Charles Bettelheim Class Struggles in the USSR Second Period: 1923-1930 [Section 5 -- Sec. 1 of Part 4]

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  Key to abbreviations, initials, and Russian
  words used in the text

Artel	A particular form of producers' cooperative
Cadet party	The Constitutional Democratic Party
CLD	See STO
Cheka	Extraordinary Commission (political police)
Glavk	One of the chief directorates in the Supreme Council of the National Economy or in a people's commissariat
Gosplan	State Planning Commission
GPU	State Political Administration (political police)
Kulak	A rich peasant, often involved in capitalist activities of one kind or another, such as hiring out agricultural machinery, trade, moneylending, etc.
Mir	The village community
Narkomtrud	People's Commissariat of Labor
NEP	New Economic Policy
NKhSSSRv	National Economy of the USSR in (a certain year or period)
NKVD	People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs
OGPU	Unified State Political Administration (political police)
Orgburo	Organization Bureau of the Bolshevik Party
Politburo	Political Bureau of the Bolshevik Party
Rabfak	Workers' Faculty
Rabkrin	See RKI
RCP(B)	Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik): official
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	name of the Bolshevik Party, adopted by the Seventh Party Congress in March 1918
RKI	Workers' and Peasants' Inspection
RSDLP	Russian Social Democratic Labor Party
RSDLP(B)	Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolshevik)
RSFSR	Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic
Skhod	General assembly of a village
Sovkhoz	State farm
Sovnarkhoz	Regional Economic Council
Sovnarkom	Council of People's Commissars
SR	Socialist Revolutionary
STO	Council of Labor and Defense
Uchraspred	Department in the Bolshevik Party responsible for registering the members and assigning them to different tasks
Uyezd	County
Volost	Rural district
VSNKh	Supreme Economic Council
VTsIK	All-Russia Central Executive Committee (organ derived from the Congress of soviets)
Zemstvo	Administrative body in country areas before the Revolution

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   Part 4
     The changes in ideological and political
     relations within the Bolshevik Party

    Under the conditions of the NEP the leadership of the Bolshevik Party (its congresses and conferences, and, still more, the Central Committee, the Political Bureau, and the Party Secretariat) formed the chief foreground of politics, with the government and the VTsIK only secondary. This was where, through a series of conflicts, there took place, in a comparatively open way, the process of working out the political line to be followed and the conceptions on which that line was based.

    I have spoken here of a "foreground" so as to emphasize the fact that, in reality, the political line was not worked out "in a test tube," inside some "sovereign" political ruling group. Social conflicts, whether organized or not, actually had their effect, direct or indirect, upon the analyses made by the Party and upon the process whereby it decided its line. The Party (or its leadership) was not a "demiurge" placed somewhere "above" all contradictions and acting somehow "from without" upon these contradictions.

    The tasks that the Bolshevik Party undertook were determined by the existence of objective contradictions. However, the way these tasks were precisely defined, and the means that were adopted to fulfill them, resulted from the fashion in which these contradictions were identified by the Party, the type of analysis to which they were subjected, the resources actually available for action upon them, and the estimate made of the possibility of taking action with these resources.

    The analyses which the Party developed, and the conclusions to which they pointed, were dependent, therefore, not only on the objective situation but also on the ideological

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forms through which the struggles fought out inside the Party were conducted. The aggregate of these forms constituted what may be called the Bolshevik ideological formation. It was a result of history, produced by systematization of the Party's experience and, more broadly, of the experience of the international labor movement, a systematization effected by applying the concepts of Marxism and Leninism, along with notions regarded as being compatible with these concepts. Like everything else, the Bolshevik ideological formation contained contradictions of its own, and it changed during the NEP period in consequence of the class struggles and of "experience gained" -- meaning the Party's interpretation of the successes and failures of the political line followed up to that point.

    The actual political line was never identical with that which was laid down in principle. The more or less extensive gap between the two, which tended to widen toward the end of the NEP, was determined by many different factors, and in particular by the greater or lesser correctness of the conclusions drawn from analysis of the contradictions and of the evaluation made of the means that could be employed to deal correctly with them. The gap between the actual political line and the line of principle depended also on the support or opposition that the various class forces -- and the apparatuses through which they operated -- offered to the line as it was defined in principle.

    Through the struggles which occurred in this Party during the NEP period we can see how the position of certain leaders was strengthened, whereas the authority of those who defended conceptions that were rejected by the Party's leading bodies suffered decline. This process became especially acute toward the end of the NEP period, when, in contrast to what had happened in Lenin's time, leaders whose ideas were rejected found themselves, more and more often, removed from the Party leadership and even expelled from the Party, which meant a narrowing of inner-Party democracy. The working of democratic centralism demands that a variety of opinions be expressed and that Party members be allowed to

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engage in a genuine debate. In this way the form in which ideological and political struggles were carried on in the Party was altered.

    The problems which the Party had to confront on the eve of the "great change" were both many and complicated. Basically, they were the same problems as those the Party had been faced with in 1923-1924 (on this, see volume I of the present work, pp. 506 ff.), but the terms in which they were presented were partly different.

    The decisive problem was, and remained all through these years, how to unite the masses of the people so as to develop their active support for the Soviet government. At the heart of this problem lay the task of consolidating the worker-peasant alliance.

    On the fulfillment of this task depended the possibility of radically transforming some of the existing social relations, and this transformation was also constantly on the agenda during the NEP period. It concerned, first and foremost, political relations, for what was required was to destroy the state apparatus inherited from Tsardom, to revive the soviets, and to develop democratic centralism, which could not be done without developing mass democracy. The problem of a radical transformation also existed at the level of the immediate production relations: what was required was, in particular, to change labor relations in the state-owned enterprises. The solution of such a problem as this was dependent on the Party's capacity to stimulate real mass actions.

    The industrialization of the country and the transformation of its agriculture were problems that were present throughout the NEP period, more or less acutely, but the type of industrialization and of change in agriculture that took place was dictated by the nature of the changes in the immediate production relations, in political relations, and in relations between classes.

    All these problems came up, with greater or lesser clarity at different times, during the discussions that went on in the Party during this period. However, the solutions that the Party tried to apply varied from time to time, partly because these

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problems arose in terms that were to some extent new, and partly because the analysis made of them changed, in connection with the changes undergone by the Bolshevik ideological formation.

    When one considers the years 1924 to 1929 as a whole, one is struck by the fact that the Party never clearly defined what the chief link in the situation was, the link on which action must be taken first and foremost so as to be able to wield sufficient power over the whole set of contradictions. Nevertheless, it can be said that between 1924 and 1927 the decisions taken by the Party's leading bodies were more or less consistently dominated by the problem of maintaining the worker-peasant alliance. It was on this problem that the Party's efforts were mainly concentrated, even though it did not always deal correctly with it and was unsuccessful in arousing a mass movement among the peasantry.

    The worker-peasant alliance was, indeed, the chief link at that time, the factor on which action needed to be taken first and foremost in order to strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat. The various oppositions which took shape within the Party between 1924 and 1927 all overlooked or neglected this chief link. Even when some of their formulations were correct (especially when they demanded that disputed questions be discussed more openly and thoroughly, and that genuine democratic centralism be developed), the general orientation of the political line they advocated was mistaken, because it neglected the main thing -- what was needed in order to strengthen the worker-peasant alliance.

    From 1928 on (and even earlier, if certain practical decisions are taken into account), however, the Party tended no longer to focus its efforts mainly on the worker-peasant alliance, although this was far from having been consolidated, and its consolidation continued to be the principal problem. The Bolshevik Party then acted increasingly as though industrialization of the country was the sine qua non for solving all other problems. In this way the conditions accumulated which dictated the "great change" at the end of 1929. The "Right" opposition tried to prevent this turn, for which neither the

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Party nor the peasantry were really prepared. But it was incapable of formulating a political line that could have prevented the kulaks from gathering around them an increasing number of middle peasants. It was therefore doomed to defeat when the Party launched itself along the road of a collectivization and an industrialization which it could not control.

    In order to get a better grasp of the ideological and political changes that led to the "great change," we need to examine the conditions under which the struggle for the worker-peasant alliance, and then for industrialization, was waged within the Party. This is the indispensable starting point for an analysis of the essential features of the Bolshevik ideological formation and of the process of change that it underwent.









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  1. The fight for the worker-peasant
     alliance

    When we study the period between the Twelfth and Fifteenth Party Congresses (from 1923 to the end of 1927), we see that, for the Party leadership, the chief political task was, in principle, the strengthening of the worker-peasant alliance. This was so even if the primacy of the task was not always made clearly explicit and the concrete conditions for realizing it often remained vague, both on the plane of formulations and, even more, on that of political and economic practice. In any case, it was around this problem that the sharpest conflicts were fought against the chief opposition trends. These struggles, and the way they unfolded, are of major importance as regards the ideological and political changes that occurred (especially in respect to organizational practice), and so we must briefly recall how they developed between 1924 and 1927, taking as our chronological "reference points" the chief meetings held by the Party's leading bodies.



   I.  From the Twelfth to the Thirteenth
     Party Congress

    During the period separating the Twelfth Congress from the Thirteenth, which was held on May 23-31, 1924, a little more than four months after Lenin's death, political struggles were waged around problems of the worker-peasant alliance and of inner-Party democracy. They gave rise to a number of discussions and decisions of which we can only summarize here the most important aspects.

    The Thirteenth Congress resolved that, "in order to solve

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the problem of the Party's work in the countryside, it is necessary to start from the principle that the task for the whole of this historical period is to realize the alliance between the working class and the peasantry."[1] The resolutions devoted to work in the rural areas and to cooperation[2] show the importance accorded by the Congress to the worker-peasant alliance and to the efforts being made to decide how to develop this alliance so as to lead the peasantry "to socialism through co-operation."[3] These resolutions also show the difficulties encountered by the progress of Party activity in the countryside, and reveal a tendency to rely upon, for the fulfillment of rural tasks, mainly the rural intelligentsia and those industrial workers who had "links with the villages,"[4] rather than upon the peasants themselves. Moreover, in terms of day-to-day practice, the Party gave only minimal aid to the poor and middle peasants.

    While, at the time of the Thirteenth Congress, the Party seemed united on the need to strengthen the worker-peasant alliance, the divisions on this matter were actually as deep as on some others. In 1923-1924 opposition to the worker-peasant alliance was expressed mainly in the demands put forward to strengthen the role of Gosplan and to increase credits to heavy industry (which, under the conditions of the time, could be done only at the expense of agriculture and the peasantry).

    Open opposition to the economic policy followed by the Party between the Twelfth and Thirteenth Congresses was shown when, on October 15, 1923, forty-six members of the CC sent a letter to the Political Bureau. This letter, which came to be spoken of as the "platform of the 46" was signed by Pyatakov, Preobrazhensky, Osinsky, Kaganovich, and Sapronov.[5] It attributed the economic difficulties encountered in 1923 (especially the slump in sales of industrial goods experienced toward the end of the year) to shortcomings in credit policy, planning, and aid to industry.[6]

    The "platform of the 46" declared that if economic difficulties had piled up in this way, it was not due to incapacity on the part of the leadership but to the fact that the problems con-

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cerned had not been widely discussed, discussion of them being confined to "Party functionaries recruited from above," while the mass of the Party members were excluded. The platform therefore proceeded to deal in a severely critical way with the way that the Party functioned:

This is a fact which is known to every member of the Party. Members of the Party who are dissatisfied with this or that decision of the Central Committee, or even of a provincial committee, who have this or that doubt in their minds, who privately note this or that error, irregularity or disorder, are afraid to speak about it at Party meetings, and are even afraid to talk about it in conversation, unless the partner in the conversation is thoroughly reliable from the point of view of 'discretion'; free discussion within the Party has practically vanished, the public opinion of the Party is stifled.[7]

    Although Trotsky, who was a member of the Political Bureau, did not sign this platform, he was thought to share the views expressed in it, on account of the letters he sent, around this same time, to the other members of the PB, letters of similar content.[8]

    Thus, in the months preceding the Thirteenth Congress, great tension developed within the CC, centered on problems of "economic policy" (and so, of the worker-peasant alliance) and of the Party's internal regime.

    On the first of these points the opposition suffered formal defeat, as may be seen from the resolutions of the Thirteenth Conference (January 16-18, 1924) and the Thirteenth Congress. On the second, matters were more complicated.

    On the one hand, the Thirteenth Conference adopted a resolution on "building the Party"[9] which acknowledged that the situation called for a serious change in the Party's orientation, in the sense of effective and systematic application of the principles of "workers' democracy." The resolution specified that "workers' democracy means open discussion by all Party members of the most important questions . . . , freedom of discussion within the Party, and also election from below of leading functionaries and committees."[10] In reality, the adop-

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tion of this resolution did little to modify the authoritarian practices which prevailed.

    On the other hand, the Thirteenth Conference condemned, as factional activity, the "platform of the 46" and Trotsky's statements, thereby confirming a resolution passed by the plenum of the CC and the CCC at its meeting of October 25-27, 1923.[11]

    The Thirteenth Congress strengthened the positions of those who had declared for consolidating the worker-peasant alliance, especially Stalin, who was reelected to the post of general secretary, although he had offered his resignation after Lenin's "Letter to the Congress" had been discussed by the CC and by the senior members of the Congress delegations.[12]

    Trotsky's position, on the contrary, was markedly weakened, especially after the very severe criticism made of him by Zinoviev, who called upon him to admit his mistakes publicly.[13] Trotsky refused to do this, while saying that he bowed to the decisions taken, regardless of whether they were right or wrong.[14]

    Despite the overt appearance of divergencies in the PB, the Thirteenth Congress seemed to be still dominated by a spirit of unity. The composition of the PB underwent little change: Trotsky continued to be a member, and Bukharin entered it, taking the place of Lenin, who died on January 21, 1924.



  II.  From the Thirteenth to the Fourteenth
      Party Congress

    After the Thirteenth Congress Trotsky's position continued to weaken. On November 6, 1924, he published a book entitled The Lessons of October, in which he leveled an attack specifically at Kamenev and Zinoviev for their hesitancy at the moment of the October Revolution. This gave rise to a series of counterattacks on their part, the most important of which, at the time, was the one launched by Kamenev in a speech on November 18.[15] His chief criticism of Trotsky was his alleged "underestimation of the role of the peasantry, masked by revo-

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lutionary phraseology."[16] The Party gathering to which Kamenev had spoken passed a motion denouncing "Trotsky's breach of the promises he made at the Thirteenth Congress." Similar resolutions were adopted at other Party meetings.[17] On January 15, 1925, Trotsky sent a letter to the CC in which he said that he had not sought to reopen a discussion in the Party, and offered his resignation from the chairmanship of the Revolutionary Military Council.


   (a)  The condemnation of "Trotskyism"

    On January 17 the plenum of the CC adopted a resolution condemning Trotsky for his attacks on the unity of the Party. It denounced Trotskyism as "a falsification of Communism in the spirit of adaptation to 'European' models of pseudo-Marxism, that is, in the last analysis, to the spirit of 'European' Social-Democracy." Trotsky was relieved of his functions as chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council and warned that any further violation of the Party's decisions would make his continued membership of the PB impossible and put on the agenda the question of expelling him from the CC.[18]

    During the discussions preceding the adoption of this resolution, Zinoviev had demanded that Trotsky be expelled from the Party, or at least removed from the CC. This demand was rejected, and Kamenev then called for Trotsky's removal from the PB. These demands were opposed by Stalin, Kalinin, Voroshilov, and Ordzhonikidze.[19] At the Party's Fourteenth Congress Stalin mentioned these demands put forward by Zinoviev and Kamenev, explaining that they had not been accepted because "we knew that the policy of amputation was fraught with great dangers for the Party, that the method of amputation, the method of blood-letting -- and they demanded blood -- was dangerous, infectious: today you amputate one limb, tomorrow another, the day after tomorrow a third -- what will we have left in the Party?"[20]

    These discussions were thus among the first occasions on which open dissension occurred between Stalin, on the one hand, and Zinoviev and Kamenev, on the other.

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   (b)  The worker-peasant alliance and the
       building of socialism in one country

    The resolution of the plenum of January 1925 had been preceded by the publication of a series of articles criticizing Trotsky's concept of "permanent revolution." One of these, published by Stalin in Pravda and Izvestiya of December 20, 1924, was to have considerable importance. It was entitled: "October and Comrade Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution." In this article Stalin counterposed to Trotsky's theory the thesis of building socialism in one country. The Fourteenth Party Conference (April 27-29, 1925) embodied this thesis officially in one of the resolutions it adopted.[21]

    In a report on the Fourteenth Conference which he gave in May 1925 Stalin said that this resolution implied that the community of interest between the workers and the peasants was sufficiently strong to outweigh, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the contradictions setting them against each other: hence, it was possible for the socialist road to triumph in the USSR. It was just this possibility that Trotsky rejected when he declared that "in a backward country" the contradictions between the working class and the peasantry could not be resolved -- that they could be resolved only on the international plane. Stalin quoted this passage from Trotsky: "The contradictions in the position of a workers' government in a backward country with an overwhelmingly peasant population can be solved only on an international scale, in the arena of the world proletarian revolution." And Stalin added: "Needless to say, this proposition has nothing in common with Leninism."[22]

    We thus see clearly that what was at issue in the conflict between Trotsky's concept of "permanent revolution" and acceptance of the possibility of building socialism in one country, not excluding a country with a peasant majority, was the firmness of the worker-peasant alliance, and therefore, the significance of the NEP. Trotsky's thesis reduced the NEP to a measure dictated by circumstances, a "retreat" which must result in capitalism becoming stronger and stronger. According to this thesis, in the conditions prevailing in Russia, the

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only way to hold back the realization of this threat was to undertake rapid industrialization, and this could be carried through only at the expense of the peasantry, for industry was too weak to have its own source of accumulation. This point of view was developed systematically by Preobrazhensky, in his conception of "primitive socialist accumulation."[23]

    In Stalin's report on the Fourteenth Conference he showed that the conference had rejected this view and acknowledged that, within the setting of the NEP, it was possible to deal correctly with the contradictions that inevitably counterposed the proletariat to "the class of private-property-owners, i.e., the peasantry,"[24] and that, under these conditions, the socialist road could triumph over the capitalist road: "The socialist path . . . means development by a continuous improvement in the well-being of the majority of the peasantry. It is in the interest of both the proletariat and the peasantry, particularly of the latter, that development should proceed along . . . the socialist path, for that is the peasantry's only salvation from impoverishment and a semi-starvation existence."[25]

    Politically, the Fourteenth Conference stressed the need, if the worker-peasant alliance was to be strengthened, to respect revolutionary legality and to eliminate the survivals from "war communism" in political and administrative work. One of the resolutions adopted mentioned that the achievement of these aims required the entry in larger numbers of agricultural workers and poor and middle peasants into the Party organizations.[26] The Fourteenth Conference also declared that, at the stage which had now been reached, the Party's principal task must be to revitalize the Soviets and improve the leadership of the peasantry by the proletariat through the organs of Soviet power, so that it was necessary to go forward to the phase of developing soviet democracy. In his report on the Fourteenth Conference, Stalin said that "the task of implanting Soviet democracy and revitalizing the Soviets in the countryside should make it possible for us to reconstruct our state apparatus, to link it with the masses of the people, to make it sound and honest, simple and inexpensive. . . ."[27]

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    This task -- which was never fully realized -- corresponded to what Lenin had called for when he demanded the destruction of the state machine inherited from tsardom and its replacement by one that would be genuinely proletarian.[28]

    It was a task that required, too, a change in the style of the leadership given by the Party. Stalin said that an end must be put to incorrect forms of leadership, that the Party must stop giving orders to the peasants: "We must learn to explain to the peasants patiently the questions they do not understand, we must learn to convince the peasants, sparing neither time nor effort for this purpose."[29]

    Fundamentally, then, the Fourteenth Conference defined some of the conditions for strengthening the worker-peasant alliance, especially on the political plane, that of the Party's relations with the peasant masses and Soviet democracy.


   (c)  The Fourteenth Conference and peasant
       problems

    The decisions taken by the Fourteenth Conference and by the CC also concerned economic problems, especially the policy to be followed toward the well-to-do and rich peasants.

    On the eve of the conference a number of speeches were made which showed that the Party leadership was taking a less restrictive attitude to the rich peasants, whose possibilities of accumulating and of increasing agricultural production were seen as indispensable to the development of the economy. At the beginning of April, for instance, Kamenev said to the Congress of Soviets of the Moscow region:

We must also revise our laws relating to the use of land, to the employment of wage-labour [by farmers -- C. B.], and to the leasing of land [which] are holding back the development of the productive forces in the countryside and exacerbating class relations instead of guiding them in the proper way. . . . We are for the development of the productive forces, we are against survivals which hinder the development of the productive forces. . . . we are for accumulation by the peasants, but we are for regulating this accumulation.[30]

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    On April 17, 1925, Bukharin spoke on the same theme at a mass meeting in Moscow, at which he said: "Our policy towards the rural areas must develop in such a way as partly to remove and abolish a number of restrictions which hinder the growth of the farms of the well-to-do peasant and the kulak. To the peasants, to all the peasants, we must say, Get rich, develop your farms, don't be afraid that coercion will be used against you.[31]

    Except for the expression, "Get rich," the same themes were expounded at the Fourteenth Conference, and met with open opposition only from one delegate, Yuri Larin.[32]

    Meeting on the day after the close of the conference, April 30, the CC adopted a resolution on "the Party's current tasks in economic policy in connexion with the economic needs of the rural areas."[33] This resolution widened the right to lease land, removed restrictions on the employment of wage earners in agriculture, reduced the agricultural tax, and condemned the practice of imposing fixed prices when procuring agricultural produce.[34]

    The decisions of the CC of April 30, 1925, were based on the work done at the Fourteenth Conference and marked a drift toward a conception of the NEP whose practical application contradicted the demands of the alliance between the working class and the mass of the peasantry. These decisions aimed at finding a solution to the general problem of accumulation in the Soviet economy by favoring accumulation by the rich and well-to-do peasants.


   (d)  The birth of the new opposition and its
       condemnation by the Fourteenth
       Congress

    This conception of the NEP facilitated fresh attacks on the worker-peasant alliance. At the beginning of the summer of 1925, several leaders of the Party began openly criticizing the decisions taken in April. Some of them, including Zinoviev, secretary of the Leningrad organization, put forward formulations which tended to challenge the NEP itself.

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    The first public onslaught on the decisions taken in the spring was made in a speech by Zinoviev on June 21, 1925. He said that these decisions demonstrated the determination of the leadership to rely not on "the wretched peasant nag" but on the fat kulak horse.[35] In September Zinoviev published a book entitled Leninism,[36] in which, interpreting certain quotations from Lenin, he asserted that in abandoning "war communism" for the NEP the Party had abandoned the socialist economic forms for "state capitalism in a proletarian state," and added: "Let us have no illusions, no self-deception! Let us call state capitalism, state capitalism."[37]

    On September 5 Zinoviev, Kamenev, Sokolnikov, and Krupskaya drew up a document which became known as the "platform of the 4." Those who signed it included two members of the Political Bureau and Lenin's widow, while the signature of Sokolnikov, who had hitherto been a resolute supporter of a "rightist" conception of the NEP, made this platform seem the point of convergence of dissenters of differing views.

    The "new opposition" thus born attacked the NEP and, echoing some workers' demands, called for increases in wages. It denounced "the practices of the apparatus" and called for freedom of discussion and democracy in the Party.[38]

    Some of the points made by the new opposition met with response among part of the working class, especially their call for wage increases, which, in the situation existing then, was demagogic. It led some Party members to take part in unofficial strikes.

    On the whole, however, the opposition found little support in the Party. The turnabout made by Zinoviev and Kamenev, who had previously been unconditional defenders of the NEP and of the wages policy followed until then,[39] could evoke nothing but skepticism.

    The contradictions in the platform of the new opposition, the contrary positions so recently defended by Zinoviev and Kamenev, and the conditions under which the delegates to the Fourteenth Congress (December 18-31, 1925) were chosen ensured that the representatives of this opposition at the con-

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gress were few in number. However, they did succeed in speaking. Zinoviev even presented a "political counter-report," opposed to the one presented by Stalin. Though frequently interrupted, he developed his arguments, calling for respect for democracy in the Party. He declared that the situation of 1921 and 1923, which had justified the restrictions imposed on freedom of discussion in the Party, now belonged to the past. "Today we have different workers, greater activity in the masses, other slogans." And he added: "While permitting no factions, and on the question of factions maintaining our previous positions, we should at the same time instruct the Central Committee to draw into Party work all the forces of all former groups in our Party, and offer them the possibility to work under the leadership of the Central Committee."[40]

    As regards the problems of the NEP, Zinoviev reiterated his formulations of the summer and autumn, and concentrated his attack upon Bukharin.

    When he replied,[41] Stalin, quoting Lenin, said that the concessions made to the peasantry were above all concessions to the middle peasants, and that they were intended to strengthen the worker-peasant alliance.[42] He reminded his listeners that the

N.E.P. is a special policy of the proletarian state aimed at permitting capitalism while the commanding positions are held by the proletarian state, aimed at a struggle between the capitalist and socialist elements, aimed at increasing the role of the socialist elements to the detriment of the capitalist elements, aimed at the victory of the socialist elements over the capitalist elements, aimed at the abolition of classes and the building of the foundations of a socialist economy.[43]

    His argument regarding the question of state capitalism[44] was weak. Though he admitted that state capitalism was compatible with the dictatorship of the proletariat, as Lenin had said, he confined the notion of state capitalism to foreign concessions. For him, the predominant role played by the state-owned industrial sector sufficed to dispose of the question of state capitalism. He no more took up the question of the

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capitalist relations that might prevail in state-owned industry than did the "new opposition."[45]

    Stalin ended his speech with an appeal for unity, saying: "The Party wants unity, and it will achieve it with Kamenev and Zinoviev, if they are willing, without them if they are unwilling."[46]

    On December 23 a resolution whose terms were conceived so as to avoid a break with the members of the opposition was tabled. This resolution was passed by 559 votes to the 65 cast by the oppositionists.[47]

    On January 1, 1926, a new Political Bureau was elected by a CC whose composition had been partly altered. Zinoviev was still a member of the PB, but Kamenev was reduced to the rank of "alternative member." Bukharin, Rykov, Stalin, Tomsky, and Trotsky were reelected; three new members entered the PB: Voroshilov, Kalinin, and Molotov.

    The opposition had suffered a heavy defeat. The Party apparatus in Leningrad was reorganized by a delegation from the central secretariat. Zinoviev was replaced by Kirov as first secretary of the Leningrad organization.

    Among the important questions discussed by the Fourteenth Congress were also those of the trade unions and the industrial policy.


   (e)  The Fourteenth Congress and the
       trade-union question

    The Fourteenth Congress pronounced a judgment that was, on the whole, severe in its strictures on the way that trade-union activity had been carried on in 1925. The resolution adopted said that the unions had more often than not failed to face up to their obligations, allowing "their chief task, defence of the economic interests of the masses," to fall into the background.[48] It noted that a certain remoteness had developed "between the trade-union organs and the masses," which resulted in "a weakening of trade-union discipline, as was shown with particular clarity in a series of economic conflicts in the spring of 1925."[49] It called for wider participation by the

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masses in the work of the trade-union organizations, and demanded that the unions participate more systematically in the analyzing of economic and production problems, so as to be able to carry out a task of information and explanation.[50] It warned against any tendency to form an "unnatural bloc" between the economic organs, the heads of enterprises, and the trade unions.[51] Consequently, the resolution denounced the numerous cases in which collective agreements were concluded with the economic organs by trade unions ignorant of the actual situation "of the workers and office-workers on whose behalf they sign," so that the agreements in question "enjoyed little authority in the eyes of the workers and offered few guarantees to the economic organs."[52]

    In his political report to the Fourteenth Congress Stalin dealt with the problems of industry. He considered that, since it had now attained a level of production close to the prewar level, "further steps in industry mean developing it on a new technical basis, with the utilisation of new equipment and the building of new plants."[53] What was now required was to cross a threshold, and consequently, owing to "a considerable shortage of capital," the future development of industry "will, in all probability, proceed at a less rapid tempo than it has done up to now."[54] Stalin thus forecast that industry would grow more slowly than agriculture. In order to overcome the difficulties resulting from this situation he advocated that efforts at industrialization be not restricted to the large-scale industry directed by the central organs but that industrial development be assisted "in every district, in every okrug, in every gubernia, region and national republic."[55] This was a prospect very far removed from the policy that was to be put into practice a few months later.

    Elsewhere, in the reply he made to the discussion of his political report, Stalin spoke of the need to develop industries to produce equipment and machinery, so that the Soviet Union should not run the risk of becoming "an appendage of the capitalist countries."[56]

    One of the resolutions adopted by the Congress expressed the same demand, considering that it was of fundamental

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importance "to carry on economic construction with a view to converting the U.S.S.R. from a country that imports machinery and equipment into one that produces them for itself."[57]

    The Fourteenth Congress thus took up the problem of industrialization while remaining very vague as to the pace at which it should progress and the conditions for financing it.



   III.  From the Fourteenth Congress to the
       eve of the Fifteenth

    The "compromise" adopted by the Fourteenth Congress on the question of the "new opposition" did not put a stop to the oppositional activity of Zinoviev and Kamenev and their allies. The continuance of this activity reflected the reservations felt by a fairly large number of Party members regarding the NEP and a peasant policy which they considered to be a hindrance to rapid industrialization. The opposition declared for speeding up the pace of industrial development and persisted in advocating that recourse be had, for this purpose, to "primitive socialist accumulation." In 1926 the discussion on this subject was broadened. It revolved mainly around Preobrazhensky's book The New Economics,[58] which Bukharin subjected to a series of critical articles, one of the most important of which appeared in Pravda under the title: "The 'Law of Primitive Socialist Accumulation,' or Why We Should Not Replace Lenin by Preobrazhensky."[59]


   (a)  The birth of the "united opposition"

    At the Fourteenth Congress Zinoviev had prepared the ground for an attempt at bringing together "all the former groups in the Party,"[60] which signified principally an "opening" in the direction of Trotsky.[61]

    This "opening" led, at the end of March or the beginning of April, to contact being made between Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. About this time they agreed to cease repeating the

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accusations they had been hurling at each other until then. In this way there began to take shape an opposition which Stalin was to describe as "an unprincipled bloc."[62]

    Trotsky now came forward actively after having remained passive for almost two years. He made himself the advocate of a rate of industrial development higher than that officially proposed by Dzerzhinsky. The latter criticized Trotsky and Zinoviev sharply for their statements, accusing them of preparing a "new platform," to be based on exploitation of the peasants. Stalin spoke to the same effect. Eventually the resolution on industrialization was adopted unanimously, but the debate revealed how Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev were now aligned together.[63]

    This alignment led to the formation, at the beginning of 1926, of what was called the "united opposition," on the basis of the "declaration of the thirteen."[64] This dealt mainly with industrial policy and with the divisions in the Party. Trotsky expounded particularly the idea that the Party's "bureaucracy" threatened the revolution with a sort of "Thermidor."[65] At the plenum of July 14-23, 1926, the "united opposition" acted openly in concert, demanding higher wages for the workers and an increase in the agricultural tax on the rich peasants.[66]

    The Party leadership denounced the demagogic character of the opposition's arguments and the very serious threat that they offered to the worker-peasant alliance. Dzerzhinsky, as chairman of the VSNKh, made a long, closely reasoned speech on this theme.[67] But the Party leadership also used organizational measures to reply to the opposition. At the plenum of July 1926, Zinoviev was removed from the PB and one of his associates, M. Lashevich, from the CC and also from his post in the Revolutionary Military Council. These measures were taken as punishment for factional activity.[68] On this occasion Rudzutak entered the Political Bureau, and Mikoyan, Andreyev, Ordzhonikidze, Kaganovich, and Kirov became "alternative members." Trotsky retained his membership.

    However, the united opposition continued its activity. Trotsky, Zinoviev, and others of its leaders spoke at meetings of factory cells, as the Party rules allowed them to do. At first,

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their speeches seem to have evoked some response, but very soon the Party organizations in Moscow and Leningrad set themselves to put a stop to the opposition's activity, intervening physically to prevent its spokesmen from getting their message across. They succeeded in doing this, for the rank and file of the Party remained ultimately indifferent to the opposition's theses.

    During 1926, finding itself unable to obtain a hearing, the opposition organized itself. Thereby it took the path of factional activity. According to various sources, its active supporters numbered between four and eight thousand. These figures are very small in comparison with the Party's total membership at that time (about a million), but not negligible in relation to the numbers of those who took part actively in political discussions, which meant not more than a few tens of thousands.[69]

    In any case, the development of the opposition's organization did not escape the attention of the OGPU. The leaders of the opposition, fearing punishment for factional activity, therefore sought a discussion with the Party secretariat. After this discussion, on October 16 they signed a declaration in which, without renouncing the line of the "declaration of the thirteen," they admitted that they had broken discipline and engaged in factional activity.[70]

    By putting their names to this statement the leaders of the opposition hoped to be allowed to present their views in writing to the Fifteenth Party Conference. The CC plenum which met on October 23-26 rejected this demand, however, and took measures against the opposition's leaders. Trotsky was removed from the PB, Kamenev lost his position as an "alternative member" of that body, and Zinoviev ceased to be chairman of the Executive Committee of the Comintern.[71]


   (b)  The Fifteenth Conference and the first
       defeat of the ''united opposition" in
       1926

    The Fifteenth Conference, which was held between October 26 and November 3, 1926, saw the united opposition

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defeated. The debate on this subject was opened by Stalin, who laid before the conference theses on "the opposition bloc in the C.P.S.U.(B.)"[72] and on November 1 presented a report on "the Social-Democratic deviation in our Party."[73]

    Stalin's theses denounced the rallying of the "new opposition" to the positions of Trotskyism: his report analyzed the way the opposition had developed, and gave a critique of its positions. He formulated with particular clarity some of the principles of the NEP, especially as regards relations between industry and agriculture. He said: "The opposition bloc . . . fails to realise and refuses to recognise that industry cannot be advanced if the interests of agriculture are ignored or violated. It fails to understand that while industry is the leading element in the national economy, agriculture in its turn is the base on which our industry can develop. "[74]

    Stalin then showed that the opposition's theses led to peasant farming being treated as a "colony" which the proletarian state had to "exploit," and he quoted Preobrazhensky to this effect: "The more a country that is passing to a socialist organisation is economically backward, petty-bourgeois, and of a peasant character . . . the more it has to rely for socialist accumulation on the exploitation of pre-socialist forms of economy. "[75]

    Stalin's formulation emphasizing that agriculture was the basis for the development of industry was of great importance -- it made explicit one of the principles of the NEP which held a preponderant place in the documents approved by the Bolshevik Party's leading organs right down to 1928.

    Kamenev, Trotsky, and Zinoviev spoke at the Conference in support of the views they had been advocating jointly since the spring, and declared that they sought to achieve a "common effort" by the Party as a whole. The speeches of Kamenev and Zinoviev were violently interrupted, while Trotsky was listened to in silence. All three were replied to, in particular, by Molotov and Bukharin, who refuted the opposition's arguments, while some of its former supporters -- notably Krupskaya -- broke with it. Stalin replied to the discussion,[76] going over again the main arguments of his opening report. He concluded by saying to the members of the opposition:

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"Either you observe these conditions, which are at the same time the conditions for the complete unity of our Party, or you do not -- and then the Party, which gave you a beating yesterday, will proceed to finish you off tomorrow."[77]

    The resolution condemning the opposition bloc[78] was passed unanimously by the Fifteenth Conference which thus confirmed the sanctions taken by the preceding plenum against Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev.

    One of the resolutions of the Fifteenth Conference made explicit in a particularly clear way what was implied by the principles of the NEP. It pointed out that in order to strengthen the worker-peasant alliance there must be an improvement in the supply of machines and other goods to the rural areas, better organization of the marketing of agricultural produce, provision of credit for agriculture, and aid to the poor peasants, through special credits and through support for the development of collective farming. The resolution was favorable to the development of rural industry, especially for the processing of agricultural produce, and it condemned the opposition's advocacy of raising industrial prices and lowering agricultural prices.[79]

    Actually, as we know, the practical measures that this resolution called for were not taken. In the months that followed, the rural areas experienced a grave shortage of manufactured products, while the rural crafts were deprived of a large proportion of their raw material of urban origin, this being reserved to an ever greater extent for the needs of large-scale industry.


   (c)  The breakup of the opposition, its
       attempt to reorganize, and its fresh
       defeat on the eve of the Fifteenth
       Congress

    After the defeat it suffered at the Fifteenth Conference, the opposition began to disintegrate. The supporters of the "democratic centralism" group broke away and tried to form a group (the "group of 15") which would operate outside the Party,

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with a view, as they put it, to constituting "a nucleus for defence of the cause of the proletarian revolution," which they saw as having been betrayed by the Party and by the opposition.[80] This group had no political weight and soon disappeared.

    On the morrow of the Fifteenth Conference, Zinoviev and Kamenev were willing to cease maintaining a position different from that of the majority, whereas Trotsky wished to keep up the opposition's fight, even though he realized that it could not alter the balance of forces within the Party. At the end of 1926 Zinoviev and Kamenev rejoined Trotsky, and the opposition, which had suffered numerous defections, once more operated as a clandestine faction.[81]

    At the end of March 1927, Trotsky began attacking, in letter addressed to the PB, the line advocated by the Comintern for the Chinese Communist Party, and demanded that a discussion be opened on the "China question."[82] Trotsky believed in "the unconditional predominance, the direct domination of capitalist relations in China," and that "a class of landlords as a separate class does not exist in China. The landowners and the national bourgeoisie are one and the same."[83] Consequently, he rejected any policy of a united front with the Chinese bourgeoisie, and was later to declare that "only the predominance of the proletariat in the decisive industrial and political centres of the country creates the necessary basis for the organisation of a Red Army and for the extension of a soviet system into the countryside."[84]

    Although they were mistaken as to the real line of the Kuomintang, and gravely underestimated its capacity to turn on the working class (as shown in the repression begun by Chiang Kai-shek on April 12, in Shanghai), the leadership of the Bolshevik Party and the Executive Committee of the Comintern made an analysis that was more correct than the opposition's of the nature of the Chinese revolution. This analysis was set forth by Stalin in a series of theses published in Pravda on April 21, 1927.[85]

    Having failed to get the China question discussed by the CC, the united opposition appealed to the Executive Commit-

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tee of the Comintern, supporting its approach with a statement called the "declaration of the 83," from the number of its original signatories.[86] By acting in this way it appeared once more in the role of an organized faction.

    On May 24 Trotsky addressed the Executive Committee of the Comintern, presenting his analysis of the situation. Stalin replied, showing the ultraleft character of Trotsky's views and recalling Lenin's theses on the possibility and necessity of farming peasant soviets in countries such as China and India.[87] Here, too, the question of alliance with the peasant masses, with the place and role of the latter in an action for revolutionary change led by the proletariat, formed the line of demarcation between the positions defended by the majority of the Bolshevik Party and those of the opposition.

    After listening to several other speeches, the Executive Committee of the Comintern condemned Trotsky's views and confirmed, though with some corrections, the line which had been followed until then.[88]

    The opposition's resumed activity evoked a series of sanctions. Some members of the opposition were arrested, others were posted to the provinces or sent abroad. The opposition then appeared to retreat, by signing, on the occasion of the plenum of August 7 a declaration stating: "We will carry out all the decisions of the Communist Party and of its Central Committee. We are prepared to do everything possible to destroy all factional elements which have formed themselves as a consequence of the fact that on account of the inner-Party regime we were compelled to inform the Party of our opinions, which were falsely reported in the whole press of the country."[89]

    This declaration saved the opposition, for the moment, from expulsion from the Party. Nevertheless, though they drew up a "platform" recapitulating their views, they found that they were refused the right to publish the platform and circulate it in the Party in preparation for the Fifteenth Congress. They therefore took steps to print and circulate it clandestinely, and held illegal meetings. Eventually, at the plenum of October 21-23, 1927, Stalin called for sanctions to be taken against

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Trotsky and Zinoviev. After a discussion marked by violent incidents, these two were removed from the CC on the grounds that they had broken Party discipline.[90]

    The opposition was now nearing its final defeat. Its motions (when they could be presented at meetings of Party members) received only a very small number of votes. The right to speak was almost always denied to its representatives. In a last effort, the opposition tried, during the demonstration commemorating the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, to organize its own procession of demonstrators. They numbered in the few hundreds, and were quickly dispersed or arrested. On November 14, eighteen days before the Fifteenth Congress, Zinoviev and Trotsky were expelled from the Party. Kamenev and some other supporters of the opposition who were still on the CC were removed from it. The united opposition had practically ceased to exist. The Fifteenth Congress was held without the delegates including any open advocates of the line of accelerated industrialization. The Congress ratified the decisions taken by the CC on November 14. It condemned the opposition for breaking with Leninist ideology, for taking up "Menshevik positions," for having "denied the socialist nature of state-owned industry" and the possibility of "the socialist road of development for the countryside under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat," together with "the policy of alliance between the proletariat and the basic mass of the peasantry on the basis of Socialist construction." The opposition was accused of having "in practice denied that the dictatorship of the proletariat exists in the U.S.S.R." (by its talk of "Thermidor"), thereby making itself a tool of petty-bourgeois democracy and international social democracy. It was also condemned for indiscipline and factional activity.[91]



   IV.  The Fifteenth Congress

    The Fifteenth Congress of the Bolshevik Party was held on the morrow of the political defeat of the supporters of an

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opposition which gave the "exigencies" of rapid and centralized industrialization priority over the policy of consolidating the worker-peasant alliance within the framework of the NEP. The Congress resolutions included some especially clear formulations regarding this policy.


   (a)  The resolutions of the Fifteenth
       Congress

    These resolutions dealt chiefly with agricultural and peasant questions and with problems of industry and planning.[92] They reaffirmed the need to continue the NEP while stressing a concrete policy which included certain modifications in this policy as compared with the previous period. These concerned, especially, measures to restrict "the exploiting tendencies of the kulaks."

    This new orientation was put forward for the first time by Bukharin,[93] in a speech delivered two months before the Congress, on October 12, 1927. In this speech Bukharin said that it was now possible to exercise "increased pressure on the kulaks," because, during the last two years, the alliance with the peasant masses had been strengthened, together with the State's commanding positions.[94]

    The Fifteenth Congress also declared in favor of a policy of collectivization, but emphasized that this must be carried through with caution, by means of persuasion and without constraint. There could be observed, however, certain shades of difference between the way in which, on the one hand, Bukharin, Rykov (who was then chairman of the Sovnarkom of the USSR), and Kalinin, and, on the other, Stalin, presented the question of collectivization. For the former, collectivization was one of the elements in a policy aimed at solving the problems of agriculture. Stalin said of collectivization that "there is no other way out" -- no other solution to the problems of Soviet agriculture[95] though, during the Congress, he did not advocate either rapid collectivization or the use of coercion.

    As regards the conditions for developing industrialization, the Congress resolutions repeated, in the main, the formula-

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tions to be found in Bukharin's writings following the Fourteenth Congress, calling for more rapid industrialization while at the same time attacking the "super-industrializers" of the united opposition, the advocates of maximum accumulation to be achieved at the expense of the peasantry (especially by "opening the scissors").[96]

    The resolution of the Fifteenth Congress on the drawing up of the Five-Year Plan counterposed to the striving for "maximum" accumulation the need for "optimum" accumulation:

As regards relations between production and consumption, it must be clearly seen that we cannot proceed from a simultaneous maximising of both, as the opposition now demands. . . . Paying attention to the relative contradiction between these two factors, their reciprocal action and the connexions between them, and appreciating that, from the standpoint of long-term development, their interests generally coincide, we must proceed from an optimum combination of these two factors.[97]

    The resolution declared that the same requirements must be observed as regards

relations between town and country, between socialist industry and peasant farming. It is not right to proceed from the demand for a maximum transfer [perekachka: literally, pumping] of resources from peasant farming into industry for this would not only signify a political breach with the peasantry but also would undermine the supply of raw materials to industry itself, disrupt both the internal market and exports, and upset the entire economic system.[98]

    On the question of rates of development, the resolution also stressed the idea of an "optimum" rate, declaring: "Here we must proceed not from the maximum rate of accumulation in the near future or within a few years, but from a relation between the factors in the economy such that the highest rate of development may be ensured over a long period."[99]

    In the course of this resolution the opposition's slogan of raising industrial prices was again condemned, on the grounds that it would favor bureaucratic degeneration and monopolis-

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tic disintegration of industry, harm the consumers (and, in the first place, the working class and the poorer strata in town and industry), give the kulaks a trump card to play, and finally, bring about a sharp decline in the rate of development, by compromising industry's agricultural basis.[100]

    The resolution likewise upheld the need to observe an optimum relation between the development of light industry and heavy industry. It emphasized that, when shifting the center of gravity from light to heavy industry, care must be taken that the latter did not tie up too large a share of the state's capital in the construction of very big enterprises whose products would not come on to the market for many years, and, consequently, that account must be taken of the fact that the faster turnover of capital in light industry (producing consumer goods of prime necessity) enabled the capital resulting from it to be subsequently used in heavy industry, while at the same time ensuring the development of light industry itself.[101]

    The Fifteenth Party Conference, in November 1926, had already resolved that observance of these principles would make it possible gradually to speed up the pace at which the economy was developing, and to "catch up with and then surpass" the "levels of industrial development of the leading capitalist countries in a relatively short historical period."[102]

    From the standpoint of the class struggle and of the relation between class forces, the Fifteenth Congress reaffirmed that the decisions of the Fifteenth Conference and of the Fourteenth Congress had laid down a policy that was basically correct, especially as regards the rural area. The resolution adopted considered that these decisions had helped to strengthen the alliance between the working class and the mass of the peasants, and that this created the possibility of going over, with the help of all the poor and middle peasants, to a systematic curbing of kulak farming and private enterprise generally, so as to bring about "a relative decline . . . in the private capitalist elements in town and country alike."[103]

    Finally, the Congress noted that the Five-Year Plan would be drawn up in awareness that there might be some bad harvests.[104] It should therefore not be too "taut," but suf-

page 385

ficiently "flexible" to be adapted to the fluctuations of agricultural production.

    The theses on "optimum accumulation" and on the need to maintain correct proportions between the development of industry and agriculture, between heavy industry and light industry, between town and country, repeated almost word for word the formulations used by Bukharin in his fight against the united opposition. Bukharin had expressed thus his conception of the relations that should be established between light and heavy industry:

I think that the formula which calls for maximum investment in heavy industry is not quite correct -- or, rather, that it is absolutely incorrect. While we must emphasise mainly the development of heavy industry, we must at the same time combine this with a corresponding development of light industry, in which turnover is faster and profits made sooner, and which repays in a shorter time the outlay devoted to it.[105]

Bukharin claimed that, if proper proportions were observed in the development of the different sectors of the economy, the result would be economic development that would follow "a rising curve."[106] This formulation, aimed at warning against desire to speed up too suddenly the rate of economic growth, was to be interpreted later as expressing belief in the possibility of a sort of "indefinite acceleration" of economic growth.

    The resolutions adopted unanimously by the Fifteenth Congress reaffirmed, even more clearly than the Fourteenth Congress and the Fifteenth Conference had done, the need to establish definite relations and proportions between the different sectors of the economy. These resolutions recognized that respect for these relations was essential if the economy was to advance without jolts, if a policy of "closing the scissors" between industrial and agricultural prices was to be carried out, and if there was to be a regular supply of goods to the rural area and to the towns on a basis of prices which would not be subject to inflationary increases.

    However, these principles were violated by the adoption of a series of measures that were incompatible with them, and

page 386

from this followed the development of contradictions which made themselves sharply felt from the end of 1927 on. The procurement crisis was a spectacular consequence of these contradictions, which, because they were not brought under control, found expression in two political lines which came into conflict more and more obviously in 1928 and 1929.

    Before examining the content of this conflict and the forms it took, a few words should be said about the contradictions between the policy actually followed and the resolutions passed by the Congress.


   (b)  The development of the contradictions
       between the principles stated in the
       resolutions of the Party's congresses
       and conferences and the economic
       policy actually carried out

    These contradictions existed at several levels. Broadly, we can say that they mainly affected the scope and the orientation of the industrial investment plans which constituted the nucleus of the actual economic policy. In a secondary way, they concerned pragmatic measures taken with a view to palliating to some degree certain consequences resulting from the scope and orientation of these investment plans.


   (1)  The industrial investment plans from
       1926-1927 on

    We have already seen that the Fourteenth Congress and the Fifteenth Conference warned against too rapid an increase in industrial investment, because of the danger that such an increase would present to the worker-peasant alliance.[107] Nevertheless, the Fifteenth Conference adopted a resolution, on the situation and the economic tasks of the reconstruction period, which fixed at a minimum of 900 million roubles the amount of industrial investment for the year 1926-1927.[108] Yet, a few months previously, an amount of investment close to that had been rejected by Dzerzhinsky on the grounds that

page 387

such a figure was incompatible with the actual economic situation.[109]

    In adopting this figure the conference practically ratified the investment programs already in motion by the industrial organizations. To some extent, these organizations operated with sufficient autonomy for the Party's leading bodies to find themselves (through not having intervened in good time) faced with faits accomplis which they were, so to speak, obliged to "confirm."

    The same process occurred during the months that followed, for the figure adopted by the Fifteenth Conference was largely surpassed. In December 1926 the VSNKh approved a plan for industrial investment which totaled 947 million roubles. Five weeks later, the CC and the Sovnarkom ratified this figure, while making some reservations. Subsequently, 991 million roubles were allocated for industrial investments -- but, in the end, these investments absorbed 1,068 million, nearly one-third more than in the previous year,[110] while the absolute amount of investment in industries producing consumer goods declined.[111] Thus, all the appeals for "caution" issued previously by the Party's leading bodies, and by Stalin himself, were "forgotten."[112] And yet the political significance of these appeals could not have been clearer: what was needed was to ensure industrial development based on cooperation with the peasantry and not on exploitation of them.[113]

    This "forgetting" of the previously made calls for prudence had political implications. Its immediate basis was the relative autonomy of the industrial organizations, and it reflected the power of that social force which was represented by the heads of these organizations and of the great enterprises. It presupposed the gradual, but not openly admitted, rallying of a section of the Party's leaders to an actual policy that accorded major importance to the rapid growth of large-scale industry producing means of production, a policy which was increasingly remote from the demands of the worker-peasant alliance, with its implications of relatively preferential supplying of goods to the rural areas, and grain procurement on a noncoercive basis.

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    This change in policy actually pursued corresponded also to a certain change in the Bolshevik ideological formation -- the increased role of conceptions which favored the most up-to-date industrial techniques and ascribed a decisive role to accumulation in the development of industrial production (even though small and medium rural industry still possessed enormous possibilities for increased production, production that would have greatly helped the peasants to increase their harvests). Little by little, an orientation was gaining ground in the Party which favored industrial investment of a magnitude and nature such as to be incompatible with the maintenance of the NEP. In this sense, the "general crisis of the NEP" was simply the crisis that resulted from the de facto abandonment, in decisive domains, of the New Economic Policy.

    Nevertheless, the open change of "line," and the "turn" that went with it, were not to be proclaimed until after a series of struggles had been waged, through 1928 and 1929, inside the Party leadership.


   (2)  The rapid growth in budgetary
       expenditure and its immediate effects

    The appeals for caution issued by the Party's congresses and conferences applied also to the size of budgetary expenditure. It was feared that too rapid an increase in this would undermine the policy of stabilizing prices, and even reducing industrial prices, which was one of the components of the NEP. Here, too, these appeals were gradually "forgotten." In 1926-1927 the total amount of budgetary expenditure was 41 percent greater than in the previous year, whereas the national income, in constant prices, had increased by only 6.3 percent.[114] A period was thus entered in which the increase in public expenditure bore no relation to the increase in real resources. This was the point of departure of grave imbalances, shortages in the rural area, price increases, and increased hardships for the poor and middle peasants.

    In this situation the prices reigning in the sphere of private trade reflect in a very clear way the inflation that was develop-

page 389

ing. Between December 1926 and June 1929 the retail prices of agricultural produce in private shops increased by 130 percent.[115]

    The relative indifference shown to the inflationary consequence of an increase in budgetary expenditure that had no counterpart in increased real resources reflected the progress of illusions (connected with the changes in the Bolshevik ideological formation) regarding the capacity of the political authority to bring about price changes independently of changes in costs and of shortage of supplies. Thus, Kuibyshev thought it possible to proclaim the "victory of the plan" over market forces.[116] The economist Strumilin went even further when he declared: "We are not bound by any (objective) law. There is no fortress that Bolsheviks cannot storm. The question of tempo is subject to men's will."[117]

    These were the earliest expressions of the "voluntarist" illusions which developed rapidly during the years 1928 and 1929. They contributed to the appearance of a series of economic imbalances which had profoundly negative effects on the worker-peasant alliance.


   (3)  The contradictions entailed by the tax
       measures taken in favor of the poor and
       middle peasants

    Starting at the end of 1923, price policy aimed at improving the standard of living of the peasant masses. This policy met with success so long as it made possible the closing of the "scissors" between industrial and agricultural prices,[118] and so long as the increased cash incomes of the peasants found a counterpart in a sufficiently increased supply of manufactured goods available in the villages. Generally speaking, despite temporary or local difficulties, this was so until the autumn of 1927.

    At that moment the situation worsened seriously, for the supply of goods to the village declined as a result of the industrial investment policy and of the priority given to supplying the towns. With many village shops empty of goods, the

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Soviet government decided, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, to relieve the poorest section of the peasantry almost completely of their obligation to pay the agricultural tax. This meant that 35 percent of all peasant households were exonerated from paying taxes in October 1927, as against 25 percent in the previous year. Furthermore, it was decided to use less pressure to get in arrears of tax payments,[119] so that at the beginning of 1928 these amounted to 20 percent of the agricultural tax payable during the fiscal year begun in 1927.

    These measures would have been in accordance with the line of the NEP if the villages had been properly supplied with goods. As, however, this was not the case, the peasants looked askance at money they could exchange for goods only to a limited extent. This was one of the causes of the decline in agricultural deliveries which was observed from October 1927 on, the decline which led to the adoption of the "emergency measures" and the abandonment of the NEP.


   (4)  The contradictions in wage policy

    Implementation of the policy of "closing the scissors" between industrial and agricultural prices encountered obstacles of several kinds: first and foremost, the high level of costs of production in industry, due to the fact that wages often increased faster than the productivity of labor.[120] This was an effect of the pressure brought to bear by the workers in the factories, pressure to which the heads of enterprises eventually yielded.[121]

    At the same time, wage increases unaccompanied by a sufficient increase in the production of consumer goods brought about either pressure for an increase in retail prices or the development of "shortages" of goods. The shortage of industrial products became very serious when, owing to the priority given to investments in heavy industry, there was a slowing down in the rate of growth of the production of manufactured consumer goods, which happened in 1927. Yet, in that same year, the demand for manufactured consumer goods

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on the part of the wage earners increased sharply, for employment in industry (including building) increased by 12.4 percent[122] and average wages by 10 percent.[123]

    Consequently, in the second half of 1927 the Soviet authorities found themselves faced with a rapid and simultaneous growth of purchasing power in the towns and in the villages. Unable to satisfy the whole of the increased demand for goods, they decided to give priority to the urban market. This being so, the shortage of industrial goods hit the rural areas hard just when the procurement of grain was being carried out.

    The years 1926-1927 and 1927-1928 were thus marked by aggravation of the contradictions between the policy actually pursued and the political line decided on by the Party's congresses and conferences. Other contradictions also affected various aspects of the policy actually implemented, which were not mutually coherent, resulting as they did from pressures exerted by different classes and social strata. There was the workers' pressure for higher wages and a rapid increase in employment; pressure from the poor and middle peasantry for a reduction in taxes; pressure from the heads of large-scale state-owned industry and the central industrial organs for the rapid launching of an industrialization plan that gave priority to heavy industry. But these contradictions also corresponded to different conceptions that were present in the Bolshevik Party regarding what was demanded for the building of socialism, conceptions which tended to diverge further and further when the effects of the contradictions in the policy followed by the Party up to that point started to develop, and when beginning in early 1928, those effects took the form of an open crisis.

    It then became necessary to deal with the contradictions between the line laid down in principle and the policy actually followed. This was an essential aspect of the struggles which, in 1928 and 1929, counterposed within the Party leadership those who thought it possible and necessary to reaffirm the principles accepted by the Fifteenth Congress, and who called for these principles to be put into effect, and those who

page 392

considered that the time had come for an immediate and rapid industrialization drive (such as was already implicit in the annuaI plans adopted in and after 1926-1927) and who came out in favor of a political line contradictory to the resolutions of the Fifteenth Congress.

    Among the supporters of the first of these "lines," the one that was called the "Right-wing" line, were Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky. The second line, which called for the levying of "tribute" from the peasantry, and collectivization carried through with the minimum of delay, was supported by Stalin, Kuibyshev, and Molotov. The demands of this line gradually prevailed, and it triumphed at the end of 1929.



  Notes

1.	K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, p. 850.    [p. 362]
2.	Ibid., pp. 842, 850 ff.    [p. 362]
3.	Ibid., p. 850.    [p. 362]
4.	Ibid., pp. 857, 858.    [p. 362]
5.	The text of the "platform of the 46" is given in E. H. Carr, The Interregnum, pp. 367 ff.    [p. 362]
6.	Ibid., p. 367-368.    [p. 362]
7.	Ibid., p. 368.    [p. 363]
8.	Ibid., pp. 106-107.    [p. 363]
9.	K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, pp. 771 ff.    [p. 363]
10.	Ibid., p. 773.    [p. 363]
11.	Ibid., pp. 767 ff., 778 ff.    [p. 364]
12.	On this letter of Lenin's see volume I of the present work, pp. 323-324, and Lenin, CW, vol. 36, pp. 593-596. On the reelection of Stalin, see P. Broué, Le Parti bolchévique, p. 202, and L. Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, p. 287.    [p. 364]
13.	Carr, The Interregnum, p. 362.    [p. 364]
14.	XIII-y Syezd RKP(b) (1924), pp. 153-168.    [p. 364]
15.	L. Kamenev, Stati i ryechi (1925), vol. I, pp. 188-243.    [p. 364]
16.	Ibid., and Carr, Socialism, vol. 2, p. 15.    [p. 365]
17.	See Pravda, November 19 and 23, 1924.    [p. 365]
18.	K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, pp. 913 ff.    [p. 365]
page 391
19.	Carr, Socialism, vol. 2, p. 31.    [p. 365]
20.	Stalin, Works, vol. 7, p. 390.  [Transcriber's Note: See Stalin's "The Fourteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.)". -- DJR]    [p. 365]
21.	K.P.S.S. v resolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 43 ff.    [p. 366]
22.	Stalin, Works, vol. 7, pp.112-113.  [Transcriber's Note: See Stalin's "The Results of the Work of the Fourteenth Conference of the R.C.P.(B.)". -- DJR] The quotation was taken from Trotsky's preface to his book 1905.    [p. 366]
23.	E. Preobrazhensky, The New Economics, pp. 77 ff. The expression "primitive socialist accumulation" had already been used by Trotsky in 1922: it seems to have been originated by Sapronov, one of the signatories of the platform of the 46 (Broué, Le Parti bolchévique, p. 213). Formally, Trotsky's interpretation of the thesis of primitive socialist accumulation differed somewhat from Preobrazhensky's (see I. Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed ), but the political implications of accepting this thesis were not affected.     The article by N. Bukharin entitled "A Critique of the Opposition's Economic Platform," in Bolshevik, No. 1 (January 15, 1925), gives a systematic criticism of the economic views expounded by the opposition of the 46 and by Trotsky and Preobrazhensky in 1922-1924. A French translation of this article is included in N. Bukharin et al., Le Débat soviétique sur la loi de la valeur, pp. 201 ff.    [p. 367]
24.	Stalin, Works, vol. 7, p. 111.    [p. 367]
25.	Ibid., p. 112.    [p. 367]
26.	K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 11, 13.    [p. 367]
27.	Stalin, Works, vol. 7, pp. 127-128.    [p. 367]
28.	See volume I of the present work, especially pp. 329 ff., 446 ff., 522 ff.    [p. 368]
29.	Stalin, Works, vol. 7, p. 128.    [p. 368]
30.	Kamenev, Stati i ryechi (1926), vol. 12, pp. 132-133.    [p. 368]
31.	Pravda, April 24. 1925. This version was described as "abridged." A complete but revised text of the speech was subsequently published in Bolshevik, nos. 8 and 9-10 (1925).    [p. 369]
32.	Carr, Socialism, vol. 1, p. 263.    [p. 369]
33.	K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, pp. 922-932.    [p. 369]
34.	Carr, Socialism, vol. 1, pp. 268-269.    [p. 369]
35.	Leningradskaya Pravda, June 24, 1925, quoted in Carr, Socialism, vol. 1, p. 286.    [p. 370]
36.	G. Zinoviev, Leninizm.    [p. 370]
37.	Ibid., pp. 236-258.    [p. 370]
38.	Carr, Socialism, vol. 2, pp. 66-68, 108 ff.    [p. 370]
39.	In November 1924, Zinoviev had still been warning against a
page 394
	"narrowly trade-unionist policy," reminding the unions that they had to pursue "the politics of the working class in a peasant country" (VI-ox Syezd Professionalnykh Soyuzov SSSR [1925], p. 29).    [p. 370]
40.	Carr, Socialism, vol. 2, pp. 141-142.    [p. 371]
41.	Stalin, Works, vol. 7, pp. 362 ff.    [p. 371]
42.	Ibid., pp. 367-368.    [p. 371]
43.	Ibid., p. 374.    [p. 371]
44.	Ibid., pp. 375 ff.    [p. 371]
45.	Stalin also dealt with this question in his political report, where his analysis of it was equally limited (ibid., pp. 312-313).    [p. 372]
46.	Ibid., p. 401.    [p. 372]
47.	XIV-y Syezd VKP(b) (1926), pp. 521-524; see Carr, Socialism, vol. 2, p. 144.    [p. 372]
48.	K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 95.    [p. 372]
49.	Ibid., p. 96.    [p. 372]
50.	Ibid., p. 98.    [p. 373]
51.	Ibid., p. 100.    [p. 373]
52.	Ibid., p. 101.    [p. 373]
53.	Stalin, Works, vol. 7, p. 322.    [p. 373]
54.	Ibid., p. 322. Here he voiced the doctrine which was later to be known as that of "decreasing tempos," and which Stalin himself was to denounce as "Trotskyist."    [p. 373]
55.	Ibid., p. 323.    [p. 373]
56.	Ibid., pp. 364-365.    [p. 373]
57.	K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 75.    [p. 374]
58.	See above, p. 393, n. 23.    [p. 374]
59.	Pravda, no. 153 (1926). There is a French translation in N. Bukharin, Le Socialisme dans un seul pays, p. 67.    [p. 374]
60.	See above, p. 371.    [p. 374]
61.	Besides the Trotskyist opposition there still survived at this time a group which called for "democratic centralism," led by Sapronov, and the remains of the "Workers' Opposition," led by Shlyapnikov (on these groups, see volume I of the present work, pp. 368-410). Several members of these groups had been expelled from the Party, and some arrested. In 1923 the GPU had liquidated two other groups, most of whose members were non-Party: the "Workers' Truth" group, inspired by Bogdanov, and the "Workers' Group" founded by Myasnikov (see Schapiro, The Communist Party, pp. 300-301).    [p. 374]
62.	At the Fifteenth Party Conference: Stalin, Works, vol. 8, pp. 225 ff.  [Transcriber's Note: See Stalin's "The Opposition Bloc in the C.P.S.U.(B.)". -- DJR]    [p. 375]
page 395
63.	Carr, Socialism, voI. 2, pp. 172-173.    [p. 375]
64.	Schapiro, The Communist Party, p. 302. The text of the "declaration" is in the Trotsky archives at Harvard University.    [p. 375]
65.	Carr and Davies, Foundations, voI. I, p. 5; Schapiro, The Communist Party, p. 303.    [p. 375]
66.	Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, pp. 275-276; Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, p. 5.    [p. 375]
67.	Pravda, August 1, 1926. It was after making this speech that Dzerzhinsky, who was a sick man, had a fatal heart attack. A week later he was succeeded at the head of the VSNKh by Kuibyshev.    [p. 375]
68.	K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 160 ff., and Schapiro, The Communist Party, p. 304.    [p. 375]
69.	Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, pp. 273-274.    [p. 376]
70.	Broué, Le Parti bolchévique, pp. 243-244.    [p. 376]
71.	K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 170-171.    [p. 376]
72.	Stalin, Works, vol. 8, p. 225.    [p. 377]
73.	Ibid., pp. 245 ff.  [Transcriber's Note: See Stalin's "The Social-Democratic Deviation in Our Party". -- DJR]    [p. 377]
74.	Ibid., p. 301 (my emphasis -- C. B.).    [p. 377]
75.	Quoted in ibid., p. 302. Preobrazhensky's original text was published under the title: "The Fundamental Law of Socialist Accumulation," in Vestnik Kommunisticheskoy Akademii, no. 8 (1924). In the corresponding passage in his book The New Economics, p. 124, he replaced the expression "exploitation" by "alienating part of the surplus product."    [p. 377]
76.	Stalin, Works, Vol. 8, pp. 311 ff.  [Transcriber's Note: See Stalin's "Reply to the Discussion on the Report on 'The Social-Democratic Deviation in Our Party'". -- DJR]    [p. 377]
77.	Ibid., p. 370.    [p. 378]
78.	K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 209 ff.    [p. 378]
79.	Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 180-181.    [p. 378]
80.	Broué, Le parti bolchévique, pp. 249-250.    [p. 379]
81.	Ibid., pp. 250-252, 259.    [p. 379]
82.	Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, p. 327, and B. Fabrègues, "La 'Revolution permanente': une absurde théorie gauchiste," pt. 2, "La Revolution chinoise," in Communisme, no. 12 (September-October 1974), pp. 33 ff.    [p. 379]
83.	Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, p. 209, and Writings, 1930-1931, p. 21.    [p. 379]
84.	Trotsky, Writings, 1930-1931, p. 19. These lines, written in 1930, express Trotsky's fundamental position as it was in 1927 -- a position which the history of the Chinese revolution has utterly refuted.    [p. 379]
85.	Stalin, Works, vol. 9, pp. 224 ff.  [Transcriber's Note: See Stalin's "Questions of the Chinese Revolution". -- DJR]    [p. 379]
page 396
86.	Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, p. 334.    [p. 380]
87.	Stalin, Works, vol. 9, p. 302.  [Transcriber's Note: See Stalin's "The Revolution in China and the Tasks of the Comintern". -- DJR]    [p. 380]
88.	Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, p. 337.    [p. 380]
89.	International Press Correspondence, vol. 7, no. 48 (August 18, 1927).    [p. 380]
90.	K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 311.    [p. 381]
91.	Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 368 ff.    [p. 381]
92.	Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 312-371.    [p. 382]
93.	An analysis of the way Bukharin's ideas evolved is given in Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938 : for the period leading up to the Fifteenth Congress see especially chapter 7, pp. 213 ff.    [p. 382]
94.	International Press Correspondence, vol. 7, p. 1422. See also an article by Bukharin which appeared a fortnight later (in V zashchitu proletarskoy diktatury: Sbornik, pp. 202-211, 215, 224-231).    [p. 382]
95.	Stalin, Works, vol. 10, p. 313.  [Transcriber's Note: See Lenin's "The Fifteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.)". -- DJR]    [p. 382]
96.	Bukharin, Le Socialisme, pp. 67 ff.    [p. 383]
97.	K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 333.    [p. 383]
98.	Ibid.    [p. 383]
99.	Ibid., p. 334.    [p. 383]
100.	Ibid.    [p. 384]
101.	Ibid.    [p. 384]
102.	Ibid., p. 175. This appears to have been the first time that the formulation "catch up with and then surpass" was used officially (Cohen, Bukharin, p. 245)    [p. 384]
103.	K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 334.    [p. 384]
104.	Ibid., p. 332.    [p. 384]
105.	Bukharin, V zashchitu, p. 225.    [p. 385]
106.	Bukharin, Building Up Socialism, p. 62.    [p. 385]
107.	See above, pp. 374 ff., 377 ff.    [p. 386]
108.	K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 173 ff., especially p. 185.    [p. 386]
109.	Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 2, pp. 278-281.    [p. 387]
110.	Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta, December 30, 1926; Sobranie Zakonov, no. 10 (1927), art. 98; Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 278.    [p. 387]
111.	Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 294.    [p. 387]
112.	This "forgetfulness" was repeated in the succeeding years, when industrial investments came to 1,304 million roubles (1927-1928) and 1,679 million roubles (1928-1929): see ibid., pp. 296, 314.    [p. 387]
page 397
113.	See Stalin's speech of November 3, 1926, in Works, vol. 8, pp. 368-369.  [Transcriber's Note: See Stalin's "Reply to the Discussion on the Report on 'The Social-Democratic Deviation in Our Party'". -- DJR]    [p. 387]
114.	Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 742.    [p. 388]
115.	In the same period the retail prices of foodstuffs in state and cooperative shops increased by only 11 percent. The retail prices of industrial goods increased at about the same rate as in the "private" sector, i.e., 15 percent (ibid., pp. 964-965).    [p. 389]
116.	Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta, August 14, 1927.    [p. 389]
117.	Planovoye Khozyaistvo, no. 7 (1927), p. 11. The metaphor of the "fortress" which can always be "stormed" was all the more remarkable in that Lenin, faced with the negative political consequences of "war communism," made use precisely of the "fortress" metaphor when he advocated substituting a strategy of siege and advance step by step for futile attempts at frontal assault (see volume 1 of the present work, pp. 457-459).     Four years later, Stalin was again to use this metaphor, saying, "Everything can be achieved, everything can be overcome, if there is a passionate desire for it. . . . There are no fortresses that Bolsheviks cannot capture" (Works, vol. 13, pp. 40, 43  [Transcriber's Note: See Stalin's "The Tasks of Economic Executives". -- DJR]).    [p. 389]
118.	See above, pp. 150 ff.    [p. 389]
119.	Pravda, October 16, 1927, report of the decisions of the second session of the TsIK elected by the Fourth Congress of Soviets of the USSR, and various sources quoted in Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, p. 331, n. 25; p. 356.    [p. 390]
120.	In 1925 the "scissors" between wages and productivity caused an increase of 2 percent in industrial costs, instead of the 6 percent reduction provided for by the plan (A. Baykov, The Soviet Economic System, p. 123). In 1926-1927 the rates of increase of productivity and wages were 9 percent and 12 percent, respectively, which went counter to the intention that had been proclaimed to reduce costs of production in industry, so as to reduce the prices at which industrial products were sold while at the same time increasing industry's capacity to accumulate (K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 181 ff).  [p. 390]
121.	See above, p. 314.    [p. 390]
122.	Trud v SSSR, p. 10.    [p. 391]
123.	Ekonomicheskoye Obozreniye, no. 12 (1929), p. 204.    [p. 391]