by Ludo Martens
These four cases give us an idea of the great difficulty that the Soviet leadership had to face against relentless enemies, hidden and acting in secret, enemies that did everything they possibly could to undermine and destroy the Party and Soviet power from within.
The struggle against opportunism in the Party
During the twenties and thirties, Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders led many struggles against opportunist tendencies within the Party. The refutation of anti-Leninist ideas coming from Trotsky, then Zinoviev and Kamenev, finally Bukharin, played a central rфle. These ideological and political struggles were led correctly, according to Leninist principles, firmly and patiently.
The Bolshevik Party led a decisive ideological and political struggle against Trotsky during the period 1922--1937, over the question of the possibility of building socialism in one country, the Soviet Union. Using `leftist' ideology, Trotsky pretended that socialist construction was impossible in the Soviet Union, given the absence of a victorious revolution in a large industrialized country. This defeatist and capitulationist thesis was the one held since 1918 by the Mensheviks, who had concluded that it was impossible to build socialism in a backward peasant country. Many texts by Bolshevik leaders, essentially by Stalin and Bukharin, show that this struggle was correctly led.
In 1926--1927, Zinoviev and Kamenev joined Trotsky in his struggle against the Party. Together, they formed the United Opposition. The latter denounced the rise of the kulak class, criticized `bureaucratism' and organized clandestine factions within the Party. When Ossovsky defended the right to form `opposition parties', Trotsky and Kamenev voted in the Politburo against his exclusion. Zinoviev took up Trotsky's `impossibility of building socialism in one country', a theory that he had violently fought against only two years previous, and spoke of the danger of the degeneration of the Party.
.
Edward Hallett Carr. Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926--1929, Volume 2 (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1971), pp. 7, 10--12, 20.
Trotsky invented in 1927 the `Soviet thermidor', analogous with the French counter-revolution where the right-wing Jacobins executed the left-wing Jacobins.
Then Trotsky explained that at the beginning of World War I, when the German army was 80 kilometres (50 miles) from Paris, Clйmenceau overthrew the weak government of Painlevй to organize an effective defence without concessions. Trotsky was insinuating that in the case of imperialist attack, he would implement a Clйmenceau-like coup d'йtat.
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Ibid. , pp. 28--29.
Through these acts and his writings, the opposition was thoroughly discredited and, during a vote, received only 6000 votes as against 725,000.
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Ibid. , p. 42.
On December 27, 1927, the Central Committee declared that the opposition had allied itself with anti-Soviet forces and that those who held its positions would be expelled from the Party. All the Trotskyist and Zinovievite leaders were expelled.
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Ibid. , p. 49.
However, in June 1928, several Zinovievites recanted and were re-integrated, as were their leaders Zinoviev, Kamenev and Evdokimov.
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Ibid. , p. 60.
A large number of Trotskyists were also re-integrated, including Preobrazhensky and Radek.
.
Ibid. , p. 67.
Trotsky, however, maintained his irreconcilable opposition to the Party and was expelled from the Soviet Union.
The next great ideological struggle was led against Bukharin's rightist deviation during the collectivization. Bukharin put forward a social-democratic line, based on the idea of class re-conciliation. In fact, he was protecting the development of the kulaks in the countryside and represented their interests. He insisted on a slowing down of the industrialization of the country. Bukharin was torn asunder by the bitterness of the class struggle in the countryside, whose `horrors' he described and denounced.
During this struggle, former `Left Opposition' members made unprincipled alliances with Bukharin in order to overthrow Stalin and the Marxist-Leninist leadership. On July 11, 1928, during the violent debates that took place before the collectivization, Bukharin held a clandestine meeting with Kamenev. He stated that he was ready to `give up Stalin for Kamenev and Zinoviev', and hoped for `a bloc to remove Stalin'.
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Ibid. , p. 65.
In September 1928, Kamenev contacted some Trotskyists, asking them to rejoin the Party and to wait `till the crisis matures'.
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Ibid. , p. 73, n. 3.
After the success of the collectivization of 1932--1933, Bukharin's defeatist theories were completely discredited.
By that time, Zinoviev and Kamenev had started up once again their struggle against the Party line, in particular by supporting the counter-revolutionary program put forward by Riutin in 1931--1932 (see page ). They were expelled a second time from the Party and exiled in Siberia.
From 1933 on, the leadership thought that the hardest battles for industrialization and collectivization were behind them. In May 1933, Stalin and Molotov signed a decision to liberate 50 per cent of the people sent to work camps during the collectivization. In November 1934, the kolkhoz management system took its definite form, the kolkhozians having the right to cultivate for themselves a private plot and to raise livestock.
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Getty, op. cit. , p. 94.
The social and economic atmosphere relaxed throughout the country.
The general direction of the Party had proven correct. Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin and a number of Trotskyists recognized that they had erred. The Party leadership thought that the striking victories in building socialism would encourage these former opposition leaders to criticize their wrong ideas and to accept Leninist ones. It hoped that all the leading cadres would apply Leninist principles of criticism and self-criticism, the materialist and dialectical method that allows each Communist to improve their political education and to assess their understanding, in order to reinforce the political unity of the Party. For that reason, almost all the leaders of the three opportunist movements, the Trotskyists Pyatakov, Radek, Smirnov and Preobrazhensky, as well as Zinoviev and Kamenev and Bukharin, who in fact had remained in an important position, were invited to the 17th Congress, where they made speeches.
That Congress was the congress of victory and unity.
In his report to the Seventeenth Congress, presented on January 26, 1934, Stalin enumerated the impressive achievements in industrialization, collectivization and cultural development. After having noted the political victory over the Trotskyist group and over the bourgeois nationalists, he stated:
`The anti-Leninist group of the Right deviators has been smashed and scattered. Its organizers have long ago renounced their views and are now trying in every way to expiate the sins they committed against the Party.'
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Stalin, Report to the Seventeenth Party Congress on the Work of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.). Selected Works, p. 404.
During the congress, all the old opponents acknowledged the tremendous successes achieved since 1930. In his concluding speech, Stalin stated:
`(I)t has been revealed that there is extraordinary ideological, political and organizational solidarity in the ranks of the Party.'
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Stalin, Instead of a Reply to the Discussion, Works, vol. 13, p. 404.
Stalin was convinced that the former deviationists would in the future work loyally to build socialism.
`We have smashed the enemies of the Party .... But remnants of their ideology still live in the minds of individual members of the Party, and not infrequently they find expression.'
And he underscored the persistence of `the survivals of capitalism in economic life' and `Still less ... in the minds of people'. `That is why we cannot say that the fight is ended and that there is no longer any need for the policy of the socialist offensive.'
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Stalin, Report, op. cit. , p
p. 405--406.
A detailed study of the ideological and political struggle that took place in the Bolshevik leadership from 1922 to 1934 refutes many well-ingrained lies and prejudices. It is patently false that Stalin did not allow other leaders to express themselves freely and that he ruled like a `tyrant' over the Party. Debates and struggles took place openly and over an extended period of time. Fundamentally different ideas confronted each other violently, and socialism's very future was at stake. Both in theory and in practice, the leadership around Stalin showed that it followed a Leninist line and the different opportunist factions expressed the interests of the old and new bourgeoisies. Stalin was not only careful and patient in the struggle, he even allowed opponents who claimed that they had understood their errors to return to the leadership. Stalin really believed in the honesty of the self-criticisms presented by his former opponents.
The trials and struggle against revisionism and enemy infiltration
On December 1, 1934, Kirov, number two in the Party, was assassinated in his office in the Party Headquarters in Leningrad. The assassin, Nikolayev, had entered simply by showing his Party card. He had been expelled from the Party, but had kept his card.
The counter-revolutionaries in the prisons and in the camps started up their typical slanderous campaign:
`It was Stalin who killed Kirov'! This `interpretation' of Kirov's murder was spread in the West by the dissident Orlov in 1953. At the time, Orlov was in Spain! In a book that he published after he left for the West in 1938, Orlov wrote about hearsay that he picked up during his brief stays in Moscow. But it was only fifteen years later, during the Cold War, that the dissident Orlov would have sufficient insight to make his sensational revelation.
Tokaev, a member of a clandestine anti-Communist organization, wrote that Kirov was killed by an opposition group and that he, Tokaev, had carefully followed the preparations for the assassination. Liuskov, a member of the NKVD who fled to Japan, confirmed that Stalin had nothing to do with this assassination.
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Ibid. , p. 207.
Kirov's assassination took place just as the Party leadership thought that the most difficult struggles were behind them and that Party unity had been re-established. Stalin's first reaction was disorganized and reflected panic. The leadership thought that the assassination of the number two man in the Party meant the beginning of a coup d'йtat. A new decree was immediately published, calling for the use of summary procedures for the arrest and execution of terrorists. This draconian measure was the result of the feeling of mortal danger for the socialist rйgime.
At first, the Party looked for the guilty within traditional enemy circles, the Whites. A few of them were executed.
Then, the police found Nikolayev's journal. In it, there was no reference to an opposition movement that had prepared the attack. The inquiry finally concluded that Zinoviev's group had `influenced' Nikolayev and his friends, but found no evidence of direct implication of Zinoviev, who was sent back to internal exile.
The Party's reaction showed great disarray. The thesis by which Stalin `prepared' the attack to implement his `diabolical plan' to exterminate the opposition is not verified by the facts.
The trial of the Trotskyite-Zinovievist Centre
The attack was followed by a purge from the Party of Zinoviev's followers. There was no massive violence. The next few months focused on the great preparations for the new Constitution, based on the concept of socialist democracy.
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Ibid. , pp. 95, 111-112, 115--116.
Only sixteen months later, in June 1936, the Kirov dossier was re-opened with the discovery of new information. It turned out that in October 1932, a secret organization, including Zinoviev and Kamenev, had been formed.
The police had proof that Trotsky had sent, early in 1932, clandestine letters to Radek, Sokolnikov, Preobrazhensky and others to incite them to more energetic actions against Stalin. Getty found traces to these letters in Trotsky's archives.
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Ibid. , p. 119; p. 245, n. 20.
In October 1932, the former Trotskyist Goltsman clandestinely met Trotsky's son, Sedov, in Berlin. They discussed a proposal by Smirnov to create a United Opposition Block, including Trotskyists, Zinovievites and Lominadze's followers. Trotsky insisted on `anonynimity and clandestinity'. Soon after, Sedov wrote to his father that the Bloc was officially created and that the Safarov--Tarkhanov group was being courted.
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Ibid. , pp. 119--120.
Trotsky's Bulletin published, using pseudonyms, Goltsman's and Smirnov's reports.
Hence, the leadership of the Party had irrefutable proof that a plot existed to overthrow the Bolshevik leadership and to put into power a gang of opportunists walking in step with the old exploiting classes.
The existence of this plot was a major alarming sign.
Trotsky and counter-revolution
It was clear in 1936 to anyone who was carefully analyzing the class struggle on the international scale that Trotsky had degenerated to the point where he was a pawn of all sorts of anti-Communist forces. Full of himself, he assigned himself a planetary and historic rфle, more and more grandiose as the clique around him became insignificant. All his energy focused on one thing: the destruction of the Bolshevik Party, thereby allowing Trotsky and the Trotskyists to seize power. In fact, knowing in detail the Bolshevik Party and its history, Trotsky became one of the world's specialists in the anti-Bolshevik struggle.
To show his idea, we present here some of the public declarations that Trotsky made before the re-opening of the Kirov affair in June 1936. They throw new light on Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov and all those who plotted with Trotsky.
`Destroy the communist movement'
Trotsky declared in 1934 that Stalin and the Communist Parties were responsible for Hitler's rise to power; to overthrow Hitler, the Communist Parties had to be destroyed `mercilessly'!
`Hitler's victory ... (arose) ... by the despicable and criminal policy of the Cominterm. ``No Stalin --- no victory for Hitler.'' '
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Leon Trotsky, Are There No Limits to the Fall? A Summary of the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (18 January 1934). Writings of Leon Trotsky (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973), vol. 6, p. 210.
`(T)he Stalinist Cominterm, as well as the Stalinist diplomacy, assisted Hitler into the saddle from either side.'
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Ibid. , p. 215.
`(T)he Cominterm bureaucracy, together with social-democracy, is doing everything it possibly can to transform Europe, in fact the entire world, into a fascist concentration camp.'
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Leon Trotsky, Que signifie la capitulation de Rakovsky? (31 March 1934). La lutte, pp. 59--60.
`(T)he Cominterm provided one of the most important conditions for the victory of fascism. ... to overthrow Hitler it is necessary to finish with the Cominterm.'
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Trotsky, Are There No Limits to the Fall?, p. 212.
`Workers, learn to despise this bureaucratic rabble!'
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Ibid. , p. 216.
`(The workers must) drive the theory and practice of bureaucratic adventurism out of the ranks of the workers' movement!'
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Ibid. , p. 217.
So, early in 1934, Hitler in power less than a year, Trotsky claimed that to overthrow fascism, the international Communist movement had to be destroyed! Perfect example of the `anti-fascist unity' of which Trotskyists speak so demagogically. Recall that during the same period, Trotsky claimed that the German Communist Party had refused `the policies of the united front with the Social Democracy'
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Ibid. , p. 211.
and that, consequently, it was responsible, by its `outrageous sectarism', for Hitler's coming to power. In fact, it was the German Social-Democratic Party that, because of its policy of unconditional defence of the German capitalist rйgime, refused any anti-fascist and anti-capitalist un
ity. And Trotsky proposed to `mercilessly extirpate' the only force that had truly fought against Nazism!
Still in 1934, to incite the more backward masses against the Bolshevik Party, Trotsky put forward his famous thesis that the Soviet Union resembled, in numerous ways, a fascist state.
`(I)n the last period the Soviet bureaucracy has familiarized itself with many traits of victorious fascism, first of all by getting rid of the control of the party and establishing the cult of the leader.'
