, bureaucracy is bound to manifest itself in some way.
As Ludo Martens points out in his excellent book ‘Another View of Stalin’, "Lenin and the Bolsheviks always led a revolutionary struggle against the bureaucratic deviations that, in a backward country, inevitably occurred within the apparatuses of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They estimated that the dictatorship was menaced ‘from inside’ by the bureaucratisation of the Soviet state apparatus".
Lenin, in 1919, talking about the problem of bureaucracy, says the following: "We have done what no other state in the world has done in the fight against bureaucracy. The apparatus which was a thoroughly bureaucratic and bourgeois apparatus of oppression, and which remains such even in the freest of bourgeois republics, we have destroyed to its very foundations. Take, for example, the courts. Here, it is true, the task was easier; we did not have to create a new apparatus, because anybody can act as a judge basing himself on the revolutionary sense of justice of the working classes. We have still by no means completed the work in this field but in a number of respects, we have made the courts what they should be. We have created bodies on which not only men, but also women, the most backward and conservative section of the population, can be made to serve without exception.
"The employees in the other spheres of government are more hardened bureaucrats. The task here is more difficult. We cannot live without this apparatus; every branch of government creates a demand for such an apparatus. Here we are suffering from the fact that Russia was not sufficiently developed as a capitalist country. Germany, apparently, will suffer less from this, because her bureaucratic apparatus passed through an extensive school, which sucks people dry but compels them to work and not just wear out armchairs, as happens in our offices. We dispersed these old bureaucrats, shuffled them and then began to place them in new posts.
"The tsarist bureaucrats began to join the Soviet institutions and practise their bureaucratic methods, they began to assume the colouring of Communists and, to succeed better in their careers, to procure membership cards of the Russian Communist Party. And so, they have been thrown out of the door but they creep back in through the window. What makes itself felt here most is the lack of cultured forces. These bureaucrats may be dismissed, but they cannot be re-educated all at once. Here we are confronted chiefly with organisational, cultural and educational problems." (V. I. Lenin, EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P. (B.), MARCH 18-23, 1919, From V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965 Vol. 29,pp. 141-225)
Further, he says:
"But impoverished though Russia is, she still has endless resources which we have not yet utilised, and often have shown no ability to utilise. There are still many undisclosed or uninspected military stores, plenty of production potentialities which are being overlooked, partly owing to the deliberate sabotage of officials, partly owing to red tape, bureaucracy, inefficiency and incompetence -- all those "sins of the past" which so inevitably and so drastically weigh upon every revolution which makes a "leap" into a new social order." (V. I. Lenin, ALL OUT FOR THE FIGHT AGAINST DENIKIN! Written not later than July 3, 1919, From V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Vol. 29, pp. 436-55.)
"We are perfectly aware of the effects of Russia's cultural underdevelopment, of what it is doing to Soviet power -- which in principle has provided an immensely higher proletarian democracy, which has created a model of such democracy for the whole world -- how this lack of culture is reducing the significance of Soviet power and reviving bureaucracy. The Soviet apparatus is accessible to all the working people in word, but actually, it is far from being accessible to all of them, as we all know. And not because the laws prevent it from being so, as was the case under the bourgeoisie; on the contrary, our laws assist in this respect. But in this matter laws alone are not enough. A vast amount of educational, organisational and cultural work is required; this cannot be done rapidly by legislation but demands a vast amount of work over a long period. This question of the bourgeois experts must be settled quite definitely at this Congress. The settlement of the question will enable the comrades, who are undoubtedly following this Congress attentively, to lean on its authority and to realise what difficulties we are up against. It will help those comrades who come up against this question at every step to take part at least in propaganda work." (V. I. Lenin, EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P. (B.), MARCH 18-23, 1919, From V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965 Vol. 29, pp. 141-225.)
Stalin was also not afraid to address the problem of bureaucracy. He said in 1927:
"Bureaucracy is one of the worst enemies of our progress. It exists in all our organisations -- Party, Y.C.L., and trade union and economic. When people talk of bureaucrats, they usually point to the old non-party officials, who as a rule are depicted in our cartoons as men wearing spectacles. (Laughter.) That is not quite true, comrades. If it were only a question of the old bureaucrats, the fight against bureaucracy would be very easy. The trouble is that it is not a matter of the old bureaucrats. It is a matter of the new bureaucrats, bureaucrats who sympathise with the Soviet Government, and finally, communist bureaucrats. The communist bureaucrat is the most dangerous type of bureaucrat. Why? Because he masks his bureaucracy with the title of Party member. And, unfortunately, we have quite a number of such communist bureaucrats." (J. V. Stalin SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE ALL-UNION LENINIST YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE May 16, 1927 Pravda, No. 113, May 17, 1928, cited in 'Another View of Stalin')
Arch Getty, speaking about the mid-1930s period, wrote: "The party had become bureaucratic, economic, mechanical and administrative to an intolerable degree. Stalin and other leaders at the centre perceived this as an ossification, a breakdown and a perversion of the party’s function. Local party and government leaders were no longer political leaders but economic administrators. They resisted political control from both above and below and did not want to be bothered with ideology, education, political mass campaigns, or the individual rights and careers of party members. The logical extension of this process would have been the conversion of the party apparatus into a network of locally despotic economic administrations. The evidence shows that Stalin, Zhdanov and others preferred to revive the educational and agitation functions of the party, to reduce the absolute authority of local satraps, and to encourage certain forms of rank-and-file leadership". (Cited in 'Another View of Stalin')
Stalin, THE PARTY'S TASKS
Report Delivered at an Enlarged Meeting of the Krasnaya Presnya District Committee of the R.C.P. (B.) with Group Organisers , members of the Debating Society and of the Bureau of the Party Units, December 2, 1923
"The second cause is that our state apparatus, which is bureaucratic to a considerable degree, exerts a certain amount of pressure on the Party and the Party workers. In 19I7, when we were forging ahead, towards October, we imagined that we would have a Commune, a free association of working people, that we would put an end to bureaucracy in government institutions, and that it would be possible, if not in the immediate period, then within two or three short periods, to transform the state into a free association of working people. Practice has shown, however, that this is still an ideal which is a long way off, that to rid the state of the elements of bureaucracy, to transform Soviet society into a free association of working people, the people must have a high level of culture, peace conditions must be fully guaranteed all around us so as to remove the necessity of maintaining a large standing army, which entails heavy expenditure and cumbersome administrative departments, the very existence of which leaves its impress upon all the other state institutions. Our state apparatus is bureaucratic to a considerable degree, and it will remain so for a long time to come. Our Party comrades work in this apparatus, and the situation -- I might say the atmosphere -- in this bureaucratic apparatus is such that it helps to bureaucratise our Party workers and our Party organisations." (Pravda, No. 277, December 6, 1923, From J. V. Stalin, On the Opposition, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1974 pp. 12-27.)
There are abundant examples of the bureaucracy that existed in the Soviet Union at all levels.
Robert W. Thurston, in his relatively honest (for a bourgeois historian) and extremely useful study ‘Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia’ quotes several incidents like this: "In April 1935, before the Stakhanov movement complicated the picture even more, investigators at the Gorky auto factory found cases in which foremen signed any document put before them. On approved a job order even though the worker’s name was falsified… Another supervisor signed an order that bore the name Vodopianov, then a famous pilot; it was for 1,796 rubles. A different foreman approved an order brought to him to ‘assemble a good wife on the conveyer’. Yet another authorised a worker to ‘grind off his head’. In other instances foremen allowed workers to fill in the details of a job, including pay for it." (p.173)
3. What was Stalin’s attitude towards bureaucracy?
Stalin, of course, is such a popular hate figure for bourgeois historians and Trotskyists alike that it would be extremely surprising if he were not considered to be the chief of all the bureaucrats. For that reason it is worth having a quick look at Stalin’s comments on bureaucracy - what was his attitude towards it? Did he acknowledge its existence? Did he consider it necessary to fight against it? Reactionaries will no doubt argue that Stalin’s words have no meaning, and are entirely divorced from deed, but I don’t think anyone would deny that, in the period during which Stalin was General Secretary of the CPSU, Stalin’s word counted for a lot - that high party and state officials as well as rank-and-file party members and non-party activists invested great importance in Stalin’s words, especially since, by and large, Stalin’s speeches and articles always had a practical program - they were never simply a collection of abstract ideas.
"... [O]ne of the most serious obstacles, if not the most serious of all, is the bureaucracy of our apparatus. I am referring to the bureaucratic elements to be found in our Party, government, trade union, co-operative and all other organisations. I am referring to the bureaucratic elements who batten on our weaknesses and errors, who fear like the plague all criticism by the masses, all control by the masses, and who hinder us in developing self-criticism and ridding ourselves of our weaknesses and errors. Bureaucracy in our organisations must not be regarded merely as routine and red tape. Bureaucracy is a manifestation of bourgeois influence on our organisations. [This is especially important, being as Stalin is often accused, even by ‘friends’, of not having understood the class basis of opposition and degeneration of party members - CR] Lenin was right when he said: ". . . We must realise that the fight against bureaucracy is an absolutely essential one, and that it is just as complicated as the fight against the petty-bourgeois elemental forces. Bureaucracy in our state system has become a malady of such gravity that it is spoken of in our Party programme, and that is because it is connected with these petty-bourgeois elemental forces and their wide dispersion "[ *] (Vol. XXVI, p. 220). With all the more persistence, therefore, must the struggle against bureaucracy in our organisations be waged, if we really want to develop self-criticism and rid ourselves of the maladies in our constructive work." (J. V. Stalin AGAINST VULGARISING THE SLOGAN OF SELF-CRITICISM Pravda, No. 146, June 26, 1928 From J. V. Stalin, Works Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954, Vol. 11, pp. 133-44.)
Stalin elsewhere puts the question thus:
"Does the state apparatus function honestly, or does it indulge in graft; does it exercise economy in expenditure, or does it squander the national wealth; is it guilty of duplicity, or does it serve the state loyally and faithfully; is it a burden on the working people, or an organisation that helps them; does it inculcate respect for proletarian law, or does it corrupt the people's minds by disparaging proletarian law; is it progressing towards transition to a communist society in which there will be no state, or is it retrogressing towards the stagnant bureaucracy of the ordinary bourgeois state -- these are all questions the correct solution of which cannot but be a matter of decisive importance for the Party and for socialism. That our state apparatus is full of defects, that it is cumbersome and expensive and nine-tenths bureaucratic, that its bureaucracy weighs heavily on the Party and its organisations, hampering their efforts to improve the state apparatus -- these are things which hardly anyone will doubt. Yet it should be perfectly clear that, if our state apparatus were to rid itself of at least some of its basic faults, it could, in the hands of the proletariat, serve as a most valuable instrument for the education and re-education of broad sections of the population in the spirit of the proletarian dictatorship and socialism.
"That is why Lenin devoted special attention to improving the state apparatus.
"That is why the Party has set up special organisations of workers and peasants (the reorganised Workers' and Peasants' Inspection and the enlarged Central Control Commission) to combat deficiencies in our state apparatus.
"The task is to help the Central Control Commission and the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection in their difficult work of improving, simplifying, reducing the cost of the state apparatus and bringing a healthier atmosphere into it from top to bottom (see the congress resolution on "Work of the Control Commissions")" (J. V. Stalin, THE RESULTS OF THE THIRTEENTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P. (B.), Report Delivered at the C.C., R.C.P. (B.) Courses for Secretaries of Vyezd Party Committees, June 17, 1924)
So we can see that Stalin very clearly understood the existence of bureaucracy in the state and party apparatus; he understood the origins of that bureaucracy; he appreciated the need to overcome that bureaucracy and he urged such audiences as the Young Communist League, the readers of Pravda and regional party secretaries to engage in the "absolutely essential" fight against bureaucracy, that the task was to "extirpate with a red-hot iron" this illness (THE FIFTEENTH CONGRESS OF THE C.P.S.U. (B.), December 2-19, 1927.)
4. What was the essence of the fight against bureaucracy?
The fight against bureaucracy in the party, in the state apparatus, in the factories and the collectives, was characterised by an abundance of methods. It was necessary to wipe out red tape, inactivity, inefficiency, complacency, corruption, nepotism, bookism and so on - all the "sins of the past" that Lenin had referred to. But doing this was not a simple matter. The USSR was still predominantly rural and backward; there were many elements working towards counter-revolution; there were many elements working towards ‘diversion’ of the revolution in the interests of the rich farmers (kulaks) and small capitalists (‘NEP-men’); the working class and the poor peasantry were still very much learning as they went along, having come to power with the most limited experience of running society; in addition to which the USSR was trying to exist as a socialist country in the middle of a hostile capitalist world which, given half a chance, would not hesitate to use force to overthrow the Soviet system. All these factors meant that bureaucracy could not easily be just thrown out the window. The working class and the collective/state farmers needed to learn how to govern their country; they needed understanding of science and technology, in order to not be reliant solely upon foreigners and intellectuals from tsarist times - by definition a vacillating group, trained in the worst type of bureaucracy; the workers had to develop the confidence to question factory managers, party officials, state officials and so on; party democracy had to be improved; reactionary and bureaucratic elements in the party had to be ousted.
I will go through some of these processes one by one.
a. Education / Cultural Revolution
As Stalin pointed out, "all the ruling classes that have hitherto existed, the working class, as a ruling class, occupies a somewhat special and not altogether favourable position in history. All ruling classes until now -- the slave-owners, the landlords, the capitalists -- were also wealthy classes. They were in a position to train in their sons the knowledge and faculties needed for government. The working class differs from them, among other things, in that it is not a wealthy class, that it was not able formerly to train in its sons the knowledge and faculty of government, and has become able to do so only now, after coming to power.
That, incidentally, is the reason why the question of a cultural revolution is so acute with us. True, in the ten years of its rule the working class of the U.S.S.R. has accomplished far more in this respect than the landlords and capitalists did in hundreds of years. But the international and internal situation is such that the results achieved are far from sufficient. Therefore, every means capable of promoting the development of the cultural powers of the working class, every means capable of facilitating the development in the working class of the faculty and ability to administer the country and industry -- every such means must be utilised by us to the full." (Stalin THE WORK OF THE APRIL JOINT PLENUM OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AND CENTRAL CONTROL COMMISSION Report Delivered at a Meeting of the Active of the Moscow Organisation of the C.P.S.U. (B.) April 13, 1928)
Stalin again:
"The surest remedy for bureaucracy is raising the cultural level of the workers and peasants. One can curse and denounce bureaucracy in the state apparatus, one can stigmatise and pillory bureaucracy in our practical work, but unless the masses of the workers reach a certain level of culture, which will create the possibility, the desire, the ability to control the state apparatus from below, by the masses of the workers themselves, bureaucracy will continue to exist in spite of everything. Therefore, the cultural development of the working class and of the masses of the working peasantry, not only the development of literacy, although literacy is the basis of all culture, but primarily the cultivation of the ability to take part in the administration of the country, is the chief lever for improving the state and every other apparatus. This is the sense and significance of Lenin's slogan about the cultural revolution. (THE FIFTEENTH CONGRESS OF THE C.P.S.U. (B.), December 2-19, 1927.)
On 're-education':
"One of the essential tasks confronting the Party in the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to re-educate the older generations and educate the new generations in the spirit of the proletarian dictatorship and socialism. The old habits and customs, traditions and prejudices inherited from the old society are most dangerous enemies of socialism. They -- these traditions and habits -- have a firm grip over millions of working people; at times they engulf whole strata of the proletariat; at times they present a great danger to the very existence of the proletarian dictatorship. That is why the struggle against these traditions and habits, their absolute eradication in all spheres of our activity, and, lastly, the education of the younger generations in the spirit of proletarian socialism, represent immediate tasks for our Party without the accomplishment of which socialism cannot triumph. Work to improve the state apparatus, work in the countryside, work among women toilers and among the youth -- these are the principal spheres of the Party's activity in the fulfilment of these tasks." (J. V. Stalin THE RESULTS OF THE THIRTEENTH CONGRESS OF THE RCP (B.) Report Delivered at the C.C., RCP (B.) Courses for Secretaries of Vyezd Party Committees June 17, 1924 Pravda, Nos. 136 and 137, June 19 and 20, 1924 From J. V. Stalin, Works Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow 1953, Vol. 6, pp. 246-273.)
"Our tasks in the sphere of ideological and political work are:
1) To raise the theoretical level of the Party to the proper height.
2) To intensify ideological work in all the organizations of the Party.
3) To carry on unceasing propaganda of Leninism in the ranks of the Party.
4) To train the Party organizations and the non-party active which surrounds them in the spirit of Leninist internationalism.
5) Not to gloss over, but boldly to criticise the deviations of certain comrades from Marxism-Leninism.
6) Systematically to expose the ideology and the remnants of the ideology of trends that are hostile to Leninism." (THE FIFTEENTH CONGRESS OF THE C.P.S.U. (B.), December 2-19, 1927.)
The successes of the education drive were visible at every level.
"Between 1930 and 1933, the number of Party schools increased from 52,000 to more than 200,000 and the number of students from one million to 4,500,000. It was a remarkable effort to give a minimum of political coherence to hundreds of thousands who had just entered the Party" (figures from J. Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p.5.)
The Webbs noted that, prior to the October Revolution, 70-80% of the population of the territories which would later make up the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were illiterate. But, wrote Lenin, "Without literacy no politics, but only rumours, small talk and prejudices". Literacy was all but abolished by the early 1930s (90% in 1933, increased from 67% in 1929), by which time schools were accessible to the people of every single village and town. The Webbs comment: "There is no other fragment of the world’s surface, at all comparable in extent, in which anything like this concept of an educational service prevails". In 1934, Stalin noted some of the growing achievements of the Soviet education system:
"As regards the cultural development of the country, we have the following to record for the period under review:
a) The introduction of universal compulsory elementary education throughout the U.S.S.R., and an increase in literacy among the population from 67 per cent at the end of 1930 to 90 per cent at the end of 1933.
b) An increase in the number of pupils and students at schools of all grades from 14,358,000 in 1929 to 26,419,000 in 1933, including an increase from 11,697,000 to 19,163,000 in the number receiving elementary education, from 2,453,000 to 6,674,000 in the number receiving secondary education, and from 207,000 to 491,000 in the number receiving higher education.
c) An increase in the number of children receiving pre-school education from 838,000 in 1929 to 5,917,000 in 1933.
d) An increase in the number of higher educational institutions, general and special, from 91 in 1914 to 600 in 1933.
e) An increase in the number of scientific research institutes from 400 in 1929 to 840 in 1933.
f) An increase in the number of clubs and similar institutions from 32,000 in 1929 to 54,000 in 1933.
g) An increase in the number of cinemas, cinema installations in clubs, and mobile cinemas, from 9,800 in 1929 to 29,200 in 1933.
h) An increase in the circulation of newspapers from 12,500,000 in 1929 to 36,500,000 in 1933.
Perhaps it will not be amiss to point out that the proportion of workers among the students in our higher educational institutions is 51.4 per cent of the total, and that of labouring peasants 16.5 per cent; whereas in Germany, for instance, the proportion of workers among the students in higher educational institutions in 1932-33 was only 3.2 per cent of the total, and that of small peasants only 2.4 per cent."
Pat Sloan’s book ‘Soviet Democracy’ (Left Book Club Edition, Victor Gollancz, 1937) gives an excellent account of the education system in the 1930s USSR and is well worth reading.
b. Encouraging criticism and self-criticism
Stalin considered criticism and self-criticism to be absolutely essential tools for improving the party and the state apparatus. He considered that no one should consider themselves above criticism from the masses, who will often be able to detect shortcomings in the administration much quicker and more objectively than can the administrators themselves.
"Often we settle questions, not only in the districts, but also at the centre, by the family, domestic-circle method, so to speak. Ivan Ivanovich, a member of the top leadership of such and such an organisation, has, say, made a gross mistake and has messed things up. But Ivan Fyodorovich is reluctant to criticise him, to expose his mistakes and to correct them. He is reluctant to do so because he does not want to "make enemies." He has made a mistake, he has messed things up -- what of it? Who of us does not make mistakes? Today I shall let him, Ivan Fyodorovich, off; tomorrow he will let me, Ivan Ivanovich, off; for what guarantee is there that I, too, shall not make a mistake? Everything in order and satisfactory. Peace and good will. They say that a mistake neglected is detrimental to our great cause? Never mind! We'll muddle through somehow.
"Such, comrades, is the way some of our responsible workers usually argue.
"But what does that mean? If we Bolsheviks, who criticise the whole world, who, in the words of Marx, are storming heaven, if we, for the sake of this or that comrade's peace of mind, abandon self-criticism, is it not obvious that that can lead only to the doom of our great cause? (Voices : "Quite right!" Applause.)
"Marx said that what, among other things, distinguishes the proletarian revolution from every other revolution is that it criticises itself and, in criticising itself, strengthens itself. That is an extremely important point of Marx's. If we, the representatives of the proletarian revolution, shut our eyes to our defects, settle questions by the family-circle method, hush up each other's mistakes and drive the ulcers inwards into the organism of the Party, who will correct these mistakes, these defects?
"Is it not obvious that we shall cease to be proletarian revolutionaries, and that we shall certainly perish if we fail to eradicate from our midst this philistinism, this family-circle method of settling highly important questions of our work of construction?
"Is it not obvious that by refraining from honest and straightforward self-criticism, by refraining from honest and open correction of our mistakes, we close our road to progress, to the improvement of our work, to new successes in our work?
"After all, our development does not proceed in the form of a smooth, all-round ascent. No, comrades, we have classes, we have contradictions within the country, we have a past, we have a present and a future, we have contradictions between them, and our onward progress cannot take the form of a smooth rocking on the waves of life. Our advance takes place in the process of struggle, in the process of the development of contradictions, in the process of overcoming these contradictions, in the process of bringing these contradictions to light and eliminating them.
"As long as classes exist we shall never be in a position to say: Well, thank God, everything is all right now. We shall never be in such a position, comrades." (J. V. Stalin, THE FIFTEENTH CONGRESS OF THE C.P.S.U. (B.), December 2-19, 1927)
Again, with regard to criticism and self-criticism, Stalin says the following:
"I think, comrades, that self-criticism is as necessary to us as air or water. I think that without it, without self-criticism, our Party could not make any headway, could not disclose our ulcers, could not eliminate our shortcomings. And shortcomings we have in plenty. That must be admitted frankly and honestly.
"The slogan of self-criticism cannot be regarded as a new one. It lies at the very foundation of the Bolshevik Party. It lies at the foundation of the regime of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Since our country is a country with a dictatorship of the proletariat, and since the dictatorship is directed by one party, the Communist Party, which does not, and cannot, share power with other parties, is it not clear that, if we want to make headway, we ourselves must disclose and correct our errors -- is it not clear that there is no one else to disclose and correct them for us? Is it not clear, comrades, that self-criticism must be one of the most important motive forces of our development?
"The slogan of self-criticism has developed especially powerfully since the Fifteenth Congress of our Party. Why? Because after the Fifteenth Congress, which put an end to the opposition, a new situation arose in the Party, one that we have to reckon with.
"In what does the novelty of this situation consist? In the fact that now we have no opposition, or next to none; in the fact that, because of the easy victory over the opposition -- a victory which in itself is a most important gain for the Party -- there may be a danger of the Party resting on its laurels, beginning to take things easy and closing its eyes to the shortcomings in our work. ….
"It would be strange to fear that our enemies, our internal and external enemies, might exploit the criticism of our shortcomings and raise the shout: Oho! All is not well with those Bolsheviks! It would be strange if we Bolsheviks were to fear that. The strength of Bolshevism lies precisely in the fact that it is not afraid to admit its mistakes. Let the Party, let the Bolsheviks, let all the upright workers and labouring elements in our country bring to light the shortcomings in our work, the shortcomings in our constructive effort, and let them indicate ways of eliminating our shortcomings, so that there may be no stagnation, vegetation, decay in our work and our construction, so that all our work and all our constructive measures may improve from day to day and go from success to success. That is the chief thing just now. As for our enemies, let them rant about our shortcomings -- such trifles cannot and should not disconcert Bolsheviks.
"Lastly, there is-yet another circumstance that impels us to self-criticism. I am referring to the question of the masses and the leaders. A peculiar sort of relation has lately begun to arise between the leaders and the masses. On the one hand there was formed, there came into being historically, a group of leaders among us whose prestige is rising and rising, and who are becoming almost unapproachable for the masses. On the other hand the working-class masses in the first place, and the mass of the working people in general are rising extremely slowly, are beginning to look up at the leaders from below with blinking eyes, and not infrequently are afraid to criticise them.
"Of course, the fact that we have a group of leaders who have risen excessively high and enjoy great prestige is in itself a great achievement for our Party. Obviously, the direction of a big country would be unthinkable without such an authoritative group of leaders. But the fact that as these leaders rise they get further away from the masses, and the masses begin to look up at them from below and do not venture to criticise them, cannot but give rise to a certain danger of the leaders losing contact with the masses and the masses getting out of touch with the leaders.
"This danger may result in the leaders becoming conceited and regarding themselves as infallible. And what good can be expected when the top leaders become self-conceited and begin to look down on the masses? Clearly, nothing can come of this but the ruin of the Party. But what we want is not to ruin the Party, but to move forward and improve our work. And precisely in order that we may move forward and improve the relations between the masses and the leaders, we must keep the valve of self-criticism open all the time, we must make it possible for Soviet people to "go for" their leaders, to criticise their mistakes, so that the leaders may not grow conceited, and the masses may not get out of touch with the leaders.
"The question of the masses and the leaders is sometimes identified with the question of promotion. That is wrong, comrades. It is not a question of bringing new leaders to the fore, although this deserves the Party's most serious attention. It is a question of preserving the leaders who have already come to the fore and possess the greatest prestige by organising permanent and indissoluble contact between them and the masses. It is a question of organising, along the lines of self-criticism and criticism of our shortcomings, the broad public opinion of the Party, the broad public opinion of the working class, as an instrument of keen and vigilant moral control, to which the most authoritative leaders must lend an attentive ear if they want to retain the confidence of the Party and the confidence of the working class.
"From this standpoint, the value of the press, of our Party and Soviet press, is truly inestimable. From this standpoint, we cannot but welcome the initiative shown by Pravda in publishing the Bulletin of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection, which conducts systematic criticism of shortcomings in our work. Only we must see to it that the criticism is serious and penetrating, and does not just skate on the surface. From this standpoint, too, we have to welcome the initiative shown by Komsomolskaya Pravda in vigorously and spiritedly attacking shortcomings in our work...
"You must know that workers are sometimes afraid to tell the truth about shortcomings in our work. They are afraid not only because they might get into "hot water" for it, but also because they might be made into a "laughing-stock" on account of their imperfect criticism. How can you expect an ordinary worker or an ordinary peasant, with his own painful experience of shortcomings in our work and in our planning, to frame his criticism according to all the rules of the art? If you demand that their criticism should be 100 per cent correct, you will be killing all possibility of criticism from below, all possibility of self-criticism. That is why I think that if criticism is even only 5 or 10 per cent true, such criticism should be welcomed, should be listened to attentively, and the sound core in it taken into account. Otherwise, I repeat, you would be gagging all those hundreds and thousands of people who are devoted to the cause of the Soviets, who are not yet skilled enough in the art of criticism, but through whose lips speaks truth itself.
"Precisely in order to develop self-criticism and not extinguish it, we must listen attentively to all criticism coming from Soviet people, even if sometimes it may not be correct to the full and in all details. Only then can the masses have the assurance that they will not get into "hot water" if their criticism is not perfect, that they will not be made a "laughing-stock" if there should be errors in their criticism. Only then can self-criticism acquire a truly mass character and meet with a truly mass response." (J. V. Stalin, REPORT TO THE SEVENTEENTH PARTY CONGRESS ON THE WORK OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE C.P.S.U. (B.) Pravda, No. 27, January 28, 1934 From J. V. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1976 pp. 671-765. Based on J. V. Stalin, Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1955 Vol. 13, pp. 288-388)
As to the successes in the field of self-criticism, Stalin notes in 1928 that "as a result of self-criticism, our press has become more lively and vigorous, while such detachments of our press workers as the organisations of worker and village correspondents are already becoming a weighty political force.
"True, our press still continues at times to skate on the surface; it has not yet learned to pass from individual critical remarks to deeper criticism, and from deep criticism to drawing general conclusions from the results of criticism and making plain what achievements have been attained in our constructive work as a result of criticism. But it can scarcely be doubted that advances will be made in this field as the campaign goes on." (J. V. Stalin, AGAINST VULGARISING THE SLOGAN OF SELF-CRITICISM Pravda, No. 146, June 26, 1928 From J. V. Stalin, Works Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954, Vol. 11, pp. 133-44.)
Thurston gives an example of worker’s criticism in action:
"In September 1936 the worker M. A. Panov wrote an angry letter to I. P. Rumiantsev, then first secretary of Smolensk oblast. Panov had been "without a party card" for two years and had lately been out of work, too. After complaining to the Secretariat of the Council of Ministers, he had learned that his case had been referred to by Rumiantsev. Ten days had gone by, but "you are still fooling around," Panov wrote to this local chieftain; "it’s time to end this red tape and get down to work." Declaring, "You speak beautifully, but in fact it must be said that that’s hot air", the worker announced that he would give Rumiantsev three days to act or he would complain to the party Central Committee. He was sure to add that he was not an "opportunist, Trotskyite or Zinovievite, but one of our own". Panov, like many other workers, thought that he had a right to criticise a high party official, then a member of the Central Committee, and to demand attention from him. Stalin had said, "Listen to the voice of the people," and his regime favoured such positive elements in the system, for they encouraged productivity, satisfaction, and commitment to the state".
For a bourgeois historian, hostile to communism from the beginning, to write such a thing, implying that popular democracy was prevalent in the Soviet Union, says a great deal.
c. Control from below; drawing the masses into political activity; learning from the masses
You may have thought that the slogan of 'socialism from below' was the invention of one or other Trotskyist groupings, whose claim it is that the Soviet Union under Stalin was 'socialism from above' - i.e. Stalin was a dictator and there was no democracy for the working class. But the fact is that both Lenin and Stalin understood perfectly well the need for implementing the greatest 'control from below' - they fully appreciated the danger that bureaucracy could undermine the dictatorship of the proletariat, and they did all they could to eliminate this danger by making leaders accountable to the people and by drawing the greatest number of people possible into political activity.
Said Lenin in 1919:
"Bureaucracy has been defeated. The exploiters have been eliminated. But the cultural level has not been raised, and therefore the bureaucrats are occupying their old positions. They can be forced to retreat only if the proletariat and the peasants are organised far more extensively than has been the case up to now, and only if real measures are taken to enlist the workers in government." (Lenin, EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P. (B.), MARCH 18-23, 1919)
"If we want to combat bureaucracy, we must enlist the co-operation of the rank and file … what other way is there of putting an end to bureaucracy than by enlisting the co-operation of the workers and peasants?" (Lenin, vol. XXV, pp 496, 495)
Stalin explains the essential nature of the close relationship of people and party:
"It may he taken as a rule that so long as Bolsheviks keep contacts with the broad masses of the people, they will be invincib1e. And, contrariwise, it is sufficient for Bolsheviks to break away from the masses and lose contact with them, to become covered with bureaucratic rash, for them to lose all their strength and become converted into nonentities.
"In the system of mythology of the ancient Greeks there was one famous hero, Antaeus, who, as mythology declares, was the son of Poseidon, the God of the Sea, and Gaea, the Goddess or the Earth. He was partictuarly attached to his mother, who bore him, fed him and brought him up so that there was no hero whom this Antaeus did not vanquish. He was considered to be an invincible hero. Wherein lay his strength? It lay in the fact that every time he was hard-pushed in a struggle with an opponent, he touched the earth, his mother, who had borne him and fed him, and thus regained new strength.
"But, nevertheless, he had a weak spot -- the danger of being separated, in some way, from the earth. His enemies took account of this weakness of his, and waited for him. And an enemy was found who took advantage of this weakness and vanquished him. This was Hercules. But how did Hercules defeat him? He tore him from the earth, raised him into the air, deprived him of the possibility of touching the earth, and thus throttled him in the air.
"I think that Bolsheviks remind us of Antaeus, the hero of Greek mythology. Like Antaeus, they are strong in keeping contact with their mother, with the masses, who bore them, fed them and educated them. In addition, as long as they keep contact with their mother, with the people, they have every chance of remaining invincible.
"This is the key to the invincibility of Bolshevik leadership." (J. V. STALIN, MASTERING BOLSHEVISM, WORKERS LIBRARY PUBLISHERS, New York City, 1937)
Towards the aim of establishing workers' control, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection was set up by Lenin to combat deficiencies in the state apparatus. "The task is to help the Central Control Commission and the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection in their difficult work of improving, simplifying, reducing the cost of the state apparatus and bringing a healthier atmosphere into it from top to bottom" (Stalin)
"Some comrades think that people can only be checked up on from above, when the leaders check up on subordinates, on the results of their work. This is not true. Check-up from above is necessary, of course, as one of the effective measures for verifying people and checking up the fulfilment of tasks. But verification from above does not exhaust by far the whole business of verification. There is still another kind of verification, the check-up from below, in which the masses, the subordinates, verify the leaders, point out their mistakes, and show the way of correcting them. This kind of verification is one of the most effective methods of checking up on people. The rank-and-file members verify their leaders at meetings of active Party workers, at conferences and congresses, by listening to their reports, by criticising defects, and finally by electing or not electing some or other leading comrades to the leading Party organs. Precise operation of democratic centralism in the Party as demanded by our Party statutes, unconditional electiveness of Party organs, the right to put forward and to withdraw candidates, the secret ballot and freedom of criticism and self-criticism -- all these and similar measures must be carried into life, in order to facilitate the check-up on, and control over, the leaders of the Party by the rank-and-file Party members.
The non-party masses check their economic, trade union and other leaders at meetings of non-party active workers, at all kinds of mass conferences, where they hear reports of their leaders, criticise defects and indicate ways or correcting them. Finally, the people check leaders of the country during the elections to the Soviet Union organs of power, through universal, equal, direct and secret ballot.
The task is to link up the check from above with that from below." (J. V. STALIN, MASTERING BOLSHEVISM, WORKERS LIBRARY PUBLISHERS, New York City, 1937)
The Webs describe the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection thus: "Under the system of "workers’ and peasants’ inspection" every office was periodically visited, sometimes without notice, by a sort of jury, drawn from the common people, who insisted on having demonstrated to them the practical utility of every piece of "red tape". Stalin, who was placed at the head at the head of what became an extensive organisation extending all over the USSR, fortified these indiscriminate juries of inspection by a staff of officials trained in administrative routine, who tactfully directed the juryman’s eyes to matters needing reform and put into useful shape the jury’s criticism and suggestions." The Webbs point out that the WPI worked in conjunction with the "chistka", or cleansing, process to which all public departments were subjected occasionally. The Webbs a Mr. Calvin B. Hoover, descibing these chistkas: "When hearings are held before the cleaning commission, all the workesr of the industry are invited and expected to be present. As a matter of fact, anyone can be present, and anyone can ask questions of the person who is being ‘cleaned’. The process is not a pleasant one for the person ‘at the bar’, for every possible criticism that can be raked up is usually fired at his unlucky head. Every questionable act that he may have done, any indiscreet conversation, any part of his private life may be hauled out into the pitiless light of publicity. The janitor may accuse the director of having a bourgeois taste in neckties or of not providing proper safeguards for workmen in dangerous occupations. The ancestry of the victim is particularly examined into, and happy is he who can answer that his mother ‘came from the wooden plough’ and his father ‘came from the loom’, and thrice damned is he whose ancestry includes either kulak, bourgeois or landlord… Nevertheless, this institution gives a sense of power even to the individual workman. And it does serve to lessen any tendency on the part of the administrative personnel to be tyrannical in any special personal cases, lest the victim attain his revenge at the next chistka."
The Webbs also cite Ms Barbara Wootton, writing in 1934, on the WPI: "Undoubtedly the price of this meddlesome interference of the rank and file into affairs of which they must, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, understand nothing at all, is a considerable sacrifice of efficiency. But, even at that price, it may be argues that the safeguard which this affords against the odious vulgarities of class distinctions is well worth having. For those who are accustomed by the nature of their work to give commands, or are divorced from the crude physical realities of farm and mine and factory, what can be more salutary than some such direct personal reminder that they are no better than their fellows? The official intrusion of those who perform the smiplest, the dirtiest or the most tedious jobs into the secret places of those whose work is skilled, responsible and interesting (and paid for as such) provides a means of contact between the one group and the other that might never be established in any other way; and it makes at the same time a magnificent assertion that none shall judge the one superior to the other.
In 1934 the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection was superseded, as many were complaining that it was creating the need for even more paperwork than was already required. Also as the educational and cultural level had improved considerably since the WPI was set up, and there were hundreds of thousands of trained, experienced workers, it was possible for inspections to be carried out by people with expertise and experience in particular fields. The work of inspection was handed over to the All-Union Central Committee of Trade Unions.
Production Conferences were an excellent method of involving workers in organising production themselves and getting them to discuss difficulties and air criticisms. Stalin wrote: "Can [the country’s] tasks be accomplished without the direct assistance and support of the working class? No, they cannot. Advancing our industry, raising its productivity, creating new cadres of builders of industry, correctly conducting socialist accumulation, sensibly using accumulations for the needs of industry, establishing a regime of the strictest economy, tightening up the state apparatus, making it operate cheaply and honestly, purging it of the dross and filth which have adhered to it during the period of our work of construction, waging a systematic struggle against stealers and squanderers of state property -- all these are tasks which no party can cope with without the direct and systematic support of the vast masses of the working class. Hence, the task is to draw the vast masses of non-party workers into all our constructive work. Every worker, every honest peasant must assist the Party and the Government in putting into effect a regime of economy, in combating the misappropriation and dissipation of state reserves, in getting rid of thieves and swindlers, no matter what disguise they assume, and in making our state apparatus healthier and cheaper. Inestimable service in this respect could be rendered by production conferences. There was a time when production conferences were very much in vogue. Now, somehow, we don't hear about them. That is a great mistake, comrades. The production conferences must be revived at all costs. It is not only minor questions, for instance of hygiene, that must be put before them. Their programme must be made broader and more comprehensive. The principal questions of the building of industry must be placed before them. Only in that way is it possible to raise the activity of the vast masses of the working class and to make them conscious participants in the building of industry." (J. V. Stalin THE ECONOMIC SITUATION OF THE SOVIET UNION AND THE POLICY OF THE PARTY Leningradskaya Pravda, No. 89, April 18, 1926 From J. V. Stalin, Works Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954, Vol. 8, pp. 123-56.
Thurston notes that production conferences were revived, and is forced to admit that they were highly successful in providing an arena for workers to exercise their control (p.180). He also notes that those managers in industry who were well-known for being good listeners, who were attentive to workers and their suggestions, problems and grievances, who kept their doors open to the workers, were very well regarded by the higher authorities and were able to keep their positions for lengthy periods of time. Thurston also points out two other institutions that were open to workers to help exercise control: firstly the people’s courts; secondly the newspapers. He cites a Soviet émigré, interviewed by J. K. Zawodny in the early 1950s, as saying: "Honestly, I have to say that the People’s Court usually rendered just sentences favouring the workers, particularly with regard to housing cases". Another interviewee said: "anyone could complain in a formal way, especially when he had the law behind him. He could even write to a paper, and in this way let the higher officials know about his complaint." (p.185) Thurston’s narrative continues: "This often happened: for example, in the first half of 1935 workers sent two thousand letters to the newspaper of the Voroshilov factory in Vladivostok".
Another method of workers’ exerting their control was the comprehensive system of elections that was in place in the Soviet Union, at every level of state functioning. Stalin, in his famous interview with Roy Howard, of the Howard-Scripps Press on March 1st, 1936, "It seems to you that there will not be an electoral struggle. But there will be, and I foresee a very lively electoral struggle. We have not a few institutions which work badly. It sometimes happens that one or another local organ of power does not know how to satisfy one or another of the many-sided and ever-growing needs of toilers of city and country. Did you construct a good school or not? Did you better living conditions? Are you not a bureaucrat? Did you help make our work more effective, our life more cultured? Such will be the criteria with which millions of electors will approach candidates, discarding the unfit, crossing them out of the lists, putting forward the best and nominating them as candidates."
Stalin commented on the level of democracy in Soviet elections in a radio broadcast on the eve of the elections, December 12th 1937. He said: "Never in the history of the world has there been such a really free and democratic election, never! … Only within socialist society can there be such a democratic election…
"In capitalist states there exist some odd and, I would say, wholly eccentric relations between deputies and voters. Before the elections deputies entice and frolic with the voters, are obliging before them, wail and whimper about loyalty, give heaps of promises … [but afterward] the deputy can shift from one camp to another, he can change from the correct to the incorrect road, he can even embroil himself in unnecessary machinations, he can overturn somersaults at his pleasure: he is independent. But here voters have the right to recall their deputies at any time if they begin to evade, if they shift from the line, if they forget about their dependence on the people, on the voters. That is a wonderful law, comrades. The deputy must know that he is a servant of the people, its messenger to the Supreme Soviet and he must conduct himself along the line which the people have ordered him to follow." (cited in Frederick Schuman, ‘Soviet Politics At Home And Abroad, Robert Hale Ltd, 1948; p320)
The success in bringing workers into control of society is well documented in such books as Pat Sloan’s ‘Soviet Democracy’, Hewlett Johnson's ‘The Socialist Sixth of the World’ and the Webb’s ‘Soviet Communism - A New Civilisation’. It is quite clear that working class people became predominant at every level of administration of the country. Stalin, reporting to the 15th Congress of the CPSU (B) in 1927 says this:
"I would like to deal with three appointments that are significant. You know that Lobov has been appointed Chairman of the Supreme Council of National Economy of the R.S.F.S.R. He is a metalworker. You know that Ukhanov, a metalworker, has been elected Chairman of the Moscow Soviet in place of Kamenev. You know also that Komarov, also a metalworker, has been elected Chairman of the Leningrad Soviet in place of Zinoviev. Thus, the "Lord Mayors" of our two capitals are metalworkers. (Applause.) It is true that they are not of the nobility, but they are managing the affairs of our capitals better than any member of the nobility. (Applause.) You may say that this is a tendency towards metallisation, but I don't think there is anything bad about that. (Voices: "On the contrary, it is very good.")
"Let us wish the capitalist countries, let us wish London, let us wish Paris, success in catching up with us at last and in putting up their own metalworkers as "Lord Mayors." (Applause.)" (J. V. Stalin, THE FIFTEENTH CONGRESS OF THE CPSU (B.), December 2-19, 1927)
"In the same report, Stalin adds: "It is indisputable that during the past few years the old cadres of our Party have been permeated with new, rising cadres, consisting mainly of workers. Formerly, we counted our cadres in hundreds and thousands, but now we have to count them in tens of thousands. I think that if we begin from the lowest organisations, the shop and team organisations, and proceed to the top, all over the Union, we shall find that our Party cadres, the overwhelming majority of whom are workers, now number not less than 100,000. This indicates the immense growth of our Party. It indicates the immense growth of our cadres, the growth of their ideological and organisational experience, the growth of their communist culture."
One small illustration of how the state was perceived by the people, is the sheer volume of letters that were written to the leaders of the party and state.
The amount of correspondence was staggering:
"One of the chief revelations to come from the opening of the Soviet Archives is the sheer volume of letters received by newspapers, as well as party and state leaders and institutions. We now know that in the not atypical month of July 1935, Krest'ianskaia Gazeta (the
peasants newspaper) received approximately 26,000 letters. Mikhail Kalinin who as president of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets was one of the most frequent recipients of letters, relieved an average of 77,000 a year between 12923 and 1935. Throughout 1936 Andrei Zahdanov Leningrad Party secretary received 130 letters a day. The regional party secretary in Denpropetrovsk, Mikhail Khataevich, reported, perhaps with some exaggeration that he received 250 letters per day. Letters also poured in to other newspapers, municipal soviets, procurators' offices, the Peoples Commissariat of internal Affairs (NKVD), party and state commissions, and the offices of Politburo members and government leaders including Stalin."
Siegelbaum; Ibid; Introduction p. 9.
"The familiar even intimate tone of many of the letters also suggested the link between the personal and the political. .. One notes for example, that letters sent to Mikhail Kalinin president of the Executive Committee of the Soviets, addressed him as `all-Union elder (starosta) – a term combining Soviet and village communal lexicons – and more frequently as `dear uncle' and `grandfather'. Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's widow and an important official in the RSFR's Commissariat of Education becomes `Dear NK".."
Lewis Siegelbaum and Adrei Sokolov `Stalinism as a Way of Life'; Yale New Haven, 2000; Introduction p. 22.
Siegelbaum is simply an academic, he is not a communist. Yet even he does not dispute that these letters are real. Scholars have repetitively discussed the torrent of letters to both high
officials, local officials and the various presses. When the Nazi army invaded into the USSR, it captured various Soviet archives in the city of Smoklensk. These were shopped to Germany, where the USA army seized them at the end of the war.
Many of these letters were used as "the jumping off point for an investigation" [Merle Fainsod; `Smolensk Under Soviet Rule'; London 1958; p.379]. Several examples are given by Fainsod of instances where abuses, both in the kolkhoz and in factories – were highlighted by letter writers, and which forced Soviet authorities to make redress. Fainsod refers to the case of D.V.Gapeshin ` a senior stableman in the `perelom' kolkhoz, who wrote to raikom secretary [ie secretary of an intermediate administrative layer] on the drunkenness and mismanagement of kolkhoz chairman Volkov. Redress followed, although not without a protracted course [Fainsod p.380-383].
We know that Stalin therefore was in favour of the voice for the masses being heard.
Perhaps the best example of this was the full discussions that took place over the Stalin Constitution. As Siegelbaum puts it:
"The draft of the Stalin Constitution in 1936, the subject of the third chapter, occasioned something akin to a national referendum on the Stalin version of socialism. Seizing the opportunity presented by the Constitution's incorporation of a language of rights, letter writers and participants in formal discussions projected their own ideas, hopes, and resentments onto the document. … "
Introduction Siegelbuam; Ibid; p. 7.
That some of the correspondence was highly critical to the state, is clear:
"On the basis of recent archival research, it had become clear that practically every major state initiative of the 1930's was accompanied by some form of popular resistance. In the case of the full scale collectivization, which commenced in late 1929, resistance was massive. It ran the gamut from insurgencies and other acts of violence to murders of collectivizers and their local collaborators, to vociferous protests by women the so-called bab'I bunty), frequently in connection with raion soviet decisions to close churches and/or confiscate church property, to the razbazarivanie (`squandering") of livestock and other property
through slaughter and sale, the destruction of collective farm buildings, the liberation of arrested kulaks, the reacquisition of confiscated property, and the disbandment of collective farms.";
Siegelbaum; Introduction Ibid p. 12.
This criticism reinforces two points.
Firstly that Stalin, at least on the basis of his reply to Gorky was aware of the mass of such correspondence and did not wish to shut it down. His praise of this type of correspondence showed that he wished to sue it against the dangers of a sterile bureaucracy.
The discussions on the proposed new Soviet Constitution were very significant.
"The discussion and adoption of a new Soviet Constitution was one of the most important public events of the 1930's. .. the Constitution was designed to consolidate the principles of the new socialist state and social system";
Siegelbaum Ibid; p. 158.
It differed from the first federal constitution adopted under Lenin's guidance, but after his
death – some 13 years earlier. The Constitution of 1936:
`reflected the new `correlation of class forces in the USSR' – that is the elimination of landlordism, kulaks and capitalist in the intervening periods – it proclaimed a system of universal secret ballot suffrage, albeit under the aegis of the Communist party… the new
basic law of the land also reflected changes in official thinking about the role of law in a socialist society.. the main spokesman for the new approach was A Ya Vyshinsky, whose appointment as Procurator-General of the USSR in 1935 symbolized the ascendance of that philosophy. Taking his cue from Stalin's assertion that the ` withering of the state will not come through a weakening of state authority, but through its maximum intensification".
Siegelbaum Ibid p. 159.
Despite Siegelbaum's insistence that this debate was `controlled' from above, and that the numbers are `inflated' - the statistics of its depth are astounding. It is clear that even Siegelbaum is impressed.
"The figures on the participants in the discussion of the draft are mind-boggling. According to official data 623,334 meetings were held around the country; they were attended by 42,372,990 people who produced 169,739 proposals comments, and prospective amendments. … the campaign's organizers themselves resisted the temptation to claim that every individual participated in debating the constitution… for example it was reported form Moldavia that the "the discussion involved 70.5 % of voters", from Vonronezh Oblast meeting of working people have been attended by1,130,000 people or 71 % of voters.."
Siegelbaum Ibid p.162.
I will not dwell on this subject, as other presentations to this society have dealt with the purges in some detail. Suffice to say that bureaucracy was not just a problem of the state but also of the party, at all levels. Those who were found by the Central Control Commission of being corrupt or bureaucratic were purged from the party without much in the way of ceremony. Ludo Martens points out in ‘Another View of Stalin’ that "after each massive recruitment wave, the leadership had to sort". The first purge was carried out in 1921, 0where 25% of party members were excluded - 45% of all members in the countryside. Another purge in 1929 resulted in the exclusion of 11% of the membership; another purge in 1933 resulted in the exclusion of 18% of the membership, which had grown from 30,000 in 1917 to 600,000 in 1921 to 1,500,000 in 1929, to 2,500,000 in 1932 (All figures from Ludo’s book).
According to the Webbs, the features of the 1933 purge were as follows:
- attention paid to ensuring that every member should have a competent knowledge of the Party program and the most important decisions, so as to be able to explain them to the non-party masses;
- the strict examination, in "the nuclei attached to the non-productive undertakings" of the conduct of those who "abuse the Party position for personal ends, embezzlement, nepotism, careerism, bureaucratic attitude towards the masses";
- in the rural districts, the sharp scrutiny of the way each member "is fighting for the … fulfilling of obligations of the collective farms … against the kulak and his agents" and how he is "protecting the socialist common property" (all quotes from Pravda).
Ludo notes that "during the May 1937 electoral campaign, for the 54,000 Party rank and file organisations for which we have data, 55% of the directing committees were replaced. In the Leningrad region, 48% of the members of the local committees were replaced. Getty [J. Arch Getty, in ‘Origins of the Great Purges’] noted that this was the most important, most general and most effective antibureaucratic campaign that the party had ever effected."
Stalin talked often about the necessity to rid the party of bureaucrats and egoists: In his Report to the 17th Congress, he says the following:
"Besides the incorrigible bureaucrats and red-tapists, as to whose removal there are no differences of opinion among us, there are two other types of executive who retard our work, hinder our work, and hold up our advance.
"One of these types of executive consists of people who rendered certain services in the past, people who have become big-wigs, who consider that Party decisions and Soviet laws are not written for them, but for fools. These are the people who do not consider it their duty to fulfil the decisions of the Party and of the Government, and who thus destroy the foundations of party and state discipline. What do they count upon when they violate Party decisions and Soviet laws? They presume that the Soviet government will not venture to touch them, because of their past services. These overconceited bigwigs think that they are irreplaceable, and that they can violate the decisions of the leading bodies with impunity. What is to be done with executives of this kind? They must unhesitatingly be removed from their leading posts, irrespective of past services. (Voices : "Quite right!") They must be demoted to lower positions and this must be announced in the press. (Voices: "Quite right!") This is essential in order to bring those conceited bigwig bureaucrats down a peg or two, and to put them in their proper place. This is essential in order to strengthen Party and Soviet discipline in the whole of our work. (Voices: "Quite right!" Applause.)
"And now about the second type of executive. I have in mind the windbags, I would say honest windbags (laughter ), people who are honest and loyal to the Soviet power, but who are incapable of leadership, incapable of organising anything. Last year I had a conversation with one such comrade, a very respected comrade, but an incorrigible windbag, capable of drowning any live undertaking in a flood of talk. Here is the conversation:
I: How are you getting on with the sowing?
He: With the sowing, Comrade Stalin? We have mobilised ourselves. (Laughter.)
I: Well, and what then?
He: We have put the question squarely. (Laughter.)
I: And what next?
He: There is a turn, Comrade Stalin; soon there will be a turn. (Laughter.)
I: But still?
He: We can see an indication of some improvement. (Laughter.)
I: But still, how are you getting on with the sowing?
He: So far, Comrade Stalin, we have not made any headway with the sowing. (General laughter.)
"There you have the portrait of the windbag. They have mobilised themselves, they have put the question squarely, they have a turn and some improvement, but things remain as they were.
"This is exactly how a Ukrainian worker recently described the state of a certain organisation when he was asked whether that organisation had any definite line: "Well," he said, "as to a line . . . they have a line all right, but they don't seem to be doing any work." (General laughter.) Evidently, that organisation also has its honest windbags.
"And when such windbags are dismissed from their posts and are given jobs far removed from operative work, they shrug their shoulders in perplexity and ask: "Why have we been dismissed? Did we not do all that was necessary to get the work done? Did we not organise a rally of shock brigaders? Did we not proclaim the slogans of the Party and of the Government at the conference of shock brigaders? Did we not elect the whole of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee to the Honorary Presidium? (General laughter.) Did we not send greetings to Comrade Stalin -- what more do you want of us?" (General laughter.)
"What is to be done with these incorrigible windbags? Why, if they were allowed to remain on operative work they are capable of drowning every live undertaking in a flood of watery and endless speeches. Obviously, they must be removed from leading posts and given work other than operative work. There is no place for windbags on operative work. (Voices: "Quite right!" Applause.)"
With regard to purges, the Webbs wrote: "Collectivists themselves do well to overhaul, from time to time, the social apparatus they are driven to construct. The leaders of the Soviet Union have repeatedly insisted on such an overhaul. During the present year (1937), strenuous efforts have been made, both in the trade union organisation and in the Communist Party, to cut out the dead wood. The officials of every grade are told to remember that their first duty is to serve the public. The rank and file of their membership, in these organisations, and also those in the consumers’ co-operative movement and the collective farms, are scolded for not insisting on more frequent meetings, and for failing at such meetings to complain of every shortcoming. To the student familiar with the bureaucracy of the American joint-stock monopolies, French government offices, or Italian identity papers, what is remarkable in the Soviet Union is, not the amount of its bureaucracy in this sense, but the sustained effort that is made to suppress it, and to lessen its inconveniences to the public" (Sidney and Beatrice Webb, ‘Soviet Communism - A New Civilisation’, 1937, p.1212)
Said Stalin in his pamphlet ‘The Economic Situation Of The Soviet Union And The Policy Of The Party’, published in Pravda in 1926, "The Party … must firmly and resolutely adopt the course of inner-Party democracy; our organisations must draw the broad mass of the Party membership, which determines the fate of our Party, into discussing the questions of our constructive work. Without this, there can be no question of raising the activity of the working class." Stalin pointed out in his writings and speeches that discussion was a sign of the party’s strength, of its political maturity and the high quality of its membership (see his speech ‘The Party’s Tasks’, published in Pravda on December 6, 1923). But he was also not afraid to point out that the Party was not a talking shop, a debating society; the Party was a party of action, where discussion took place in order to guide action; and that action, once the discussion was closed, was to be united action, regardless of the positions taken in the debate.
One reflection of an increasingly democratic party, one which was increasingly representative of the masses, is the fact that the party grew to an enormous extent in the Stalin era, starting with what is known as the Lenin Enrolment, where 250,000 people, realising the need to cement the roots of the party after Lenin’s death, joined. Nikolai Ostrovsky’s famous novel ‘How The Steel Was Tempered’ contains a beautiful passage about the Lenin Enrolment: Artem, brother of the story’s hero Pavel, explains his decision to join the party: "'…now that our Comrade Lenin is gone and the Party has issued its call, I have looked back at my life and seen what was lacking. It's not enough to defend your own power, we have to stick together like one big family, in Lenin's place, so that the Soviet power should stand solid like a mountain of steel. We must become Bolsheviks. It's our Party, isn't it?'" The narrative continues: "The death of Lenin brought many thousands of workers into the Bolshevik Party. The leader was gone but the Party's ranks were unshaken. A tree that has thrust its mighty roots deep into the ground does not perish if its crown is severed".
But Stalin was very careful to point out that simply increasing numbers did not automatically strengthen the party or make it more democratic: The biggest parties can perish if they yield to infatuation, seize too much and then prove incapable of embracing, digesting what they have captured. Judge for yourselves. Political illiteracy in our Party is as high as 60 per cent -- 60 per cent prior to the Lenin Enrolment, and I am afraid that with the Lenin Enrolment it will be brought up to 80 per cent. Is it not time to call a halt, comrades? Is it not time to confine ourselves to 800,000 members and put the question squarely and sharply of improving the quality of the membership, of teaching the Lenin Enrolment the foundations of Leninism, of converting the new members into conscious Leninists? I think it is time to do that. (J. V. Stalin, THE FIFTEENTH CONGRESS OF THE C.P.S.U. (B.), December 2-19, 1927)
Stalin was also very careful that party posts should be filled not by co-option and appointment but by electoral methods. He wrote in the speech cited above on ‘The Party’s Tasks’ that: "the principle of election must be applied in practice to all Party bodies and official posts, if there are no insuperable obstacles to this such as lack of the necessary Party standing, and so forth. We must eliminate the practice of ignoring the will of the majority of the organisations in promoting comrades to responsible Party posts, and we must see to it that the principle of election is actually applied."
There was considerable progress in terms of developing inner-party democracy:
"Only the blind fail to see that inner-Party democracy, genuine inner-Party democracy, an actual upsurge of activity on the part of the mass of the Party membership, is growing and developing in our Party. There is talk about democracy. But what is democracy in the Party? Democracy for whom? If by democracy is meant freedom for a couple or so of intellectuals divorced from the revolution to engage in endless chatter, to have their own press organ, etc., then we have no use for such "democracy," because it is democracy for an insignificant minority that sets at naught the will of the overwhelming majority. If, however, by democracy is meant freedom for the mass of the Party membership to decide questions connected with our work of construction, an upsurge of activity of the Party membership, drawing them into the work of Party leadership, developing in them the feeling that they are the masters in the Party, then we have such democracy, that is the democracy we need, and we shall steadily develop it in spite of everything. (Applause.)
...[P]arallel with inner-Party democracy, collective leadership is growing, step by step, in our Party. Take our Central Committee and the Central Control Commission. Together they constitute a leading centre of 200-250 comrades, which meets regularly and decides highly important questions connected with our work of construction. It is one of the most democratic and collectively functioning centres our Party has ever had. Well? Is it not a fact that the settlement of highly important questions concerning our work is passing more and more from the hands of a narrow upper group into the hands of this broad centre, which is most closely connected with all branches of our work of construction and with all the districts of our vast country?" (J. V. Stalin, THE FIFTEENTH CONGRESS OF THE C.P.S.U. (B.), December 2-19, 1927)
It is worth saying a few words here about the distinction between inner-party democracy and factionalism. Lenin and Stalin were both very clear that the establishment of blocs and factions within the party did not serve to strengthen inner-party democracy; rather they destroyed inner-party democracy by undermining party unity, by abolishing free discussion with the fight for an ‘alternative’ program by one particular group or faction. In the words of Stalin, in his Theses for the All-Union Conference of the CPSU (B), 1926, "The Party takes as its starting point that "whoever weakens in the least the iron discipline of the Party of the proletariat (especially during the time of its dictatorship), actually aids the bourgeoisie against the proletariat" (Lenin, Vol. XXV, p. 190); that inner-Party democracy is necessary not in order to weaken and shatter proletarian discipline in the Party, but in order to strengthen and consolidate it, and that without iron discipline in the Party, without a firm regime in the Party, backed by the sympathy and support of the vast masses of the proletariat, the dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible.
"The opposition bloc, on the other hand, starts out by counter-posing inner-Party democracy to Party discipline, confuses freedom of groups and factions with inner-Party democracy, and tries to make use of such democracy to shatter Party discipline and undermine the unity of the Party. It is natural that the opposition bloc's call for a fight against the "regime" in the Party, which leads in practice to advocacy of freedom of groups and factions in the Party, should be a call that is taken up with fervour by the anti-proletarian elements in our country as a means of salvation from the regime of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
"The conference considers that the fight of the opposition bloc against the "regime" in the Party, a fight which has nothing in common with the organisational principles of Leninism, can only result in undermining the unity of the Party, weakening the dictatorship of the proletariat and unleashing the anti-proletarian forces in the country that are striving to undermine and shatter the dictatorship."
This question of freedom of factions and opposition is one which has caused much confusion, and one that has caused many to label the Soviet Union and the CPSU (B) under Stalin as ‘undemocratic’ (the fact that this party discipline originated in fact with Lenin is neither here nor there!). Pat Sloan gives an excellent summary of the complicated relationship between democracy and dictatorship in the Soviet Union in his book ‘Soviet Democracy’: "The truth of the matter is that under all conditions a struggle by a democratic organisation for its freedom is a limitation on the democratic rights of the opponents of that freedom. And once, in a critical situation, a minority continues to oppose the interests of the majority, such a minority becomes, consciously or not, a weapon of the enemy against the bureaucracy concerned … [D]emocracy and dictatorship are not mutually exclusive". With the Party and the state under constant threat from internal and external enemies, there could be no question of a ‘talking shop’ type of party, where members were free from organisational discipline.
f. Addressing various defects in the party and state apparatus
There were of course a thousand and one different types of bureaucratic defect in the party and in the Soviet administration. Stalin gives some very vivid examples in his report to the 17th Congress of the CPSU (B) on the work of the Central Committee:
"I shall not dilate on those defects in our state apparatus that are glaring enough as it is. I have in mind, primarily, "Mother Red Tape." I have at hand a heap of materials on the matter of red tape, exposing the criminal negligence of a number of judicial, administrative, insurance, co-operative and other organisations.
"Here is a peasant who went to a certain insurance office twenty-one times to get some matter put right, and even then failed to get any result. Here is another peasant, an old man of sixty-six, who walked 600 versts to get his case cleared up at an Uyezd Social Maintenance Office, and even then failed to get any result.
"Here is an old peasant woman, fifty-six years old, who, in response to a summons by a people's court, walked 500 versts and travelled over 600 versts by horse and cart, and even then failed to get justice done.
"A multitude of such facts could be quoted. It is not worth while enumerating them. But this is a disgrace to us, comrades! How can such outrageous things be tolerated?
"Lastly, facts about "demoting." It appears, that in addition to workers who are promoted, there are also such as are "demoted," who are pushed into the background by their own comrades, not because they are incapable or inefficient, but because they are conscientious and honest in their work.
"Here is a worker, a tool-maker, who was promoted to a managerial post at his plant because he was a capable and incorruptible man. He worked for a couple of years, worked honestly, introduced order, put a stop to inefficiency and waste. But, working in this way, he trod on the toes of a gang of so-called "Communists," he disturbed their peace and quiet. And what happened? This gang of "Communists" put a spoke in his wheel and thus compelled him to "demote himself," as much as to say: "You wanted to be smarter than us, you won't let us live and make a bit in quiet -- so take a back seat, brother."
"Here is another worker, also a tool-maker, an adjuster of bolt-cutting machines, who was promoted to a managerial post at his factory. He worked zealously and honestly. But, working in this way, he disturbed somebody's peace and quiet. And what happened? A pretext was found and they got rid of this "troublesome" comrade. How did this promoted comrade leave, what were his feelings? Like this: "In whatever post I was appointed to I tried to justify the confidence that was placed in me. But this promotion played a dirty trick on me and I shall never forget it. They threw mud at me. My wish to bring everything into the light of day remained a mere wish. Neither the works committee, nor the management, nor the Party unit would listen to me. I am finished with promotion, I would not take another managerial post even if offered my weight in gold" (Trud,[ 81] No. 128, June 9, 1927).
"But this is a disgrace to us, comrades! How can such outrageous things be tolerated?
"The Party's task is , in fighting against bureaucracy and for the improvement of the state apparatus, to extirpate with a red-hot iron such outrageous things in our practical work as those I have just spoken about".
Stalin goes onto talk about another shortcoming in the work of the Party:
"A second shortcoming. It consists in introducing administrative methods in the Party, in replacing the method of persuasion, which is of decisive importance for the Party, by the method of administration. This shortcoming is a danger no less serious than the first one. Why? Because it creates the danger of our Party organisations, which are independently acting organisations, being converted into mere bureaucratic institutions. If we take into account that we have not less than 60,000 of the most active officials distributed among all sorts of economic, co-operative and state institutions, where they are fighting bureaucracy, it must be admitted that some of them, while fighting bureaucracy in those institutions, sometimes become infected with bureaucracy themselves and carry that infection into the Party organisation. And this is not our fault, comrades, but our misfortune, for that process will continue to a greater or lesser degree as long as the state exists. And precisely because that process has some roots in life, we must arm ourselves for the struggle against this shortcoming, we must raise the activity of the mass of the Party membership, draw them into the decision of questions concerning our Party leadership, systematically implant inner-Party democracy and prevent the method of persuasion in our Party practice being replaced by the method of administration."
"A third shortcoming. This consists in the desire of a number of our comrades to swim with the stream, smoothly and calmly, without perspective, without looking into the future, in such a way that a festive and holiday atmosphere should be felt all around, that we should have celebration meetings every day, with applause everywhere, and that all of us should be elected in turn as honorary members of all sorts of presidiums. (Laughter, applause.)
"Now it is this irresistible desire to see a festive atmosphere everywhere, this longing for decoration, for all sorts of anniversaries, necessary and unnecessary, this desire to swim with the stream without noticing where it is taking us (laughter, applause) -- it is all this that forms the substance of the third shortcoming in our Party practice, the basis of the defects in our Party life."
In the same speech, comrade Stalin addresses yet another element of bureaucracy - the failure to implement in reality a line agreed by the Party:
"Some people think that it is sufficient to draw up a correct Party line, proclaim it for all to hear, state it in the form of general theses and resolutions, and have it voted for unanimously, for victory to come of itself, automatically, as it were. That, of course, is wrong. It is a gross delusion. Only incorrigible bureaucrats and red-tapists can think so. As a matter of fact, these successes and victories did not come automatically, but as the result of a fierce struggle for the application of the Party line. Victory never comes of itself -- it is usually won by effort. Good resolutions and declarations in favour of the general line of the Party are only a beginning; they merely express the desire for victory, but not the victory itself. After the correct line has been laid down, after a correct solution of the problem has been found, success depends on how the work is organised; on the organisation of the struggle for carrying out the Party line; on the proper selection of personnel; on checking upon the fulfilment of the decisions of the leading bodies. Other wise the correct line of the Party and the correct solutions are in danger of being seriously prejudiced. More than that, after the correct political line has been laid down, organisational work decides everything, including the fate of the political line itself, its success or failure". Stalin continues this theme by suggesting that it is necessary to implement a far-reaching system of checking of fulfilment of decisions in order to weed out the bureaucrats and red-tapists.
Stalin points out more weaknesses in the work of the Party in his report to the plenum of the CC of the CPSU (B) in 1937 on ‘Mastering Bolshevism’:
"Can it be said that this Bolshevik rule is carried out by our Party comrades? Unfortunately, it cannot be said. It has already been spoken of here at the plenum. But not everything was said. The fact is that this well-tried rule is violated right and left in our practice and, moreover, in the grossest way. Most frequently, workers are selected not according to objective criteria, but according to accidental, subjective, narrow and provincial criteria. Most frequently so-called acquaintances are chosen, personal friends, fellow townsmen, people who have shown personal devotion, masters of eulogies to their patrons, irrespective of whether they are suitable from a political and a business-like standpoint.
"Naturally, instead of a leading group of responsible workers, a family group, a company, is formed, the members of which try to live peacefully, not to offend each other, not to wash their dirty linen in public, to eulogize each other and from time to time to send inane and nauseating reports to the center about successes.
"It is not difficult to understand that in such conditions of kinship there can be no place either for criticism of the shortcomings of the work, or for self-criticism by the leaders of the work.
"Naturally, such conditions of kinship create a favorable environment for generating bootlickers, people without any sense of dignity, and therefore having nothing in common with Bolshevism.
"Take, for example, Comrades Mirzoyan and Vainov. The former is secretary of the regional Party organization in Kazakstan; the latter is secretary of the Yaroslav regional Party organization. These people are not the most backward workers in our midst. And how do they select workers?
"The former dragged along with him from Azerbaijan and the Urals, where he formerly worked, into Kazakstan thirty or forty of his "own" people, and placed them in responsible positions in Kazakstan. The latter dragged along with him from the Donbas, where he formerly worked, to Yaroslav a dozen or so of his "own" people also, and also placed them in responsible positions. Consequently, Comrade Mirzoyan has his own crew. Comrade Vainov also has his.
"Was it really impossible to select workers from the local people, being guided by the well-known Bolshevik rule on the selection and placing of people? Of course, it was possible. Why then did they not do so? Because the Bolshevik rule for the selection of workers excludes the possibility of a narrow parochial approach, excludes the possibility of workers being selected according to criteria of kinship and being "one of the gang". In addition, when selecting personally devoted people as workers, these comrades evidently have wanted to create for themselves conditions which give them a certain independence both of the local people and of the Central Committee of the Party.
"Let us suppose that Comrades Mirzoyan and Vainov, owing to some circumstances or other, are transferred from their present place of work to some other place. How should they act in such a case regarding their "tails"? Will they really have to drag them along once more to their new place of work?
"This is the absurdity resulting from the violation of the Bolshevik rule on the correct selection and distribution of workers."
So it can be seen that Stalin initiated several campaigns against each level of bureaucracy.
We have seen that Lenin, Stalin and the main stream of the CPSU led a determined struggle against all forms of bureaucracy. But for some reason the accusations of Trotsky and the ‘opposition’ in its various forms - the so-called Workers’ Opposition, the New Opposition, etc - that the Soviet Union was run by bureaucrats with Stalin as the chief bureaucrat never stopped.
But it is interesting to see that the accusation of bureaucracy was an old favourite of Trotsky’s - he had used it against Lenin also. The following passage is from Ludo’s book:
"In 1904, Trotsky accused Lenin of being a bureaucrat making the party degenerate into a revolutionary-bourgeois organisation. Lenin was blinded by the ‘bureaucratic logic of such and such "organisational plan"’, but ‘the fiasco of organisational fetishism’ was certain…
"In 1923, Trotsky wrote the same thing about Stalin, but using a more moderate tone: ‘bureaucratisation threatens to … provoke a more or less opportunistic degeneration of the Old Guard’" (p.44)
What is most notable about Trotsky’s accusations of bureaucracy and degeneration of party democracy is that they were very rarely accompanied by practical suggestions (other than implications in favour of factionalism). Stalin also made sweeping attacks against bureaucracy in his writings and speeches, but the difference between them is that Stalin made these problem real, tangible, and hence solvable, by discussing exactly what the party and the state bodies could do to tackle these problems. Trotsky, on the other hand, made his vague, demagogic criticisms (many of which did contain an element of truth, and which were also made by Stalin) which were designed only to bring about a distrust of the leadership, to encourage disagreement.
As Stalin said, this is not the sort of criticism we need:
"It goes without saying that what we have in mind is not just "any sort" of criticism. Criticism by a counter-revolutionary is also criticism. But its object is to discredit the Soviet regime, to undermine our industry, to disrupt our Party work. Obviously, it is not such criticism we have in mind. It is not of such criticism I am speaking, but of criticism that comes from Soviet people, and which has the aim of improving the organs of Soviet rule, of improving our industry, of improving our Party and trade-union work. We need criticism in order to strengthen the Soviet regime, not to weaken it. And it is precisely with a view to strengthening and improving our work that the Party proclaims the slogan of criticism and self-criticism." (Stalin THE WORK OF THE APRIL JOINT PLENUM OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AND CENTRAL CONTROL COMMISSION Report Delivered at a Meeting of the Active of the Moscow Organisation of the C.P.S.U. (B.) April 13, 1928)
Lenin pointed out, in response to Trotsky’s accusations of bureaucracy in the trade unions: "It will take decades to overcome the evils of bureaucracy. It is a very difficult struggle, and anyone who says we can rid ourselves of bureaucratic practices overnight by adopting anti-bureaucratic platforms is nothing but a quack with a bent for fine words." (Address to the 8th Congress of the RCP(B), March 18-23, 1919) Lenin continues: "Comrade Trotsky says that Comrades Tomsky and Lozovsky - trade unionists both - are guilty of cultivating in their midst a spirit of hostility for the new men. But this is monstrous. Only someone in the lunatic fringe can say a thing like that.
"This haste leads to arguments, platforms and accusations, and eventually creates the impression that everything is rotten" - precisely what Trotsky was trying to do with his incessant slurs of bureaucracy.
Trotsky’s true meaning when he refers to bureaucracy comes out in his famous work ‘The Revloution Betrayed’, written in 1936 (as the USSR was preparing itself for impending war):
"There is no peaceful outcome for the crisis. No devil ever yet voluntarily cut off his own claws. The soviet bureaucracy will not give up its position without a fight. The development leads obviously to the road of revolution … The bureaucracy can be removed only by a revolutionary force. And, as always, there will be fewer victims the more bold and decisive is the attack. To prepare this and stand at the head of the masses in a favourable historic situation - that is the task of the Soviet section of the Fourth International.
"Healthy young lungs find it intolerable to breathe in the atmosphere of hypocrisy inseparable from a Thermidor … the more impatient, hot-blooded, unbalanced, injured in their interests and feelings, are turning their thoughts in the direction of terrorist revenge. … Although completely impotent to solve the problems which it sets itself, this individual terror has nevertheless an extremely important symptomatic significance. It characterises the sharp contradiction between the bureaucracy and the broad masses of the people!"
12. Trotsky's rôle on the eve of the Second World War
During the thirties, Trotsky literally became the world's expert on anti-Communism. Even today, right-wing ideologues peruse Trotsky's works in search of weapons against the Soviet Union under Stalin.
In 1982, when Reagan was again preaching the anti-Communist crusade, Henri Bernard, Professor Emeritus at the Royal Military School of Belgium, published a book to spread the following urgent message:
`The Communists of 1982 are the Nazis of 1939. We are weaker in front of Moscow than we were in August 1939 in front of Hitler.' Bernard, op. cit. , p. 9.
All of the standard clichés of Le Pen , the fascist French Front National leader, are there:
`Terrorism is not the act of a few crazies. The basis of everything is the Soviet Union and the clandestine network of international terrorism.' Ibid. , p. 121.
`Christian leftism is a Western wound.
`The synchronicity of `pacifist' demonstrations shows how they were inspired by Moscow.' Ibid. , p. 123.
`The British commandos who went to die in the Falklands showed that there still exist moral values in the West.' Ibid. , p. 11.
But the tactics used by such an avowed anti-Communist as Bernard are very interesting. Here is how a man who, despite despising a `leftist Christian', will ally himself with Trotsky.
`The private Lenin was, like Trotsky, a human being .... His personal life was full of nuance ....
`Trotsky should normally have succeeded Lenin ... he was the main architect of the October Revolution, the victor of the Civil War, the creator of the Red Army ....
`Lenin had much respect for Trotsky. He thought of him as successor. He thought Stalin was too brutal ....
`Within the Soviet Union, Trotsky rose up against the imposing bureaucracy that was paralysing the Communist machine ....
`Artist, educated, non-conformist and often prophet, he could not get along with the main dogmatists in the Party ....
`Stalin was nationalist, a sentiment that did not exist either in Lenin or Trotsky .... With Trotsky, the foreign Communist Parties could consider themselves as a force whose sole purpose was to impose a social order. With Stalin, they worked for the Kremlin and to further its imperialist politics.' Ibid. , pp. 48--50.
We present here a few of the main theses that Trotsky put forward during the years 1937--1940, and that illustrate the nature of his absolute anti-Communist struggle. They allow one to understand why people in the Western security services, such as Henri Bernard, use Trotsky to fight Communists. They also shed some light on the class struggle between Bolsheviks and opportunists and on some aspects of the Purge of 1937--1938.
The enemy is the new aristocracy, the new Bolshevik bourgeoisie
For Trotsky, the main enemy was at the head of the Soviet State: it was the `new Bolshevik aristocracy', the most anti-Socialist and anti-democratic layer of the society, a social layer that lived like `the well-to-do bourgeois of the United States'! Here is how he phrased it.
`The privileged bureaucracy ... now represents the most antisocialist and the most antidemocratic sector of Soviet society.' Trotsky, Thermidor et l'antisémitisme (22 February 1937). La lutte, pp. 143--144.
`We accuse the ruling clique of having transformed itself into a new aristocracy, oppressing and robbing the masses .... The higher layer of the bureaucracy lives approximately the same kind of life as the well-to-do bourgeois of the United States and other capitalist countries.' Trotsky, The World Situation and Perspectives (14 February 1940). Writings, vol. 12, pp. 148--149.
This language makes Trotsky indistinguishable from the Menshevik leaders when they were leading the counter-revolutionary armed struggle, alongside the White and interventionist armies. Also indistinguishable from the language of the classical Right of the imperialist countries.
Compare Trotsky with the main anti-Communist ideologue in the International Confederation of Christian Unions (CISC), P. J. S. Serrarens, writing in 1948:
`There are thanks to Stalin, once again `classes' and rich people .... Just like in a capitalist society, the élite is rewarded with money and power. There is what `Force Ouvrière' (France) calls a `Soviet aristocracy'. This weekly compares it to the aristocracy created by Napoleon.' P. J. S. Serrarens, La Russie et l'Occident ( Utrecht: Confédération Internationale des Syndicats Chrétiens, n.d.), pp. 33, 37.
After World War II, the French union Force Ouvrière to which Serrarens was referring was directly created and financed by the CIA. The `Lambertist' Trotskyist group worked, and still works, inside it. At that time, the CISC, be it in Italy or Belgium, worked directly for the CIA for the defence of the capitalist system in Europe. To mobilize the workers against Communism, it used a revolting `anti-capitalist' demagoguery that it borrowed from the social-democrats and the Trotskyists: in the Soviet Union, there was a `new class of rich people', a `Soviet aristocracy'.
Confronting this `new aristocracy, oppressing and robbing the masses', Trotsky, The World Situation, p. 148.
there were, in Trotsky's eyes, `one hundred and sixty millions who are profoundly discontented'. Ibid. , p. 149.
These `people' were protecting the collectivization of the means of production and the planned economy against the `ignorant and despotic Stalinist thieves'. In other words, apart from the `Stalinists', the rest of the society was clean and led just struggles! Listen to Trotsky:
`Twelve to fifteen millions of the privileged --- there are the ``people'' who organize the parades, demonstrations, and ovations .... But apart from this `` pays légal'' as was once said in France, there exist one hundred and sixty millions who are profoundly discontented ....
`Antagonism between the bureaucracy and the people is measured by the increasing severity of the totalitarian rule ....
`The bureaucracy can be crushed only by a new political revolution.' Ibid. , p. 149.
`(T)he economy is planned on the basis of nationalization and collectivization of the means of production. This state economy has its own laws that are less and less tolerant of the despotism, ignorance and banditry of the Stalinist bureaucracy.' Trotsky, La capitulation de Staline (11 March 1939). La lutte, p. 216.
Since the re-establishment of capitalism was impossible in Trotsky's eyes, any opposition, be it social-democratic, revisionist, bourgeois or counter-revolutionary, became legitimate. It was the voice of `one hundred and sixty millions who were profoundly discontented' and aimed to `protect' the collectivization of the means of production against the `new aristocracy'. Trotsky became the spokesperson for all the retrograde forces, anti-socialist and fascist.
Trotsky was one of the first to put forward the line that Bolshevism and fascism were twins. This thesis was quite popular, during the thirties, in the reactionary Catholic parties. The Communist Party was their sworn enemy, the fascist party their most important bourgeois opponent. Once again, here is Trotsky:
`Fascism is winning victory after victory and its best ally, the one that is clearing its path throughout the world, is Stalinism.' Trotsky, Caïn Dugachvili va jusqu'au bout (April 1938). L'appareil, p. 238.
`In fact, nothing distinguishes Stalin's political methods from Hitler's. But the difference in results on the international scale is remarkable.' Trotsky, La capitulation de Staline, p. 216.
`An important part, which becomes more and more important, of the Soviet apparatus is formed of fascists who have yet to recognize themselves as such. To equate the Soviet régime with fascism is a gross historic error .... But the symmetry of the political superstructures and the similarity of totalitarian methods and of psychological profiles are striking ....
`(T)he agony of Stalinism is the most horrible and most odious spectacle on Earth.' Trotsky, Nouvelles défections (17 March 1938). La lutte, pp. 161--162.
Trotsky here presented one of the first versions of the essential theme of CIA and fascist propaganda during the fifties, that of `red fascism'. By using the word `fascism', Trotsky tried to redirect the hatred that the masses felt towards the terrorist dictatorship of big capital, against socialism. After 1944--1945, all the German, Hungarian, Croatian and Ukrainian fascist leaders that fled to the West put on their `democratic' mask; they praised U.S. `democracy', the new hegemonic force and the main source of support for retrograde and fascist forces in the world. These `old' fascists, faithful to their criminal past, all developed the same theme: `Bolshevism is fascism, but even worse'.
Note further that at the time that European fascism had already started its war (wars in Ethiopia and Spain, annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia), Trotsky was affirming that the `most horrible and most odious spectable' on Earth was the `agony of socialism'!
Defeatism and capitulation in front of Nazi Germany
Trotsky became the main propagandist for defeatism and capitulationism in the Soviet Union. His demagogic `world revolution' served to better stifle the Soviet revolution. Trotsky spread the idea that in case of fascist aggression against the Soviet Union, Stalin and the Bolsheviks would `betray' and that under their leadership, the defeat of the Soviet Union was inevitable. Here are his ideas on this subject:
`The military ... status of Soviet Russia, is contradictory. On one side we have a population of 170,000,000 awakened by the greatest revolution in history ... with a more or less developed war industry. On the other side we have a political regime paralyzing all of the forces of the new society .... One thing I am sure: the political regime will not survive the war. The social regime, which is the nationalized property of production, is incomparably more powerful than the political regime, which has a despotic character .... The representatives of the political regime, or the bureaucracy, are afraid of the prospect of a war, because they know better than we that they will not survive the war as a regime.' Trotsky, On the Eve of World War II (23 July 1939). Writings, vol. 12, p. 18.
Once again, there were, on one side, `the 170 million', the `good' citizens who were awoken by the Revolution. One might wonder by whom, if it was not by the Bolshevik Party and Stalin: the great peasant masses were certainly not `awoken' during the years 1921--1928. These `170 million' had a `developed war industry'. As if it was not Stalin's collectivization and industrialization policies, implemented thanks to his strong will, that allowed the creation of an arms industry in record time! Thanks to his correct line, to his will, to his capacity to organize, the Bolshevik régime awoke the popular forces that had been kept in ignorance, superstition and primitive individual work. According to the provocateur Trotsky's rantings, the Bolshevik régime paralyzed that society's forces! And Trotsky made all sorts of absurd predictions: it was certain that the Bolshevik régime would not survive the war! Hence, two propaganda themes dear to the Nazis can be found in Trotsky's writings: anti-Bolshevism and defeatism.
` Berlin knows to what extent the Kremlin clique has demoralized the country's army and population through its struggle for self-preservation ....
`Stalin continues to sap the moral force and the general level of resistance of the country. Careerists with no honor, nor conscience, upon whom Stalin is forced to rely, will betray the country in difficult times.' Trotsky, Staline et Hitler (12 March 1938). L'appareil, p. 234.
In his hatred of Communism, Trotsky incited the Nazis to wage war against the Soviet Union. He, the `eminent expert' on the affairs of the Soviet Union, told the Nazis that they had every chance of winning the war against Stalin: the army and the population were demoralized (false!), Stalin was destroying the resistance (false!) and the Stalinists would capitulate at the beginning of the war (false!).
In the Soviet Union, this Trotskyist propaganda had two effects. It encouraged defeatism and capitulationism, through the idea that fascism was assured victory given that the USSR had such a rotten and incompetent leadership. It also encouraged `insurrections' and assassination attempts to eliminate Bolshevik leaders `who would betray in difficult times'. A leadership that was categorically destined to fall during the war might well fall at the beginning of the war. Anti-Soviet and opportunistic groups could therefore make their attempts.
In both cases, Trotsky's provocations directly helped the Nazis.
Trotsky and the Tukhachevsky plot
In the chapter dedicated to the Tukhachevsky military plot, we showed that a large anti-Communist opposition truly did exist among the cadres of the Red Army. Trotsky's attitude towards this reality is enlightening.
Here are Trotsky's written positions about the Tukhachevsky affair:
`I must here state what were my relations with Tukhachevsky .... I never considered the Communist convictions of this officer of the Old Guard to be serious ....
`The generals struggled to defend the security of the Soviet Union against the interests of Stalin's personal security.' Trotsky, L'armée contre Staline (6 March 1938). L'appareil, pp. 197, 201.
`The army needs capable, honest men, just as the economists and scientists, independent men with open minds. Every man and woman with an independent mind comes into conflict with the bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy must decapitate the one section at the expense of the other in order to preserve themselves .... A man who is a good general, like Tukhachevsky, needs independent aides, other generals around him, and he appreciates every man according to his intrinsic value. The bureaucracy needs docile people, byzantine people, slaves, and these two types come into conflict in every state.' Trotsky, On the Eve of World War II, p. 19.
`Tukhachevsky, and along with him the cream of the military cadres, perished in the struggle against the police dictatorship hovering over Red Army officers. In its social characteristics, the military bureaucracy is naturally no better than the civil bureaucracy .... When the bureaucracy is viewed as a whole, it retains two functions: power and administration. These two functions have now reached an acute contradiction. To ensure good administration, the totalitarian power must be eliminated ....
`What does the new duality of power mean: the first step in the decomposition of the Red Army and the beginning of a new civil war in the country?
`The current generation of commissars means the control of the Bonapartist clique over the military and civilian administration and, through it, over the people ....
`The actual commanders grew up in the Red Army, can not be dissociated from it and have an unquestioned authority acquired over many years. On the other hand, the commissars were recruited among the sons of bureaucrats, who have no revolutionary experience, no military knowledge and no ideological capital. This is the archetype of the new school careerists. They are only called upon to command because they are `vigilant', i.e. they are the army's police. The commanders show them the hatred that they deserve. The régime of dual command is transforming itself into a struggle between the political police and the army, where the central power sides with the police ....
`The development of the country, and in particular the growth of its new needs, is incompatible with the totalitarian scum; this is why we see tendencies to resist the bureaucracy in all walks of life .... In the areas of technology, economics, education, culture, defence, people with experience, with a knowledge of science and with authority automatically reject the agents of Stalinist dictatorship, who are for the most part uncultivated and cynical uncouth like Mekhlis and Yezhov.' Trotsky, Les défaitistes totalitaires (3 July 1939). La lutte, pp. 166--169.
First of all, Trotsky had to recognize that Tukhachevsky and those like him were never Communists: previously, Trotsky himself had designated Tukhachevsky as candidate for a Napoleon-like military coup d'état. Furthermore, for the needs of his unrelenting struggle against Stalin, Trotsky denied the existence of a bourgeois counter-revolutionary opposition at the head of the army. In fact, he supported any opposition against Stalin and the Bolshevik Party, including Tukhachevsky, Alksnis , etc. Trotsky led a united front policy with all the anti-Communists in the army. This clearly shows that Trotsky could only come to power in alliance with the counter-revolutionary forces. Trotsky claimed that those who were fighting Stalin and the leadership of the Party within the army were actually struggling for the security of the country, while the officers who were loyal to the Party were defending Stalin's dictatorship and his personal interests.
It is remarkable that Trotsky's analysis about the struggle within the Red Army is identical to that made by Roman Kolkowicz in his study for the U.S. Army . First, Trotsky opposed the Party measures to assert political control over the Red Army. In particular, Trotsky attacked the reintroduction of political commissars, who would play an essential political rôle in the war of anti-fascist resistance and would help young soldiers maintain a clear political line despite the incredible complexity of problems created by the war. Trotsky encouraged the elitist and exclusivist sentiments within the military against the Party, with the explicit aim of splitting the Red Army and provoking civil war. Next, Trotsky declared himself in favor of the independence, hence the `professionalism', of officers, saying that they were capable, honest and with an open mind, to the extent that they opposed the Party! Similarly, it is clear that anti-Communist elements like Tokaev defended their dissident bourgeois ideas in the name of independence and of an open mind!
Trotsky claimed that there was a conflict between the `Stalinist' power and the State administration, and that he supported the latter. In fact, the opposition that he described was the opposition between the Bolshevik Party and the State bureaucracy. Like all anti-Communists throughout the world, Trotsky slandered the Communist Party by calling it `bureaucratic'. In fact, the real danger of bureaucratization of the régime came from the parts of the administration that were in no sense Communist, that sought to get rid of the `stifling' political and ideological control of the Party, to impose themselves on the rest of society and to acquire privileges and benefits of all kinds. The political control of the Party over the military and civil administration was especially aimed at fighting these tendencies towards bureaucratic disintegration. When Trotsky wrote that to ensure a good administration of the country, the Party had to be eliminated, he was the spokesperson for the most bureaucratic tendencies of the state apparatus.
More generally, Trotsky defended the `professionalism' of the military, technical, scientific and cultural cadres, i.e. of all the technocrats who tried to rid themselves of Party control, who wanted to `eliminate the Party from all aspects of life', according to Trotsky's precepts.
In the class struggle that took place within the State and Party in the thirties and forties, the front line was between the forces that defended Stalin's Leninist line and those who encouraged technocratism, bureaucracy and militarism. It was the latter forces that would gain hegemony over the Party leadership during Khrushchev's coup d'état.
Provocations in the service of the Nazis
To prepare for the Nazi war of aggression, Stalin and the Bolsheviks had to be overthrown. By defending this thesis, Trotsky became an instrument in the hands of the Hitlerites. Recently, during a meeting at the Free University of Brussels (ULB), a ranting Trotskyist yelled: `Those are lies! Trotsky always stated that he unconditionally defended the Soviet Union against imperialism.'
Yes, Trotsky always defended the Soviet Union, assuming that destroying the Bolshevik Party was the best preparation for defence! The essential point is that Trotsky was calling for an anti-Bolshevik insurrection, from which the Nazis, and not the handful of Trotskyists, would profit. Trotsky could well preach insurrection in the name of a `better defence' of the Soviet Union, but he clearly held an anti-Communist line and mobilized all the anti-socialist forces. There is no doubt that the Nazis were the first to appreciate this `better defence of the Soviet Union'.
Here are Trotsky's exact words about `a better defence of the Soviet Union'.
`I cannot be ``for the USSR'' in general. I am for the working masses who created the USSR and against the bureaucracy which has usurped the gains of the revolution .... It remains the duty of a serious revolutionary to state quite frankly and openly: Stalin is preparing the defeat of the USSR.' Trotsky, A Political Dialogue, pp. 156, 158.
`I consider the main source of danger to the USSR in the present international situation to be Stalin and the oligarchy headed by him. An open struggle against them ... is inseparably connected for me with the defense of the USSR.' Trotsky, Stalin After the Finnish Experience (13 March 1940). Writings, vol. 12, p. 160.
`The old Bolshevik Party was transformed into a caste apparatus ....
`Against the imperialist enemy, we will defend the USSR with all our might. However, the gains of the October Revolution will serve the people only if it shows itself capable of acting against the Stalinist bureaucracy as it did previously against the Tsarist bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie.' Trotsky, Lettres aux travailleurs d'URSS (May 1940). La lutte, pp. 301--302.
`Only an uprising of the Soviet proletariat against the base tyranny of the new parasites can save what is still left over in the foundations of the society from the conquests of October .... In this sense and in this sense only, we defend the October Revolution from imperialism, fascist and democratic, from the Stalin bureaucracy, and from its ``hired friends''.' Trotsky, The Twenty-First Anniversary (14 November 1938). Writings, vol. 11, p. 111.
From these citations, it is clear that the words `we support the USSR against imperialism' were pronounced by an anti-Communist who had to say them if he wanted to have the slightest chance of being listened to by the masses who were ready to defend the socialist régime to the bitter end. But only politically blind people could be confused by the meaning of this `defence'. In fact, this is how traitors and enemies prepare defence: `Stalin will betray, he is preparing defeat; so Stalin and the Bolshevik leadership have to be eliminated to defend the USSR.' Such propaganda perfectly suited the Nazis.
Trotsky `defended' the Soviet Union, but not the Soviet Union of Stalin and the Bolshevik Party. He pretended to defend the Soviet Union `with all our might', i.e. with his few thousand followers in the USSR! Meanwhile, these few thousand marginals should have prepared an insurrection against Stalin and the Bolshevik Party! Good defence, to be sure.
Even a hardened anti-Communist such as Tokaev thought that Trotsky's writings played into the hands of the German aggressors. Tokaev was anti-Communist, but a partisan of British imperialism. At the beginning of the war, he made the following reflexions:
`The peoples of the U.S.S.R., guided by their elemental feelings in the face of mortal danger, had made themselves one with the Stalin régime .... The opposed forces had joined hands; and this was a spontaneous act: the average Soviet outlook was: `Side even with the Devil, to defeat Hitler.' ... opposition to Stalin was not only harmful to the international anti-Axis front but was also equivalent to antagonism to the Peoples of the U.S.S.R.' Tokaev, op. cit. , p. 188.
With the approach of World War II, Trotsky's main obsession, if not the only one, became the overthrow of the Bolshevik Party in the Soviet Union. His thesis was that of the world far-right: `whoever defends, directly or indirectly, Stalin and the Bolshevik Party, is the worst enemy of socialism'. Here are Trotsky's declarations:
`The reactionary bureaucracy must be and will be overthrown. The political revolution in the USSR is inevitable.' Trotsky, Le gouvernement soviétique applique-t-il toujours les principes définis il y a vingt ans? (13 January 1938). La lutte, pp. 159--160.
`Only the overthrow of the Bonapartist Kremlin clique can make possible the regeneration of the military strength of the USSR .... The struggle against war, imperialism, and fascism demands a ruthless struggle against Stalinism, splotched with crimes. Whoever defends Stalinism directly or indirectly, whoever keeps silent about its betrayals or exaggerates its military strength is the worst enemy of the revolution, or socialism, of the oppressed peoples.' Trotsky, A Fresh Lesson: After the ``Imperialist Peace'' at Munich (10 October 1938). Writings, vol. 11, p. 68.
When these lines were being written in 1938, a fierce class struggle was developing on the world scene, between fascism and Bolshevism. Only the most right-wing ideologues of French, British or U.S. imperialism or of fascism could defend Trotsky's thesis:
`Whoever defends Stalinism directly or indirectly ... is the worst enemy'.
Trotsky encouraged terrorism and armed insurrection
From 1934 on, Trotsky called over and over for the overthrow of the Bolsheviks, through terrorism and armed insurrection.
In April 1938, Trotsky claimed that it was inevitable that there would be, in the USSR, attempts against Stalin and the other Bolshevik leaders. Of course, he continued to claim that individual terror was not a correct Leninist tactic. But, you see, `the laws of history tell us that assassinations attempts and acts of terror against gangsters such as Stalin are inevitable'. Here is how Trotsky put forward in 1938 the program of individual terror.
`Stalin is destroying the army and is crushing the country .... Inplacable hatred is accumulating around him, and a terrible vengeance hangs over his head.
`An assassination attempt? It is possible that this régime, which has, under the pretext of fighting terrorism, destroyed the best brains in the country, will ultimately suffer individual terror. One can add that it would be contrary to the laws of history that the gangsters in power not be suject to acts of vengeance by desperate terrorists. But the Fourth International ... has nothing to do with despair and individual vengeance is too limited for us .... In as much as Stalin's personal future concerns us, we can only hope that his personal lot is to live long enough to see his system collapse. He will not have to wait long.' Trotsky, Caïn Dougachvili va jusqu'au bout, p. 238.
Hence, for Trotskyists, it would be `against the laws of history' that one would not attempt to kill Stalin, Molotov, Zhdanov, Kaganovich, etc. It was an `intelligent' and `clever' way for the clandestine Trotskyist organization to put forward its terrorist message. It did not say `organize assassination attempts'; it said: `the terrorist vengeance against Stalin is part of the laws of history'. Recall that in the anti-Communist circles that Tokaev and Alexander Zinoviev frequented, there was much talk of preparation for assassination attempts against the Bolshevik leaders. One can easily see what forces were being `inspired' by Trotsky's writings.
Trotsky alternated his calls for individual terrorism with propaganda for armed insurrections against the Bolshevik leadership. In general, he used the veiled and hypocritical formula of `political revolution'. During a debate with the Trotskyist Mandel, in 1989, we said that Trotsky called for armed struggle against the Soviet régime. Mandel got angry and cried out that this was a `Stalinist lie', since `political revolution' meant popular revolution, but pacific. This anecdote is an example of the duplicity systematically taken by professional anti-Communists, whose primary task is to infiltrate leftist circles. Here, Mandel wanted to reach out to the environmentalist audience. Here is the program of anti-Bolshevik armed struggle, put forward by Trotsky:
`(T)he people ... have lived through three revolutions against the Tsarist monarchy, the nobility and the bourgeoisie. In a certain sense, the Soviet bureaucracy now incarnates the traits of all the overthrown classes, but without their social roots nor their traditions. It can only defend its monstrous privileges through organized terror ....
`The defence of the country can only be organized by destroying the autocratic clique of saboteurs and defeatists.' Trotsky, Les défaitistes totalitaires, pp. 165, 169.
As a true counter-revolutionary, Trotsky claimed that socialism united the oppressive traits of Tsarism, the nobility and the bourgeoisie. But, he said, socialism did not have as large a social basis as those other exploiting régimes! The anti-socialist masses could therefore overthrow it more easily. Once again, here was a call for all the reactionary forces to attack the abhorent, toppling régime and to undertake the `Fourth Revolution'.
In September 1938, Austria had already been annexed. This was the month of Munich, where French and British imperialism gave the green light to Hitler to occupy Czechoslovakia. In his new Transitional Program, Trotsky set out the tasks of his organization in the Soviet Union, despite the fact that he himself admitted `as an organization ...\ unquestionably ``Trotskyism'' is extremely weak in the USSR.' Leon Trotsky, The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International. The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1974), p. 103.
He continued:
`(T)he Thermidorian oligarchy ... hangs on by terroristic methods .... the chief political task in the USSR still remains the overthrow of this same Thermidorian bureaucracy .... Only the victorious revolutionary uprising of the oppressed masses can revive the Soviet regime and guarantee its further development toward socialism. There is but one party capable of leading the Soviet masses to insurrection --- the party of the Fourth International.' Ibid. , pp. 103--106.
This document, which all Trotskyist sects consider to be their basic program, contains an extraordinary sentence. When would this `insurrection' and `uprising' have taken place? Trotsky's answer is stunning in its honesty: Trotsky planned his `insurrection' for when the Hitlerites attacked the Soviet Union:
`(T)he impetus to the Soviet workers' revolutionary upsurge will probably be given by events outside the country.' Ibid. , p. 105.
The next citation is a good example of duplicity. In 1933, Trotsky claimed that one of the `principal crimes' of the German Stalinists was to have refused the united front with social democracy against fascism. But, until Hitler took power in 1933, social democracy did its utmost to defend the capitalist régime and repeatedly refused unity proposals made by the German Communist Party. In May 1940, eight months after the European part of World War II had started, the great specialist of the `united front', Trotsky, proposed that the Red Army start an insurrection against the Bolshevik régime! He wrote in his Open Letter to the Soviet Workers:
`The purpose of the Fourth International ... is to regenerate the USSR by purging it of its parasitic bureaucracy. This can be only be done in one manner: by the workers, the peasants, the soldiers of the Red Army and the sailors of the Red Fleet who will rise up against the new caste of oppressors and parasites. To prepare this uprising of the masses, a new party is needed .... the Fourth International.' Trotsky, Lettres aux travailleurs d'URSS, p. 303.
At the time that Hitler was preparing war against the Soviet Union, the provocateur Trotsky was calling on the Red Army to effect a coup d'état. Such an event would have been a monstrous disaster, opening up the entire country to the fascist tanks!
Excursion 1: The Deformed Worker’s State
The orthodox Trotskyists analysis must reject a causal link between economic base and superstructure exactly because it argues that the Soviet Union is defined in nature as a "proletarian state" by,
"The nationalisation of the land, the means of industrial production, transport and exchange, together with the monopoly of foreign trade, constitute the basis of the Soviet social structure". (10)
Obviously then, if these measures constituted the base of a "proletarian state", the assumption of political power by a bureaucratic caste could be explained by imposing an intervention between the, essentially socialist, economic base and the political, legal and ideological superstructures where interests ignorant of and inimical to those of the working class and peasantry and to socialism in general were prevalent, indeed predominant. Workers Power argue that,
" . . . even in Stalin's Russia the working class remained the ruling class because the property forms in existence were those that the working class requires in order to build socialism. The working class had, however, been politically expropriated by a caste of bureaucrats analogous to the caste of bureaucrats in the trade union movement under capitalism". (11)
The bureaucracy was not classified as a class because it was not seen as necessary to the economic system in, say, the same way as capitalists are to capitalism, i.e. you cannot have capitalism without a capitalist class. The bureaucracy is defined as a parasite on property relations not an essential aspect of them. The primary contradiction in the U.S.S.R., then, is not seen as that at the level of base, of forces and relations of production, but, rather, that between the property relations and the bureaucracy, who impose a blockage of the dynamic development of the productive forces. (12) Not only then, is there an intervention between base - superstructure, there is also an intervention at the level of base itself
Surely, however, the existence of the bureaucracy is a direct result of the low level of the productive forces and therefore, in general, one should not be surprised if this factor is represented in productive relations. Indeed, Trotsky mentions that,
"When there is enough goods in a store, the purchasers can come whenever they want to. When there is little goods, the purchasers are compelled to stand in line. When the lines are very long, it is necessary to appoint a policeman to keep order. Such is the starting point of the Soviet bureaucracy. It "knows who is to get something and who has to wait". (13)
In other words, socialist relations rely on a level of productive forces high enough to satisfy human need, making redundant the distributive role of the bureaucracy, which relies on the inequalities which a lesser level of productive forces than this inevitably means. It is quite utopian, then, to denounce the bureaucracy as a parasitic excrescence when its role is actually a functional one at this level of the productive forces. (This function may be politically abhorrent to us especially as the bureaucracy siphons off productive capacity and itself expropriates it, so helping to perpetuate the reason for its existence. The question, however, is not a moral one). The notion that the bureaucracy is not a class because it is not essential to the system then falls by the wayside. The bureaucracy may well not be a class, but not for this reason. At the level of primitive socialist accumulation, some sort of bureaucracy is necessary and whether it can use this initial position of power to structually assimilate itself into the productive system and remain there when its formal functional role is no longer necessary remains to be later analysed. It may be possible for it to do so by using its initial power to gain authoritative access to the economy and state machine denied other social strata, and also the historical legitimacy gained by tradition may have an influence.
Whilst the distributive role of some type of bureaucracy is essential to this level of productive forces, its role in expropriating a (relatively) substantial share of the social product to itself is not. It would theoretically be possible for the distributive role to be carried out by the workers themselves through a fairly democratic process such as Soviet power. Now we seem to be arguing against the earlier notion that a bureaucracy of some type is essential. Bear in mind, i) that a low level of productive forces allows one to envisage a numerically small working class and a relatively low level of literacy and political culture, all essential to enable a genuine Soviet process to be tenable. ii) Bear in mind , also, that the Soviets represent particular interest groups within the class and that, at a low level of productive forces, the debate must inevitably revolve around allocating scarce resources. In this sense, even if in the unlikely event all the problems mentioned in i) could miraculously be mitigated, we still have merely a "democratic bureaucracy". The notion of bureaucracy, as Trotsky vividly illustrates, rests on a material basis which cannot be overcome solely by political will. In fact, the idea that the adverse effects of bureaucracy can be controlled organisationally, a position displayed by Lenin in 'Better Fewer, But Better', and taken up by Stalin in a systematic manner, in practice, embodies a cruel paradox as the bodies empowered to carry out the organisational purges themselves become organs of bureaucratic repression. In fact, the Stalin period undoubtedly proved in practice that even with vast and ongoing purges of the bureaucracy - a fluidity that meant that promotion within the hierarchy was a possible step towards a labour camp - it was not possible to stop the coalescence of this group as a distinct and powerful social strata. (14)
The important question of the bureaucracy as a class or not can be taken up later, as obviously if the bureaucracy expropriates surplus value from the working class, then this would be fundamental indicator of its position especially as regards economic base. It is pertinent to note here, however, that differences exist between the left as to whether this social strata acts as a relative or an absolute block to socialist construction,
"Even in most highly bureaucratised socialist states the bureaucracy has been a relative, not an absolute brake upon the development of the productive forces". (15)
Reynolds proceeds to say of such an assertion that,
"If this means anything it means that given time and patience even the Stalinist bureaucrats will lead us to socialism!" (16)
This is not a semantic debate because if the bureaucracy is an absolute obstacle to the development of the forces of production, then Trotsky's idea of a political revolution to remove this strata is still relevant, whereas if the obstacle is relative, the sort of "within system" democratisation, which is envisaged by Roy Medvedev, may have been possible even though the collapse of the USSR held out in practice another scenario. (17) It may be noted that the absolute brake notion may give some indication of why the USSR did collapse as "frozen" productive forces promoted a conflict with the "socialist" productive relations leading to economic instability. It would imply that an extremely high level of explanation primacy was given to the productive forces in that they could remain static and independent of productive relations.
We can note of the deformed worker's state thesis that,
1) Both Trotsky (reference 10) and at least some Trotskyists (reference 11) argue that the "ownership of the means of production" lies indirectly in the hands of the working class - who, therefore, were the ruling class - even though this ownership is mediated through a bureaucratic stratum. It seems to me that one must then admit that this stratum exercises control over the means of production. This is by no means an incidental point because we shall note in section B that it can be argued that such control transcends mere formal ownership for all practical purposes and in section E that this initial control of the means of production by the bureaucracy has been used to establish gross inequalities of material processions, privileged access to the education system for the bureaucracy's offsprings and so forth, resulting in effective class inheritance right solidifying the "new bourgeoisie". Interestingly enough, the argument of Trotskyists adhering to the deformed workers state perspective is reminiscent of that of a section of the British aristocracy who point out that, in terms of liquid cash - if not in terms of "breeding" i.e. social status - they are really rather poor and the vast landed estate is simply a (rather burdensome) "trust", which bears down on them during their lifetime. Many of us could perhaps bear such a burden with grim fortitude! But the serious question I am asking is how far could one conceptualise a "workers state" where actual workers were devoid of any significant input into the running of that state? In other words, the level of the determination which the working class exercises vis a vis the means of production is extremely limited.
2) Probably this "determinate degree of appropriation of the economic surplus" is the area where massive consensus existed between all perspectives on the Soviet Union, in agreeing that the manner of appropriation is governed by the bureaucracy and that an unequal amount of surplus generated was used to maintain this sectors material privileges. The amount so siphoned off is arguable and will briefly be discussed in section F, but already mentioned in this section, a tension exists between the immediate rapaciousness of the bureaucracy and its long-term interests in expanding the level of productive forces, which if it fails to do, risks the ultimate sanction of mass working class discontent posing a threat to the ruling elite, such as has occurred most spectacularly in Poland. A rise in the level of the forces also means that the bureaucracy can expand its absolute level of expropriation of surplus value, even whilst, as a percentage of total surplus value, its expropriation decreases. This does not negate, but will tend to diminish the economic contradiction between the bureaucracy and the working class.
3) In the U.S.S.R., a significant division of labour is was extant between town and country and all indications are that if there had been no collapse that this would have continued for the foreseeable future. Having said this, it is clear that any objective account portrays a rather different picture to the one of persistent chaos typical of popular Western media. (18) Nevertheless, important distinctions between rural and urban worker did exist in terms of financial remuneration, freedom to move between jobs and educational opportunities. (19) More generally, a significant division of labour obviously exists between the elite-party selected "Nomenklatura" (20), the lower administrative echelons, the intelligentsia (21) and the working class in industry. (22) This is a simplification and detailed empirical analysis of class differentiation may be found elsewhere (23), but it does precis a class set which is typical of literature on the U.S.S.R. (24)
In many ways this is a type of class format which one could expect from a country which has undergone seventy years of rapid - if by no means uninterrupted - industrialisation centred around heavy industry, i.e. a powerful cntralised administrative elite dominating a working class with massive potential social weight but with little actual political power. The intelligentsia is at one and the same time essential to technological and scientific development and, therefore, essential to the ruling elites rationale of economic development, yet - inasmuch as the intelligentsia is not (yet) a part of the elite - poses a potential challenge to it. It poses this potentiality in two interconnected ways, i) if bureaucratic supervision of intellectual life is intolerably rigid, it runs the risk of suppressing, or inducing a self-suppression of creative activity which, in the long term, may damage fundamental economic imperatives, which the bureaucracy hold dear if only because in these are embodied the rationale for its very existence. ii) On the other hand, the intelligentsia holds the possibility of developing ideological schemas opposed to the ideological monopoly, abrogated by the ruling elite at a theoretical level, and even the conceptualising of such schemas impinges on an area of bureaucratic activity, even if containing no explicit oppositional elements.
It was therefore most unwise, from its point of view, for the bureaucracy to relax it grip on intellectual life, 'Glasnost', completely. It is important to study divisions of labour in a society in formal terms, but ultimately, it is even more imperative to supplement inquiry into the static entity by noting whether such divisions are expanding, attenuating or being restructured. We note, very crudely, divisions in the U.S.S.R. between administrative personnel, the diverse section categorised as intelligentsia and the industrial working class and peasantry. The latter three strata were undoubtedly essential to the functioning of the Soviet economy and some sort of administration is also clearly necessary. We noted earlier that the low level of productive forces meant that an administrative bureaucracy was inevitable in a situation of absolute scarcity. Outside intervention, Civil War, etc. also meant that a ruthlessly central political power was required to defend state power. Within the strict parameters laid down by objective historical necessity, a limited "democratic" bureaucracy was a possibility and it is unnecessary to either ascribe historical legitimacy to the arbitrary (often counter-productive) repressions of Stalinism or dwell on the idealism of some Anarchist thinking, which blamed the Bolsheviks themselves for the authoritarian social conditions they themselves were a prisoner of and effectively demanded that the Bolsheviks renounce state power. (25) The objective material conditions for an authoritarian bureaucracy, however, rest on rather specific indices according to Trotsky,
"Both conditions for the omnipotence of the bureaucracy - the backwardness of the country and the imperialist environment - bear, however, a temporary and transitional character and must disappear with the victory of the world revolution". (26)
Whilst a centralised administration is adequate to build productive forces on a sectoral basis, as the forces develop and economic engagements and interactions increase in scope and complexity, the bureaucracy simply cannot legislate for the multitude of micro-economic decisions - unimportant on their own but combining into an immense problem - now required. Such a situation leads to an informal market as wiry entrepreneurs "fill in" gaps left by the state economy. This has led some analysts to envisage a significant role for the free market under socialism. (27) Trotsky, however, presents the Marxist answer to this question.
"Under a nationalized economy, quality demands a democracy of producers and consumers, freedom of criticism and initiative - conditions incompatible with a totalitarian regime of fear lies and flattery". (28)
Further,
"The dictatorship of the proletariat opens a wider scope to human genius the more it ceases to be a dictatorship. The socialist culture will flourish only in proportion to the dying away of the state. In that simple and unshakeable historic law is contained the death sentence of the present political regime in the Soviet Union. Soviet democracy is not the demand of an abstract policy, still less an abstract moral. It has become a life-and- death need for the country". (29)
Contrast these lines, first published in 1936, with those of the General Secretary of the C.P.S.U. at the time of writing.
"Socialism can and will give the working people still more if we keep boldly to the path of creative endeavour and initiative of the people, innovation and renewal, that is restructuring". (30)
Further,
"Nothing will come out of it unless people are involved and accept the task of restructuring in their hearts and minds and believe in it as their own policy , a policy that is needed by every person, every family, every work collective, village town, every republic and the whole country? Do the inspectors know better? That just cannot be. The people know everything. which means that they will see in good time what interferes with our restructuring and what jeopardises our new policy and strategy aimed at our society's renewal. And the people will eliminate in good time any negative phenomena. So the people must know and see everything and be involved in public affairs. How are we to ensure that? There is no other way but to fling all doors wide open to broad democratisation of all the spheres of the life of Soviet society". (31)
This did not mean that Gorbachev had become infected with the virus of dreaded "Trotskyism" it simply means that the bureaucracy has been forced to confront the problem that an undemocratic political life inhibits economic growth. Certainly, the contradiction had built up in a more protracted manner than Trotsky envisaged, but the fact that the bureaucracy now realised that substantial structual reform was imperative reveals the contradiction strengthening. Obviously, Trotsky's answer to the elimination of the contradiction, dissolution of the bureaucracy by force and widespread implementation of democratic procedures by the working class, is anathema to it, meaning the contradiction is expressed in new forms. Far from introducing democracy "from above" for the working class and peasantry, the I.C.F.I. in an important statement, is correct in penetrating the appearance to reveal the essence,
"Gorbachev's "democratic" measures - the release of some political prisoners, a very limited relaxation of censorship and criticism of bureaucratic excesses - do not, by any means constitute a move towards restoring Soviet democracy. They are an attempt to win a social base for the bureaucracy among the broad layers of Soviet intelligentsia and managerial functionaries.
The "democratic" pretensions of the bureaucracy are in fact aimed at politically dissolving the working class into the population as a whole and manipulating class antagonisms which continue in the Soviet Union in order to bolster its own rule". (32)
4) A massive development of the productive forces has certainly taken place. (Trotskyists would argue that this has occurred despite the existence of the parasitical bureaucracy and this in itself - somewhat ironically - proves the efficacy of a planned economy. However, what is relevant here is simply that the productive forces have expanded. (33) Are the forces developed to a high enough degree to allow a socialist mode of production? Viewed statically, this is an indeterminate question, in that on the one hand, it is possible to cite statistics, for example from the table in the last reference cited, to illustrate the massive growth which has occurred in the U.S.S.R. and, on the other hand, to point to the significant section of the population still engaged in agricultural production (34) and also to the underdevelopment, admittedly due primarily to extremely adverse climatic factors, pertaining in some areas of the country. The question , then, can only be answered by considering the international situation and actual or potential factors internal to the Soviet Union blocking growth of the productive forces. (35)
In Trotskyist, terms the removal of the bureaucracy would have opened the way for a vast development of the forces of production. This leads us to confront Laclau's statement that we have to theorise "a totality defined by its mutual interconnections", with special regard being paid to "property in the means of production".
In the Soviet system, the mediation via the bureaucracy of control over the means of production was a key to an understanding of that society. This control certainly put the bureaucratic stratum in a powerful position to attempt to gain a class ownership over the means of production, and it is possible that the "Nomenklatura" may even establish itself as a self-perpetuating entity with membership barred to all but offspring, in which case one could assert the existence of class inheritance rights. It may be argued that this is not a very convincing argument for class, in that groups in capitalist society exercise such a self-perpetuating mechanism. However, these groups, as disparate groups, did not intersect with all top levels of state, government and military in the formal manner in which the Nomenklatura does, even though they may interface in terms of overall class interests with all these groups. Also, they lack the centralising medium of the party. Because the bureaucracy exercises this role between the working class and peasantry and the means of production, it also clearly exercises a substantial level of determination over the distribution of surplus value, the division of labour and productive forces development. Naturally, this determination is substantial not absolute. Working class struggle or the potential for such struggle can force the bureaucracy to devolve more surplus to the working class, or it may do so to head off possible discontent it has identified. Technological innovation, as in capitalist society, may impinge on and modify divisions of labour, even though the division in totality is set in accordance with bureaucratic determination. As we have already said, development of the productive forces is not "absolutely" blocked by the bureaucracy, but, in Trotskyist argumentation, limited and distorted by it. It is easy to concur with Laclau, then, that "property is the means of production" does constitute "the decisive element", in that such ownership determines the three subordinate elements. This may appear to be so patently obvious as hardly to require stating, yet in view of some of the argumentation we shall encounter shortly, I want the reader to bear it firmly in mind. In my opinion the "orthodox" Trotskyist view of the U.S.S.R has some validity because i) it recognises a procedure of conditional determination between base and superstructure, ii) it contains a notion of indeterminacy which recognises the contradictions inherent in Soviet society. As Trotsky reminds us, the categorisation of the U.S.S.R. is not amenable to simple taxonomical explanation,
"The outcome depends on a struggle of living social forces - not on a national scale either, but on and international scale". (38)
iii) it recognises the importance of ownership of the means of production, whilst allowing other elements as subsidiary explanatory factor, iv) it allows an understanding of Soviet foreign policy in all its contradictory terms. Far from this policy being "counter-revolutionary through and through" (I.C.P./Workers Press), it is strategically counter- revolutionary because it asserts always the interests of the Soviet state, therefore the bureaucracy over the long-term interests of the international working class. Yet this policy can be tactically progressive, in that the Soviet bureaucracy, resting as it does on nationalised property relationships, can carry out interventions in favour of the working class, even though the motivation for these interventions is solely to support the interests of the bureaucracy and even though such interventions will always tend to suppress working class self-activity in favour of revolution from above. A recent example is Afghanistan, a country of seventeen million and a tiny proletariat of ninety thousand (39) and two hundred thousand Mullahs, where Soviet intervention brought a massive rise in health care, education and womens' right (40) even though the intervention was probably made for strictly military reasons. The contradictory nature of the bureaucracy is illustrated by the fact that far from extending the nationalised property relations in an aggressive manner in order to remove the material basis from the most reactionary religious elements, it attempts to negotiate and compromise with them once external security is reasonably well ensured up to the point of military withdrawal. (41)
The bureaucracy can carry out direct overturns of existing property relations, or support those who so do in pursuance of its own interests. These are hypostatised in the theory of socialism in one country and the absolutism regarding the overriding concern to maintain nationalised property relations in the U.S.S.R., which international revolutionary upsurges - even though they are the only potential way in which the nationalised property relations can permanently be defended - are seen to threaten. Hence the betrayals of revolutions in Germany in 1933, Spain in 1936 and ad infinitum.
The notion of the U.S.S.R. as a "transitional" society, in Trotsky's usage of the term, has proved to be historically incorrect. Also invalid is the idea of a "political" revolution which lacks theoretical groundings and empirical verification.
Notes
10. The Revolution Betrayed, op cit, Page 248.
11. The Degenerated Revolution, op cit. Page 30. Emphasis in original in italics.
12. Ibid. Page 30.
13. The Revolution betrayed, op cit. Page 112.
14. GETTY, John Archibald, Origins of the Great Purges : The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938. Getty's work opposes this view of the purges, and asserts that they were merely accounting mechanisms to ascertain who was in the C.P.S.U. The purges according to Getty were targeted at drunks and careerists, rather than at Trotskyists or other oppositional or potentially oppositional elements and did not involve imprisonment or executions, except in exceptional circumstances. Whilst showing that Soviet society was far more fluid, therefore unpredictable, than "totalitarian" models would suggest, unease may be expressed in the narrow manner in which the term purge (Chistka) is considered.
15. SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY (AUSTRALIA), The Struggle For Socialism, cited in REYNOLDS, Chris, Class Politics or Bloc Politics? In:- Workers Liberty, Number 4, November 1985, Emphasis in article in italics.
16. Ibid, REYNOLDS, Page 3.
17. LANE, David, State and Politics in the U.S.S.R.
In chapter nine, page 270, Lane discusses the differences in the Soviet dissident movement between "loyal, i.e. "system-supportive" or "internal critiques" operating within a broad "Marxist" framework and, for example the "moral absolutism" of Solzhenitsyn.
18. HUTCHINGS, Raymond, Soviet Economic Development, Passim but note especially Agricultural Organisation and Policy. Chapter Ten, Page 117.
19. Ibid, Page 100.
20. VOSLENSKY, Michael, Nomenklatura.
21. KONRAD, George, SZELENYI, Ivan, The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power: A Sociological Study of the Role of the Intelligentsia in Socialism.
22. SCHAPIRO, Leonard and GODSON, Joseph, Eds The Soviet Worker.
23. KERBLAY, Basile, Modern Soviet Society.
24. While forced labour has played a significant role in Soviet economic life (Hutchings, op cit. for instance asserts that "...up to 1953 - 1955 forced labour played a fairly substantial part in the economy" - Page 103), amply documented by Solzhenitsyn in his series on the Gulag Archipelago, its economic role now appears to be insignificant and therefore can be omitted from any broad class analysis.
25. GOLDMAN, Emma, The Failure of the Russian Revolution, In:- WOODCOCK, George, Ed, The Anarchist Reader, Page 153.
26. TROTSKY, Leon, In Defence of Marxism, Page 8.
27. NOVE, Alec, The Economics of Feasible Socialism.
28. Revolution Betrayed, op cit. Page 276. Emphasis in original in italics.
29. Ibid, Page 276.
30. GORBACHEV, Milhail, Speech at a Meeting with Party and Government Activists and Economic Executives of the Latvian S.S.R. - February 19. 1987, In:- Restructuring is Carried Out by the People, Page 6.
31. Ibid, Page 7.
32. INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, What is Happening in the U.S.S.R.? : Gorbachev and the Crisis of Stalinism, March 23, 1986 In:- International Worker, Number 10, May 1987, Page 10.
33. HUTCHINGS, op cit, Appendix. Growth of Industrial Output, Page 308.
34. Ibid, Pages 113 and 117.
35. What is Happening in the U.S.S.R.? op cit, Page 10.
36. HUTCHINGS, op cit. Page 4.
37. VOSLENSKY, op cit.
38. Revolution Betrayed, op cit. Page 49.
39. ENGIN, Emine, The Revolution in Afghanistan, Iscinin Sesi Publications, English Series 16, November 1982, Page 17.
Population statistics, etc., vary from work to work and lack of data in itself illustrates Afghanistan's backwardness. Compare with, Afghanistan, In:- NON-ALIGNED MOVEMENT, The Non-Aligned Countries. Page 17.
40. Women of the East - Proletarian Revolution or Slavery, In:- Women and Revolution, Journal of the Womens Commission of the Spartacist League, Number 20, Spring 1980.
41. The logic of this is embodied in the very nature of the Soviet intervention, see ENGIN, op cit, Pages 81 and 89.
Excursion 2: State Capitalism
The state capitalist theory, as explicated by one of its best known contemporary exponents Cliff (42), relies to an extent on an examination of superstructural elements to show that these are of such a nature as to be incompatible with the notion of a "workers state". (43) This is coupled with an economic analysis, which is also aimed at rejecting claims that the U.S.S.R. is either socialist or some kind of deformed workers state. (44) In fact, Cliff suggests that many of the practices inherent in the Soviet Union of Stalin's time were far more repressive against the working class than would be the case in traditional capitalism. These practices are too numerous to mention in full, but they include such things as "one-man management", (45) the suppression of trade union rights, (46) the use of piece-rates - so called "socialist competition" to atomise the workforce, (47) the denial of the freedom of workers to move to other employment, (48) the additional exploitation of the working class by the use of female labour, (49) the use of forced labour and so on. (50) However, the orthodox Trotskyist analysis could agree with all of Cliff's empirical data and still logically assert that the Soviet Union was a deformed workers state. Cliff's refutation of this position, then, has to rely on his analysis of base, rather than on his description of superstructural phenomena. It is shown that, at varying times, Trotsky's notion of a workers state rested on the control, however indirect and mediated this may be, the proletariat could exercise over the state, which implies a political revolution may be unnecessary, and in contradiction to this, the understanding that the nationalised property relationships in the U.S.S.R. constitute the essence of the definition "workers state", even though he argued that the working class could only genuinely influence these nationalised relationships by enacting a political revolution to remove the bureaucratic caste. (51) It can be suggested that both of these factors - nationalised property and workers power would need to be in operation for a state to be defined as socialist, together with the proviso that a conscious attempt was being made and that an impetus existed towards the alleviation of the effects of the law of value and its eventual negation. The matter of just how direct working class control needs to be to justify the term "socialist society" was, and is, a matter of hectic debate and, as noted previously, for the Anarchists only direct democracy will do, whilst Marxist-Leninists see important mediating roles for soviets and especially the party. I take it as self-evident that Trotsky's definition must primarily be tested by reference to property relations. It is important to note the subjective factor also, which Trotsky summarises by asserting that the revolution lives on in the ideological sphere "in the consciousness of the toiling masses" (52), but it would be idealism not to note that, inasmuch as such a consciousness exists today, it will have undergone a protracted process of modification, via both the everyday workings of Soviet life and ideological production "from above".
In allowing that Trotsky's categorisation rests ultimately on an understanding of base, a disjuncture is noted between base and superstructure which may be acceptable to some Marxists, if taken as a transient non-correspondence, but which may not appear tenable over the timescale which the U.S.S.R. existed. It is true that the theory could by "upgraded" by a reinterpretation of the idea of a Soviet "Thermidor" leading to a "Bonapartist" dictatorship" but here again a certain impermanence is embodied in such a definition of a regime precisely because the non-correlation between the pair is "artificially" maintained. (53)
I now return to Cliff's economic rationale for his theory of state capitalism. After spending some time describing Marx's law of value and insisting that it is applicable only to capitalism (54), he is eventually forced to the position that,
". . . if one examines the relations within the Russian economy, abstracting them from their relation with the world economy, one is bound to conclude that the source of the law of value, as the motor and regulator of production is not to be found in it". (55)
Exponents of the theory of a deformed workers state would agree with both of these points, but Cliff draws different conclusions from them. This is hinted at in the passage immediately above. For Cliff the definition of state capitalism relies on the way in which the U.S.S.R. is forced to relate to the capitalist world economy.
"From this point of view the Russian state is in a similar position to the owner of a single capitalist enterprise. The rate of exploitation, that is the ratio between surplus value and wages (s/v) does not depend on the arbitrary will of the Stalinist government, but is dictated by world capitalism". (56)
Cliff then, after finding capitalist competition is absent in the U.S.S.R., finds it necessary to find his "many capitals" by reference to the world economy. Some moot points exist in relation to the internal consistency of Cliffs analysis. In particular, if one envisaged a world economy with "many" state capitalist nations, then one could also envisage severe modifications to the law of value as asserted in this schema. Our interest, however, lies in the fact that Cliff totally negates the idea of a national base specific to the U.S.S.R. and conflates it entirely with, indeed makes it entirely subordinate to, the world economy. (57) In a sense, we have the reverse of the Stalinist theory of "socialism in one country", i.e. socialism in no country unless not subject to capitalist economic laws, which suggest an international revolution occurring with all the significant capitalist countries party to it. Although we have a base subordinate to global economic laws. the superstructures are not so, or at least only indirectly so, as the bureaucracy mediates between this factor and the superstructures. By so doing, Cliff set aside conflict between the relations and forces of production internal to Soviet society as a logical agent of social change and one would then need to locate such a potential in the international relationships. It is also apparent that the theory of crisis, which Marxists develop for a capitalist economy (whether it be variations of disproportionality between different production sectors, or underconsumption theories to explain cyclical crisis, or the tendency of the rate of profit to fall to explain the long term decline of capitalism) would need somehow to be transferred to this sphere also. With the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, this would be especially difficult as the tendency describes, in economic terms, the conflict between relations and forces of production. In the original conception, the belief is that in order to compete, individual capitalists have to engage in constant technological innovation with more and more surplus value being extracted from fewer workers. The increased exploitation caused by the increase in relative surplus value is commensurate with a steady increase in constant as set against variable capital. The result being a rise in the mass of profit, yet a fall in the rate of profit. In Cliff's analysis, this would be far more complex, not only because it would be an international equation, but also because it would need to be decided whether the tendency was applicable to state capitalism, and if so, how this would modify the global sum. By identifying the economy of the Soviet Union with the global economy in this way, whatever use the base-superstructure model could have been to us in analysing the U.S.S.R. has been largely nullified.
1. Cliff is clear that the working class in no way owns the means of production and bureaucratic ownership is exercised in a very specific way, as a class, enabling the Soviet economy to be regarded as a single capitalist firm. I will not engage in protracted commentary on this issue here as it occupies attention in Section E. It can be noted here, however, that Cliff's argumentation is inconsistent when he raises the hypothesis of "the Russian (sic) market" being flooded by foreign goods and then immediately has to admit that such a prospect is inconceivable because,
"Her (the Soviet Union's -T.T..) own markets are protected against the possibility of been flooded with foreign goods by virtue of the state's monopoly of foreign trade which can only be destroyed by military power. (58)
Cliff, therefore, has to locate his global economic interaction thesis in military competition. (59) Accordingly. then, "the Russian (sic) economy is directed to the production of certain use values". (60) These "certain use values" being military production. The arms production appears to be seen as integral to the Soviet economy, rather than as a response to imperialist encirclement and this fits in logically with the way the state capitalist group (61) sees surplus value transmuted via such production. (62)
2. Cliff also views economic surplus as being appropriated by the bureaucracy and a disproportionate amount being filtered off for their own use, but unlike category A, the actual "rate of exploitation" is factored into the international economic system. Of course, there is some truth, in that, indirectly such a sequence occurs. Precisely because the U.S.S.R.'s regime perceived - and still does perceive, and realistically so, a threat of external interference by imperialism, extremely heavy emphasis was placed upon a sectoral building of the economy giving prominence to heavy industry directly necessary for military production. This meant an oppressively aggressive attempt to extract surplus value from the working class both in terms of productivity and low wage levels allowing substantial investment in the chosen sectors. In this sense it would be correct to suggest that the rate of exploitation is not an act of "arbitrary will of the Stalinist government", but it does not imply the intimate economic linkage Cliff suggests either. Rather, the analogy can be made of a householder diverting resources to fit locks, cameras and alarms to the house due to a fear of burglary. This does not mean the householder and burglar are in economic cahoots, in fact quite the reverse!
3. Cliff mentions that,
"Common to both a workers' state and capitalism is the division of labour, primarily the division between mental and manual labour. The distinguishing feature is the existence or non-existence of workers' control over production. Workers' control forms the bridge, albeit a narrow bridge, to the abolition of the separation of manual and mental labour, which will be completely realised with the establishment of communist society". (63)
It has already been noted that Cliff regards workers' control as totally absent in the Soviet system and does not accept the notion of this control being indirect, in that it is mediated via the bureaucratic stratum, which we have cited as being an original conceptualisation of Trotsky's upheld by contemporary Trotskyist outfits such as Workers Power. The lack of this "distinguishing feature" is enough, in Cliff's view, to establish the U.S.S.R.'s capitalist credentials. (Incidentally, in the initial section more importance was given to the division of labour between town and country than here, and we maintain this difference of emphasis in that it played no insignificant part in accentuating the division Cliff concentrates on and, therefore, in promoting the deformations integal to the Bonapartist bureaucratic layer). If by "narrow bridge" it is meant that workers' control in a state such as the early Soviet Union is tentative and fragile, then one can only agree. However, more importantly, is the proposition correct? It is correct, in that to establish socialism, a tremendous increase in productive forces is necessary, which is inconceivable without the efficiency a democratically organised centralised economy could initiate by releasing the creative powers of the masses stultified under capitalism. Neither is this a purely instrumental conviction. The creation of a new "socialist man" - which, it is all too often forgotten in the economic debates, is what the whole project is about - must rely on steadily increasing the cultural level and political consciousness of the working class, which cannot be done on their own behalf, but only by their active participation in the social, political and economic life which is impossible without workers' democracy. In some senses though, this is an "ultimatist" view because we have to acknowledge that history indicates a very substantial increase in productive forces can occur with the working class, not only excluded from any decision making processes, but actively coerced. Whilst in the early years of the Soviet state, if workers' control had been implemented and had led to any inhibiting of the frenetic attempt to raise the level of the productive forces, the debate would be of only historical relevance, as the state would have been crushed by internal or external intervention or a combination thereof. (64) In short, the context of the historical conjuncture is important, a point Cliff tends to underplay, in defining the degree of contradiction between the necessity to raise the level of the productive forces and workers' control. At what level of productive capacity a law of identity could be said to operate, in that a point may be established where, apart from its desirability in the arena of consciousness and general aspiration in the socialist project, workers' control would simply be more economically efficient (65) is probably unanswerable outside of practice. The point remains that property is nationalised and could be taken control of by the working class, certainly with major reorganisation, but without the formal change in productive relations necessary under capitalism. (66)
4. Cliff has a controversial view of the productive forces,
"For the problem humanity must solve today, under pain of annihilation, is not how to develop the productive forces, but to what end and under what social relations to utilise them. (67)
This allows him to immediately go on to say,
"This conclusion as regards the reactionary character of Russian state capitalism, notwithstanding the rapid development of its productive forces, can be refuted only if one could prove that world capitalism has not prepared the material conditions necessary for the establishment of socialism, or that the Stalinist regime is preparing further conditions necessary for the establishment of socialism than those prepared by the world at large". (68)
It is necessary to point out here i) that the problem is both how to develop the productive forces and how to use them - the two elements being intimately interlinked, ii) to repeat, the whole process of revolutions this century amply proves the inability of world capitalism to prepare "the material conditions necessary for the establishment of socialism" in major sectors of the world economy, and this inability to promote capitalist development has played no insignificant role in promoting such revolutions. iii) Therefore, I would consider Cliff's "conclusion" on the U.S.S.R. and regard its "rapid development of productive forces" as of a greater significance than he does.
In conclusion, I believe that Cliff was wrong on all four elements of the totality - hardly surprisingly as they are interlinked in actuality and interlinked in his analysis - and these series of errors are not unrelated to the attempt to "read off" base from superstructure or the subsuming of the national base into the international ones. Whilst a correct understanding of interactions between the pair and their world partners will not lead in any automatic way to correct political analysis, an incorrect understanding places significant obstacles in the way of such an understanding.
Notes
42. CLIFF Tony, State Capitalism in Russia, op cit.
43. Ibid. Example, Chapters 1 and 2, Socio-economic relations in Stalinist Russia and State and Party in Stalinist Russia respectively.
44. Ibid. Chapter 7, Russian economy and the Marxian law of value and theory of capitalist crisis.
45. Ibid, Page 13.
46. Ibid, Page 15.
47. Ibid, Page 19.
48. Ibid, Page 22.
49. Ibid, Page 27.
50. Ibid, Page 30.
51. Ibid, Pages 266/267.
52. Revolution Betrayed, op cit. Page 255.
53. THOMPSON, Paul, Trotsky's Incorrect Use of Historical Analogy: Political Revolution, Thermidor and Bonapartism, In:- Communist Forum, Discussion Bulletin No. 5, 8th February 1897, Page 5.
This, as the title implies, is a refutation of the notion of Thermidor in the Soviet situation and highlights the problems of using concepts appropriate to describing conjunctures, arising in bourgeois revolutions, to describe those arising in proletarian ones. In fact Thompson argues, the transposition is utterly inappropriate.
54. State Capitalism in Russia. op cit. Page 194.
55. Ibid, Page 208.
56. Ibid, Page 209.
57. As regards an Eastern Bloc state, such as Yugoslavia heavily influenced by the dictates of the International Monetary Fund, Cliff's global interaction thesis has more credibility.
On the I.M.F. and Yugoslavia, see Yugoslavia in Turmoil, In:- Workers Vanguard, Number 429, 29 May 1987, Page 210.
58. State Capitalism in Russia, op cit. Page 210.
59. Ibid, Page 210.
60. Ibid, Page 212.
61. Formerly International Socialists:- now the Socialist Workers Party.
62. I.S. Journal, (First Series), Numbers 28 and 100.
63. State Capitalism in Russia, op cit. Page 140
64. SIRIANNI, Carmen, Workers Control and Socialist Democracy : The Soviet Experience.
This author argues, as noted in Chapter Four, that workers control was actually essential on economic as well as political grounds.
65. Ibid. Sirianni's argumentation is of importance here also.
66. State Capitalism in Russia, op cit. Page 188. Here Cliff presents an opposing view.
67. Ibid. Page 187.
68. Ibid, Page 187. Emphasis in original in italics.
Excursion 3: BUREAUCRATIC STATE COLLECTIVISM
Bureaucratic State Collectivism originated from the Italian Marxist Bruno Rizzi, but its better known exponent is probably Max Shachtman. Rizzi, in his La Bureaucratisation du Monde of 1939, toys with the idea of bureaucratic collectivism as a new form of slave society, (69) still capable of leading directly to Communism, due to the massive increase in the level of productive forces. The totalitarian political apparatus associated with this type of society "should not impress the Marxists" because "it is totalitarian rather in the political than the economic sense". Rizzi asserts both that these factors "will be reversed" and that this process will be automatic as the society develops. (70) Rizzi's conception, then, sees the superstructure as totally subordinate to the base. An increase in productive forces will inevitably mean that the bureaucracy will become sated with material goods and also that their intellectual and moral needs will be satisfied. The repressive superstructures which ensure their privileged position in a society of scarcity can simply disappear leaving behind a Communist society. (71)
The idea of an inevitable upward growth of the productive forces to saturation level is not only designed to stretch credulity as to the process itself, but also one would have to concede that the bureaucracy would not develop additional needs and aspirations as the level of productive forces increases. How many cars, houses, boats, electronic gadgets and aeroplanes, equal a saturation point would have to be defined for a "class" of bureaucrats and has as much to do with advertising, etc. as actual material necessity. (72) The crude understanding that intellectual and moral needs would be fulfilled by an increase in the forces of production ignores not only Marx's theory of alienation, but the empirical reality of advanced Western capitalism, where it is not only amongst the poor that such needs are not satisfied. Indeed, with this theory a possibility exists that monopoly capitalism could eventually develop in this way, if it was possible to attenuate its economic laws of motion and develop the productive forces sufficiently. At the same time socialism in the underdeveloped part of the globe is expelled from the discourse.
Shachtman also suggests the idea of Stalinism as a "new barbarism" (73) and he also considers that the major raison d'être of production under the Stalinist regime was to satisfy the needs of the bureaucracy. It is possible to see the concentration on building up heavy industry, military hardware and the mammoth architectural projects typical of the Stalinist era as the bureaucracy looking after its relatively long term interests, but on the other hand, it is possible to see the schema as over simplistic for analytical exactitude. As Cliff cogently notes,
"With the dynamism of highly developed productive forces, an economy based on gratifying the needs of the rulers can be arbitrarily described as leading to the millennium or 1984". (74)
A great deal of academic debate has been directed to this conception of bureaucratic collectivism, but I want to proceed to discuss one of the lesser known documents emanating from the left in order to consider whether it appears to be rather more internally consistent than the ideas already mentioned.
In Fantham and Machover's view, "state collectivism" is not specific to the U.S.S.R. in Stalin's time (75) but widely applicable to the underdeveloped world (76), where it can be seen as initially progressive "to the extent that state collectivism enables those societies to climb out of the pit of underdevelopment in which world capitalism trapped them . . ." (77). State collectivism, then, is a product of imperialism which blocks the potential development of the underdeveloped sector and forces these nations on to an alternative path of industrial development. The unilateral path between capitalism and socialism is rejected (78) in favour of a bifurcated view of human history. (79)
State collectivism is only seen as progressive in the sense that capitalism was in its initial stages as it paved the way for a massive increase in the productive forces. This view leads to an agreement with Ticktin that the U.S.S.R. is characterised by waste and underemployment on a huge scale (80) whereas Cuba, for instance, is still seen as being in its progressive stage because the masses still identify with the regime and an attempt has been made to "resolve acute problems of underdevelopment" at a lesser human cost than the regime of Stalin. (81) Contrary to either the "millennium" or "1984" perspective, then, state collectivism is perceived to embody the dynamic - consolidated - stagnant schema applicable to other social systems and, therefore, its origin and potential endings can be historically located. The implications of Fantham and Machover's theory are extremely important, in that "anti-capitalist revolutions" in the underdeveloped sectors of the world economy are seen to be likely to develop into "state collectivist regimes, rather than socialist ones in the post-revolutionary period" unless and until the "advanced countries" experience a socialist revolution. (82) Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution, then, is rejected and the problematic for a feasible socialist revolution is truly seen as located in international interactions. I take the theory as suggesting that because socialism is reliant on a relatively high level of productive forces (which, by definition, do not exist in the underdeveloped sector) that it would only be possible in the underdeveloped sector if a socialist revolution occurred in the imperialist sector, thereby releasing productive capacity, which could be used by the imperialised economy to alleviate this problem. The uneven development inherent in imperialism is seen as a significant factor preventing the imperialist economies from breaking out of the vicious circle. For this reason, the authors see state collectivist regimes as historically progressive in this sector, whereas (obviously) they would not be so in the capitalist democracies and, in fact, the writers are correct in noting that in the advanced economies. external intervention would be necessary to "impose" such a regime. (83) The argument is not central here, but it may be said that the chances of such an imposition occurring appear minimal, in that it would require a lesser set of productive forces to supplant a higher level of these forces. Such an event would place a large question mark not only over Fantham and Machover's theory, a question mark unacknowledged by them, but over a Marxist notion of history itself.
1. The bureaucratic state collectivism analysis also upholds the typical notion of a ruling bureaucratic stratum, but the impression is that it has a lesser relative autonomy from the state than in the deformed workers' state theory where it is seen as parasitic upon society and inasmuch as the bureaucracy is seen as a product of history, it is viewed as an illegitimate one. In the b.s.c. thesis, there appears to be seen a greater fusion between the bureaucratic strata and the state in that bureaucratic management of the state defines its nature and category label. Collectivism expresses succinctly the manner in which means of production are organised and, because owned by the state, for all essential purposes owned by the bureaucracy. Like the state capitalist analysis, then, the logic of this is that the bureaucracy would be a new type of class, rather than caste, formation.
2. Again typically, the bureaucracy is seen as appropriating surplus value, but this is only relative and both Bruno Rizzi's early work and Fantham and Machover's fairly recent one, nevertheless, present an historically progressive role for the bureaucracy, in that this form of organisation is capable of raising the level of productive forces at a speed and in a manner inconceivable in an imperialist capitalist country. It is important to give an objective account and clearly state that this is perceived to be due to the superior form of economic organisation, and not at all to any altruistic impulses of the bureaucracy to improve living standards which, by the way, would be unusual behaviour for such a repressive ruling class which does not find in necessary to seek consensus from the dominated classes. It is true that the deformed workers' state analysis sees even a bureaucratically deformed workers' state as economically superior to capitalism, but without the optimistic projections regarding the level of productive forces inherent in the bureaucratic state collectivist perspectives.
3. The idea of the Soviet Union as a slave society appears as even more nonsensical now than it must have done when written. This is the kind of terminology one expects form the extreme-right where it serves not as analysis but as political abuse. In Marxist categories it would be important to show in what manner we could correlate the idea with the original tenets of historical materialism. This does not mean that a new type of slave society can be relegated as a conception totally to the realm of science fiction, but it does mean the term slave has a generally understood meaning in regards of physical restraint and general constraints on the parameters of activity which cannot be found even at the zenith of Stalinism.
Fantham and Machover's view is more coherent in that they see bureaucratic state collectivism as removing a society from any direct control by imperialism. Therefore, the working class, has been removed from the international division of labour in such a society. The advantage for the working class in this lies not in any short term gains in terms of wage remuneration or agency exercised with the social totality, but in long term social development.
4. This development is seen as the massive increase in productive forces which the bureaucratic state collectivist regime is capable of producing. The idea that such a increase automatically, in and of itself, leads to socialism has been criticised at length elsewhere and need not detain us here as it forms no part of Fantham and Machover's analysis. They see the societies as progressive as compare with the imperialist sector of the world economy and that is all. Let us now summarise the theory.
1) The economic base and the superstructures are not seen as dichotomous as in the deformed workers' state analysis. A bureaucratic state collectivism is seen as a society of a new type of running "parallel" to capitalism. (84) As such, it has its own specific economic laws of motion (85) and corresponding superstructures. Because the relationship is viewed in this manner, a revolution, rather than simply a "political revolution", is identified as necessary to change the relations of production. (86) Whereas, the Trotskyist analysis sees Stalinism as a political counter-revolution, whereby " . . . a new mode of production was established". (87) The authors place the Soviet Union in a special category as " . . . a successful proletarian revolution" (88) had occurred there and the b.s.c. regime, established by the counter-revolution, replaced a more progressive one, whereas,
"In other countries where it emerged state collectivism did so as a form definitely more progressive than the society it directly replaced". (89)
Ownership of the means of production is seen as class ownership by the bureaucracy embodied in state collectivism. This is a major challenge to the original Trotskyist analysis where the bureaucracy is seen as a mediating layer - by logical extension an unstable layer - interspersed between the means of production and the working class, i.e. a caste. After seventy years, it is clear that the original formalised schema, which viewed the bureaucracy as a temporary phenomena and the U.S.S.R. as being able to do no other than "revert" to capitalism or proceed to socialism, was simply wrong. (90) The attempt to hold fast to such a conception is the spur for Pablo's famous analysis. (91)
2. Appropriation of economic surplus is seen as essentially the same as in the first two sections. There is probably a tendency to downplay this in Fantham and Machover's analysis, in that the bureaucracy must be a progressive force - to what degree and timescale is arguable - because it can promote the building of productive forces, in the "parallel development", in a manner in which capitalism could not.
3. In fact in, an earlier critique of Trotskyism (92), Big Flame note that in typical Trotskyist theory,
"The concentration on bureaucracies as parasitical layers creates a situation where the necessity for a division of labour is seen as allowing a basis for bureaucracy". (93)
Whereas they prefer a functionalist analysis of bureaucracy,
"It is the bargaining function, not the existence of . . . bureaucrats as a separate group in the division of labour with their own distinct interests, that creates the conditions for social privileges". (94)
It is precisely the "bargaining function" which promotes "the existence of bureaucrats as a separate group" and exactly their manner of existence which enables them to carry out the "bargaining function". In trying to move away from Trotsky's supposed "sociological" analysis of material circumstances (which indicates how little they understood the attempt to integrate an understanding of bureaucracy into the internal relations of the U.S.S.R., which themselves emanate from the objective historical circumstances) and lead directly to Trotsky's international outlook, B.F.' idealist viewpoint, which views bureaucracy as abstraction, leads them to see the Cultural Revolution in China as an "anti-bureaucratic revolution" (95), rather than an intra-bureaucratic struggle, albeit involving some mass participation. (96) Big Flame read the question backwards in empiricist fashion. The function rationality of the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union is defined by its role in the division of labour and not the reverse order.
The "determinate degree" of labour division in the U.S.S.R. can be understood as of a higher order in the b.s.c. model, not in the sense of any immediate differentiation in location in the social totality, but in terms of projected functional necessity - to Trotsky the bureaucracy being a procedural imposition - and historical viability. In the b.s.c. theory, the labour division would be seen as historically justified, whereas, in Trotsky's analysis, its role is identified as a blockage on the development of the productive forces. In Section A, it has already been noted that the bureaucracy's role at the initiation of socialist construction enbodies a contradiction, the main aspect of which is the pressing need for centralised economic organisation to which the strata's inegalitarianism displayed in its consumption of a disproportionately high level of surplus value, is secondary. With economic development, this contradiction is modified and assumes an eventual reverse configuration as the bureaucracy's "rational" role is superseded and the strata - by its very existence, not because of any subjective intentions - becomes an increasing drag on, not only the development of the productive forces, but on all aspects of society. (97)
4. All these theories so far considered agree that a substantial growth in productive forces has occurred. On its own, this means little, but the differentiation from "parallel" capitalist development, which also has its success stories, South Korea, Taiwan/Formosa, Hong Kong to name only three, is the manner in which this growth takes place with heavy emphasis on specific sectors. In itself, this implies some level of co-ordination or "planning" absent from capitalist development.
The b.s.c. theory as explicated by Fantham and Machover, is an attempt to grapple with some of the problems inherent in both Trotsky and Cliff's analysis. In particular, it grapples with Trotsky's view of the integral instability of Soviet society (98) and Cliff's conflating of internal and external relations. (99) Whilst they accept Ticktin's points regarding waste in the Soviet Union (100), this does not form the crux of their analysis, which is enternally coherent. They go beyond rejecting any crude Marxist view of a "unilinear sequence of modes of production", the "stages" conception, and argue for this "bifurcated" view of history. As an explanatory device, the use of the term is understandable as long as one remembers that history is a totality. Intersections and interventions occur within history, but they do not stand outside of the totality even though they may modify it.
Notes
69. CLIFF. Tony, The Theory of Bureaucratic Collectivism : A Critique, in his Neither Washington Nor Moscow, Pages 90/91. See also a partial translation of this work in, RIZZI, Bruno, The bureaucratisation of the World. Also note an important review of the above text by TARBUCK, Ken, In : Revolutionary History, Volume 1. Number 3, Autumn 88.
70. Ibid, Page 91.
71. Ibid, Page 91. Also note in the same book the essay entitled, The End of the Road : Deutscher's Capitulation to Stalinism , Pages 166 to 179.
72. MARCUSE, Herbert, One Dimensional Man, and HELLER, Agnes, The Theory of Need in Marx, both provide interesting discussions of "wants" and "needs etc.
73. CLIFF, The Theory of Bureaucratic Collectivism, op cit. Page 92.
74. Ibid, Page 93.
75. The Century of the Unexpected, op cit. Page 15.
76. Ibid, Page 3.
77. Ibid, Page 4.
78. Ibid, Pages 11/12.
79. Ibid, Page 4.
80. Ibid, Page 16.
81. Ibid, Page 15.
82. Ibid, Page 23.
83. Ibid, Page 23.
84. Ibid, Page 4.
85. Ibid, Pages 9/10.
86. Ibid, Page 8.
87. Ibid, Page 10.
88. Ibid, Page 11.
89. Ibid, Page 11.
90. It may be clear to m, but anyone with more than a passing acquaintance with the Trotskyist left will know that such a sentence could only be written by a heretic. This is dogmatism I believe!
91. PABLO, Michel, Where Are We Going? In: NATIONAL EDUCATION DEPARTMENT SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY, Education for Socialists Bulletin - Towards The History of the Fourth International, Part 4, International Secretariat Documents 1951-1954, Volume 1. March 1974, Page 4.
92. THOMPSON, Paul, and LEWIS, Guy, The Revolution Unfinished? - A Critique of Trotskyism, op cit.
93. Ibid, Page 30.
94. Ibid, Page 31. Emphasis in original in italics.
95. Ibid, Page 30.
96. WU, S.S., Mao-Tse Tung and the Chinese Revolution, In:- UNITED SECRETARIAT OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, International Press Correspondence (Inprecor), Number 60. October 21. 1976, 76 Rue Antoine Dansaert, France, Page 7. (Now defunct and merged with International Press), P O Box 116, New York, 10014.
97. Fantham and Machover have little to say about the division of labour between town and country, but do recognise such a division. See, Century of the Unexpected, op cit, Page 10.
98. Ibid, Page 3.
99. Ibid, Page 9.
100. Ibid, Pages 16/17.