Notes from the book "Stalin's Master Narrative " of the History of the CPSU
Although it has been written for the purpose of degrading Stalin, without the introduction and comments, book actually proves that Stalin was against "personality cult" and removed his name and all the flattering, exaguration from the History of CP short course during editing. Attached is my notes I have taken while I was reading to write about it and to translate, however I will not have any time soon. I am attaching the notes in case it may be useful to some one interested.
-----------Notes From the book and some notes on the foundations supported the book.; below red sections removed, and or replaced by Stalin
Yale University Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support given for this publication by the John M. Olin Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Historical Research Foundation, Roger Milliken, the Rosentiel Foundation, Lloyd H. Smith, Keith Young, the William H. Donner Foundation, Joseph W. Donner, Jeremiah Milbank, the David Woods Kemper Memorial Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.
The Olin Foundation provided financial support to efforts to promote capitalism and fend off what John Olin saw as encroaching socialism. It became a major backer of right-wing think tanks, policy institutes, colleges, and academics. A staunch supporter of the anti-communist right in the United States, the foundation was a key booster of neoconservatism especially at the American Enterprise Institute, considered the premier neocon think tank in the United States.
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation "has a stated mission to "restore, strengthen, and protect the principles and institutions of American exceptionalism." The Bradley Foundation funds the anti-union National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is, alongside the Koch brothers’ network, one of the chief funders of the conservative NGOs.
The Rosentiel Foundation, also known as a conservative foundation.
Lloyd H. Smith, is called as " a committed conservative"
William H. Donner Foundation funds various universities: MIT, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. Its primary focus to that of supporting conservative research.
Jeremiah Milbank Foundation is a major right-wing funder. It's current executive director Carl Helstrom works as Vice President for programs at another major right-wing funder: the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
The Smith Richardson Foundation supports policy research in the realms of foreign and domestic public policy. According to the foundation's website, its mission is "to contribute to important public debates and to address serious public policy challenges facing the United States."
At the "Acknowledgements" section of the book it states the name of "grantors";
This critical edition has benefited from a number of long- and short-term grants provided by the International Research and Exchanges Board, with funds supplied by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the United States Department of State under the auspices of the Russian, Eurasian, and East European Research Program (Title VIII); the National Endowment for the Humanities; the US Department of State’s Fulbright Program; and the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Richmond.
The International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) is a global NGO. In align with U.S. State Department , the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) the National Endowment for the Humanities aims in strengthening U.S. geopolitical objectives in Foreign Affairs.
Editors’ Introduction
THE historical context History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks):Short Course was the central text of the Stalin-era ideological canon. Compulsory reading for Soviet citizens of all walks of life, it was ubiquitous in the U.S.S.R. between 1938 and 1956. Over forty million copies of the book circulated in over a dozen languages, with hundreds of thousands more appearing in places as far-flung as Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Beijing, London, Paris, and New York.1 What’s more, the Short Course governed all references to the Soviet historical experience, not only in public school textbooks and more academic scholarship, but on the theatrical stage and silver screen as well. Even the display cases of the country’s museums were arranged in conformity with the new storyline. The Short Course was, in other words, the U.S.S.R.’s master narrative—a hegemonic statement on history, philosophy, and ideology that scripted Soviet society for the better part of a generation. Abroad, the book enjoyed a similar role among Moscow-aligned communist parties and fellow travelers; after 1945, it served as a blueprint for socialist development in the U.S.S.R.’s new Eastern European satellites, the People’s Republic of China, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Ultimately, the Short Course ought to be considered one of the most influential books of the twentieth century.
J. V. Stalin has traditionally been credited with authorship of the Short Course, despite the fact that it was officially attributed to an anonymous Central Committee editing commission. Some commentators have gone so far as to suggest that it should be read as Stalin’s autobiography, if not his personal Mein
Kampf.2 This critical edition of the Short Course demonstrates that such accounts fundamentally mischaracterize Stalin’s relationship to the book, insofar as he neither wrote it from scratch nor interpolated his own personal experiences into its narrative.
Ultimately, the Short Course ought to be recognized as one of the most important texts for the study of Stalinism, the party canon, and modern communism as a whole. It offers a unique perspective on Stalin’s plans for the transformation of Soviet identity and the society’s historical imagination. Perhaps
most provocatively, the Short Course and its editing offer unprecedented insight into the nature of Stalin’s mentalité and his understanding of history, agency, and Marxism-Leninism itself.
1. Stalin’s letter to Proletarskaya revolyutsiya and the Mobilization of Party Historians. The new Priority of Party History after the Kirov Murder. The reorganization of agitprop and its Textbook Brigades
Despite its centrality to the era, the Short Course has only recently begun to receive sustained analysis in modern scholarly literature.3 Specialists tend to date its origins to 1931, when Stalin denounced party historians as “archive rats” in a letter to the journal Proletarskaya revolyutsiya and called for a new approach to party education that would emphasize accessibility and popular indoctrination.4 4. I. V. Stalin, “O nekotorykh voprosakh istorii bol’shevizma,” Proletarskaia revo-liutsiia 6 (1931): 3–12.
As is well known, the murder of S. M. Kirov in December 1934 provided Stalin with a casus belli to wage war against the remnants of the left Zinovievite opposition. Less well known is the fact that the murder also served as the premise for renewed intervention within the party educational system. Official calls in January 1935 demanded that all indoctrinational efforts henceforth be structured around the Bolsheviks’ historic struggle with the internal party opposition.6 6. “Zakrytoe pis’mo TsK VKP(b): Uroki sobytii, sviazannykh s zlodeiskim ubiistvom tov. Kirova,” Izvestiia TsK KPSS 8 (1989): 96, 100.
Pravda followed up on this directive two months later by chastising state publishing houses for their attempts to get by with new editions of obsolete instructional texts. Not only did these texts fail to supply information now judged to be critical for promoting vigilance within party ranks, but they were still encumbered by excessive schematicism and attention to anonymous social forces.7 7. “Glubzhe izuchat’ istoriiu partii,” Pravda, March 7, 1935, 1; “‘O nekotorykh za-dachakh Marksistsko-Leninskogo obrazovaniia:’ iz rechi tov. P. Postysheva na plenume Ki-evskogo gorodskogo partiinogo komiteta 22 fevralia 1935 goda,” Pravda, March 5, 1935, 2.
In the midst of this discussion in the press, A. I. Stetsky summoned leading members of the ideological establishment to his Central Committee department of culture and propaganda for a wide-ranging discussion of the crisis.8 8. So many records from Kul’tprop have been lost that the only evidence of this meeting is found in Ye. M. Yaroslavsky’s diary entry from March 10, 1935. This diary, which remains to the present day in private hands, is cited in Dahlke, Individuum und Herrschaft, 332–333.
The next day, Yaroslavsky wrote a letter to Stalin in which he conceded that much of the miserable state of party education was attributable to the inaccessibility of its textual materials. He proposed to rectify the situation by re-organizing party education into a centralized, three-tiered system. On the most basic level, neophytes would study a curriculum structured around a short, animated, still-to-be-written textbook that would flank vital informa-tion about party history with illustrated material on the party’s “heroism and people.” Students would then move on to material organized around a textbook like Knorin’s 1934 Short History of the CPSU(B), “although here it would be necessary to avoid schematicism” and “liven up” the narrative. Finally, the most politically mature party members would study their history according to a detailed, two-volume text that would devote two-thirds of its narrative to the post-1917 period. Yaroslavsky offered his recently republished History of the CPSU(B) as an example of such an advanced reader. Key to the success of this proposal, Yaroslavsky averred, would be input from the party hierarchy on the priorities around which this new generation of texts was to be constructed.9 9. Yaroslavsky to Stalin (March 11, 1935), RGASPI, f. 89, op. 1, d. 84, ll. 9–10. P. N. Pospelov confirmed the seriousness of this proposal in 1972—see D. Rudnev, “Kto pisal ‘Kratkii kurs,’” Politika 9 (1991): 63. See Kratkaia istoriia VKP(b), ed. V. G. Knorin et al. (Moscow: Partizdat, 1934); E. M. Iaroslavskii, Istoriia VKP(b), 2 vols. (Moscow: Partizdat, 1933, 1934).
Internal party reports, combined with Yaroslavsky’s lobbying and criticism in the press, pushed Stalin and his entourage to correct the situation not only on the textbook front but throughout the party educational establishment as a whole. In late March 1935, the general secretary gave an extended speech to the Orgburo in which he assailed the quality of party education and adopted Yaroslavsky’s call for a three-tiered indoctrinational system. At that same meeting, the party leadership passed a Central Committee resolution calling for new infrastructure, greater discipline, and more accountability—an initiative quickly seconded by the Leningrad party organization, which was still reeling from the Kirov murder.10 10. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1118, l. 99; “Zabotlivo vyrashchivat’ partiinye kadry,” Pravda, March 26, 1935, 1; Central Committee resolution of March 27, 1935, “O sozdanii v gorkomakh VKP(b) otdelov partkadrov,” Pravda, March 28, 1935, 2; “Reshitel’no uluchshit’ partiinuiu rabotu,” Pravda, March 29, 1935, 1; “O zadachakh partiino-organizatsionnoi i politichesko-vospitatel’noi raboty: Postanovlenie plenuma Leningradskogo gorodskogo komiteta VKP(b) ot 29 marta 1935 goda,” Pravda, March 30, 1935, 2–3.
Stetsky’s massive Central Committee apparatus was broken up into five smaller departments dedicated to more focused work on agitation and propaganda, state publishing and the press, cultural enlightenment, school policy, and science.12 12 See undated Central Committee resolution “O reorganizatsii Kul’tpropa TsK VKP(b),” Pravda, May 14, 1935, 1. A. I. Stetsky retained control of the new Agitprop department.
Third, Stalin and the other Central Committee secretaries met to draw up a new, more detailed agenda for party history text-books. Fourth, the hierarchs passed yet another Central Committee resolution that reiterated the need for improvements in history instruction among party members. Courses, classes, and reading circles had to be rethought; curricular materials had to be redesigned.13 13. Central Committee resolution of June 14, 1935 “O propagandistskoi rabote v blizhaishee vremia,” Pravda, June 15, 1935, 1. This resolution is discussed in N. Rubinsh-tein, “Nedostatki v prepodavanii istorii VKP(b),” Bol’shevik 8 (1936): 32–42.
Most important among these measures was probably Stalin’s meeting about party education efforts with other Central Committee secretaries during the spring of 1935—a little-understood event that is described only obliquely in correspondence between Stetsky, Yaroslavsky, and the general secretary him-self. It was apparently at this meeting that a whole array of textbook projects was either commissioned or re-endorsed. B. M. Volin and S. B. Ingulov were instructed to combine forces on a coauthored political grammar. Knorin, Yaro-slavsky, and P. N. Pospelov were to produce a new, collectively written popular history for mass audiences. A larger brigade of authors who had been working on a four-volume academic history of the party at the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute (IMEL) since 1932 was to continue to soldier forward, flanked by a second brigade that was to produce a shorter, two-volume history for grassroots propagandists and party activists.14
14. See Stetsky to Stalin (June 8, 1935), RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1066, ll. 118–119; Stetsky to Stalin (June 15, 1935), f. 71, op. 3, d. 62, ll. 287–285; Yaroslavsky to Stalin (June 2, 1935), f. 558, op. 11, d. 842, ll. 7–8. Stesky’s first letter, which Stalin transformed into a Politburo resolution entitled “O populiarnom uchebnike,” indicated that the collectively written, popular textbook was to be written by a prominent brigade of authors (Knorin, Yaroslavsky, Pospelov, M. A. Moskalyev, L. M. Gulyaev, N. М. Voitinsky, A. P. Kuchkin, F. A. Anderson, S. E. Rabinovich, and B. N. Ponomaryev) and was due in early August. Yaroslavsky mentioned these developments in correspondence that summer and fall—see f. 71, op. 3, d. 57,
In some senses, these measures signaled a fresh start on the ideological front. In others, however, they spoke of continued weakness. Four years af-ter Stalin’s letter to Proletarskaya revolyutsiya, the party leadership had placed responsibility for its new initiatives in the hands of three people who had repeatedly failed to deliver breakthroughs in the past. True, all were quint-essential insiders: Knorin was an important Comintern official who had just been appointed to be Stetsky’s deputy at Agitprop; Yaroslavsky sat on several prominent editorial boards and the Party Control Commission; Pospelov edited the party’s ideological journal Bolshevik with the other two. But none of them had any new ideas on how to combine the party hierarchy’s demands for an accessible, animated historical narrative with a sophisticated explication of Marxist-Leninist theory. Predictably, although this troika succeeded in cobbling together a massive new two-volume text by the end of 1935—The History of the CPSU(B): A Popular Textbook—it failed to win Stalin’s approval.15 15 Soveshchanie po voprosam partiinoi propagandy i agitatsii pri TsK VKP(b),4–7 dekabria 1935 g. (Moscow: Partizdat, 1936), 10, 29, 135; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 74.
Archival material detailing Stalin’s reaction to this text has not survived, but it is likely that at least two things aroused his displeasure. First, although the Popular Textbook was considerably more dynamic and evocative than its predecessors, it was very long and—despite its title—not really suitable for mass audiences. Second, it was dominated by a verbose play-by-play narrative that offered little in the way of larger observations, generalizations, or lessons associated with the party’s historical experience. In other words, the book did not satisfy the party’s need for a didactic work that would rally opinion at the grass roots. Stalin’s dismissal of the Popular Textbook left its authors little choice but to return to the drawing board in search of a genuinely popular approach to party history.16 16. Hints about the volume’s shortcomings are visible in “O partiinoi propagande: rech’ sekretaria TsK VKP(b) tov. A. Andreeva na otkrytii Vysshei shkoly propagandistov im. Ia. M. Sverdlova pri TsK VKP(b), 7 fevralia 1936 g,” Pravda, February 26, 1936, 2; A. I. Stetskii, “Ob institutakh Krasnoi professury,” Bol’shevik 23–24 (1935): 54–55.
2. The ideological Establishment during the Great Terror. Stalin's reorganization of the Party’s Educational system. chaos within the Textbook Brigades. Stalin's rewriting of Party History
These problems with party education were compounded in mid-1936 by the advent of the Great Terror. This purge precipitated demands for an explanation for the persistence of opposition within the party, first on the left and then on the right. At the same time, widespread arrests within the upper ranks of the party, state bureaucracy, and military stripped the historical narrative of its protagonists and heroes.
Aware of the penalty for allowing enemies of the people into print and unwilling to gamble on their ability to predict who within the party would survive the purge, historians simply began to delete all mention of those who were not fixtures of Stalin’s inner circle (e.g., V. M. Molotov, L. M. Kaganovich, K. Ye. Voroshilov, N. I. Yezhov), long-dead martyrs (Kirov, M. V. Frunze, F. E. Dzerzhinsky), members of the Soviet Olympus (A. G. Stakhanov, V. K. Blyukher, I. D. Papanin, V. P. Chkalov), or already-condemned enemies of the people (L. D. Trotsky, G. E. Zinoviev, L. B. Kamenev).18 18. Compare, for instance, the list of party members assisting Stalin during the 1917 revolution as listed in August 1937 and January 1938 printings of Iaroslavskii, Ocherki po istorii VKP(b), 1:335 versus 1:323.
In the end, this methodology offered the best chance of constructing a narrative that the censor would pass, albeit at the cost of abandoning all pretense of a dynamic story-line animated by a diverse variety of inspirational heroes.
Unsurprisingly, as the Terror mounted, so too did calls from all levels of the party for a canonical textbook that could serve as an almanac or reference book in troubled times.19 19. Yaroslavsky reported being repeatedly asked about new textbooks whenever he gave public talks—see RGASPI, f. 89, op. 8, d. 807, l. 4.
Stalin stoked this sense of ideological panic in his infamous speech at the party’s 1937 February–March Central Committee plenum, where he blamed the rank and file’s lack of vigilance on their poor understanding of the official line. “Master Bolshevism,” he commanded. Prioritize “the political training of our cadres.” These demands contributed not only to the tension in the air, but to a formal resolution calling for further educational reform. Sta-lin capitalized on this mandate shortly after the plenum’s conclusion, forwarding a proposal to the Politburo for a two-tier system of “Party” and “Leninist” courses for discussion in early April.20
20. “‘O nedostatkakh partiinoi raboty i merakh likvidatsii trotskistskikh i inykh dvuru-shnikov’—Doklad t. Stalina na plenume TsK VKP(b),” Pravda, March 29, 1937, 2–4; “Mate-rialy fevral’sko-martovskogo plenuma TsK VKP(b) 1937 g.,” Voprosy istorii 10 (1994): 13; Voprosy istorii 3 (1995): 11, 14–15; Orgburo resolution of March 25, 1937, “O vypolnenii resheniia Plenuma TsK ob organizatsii partiinykh kursov, leninskikh kursov i kursov po istorii i politike partii,” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 623, l. 1. According to Stalin’s proposal, the commission charged with overseeing the organization of these courses was to be chaired by Andreev and include Stetsky, A. A. Zhdanov, N. I. Yezhov, Ya. B. Gamarnik, N. S. Khrush-chev, G. M. Malenkov, and Ya. A. Yakovlev.
Amid the orgy of arrests that followed the plenum, Yaroslavsky hurriedly submitted to Stalin a draft of a new textbook that he had spent the past year de-veloping. Stalin asked Stetsky to look at it and the latter promptly tore the manuscript apart.21 21. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1219, ll. 1–6. The manuscript, entitled Kratkaia isto-riia VKP(b), does not appear to have survived; it was probably related to his two-volume Ocherki po istorii VKP(b).
Stalin took a close look at Stetsky’s report and then rescheduled the Politburo’s discussion of party educational reform in order to first sketch out his own broad critique of recent work on the subject. The end result was a terse memorandum that showed no awareness of the effect that the purges were having on the field:
I think that our textbooks on party history are unsatisfactory for three main reasons. They are unsatisfactory because they present party history without connection to the country’s history; because simple discussion of events and facts in the struggle with tendencies [in the party] is given without the necessary Marxist explanations; and because [the texts] suffer from an incorrect formulation and an incorrect periodization of events.
Continuing, Stalin noted that particularly the struggle with factionalism required more attention: already a major characteristic of the Bolshevik experience, the subject was now to become its defining feature. The purpose of this focus was obviously twofold, providing a historically informed explanation for the ongoing search for hidden enemies within the party while at the same time justifying Stalin’s demands for heightened political vigilance. Much more attention was also to be given to pre-revolutionary Russian political and economic history, which would inform the context and imperative of otherwise obscure inter party debates. Accounts of the post revolutionary period were to be similarly bolstered. According to Stalin, every chapter and major division of the texts was to be prefaced with pertinent information on Russo-Soviet state history in order to ensure that the books would not read like some “light and unintelligible story about bygone affairs.” He concluded his memorandum with a table that laid out in unambiguous terms what he considered to be the correct periodization of the party’s historical experience.22 22. Draft Politburo resolution “Ob uchebnike istorii VKP(b),” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1144, ll. 1–5ob. Stalin edited this text at least once between April 6 and 14.
Stalin circulated this memorandum among his colleagues in the Politburo and then assembled the group for a meeting in mid-April with specialists like Knorin, Popov, B. M. Tal, L. Z. Mekhlis, and A. I. Ugarov. Two resolu-tions emerged from this meeting—the first established a commission to orga-nize Stalin’s two-tiered training courses and the second outlined the curricular materials that the courses would require. Surviving archival evidence suggests that the lower-tier “Party” courses were to emphasize an accessible, populist line focusing on the U.S.S.R.’s usable past, Soviet patriotism, and the personal-ity cult, and were to rely upon revised editions of Yaroslavsky’s and Knorin’s well-known textbooks on party history. The upper-tier “Leninist” courses, by contrast, were to stress a more rigorously orthodox approach to party ideology and utilize a new flagship text to be coauthored by Knorin, Yaroslavsky, and Pospelov.23 23. At the Politburo meeting, the commission in charge of organizing the new party courses was reassigned to Zhdanov and expanded to include Stetsky, Yezhov, Gamarnik, Khrushchev, Malenkov, Yakovlev, I. A. Akulov, B. M. Tal, N. N. Popov, Yaroslavsky, Knorin, Pospelov, N. L. Rubinshtein, L. Z. Mekhlis, and A. I. Ugarov. See Politburo resolution of April 16, 1937, “Ob organizatsii kursov usovershenstvovaniia dlia partkadrov, soglasno rezoliutsii poslednego plenuma TsK(b) po punktu 4 poriadka dnia plenuma,” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 800, l. 2. The only detailed material on these courses is stored at RGVA, thanks to the major role Gamarnik played in their development on the eve of his suicide in May 1937. Duplicates at the former central party archive are missing along with dozens of other Agitprop files from this period. See RGVA, f. 9, op. 29, d. 323, ll. 82, 100–119; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 989, 16. An outline of the lower-tier curriculum was published as “Programma po istorii VKP(b) dlia partiinykh kruzhkov (proekt),” Bol’shevik 11 (1937): 68–90.
Officially freed of all other commitments, this troika was given four months to produce the new catechism.24 24. Politburo resolution of April 16, 1937, “Ob uchebnike po istorii VKP(b),” RGASPI,
f. 17, op. 163, d. 1144, ll. 5–5ob; f. 558, op. 1, d. 3212, l. 27. It was published as “K izucheniiu istorii VKP(b),” Pravda, May 6, 1937, 4. Many of the provisions of this resolution were developed further in the Politburo resolution of May 11, 1937, “Ob organizatsii partiinykh kursov,” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 840, ll. 46–48.
Knorin wrote an explanatory article about Stalin’s views on party history for several leading party journals and then also probably began revising his 1934 textbook.27 27 V. Knorin, “K voprosu ob izuchenii istorii VKP(b),” Bol’shevik 9 (1937): 1–6. Both Yaroslavsky and Knorin were to complete revisions to their older texts by July 1, 1937. See Politburo resolution of May 11, 1937, “Ob organizatsii partiinykh kursov,” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 987, ll. 51–54.
Pospelov spent his time on another piece that was perhaps intended for the IMEL’s single remaining textbook brigade.28 28. RGASPI, f. 629, op. 1, d. 10, ll. 21–97.
Such behavior is odd enough to provoke questions about what was preventing the troika from focusing exclusively on its central mandate. Were the historians intimidated by the nature of the assignment? Did personal rivalries complicate their collaborative work? Did they somehow believe that they could satisfy the party hierarchy with a revised version of their 1935 Popular Textbook?
.......
Days after Knorin’s arrest, Yaroslavsky submitted to Stalin a new version of his Sketches on the History of the CPSU(B) that he had revised for the lower-tier “Party” courses that were scheduled to launch that fall. In an accom-panying letter, Yaroslavsky claimed that he had been focusing all of his energies on this work recently (probably a poorly concealed attempt to distance himself from the fallen Knorin) and announced his readiness to begin work on the more advanced narrative for the upper-tier courses with Pospelov.33 Stalin took a look at his 800-page typescript, had it laid out in publishers’ galleys, and then lightly edited it before passing it on to Stetsky.34 The general secretary must have given it a relatively positive appraisal, because while Stetsky’s eventual review was critical, it focused on narrow questions of fact and interpretation rather than more fundamental flaws. Stalin accepted the constructive tone of the re-port and forwarded it to the rest of the Politburo members for their sanction.35
In the end, Yaroslavsky’s manuscript was judged to be too long and too choked with factual detail for use with mass audiences.36 That said, the party hierarchy had few other choices. The IMEL’s four-volume academic history had collapsed in 1936 and its shorter project had just been crippled by Popov’s “un-masking.” Knorin’s arrest had doomed both his lower-tier textbook and the flagship text that he was to write with Yaroslavsky and Pospelov. This forced the party hierarchy to delay the launch of Stalin’s new educational system and to press Yaroslavsky for revisions to his lower-tier manuscript—decisions that suspended his plans to develop a more advanced text.37 To help with this time-consuming work, Stetsky commandeered a brigade of remaining specialists at the IMEL—Pospelov, V. G. Sorin, M. S. Volin, and others—to help Yaroslavsky with the redrafting. As Yaroslavsky would later remember, “a whole group took responsibility for these issues. Comrade [A. A.] Zhdanov even said along the way that ‘a whole collective farm’ had taken shape around the project.”38 For his part, Yaroslavsky appears to have returned to the project willingly, understand-ably reluctant to lose favor with the party hierarchy. The weight of the task bore down on him, however; as he later recalled: “after that project was presented [to Stalin] and after it was looked over by members of the Politburo, we were told: ‘Make it twice as short, so that it will run no more than 240 pages in length.’ This was a very difficult task—you can’t just scrunch this sort of thing down—and it took an awful lot of work.”39
Indeed, it was only in November 1937 that Yaroslavsky succeeded in re-turning his lower-tier manuscript—now in its second incarnation and retitled History of the CPSU(B): A Short Textbook—to the party hierarchy.40 Thoroughly reworked and half its former size, the book prioritized accessibility through references to Soviet patriotism, the personality cult, and the usable past (to the extent to which this was still possible). Although the Short Text-book contained a fairly narrow, selective cast of protagonists and malefactors, it was otherwise a surprisingly rich and detailed account. Lenin and Stalin loomed particularly large, of course, both because they animated an otherwise impersonal narrative and because Yaroslavsky had long harbored dreams of writing a biography of the general secretary.41
When Stalin found time to look at the manuscript in late 1937 or early 1938, he judged it to be worth reviewing and ordered it circulated among members of his inner circle. That said, if Stalin did not object to the overall approach to party history embodied in the text, he did reject Yaroslavsky’s plodding his-torical introduction and hasty conclusion. After editing the first few pages of the introduction himself, he asked Pospelov to write a more theoretical one.42 Stalin heavily revised this draft and then met with Zhdanov and Pospelov twice in early March, even as the Third Moscow Trial was deciding the fates of N.
CHAPTER ONE
The Struggle for the Creation of a Social-Democratic Labour Party in Russia (1883–1901)
In 1861, the tsarist government, frightened by the peasant rebellions against the landlords, was compelled to abolish serfdom.
“. . . tsarist Russia,” said Comrade Stalin, “was the home of every kind of oppression—capitalist, colonial and militarist—in its most inhuman and barbarous form.” (Stalin, Questions of Leninism, 10th Russ. ed., p. 4.)
From the point of view of capitalism, there were new, modern classes as well as old, pre-capitalist classes in pre-revolutionary Russia. The fundamentally new classes were the proletariat and industrial bourgeoisie, which began to grow rapidly after the fall of serfdom. In pre-emancipation Russia, these classes were insignificant and did not enjoy great significance. The old, pre-capitalist classes were the feudal landlord class, the peasant class and a large strata of petty handicraftsmen and artisans.
2. Spread of Marxism Narodism (Populism) and Marxism in Russia. Plekhanov and The His “Emancipation of Labour” Group. Its Plekhanov’s Fight against the Narodniks Narodism. Spread of Marxism in Russia
Before Marx and Engels, there were outstanding thinkers who dreamed of the restructuring of human society, of the elimination of inequality and exploitation and man’s exploitation of his fellow man. But these people, who called themselves Socialists, dreamed of attaining Socialism without class struggle. They thought that it would be possible to “persuade” the exploitative classes, the bourgeoisie and the landlords, to voluntarily surrender their wealth and power.8
“Marxism is the scientific expression of the fundamental interests of the working class” (Stalin).
Marx and Engels personally led the revolutionary struggle of the working class and helped it to organize. During the Revolution of 1848, Marx and Engels stood at the head of the revolutionary German workers. Even before the Revolution of 1848, they formed the Communist League and wrote the famous Communist Manifesto. In this manifesto, they said that the proletariat had nothing to lose in the revolution except for its chains and had the whole world to win. Their militant call, “Workers of the World, Unite!” became the banner for workers of the entire world. Marx, with Engels’s help, led the First International, or the “International Workingman’s Association,” which was organized in 1864.
The Narodniks’ actions were detrimental because The Narodniks prevented the working class from understanding its leading role in the revolution and retarded the creation of a Marxist labour an independent party of the working class.
Narodism was the most evil enemy of Marxism.
Marxism in Russia grew and became stronger could therefore grow and gain strength only by combating Narodism, exposing the whole erroneous and harmful nature of the Narodniks’ teaching and their terroristic tactics, which precluded the organization of a mass party.
The Narodniks announced that Socialism in Russia would come not through the dictatorship of the proletariat, but through the peasant commune, which they regarded as the embryo of Socialism.
What was the commune, which survived from the time of serfdom?
Peasant land was considered not to be the property of individual peasants, but of the village or land community in question. Generally speaking, this land was redivided every twelve years or so according to the number of souls, or mouths to feed, in each peasant household at the time of the redivision. These allotments of communal land were not allowed to be bought or sold. It was because of such customs that the Narodniks concluded that the peasants must be innate Socialists.
The Narodniks forgot, however, that the agriculture that was conducted on these allotments of communal land was conducted individually, rather than collectively. They closed their eyes to the fact that the poor peasants who possessed no horses had nothing with which to work their land, and that the poor peasants and the peasants of little means had to surrender a large part of their allotment to the kulaks for virtually nothing. The kulak felt himself to be superior within the commune and could exploit the poor and middle peasants at will. The commune was also convenient for the tsarist government. The tsarist government introduced “collective responsibility” for the collection of the state’s taxes, according to which the entire village or commune was responsible for the total sum due.
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But Marxism does not deny the role of outstanding individuals in history. Marx wrote that it is precisely people who make their own history. But they do not make it in any old way that might occur to them. Every new generation must confront the specific conditions of material production and social rela-tions which were already present as that generation came into being.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin), the great chief of the working class and founder of Bolshevism, was born in the city of Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk) in 1870 and began his revolutionary activity as a seventeen year-old boy.
At the end of 1896, the “young” revolutionaries who had temporarily become the leaders of the League of Struggle after the arrest of the “old fellows,” adopted an erroneous line. They announced that it was necessary to rally the workers to only an economic struggle against individual capitalists and to renounce the po-litical struggle against the entire tsarist system. These people came to be called “Economists.” Lenin waged the most decisive struggle against the Economists.
Lenin’s The St. Petersburg League of Struggle gave a powerful impetus to the amalgamation of individual the workers’ circles in other cities and regions of Russia into similar leagues.
4. Lenin’s Struggle against Narodism and “Legal Marxism.” Lenin’s Idea of an Alliance of the Working Class and the Peasantry. First Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party
“Terror,” Lenin wrote, “was a conspiracy of the intellectual groups. Ter-ror was utterly unconnected with any sort of popular sentiment. Terror did not prepare any kind of militant leader for the masses. Terror was the result and also the symptom and complement of disbelief in the upris-ing. . . .” (Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. IX, p. 26.)
5. Beginning of Comrade Stalin’s Revolutionary Activity
At the end of the nineties, the working-class revolutionary movement grew to encompass the Russian periphery including the Caucasus, where Comrade Stalin led the revolutionary struggle of the working class and the formation of Marxist Social-Democratic organizations.
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5.7. Lenin’s Fight against the Economists “Economism.” First Issue of Appearance of Lenin’s Newspaper Iskra
The “Economists” said maintained that the workers should limit them-selves to only the economic struggle, engage only in the economic struggle; “the struggle for another five kopeks,” as it was said at the time. as to the political struggle, the struggle for political rights, that should be left to the liberal bour-geoisie—the liberal professors, lawyers and other such people, the Economists said, whom the workers should support. But the Economists did not want to un-derstand that the liberal bourgeoisie—that is, that part of the bourgeoisie that was somewhat dissatisfied with the tsarist government—would not struggle at all for the workers’ rights nor for the overthrow of tsardom, but only in order to obtain concessions and rights for themselves. More than that, the liberal bour-geoisie was weak and cowardly and did not frighten tsardom. Renouncing the independent proletarian political organization and the independent political demands of the workers, the Economists played into the hands of the bour-geoisie and tsarist government. Therefore Lenin referred to the Economists as the conductors of bourgeois influence over the proletariat. In Lenin’s eyes this tenet was a desertion of Marxism, a denial of the necessity for an inde-pendent political party of the working class, an attempt to convert the working class into a political appendage of the bourgeoisie.
The “Economists” said held that the Russian Marxists only had to aid in the working class’s economic struggle and support the liberal bourgeoisie political struggle was a matter for the liberal bourgeoisie, and that as far as the workers were concerned, the economic struggle against the employers was enough for them.
This struggle was serious because the Economists at the end of the nineties and the beginning of the new century enjoyed well-known influence over the more backward part of the workers, especially over the workers connected with the countryside (many of these half-peasant half-workers thought only about how to earn enough for a horse or a cow before returning to the countryside).
The Economists’ line enjoyed similar support among the better-paid worker elite, the so-called “labour aristocracy.”
This brief wide influence of the Economists likewise facilitated the success of an array of Economist strikes at the end of the nineties, when it was easier to win concessions from individual mill owners due to the conditions of industrial growth.
Almost all of the leading articles on the issues of party organization in the first and successive issues of Iskra belonged to Lenin.
With the development of capitalism in Russia the number of industrial proletariat rapidly grew in numbers. In the middle of the eighties the growing working class adopted the path of organized struggle, of mass organized action (the Morozov strike of 1885) in the form of organized strikes. In this way, the Russian Marxists’ contention that the working class was the head of the revolutionary forces was confirmed.
An organization of revolutionary Marxists arose under the leadership of Comrade Stalin in Transcaucasia.
CHAPTER TWO
Formation of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. and the Appearance of the Bolshevik and the Menshevik Groups within the Party (1901–1904)
1. Upsurge of the Revolutionary Movement in Russia at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century in 1901–04
Industrial crisis and unemployment did not halt or weaken the working-class movement. On the contrary, the workers’ struggle took on assumed an increasingly revolutionary character. From economic strikes, the workers went on passed to political strikes, and the workers organized finally to demonstra-tions, going into the streets with political demands, with the slogan of toppling the autocracy put forward political demands for democratic liberties, and raised the slogan, “Down with the tsarist autocracy!” All the workers in a large number of cities organized May Day demonstrations and strikes.
In March 1902 big strikes and a demonstration of workers took place in Batum, organized by the Batum Social-Democrats Democratic Committee under the leadership of Comrade Stalin.
The working class of Russia was rising to wage a political revolutionary struggle against the tsarist regime—the power of the landlords and capitalists.
The mass revolutionary actions of the workers and peasants at the start of the twentieth century and the growth of the emancipation movement of the nationalities oppressed by the tsar—all of this indicated that revolution was maturing and drawing near in Russia.
In 1902 the liberal bourgeoisie organized Zemstvo liberal movement led to the formation of the bourgeois “Liberation” group, the nucleus of the future principal party of the bourgeoisie in Russia—the Constitutional-Democrats Democratic Party. P. Struve was the organizer of the “Liberation” group, having much earlier been active as a legal Marxist who had even written the manifesto for the First Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.
The formation of a Marxist labour party in Russia took place in conditions that differed from those within which labour parties formed in the West.
There, in the Western capitalist countries, proletarian parties formed in the wake of the bourgeois revolutions and were able to exist openly (legally). In Russia, formation of the proletarian party took place under a fierce tsarist re-gime on the eve of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
Bourgeois elements (legal Marxists, Economists) joined the Marxist party organizations who had never even thought about the struggle for Socialism and who simply wanted to use the working class to complete the Bourgeois Revolution in the interests of the bourgeoisie. These people wanted the workers’ assistance in order to replace the tsarist government or, at the very least, to obtain from the tsarist government political freedoms and concessions for the liberal bourgeoisie.
The difficulty of forming a proletarian party in Russia was enormous lay not only in the fact that the Party had to be built under the fire of the most savage persecution by the tsarist government. The best Party workers were being pursued by the police, which every now and then robbed the organizations of their finest workers whom it condemned to exile, imprisonment and penal servitude.
What was needed was to create a firm, secret (conspiratorial) organization of revolutionaries that could withstand police attacks and at the same time be closely connected to the masses. Such an organization was built by Lenin’s Iskra.
Lenin accordingly held that the building of a political party of the working class should be begun by the founding of a militant political newspaper on an all-Russian scale, which would carry on propaganda and agitation in favour of the views of revolutionary Social-Democracy—that the establishment of such a newspaper should be the first step in the building of the Party.
Such was Lenin’s plan for the creation of a party of the working class in auto-cratic tsarist Russia.
Lenin’s Iskra also had enemies within the labour movement. Bolshevism matured in the struggle of Lenin’s Iskra against “Economism.” This is what the opportunistic movement was called that claimed that the workers should wage only a purely economic struggle, that is, that they should aim for wage in-creases, a shorter working day, etc. The Economists denied the working class’s political struggle and its leadership role. They announced that the political struggle against the tsarist autocracy must be led by the liberal bourgeoisie and that the working class must follow the bourgeoisie and not carry out its own policies.
The “Economists” no longer dared openly to contest the need for a political party of the working class. But they considered that it should not be the guiding force of the working-class movement, that it should not interfere in the spontane-ous movement of the working class, let alone direct it, but that it should follow in the wake of this movement, study it and draw lessons from it.
Exposing the whole madness of the Economists’ “khvostism” (to follow in the tail), Iskra tried to raise ever broader strata of the working class to the level of the advanced ones. It explained the political tasks of the working class as the vanguard in the struggle for democracy against the tsarist autocracy. Iskra wrote about the imperative of the struggle for political freedoms, the eight-hour working day, the overthrow of tsardom, and then the overthrow of the entire capitalist system.
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5 . Stalin—Founder of the Leninist-Iskra Organization in Transcaucasia
A mighty Iskra organization took shape in Transcaucasia. Its founder was Comrade Stalin.
Stalin occupied a place within the leading ranks, alongside Lenin, in the struggle for a working class revolutionary party in our country. Even then, at the dawn of the construction of the Bolshevik Party, Stalin clearly saw who his chieftain and teacher was. Here is how Comrade Stalin reminisced on this topic in a speech to the Kremlin cadets’ banquet in honor of Lenin’s memory:
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3.4. Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. Adoption of Program and Rules and Formation of a Single Party.
The most important item on the agenda was the adoption of the Party pro-gram. The workers’ party program was a brief explanation of the goals and tasks of the working class’s struggle. It determined both the ultimate goal of the revolutionary movement and the demands that the Party was struggling for on the path to this ultimate goal. The fundamental idea of the Iskra draft program was the idea of the proletarian dictatorship. This program did not suit the opportunists. The chief point which, during the discussion of the pro-gram, aroused the objections of the opportunist section of the congress was the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Economist Akimov spoke out against the program in especially heated terms. Trotsky also spoke out against the dictatorship of the proletariat. Trotsky announced that the dictatorship of the proletariat would be possible only after the Party merged with the working class. In other words, Trotsky was demanding the elimination of the Party, without which it would be impossible to realize the dictatorship of the proletariat or reinforce it. Trotsky likewise announced that the dictatorship of the proletariat would be possible only when the working class represented the majority in the country. This meant that Trotsky was actually against the proletarian dictatorship. We know that even now, 20 years after the October Socialist revolution, the working class still does not make up the majority of the country, and yet the proletarian dictatorship has already existed for 20 years in the USSR. The pseudo-Cadet and Economist Akimov completely agreed with Trotsky. Lurking within his position at the Second Conference were the roots of the brutal struggle that was led by Trotsky—a fascist agent and the most evil enemy of the people. There were a number of other items in the program on which the opportunists did not agree with the revolutionary section of the congress. But they decided to put up the main fight on the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat, on the plea that the programs of a number of foreign Social-Democratic parties contained no clause on the dictatorship of the proletariat, and that therefore the program of the Russian Social-Democratic Party could dispense with it too.
In order to complete the Socialist revolution and establish the proletarian dictatorship, it was necessary first of all to be victorious in the bourgeois-democratic revolution—to overthrow the power of the tsar and landlords.
5. Appearance within the Party of Bolshevik and Menshevik Factions.
Organizational differences were one of the major reasons for the Party’s split at the conference into two factions (groups): the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. What was the essence of this disagreement?
Against Lenin spoke out the “soft” Iskraites—the future Mensheviks Martov, Trotsky and several others. All of the opportunists joined them. The Martovites suggested accepting into the Party all takers. They suggested that everyone who promised to contribute something should be invited to join the Party, even those who did not belong to a Party organization or submit to Party discipline.
The Menshevik proposal weakened the working class party and made it possible for alien people, random “fellow travelers” and those hostile to Social-ism from the ranks of the liberal bourgeoisie to penetrate into the Party. The Leninists stood for a militant, proletarian party, while the Martovites stood for a petty-bourgeois, opportunistic party.
Lenin’s struggle for the first paragraph of the Rules, as the future experience of the Party would show, had enormous historical significance. The Bolshevik Party, built on a foundation of Leninism, was transformed into a mighty revolutionary force. The Menshevik party, a group of bourgeois lackeys, sank to the bottom of the counter-revolutionary pit.
It appears at first glance that the congress split over the question of elections to the central institutions of the Party. But if one looks at the total sum of the differences, then the split at the Second Congress took place over the issue of how to build the Party. Lenin and the Bolsheviks believed that it was necessary to create a militant, centralized Party, capable of taking charge of the working class and leading it to victory over tsardom and the bourgeoisie. And the party that Martov and Trotsky proposed to found was only able to trudge at the tail of the spontaneous labour movement and would have become an appendage of the bourgeois parties.
The Second Congress had enormous significance for Party history.
The congress created the Party’s central institutions: the Central Committee and the Central Organ. At the Second Congress, the revolutionary party of the working class thus took shape: the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. This Party was born in the conditions of a bitter struggle for Lenin’s revolutionary line, under enemy fire.
After the Second Congress, the division of the Social-Democratic Party into the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks began. In the struggle for the Party, Lenin created the Bolshevik group. Led by Lenin, the Bolsheviks defended and solidified the victory of Iskra’s ideological and organizational foundations at the congress. The Bolsheviks demonstrated that they were able to wage their struggle against the opportunists to the end—to a split and a break with them.
4.6. The Bolshevik Struggle for the Party with the Mensheviks and Conciliators in 1903–04 Splitting Activities of the Menshevik Leaders and Sharpening of the Struggle within the Party after the Second Congress. Opportunism of the Mensheviks. Lenin’s Book, One Step Forward,
Two Steps Back. Organizational Principles of the Marxist Party.
Thereupon the Mensheviks, secretly from the Party, created their own anti-Party factional organization, headed by Martov, Trotsky and Axelrod. They set for themselves the task of seizing the Party centre and destroying the Party. The majority of the local Social-Democratic organizations in Russia ap-proved of Lenin’s line at the Second Congress and supported the Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks waged a rabid struggle against Lenin’s revolutionary line., and, as Martov wrote, they “broke into revolt against Leninism.” The Mensheviks were able to lure to their side the majority of the foreign part of the Party, where intellectuals prevailed among the émigrés. The methods they adopted for combating the Party were, as Lenin expressed it, “to disorganize the whole Party work, damage the cause, and hamper all and everything.” The Mensheviks won a decisive majority at the congress They entrenched themselves in the Foreign League of Russian Social-Democrats, nine-tenths of whom were émigré intellectuals isolated from the work in Russia, and from this position they opened fire on the Party, on Lenin and the Leninists.
But Lenin knew that the Bolsheviks’ policies were the only correct Marxist ones and he firmly continued his revolutionary line with the support of the lo-cal organizations in Russia.
CHAPTER THREE
The Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks in the Period of the Russo-Japanese War and the First Russian Revolution (1904–1907)
5. Leninist Position on the Question of the Bourgeois-Democratic
7. Soviets of Workers’ Deputies
10. Reasons for the Revolution’s Defeat
11. Historical Significance of the First Russian Revolution
CHAPTER FOUR
The Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks in the Period of the Stolypin Reaction. and The Bolsheviks Constitute Themselves as an Independent Social-Democratic Marxist Party
(1908–1912)
3. Bolshevik and Menshevik Evaluation of the Prospects for Revolution.
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in the Period of the Stolypin Reaction. Struggle of the Bolsheviks against the Liquidators and Otzovists
4. Struggle of the Bolsheviks against Trotskyism and Conciliationism. Anti-Party August Bloc.
5. Stalin’s Struggle for the Preservation and Strengthening of the Illegal Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Bolshevik Party during the New Rise of the Working-Class Movement before the First Imperialist War. (1912–1914)
2.3. From January 9 to the General Strike. Workers’ Political Strikes and Demonstrations. Growth of the Revolutionary Movement among the Peasants. Revolt on the Battleship “Potemkin”
After January 9 1905 the revolutionary struggle of the workers did not die down grew more acute and assumed a political character.
The peasant movement spread ever wider in the central parts of Russia, and the Volga region, and in Transcaucasia, especially in Georgia. But the peasant rebellions developed even further in the national regions. In Georgia, especially in Guri, almost all of the peasantry rose up. The peasants began to seize the landed estates. They ceased to fulfill their obligations to their landlords and obey the tsarist authorities. In the villages, peasant committees appeared that took charge of everything. In Latvia and Esthonia, the landless peasants re-belled. In the Ukraine and Byelorussia, the peasant struggle for the land also grew.
The emancipation movement developed among the oppressed nationalities as well—the Poles, the peoples of Transcaucasia, the Ukrainians, the Tatars and others.
Attempts by the masses to deliver an armed rebuff to the tsar’s troops be-came more and more frequent. In an array of places actual street fighting began between the people and the troops—battles at the barricades. The fighting turned into an uprising. The workers demonstrated ideal forms of heroism and revolutionary enthusiasm.
The workers’ recourse to mass political strikes and demonstrations, the growth of the peasant movement, the armed clashes between the people and the police and troops, and, finally, the revolt in the Black Sea Fleet, all went to show that conditions were ripening for an armed uprising of the people. The position of the bourgeoisie was different. The liberals started to appeal more and more fre-quently to the tsar with letters and draft proposals outlining necessary reforms. They were forced to embrace this cause by the revolution and their fears in the face of it.
The tsarist government attempted to take care of continued to suppress the developing revolutionary movement workers and peasants with ferocious bru-tality. But it could not help seeing that it would never cope with the revolution by repressive measures alone. Therefore, without abandoning measures of repres-sion, it resorted to a policy of manoeuvring. At that time, tsardom attempted to distract the masses from revolution by enflaming national animosities. Jewish pogroms were organized by the police in an array of cities and Armenian-Tatar massacres were provoked in Baku. On the one hand, with the help of its agents-provocateurs, it incited the peoples of Russia against each other, engineering Jew-ish pogroms and mutual massacres of Armenians and Tatars. Attempting to deceive the masses, the tsar promised to convene a Duma. This Duma (known as the Bulygin Duma after the person who designed it, the tsarist minister Bulygin) was not granted any legislative powers and was supposed to be just a consultative assembly for the landlords and bourgeoisie under the tsar. On the other hand, it promised to convene a “representative institution” in the shape of a Zemsky Sobor or a State Duma, and instructed the Minister Bulygin to draw up a project for such a Duma, stipulating, however, that it was to have no legislative powers. All these measures were adopted in order to split the forces of revolution and to sever from it the moderate sections of the people.
The Bolsheviks spoke out against the tsar’s efforts to deceive the masses. They advanced the slogans: “Down with the consultative Duma!” “Boycott the Duma!” and “Down with the tsarist government!” Millions of people followed the Bolsheviks’ call to boycott the Duma. And the Bulygin Duma was never convened. The revolutionary vortex swept it away.
The Bolsheviks declared a boycott of the Bulygin Duma with the aim of frus-trating this travesty of popular representation.2
The Mensheviks, on the other hand, decided not to sabotage the Duma and considered it necessary to take part in it.
3.4. Two Tactics in the Bourgeois-Democratic Revolution—Those of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks Tactical Differences between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Third Party Congress. Lenin’s Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution. Tactical Foundations of the Marxist Party
When the revolution began in Russia, Lenin was in emigration in Switzer-land. At the first news of the January 9 events, the Bolsheviks personified by Lenin judged these events to mark the beginning of the revolution.
In his letters and articles, Lenin pointed out that the nascent revolution con-ferred great responsibility upon the Social-Democratic Party. It was necessary to organize their forces and agree on the forms and means of struggle. And if before the revolution Lenin demanded the convention of the Third Party Congress, then all the more insistently did he advance this demand now. The demand for the quickest possible convention of the congress was supported by the overwhelming majority of the party organizations in Russia.
The revolution had set in motion all classes of society. The turn in the political life of the country caused by the revolution dislodged them from their old wonted positions and compelled them to regroup themselves in conformity with the new situation. Each class and each party endeavoured to work out its tactics, its line of conduct, its attitude towards other classes, and its attitude towards the government. Even the tsarist government found itself compelled to devise new and unaccustomed tactics, as instanced by the promise to convene a “representative institution”—the Bulygin Duma.
At the same time that this congress was held in London, the Mensheviks convened held their Menshevik conference in Geneva.
“Two congresses—two parties,” was the way Lenin summed up the situation.
But the split with the Mensheviks was still not allowed to result in a complete and total dissolution of the formal alliance with them at the Third Party Congress. This happened later, at the Prague Conference (1912). The Third Congress still considered it to be possible to maintain a formal alliance with the Mensheviks, in order to expose the conciliators’ policy within the framework of the unified party and strip away the portion of the workers who still remained on the Mensheviks’ side.
Both the congress and the conference virtually discussed the same tactical questions, but the decisions they arrived at were diametrically opposite. The two sets of resolutions adopted by the congress and the conference respectively revealed the whole depth of the tactical difference between the Third Party Congress and the Menshevik conference, between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.
In his remarkable work Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, Lenin showed all the fundamental differences be-tween how the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks viewed the Revolution of 1905 and the role of the proletariat, bourgeoisie and peasantry therein.
In his historic book, Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, Lenin gave a classical criticism of the tactics of the Mensheviks and a brilliant substantiation of the Bolshevik tactics.
Lenin foresaw the possibility of а two-way two possible outcomes of the revolution:
a) First Outcome: Either it would end in a decisive victory over tsardom, in the overthrow of tsardom by means of a successful armed uprising and the establishment of a provisional revolutionary government. This government would be a revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. Its tasks would be the establishment of a democratic republic, the confiscation of the landed estates for the peasantry, the implementation of the 8-hour working day for the workers and the merciless struggle with the counter-revolution and the establishment of a democratic republic;
b) Second Outcome: Or, if the forces and organization of the workers and peasants were inadequate for an armed overthrow of tsardom and revolution, it might end in a pathetic deal between the tsar and the liberal bourgeoisie and tsardom at the expense of the people, and the introduction of a in some sort of curtailed constitution, which would not grant political rights to the people or, most likely, in some caricature of a constitution.
The proletariat was vitally interested in the completion of the democratic revolution, the establishment of a democratic republic, the winning of political rights and liberties and the 8-hour working day better outcome of the two, that is, in a decisive victory over tsardom. This would have eased the proletariat’s subsequent struggle for Socialism. But such an outcome was possible only if the proletariat succeeded in becoming the leader and guide of the revolution.
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"The outcome of the revolution,” Lenin said, “depends on whether the working class will play the part of a subsidiary to the bourgeoisie, a subsidiary that is powerful in the force of its onslaught against the autocracy but impotent politically, or whether it will play the part of leader of the people’s revolution.” (Ibid., p. 41.)
The most important task of the proletarian party was to organize the uprising against tsardom and arm the working class.
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Lenin considered that the most effective means of overthrowing tsardom and achieving a democratic republic was a victorious armed uprising of the people. Contrary to the Mensheviks, Lenin held that “the general democratic revolutionary movement has already brought about the necessity for an armed uprising,” that “the organization of the proletariat for uprising” had already “been placed on the order of the day as one of the essential, principal and indispensable tasks of the Party,” and that it was necessary “to adopt the most energetic measures to arm the proletariat and to ensure the possibility of directly leading the uprising.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. VIII, p. 75.)
5. Leninist Position on the Question of the Bourgeois-Democratic Revolution Passing into a Socialist One
Lenin taught that the establishment of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry would be merely a temporary, transitional task.
3) While advocating the victory of the bourgeois revolution and the achievement of a democratic republic, Lenin had not the least intention of coming to a halt in the democratic stage and confining the scope of the revolutionary movement to the accomplishment of bourgeois-democratic tasks. On the contrary, Lenin maintained that following upon the resolution of this task accomplishment of the democratic tasks, the proletariat and the other exploited masses would have to develop begin a struggle, this time for the Socialist revolution.
The Trotskyites subsequently slandered Lenin with the claim that he and the Bolsheviks had supposedly only spoken out about the bourgeois revolution passing into a Socialist one in 1917—that they had “rearmed” themselves. In fact, as we know, it was already in 1894 that Lenin wrote in his book What is a ‘Friend of the People?’ that having overthrown the tsar, the proletariat would have to follow a direct path of political struggle toward the Socialist revolution.
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 its task, because the Mensheviks under Trotsky took over its leadership owing to its bad, Menshevik leadership. In the Soviet, Trotsky supplied slogans which harmed the revolution, calling for instance for the evacuation of troops from St. Petersburg. The Mensheviks in the Soviet did not pay attention to the need for revolutionary work among the tsarist troops and did not prepare for an uprising. As we know, Lenin had not yet arrived in St. Petersburg; he was still abroad.
Reminiscing later about his first meeting with Lenin at the Tammerfors Conference, Comrade Stalin wrote:
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The oppressed nationalities of Russia also rose in armed struggle. Nearly the whole of Georgia was up in arms. Under the leadership of Comrade Stalin, the workers and peasants of the Caucasus bravely fought with the tsarist troops.
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Comrade Stalin proved that the Bolsheviks’ tactics, designed to organize a new uprising, were the only correct and militant tactics. They would rouse the workers and rally them to the revolution. The Mensheviks’ tactics lulled the workers to sleep.
The Mensheviks, by their compromising tactics, hampered the revolution, confused the minds of large numbers of workers and split the working class. Therefore, the workers did not always act concertedly in the revolution, and the working class in 1905, still lacked the ability to lacking unity within its own ranks, could not become the real head (hegemon) leader of the revolution and enjoy the recognition of the peasant masses. The Party still lacked the strength to combine together the three fundamental currents of the revolutionary movement: the workers, peasants and soldiers.
11. Historical Significance of the First Russian Revolution
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The first Russian revolution constituted a whole historical stage in the development of our country. This historical stage consisted of two periods:
Chapter Four
The Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks in the Period of the Stolypin Reaction. and The Bolsheviks Constitute Themselves as an Independent Social-Democratic Labour Marxist Party (1908–1912)
The Constitutional-Democratic Party had fewer seats in the Third Duma than in the First and Second Dumas. This was due to the fact that the voting rights possessed by the urban masses (employees, part of the merchants, etc.), who had voted for the Constitutional-Democrats in the previous Duma elections after having been deceived by their false “democratic” promises, were now significantly limited. Moreover, there was the transfer of part of the land-lord vote from the Constitutional-Democrats to the Octobrists.
2. Bolshevik Activity during the Years of Reaction
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3. Bolshevik and Menshevik Evaluation of the Prospects for Revolution. Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in the Period of the Stolypin Reaction. Struggle of the Bolsheviks against the Liquidators and Otzovists
Many of the petty-bourgeois “fellow-travelers” of the Party, especially the intellectuals, deserted its ranks from fear of persecution by the tsarist government and loss of belief in the revolution.
That is why the Bolsheviks were certain that there would be a new rise of the revolutionary movement, prepared for it and mustered the forces of the working class after the defeat of the first Russian revolution.
The Party had to reckon with this fact and the new situation. It would have been incorrect to continue with the tactic of boycotting the Duma; it was necessary to take part in the Duma and use the legal opportunities to agitate during elections and from the Duma tribune. Offensive tactics had to be exchanged for a tactical retreat, but a retreat that was done correctly in order to preserve the revolutionary army and its morale and military readiness as much as possible. Offensive tactics had to be replaced by defensive tactics, the tactics of mustering forces, the tactics of withdrawing the cadres underground and of carrying on the work of the Party from underground, the tactics of combining illegal work with work in the legal working-class organizations.
In his “Letter from the Caucasus,” written in 1909, Comrade Stalin said that the Mensheviks were demanding “that our program be adapted to that of the Constitutional-Democrats,” exposing the Tiflis Mensheviks, who were the most open in their decision to renounce the revolutionary program and eliminate the proletarian party.
Using the Tiflis Mensheviks as an example, Comrade Stalin exposed the existence of all-Russian Menshevik liquidationism. Lenin was in full agreement with the lethal critique that Comrade Stalin addressed to the Mensheviks.
4. Struggle of the Bolsheviks against Trotskyism and Conciliationism. Anti-Party August Bloc
Later, in 1912, Trotsky organized the August Bloc,64 a bloc of all the non-Bolshevik anti-Bolshevik groups and trends directed against Lenin and the Bol-shevik Party. The Liquidators and the Otzovists united in this anti-Bolshevik bloc, thus demonstrating their kinship. Trotsky and the Trotskyites took up a liquidationist stand on all fundamental issues. But At the time, Trotsky appeared as a centrist—that is, he tried to conceal his opportunism—as Kautsky had in the Second International, Trotsky masked his liquidationism through revolutionary rhetoric under the guise of Centrism, that is, conciliationism; he claimed that he belonged to neither the Bolsheviks nor the Mensheviks and that he was trying to reconcile them.
Comrade Stalin fully approved of supported this bloc. He was in exile in the Vologda region at the time and from there wrote a letter to Lenin from Solvy-chegodsk,
5. Stalin’s Struggle for the Preservation and Strengthening of the Illegal Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia
Comrade Stalin’s activity in Transcaucasia during this period serves as an example of the struggle for party-mindedness and the preservation and strengthening of the proletarian party in the most grim circumstances of the reaction.
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5.6. Prague Party Conference, 1912. Bolsheviks Constitute Themselves an Independent Social-Democratic Labour Marxist Party
It was becoming clear that No Bolshevik now doubted that it was unthinkable for the Bolsheviks to formally remain in one Social-Democratic party with the Mensheviks would only harm the cause of the revolution.
Comrade Stalin completely supported Lenin’s line on the rupture with the Liquidators. On Lenin’s orders, Comrade Stalin did an enormous amount of work to convene the all-party Prague Conference.
As the leader of the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee, Comrade Stalin escaped from exile shortly after the conference and traveled to all the important regions of Russia, built the Party, organized Pravda and led the Duma faction. Comrade Stalin personally steered the work of the Bolshevik Party during the period of the new wave of the labour movement according to Lenin’s directions.
7. Struggle of the Bolsheviks against Opportunism and for a Rupture in the Second International
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The Prague Conference elected a Bolshevik Central Committee led by Lenin and Stalin. Stalin headed the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee, which personally led revolutionary work in Russia.
Chapter Five
The Bolshevik Party during the New Rise of the Working-Class Movement before the First
Imperialist War (1912–1914)
1. Revolutionary Rise of the Revolutionary Movement in the Period 1912–14
The temporary victory of the counter-revolution was inseparably connected with the decline of the workers’ mass struggle. Feelings of fatigue and depression gripped a large part of the working class during the years of reaction. Gradually,2 the working class again gathered its forces and began to take to the offensive. The triumph of the Stolypin reaction was short lived. A government which would offer the people nothing but the knout and the gallows could not endure. Repressive measures became so habitual that they ceased to inspire fear in the people.
—Comrade Stalin wrote in the St. Petersburg Bolshevik newspaper, Zvezda (The “1912 Prague Conference” Collection, p. 160.)
Lenin and Stalin inspired Pravda and its leaders on an ideological level. Having escaped from the Narymsk territory at the end of the summer, Comrade Stalin personally directed Pravda from the second half of 1912 to the beginning of 1913.
Comrade Stalin spoke at brief meetings in an array of factories. He was living in St. Petersburg illegally. His speeches at the assemblies entailed an enormous risk. The workers’ organizations and the workers themselves took all means possible to shield Comrade Stalin from the police persecution that was always at his heels.
In March 1913, Comrade Stalin was again arrested and banished to Siberia, from where he was freed only by the February Revolution.
6. Lenin’s and Stalin’s Struggle for the Bolshevik Program on the National Question
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CHAPTER SIX
The Bolshevik Party in the Period of the Imperialist War. And The Second Russian Revolution in Russia. (1914–February–March 1917)
On July 14 (27, New Style), 1914, as the workers began to build barricades in St. Petersburg, universal mobilization was announced, indicating that war had been declared the tsarist government proclaimed a general mobilization. On July 19 (August 1, New Style) Germany declared war on Russia and the First Imperialist War began like a thunder clap.
This most revolutionary of the world proletariats, with such a serious ally as the revolutionary Russian peasantry, fought under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, the Lenin-Stalin Party.
Only the Bolshevik Party, the Lenin-Stalin Party, immediately and unhesitatingly raised the banner of determined struggle against the imperialist war.
Lenin and Stalin and the Bolshevik Party said that the national-emancipatory revolutionary movement of the oppressed peoples served as support and reserves for the proletarian revolution.
Comrade Stalin spent the war in internal exile in Turukhansk. Comrade Stalin carried out a lot of work among the exiles, unmasking social-chauvinists, Mensheviks, Anarchists and Trotskyites.
In 1915, the publication of the Bolshevik journal Voprosy strakhovaniya (Labour Insurance Questions) was revived. Comrade Stalin hailed its appearance and collected money from among the exiles for this journal.
5.6. The February Bourgeois-Democratic Revolution of 1917.
The most prominent leaders of the Bolshevik Party—Stalin and Sverdlov—were in internal exile in Siberia.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Bolshevik Party in the Period of Preparation and Realization of the October Socialist Revolution
(April 1917–1918)
1. Situation in the Country after the Victory of the Second Russian February Revolution. Party Emerges from Underground and Passes to Open Political Work. Lenin Arrives in Petrograd. Lenin’s April Theses. Party’s Policy of Transition to Socialist Revolution
2. The Bolshevik Party after the Bourgeois-Democratic February Revolution
3.4. Struggle of the Bolsheviks for the Masses Successes of the Bolshevik Party in the Capital. Abortive Offensive of the Armies of the Provisional Government. Suppression of the July Demonstration of Workers and Soldiers
But these were all staunch revolutionaries, steeled in the struggle with tsardom and trained by Lenin and Stalin.
Stalin returned from exile to Petrograd on March 12 (25). In his articles in Pravda, Stalin called for the creation of a firm alliance of workers and peasants and explained that the organs of this alliance ought to be the workers’ and soldiers’ Soviets (the latter of which consisted chiefly of peasants in soldiers’ uni-forms on account of the war). He called for the Soviets to be strengthened and developed as the people’s organs of revolutionary power.
Comrade Stalin delivered a rebuff to Kamenev and called upon the Party to expose the true origins of the imperialist war to the people, which meant “declaring war on war, making war impossible.”
Comrade Stalin defended the arming of the workers and the imperative of creating detachments of the workers’ (Red) guard. He called upon the peasants to not wait for the Constituent Assembly and to take over the landed estates and cultivate the land themselves.
Direct political leadership of the congress and the defence of the most important decisions of the Party fell to Comrade Stalin.
The chief items discussed at the congress were Comrade Stalin’s reports: the political report of the Central Committee and the report on the political situation.
The Party was headed for Socialist revolution, for armed uprising against the bourgeoisie.
And at that decisive moment within the Party There were some at the congress who, reflecting the bourgeois and Menshevik influence, opposed the adoption of the course of Socialist revolution. Comrade Stalin rebuffed all the opponents of the proletarian Socialist revolution.
Comrade Stalin led the struggle at the congress on two fronts: on one side against the Trotskyites, who were working in league with Bukharin, and on the other, against the then Right Opportunists Rykov, Kamenev and others.
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The Great October Socialist Revolution had won.
The victory of the Soviet Socialist Revolution can be explained by the fol-lowing reasons:
1. The bourgeois government of the Socialist-Revolutionary Kerensky had become utterly discredited in the eyes of the workers and peasants. Kerensky wanted to continue the war until victory was achieved, but the workers, peas-ants and soldiers demanded that the war be stopped and peace concluded. Kerensky wanted to keep the land for the landlords, but the workers and peasants demanded the immediate seizure of the landlords’ land for the benefit of the peasants. Kerensky wanted to curb the workers, but the workers and peasants demanded that the factory owners be curbed and placed under the control of the workers’ organizations.
2. The second reason was that these demands served as the basis for a strong alliance between the workers and peasants in the form of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies against the bourgeois Provisional Government and its henchmen, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and in support of the Bolshevik Party.
3. The third reason was that the vast masses of the workers and peasants abandoned the compromising Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, rallied around the Bolshevik Party, and recognized it as their leader and guide.
It was for these reasons that the October revolution was victorious.29
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There were several reasons for this comparatively easy victory of the Socialist revolution in Russia. The following chief reasons should be noted:
1) The October Revolution was confronted by an enemy so comparatively weak, so badly organized and so politically inexperienced as the Russian bourgeoisie.
Now, after the October coup d’état, the “Declaration of Rights of the Peoples of Russia” was published over Lenin’s and Stalin’s sig-natures. Recognition of the independence of Finland and the Ukraine followed thereafter. Sovnarkom ratified the Soviet power address “To All Working Muslims of Russia and the East,” prepared by Comrade Stalin. In this address it was said that the Soviet power had decisively broken with the previous nationality policy of tsardom and the Provisional Government. A People’s Commissariat of Nationality Affairs was formed under Comrade Stalin. The most important steps in the Bolshevik Party’s position on the national question before October were associated with Comrade Stalin’s name, as are all issues associated with the Party’s nationality policy after October 1917.
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. But At the same time Trotsky announced he informed the Germans that the Soviet Republic would not fight and would continue to demobilize the army. The traitor Trotsky said to representatives of the German General Staff in a secret conversation that the Soviet power was powerless, a “corpse without anyone to bury it.”
The “Left Communist” group was isolated and defeated in the Party.
The Trial of the “Right-Trotskyite Bloc” in the spring of 1938 showed the “Left Communist” group in a new light. It turned out to be an espionage ring of forces hostile to Socialism within the ranks of the Bolshevik Party and the workers’ movement, just like the Trotskyite movement. This was clear even then, in 1918. But the “Left Communists”—Bukharin and other supporters of Trotsky and the “Left” Socialist-Revolutionaries—during this period were the direct organizers of a counter-revolutionary coup d’état, which aimed to eliminate the Communist Party and the Soviet power.
The Fifth Congress of Soviets adopted the First Soviet Constitution, which Comrade Stalin took an active part in developing—the Constitution of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
The events of decisive importance in the history of the Party at this period were Lenin’s arrival from exile abroad and Stalin’s return from exile, his April Theses, the April Party Conference and the Sixth Party Congress. Lenin’s and Stalin’s speeches and their leadership of the Party The Party decisions were a source of strength to the working class and inspired it with confidence in victory; in them the workers found solutions to the important problems of the struggle revolution.
Under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, the Party successfully organized the workers and labouring peasantry for the overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and landlords. Headed by the Bolshevik Party, the workers, sup-ported by the labouring peasantry, completed the Great October Socialist Rev-olution, which opened a new epoch in world history. Headed by the Bolshevik Party, the working class, in alliance with the poor peasants, and with the support of the soldiers and sailors, overthrew the power of the bourgeoisie, established the power of the Soviets, set up a new type of state—a Socialist Soviet state—abolished the landlords’ ownership of land, turned over the land to the peasants for their use, nationalized all the land in the country, expropriated the capitalists, achieved the withdrawal of Russia from the war and obtained peace, that is, obtained a much-needed respite, and thus created the conditions for the development of Socialist construction.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Bolshevik Party in the Period of Foreign Military Intervention and Civil War (1918–1920)
Along with Lenin, Comrade Stalin played an exceptional role in the defeat of the counter-revolution and intervention. He took the most active role in the formation of the Red Army and in devising strategic plans; he personally led the largest military operations. In the republic’s most difficult moments, the Party sent Comrade Stalin to the most critical sections of the front. Everywhere, where conditions were tense, it was Comrade Stalin’s iron will that inspired the troops and halted desertion, confidently rallying them to victory. Comrade Stalin’s organizational talent assisted in the quick elimination of shortcomings and enemy breakthroughs.
In May 1918, Comrade Stalin was sent by Lenin to the Tsaritsyn Front to lead the fight against Krasnov and at the same time to take charge of all work concerning foodstuffs. All of Soviet Russia’s starving urban centres depended on Comrade Stalin’s success in this work. A brilliant, heroic defence of this city was waged in the summer and fall of 1918 under the leadership of Comrades Stalin and Voroshilov, the latter of whom had come to Tsarityn from the work-ers and peasants of the Donetz Basin region. Under the leadership of Comrade Stalin, the reorganized Red forces defended Tsaritysn and drove the Whites far away, preventing General Krasnov’s troops from uniting with other White-guard troops on the Eastern Front. It was here, in Tsaritsyn, that at the initia-tive of Comrades Stalin and Voroshilov, major cavalry units started to form that would become the undefeatable First Mounted Army. Comrade Budyonny took on a major role in its organization from the start.
At the start of 1919, the Germans left a signifi-cant portion of the Ukraine, but they were relieved by the “Allies” (England and France), who landed troops in Russia in the South. In the East at the end of 1918, the Red Army suffered a major defeat at Perm. Comrade Stalin, sent there by Lenin, was able to restore the situation and halt the Whites’ advance.
The Central Committee sent Comrade Stalin in order to organize the struggle with Yudenich. Over the course of three weeks, Stalin made a breakthrough. Under his command, the mutinous forts were seized and the enemy was forced to retreat hurriedly. But thanks to the measures taken by the Soviet Government with the support of the workers and sailors, the mutinous forts were cleared of Whites, and Yudenich’s troops were defeated and driven back into Esthonia.
On November 27, 1919, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee awarded Comrade Stalin the Order of the Red Banner for his military service in the defence of Petrograd and his continuing selfless work on the Southern Front.
During the Civil War period, Lenin and Stalin mainly dedicated their attention to the military struggle at the front, the organization of the Red Army and the improvement of its armaments, provisions and political condition.
Chapter Nine
The Bolshevik Party in the Period of Transition to the Peaceful Work of Economic Restoration (1921–1925)
Why did the unit of the Kronstadt sailors go over to the mutineers? Two circumstances facilitated the outbreak of the Kronstadt mutiny: the deterioration in the composition of the ships’ crews, and the weakness of the Bolshevik organization in Kronstadt. Nearly all the old sailors who had taken part in the October Revolution were at the front, heroically fighting in the ranks of the Red Army.
All of this explains how the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and Whiteguards were able to tem-porarily take control of Kronstadt. This enabled the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and Whiteguards to worm their way into Kronstadt and to seize control of it.
Lenin and Stalin spoke out against these groups. With eight other members of the Central Commit-tee, they formed the “Platform of the Ten.” Lenin and the Leninists drew up a platform of their own, entirely contrary in spirit to the platforms of the opposition groups.
All the important local organizations of the Party voted for endorsed Len-in’s platform. Short messages about the results of the local discussions were published in Pravda by Comrade Stalin, who was leading the Party’s struggle against the opposition along with Lenin, under the title “In the Name of Comrade Lenin’s Platform.
On the basis of NEP, the Bolshevik Party, the Lenin-Stalin Party, won world-historical victories, building the basis for a Socialist society.
Class enemies hurried to take advantage of the Soviet power’s economic difficulties. At first, the transition to NEP required a modest restoration of capitalism. This was, as Comrade Stalin pointed out, “the beginning of NEP, a period in which capitalism grew a bit more active.”
6. Lenin’s Death. Stalin’s Oath
On January 21, 1924, Lenin, our leader and teacher, the creator of the Bolshevik Party, passed away in the village of Gorki, near Moscow. Lenin’s death was received by the proletariat and working people class of the whole world as a most cruel toll loss.
Comrade Stalin—the loyal heir and great continuer of Lenin’s cause—lifted Lenin’s banner up high and then carried it forth. In the days of mourning for Lenin, at the Second Congress of Soviets of the U.S.S.R., Comrade Stalin made a solemn vow on January 26, 1924 in the name of the Party. In the name of the entire Bolshevik Party, Comrade Stalin solemnly promised to fulfil Lenin’s precepts and testaments.
The Bolshevik Party kept faithful to Comrade Stalin’s great oath and fulfilled it with honor. Under the leadership of Comrade Stalin, the Bolsheviks succeeded in making the Socialist revolution in our country irreversible. This was the vow made by the Bolshevik Party to its leader, Lenin, whose memory will live throughout the ages.
Comrade Stalin frequently gave speeches with instructions on the neces-sity of demarcating and then separating the two sides to the issue regarding the victory of Socialism in one country. Yes, replied the Party, a Socialist economic system could be and should be built in our country, for we had everything needed for the building of a Socialist economic system, for the building of a complete Socialist society.
In 1938, Comrade Stalin explained the two sides to this issue once more in his answer to Comrade Ivanov, pointing out that “the second problem can be solved only by combining the serious efforts of the international proletariat with even the more serious efforts of the entire Soviet people.” But the Party knew that the problem of the victory of Socialism in one country did not end there. The construction of Socialism in the Soviet Union would be a momentous turning point in the history of mankind, a victory for the working class and peasantry of the U.S.S.R., marking a new epoch in the history of the world. Yet this was an internal affair of the U.S.S.R. and was only a part of the problem of the victory of Socialism. The other part of the problem was its international aspect. In substantiating the thesis that Socialism could be victorious in one country, Comrade Stalin had repeatedly pointed out that the question should be viewed from two aspects, the domestic and the international.
CHAPTER TEN
The Bolshevik Party in the Struggle for the Socialist Industrialization of the Country (1926–1929)
2. Formation of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Bloc with a Trotskyite Platform
3. Transition of the Trotskyite Opposition to Anti-Soviet Activity
5. Transformation of Trotskyism from a Political Trend into a Gang of Brigands and Spies
7. Formation of the Rightist Anti-Party Group and the Struggle with It
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Bolshevik Party in the Struggle for the Collectivization of Agriculture (1930–1934)
1. International Position of the U.S.S.R. Situation in 1930–34.
3. Struggle with Distortions of the Party Line in the Collective Farm Movement
5 . Underground Struggle of the Bukharinites and Trotskyites against the Party and Soviet State
9. Degeneration of the Bukharinites Into Political Double-Dealers.
Degeneration of the Trotskyite Double-Dealers into a Whiteguard Gang of Assassins and Spies. Foul Murder of S. M. Kirov by a Trotskyite-Bukharinite Band of Fascist Mercenaries. Measures of the Party to Heighten Bolshevik Vigilance
The Bolshevik Party in the Struggle to Complete the Building of the Socialist Society. Introduction of the New Constitution (1935–1937)
1. International and Home Situation in 1935–37. Temporary Mitigation of the Economic Crisis. Beginning of a New Economic Crisis. Seizure of Ethiopia by Italy. German and Italian Intervention in Spain. Japanese Invasion of Central China. Beginning of Second Imperialist War
8 Defeat Liquidation of the Counter-Revolutionary Remnants of the Bukharin-Trotsky Germano-Japanese Gang of Spies, Saboteurs, Wreckers and Terrorists Traitors to the Country. Preparations for the Election of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. Broad Inner-Party Democracy as the Party’s Course. Election of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.
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