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The fight against the Liquidators and Otzovists, as well as against the Trotskyites, confronted the Bolsheviks with the urgent necessity of uniting all the Bolsheviks and forming them into an independent Bolshevik Party. This was absolutely essential not only in order to put an end to the opportunist trends within the Party which were splitting the work- 139 1 9 0 8 - 1 9 1 2 ing class, but also in order to complete the work of mustering the forces of the working class and preparing it for a new upward swing of the revolution. But before this task could be accomplished the Party had to be rid of opportunists, of Mensheviks. No Bolshevik now doubted that it was unthinkable for the Bolsheviks to remain in one party with the Mensheviks. The treacherous conduct of the Mensheviks in the period of the Stolypin reaction, their attempts to liquidate the proletarian party and to organize a new, reformist party, made a rupture with them inevitable. By remaining in one party with the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks in one way or another accepted moral responsibility for the behaviour of the Mensheviks. But for the Bolsheviks to accept moral responsibility for the open treachery of the Mensheviks was unthinkable, unless they themselves wanted to become traitors to the Party and the working class. Unity with the Mensheviks within a single party was thus assuming the character of a betrayal of the working class and its party. Consequently, the actual rupture with the Mensheviks had to be carried to its conclusion: a formal organizational rupture and the expulsion of the Mensheviks from the Party. Only in this way was it possible to restore the revolutionary party of the proletariat with a single program, single tactics, and a single class organization. Only in this way was it possible to restore the real (not just formal) unity of the Party, which the Mensheviks had destroyed. This task was to be performed by the Sixth General Party Conference, for which the Bolsheviks were making preparations. But this was only one aspect of the matter. A formal rupture with the Mensheviks and the formation by the Bolsheviks of a separate party was, of course, a very important political task. But the Bolsheviks were confronted with another and even more important task. The task of the Bolsheviks was not merely to break with the Mensheviks and formally constitute themselves a separate party, but above all, having broken with the Mensheviks, to create a new party, to create a party of a new type, different from the usual Social-Democratic parties of the West, one that was free of opportunist elements and capable of leading the proletariat in a struggle for power. In fighting the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks of all shades, from Axelrod and Martynov to Martov and Trotsky, invariably used weapons borrowed from the arsenal of the West-European Social-Democrats. They wanted in Russia a party similar, let us say, to the German or French HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 140 Social-Democratic Party. They fought the Bolsheviks just because they sensed something new in them, something unusual and different from the Social-Democrats of the West. And what did the Social-Democratic parties of the West represent at that time? A mixture, a hodge-podge of Marxist and opportunist elements, of friends and foes of the revolution, of supporters and opponents of the Party principle, the former gradually becoming ideologically reconciled to the latter, and virtually subordinated to them. Conciliation with the opportunists, with the traitors to the revolution, for the sake of what?—the Bolsheviks asked the West- European Social-Democrats. For the sake of “peace within the Party,” for the sake of “unity”—the latter replied. Unity with whom, with the opportunists? Yes, they replied, with the opportunists. It was clear that such parties could not be revolutionary parties. The Bolsheviks could not help seeing that after Engels’ death the West-European Social-Democratic parties had begun to degenerate from parties of social revolution into parties of “social reforms,” and that each of these parties, as an organization, had already been converted from a leading force into an appendage of its own parliamentary group. The Bolsheviks could not help knowing that such a party boded no good to the proletariat, that such a party was not capable of leading the working class to revolution. The Bolsheviks could not help knowing that the proletariat needed, not such a party, but a different kind of party, a new and genuinely Marxist party, which would be irreconcilable towards the opportunists and revolutionary towards the bourgeoisie, which would be firmly knit and monolithic, which would be a party of social revolution, a party of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was this new kind of party that the Bolsheviks wanted. And the Bolsheviks worked to build up such a party. The whole history of the struggle against the “Economists,” Mensheviks, Trotskyites, Otzovists and idealists of all shades, down to the empirio-criticists, was a history of the building up of just such a party. The Bolsheviks wanted to create a new party, a Bolshevist party, which would serve as a model for all who wanted to have a real revolutionary Marxist party. The Bolsheviks had been working to build up such a party ever since the time of the old Iskra. They worked for it stubbornly, persistently, in spite of everything. A fundamental and decisive part was played in this work by the writings of Lenin—What Is To Be Done?, Two Tactics, etc. Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? was the ideological preparation for such a party. Lenin’s One Step Forward, Two Steps Back was the organizational preparation for such a party. Lenin’s Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Demo141 1 9 0 8 - 1 9 1 2 cratic Revolution was the political preparation for such a party. And, lastly, Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism was the theoretical preparation for such a party. It may be safely said that never in history has any political group been so thoroughly prepared to constitute itself a party as the Bolshevik group was. The conditions were therefore fully ripe and ready for the Bolsheviks to constitute themselves a party. It was the task of the Sixth Party Conference to crown the completed work by expelling the Mensheviks and formally constituting the new party, the Bolshevik Party. The Sixth All-Russian Party Conference was held in Prague in January 1912. Over twenty Party organizations were represented. The conference, therefore, had the significance of a regular Party congress. In the statement of the conference which announced that the shattered central apparatus of the Party had been restored and a Central Committee set up, it was declared that the period of reaction had been the most difficult the Russian Social-Democratic Party had experienced since it had taken shape as a definite organization. In spite of all persecution, in spite of the severe blows dealt it from without and the treachery and vacillation of the opportunists within, the party of the proletariat had preserved intact its banner and its organization. “Not only have the banner of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, its program and its revolutionary traditions survived, but so has its organization, which persecution may have undermined and weakened, but could never utterly destroy”—the statement of the conference declared. The conference recorded the first symptoms of a new rise of the working-class movement in Russia and a revival in Party work. In its resolution on the reports presented by the local organizations, the conference noted that “energetic work is being conducted everywhere among the Social-Democratic workers with the object of strengthening the local illegal Social-Democratic organizations and groups.” The conference noted that the most important rule of Bolshevik tactics in periods of retreat, namely, to combine illegal work with legal work within the various legally existing workers’ societies and unions, was being observed in all the localities. The Prague Conference elected a Bolshevik Central Committee of the Party, consisting of Lenin, Stalin, Ordjonikidze, Sverdlov, Spandaryan, Goloshchekin and others. Comrades Stalin and Sverdlov were elected to the Central Committee in their absence, as they were in exile HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 142 at the time. Among the elected alternate members of the Central Committee was Comrade Kalinin. For the direction of revolutionary work in Russia a practical centre (the Russian Bureau of the C.C.) was set up with Comrade Stalin at its head and including Comrades Y. Sverdlov, S. Spandaryan, S. Ordjonikidze, M. Kalinin and Goloshchekin. The Prague Conference reviewed the whole preceding struggle of the Bolsheviks against opportunism and decided to expel the Mensheviks from the Party. By expelling the Mensheviks from the Party, the Prague Conference formally inaugurated the independent existence of the Bolshevik Party. Having routed the Mensheviks ideologically and organizationally and expelled them from the Party, the Bolsheviks preserved the old banner of the Party—of the R.S.D.L.P. That is why the Bolshevik Party continued until 1918 to call itself the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, adding the word “Bolsheviks” in brackets. Writing to Gorky at the beginning of 1912, on the results of the Prague Conference, Lenin said: “At last we have succeeded, in spite of the Liquidator scum, in restoring the Party and its Central Committee. I hope you will rejoice with us over the fact.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. XXIX, p. 19.) Speaking of the significance of the Prague Conference, Comrade Stalin said: “This conference was of the utmost importance in the history of our Party, for it drew a boundary line between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks and amalgamated the Bolshevik organizations all over the country into a united Bolshevik Party.” (Verbatim Report of the Fifteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.[B.], Russ. ed., pp. 361-362.) After the expulsion of the Mensheviks and the constitution by the Bolsheviks of an independent party, the Bolshevik Party became firmer and stronger. The Party strengthens itself by purging its ranks of opportunist elements—that is one of the maxims of the Bolshevik Party, which is a party of a new type fundamentally different from the Social- Democratic parties of the Second International. Although the parties of the Second International called themselves Marxist parties, in reality they tolerated foes of Marxism, avowed opportunists, in their ranks and allowed them to corrupt and to ruin the Second International. The Bol143 I 9 0 8 - I 9 I 2 FROM MARX TO MAO �� NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION sheviks, on the contrary, waged a relentless struggle against the opportunists, purged the proletarian party of the filth of opportunism and succeeded in creating a party of a new type, a Leninist Party, the Party which later achieved the dictatorship of the proletariat. If the opportunists had remained within the ranks of the proletarian party, the Bolshevik Party could not have come out on the broad highway and led the proletariat, it could not have taken power and set up the dictatorship of the proletariat, it could not have emerged victorious from the Civil War and built Socialism. The Prague Conference decided to put forward as the chief immediate political slogans of the Party the demands contained in the minimum program: a democratic republic, an 8-hour day, and the confiscation of the landed estates. It was under these revolutionary slogans that the Bolsheviks conducted their campaign in connection with the elections to the Fourth State Duma. It was these slogans that guided the new rise of the revolutionary movement of the working-class masses in the years I9I2-I4. B R I E F S U M M A R Y The years I908-I2 were a most difficult period for revolutionary work. After the defeat of the revolution, when the revolutionary movement was on the decline and the masses were fatigued, the Bolsheviks changed their tactics and passed from the direct struggle against tsardom to a roundabout struggle. In the difficult conditions that prevailed during the Stolypin reaction, the Bolsheviks made use of the slightest legal opportunity to maintain their connections with the masses (from sick benefit societies and trade unions to the Duma platform). The Bolsheviks indefatigably worked to muster forces for a new rise of the revolutionary movement. In the difficult conditions brought about by the defeat of the revolution, the disintegration of the oppositional trends, the disappointment with the revolution, and the increasing endeavours of intellectuals who had deserted the Party (Bogdanov, Bazarov and others) to revise its theoretical foundations, the Bolsheviks were the only force in the Party who did not furl the Party banner, who remained faithful to the Party program, and who beat off the attacks of the “critics” of Marxist theory (Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism). What helped the leading core of the Bolsheviks, centred around Lenin, to safeguard the Party HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 144 and its revolutionary principles was that this core had been tempered by Marxist-Leninist ideology and had grasped the perspectives of the revolution. “Not for nothing do they say that we are as firm as a rock,” Lenin stated in referring to the Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks at that period were drawing farther and farther away from the revolution. They became Liquidators, demanding the liquidation, abolition, of the illegal revolutionary party of the proletariat; they more and more openly renounced the Party program and the revolutionary aims and slogans of the Party, and endeavoured to organize their own, reformist party, which the workers christened a “Stolypin Labour Party.” Trotsky supported the Liquidators, pharisaically using the slogan “unity of the Party” as a screen, but actually meaning unity with the Liquidators. On the other hand, some of the Bolsheviks, who did not understand the necessity for the adoption of new and roundabout ways of combating tsardom, demanded that legal opportunities should not be utilized and that the workers’ deputies in the State Duma be recalled. These Otzovists were driving the Party towards a rupture with the masses and were hampering the mustering of forces for a new rise of the revolution. Using “Left” phraseology as a screen, the Otzovists, like the Liquidators, in essence renounced the revolutionary struggle. The Liquidators and Otzovists united against Lenin in a common bloc, known as the August Bloc, organized by Trotsky. In the struggle against the Liquidators and Otzovists, in the struggle against the August Bloc, the Bolsheviks gained the upper hand and succeeded in safeguarding the illegal proletarian party. The outstanding event of this period was the Prague Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (January 1912). At this conference the Mensheviks were expelled from the Party, and the formal unity of the Bolsheviks with the Mensheviks within one party was ended forever. From a political group, the Bolsheviks formally constituted themselves an independent party, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks). The Prague Conference inaugurated a party of a new type, the party of Leninism, the Bolshevik Party. The purge of the ranks of the proletarian party of opportunists, Mensheviks, effected at the Prague Conference, had an important and decisive influence on the subsequent development of the Party and the revolution. If the Bolsheviks had not expelled the betrayers of the workers’ cause, the Menshevik compromisers, from the Party, the proletarian party would have been unable in 1917 to rouse the masses for the fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat. C H A P T E R F I V E THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY DURING THE NEW RISE OF THE WORKING-CLASS MOVEMENT BEFORE THE FIRST IMPERIALIST WAR ( 1 9 1 2 - 1 9 1 4 ) 1. RISE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN THE PERIOD 1912-14 The triumph of the Stolypin reaction was shortlived. 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. The fatigue felt by the workers in the years immediately following the defeat of the revolution began to wear off. The workers resumed the struggle. The Bolsheviks’ forecast that a new rise in the tide of revolution was inevitable proved correct. In 1911 the number of strikers already exceeded 100,000, whereas in each of the previous years it had been no more than 50,000 or 60,000. The Prague Party Conference, held in January 1912, could already register the beginnings of a revival of the working-class movement. But the real rise in the revolutionary movement began in April and May 1912, when mass political strikes broke out in connection with the shooting down of workers in the Lena goldfields. On April 4, 1912, during a strike in the Lena goldfields in Siberia, over 500 workers were killed or wounded upon the orders of a tsarist officer of the gendarmerie. The shooting down of an unarmed body of Lena miners who were peacefully proceeding to negotiate with the management stirred the whole country. This new bloody deed of the tsarist autocracy was committed to break an economic strike of the miners and thus please the masters of the Lena goldfields, the British capitalists. The British capitalists and their Russian partners derived huge profits from the Lena goldfields—over 7,000,000 rubles annually—by most shamelessly exploiting the workers. They paid the workers miserable wages and supplied them with rotten food unfit to eat. Unable to endure the oppression and humiliation any longer, six thousand workers of the Lena goldfields went on strike. The proletariat of St. Petersburg, Moscow and all other industrial 145 HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 146 centres and regions replied to the Lena shooting by mass strikes, demonstrations and meetings. “We were so dazed and shocked that we could not at once find words to express our feelings. Whatever protest we made would be but a pale reflection of the anger that seethed in the hearts of all of us. Nothing can help us, neither tears nor protests, but an organized mass struggle”—the workers of one group of factories declared in their resolution. The furious indignation of the workers was further aggravated when the tsarist Minister Makarov, who was interpellated by the Social-Democratic group in the State Duma on the subject of the Lena massacre, insolently declared: “So it was, so it will be!” The number of participants in the political protest strikes against the bloody massacre of the Lena workers rose to 300,000. The Lena events were like a hurricane which rent the atmosphere of “peace” created by the Stolypin regime. This is what Comrade Stalin wrote in this connection in 1912 i n the St. Petersburg Bolshevik newspaper, Zvezda (Star): “The Lena shooting has broken the ice of silence and the river of the people’s movement has begun to flow. The ice is broken! . . . All that was evil and pernicious in the present regime, all the ills of much-suffering Russia were focussed in the one fact, the Lena events. That is why it was the Lena shooting that served as a signal for the strikes and demonstrations.” The efforts of the Liquidators and Trotskyites to bury the revolution had been in vain. The Lena events showed that the forces of revolution were alive, that a tremendous store of revolutionary energy had accumulated in the working class. The May Day strikes of 1912 i nvolved about 400,000 workers. These strikes bore a marked political character and were held under the Bolshevik revolutionary slogans of a democratic republic, an 8-hour day, and the confiscation of the landed estates. These main slogans were designed to unite not only the broad masses of the workers, but also the peasants and soldiers for a revolutionary onslaught on the autocracy. “The huge May Day strike of the proletariat of all Russia and the accompanying street demonstrations, revolutionary proclamations, and revolutionary speeches to gatherings of workers have clearly shown that Russia has entered the phase of a rise in the revolution” —wrote Lenin in an article entitled “The Revolutionary Rise.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. XV, p. 533.) 147 1 9 1 2 - 1 9 1 4 Alarmed by the revolutionary spirit of the workers, the Liquidators came out against the strike movement; they called it a “strike fever.” The Liquidators and their ally, Trotsky, wanted to substitute for the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat a “petition campaign.” They invited the workers to sign a petition, a scrap of paper, requesting the granting of “rights” (abolition of the restrictions on the right of association, the right to strike, etc.), which was then to be sent to the State Duma. The Liquidators managed to collect only 1,300 signatures at a time when hundreds of thousands of workers backed the revolutionary slogans of the Bolsheviks. The working class followed the path indicated by the Bolsheviks. The economic situation in the country at that period was as follows: In 1910 industrial stagnation had already been succeeded by a revival, an extension of production in the main branches of industry. Whereas the output of pig iron had amounted to 186,000,000 poods in 1910, and to 256,000,000 poods in 1912, in 1913 it amounted to 283,000,000 poods. The output of coal rose from 1,522,000,000 poods in 1910 to 2,214,000,000 poods in 1913. The expansion of capitalist industry was accompanied by a rapid growth of the proletariat. A distinguishing feature of the development of industry was the further concentration of production in large plants. Whereas in 1901 the number of workers engaged in large plants employing 500 workers and over amounted to 46.7 per cent of the total number of workers, the corresponding figure in 1910 was already about 54 per cent, or over half the total number of workers. Such a degree of concentration of industry was unprecedented. Even in a country so industrially developed as the United States only about one-third the total number of workers were employed in large plants at that period. The growth of the proletariat and its concentration in large enterprises, combined with the existence of such a revolutionary party as the Bolshevik Party, were converting the working class of Russia into the greatest force in the political life of the country. The barbarous methods of exploitation of the workers practised in the factories, combined with the intolerable police regime of the tsarist underlings, lent every big strike a political character. Furthermore, the intertwining of the economic and political struggles imparted exceptional revolutionary force to the mass strikes. In the van of the revolutionary working-class movement marched the heroic proletariat of St. Petersburg; St. Petersburg was followed by the Baltic Provinces, Moscow and the Moscow Province, the Volga region and the south of Russia. In 1913 the movement spread to the Western HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 148 Territory, Poland and the Caucasus. In all, 725,000 workers, according to official figures, and over one million workers according to fuller statistics, took part in strikes in 1912, and 861,000 according to official figures, and 1,272,000 according to fuller statistics, took part in strikes in 1913. In the first half of 1914 the number of strikers already amounted to about one and a half million. Thus the revolutionary rise of 1912-14, the sweep of the strike movement, created a situation in the country similar to that which had existed at the beginning of the Revolution of 1905. The revolutionary mass strikes of the proletariat were of moment to the whole people. They were directed against the autocracy, and they met with the sympathy of the vast majority of the labouring population. The manufacturers retaliated by locking out the workers. In 1913, in the Moscow Province, the capitalists threw 50,000 textile workers on the streets. In March 1914, 70,000 workers were discharged in St. Petersburg in a single day. The workers of other factories and branches of industry assisted the strikers and their locked-out comrades by mass collections and sometimes by sympathy strikes. The rising working-class movement and the mass strikes also stirred up the peasants and drew them into the struggle. The peasants again began to rise against the landlords; they destroyed manors and kulak farmholds. In the years 1910-14 there were over 13,000 outbreaks of peasant disaffection. Revolutionary outbreaks also took place among the armed forces. In 1912 there was an armed revolt of troops in Turkestan. Revolt was brewing in the Baltic Fleet and in Sevastopol. The revolutionary strike movement and demonstrations, led by the Bolshevik Party, showed that the working class was fighting not for partial demands, not for “reforms,” but for the liberation of the people from tsardom. The country was heading for a new revolution. In the summer of 1912, Lenin removed from Paris to Galicia (formerly Austria) in order to be nearer to Russia. Here he presided over two conferences of members of the Central Committee and leading Party workers, one of which took place in Cracow at the end of 1912, and the other in Poronino, a small town near Cracow, in the autumn of 1913. These conferences adopted decisions on important questions of the working-class movement: the rise in the revolutionary movement, the tasks of the Party in connection with the strikes, the strengthening of the illegal organizations, the Social-Democratic group in the Duma, the Party press, the labour insurance campaign. 149 1 9 1 2 - 1 9 1 4 2. THE BOLSHEVIK NEWSPAPER “PRAVDA.” THE BOLSHEVIK GROUP IN THE FOURTH STATE DUMA A powerful instrument used by the Bolshevik Party to strengthen its organizations and to spread its influence among the masses was the Bolshevik daily newspaper Pravda (Truth), published in St. Petersburg. It was founded, according to Lenin’s instructions, on the initiative of Stalin, Olminsky and Poletayev. Pravda was a mass working-class paper founded simultaneously with the new rise of the revolutionary movement. Its first issue appeared on April 22 (May 5, New Style), 1912. This was a day of real celebration for the workers. In honour of Pravda’s appearance it was decided henceforward to celebrate May 5 as workers’ press day. Previous to the appearance of Pravda, the Bolsheviks already had a weekly newspaper called Zvezda, intended for advanced workers. Zvezda played an important part at the time of the Lena events. It printed a number of trenchant political articles by Lenin and Stalin which mobilized the working class for the struggle. But in view of the rising revolutionary tide, a weekly newspaper no longer met the requirements of the Bolshevik Party. A daily mass political newspaper designed for the broadest sections of the workers was needed. Pravda was such a newspaper. Pravda played an exceptionally important part at this period. It gained support for Bolshevism among broad masses of the working class. Because of incessant police persecution, fines, and confiscations of issues due to the publication of articles and letters not to the liking of the censor, Pravda could exist only with the active support of tens of thousands of advanced workers. Pravda was able to pay the huge fines only thanks to large collections made among the workers. Not infrequently, considerable portions of confiscated issues of Pravda nevertheless found their way into the hands of readers, because the more active workers would come to the printing shop at night and carry away bundles of the newspaper. The tsarist government suppressed Pravda eight times in the space of two and a half years; but each time, with the support of the workers, it reappeared under a new but similar name, e.g., Za Pravdu (For Truth), Put Pravdy (Path of Truth), Trudovaya Pravda (Labour Truth). While the average circulation of Pravda was 40,000 copies per day, the circulation of Luch (Ray), the Menshevik daily, did not exceed 15,000 or 16,000. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 150 FROM MARX TO MAO �� NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION The workers regarded Pravda as their own newspaper; they had great confidence in it and were very responsive to its calls. Every copy was read by scores of readers, passing from hand to hand; it moulded their class consciousness, educated them, organized them, and summoned them to the struggle. What did Pravda write about? Every issue contained dozens of letters from workers describing their life, the savage exploitation and the various forms of oppression and humiliation they suffered at the hands of the capitalists, their managers and foremen. These were trenchant and telling indictments of capitalist conditions. Pravda often reported cases of suicide of unemployed and starving workers who had lost hope of ever finding jobs again. Pravda wrote of the needs and demands of the workers of various factories and branches of industry, and told how the workers were fighting for their demands. Almost every issue contained reports of strikes at various factories. In big and protracted strikes, the newspaper helped to organize collections among the workers of other factories and branches of industry for the support of the strikers. Sometimes tens of thousands of rubles were collected for the strike funds, huge sums for those days when the majority of the workers received not more than 70 or 80 kopeks per day. This fostered a spirit of proletarian solidarity among the workers and a consciousness of the unity of interests of all workers. The workers reacted to every political event, to every victory or defeat, by sending to Pravda letters, greetings, protests, etc. In its articles Pravda dealt with the tasks of the working-class movement from a consistent Bolshevik standpoint. A legally published newspaper could not call openly for the overthrow of tsardom. It had to resort to hints, which, however, the class-conscious workers understood very well, and which they explained to the masses. When, for example, Pravda wrote of the “full and uncurtailed demands of the Year Five,” the workers understood that this meant the revolutionary slogans of the Bolsheviks, namely, the overthrow of tsardom, a democratic republic, the confiscation of the landed estates, and an 8-hour day. Pravda organized the advanced workers on the eve of the elections to the Fourth Duma. It exposed the treacherous position of those who advocated an agreement with the liberal bourgeoisie, the advocates of the “Stolypin Labour Party”—the Mensheviks. Pravda called upon the workers to vote for those who advocated the “full and uncurtailed demands of the Year Five,” that is, the Bolsheviks. The elections were indirect, held in a series of stages: first, meetings of workers elected delegates; then these delegates chose electors; and it was these electors 151 1 9 1 2 - 1 9 1 4 who participated in the elections of the workers’ deputy to the Duma. On the day of the elections of the electors Pravda published a list of Bolshevik candidates and recommended the workers to vote for this list. The list could not be published earlier without exposing those on the list to the danger of arrest. Pravda helped to organize the mass actions of the proletariat. At the time of a big lockout in St. Petersburg in the spring of 1914, when it was inexpedient to declare a mass strike, Pravda called upon the workers to resort to other forms of struggle, such as mass meetings in the factories and demonstrations in the streets. This could not be stated openly in the newspaper. But the call was understood by class-conscious workers when they read an article by Lenin bearing the modest title “Forms of the Working-Class Movement” and stating that at the given moment strikes should yield place to a higher form of the working-class movement—which meant a call to organize meetings and demonstrations. In this way the illegal revolutionary activities of the Bolsheviks were combined with legal forms of agitation and organization of the masses of the workers through Pravda. Pravda not only wrote of the life of the workers, their strikes and demonstrations, but also regularly described the life of the peasants, the famines from which they suffered, their exploitation by the feudal landlords. It described how as a result of the Stolypin “reform” the kulak farmers robbed the peasants of the best parts of their land. Pravda drew the attention of the class-conscious workers to the widespread and burning discontent in the countryside. It taught the proletariat that the objectives of the Revolution of 1905 had not been attained, and that a new revolution was impending. It taught that in this second revolution the proletariat must act as the real leader and guide of the people, and that in this revolution it would have so powerful an ally as the revolutionary peasantry. The Mensheviks worked to get the proletariat to drop the idea of revolution, to stop thinking of the people, of the starvation of the peasants, of the domination of the Black-Hundred feudal landlords, and to fight only for “freedom of association,” to present “petitions” to this effect to the tsarist government. The Bolsheviks explained to the workers that this Menshevik gospel of renunciation of revolution, renunciation of an alliance with the peasantry, was being preached in the interests of the bourgeoisie, that the workers would most certainly defeat tsardom if they won over the peasantry as their ally, and that bad shepherds like the Mensheviks should be driven out as enemies of the revolution. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 152 What did Pravda write about in its “Peasant Life” section? Let us take, as an example, several letters relating to the year 1913. One letter from Samara, headed “An Agrarian Case,” reports that of 45 peasants of the village of Novokhasbulat, Bugulma uyezd, accused of interfering with a surveyor who was marking out communal land to be allotted to peasants withdrawing from the commune, the majority were condemned to long terms of imprisonment. A brief letter from the Pskov Province states that the “peasants of the village of Psitsa (near Zavalye Station) offered armed resistance to the rural police. Several persons were wounded. The clash was due to an agrarian dispute. Rural police have been dispatched to Psitsa, and the vice-governor and the procurator are on the way to the village.” A letter from the Ufa Province reported that peasant’s allotments were being sold off in great numbers, and that famine and the law permitting withdrawal from the village communes were causing increasing numbers of peasants to lose their land. Take the hamlet of Borisovka. Here there are 27 peasant households owning 543 dessiatins of arable land between them. During the famine five peasants sold 31 dessiatins outright at prices varying from 25 to 33 rubles per dessiatin, though land is worth three or four times as much. In this village, too, seven peasants have mortgaged between them 177 dessiatins of arable land, receiving 18 to 20 rubles per dessiatin for a term of six years at a rate of 12 per cent per annum. When the poverty of the population and the usurious rate of interest are borne in mind, it may be safely said that half of the 177 dessiatins is bound to pass into the possession of the usurer, for it is not likely that even half the debtors can repay so large a sum in six years. In an article printed in Pravda and entitled “Big Landlord and Small Peasant Land Ownership in Russia,” Lenin strikingly demonstrated to the workers and peasants what tremendous landed property was in the hands of the parasite landlords. Thirty thousand big landlords alone owned about 70,000,000 dessiatins of land between them. An equal area fell to the share of 10,000,000 peasant households. On an average, the big landlords owned 2,300 dessiatins each, while peasant households, including the kulaks, owned 7 dessiatins each; moreover, five million households of small peasants, that is, half the peasantry, owned no more than one or two dessiatins each. These figures clearly showed that the root of the poverty of the peasants and the recurrent famines lay in the large landed estates, in the survivals of serfdom, of which the peasants could rid themselves only by a revolution led by the working class. Through workers connected with the countryside, Pravda found its 153 1 9 1 2 - 1 9 1 4 way into the villages and roused the politically advanced peasants to a revolutionary struggle. At the time Pravda was founded the illegal Social-Democratic organizations were entirely under the direction of the Bolsheviks. On the other hand, the legal forms of organization, such as the Duma group, the press, the sick benefit societies, the trade unions, had not yet been fully wrested from the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks had to wage a determined struggle to drive the Liquidators out of the legally existing organizations of the working class. Thanks to Pravda, this fight ended in victory. Pravda stood in the centre of the struggle for the Party principle, for the building up of a mass working-class revolutionary party. Pravda rallied the legally existing organizations around the illegal centres of the Bolshevik Party and directed the working-class movement towards one definite aim—preparation for revolution. Pravda had a vast number of worker correspondents. In one year alone it printed over eleven thousand letters from workers. But it was not only by letters that Pravda maintained contact with the workingclass masses. Numbers of workers from the factories visited the editorial office every day. In the Pravda editorial office was concentrated a large share of the organizational work of the Party. Here meetings were arranged with representatives from Party nuclei; here reports were received of Party work in the mills and factories; and from here were transmitted the instructions of the St. Petersburg Committee and the Central Committee of the Party. As a result of two and a half years of persistent struggle against the Liquidators for the building up of a mass revolutionary working-class party, by the summer of 1914 the Bolsheviks had succeeded in winning the support of four-fifths of the politically active workers of Russia for the Bolshevik Party and for the Pravda tactics. This was borne out, for instance, by the fact that out of a total number of 7,000 workers’ groups which collected money for the labour press in 1914, 5,600 groups collected for the Bolshevik press, and only 1,400 groups for the Menshevik press. But, on the other hand, the Mensheviks had a large number of “rich friends” among the liberal bourgeoisie and the bourgeois intelligentsia who advanced over half the funds required for the maintenance of the Menshevik newspaper. The Bolsheviks at that time were called “Pravdists.” A whole generation of the revolutionary proletariat was reared by Pravda, the generation which subsequently made the October Socialist Revolution. Pravda was backed by tens and hundreds of thousands of workers. During the rise of the revolutionary movement (1912-14) the solid foundaHISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 154 tion was laid of a mass Bolshevik Party, a foundation which no persecution by tsardom could destroy during the imperialist war. “The Pravda of 1912 was the laying of the corner-stone of the victory of Bolshevism in 1917.” (Stalin.) Another legally functioning central organ of the Party was the Bolshevik group in the Fourth State Duma. In 1912 the government decreed elections to the Fourth Duma. Our Party attributed great importance to participation in the elections. The Duma Social-Democratic group and Pravda were the chief bases of the revolutionary work of the Bolshevik Party among the masses, functioning legally on a countrywide scale. The Bolshevik Party acted independently, under its own slogans, in the Duma elections, simultaneously attacking both the government parties and the liberal bourgeoisie (Constitutional-Democrats). The slogans of the Bolsheviks in the election campaign were a democratic republic, an 8-hour day and the confiscation of the landed estates. The elections to the Fourth Duma were held in the autumn of 1912. At the beginning of October, the government, dissatisfied with the course of the elections in St. Petersburg, tried to encroach on the electoral rights of the workers in a number of the large factories. In reply, the St. Petersburg Committee of our Party, on Comrade Stalin’s proposal, called upon the workers of the large factories to declare a one-day strike. Placed in a difficult position, the government was forced to yield, and the workers were able at their meetings to elect whom they wanted. The vast majority of the workers voted for the Mandate (Nakaz) to their delegates and the deputy, which had been drawn up by Comrade Stalin. The “Mandate of the Workingmen of St. Petersburg to Their Labour Deputy” called attention to the unaccomplished tasks of 1905. “We think,” the Mandate stated, “that Russia is on the eve of the onset of mass movements, which will perhaps be more profound than in 1905. . . . As in 1905, in the van of these movements will be the most advanced class in Russian society, the Russian proletariat. Its only ally can be the much-suffering peasantry, which is vitally interested in the emancipation of Russia.” The Mandate declared that the future actions of the people should take the form of a struggle on two fronts—against the tsarist government and against the liberal bourgeoisie, which was seeking to come to terms with tsardom. Lenin attached great importance to the Mandate, which called the 155 1 9 1 2 - 1 9 1 4 workers to a revolutionary struggle. And in their resolutions the workers responded to this call. The Bolsheviks scored a victory in the elections, and Comrade Badayev was elected to the Duma by the workers of St. Petersburg. The workers voted in the elections to the Duma separately from other sections of the population (this was known as the worker curia). Of the nine deputies elected from the worker curia, six were members of the Bolshevik Party: Badayev, Petrovsky, Muranov, Samoilov, Shagov and Malinovsky (the latter subsequently turned out to be an agentprovocateur). The Bolshevik deputies were elected from the big industrial centres, in which not less than four-fifths of the working class were concentrated. On the other hand, several of the elected Liquidators did not get their mandates from the worker curia, that is, were not elected by the workers. The result was that there were seven Liquidators in the Duma as against six Bolsheviks. At first the Bolsheviks and Liquidators formed a joint Social-Democratic group in the Duma. In October 1913, after a stubborn struggle against the Liquidators, who hampered the revolutionary work of the Bolsheviks, the Bolshevik deputies, on the instructions of the Central Committee of the Party, withdrew from the joint Social-Democratic group and formed an independent Bolshevik group. The Bolshevik deputies made revolutionary speeches in the Duma in which they exposed the autocratic system and interpellated the government on cases of repression of the workers and on the inhuman exploitation of the workers by the capitalists. They also spoke in the Duma on the agrarian question, calling upon the peasants to fight the feudal landlords, and exposing the Constitutional- Democratic Party, which was opposed to the confiscation and handing over of the landed estates to the peasants. The Bolsheviks introduced a bill in the State Duma providing for an 8-hour working day; of course it was not adopted by this Black- Hundred Duma, but it had great agitational value. The Bolshevik group in the Duma maintained close connections with the Central Committee of the Party and with Lenin, from whom they received instructions. They were directly guided by Comrade Stalin while he was living in St. Petersburg. The Bolshevik deputies did not confine themselves to work within the Duma, but were very active outside the Duma as well. They visited mills and factories and toured the working-class centres of the country where they made speeches, arranged secret meetings at which they exHISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 156 plained the decisions of the Party, and formed new Party organizations. The deputies skilfully combined legal activities with illegal, underground work. 3. VICTORY OF THE BOLSHEVIKS IN THE LEGALLY EXISTING ORGANIZATIONS. CONTINUED RISE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT. EVE OF THE IMPERIALIST WAR The Bolshevik Party during this period set an example of leadership in all forms and manifestations of the class struggle of the proletariat. It built up illegal organizations. It issued illegal leaflets. It carried on secret revolutionary work among the masses. At the same time it steadily gained the leadership of the various legally existing organizations of the working class. The Party strove to win over the trade unions and gain influence in People’s Houses, evening universities, clubs and sick benefit societies. These legally existing organizations had long served as the refuge of the Liquidators. The Bolsheviks started an energetic struggle to convert the legally existing societies into strongholds of our Party. By skilfully combining illegal work with legal work, the Bolsheviks won over a majority of the trade union organizations in the two capital cities, St. Petersburg and Moscow. Particularly brilliant was the victory gained in the election of the Executive Committee of the Metal Workers’ Union in St. Petersburg in 1913; of the 3,000 metal workers attending the meeting, barely 150 voted for the Liquidators. The same may be said of so important a legal organization as the Social-Democratic group in the Fourth State Duma. Although the Mensheviks had seven deputies in the Duma and the Bolsheviks six, the Menshevik deputies, chiefly elected from non-working class districts, represented barely one-fifth of the working class, whereas the Bolshevik deputies, who were elected from the principal industrial centres of the country (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Gostroma, Ekaterinoslav and Kharkov), represented over four-fifths of the working class of the country. The workers regarded the six Bolsheviks (Badayev, Petrovsky and the others) and not the seven Mensheviks as their deputies. The Bolsheviks succeeded in winning over the legally existing organizations because, in spite of savage persecution by the tsarist government and vilification by the Liquidators and the Trotskyites, they were able to preserve the illegal Party and maintain firm discipline in their ranks, they staunchly defended the interests of the working class, had close connections with the masses, and waged an uncompromising struggle against the enemies of the working-class movement. 157 1 9 1 2 - 1 9 1 4 Thus the victory of the Bolsheviks and the defeat of the Mensheviks in the legally existing organizations developed all along the line. Both in respect to agitational work from the platform of the Duma and in respect to the labour press and other legally existing organizations, the Mensheviks were forced into the background. The revolutionary movement took strong hold of the working class, which definitely rallied around the Bolsheviks and swept the Mensheviks aside. To culminate all, the Mensheviks also proved bankrupt as far as the national question was concerned. The revolutionary movement in the border regions of Russia demanded a clear program on the national question. But the Mensheviks had no program, except the “cultural autonomy” of the Bund, which could satisfy nobody. Only the Bolsheviks had a Marxist program on the national question, as set forth in Comrade Stalin’s article, “Marxism and the National Question,” and in Lenin’s articles, “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination” and “Critical Notes on the National Question.” It is not surprising that after the Mensheviks had suffered such defeats, the August Bloc should begin to break up. Composed as it was of heterogeneous elements, it could not withstand the onslaught of the Bolsheviks and began to fall apart. Formed for the purpose of combating Bolshevism, the August Bloc soon went to pieces under the blows of the Bolsheviks. The first to quit the bloc were the Vperyod-ites (Bogdanov, Lunacharsky and others); next went the Letts, and the rest followed suit. Having suffered defeat in their struggle against the Bolsheviks, the Liquidators appealed for help to the Second International. The Second International came to their aid. Under the pretence of acting as a “conciliator” between the Bolsheviks and the Liquidators, and establishing “peace in the Party,” the Second International demanded that the Bolsheviks should desist from criticizing the compromising policy of the Liquidators. But the Bolsheviks were irreconcilable: they refused to abide by the decisions of the opportunist Second International and would agree to make no concessions. The victory of the Bolsheviks in the legally existing organizations was not, and could not have been, accidental. It was not accidental, not only because the Bolsheviks alone had a correct Marxist theory, a clear program, and a revolutionary proletarian party which had been steeled and tempered in battle, but also because the victory of the Bolsheviks reflected the rising tide of revolution. The revolutionary movement of the workers steadily developed, spreading to town after town and region after region. In the beginning HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 158 of 1914, the workers’ strikes, far from subsiding, acquired a new momentum. They became more and more stubborn and embraced ever larger numbers of workers. On January 9, 250,000 workers were on strike, St. Petersburg accounting for 140,000. On May 1, over half a million workers were on strike, St. Petersburg accounting for more than 250,000. The workers displayed unusual steadfastness in the strikes. A strike at the Obukhov Works in St. Petersburg lasted for over two months, and another at the Lessner Works for about three months. Wholesale poisoning of workers at a number of St. Petersburg factories was the cause of a strike of 115,000 workers which was accompanied by demonstrations. The movement continued to spread. In the first half of 1914 (including the early part of July) a total of 1,425,000 workers took part in strikes. In May a general strike of oil workers, which broke out in Baku, focussed the attention of the whole proletariat of Russia. The strike was conducted in an organized way. On June 20 a demonstration of 20,000 workers was held in Baku. The police adopted ferocious measures against the Baku workers. A strike broke out in Moscow as a mark of protest and solidarity with the Baku workers and spread to other districts. On July 3 a meeting was held at the Putilov Works in St. Petersburg in connection with the Baku strike. The police fired on the workers. A wave of indignation swept over the St. Petersburg proletariat. On July 4, at the call of the St. Petersburg Party Committee, 90,000 St. Petersburg workers stopped work in protest; the number rose to 130,000 on July 7, 150,000 on July 8 and 200,000 on July 11. Unrest spread to all the factories, and meetings and demonstrations were held everywhere. The workers even started to throw up barricades. Barricades were erected also in Baku and Lodz. In a number of places the police fired on the workers. The government adopted “emergency” measures to suppress the movement; the capital was turned into an armed camp; Pravda was suppressed. But at that moment a new factor, one of international import, appeared on the arena. This was the imperialist war, which was to change the whole course of events. It was during the revolutionary developments of July that Poincaré, the French President, arrived in St. Petersburg to discuss with the tsar the war that was about to begin. A few days later Germany declared war on Russia. The tsarist government took advantage of the war to smash the Bolshevik organizations and to crush the working-class movement. The advance of the revolution was interrupted by the World War, in which the tsarist government sought salvation from revolution. 159 1 9 1 2 - 1 9 1 4 B R I E F S U M M A R Y During the period of the new rise of the revolution (1912-14), the Bolshevik Party headed the working-class movement and led it forward to a new revolution under Bolshevik slogans. The Party ably combined illegal work with legal work. Smashing the resistance of the Liquidators and their friends—the Trotskyites and Otzovists—the Party gained the leadership of all forms of the legal movement and turned the legally existing organizations into bases of its revolutionary work. In the fight against the enemies of the working class and their agents within the working-class movement, the Party consolidated its ranks and extended its connections with the working class. Making wide use of the Duma as a platform for revolutionary agitation, and having founded a splendid mass workers’ newspaper, Pravda, the Party trained a new generation of revolutionary workers—the Pravdists. During the imperialist war this section of the workers remained faithful to the banner of internationalism and proletarian revolution. It subsequently formed the core of the Bolshevik Party during the revolution of October 1917. On the eve of the imperialist war the Party led the working class in its revolutionary actions. These were vanguard engagements which were interrupted by the imperialist war only to be resumed three years later to end in the overthrow of tsardom. The Bolshevik Party entered the difficult period of the imperialist war with the banners of proletarian internationalism unfurled. FROM MARX TO MAO �� NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION C H A P T E R S I X THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY IN THE PERIOD OF THE IMPERIALIST WAR. THE SECOND REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA ( 1 9 1 4 - MARCH 1 9 1 7 ) 1. OUTBREAK AND CAUSES OF THE IMPERIALIST WAR On July 14 (27, New Style), 1914, the tsarist government proclaimed a general mobilization. On July 19 (August 1, New Style) Germany declared war on Russia. Russia entered the war. Long before the actual outbreak of the war the Bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, had foreseen that it was inevitable. At international Socialist congresses Lenin had put forward proposals the purpose of which was to determine a revolutionary line of conduct for the Socialists in the event of war. Lenin had pointed out that war is an inevitable concomitant of capitalism. Plunder of foreign territory, seizure and spoliation of colonies and the capture of new markets had many times already served as causes of wars of conquest waged by capitalist states. For capitalist countries war is just as natural and legitimate a condition of things as the exploitation of the working class. Wars became inevitable particularly when, at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, capitalism definitely entered the highest and last stage of its development—imperialism. Under imperialism the powerful capitalist associations (monopolies) and the banks acquired a dominant position in the life of the capitalist states. Finance capital became master in the capitalist states. Finance capital demanded new markets, the seizure of new colonies, new fields for the export of capital, new sources of raw material. But by the end of the nineteenth century the whole territory of the globe had already been divided up among the capitalist states. Yet in the era of imperialism the development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly and by leaps: some countries, which previously held a foremost position, now develop their industry at a relatively slow rate, while others, which were formerly backward, overtake and outstrip them by 160 161 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 1 7 rapid leaps. The relative economic and military strength of the imperialist states was undergoing a change. There arose a striving for a redivision of the world, and the struggle for this redivision made imperialist war inevitable. The war of 1914 was a war for the redivision of the world and of spheres of influence. All the imperialist states had long been preparing for it. The imperialists of all countries were responsible for the war. But in particular, preparations for this war were made by Germany and Austria, on the one hand, and by France and Great Britain, as well as by Russia, which was dependent on the latter two, on the other. The Triple Entente, an alliance of Great Britain, France and Russia, was formed in 1907. Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy formed another imperialist alliance. But on the outbreak of the war of 1914 Italy left this alliance and later joined the Entente. Germany and Austria-Hungary were supported by Bulgaria and Turkey. Germany prepared for the imperialist war with the design of taking away colonies from Great Britain and France, and the Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic Provinces from Russia. By building the Baghdad railway, Germany created a menace to Britain’s domination in the Near East. Great Britain feared the growth of Germany’s naval armaments. Tsarist Russia strove for the partition of Turkey and dreamed of seizing Constantinople and the straits leading from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean (the Dardanelles). The plans of the tsarist government also included the seizure of Galicia, a part of Austria-Hungary. Great Britain strove by means of war to smash its dangerous competitor— Germany—whose goods before the war were steadily driving British goods out of the world markets. In addition, Great Britain intended to seize Mesopotamia and Palestine from Turkey and to secure a firm foothold in Egypt. The French capitalists strove to take away from Germany the Saar Basin and Alsace-Lorraine, two rich coal and iron regions, the latter of which Germany had seized from France in the war of 1870-71. Thus the imperialist war was brought about by profound antagonisms between two groups of capitalist states. This rapacious war for the redivision of the world affected the interests of all the imperialist countries, with the result that Japan, the United States and a number of other countries were subsequently drawn into it. The war became a world war. The bourgeoisie kept the preparations for imperialist war a profound secret from their people. When the war broke out each imperialist govHISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 162 ernment endeavoured to prove that it had not attacked its neighbours, but had been attacked by them. The bourgeoisie deceived the people, concealing the true aims of the war and its imperialist, annexationist character. Each imperialist government declared that it was waging war in defence of its country. The opportunists of the Second International helped the bourgeoisie to deceive the people. The Social-Democrats of the Second International vilely betrayed the cause of Socialism, the cause of the international solidarity of the proletariat. Far from opposing the war, they assisted the bourgeoisie in inciting the workers and peasants of the belligerent countries against each other on the plea of defending the fatherland. That Russia entered the imperialist war on the side of the Entente, on the side of France and Great Britain, was not accidental. It should be borne in mind that before 1914 the most important branches of Russian industry were in the hands of foreign capitalists, chiefly those of France, Great Britain and Belgium, that is, the Entente countries. The most important of Russia’s metal works were in the hands of French capitalists. In all, about three-quarters (72 per cent) of the metal industry depended on foreign capital. The same was true of the coal industry of the Donetz Basin. Oilfields owned by British and French capital accounted for about half the oil output of the country. A considerable part of the profits of Russian industry flowed into foreign banks, chiefly British and French. All these circumstances, in addition to the thousands of millions borrowed by the tsar from France and Britain in loans, chained tsardom to British and French imperialism and converted Russia into a tributary, a semi-colony of these countries. The Russian bourgeoisie went to war with the purpose of improving its position: to seize new markets, to make huge profits on war contracts, and at the same time to crush the revolutionary movement by taking advantage of the war situation. Tsarist Russia was not ready for war. Russian industry lagged far behind that of other capitalist countries. It consisted predominantly of out-of-date mills and factories with worn-out machinery. Owing to the existence of land ownership based on semi-serfdom, and the vast numbers of impoverished and ruined peasants, her agriculture could not provide a solid economic base for a prolonged war. The chief mainstay of the tsar was the feudal landlords. The Black- Hundred big landlords, in alliance with the big capitalists, domineered the country and the State Duma. They wholly supported the home and foreign policy of the tsarist government. The Russian imperialist 163 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 1 7 bourgeoisie placed its hopes in the tsarist autocracy as a mailed fist that could ensure the seizure of new markets and new territories, on the one hand, and crush the revolutionary movement of the workers and peasants, on the other. The party of the liberal bourgeoisie—the Constitutional-Democratic Party—made a show of opposition, but supported the foreign policy of the tsarist government unreservedly. From the very outbreak of the war, the petty-bourgeois parties, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, using the flag of Socialism as a screen, helped the bourgeoisie to deceive the people by concealing the imperialist, predatory character of the war. They preached the necessity of defending, of protecting the bourgeois “fatherland” from the “Prussian barbarians”; they supported a policy of “civil peace,” and thus helped the government of the Russian tsar to wage war, just as the German Social-Democrats helped the government of the German kaiser to wage war on the “Russian barbarians.” Only the Bolshevik Party remained faithful to the great cause of revolutionary internationalism and firmly adhered to the Marxist position of a resolute struggle against the tsarist autocracy, against the landlords and capitalists, against the imperialist war. From the very outbreak of the war the Bolshevik Party maintained that it had been started, not for the defence of the country, but for the seizure of foreign territory, for the spoliation of foreign nations in the interests of the landlords and capitalists, and that the workers must wage a determined war on this war. The working class supported the Bolshevik Party. True, the bourgeois jingoism displayed in the early days of the war by the intelligentsia and the kulak sections of the peasantry also infected a certain section of the workers. But these were chiefly members of the ruffian “League of the Russian People” and some workers who were under the influence of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. They naturally did not, and could not, reflect the sentiments of the working class. It was these elements who took part in the jingo demonstrations of the bourgeoisie engineered by the tsarist government in the early days of the war. 2. PARTIES OF THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL SIDE WITH THEIR IMPERIALIST GOVERNMENTS. DISINTEGRATION OF THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL INTO SEPARATE SOCIAL-CHAUVINIST PARTIES Lenin had time and again warned against the opportunism of the Second International and the wavering attitude of its leaders. He had HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 164 always insisted that the leaders of the Second International only talked of being opposed to war, and that if war were to break out they would change their attitude, desert to the side of the imperialist bourgeoisie and become supporters of the war. What Lenin had foretold was borne out in the very first days of the war. In 1910, at the Copenhagen Congress of the Second International, it was decided that Socialists in parliament should vote against war credits. At the time of the Balkan War of 1912, the Basle World Congress of the Second International declared that the workers of all countries considered it a crime to shoot one another for the sake of increasing the profits of the capitalists. That is what they said, that is what they proclaimed in their resolutions. But when the storm burst, when the imperialist war broke out, and the time had come to put these decisions into effect, the leaders of the Second International proved to be traitors, betrayers of the proletariat and servitors of the bourgeoisie. They became supporters of the war. On August 4, 1914, the German Social-Democrats in parliament voted for the war credits; they voted to support the imperialist war. So did the overwhelming majority of the Socialists in France, Great Britain, Belgium and other countries. The Second International ceased to exist. Actually it broke up into separate social-chauvinist parties which warred against each other. The leaders of the Socialist parties betrayed the proletariat and adopted the position of social-chauvinism and defence of the imperialist bourgeoisie. They helped the imperialist governments to hoodwink the working class and to poison it with the venom of nationalism. Using the defence of the fatherland as a plea, these social-traitors began to incite the German workers against the French workers, and the British and French workers against the German workers. Only an insignificant minority of the Second International kept to the internationalist position and went against the current; true, they did not do so confidently and definitely enough, but go against the current they did. Only the Bolshevik Party immediately and unhesitatingly raised the banner of determined struggle against the imperialist war. In the theses on the war that Lenin wrote in the autumn of 1914, he pointed out that the fall of the Second International was not accidental. The Second International had been ruined by the opportunists, against whom the foremost representatives of the revolutionary proletariat had long been warning. The parties of the Second International had already been infected by opportunism before the war. The opportunists had openly preached 165 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 1 7 renunciation of the revolutionary struggle; they had preached the theory of the “peaceful growing of capitalism into Socialism.” The Second International did not want to combat opportunism; it wanted to live in peace with opportunism, and allowed it to gain a firm hold. Pursuing a conciliatory policy towards opportunism, the Second International itself became opportunist. The imperialist bourgeoisie systematically bribed the upper stratum of skilled workers, the so-called labour aristocracy, by means of higher wages and other sops, using for this purpose part of the profits it derived from the colonies, from the exploitation of backward countries. This section of workers had produced quite a number of trade union and cooperative leaders, members of municipal and parliamentary bodies, journalists and functionaries of Social-Democratic organizations. When the war broke out, these people, fearing to lose their positions, became foes of revolution and most zealous defenders of their own bourgeoisies, of their own imperialist governments. The opportunists became social-chauvinists. The social-chauvinists, the Russian Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries among their number, preached class peace between the workers and the bourgeoisie at home and war on other nations abroad. They deceived the masses by concealing from them who was really responsible for the war and declaring that the bourgeoisie of their particular country was not to blame. Many social-chauvinists became ministers of the imperialist governments of their countries. No less dangerous to the cause of the proletariat were the covert social-chauvinists, the so-called Centrists. The Centrists—Kautsky, Trotsky, Martov and others—justified and defended the avowed socialchauvinists, thus joining the social-chauvinists in betraying the proletariat; they masked their treachery by “Leftist” talk about combating the war, talk designed to deceive the working class. As a matter of fact, the Centrists supported the war, for their proposal not to vote against war credits, but merely to abstain when a vote on the credits was being taken, meant supporting the war. Like the social-chauvinists, they demanded the renunciation of the class struggle during the war so as not to hamper their particular imperialist government in waging the war. The Centrist Trotsky opposed Lenin and the Bolshevik Party on all the important questions of the war and Socialism. From the very outbreak of the war Lenin began to muster forces for the creation of a new International, the Third International. In the manifesto against the war it issued in November 1914, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party already called for the formation of HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 166 the Third International in place of the Second International which had suffered disgraceful bankruptcy. In February 1915, a conference of Socialists of the Entente countries was held in London. Comrade Litvinov, on Lenin’s instructions, spoke at this conference demanding that the Socialists (Vandervelde, Sembat and Guesde) should resign from the bourgeois government of Belgium and France, completely break with the imperialists and refuse to collaborate with them. He demanded that all Socialists should wage a determined struggle against their imperialist governments and condemn the voting of war credits. But no voice in support of Litvinov was raised at this conference. At the beginning of September 1915 the first conference of internationalists was held in Zimmerwald. Lenin called this conference the “first step” in the development of an international movement against the war. At this conference Lenin formed the Zimmerwald Left group. But within the Zimmerwald Left group only the Bolshevik Party, headed by Lenin, took a correct and thoroughly consistent stand against the war. The Zimmerwald Left group published a magazine in German called the Vorbote (Herald), to which Lenin contributed articles. In 1916 the internationalists succeeded in convening a second conference in the Swiss village of Kienthal. It is known as the Second Zimmerwald Conference. By this time groups of internationalists had been formed in nearly every country and the cleavage between the internationalist elements and the social-chauvinists had become more sharply defined. But the most important thing was that by this time the masses themselves had shifted to the Left under the influence of the war and its attendant distress. The manifesto drawn up by the Kienthal Conference was the result of an agreement between various conflicting groups; it was an advance on the Zimmerwald Manifesto. But like the Zimmerwald Conference, the Kienthal Conference did not accept the basic principles of the Bolshevik policy, namely, the conversion of the imperialist war into a civil war, the defeat of one’s own imperialist government in the war, and the formation of the Third International. Nevertheless, the Kienthal Conference helped to crystallize the internationalist elements of whom the Communist Third International was subsequently formed. Lenin criticized the mistakes of the inconsistent internationalists among the Left Social-Democrats, such as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, but at the same time he helped them to take the correct position. 167 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 1 7 3. THEORY AND TACTICS OF THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY ON THE QUESTION OF WAR, PEACE AND REVOLUTION The Bolsheviks were not mere pacifists who sighed for peace and confined themselves to the propaganda of peace, as the majority of the Left Social-Democrats did. The Bolsheviks advocated an active revolutionary struggle for peace, to the point of overthrowing the rule of the bellicose imperialist bourgeoisie. The Bolsheviks linked up the cause of peace with the cause of the victory of the proletarian revolution, holding that the surest way of ending the war and securing a just peace, a peace without annexations and indemnities, was to overthrow the rule of the imperialist bourgeoisie. In opposition to the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary renunciation of revolution and their treacherous slogan of preserving “civil peace” in time of war, the Bolsheviks advanced the slogan of “converting the imperialist war into a civil, war.” This slogan meant that the labouring people, including the armed workers and peasants clad in soldiers’ uniform, were to turn their weapons against their own bourgeoisie and overthrow its rule if they wanted to put an end to the war and achieve a just peace. In opposition to the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary policy of defending the bourgeois fatherland, the Bolsheviks advanced the policy of “the defeat of one’s own government in the imperialist war.” This meant voting against war credits, forming illegal revolutionary organizations in the armed forces, supporting fraternization among the soldiers at the front, organizing revolutionary actions of the workers and peasants against the war, and turning these actions into an uprising against one’s own imperialist government. The Bolsheviks maintained that the lesser evil for the people would be the military defeat of the tsarist government in the imperialist war, for this would facilitate the victory of the people over tsardom and the success of the struggle of the working class for emancipation from capitalist slavery and imperialist wars. Lenin held that the policy of working for the defeat of one’s own imperialist government must be pursued not only by the Russian revolutionaries, but by the revolutionary parties of the working class in all the belligerent countries. It was not to every kind of war that the Bolsheviks were opposed. They were only opposed to wars of conquest, imperialist wars. The Bolsheviks held that there are two kinds of war: a) Just wars, wars that are not wars of conquest but wars of liberation, waged to defend the people from foreign attack and from attempt HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 168 to enslave them, or to liberate the people from capitalist slavery, or, lastly, to liberate colonies and dependent countries from the yoke of imperialism; and b) Unjust wars, wars of conquest, waged to conquer and enslave foreign countries and foreign nations. Wars of the first kind the Bolsheviks supported. As to wars of the second kind, the Bolsheviks maintained that a resolute struggle must be waged against them to the point of revolution and the overthrow of one’s own imperialist government. Of great importance to the working class of the world was Lenin’s theoretical work during the war. In the spring of 1916 Lenin wrote a book entitled Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. In this book he showed that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, a stage at which it has already become transformed from “progressive” capitalism to parasitic capitalism, decaying capitalism, and that imperialism is moribund capitalism. This, of course, did not mean that capitalism would die away of itself, without a revolution of the proletariat, that it would just rot on the stalk. Lenin always taught that without a revolution of the working class capitalism cannot be overthrown. Therefore, while defining imperialism as moribund capitalism, Lenin at the same time showed that “imperialism is the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat.” Lenin showed that in the era of imperialism the capitalist yoke becomes more and more oppressive, that under imperialism the revolt of the proletariat against the foundations of capitalism grows, and that the elements of a revolutionary outbreak accumulate in capitalist countries. Lenin showed that in the era of imperialism the revolutionary crisis in the colonial and dependent countries becomes more acute, that the elements of revolt against imperialism, the elements of a war of liberation from imperialism accumulate. Lenin showed that under imperialism the unevenness of development and the contradictions of capitalism have grown particularly acute, that the struggle for markets and fields for the export of capital, the struggle for colonies, for sources of raw material, makes periodical imperialist wars for the redivision of the world inevitable. Lenin showed that it is just this unevenness of development of capitalism that gives rise to imperialist wars, which undermine the strength of imperialism and make it possible to break the front of imperialism at its weakest point. From all this Lenin drew the conclusion that it was quite possible for the proletariat to break the imperialist front in one place or in several 169 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 1 7 places, that the victory of Socialism was possible first in several countries or even in one country, taken singly, that the simultaneous victory of Socialism in all countries was impossible owing to the unevenness of development of capitalism, and that Socialism would be victorious first in one country or in several countries, while the others would remain bourgeois countries for some time longer. Here is the formulation of this brilliant deduction as given by Lenin in two articles written during the imperialist war: 1) “Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of Socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country, taken singly. The victorious proletariat of that country, having expropriated the capitalists and organized its own Socialist production, would stand up against the rest of the world, the capitalist world, attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries. . . .” (From the article, “The United States of Europe Slogan,” written in August, 1915.—Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. V, p. 141.) 2) “The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in the various countries. It cannot be otherwise under the commodity production system. From this it follows irrefutably that Socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois for some time. This must not only create friction, but a direct striving on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the victorious proletariat of the Socialist country. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for Socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie.” (From the article, “War Program of the Proletarian Revolution,” written in the autumn of 1916.—Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. XIX, p. 325.) This was a new and complete theory of the Socialist revolution, a theory affirming the possibility of the victory of Socialism in separate countries, and indicating the conditions of this victory and its prospects, a theory whose fundamentals were outlined by Lenin as far back as 1905 in his pamphlet, Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution. This theory fundamentally differed from the view current among the Marxists in the period of pre-imperialist capitalism, when they held that the victory of Socialism in one separate country was impossible, and that it would take place simultaneously in all the civilized countries. On the HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 170 basis of the facts concerning imperialist capitalism set forth in his remarkable book, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin displaced this view as obsolete and set forth a new theory, from which it follows that the simultaneous victory of Socialism in all countries is impossible, while the victory of Socialism in one capitalist country, taken singly, is possible. The inestimable importance of Lenin’s theory of Socialist revolution lies not only in the fact that it has enriched Marxism with a new theory and has advanced Marxism, but also in the fact that it opens up a revolutionary perspective for the proletarians of separate countries, that it unfetters their initiative in the onslaught on their own, national bourgeoisie, that it teaches them to take advantage of a war situation to organize this onslaught, and that it strengthens their faith in the victory of the proletarian revolution. Such was the theoretical and tactical stand of the Bolsheviks on the questions of war, peace and revolution. It was on the basis of this stand that the Bolsheviks carried on their practical work in Russia. At the beginning of the war, in spite of severe persecution by the police, the Bolshevik members of the Duma—Badayev, Petrovsky, Muranov, Samoilov and Shagov—visited a number of organizations and addressed them on the policy of the Bolsheviks towards the war and revolution. In November 1914 a conference of the Bolshevik group in the State Duma was convened to discuss policy towards the war. On the third day of the conference all present were arrested. The court sentenced the Bolshevik members of the State Duma to forfeiture of civil rights and banishment to Eastern Siberia. The tsarist government charged them with “high treason.” The picture of the activities of the Duma members unfolded in court did credit to our Party. The Bolshevik deputies conducted themselves manfully, transforming the tsarist court into a platform from which they exposed the annexationist policy of tsardom. Quite different was the conduct of Kamenev, who was also tried in this case. Owing to his cowardice, he abjured the policy of the Bolshevik Party at the first contact with danger. Kamenev declared in court that he did not agree with the Bolsheviks on the question of the war, and to prove this he requested that the Menshevik Jordansky be summoned as witness. The Bolsheviks worked very effectively against the War Industry Committees set up to serve the needs of war, and against the attempts of the Mensheviks to bring the workers under the influence of the impe171 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 1 7 rialist bourgeoisie. It was of vital interest to the bourgeoisie to make everybody believe that the imperialist war was a people’s war. During the war the bourgeoisie managed to attain considerable influence in affairs of state and set up a countrywide organization of its own known as the Unions of Zemstvos and Towns. It was necessary for the bourgeoisie to bring the workers, too, under its leadership and influence. It conceived a way to do this, namely, by forming “Workers’ Groups” of the War Industry Committees. The Mensheviks jumped at this idea. It was to the advantage of the bourgeoisie to have on these War Industry Committees representatives of the workers who would urge the working class masses to increase productivity of labour in the factories producing shells, guns, rifles, cartridges and other war material. “Everything for the war, all for the war”—was the slogan of the bourgeoisie. Actually, this slogan meant “get as rich as you can on war contracts and seizures of foreign territory.” The Mensheviks took an active part in this pseudopatriotic scheme of the bourgeoisie. They helped the capitalists by conducting an intense campaign among the workers to get them to take part in the elections of the “Workers’ Groups” of the War Industry Committees. The Bolsheviks were against this scheme. They advocated a boycott of the War Industry Committees and were successful in securing this boycott. But some of the workers, headed by a prominent Menshevik, Gvozdev, and an agent-provocateur, Abrosimov, did take part in the activities of the War Industry Committees. When, however, the workers’ delegates met, in September 1915, for the final elections of the “Workers’ Groups” of the War Industry Committees, it turned out that the majority of the delegates were opposed to participation in them. A majority of the workers’ delegates adopted a trenchant resolution opposing participation in the War Industry Committees and declared that the workers had made it their aim to fight for peace and for the overthrow of tsardom. The Bolsheviks also developed extensive activities in the army and navy. They explained to the soldiers and sailors who was to blame for the unparalleled horrors of the war and the sufferings of the people; they explained that there was only one way out for the people from the imperialist shambles, and that was revolution. The Bolsheviks formed nuclei in the army and navy, at the front and in the rear, and distributed leaflets calling for a fight against the war. In Kronstadt, the Bolsheviks formed a “Central Collective of the Kronstadt Military Organization” which had close connections with the Petrograd Committee of the Party. A military organization of the Petrograd Party Committee was set up for work among the garrison. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 172 In August 1916, the chief of the Petrograd Okhrana reported that “in the Kronstadt Collective, things are very well organized, conspiratorially, and its members are all taciturn and cautious people. This Collective also has representatives on shore.” At the front, the Party agitated for fraternization between the soldiers of the warring armies, emphasizing the fact that the world bourgeoisie was the enemy, and that the war could be ended only by converting the imperialist war into a civil war and turning one’s weapons against one’s own bourgeoisie and its government. Cases of refusal of army units to take the offensive became more and more frequent. There were already such instances in 1915, and even more in 1916. Particularly extensive were the activities of the Bolsheviks in the armies on the Northern Front, in the Baltic provinces. At the beginning of 1917 General Ruzsky, Commander of the Army on the Northern Front, informed Headquarters that the Bolsheviks had developed intense revolutionary activities on that front. The war wrought a profound change in the life of the peoples, in the life of the working class of the world. The fate of states, the fate of nations, the fate of the Socialist movement was at stake. The war was therefore a touchstone, a test for all parties and trends calling themselves Socialist. Would these parties and trends remain true to the cause of Socialism, to the cause of internationalism, or would they choose to betray the working class, to furl their banners and lay them at the feet of their national bourgeoisie?—that is how the question stood at the time. The war showed that the parties of the Second International had not stood the test, that they had betrayed the working class and had surrendered their banners to the imperialist bourgeoisie of their own countries. And these parties, which had cultivated opportunism in their midst, and which had been brought up to make concessions to the opportunists, to the nationalists, could not have acted differently. The war showed that the Bolshevik Party was the only party which had passed the test with flying colours and had remained consistently faithful to the cause of Socialism, the cause of proletarian internationalism. And that was to be expected: only a party of a new type, only a party fostered in the spirit of uncompromising struggle against opportunism, only a party that was free from opportunism and nationalism, only such a party could stand the great test and remain faithful to the cause of the working class, to the cause of Socialism and internationalism. And the Bolshevik Party was such a party. 173 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 1 7 4. DEFEAT OF THE TSARIST ARMY. ECONOMIC DISRUPTION. CRISIS OF TSARDOM The war had already been in progress for three years. Millions of people had been killed in the war, or had died of wounds or from epidemics caused by war conditions. The bourgeoisie and landlords were making fortunes out of the war. But the workers and peasants were suffering increasing hardship and privation. The war was undermining the economic life of Russia. Some fourteen million able-bodied men had been torn from economic pursuits and drafted into the army. Mills and factories were coming to a standstill. The crop area had diminished owing to a shortage of labour. The population and the soldiers at the front went hungry, barefoot and naked. The war was eating up the resources of the country. The tsarist army suffered defeat after defeat. The German artillery deluged the tsarist troops with shells, while the tsarist army lacked guns, shells and even rifles. Sometimes three soldiers had to share one rifle. While the war was in progress it was discovered that Sukhomlinov, the tsar’s Minister of War, was a traitor, who was connected with German spies, and was carrying out the instructions of the German espionage service to disorganize the supply of munitions and to leave the front without guns and rifles. Some of the tsarist ministers and generals surreptitiously assisted the success of the German army: together with the tsarina, who had German ties, they betrayed military secrets to the Germans. It is not surprising that the tsarist army suffered reverses and was forced to retreat. By 1916 the Germans had already seized Poland and part of the Baltic provinces. All this aroused hatred and anger against the tsarist government among the workers, peasants, soldiers and intellectuals, fostered and intensified the revolutionary movement of the masses against the war and against tsardom, both in the rear and at the front, in the central and in the border regions. Dissatisfaction also began to spread to the Russian imperialist bourgeoisie. It was incensed by the fact that rascals like Rasputin, who were obviously working for a separate peace with Germany, lorded it at the tsar’s court. The bourgeoisie grew more and more convinced that the tsarist government was incapable of waging war successfully. It feared that the tsar might, in order to save his position, conclude a separate peace with the Germans. The Russian bourgeoisie therefore decided to engineer a palace coup with the object of deposing Tsar Nicholas II and replacing him by his brother, Michael Romanov, who was connected HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 174 with the bourgeoisie. In this way it wanted to kill two birds with one stone: first, to get into power itself and ensure the further prosecution of the imperialist war, and, secondly, to prevent by a small palace coup the outbreak of a big popular revolution, the tide of which was swelling. In this the Russian bourgeoisie had the full support of the British and French governments who saw that the tsar was incapable of carrying on the war. They feared that he might end it by concluding a separate peace with the Germans. If the tsarist government were to sign a separate peace, the British and French governments would lose a war ally which not only diverted enemy forces to its own fronts, but also supplied France with tens of thousands of picked Russian soldiers. The British and French governments therefore supported the attempts of the Russian bourgeoisie to bring about a palace coup. The tsar was thus isolated. While defeat followed defeat at the front, economic disruption grew more and more acute. In January and February 1917 the extent and acuteness of the disorganization of the food, raw material and fuel supply reached a climax. The supply of foodstuffs to Petrograd and Moscow had almost ceased. One factory after another closed down and this aggravated unemployment. Particularly intolerable was the condition of the workers. Increasing numbers of the people were arriving at the conviction that the only way out of the intolerable situation was to overthrow the tsarist autocracy. Tsardom was clearly in the throes of a mortal crisis. The bourgeoisie thought of solving the crisis by a palace coup. But the people solved it in their own way. 5. THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION. FALL OF TSARDOM. FORMATION OF SOVIETS OF WORKERS’ AND SOLDIERS’ DEPUTIES. FORMATION OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT. DUAL POWER The year 1917 was inaugurated by the strike of January 9. In the course of this strike demonstrations were held in Petrograd, Moscow, Baku and Nizhni-Novgorod. In Moscow about one-third of the workers took part in the strike of January 9. A demonstration of two thousand persons on Tverskoi Boulevard was dispersed by mounted police. A demonstration on the Vyborg Chaussée in Petrograd was joined by soldiers. “The idea of a general strike,” the Petrograd police reported, “is daily gaining new followers and is becoming as popular as it was in 1905.” 175 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 1 7 The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries tried to direct this incipient revolutionary movement into the channels the liberal bourgeoisie needed. The Mensheviks proposed that a procession of workers to the State Duma be organized on February 14, the day of its opening. But the working-class masses followed the Bolsheviks, and went, not to the Duma, but to a demonstration. On February 18, 1917, a strike broke out at the Putilov Works in Petrograd. On February 22 the workers of most of the big factories were on strike. On International Women’s Day, February 23 (March 8), at the call of the Petrograd Bolshevik Committee, working women came out in the streets to demonstrate against starvation, war and tsardom. The Petrograd workers supported the demonstration of the working women by a city-wide strike movement. The political strike began to grow into a general political demonstration against the tsarist system. On February 24 (March 9) the demonstration was resumed with even greater vigour. About 200,000 workers were already on strike. On February 25 (March 10) the whole of working-class Petrograd had joined the revolutionary movement. The political strikes in the districts merged into a general political strike of the whole city. Demonstrations and clashes with the police took place everywhere. Over the masses of workers floated red banners bearing the slogans: “Down with the tsar!” “Down with the war!” “We want bread!” On the morning of February 26 (March 11) the political strike and demonstration began to assume the character of an uprising. The workers disarmed police and gendarmes and armed themselves. Nevertheless, the clashes with the police ended with the shooting down of a demonstration on Znamenskaya Square. General Khabalov, Commander of the Petrograd Military Area, announced that the workers must return to work by February 28 (March 13), otherwise they would be sent to the front. On February 25 (March 10) the tsar gave orders to General Khabalov: “I command you to put a stop to the disorders in the capital not later than tomorrow.” But “to put a stop” to the revolution was no longer possible. On February 26 (March 11) the 4th Company of the Reserve Battalion of the Pavlovsky Regiment opened fire, not on the workers, however, but on squads of mounted police who were engaged in a skirmish with the workers. A most energetic and persistent drive was made to win over the troops, especially by the working women, who addressed themselves directly to the soldiers, fraternized with them and called upon them to help the people to overthrow the hated tsarist autocracy. The practical work of the Bolshevik Party at that time was directed HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 176 by the Bureau of the Central Committee of our Party which had its quarters in Petrograd and was headed by Comrade Molotov. On February 26 (March 11) the Bureau of the Central Committee issued a manifesto calling for the continuation of the armed struggle against tsardom and the formation of a Provisional Revolutionary Government. On February 27 (March 12) the troops in Petrograd refused to fire on the workers and began to line up with the people in revolt. The number of soldiers who had joined the revolt by the morning of February 27 was still no more than 10,000, but by the evening it already exceeded 60,000. The workers and soldiers who had risen in revolt began to arrest tsarist ministers and generals and to free revolutionaries from jail. The released political prisoners joined the revolutionary struggle. In the streets, shots were still being exchanged with police and gendarmes posted with machine guns in the attics of houses. But the troops rapidly went over to the side of the workers, and this decided the fate of the tsarist autocracy. When the news of the victory of the revolution in Petrograd spread to other towns and to the front, the workers and soldiers everywhere began to depose the tsarist officials. The February bourgeois-democratic revolution had won. The revolution was victorious because its vanguard was the working class which headed the movement of millions of peasants clad in soldiers’ uniform demanding “peace, bread and liberty.” It was the hegemony of the proletariat that determined the success of the revolution. “The revolution was made by the proletariat. The proletariat displayed heroism; it shed its blood; it swept along with it the broadest masses of the toiling and poor population,” wrote Lenin in the early days of the revolution. (Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. XX, pp. 23-4.) The First Revolution, that of 1905, had prepared the way for the swift success of the Second Revolution, that of 1917. “Without the tremendous class battles,” Lenin wrote, “and the revolutionary energy displayed by the Russian proletariat during the three years, 1905-07, the second revolution could not possibly have been so rapid in the sense that its initial stage was completed in a few days.” (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VI, pp. 3-4.) Soviets arose in the very first days of the revolution. The victorious revolution rested on the support of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. The workers and soldiers who rose in revolt created Soviets 177 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 1 7 FROM MARX TO MAO �� NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. The Revolution of 1905 had shown that the Soviets were organs of armed uprising and at the same time the embryo of a new, revolutionary power. The idea of Soviets lived in the minds of the working-class masses, and they put it into effect as soon as tsardom was overthrown, with this difference, however, that in 1905 it was Soviets only of Workers’ Deputies that were formed, whereas in February 1917, on the initiative of the Bolsheviks, there arose Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. While the Bolsheviks were directly leading the struggle of the masses in the streets, the compromising parties, the Mensheviks and Socialist- Revolutionaries, were seizing the seats in the Soviets, and building up a majority there. This was partly facilitated by the fact that the majority of the leaders of the Bolshevik Party were in prison or exile (Lenin was in exile abroad and Stalin and Sverdlov in banishment in Siberia) while the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries were freely promenading the streets of Petrograd. The result was that the Petrograd Soviet and its Executive Committee were headed by representatives of the compromising parties: Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. This was also the case in Moscow and a number of other cities. Only in Ivanovo- Voznesensk, Krasnoyarsk and a few other places did the Bolsheviks have a majority in the Soviets from the very outset. The armed people—the workers and soldiers—sent their representatives to the Soviet as to an organ of power of the people. They thought and believed that the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies would carry out all the demands of the revolutionary people, and that, in the first place, peace would be concluded. But the unwarranted trustfulness of the workers and soldiers served them in evil stead. The Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks had not the slightest intention of terminating the war, of securing peace. They planned to take advantage of the revolution to continue the war. As to the revolution and the revolutionary demands of the people, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks considered that the revolution was already over, and that the task now was to seal it and to pass to a “normal” constitutional existence side by side with the bourgeoisie. The Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leaders of the Petrograd Soviet therefore did their utmost to shelve the question of terminating the war, to shelve the question of peace, and to hand over the power to the bourgeoisie. On February 27 (March 12), 1917, the liberal members of the Fourth State Duma, as the result of a backstairs agreement with the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leaders, set up a Provisional HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 178 Committee of the State Duma, headed by Rodzyanko, the President of the Duma, a landlord and a monarchist. And a few days later, the Provisional Committee of the State Duma and the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leaders of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, acting secretly from the Bolsheviks, came to an agreement to form a new government of Russia—a bourgeois Provisional Government, headed by Prince Lvov, the man whom, prior to the February Revolution, even Tsar Nicholas II was about to make the Prime Minister of his government. The Provisional Government included Milyukov, the head of the Constitutional-Democrats, Guchkov, the head of the Octobrists, and other prominent representatives of the capitalist class, and, as the representative of the “democracy,” the Socialist-Revolutionary Kerensky. And so it was that the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leaders of the Executive Committee of the Soviet surrendered the power to the bourgeoisie. Yet when the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies learned of this, its majority formally approved of the action of the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leaders, despite the protest of the Bolsheviks. Thus a new state power arose in Russia, consisting, as Lenin said, of representatives of the “bourgeoisie and landlords who had become bourgeois.” But alongside of the bourgeois government there existed another power—the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. The soldier deputies on the Soviet were mostly peasants who had been mobilized for the war. The Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies was an organ of the alliance of workers and peasants against the tsarist regime, and at the same time it was an organ of their power, an organ of the dictatorship of the working class and the peasantry. The result was a peculiar interlocking of two powers, of two dictatorships: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, represented by the Provisional Government, and the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, represented by the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. The result was a dual power. How is it to be explained that the majority in the Soviets at first consisted of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries? How is it to be explained that the victorious workers and peasants voluntarily surrendered the power to the representatives of the bourgeoisie? Lenin explained it by pointing out that millions of people, inexperienced in politics, had awakened and pressed forward to political activity. These were for the most part small owners, peasants, workers who had recently been peasants, people who stood midway between the 179 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 1 7 bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Russia was at that time the most pettybourgeois of all the big European countries. And in this country, “a gigantic petty-bourgeois wave has swept over everything and overwhelmed the class-conscious proletariat, not only by force of numbers but also ideologically; that is, it has infected and imbued very wide circles of workers with the petty-bourgeois political outlook.” (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VI, p. 49.) It was this elemental petty-bourgeois wave that swept the pettybourgeois Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary parties to the fore. Lenin pointed out that another reason was the change in the composition of the proletariat that had taken place during the war and the inadequate class-consciousness and organization of the proletariat at the beginning of the revolution. During the war big changes had taken place in the proletariat itself. About 40 per cent of the regular workers had been drafted into the army. Many small owners, artisans and shopkeepers, to whom the proletarian psychology was alien, had gone to the factories in order to evade mobilization. It was these petty-bourgeois sections of the workers that formed the soil which nourished the petty-bourgeois politicians—the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. That is why large numbers of the people, inexperienced in politics, swept into the elemental petty-bourgeois vortex, and intoxicated with the first successes of the revolution, found themselves in its early months under the sway of the compromising parties and consented to surrender the state power to the bourgeoisie in the naive belief that a bourgeois power would not hinder the Soviets in their work. The task that confronted the Bolshevik Party was, by patient work of explanation, to open the eyes of the masses to the imperialist character of the Provisional Government, to expose the treachery of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks and to show that peace could not be secured unless the Provisional Government were replaced by a government of Soviets. And to this work the Bolshevik Party addressed itself with the utmost energy. It resumed the publication of its legal periodicals. The newspaper Pravda appeared in Petrograd five days after the February Revolution, and the Sotsial-Demokrat in Moscow a few days later. The Party was assuming leadership of the masses, who were losing their confidence in the liberal bourgeoisie and in the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. It patiently explained to the soldiers and peasants the necessity of acting jointly with the working class. It explained to them that the HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 180 peasants would secure neither peace nor land unless the revolution were further developed and the bourgeois Provisional Government replaced by a government of Soviets. B R I E F S U M M A R Y The imperialist war arose owing to the uneven development of the capitalist countries, to the upsetting of equilibrium between the principal powers, to the imperialists’ need for a redivision of the world by means of war and for the creation of a new equilibrium. The war would not have been so destructive, and perhaps would not even have assumed such dimensions, if the parties of the Second International had not betrayed the cause of the working class, if they had not violated the anti-war decisions of the congresses of the Second International, if they had dared to act and to rouse the working class against their imperialist governments, against the warmongers. The Bolshevik Party was the only proletarian party which remained faithful to the cause of Socialism and internationalism and which organized civil war against its own imperialist government. All the other parties of the Second International, being tied to the bourgeoisie through their leaders, found themselves under the sway of imperialism and deserted to the side of the imperialists. The war, while it was a reflection of the general crisis of capitalism, at the same time aggravated this crisis and weakened world capitalism. The workers of Russia and the Bolshevik Party were the first in the world successfully to take advantage of the weakness of capitalism. They forced a breach in the imperialist front, overthrew the tsar and set up Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Intoxicated by the first successes of the revolution, and lulled by the assurances of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries that from now on everything would go well, the bulk of the petty-bourgeoisie, the soldiers, as well as the workers, placed their confidence in the Provisional Government and supported it. The Bolshevik Party was confronted with the task of explaining to the masses of workers and soldiers, who had been intoxicated by the first successes, that the complete victory of the revolution was still a long way off, that as long as the power was in the hands of the bourgeois Provisional Government, and as long as the Soviets were dominated by the compromisers—the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries—the people would secure neither peace, nor land, nor bread, and that in order to achieve complete victory, one more step had to be taken and the power transferred to the Soviets. C H A P T E R S E V E N THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY IN THE PERIOD OF PREPARATION AND REALIZATION OF THE OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION ( APRIL 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 ) 1. SITUATION IN THE COUNTRY AFTER THE 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 The course of events and the conduct of the Provisional Government daily furnished new proofs of the correctness of the Bolshevik line. It became increasingly evident that the Provisional Government stood not for the people but against the people, not for peace but for war, and that it was unwilling and unable to give the people peace, land or bread. The explanatory work of the Bolsheviks found a fruitful soil. While the workers and soldiers were overthrowing the tsarist government and destroying the monarchy root and branch, the Provisional Government definitely wanted to preserve the monarchy. On March 2, 1917, it secretly commissioned Guchkov and Shulgin to go and see the tsar. The bourgeoisie wanted to transfer the power to Nicholas Romanov’s brother, Michael. But when, at a meeting of railwaymen, Guchkov ended his speech with the words, “Long live Emperor Michael,” the workers demanded that Guchkov be immediately arrested and searched. “Horse-radish is no sweeter than radish,” they exclaimed indignantly. It was clear that the workers would not permit the restoration of the monarchy. While the workers and peasants who were shedding their blood making the revolution expected that the war would be terminated, while they were fighting for bread and land and demanding vigorous measures to end the economic chaos, the Provisional Government remained deaf to these vital demands of the people. Consisting as it did of prominent representatives of the capitalists and landlords, this government had no intention of satisfying the demand of the peasants that the land be 181 HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 182 turned over to them. Nor could they provide bread for the working people, because to do so they would have to encroach on the interests of the big grain dealers and to take grain from the landlords and the kulaks by every available means; and this the government did not dare to do, for it was itself tied up with the interests of these classes. Nor could it give the people peace. Bound as it was to the British and French imperialists, the Provisional Government had no intention of terminating the war; on the contrary, it endeavoured to take advantage of the revolution to make Russia’s participation in the imperialist war even more active, and to realize its imperialist designs of seizing Constantinople, the Straits and Galicia. It was clear that the people’s confidence in the policy of the Provisional Government must soon come to an end. It was becoming clear that the dual power which had arisen after the February Revolution could not last long, for the course of events demanded the concentration of power in the hands of one authority: either the Provisional Government or the Soviets. It was true that the compromising policy of the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries still met with support among the masses. There were quite a number of workers, and an even larger number of soldiers and peasants, who still believed that “the Constituent Assembly will soon come and arrange everything in a peaceful way,” and who thought that the war was not waged for purposes of conquest, but from necessity— to defend the state. Lenin called such people honestly-mistaken supporters of the war. These people still considered the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik policy, which was one of promises and coaxing, the correct policy. But it was clear that promises and coaxing could not suffice for long, as the course of events and the conduct of the Provisional Government were daily revealing and proving that the compromising policy of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks was a policy of procrastination and of hoodwinking the credulous. The Provisional Government did not always confine itself to a covert struggle against the revolutionary movement of the masses, to backstairs scheming against the revolution. It sometimes attempted to make an open assault on the democratic liberties, to “restore discipline,” especially among the soldiers, to “establish order,” that is, to direct the revolution into channels that suited the needs of the bourgeoisie. But all its efforts in this direction failed, and the people eagerly exercised their democratic liberties, namely, freedom of speech, press, association, assembly and demonstration. The workers and soldiers endeavoured to make full use of their newly-won democratic rights in order to take an active part in the 183 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 political life of the country, to get an intelligent understanding of the situation and to decide what was to be done next. After the February Revolution, the organizations of the Bolshevik Party, which had worked illegally under the extremely difficult conditions of tsardom, emerged from underground and began to develop political and organizational work openly. The membership of the Bolshevik organizations at that time did not exceed 40,000 or 45,000. But these were all staunch revolutionaries, steeled in the struggle. The Party Committees were reorganized on the principle of democratic centralism. All Party bodies, from top to bottom, were made elective. When the Party began its legal existence, differences within its ranks became apparent. Kamenev and several workers of the Moscow organization, for example, Rykov, Bubnov and Nogin, held a semi- Menshevik position of conditionally supporting the Provisional Government and the policy of the partisans of the war. Stalin, who had just returned from exile, Molotov and others, together with the majority of the Party, upheld a policy of no-confidence in the Provisional Government, opposed the partisans of the war, and called for an active struggle for peace, a struggle against the imperialist war. Some of the Party workers vacillated, which was a manifestation of their political backwardness, a consequence of long years of imprisonment or exile. The absence of the leader of the Party, Lenin, was felt. On April 3 (16), 1917, after a long period of exile, Lenin returned to Russia. Lenin’s arrival was of tremendous importance to the Party and the revolution. While still in Switzerland, Lenin, upon receiving the first news of the revolution, had written his “Letters From Afar” to the Party and to the working class of Russia, in which he said: “Workers, you have displayed marvels of proletarian heroism, the heroism of the people, in the civil war against tsardom. You must now display marvels of organization, organization of the proletariat and of the whole people, in order to prepare the way for your victory in the second stage of the revolution.” (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VI, p. 11.) Lenin arrived in Petrograd on the night of April 3. Thousands of workers, soldiers and sailors assembled at the Finland Railway Station and in the station square to welcome him. Their enthusiasm as Lenin alighted from the train was indescribable. They lifted their leader shoulder high and carried him to the main waiting room of the station. There HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 184 the Mensheviks Chkheidze and Skobelev launched into speeches of “welcome” on behalf of the Petrograd Soviet, in which they “expressed the hope” that they and Lenin would find a “common language.” But Lenin did not stop to listen; sweeping past them, he went out to the masses of workers and soldiers. Mounting an armoured car, he delivered his famous speech in which he called upon the masses to fight for the victory of the Socialist revolution. “Long live the Socialist revolution!” were the words with which Lenin concluded this first speech after long years of exile. Back in Russia, Lenin flung himself vigorously into revolutionary work. On the morrow of his arrival he delivered a report on the subject of the war and the revolution at a meeting of Bolsheviks, and then repeated the theses of this report at a meeting attended by Mensheviks as well as Bolsheviks. These were Lenin’s famous April Theses, which provided the Party and the proletariat with a clear revolutionary line for the transition from the bourgeois to the Socialist revolution. Lenin’s theses were of immense significance to the revolution and to the subsequent work of the Party. The revolution was a momentous turn in the life of the country. In the new conditions of the struggle that followed the overthrow of tsardom, the Party needed a new orientation to advance boldly and confidently along the new road. Lenin’s theses gave the Party this orientation. Lenin’s April Theses laid down for the Party a brilliant plan of struggle for the transition from the bourgeois-democratic to the Socialist revolution, from the first stage of the revolution to the second stage—the stage of the Socialist revolution. The whole history of the Party had prepared it for this great task. As far back as 1905, Lenin had said in his pamphlet, Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, that after the overthrow of tsardom the proletariat would proceed to bring about the Socialist revolution. The new thing in the theses was that they gave a concrete, theoretically grounded plan for the initial stage of the transition to the Socialist revolution. The transitional steps in the economic field were: nationalization of all the land and confiscation of the landed estates, amalgamation of all the banks into one national bank to be under the control of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, and establishment of control over the social production and distribution of products. In the political field, Lenin proposed the transition from a parliamentary republic to a republic of Soviets. This was an important step forward in the theory and practice of Marxism. Hitherto, Marxist theo185 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 reticians had regarded the parliamentary republic as the best political form of transition to Socialism. Now Lenin proposed to replace the parliamentary republic by a Soviet republic as the most suitable form of political organization of society in the period of transition from capitalism to Socialism. “The specific feature of the present situation in Russia,” the theses stated, “is that it represents a transition from the first stage of the revolution—which, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organization of the proletariat, placed the power in the hands of the bourgeoisie—to the second stage, which must place the power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest strata of the peasantry.” (Ibid., p. 22.) “Not a parliamentary republic—to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies would be a retrograde step—but a republic of Soviets of Workers’, Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom.” (Ibid., p. 23.) Under the new government, the Provisional Government, the war continued to be a predatory imperialist war, Lenin said. It was the task of the Party to explain this to the masses and to show them that unless the bourgeoisie were overthrown, it would be impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace and not a rapacious peace. As regards the Provisional Government, the slogan Lenin put forward was: “No support for the Provisional Government!” Lenin further pointed out in the theses that our Party was still in the minority in the Soviets, that the Soviets were dominated by a bloc of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, which was an instrument of bourgeois influence on the proletariat. Hence, the Party’s task consisted in the following: “It must be explained to the masses that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses. As long as we are in the minority we carry on the work of criticizing and exposing errors and at the same time we preach the necessity of transferring the entire power of state to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies. . . .” (Ibid., p. 23.) HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 186 FROM MARX TO MAO �� NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION This meant that Lenin was not calling for a revolt against the Provisional Government, which at that moment enjoyed the confidence of the Soviets, that he was not demanding its overthrow, but that he wanted, by means of explanatory and recruiting work, to win a majority in the Soviets, to change the policy of the Soviets, and through the Soviets to alter the composition and policy of the government. This was a line envisaging a peaceful development of the revolution. Lenin further demanded that the “soiled shirt” be discarded, that is, that the Party no longer call itself a Social-Democratic Party. The parties of the Second International and the Russian Mensheviks called themselves Social-Democrats. This name had been tarnished and disgraced by the opportunists, the betrayers of Socialism. Lenin proposed that the Party of the Bolsheviks should be called the Communist Party, which was the name given by Marx and Engels to their party. This name was scientifically correct, for it was the ultimate aim of the Bolshevik Party to achieve Communism. Mankind can pass directly from capitalism only to Socialism, that is, to the common ownership of the means of production and the distribution of products according to the work performed by each. Lenin said that our Party looked farther ahead. Socialism was inevitably bound to pass gradually into Communism, on the banner of which is inscribed the maxim: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” Lastly, Lenin in his theses demanded the creation of a new International, the Third, Communist International, which would be free of opportunism and social-chauvinism. Lenin’s theses called forth a frenzied outcry from the bourgeoisie, the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries. The Mensheviks issued a proclamation to the workers which began with the warning: “the revolution is in danger.” The danger, in the opinion of the Mensheviks, lay in the fact that the Bolsheviks had advanced the demand for the transfer of power to the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Plekhanov in his newspaper, Yedinstvo (Unity), wrote an article in which he termed Lenin’s speech a “raving speech.” He quoted the words of the Menshevik Chkheidze, who said: “Lenin alone will remain outside the revolution, and we shall go our own way.” On April 14 a Petrograd City Conference of Bolsheviks was held. The conference approved Lenin’s theses and made them the basis of its work. Within a short while the local organizations of the Party had also approved Lenin’s theses. 187 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 The whole Party, with the exception of a few individuals of the type of Kamenev, Rykov and Pyatakov, received Lenin’s theses with profound satisfaction. 2. BEGINNING OF THE CRISIS OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT. APRIL CONFERENCE OF THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY While the Bolsheviks were preparing for the further development of the revolution, the Provisional Government continued to work against the people. On April 18, Milyukov, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Government, informed the Allies that “the whole people desire to continue the World War until a decisive victory is achieved and that the Provisional Government intends fully to observe the obligations undertaken towards our allies.” Thus the Provisional Government pledged its loyalty to the tsarist treaties and promised to go on shedding as much of the people’s blood as the imperialists might require for a “victorious finish.” On April 19 this statement (“Milyukov’s note”) became known to the workers and soldiers. On April 20 the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party called upon the masses to protest against the imperialist policy of the Provisional Government. On April 20-21 (May 3-4), 1917, not less than 100,000 workers and soldiers, stirred to indignation by “Milyukov’s note,” took part in a demonstration. Their banners bore the demands: “Publish the secret treaties!” “Down with the war!” “All power to the Soviets!” The workers and soldiers marched from the outskirts of the city to the centre, where the Provisional Government was sitting. On the Nevsky Prospect and other places clashes with groups of bourgeois took place. The more outspoken counter-revolutionaries, like General Kornilov, demanded that fire be opened on the demonstrators, and even gave orders to that effect. But the troops refused to carry out the orders. During the demonstration, a small group of members of the Petrograd Party Committee (Bagdatyev and others) issued a slogan demanding the immediate overthrow of the Provisional Government. The Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party sharply condemned the conduct of these “Left” adventurers, considering this slogan untimely and incorrect, a slogan that hampered the Party in its efforts to win over a majority in the Soviets and ran counter to the Party line of a peaceful development of the revolution. The events of April 20-21 signified the beginning of the crisis of the Provisional Government. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 188 This was the first serious rift in the compromising policy of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. On May 2, 1917, under the pressure of the masses, Milyukov and Guchkov were dropped from the Provisional Government. The first coalition Provisional Government was formed. It included, in addition to representatives of the bourgeoisie, Mensheviks (Skobelev and Tsereteli) and Socialist-Revolutionaries (Chernov, Kerensky and others). Thus the Mensheviks, who in 1905 had declared it impermissible for representatives of the Social-Democratic Party to take part in a revolutionary Provisional Government, now found it permissible for their representatives to take part in a counter-revolutionary Provisional Government. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had thus deserted to the camp of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie. On April 24, 1917, the Seventh (April) Conference of the Bolshevik Party assembled. For the first time in the existence of the Party a Bolshevik Conference met openly. In the history of the Party this conference holds a place of importance equal to that of a Party Congress. The All-Russian April Conference showed that the Party was growing by leaps and bounds. The conference was attended by 133 delegates with vote and by 18 with voice but no vote. They represented 80,000 organized members of the Party. The conference discussed and laid down the Party line on all basic questions of the war and revolution: the current situation, the war, the Provisional Government, the Soviets, the agrarian question, the national question, etc. In his report, Lenin elaborated the principles he had already set forth in the April Theses. The task of the Party was to effect the transition from the first stage of the revolution, “which placed the power in the hands of the bourgeoisie. . . to the second stage, which must place the power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest strata of the peasantry” (Lenin). The course the Party should take was to prepare for the Socialist revolution. The immediate task of the Party was set forth by Lenin in the slogan: “All power to the Soviets!” The slogan, “All power to the Soviets!” meant that it was necessary to put an end to the dual power, that is, the division of power between the Provisional Government and the Soviets, to transfer the whole power to the Soviets, and to drive the representatives of the landlords and capitalists out of the organs of government. The conference resolved that one of the most important tasks of 189 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 the Party was untiringly to explain to the masses the truth that “the Provisional Government is by its nature an organ of the rule of the landlords and the bourgeoisie,” as well as to show how fatal was the compromising policy of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks who were deceiving the people with false promises and subjecting them to the blows of the imperialist war and counter-revolution. Kamenev and Rykov opposed Lenin at the Conference. Echoing the Mensheviks, they asserted that Russia was not ripe for a Socialist revolution, and that only a bourgeois republic was possible in Russia. They recommended the Party and the working class to confine themselves to “controlling” the Provisional Government. In reality, they, like the Mensheviks, stood for the preservation of capitalism and of the power of the bourgeoisie. Zinoviev, too, opposed Lenin at the conference; it was on the question whether the Bolshevik Party should remain within the Zimmerwald alliance, or break with it and form a new International. As the years of war had shown, while this alliance carried on propaganda for peace, it did not actually break with the bourgeois partisans of the war. Lenin therefore insisted on immediate withdrawal from this alliance and on the formation of a new, Communist International. Zinoviev proposed that the Party should remain within the Zimmerwald alliance. Lenin vigorously condemned Zinoviev’s proposal and called his tactics “archopportunist and pernicious.” The April Conference also discussed the agrarian and national questions. In connection with Lenin’s report on the agrarian question, the conference adopted a resolution calling for the confiscation of the landed estates, which were to be placed at the disposal of the peasant committees, and for the nationalization of all the land. The Bolsheviks called upon the peasants to fight for the land, showing them that the Bolshevik Party was the only revolutionary party, the only party that was really helping the peasants to overthrow the landlords. Of great importance was Comrade Stalin’s report on the national question. Even before the revolution, on the eve of the imperialist war, Lenin and Stalin had elaborated the fundamental principles of the policy of the Bolshevik Party on the national question. Lenin and Stalin declared that the proletarian party must support the national liberation movement of the oppressed peoples against imperialism. Consequently, the Bolshevik Party advocated the right of nations to self-determination even to the point of secession and formation of independent states. This HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 190 was the view defended by Comrade Stalin, in his report delivered at the conference on behalf of the Central Committee. Lenin and Stalin were opposed by Pyatakov, who, together with Bukharin, had already during the war taken up a national-chauvinist stand on the national question. Pyatakov and Bukharin were opposed to the right of nations to self-determination. The resolute and consistent position of the Party on the national question, its struggle for the complete equality of nations and for the abolition of all forms of national oppression and national inequality, secured for the Party the sympathy and support of the oppressed nationalities. The text of the resolution on the national question adopted by the April Conference is as follows: “The policy of national oppression, inherited from the autocracy and monarchy, is supported by the landlords, capitalists and petty bourgeoisie in order to protect their class privileges and to cause disunity among the workers of the various nationalities. Modern imperialism, which increases the striving to subjugate weak nations, is a new factor intensifying national oppression. “To the extent that the elimination of national oppression is achievable at all in capitalist society, it is possible only under a consistently democratic republican system and state administration that guarantee complete equality for all nations and languages. “The right of all the nations forming part of Russia freely to secede and form independent states must be recognized. To deny them this right, or to fail to take measures guaranteeing its practical realization, is equivalent to supporting a policy of seizure and annexation. It is only the recognition by the proletariat of the right of nations to secede that can ensure complete solidarity among the workers of the various nations and help to bring the nations closer together on truly democratic lines. . . . “The right of nations freely to secede must not be confused with the expediency of secession of a given nation at a given moment. The party of the proletariat must decide the latter question quite independently in each particular case from the standpoint of the interests of the social development as a whole and of the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat for Socialism. “The Party demands broad regional autonomy, the abolition of supervision from above, the abolition of a compulsory state language and the determination of the boundaries of the self-governing and autonomous regions by the local population itself in accordance with 191 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 the economic and social conditions, the national composition of the population, and so forth. “The party of the proletariat resolutely rejects what is known as ‘national cultural autonomy,’ under which education, etc., is removed from the competence of the state and placed within the competence of some kind of national Diets. National cultural autonomy artificially divides the workers living in one locality, and even working in the same industrial enterprise, according to their various ‘national cultures’; in other words it strengthens the ties between the workers and the bourgeois culture of individual nations, whereas the aim of the Social-Democrats is to develop the international culture of the world proletariat. “The Party demands that a fundamental law shall be embodied in the constitution annulling all privileges enjoyed by any nation whatever and all infringements of the rights of national minorities. “The interests of the working class demand that the workers of all the nationalities of Russia should have common proletarian organizations: political, trade union, educational institutions of the co-operatives and so forth. Only such common organizations of the workers of the various nationalities will make it possible for the proletariat to wage a successful struggle against international capital and bourgeois nationalism.” (Lenin and Stalin, The Russian Revolution, pp. 52-3.) Thus the April Conference exposed the opportunist, anti-Leninist stand of Kamenev, Zinoviev, Pyatakov, Bukharin, Rykov and their small following. The conference unanimously supported Lenin by taking up a precise stand on all important questions and adopting a course leading to the victory of the Socialist revolution. 3. 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 On the basis of the decisions of the April Conference, the Party developed extensive activities in order to win over the masses, and to train and organize them for battle. The Party line in that period was, by patiently explaining the Bolshevik policy and exposing the compromising policy of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, to isolate these parties from the masses and to win a majority in the Soviets. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 192 In addition to the work in the Soviets, the Bolsheviks carried on extensive activities in the trade unions and in the factory committees. Particularly extensive was the work of the Bolsheviks in the army. Military organizations began to arise everywhere. The Bolsheviks worked indefatigably at the front and in the rear to organize the soldiers and sailors. A particularly important part in making the soldiers active revolutionaries was played at the front by the Bolshevik newspaper, Okopnaya Pravda (Trench Truth). Thanks to Bolshevik propaganda and agitation, already in the early months of the revolution the workers in many cities held new elections to the Soviets, especially to the district Soviets, drove out the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries and elected followers of the Bolshevik Party in their stead. The work of the Bolsheviks yielded splendid results, especially in Petrograd. A Petrograd Conference of Factory Committees was held from May 30 to June 3, 1917. At this conference three-quarters of the delegates already supported the Bolsheviks. Almost the entire Petrograd proletariat supported the Bolshevik slogan—“All power to the Soviets!” On June 3 (16), 1917, the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets met. The Bolsheviks were still in the minority in the Soviets; they had a little over 100 delegates at this congress, compared with 700 or 800 Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries and others. At the First Congress of Soviets, the Bolsheviks insistently stressed the fatal consequences of compromise with the bourgeoisie and exposed the imperialist character of the war. Lenin made a speech at the congress in which he showed the correctness of the Bolshevik line and declared that only a government of Soviets could give bread to the working people, land to the peasants, secure peace and lead the country out of chaos. A mass campaign was being conducted at that time in the workingclass districts of Petrograd for the organization of a demonstration and for the presentation of demands to the Congress of Soviets. In its anxiety to prevent the workers from demonstrating without its authorization, and in the hope of utilizing the revolutionary sentiments of the masses for its own ends, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet decided to call a demonstration for June 18 (July 1). The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries expected that it would take place under anti-Bolshevik slogans. The Bolshevik Party began energetic preparations for this demonstration. Comrade Stalin wrote in Pravda that “. . . it is our task to make sure that the demonstration in Petrograd on June 18 takes place under our revolutionary slogans.” 193 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 The demonstration of June 18, 1917, was held at the graves of the martyrs of the revolution. It proved to be a veritable review of the forces of the Bolshevik Party. It revealed the growing revolutionary spirit of the masses and their growing confidence in the Bolshevik Party. The slogans displayed by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries calling for confidence in the Provisional Government and urging the continuation of the war were lost in a sea of Bolshevik slogans. Four hundred thousand demonstrators carried banners bearing the slogans: “Down with the war!” “Down with the ten capitalist Ministers!” “All power to the Soviets!” It was a complete fiasco for the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, a fiasco for the Provisional Government in the capital of the country. Nevertheless, the Provisional Government received the support of the First Congress of the Soviets and decided to continue the imperialist policy. On that very day, June 18, the Provisional Government, in obedience to the wishes of the British and French imperialists, drove the soldiers at the front to take the offensive. The bourgeoisie regarded this as the only means of putting an end to the revolution. In the event of the success of the offensive, the bourgeoisie hoped to take the whole power into its own hands, to push the Soviets out of the arena, and to crush the Bolsheviks. Again, in the event of its failure, the entire blame could be thrown upon the Bolsheviks by accusing them of disintegrating the army. There could be no doubt that the offensive would fail. And fail it did. The soldiers were worn out, they did not understand the purpose of the offensive, they had no confidence in their officers who were alien to them, there was a shortage of artillery and shells. All this made the failure of the offensive a foregone conclusion. The news of the offensive at the front, and then of its collapse, roused the capital. The indignation of the workers and soldiers knew no bounds. It became apparent that when the Provisional Government proclaimed a policy of peace it was hoodwinking the people, and that it wanted to continue the imperialist war. It became apparent that the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets and the Petrograd Soviet were unwilling or unable to check the criminal deeds of the Provisional Government and themselves trailed in its wake. The revolutionary indignation of the Petrograd workers and soldiers boiled over. On July 3 (16) spontaneous demonstrations started in the Vyborg District of Petrograd. They continued all day. The separate demonstrations grew into a huge general armed demonstration demandHISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 194 ing the transfer of power to the Soviets. The Bolshevik Party was opposed to armed action at that time, for it considered that the revolutionary crisis had not yet matured, that the army and the provinces were not yet prepared to support an uprising in the capital, and that an isolated and premature rising might only make it easier for the counter-revolutionaries to crush the vanguard of the revolution. But when it became obviously impossible to keep the masses from demonstrating, the Party resolved to participate in the demonstration in order to lend it a peaceful and organized character. This the Bolshevik Party succeeded in doing. Hundreds of thousands of men and women marched to the headquarters of the Petrograd Soviet and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets, where they demanded that the Soviets take the power into their own hands, break with the imperialist bourgeoisie, and pursue an active peace policy. Notwithstanding the pacific character of the demonstration, reactionary units—detachments of officers and cadets were brought out against it. The streets of Petrograd ran with the blood of workers and soldiers. The most ignorant and counter-revolutionary units of the army were summoned from the front to suppress the workers. After suppressing the demonstration of workers and soldiers, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, in alliance with the bourgeoisie and Whiteguard generals, fell upon the Bolshevik Party. The Pravda premises were wrecked. Pravda, Soldatskaya Pravda (Soldiers’ Truth) and a number of other Bolshevik newspapers were suppressed. A worker named Voinov was killed by cadets in the street merely for selling Listok Pravdy (Pravda Bulletin). Disarming of the Red Guards began. Revolutionary units of the Petrograd garrison were withdrawn from the capital and dispatched to the trenches. Arrests were carried out in the rear and at the front. On July 7 a warrant was issued for Lenin’s arrest. A number of prominent members of the Bolshevik Party were arrested. The Trud printing plant, where the Bolshevik publications were printed, was wrecked. The Procurator of the Petrograd Court of Sessions announced that Lenin and a number of other Bolsheviks were being charged with “high treason” and the organization of an armed uprising. The charge against Lenin was fabricated at the headquarters of General Denikin, and was based on the testimony of spies and agents-provocateurs. Thus the coalition Provisional Government—which included such leading representatives of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries as Tsereteli, Skobelev, Kerensky and Chernov—sank to the depths of downright imperialism and counter-revolution. Instead of a policy of 195 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 peace, it had adopted the policy of continuing war. Instead of protecting the democratic rights of the people, it had adopted the policy of nullifying these rights and suppressing the workers and soldiers by force of arms. What Guchkov and Milyukov, the representatives of the bourgeoisie, had hesitated to do, was done by the “socialists” Kerensky and Tsereteli, Chernov and Skobelev. The dual power had come to an end. It ended in favour of the bourgeoisie, for the whole power had passed into the hands of the Provisional Government, while the Soviets, with their Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leaders, had become an appendage of the Provisional Government. The peaceful period of the revolution had ended, for now the bayonet had been placed on the agenda. In view of the changed situation, the Bolshevik Party decided to change its tactics. It went underground, arranged for a safe hiding place for its leader, Lenin, and began to prepare for an uprising with the object of overthrowing the power of the bourgeoisie by force of arms and setting up the power of the Soviets. 4. THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY ADOPTS THE COURSE OF PREPARING FOR ARMED UPRISING. SIXTH PARTY CONGRESS The Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party met in Petrograd in the midst of a frenzied campaign of Bolshevik-baiting in the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois press. It assembled ten years after the Fifth (London) Congress and five years after the Prague Conference of the Bolsheviks. The congress, which was held secretly, sat from July 26 to August 3, 1917. All that appeared in the press was an announcement of its convocation, the place of meeting was not divulged. The first sittings were held in the Vyborg District, the later ones in a school near the Narva Gate, where a House of Culture now stands. The bourgeois press demanded the arrest of the delegates. Detectives frantically scoured the city trying to discover the meeting place of the congress, but in vain. And so, five months after the overthrow of tsardom, the Bolsheviks were compelled to meet in secret, while Lenin, the leader of the proletarian party, was forced to go into hiding and took refuge in a shanty near Razliv Station. He was being hunted high and low by the sleuths of the Provisional Government and was therefore unable to attend the congress; but he HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 196 guided its labours from his place of concealment through his close colleagues and disciples in Petrograd: Stalin, Sverdlov, Molotov, Ordjonikidze. The congress was attended by 157 delegates with vote and 128 with voice but no vote. At that time the Party had a membership of about 240,000. On July 3, i.e., before the workers’ demonstration was broken up, when the Bolsheviks were still functioning legally, the Party had 41 publications, of which 29 were in Russian and 12 in other languages. The persecution to which the Bolsheviks and the working class were subjected during the July days, far from diminishing the influence of our Party, only enhanced it. The delegates from the provinces cited numerous facts to show that the workers and soldiers had begun to desert the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries en masse, contemptuously styling them “social-jailers.” Workers and soldiers belonging to the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary parties were tearing up their membership cards in anger and disgust and applying for admission to the Bolshevik Party. The chief items discussed at the congress were the political report of the Central Committee and the political situation. Comrade Stalin made the reports on both these questions. He showed with the utmost clarity how the revolution was growing and developing despite all the efforts of the bourgeoisie to suppress it. He pointed out that the revolution had placed on the order of the day the task of establishing workers’ control over the production and distribution of products, of turning over the land to the peasants, and of transferring the power from the bourgeoisie to the working class and poor peasantry. He said that the revolution was assuming the character of a Socialist revolution. The political situation in the country had changed radically after the July days. The dual power had come to an end. The Soviets, led by Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, had refused to take over full power and had therefore lost all power. The power was now concentrated in the hands of the bourgeois Provisional Government, and the latter was continuing to disarm the revolution, to smash its organizations and to destroy the Bolshevik Party. All possibility of a peaceful development of the revolution had vanished. Only one thing remained, Comrade Stalin said, namely, to take power by force, by overthrowing the Provisional Government. And only the proletariat, in alliance with the poor peasants, could take power by force. The Soviets, still controlled by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, had landed in the camp of the bourgeoisie, and under existing conditions could be expected to act only as subsidiaries of the Provisional 197 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 Government. Now, after the July days, Comrade Stalin said, the slogan “All power to the Soviets!” had to be withdrawn. However, the temporary withdrawal of this slogan did not in any way imply a renunciation of the struggle for the power of the Soviets. It was not the Soviets in general, as organs of revolutionary struggle, that were in question, but only the existing Soviets, the Soviets controlled by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. “The peaceful period of the revolution has ended,” said Comrade Stalin, “a non-peaceful period has begun, a period of clashes and explosions.” (Lenin and Stalin, Russian Revolution, pp. 139-140.) The Party was headed for armed uprising. There were some at the congress who, reflecting the bourgeois influence, opposed the adoption of the course of Socialist revolution. The Trotskyite Preobrazhensky proposed that the resolution on the conquest of power should state that the country could be directed towards Socialism only in the event of a proletarian revolution in the West. This Trotskyite motion was opposed by Comrade Stalin. He said: “The possibility is not excluded that Russia will be the country that will lay the road to Socialism. . . . We must discard the antiquated idea that only Europe can show us the way. There is dogmatic Marxism and creative Marxism. I stand by the latter.” (p. 146.) Bukharin, who held a Trotskyite position, asserted that the peasants supported the war, that they were in a bloc with the bourgeoisie and would not follow the working class. Retorting to Bukharin, Comrade Stalin showed that there were different kinds of peasants: there were the rich peasants who supported the imperialist bourgeoisie, and there were the poor peasants who sought an alliance with the working class and would support it in a struggle for the victory of the revolution. The congress rejected Preobrazhensky’s and Bukharin’s amendments and approved the resolution submitted by Comrade Stalin. The congress discussed the economic platform of the Bolsheviks and approved it. Its main points were the confiscation of the landed estates and the nationalization of all the land, the nationalization of the banks, the nationalization of large-scale industry, and workers’ control over production and distribution. The congress stressed the importance of the fight for workers’ control over production, which was later to play a significant part during the nationalization of the large industrial enterprises. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 198 In all its decisions, the Sixth Congress particularly stressed Lenin’s principle of an alliance between the proletariat and the poor peasantry as a condition for the victory of the Socialist revolution. The congress condemned the Menshevik theory that the trade unions should be neutral. It pointed out that the momentous tasks confronting the working class of Russia could be accomplished only if the trade unions remained militant class organizations recognizing the political leadership of the Bolshevik Party. The congress adopted a resolution on the Youth Leagues, which at that time frequently sprang up spontaneously. As a result of the Party’s subsequent efforts it succeeded in definitely securing the adherence of these young organizations which became a reserve of the Party. The congress discussed whether Lenin should appear for trial. Kamenev, Rykov, Trotsky and others had held even before the congress that Lenin ought to appear before the counter-revolutionary court. Comrade Stalin was vigorously opposed to Lenin’s appearing for trial. This was also the stand of the Sixth Congress, for it considered that it would be a lynching, not a trial. The congress had no doubt that the bourgeoisie wanted only one thing—the physical destruction of Lenin as the most dangerous enemy of the bourgeoisie. The congress protested against the police persecution of the leaders of the revolutionary proletariat by the bourgeoisie, and sent a message of greeting to Lenin. The Sixth Congress adopted new Party Rules. These rules provided that all Party organizations shall be built on the principle of democratic centralism. This meant: 1) That all directing bodies of the Party, from top to bottom, shall be elected; 2) That Party bodies shall give periodical accounts of their activities to their respective Party organizations; 3) That there shall be strict Party discipline and the subordination of the minority to the majority; 4) That all decisions of higher bodies shall be absolutely binding on lower bodies and on all Party members. The Party Rules provided that admission of new members to the Party shall be through local Party organizations on the recommendation of two Party members and on the sanction of a general membership meeting of the local organization. The Sixth Congress admitted the Mezhrayontsi and their leader, Trotsky, into the Party. They were a small group that had existed in Petrograd since 1913 and consisted of Trotskyite-Mensheviks and a 199 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 number of former Bolsheviks who had split away from the Party. During the war, the Mezhrayonsti were a Centrist organization. They fought the Bolsheviks, but in many respects disagreed with the Mensheviks, thus occupying an intermediate, centrist, vacillating position. During the Sixth Party Congress the Mezhrayonsti declared that they were in agreement with the Bolsheviks on all points and requested admission to the Party. The request was granted by the congress in the expectation that they would in time become real Bolsheviks. Some of the Mezhrayonsti, Volodarsky and Uritsky, for example, actually did become Bolsheviks. As to Trotsky and some of his close friends, they, as it later became apparent, had joined not to work in the interests of the Party, but to disrupt and destroy it from within. The decisions of the Sixth Congress were all intended to prepare the proletariat and the poorest peasantry for an armed uprising. The Sixth Congress headed the Party for armed uprising, for the Socialist revolution. The congress issued a Party manifesto calling upon the workers, soldiers and peasants to muster their forces for decisive battles with the bourgeoisie. It ended with the words: “Prepare, then, for new battles, comrades-in-arms! Staunchly, manfully and calmly, without yielding to provocation, muster your forces and form your fighting columns! Rally under the banner of the Party, proletarians and soldiers! Rally under our banner, downtrodden of the villages!” 5. GENERAL KORNILOV’S PLOT AGAINST THE REVOLUTION. SUPPRESSION OF THE PLOT. PETROGRAD AND MOSCOW SOVIETS GO OVER TO THE BOLSHEVIKS Having seized all power, the bourgeoisie began preparations to destroy the now weakened Soviets and to set up an open counter-revolutionary dictatorship. The millionaire Ryabushinsky insolently declared that the way out of the situation was “for the gaunt hand of famine, of destitution of the people, to seize the false friends of the people—the democratic Soviets and Committees—by the throat.” At the front, courts-martial wreaked savage vengeance on the soldiers, and meted out death sentences wholesale. On August 3, 1917, General Kornilov, the Commander-in-Chief, demanded the introduction of the death penalty behind the lines as well. On August 12, a Council of State, convened by the Provisional HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 200 FROM MARX TO MAO �� NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION Government to mobilize the forces of the bourgeoisie and the landlords, opened in the Grand Theatre in Moscow. The Council was attended chiefly by representatives of the landlords, the bourgeoisie, the generals, the officers and Cossacks. The Soviets were represented by Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. In protest against the convocation of the Council of State, the Bolsheviks on the day of its opening called a general strike in Moscow in which the majority of the workers took part. Simultaneously, strikes took place in a number of other cities. The Socialist-Revolutionary Kerensky threatened in a fit of boasting at the Council to suppress “by iron and blood” every attempt at a revolutionary movement, including unauthorized attempts of the peasants to seize the lands of the landlords. The counter-revolutionary General Kornilov bluntly demanded that “the Committees and Soviets be abolished.” Bankers, merchants and manufacturers flocked to Kornilov at General Headquarters, promising him money and support. Representatives of the “Allies,” Britain and France, also came to General Kornilov, demanding that action against the revolution be not delayed. General Kornilov’s plot against the revolution was coming to a head. Kornilov made his preparations openly. In order to distract attention, the conspirators started a rumour that the Bolsheviks were preparing an uprising in Petrograd to take place on August 27—the end of the first six months of the revolution. The Provisional Government, headed by Kerensky, furiously attacked the Bolsheviks, and intensified the terror against the proletarian party. At the same time, General Kornilov massed troops in order to move them against Petrograd, abolish the Soviets and set up a military dictatorship. Kornilov had come to a preliminary agreement with Kerensky regarding his counter-revolutionary action. But no sooner had Kornilov’s action begun than Kerensky made an abrupt right-about-face and dissociated himself from his ally. Kerensky feared that the masses who would rise against the Kornilovites and crush them would at the same time sweep away Kerensky’s bourgeois government as well, unless it at once dissociated itself from the Kornilov affair. On August 25 Kornilov moved the Third Mounted Corps under the command of General Krymov against Petrograd, declaring that he intended to “save the fatherland.” In face of the Kornilov revolt, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party called upon the workers and soldiers to put up active armed resistance to the counter-revolution. The 201 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 workers hurriedly began to arm and prepared to resist. The Red Guard detachments grew enormously during these days. The trade unions mobilized their members. The revolutionary military units in Petrograd were also held in readiness for battle. Trenches were dug around Petrograd, barbed wire entanglements erected, and the railway tracks leading to the city were torn up. Several thousand armed sailors arrived from Kronstadt to defend the city. Delegates were sent to the “Savage Division” which was advancing on Petrograd; when these delegates explained the purpose of Kornilov’s action to the Caucasian mountaineers of whom the “Savage Division” was made up, they refused to advance. Agitators were also dispatched to other Kornilov units. Wherever there was danger, Revolutionary Committees and headquarters were set up to fight Kornilov. In those days the mortally terrified Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leaders, Kerensky among them, turned for protection to the Bolsheviks, for they were convinced that the Bolsheviks were the only effective force in the capital that was capable of routing Kornilov. But while mobilizing the masses to crush the Kornilov revolt, the Bolsheviks did not discontinue their struggle against the Kerensky government. They exposed the government of Kerensky, the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, to the masses, pointing out that their whole policy was in effect assisting Kornilov’s counter-revolutionary plot. The result of these measures was that the Kornilov revolt was crushed. General Krymov committed suicide. Kornilov and his fellowconspirators, Denikin and Lukomsky, were arrested. (Very soon, however, Kerensky had them released.) The rout of the Kornilov revolt revealed in a flash the relative strength of the revolution and the counter-revolution. It showed that the whole counter-revolutionary camp was doomed, from the generals and the Constitutional-Democratic Party to the Mensheviks and Socialist- Revolutionaries who had become entangled in the meshes of the bourgeoisie. It became obvious that the influence of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries among the masses had been completely undermined by the policy of prolonging the unbearable strain of the war, and by the economic chaos caused by the protracted war. The defeat of the Kornilov revolt further showed that the Bolshevik Party had grown to be the decisive force of the revolution and was capable of foiling any attempt at counter-revolution. Our Party was not yet the ruling party, but during the Kornilov days it acted as the real ruling power, for its instructions were unhesitatingly carried out by the workers and soldiers. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 202 Lastly, the rout of the Kornilov revolt showed that the seemingly dead Soviets actually possessed tremendous latent power of revolutionary resistance. There could be no doubt that it was the Soviets and their Revolutionary Committees that barred the way of the Kornilov troops and broke their strength. The struggle against Kornilov put new vitality into the languishing Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. It freed them from the sway of the policy of compromise. It led them into the open road of revolutionary struggle, and turned them towards the Bolshevik Party. The influence of the Bolsheviks in the Soviets grew stronger than ever. Their influence spread rapidly in the rural districts as well. The Kornilov revolt made it clear to the broad masses of the peasantry that if the landlords and generals succeeded in smashing the Bolsheviks and the Soviets, they would next attack the peasantry. The mass of the poor peasants therefore began to rally closer to the Bolsheviks. As to the middle peasants, whose vacillations had retarded the development of the revolution in the period from April to August 1917, after the rout of Kornilov they definitely began to swing towards the Bolshevik Party, joining forces with the poor peasants. The broad masses of the peasantry were coming to realize that only the Bolshevik Party could deliver them from the war, and that only this Party was capable of crushing the landlords and was prepared to turn over the land to the peasants. The months of September and October 1917 witnessed a tremendous increase in the number of seizures of landed estates by the peasants. Unauthorized ploughing of the fields of landlords became widespread. The peasants had taken the road of revolution and neither coaxing nor punitive expeditions could any longer halt them. The tide of revolution was rising. There ensued a period of revival of the Soviets, of a change in their composition, their bolshevization. Factories, mills and military units held new elections and sent to the Soviets representatives of the Bolshevik Party in place of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. On August 31, the day following the victory over Kornilov, the Petrograd Soviet endorsed the Bolshevik policy. The old Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet, headed by Chkheidze, resigned, thus clearing the way for the Bolsheviks. On September 5, the Moscow Soviet of Workers’ Deputies went over to the Bolsheviks. The Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik Presidium of the Moscow Soviet also resigned and left the way clear for the Bolsheviks. 203 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 This meant that the chief conditions for a successful uprising were now ripe. The slogan “All power to the Soviets!” was again on the order of the day. But it was no longer the old slogan, the slogan of transferring the power to Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary Soviets. This time it was a slogan calling for an uprising of the Soviets against the Provisional Government, the object being to transfer the whole power in the country to the Soviets now led by the Bolsheviks. Disintegration set in among the compromising parties. Under the pressure of the revolutionary peasants, a Left wing formed within the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, known as the “Left” Socialist- Revolutionaries, who expressed their disapproval of the policy of compromise with the bourgeoisie. Among the Mensheviks, too, their appeared a group of “Lefts,” the so-called “Internationalists,” who gravitated towards the Bolsheviks. As to the Anarchists, a group whose influence was insignificant to start with, they now definitely disintegrated into minute groups, some of which merged with criminal elements, thieves and provocateurs, the dregs of society; others became expropriators “by conviction,” robbing the peasants and small townfolk, and appropriating the premises and funds of workers’ clubs; while others still openly went over to the camp of the counter-revolutionaries, and devoted themselves to feathering their own nests as menials of the bourgeoisie. They were all opposed to authority of any kind, particularly and especially to the revolutionary authority of the workers and peasants, for they knew that a revolutionary government would not allow them to rob the people and steal public property. After the rout of Kornilov, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries made one more attempt to stem the rising tide of revolution. With this purpose in view, on September 12, 1917, they convened an All-Russian Democratic Conference, consisting of representatives of the Socialist parties, the compromising Soviets, trade unions, Zemstvos, commercial and industrial circles and military units. The conference set up a Provisional Council of the Republic, known as the Pre-parliament. The compromisers hoped with the help of the Pre-parliament to halt the revolution and to divert the country from the path of a Soviet revolution to the path of bourgeois constitutional development, the path of bourgeois parliamentarism. But this was a hopeless attempt on the part of political bankrupts to turn back the wheel of revolution. It was bound to end in a fiasco, and end in a fiasco it did. The workers jeered at the HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 204 parliamentary efforts of the compromisers and called the Predparlament (Pre-parliament) a “predbannik” (“pre-bath-house”). The Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party decided to boycott the Pre-parliament. True, the Bolshevik group in the Pre-parliament, consisting of people like Kamenev and Teodorovich, were loath to leave it, but the Central Committee of the Party compelled them to do so. Kamenev and Zinoviev stubbornly insisted on participation in the Pre-parliament, striving thereby to divert the Party from its preparations for the uprising. Comrade Stalin, speaking at a meeting of the Bolshevik group of the All-Russian Democratic Conference, vigorously opposed participation in the Pre-parliament. He called the Pre-parliament a “Kornilov abortion.” Lenin and Stalin considered that it would be a grave mistake to participate in the Pre-parliament even for a short time, for it might encourage in the masses the false hope that the Pre-parliament could really do something for the working people. At the same time, the Bolsheviks made intensive preparations for the convocation of the Second Congress of Soviets, in which they expected to have a majority. Under the pressure of the Bolshevik Soviets, and notwithstanding the subterfuges of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries on the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets was called for the second half of October 1917. 6. OCTOBER UPRISING IN PETROGRAD AND ARREST OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT. SECOND CONGRESS OF SOVIETS AND FORMATION OF THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT. DECREES OF THE SECOND CONGRESS OF SOVIETS ON PEACE AND LAND. VICTORY OF THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION. REASONS FOR THE VICTORY OF THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION The Bolsheviks began intensive preparations for the uprising. Lenin declared that, having secured a majority in the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies in both the capitals—Moscow and Petrograd—the Bolsheviks could and should take the state power into their own hands. Reviewing the path that had been traversed, Lenin stressed the fact that “the majority of the people are for us.” In his articles and letters to the Central Committee and the Bolshevik organizations, Lenin outlined a detailed plan for the uprising showing how the army units, the navy and the Red Guards should be used, what key positions in Petro205 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 grad should be seized in order to ensure the success of the uprising, and so forth. On October 7, Lenin secretly arrived in Petrograd from Finland. On October 10, 1917, the historic meeting of the Central Committee of the Party took place at which it was decided to launch the armed uprising within the next few days. The historic resolution of the Central Committee of the Party, drawn up by Lenin, stated: “The Central Committee recognizes that the international position of the Russian revolution (the revolt in the German navy which is an extreme manifestation of the growth throughout Europe of the world Socialist revolution; the threat of conclusion of peace by the imperialists with the object of strangling the revolution in Russia) as well as its military position (the indubitable decision of the Russian bourgeoisie and Kerensky and Co. to surrender Petrograd to the Germans), and the fact that the proletarian party has gained a majority in the Soviets—all this, taken in conjunction with the peasant revolt and the swing of popular confidence towards our Party (the elections in Moscow), and, finally, the obvious preparations being made for a second Kornilov affair (the withdrawal of troops from Petrograd, the dispatch of Cossacks to Petrograd, the surrounding of Minsk by Cossacks, etc.)—all this places the armed uprising on the order of the day. “Considering therefore that an armed uprising is inevitable, and that the time for it is fully ripe, the Central Committee instructs all Party organizations to be guided accordingly, and to discuss and decide all practical questions (the Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region, the withdrawal of troops from Petrograd, the action of our people in Moscow and Minsk, etc.) from this point of view.” (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VI, p. 303.) Two members of the Central Committee, Kamenev and Zinoviev, spoke and voted against this historic decision. Like the Mensheviks, they dreamed of a bourgeois parliamentary republic, and slandered the working class by asserting that it was not strong enough to carry out a Socialist revolution, that it was not mature enough to take power. Although at this meeting Trotsky did not vote against the resolution directly, he moved an amendment which would have reduced the chances of the uprising to nought and rendered it abortive. He proposed that the uprising should not be started before the Second Congress of Soviets met, a proposal which meant delaying the uprising, divulging its date, and forewarning the Provisional Government. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 206 The Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party sent its representatives to the Donetz Basin, the Urals, Helsingfors, Kronstadt, the South- Western Front and other places to organize the uprising. Comrades Voroshilov, Molotov, Dzerzhinsky, Ordjonikidze, Kirov, Kaganovich, Kuibyshev, Frunze, Yaroslavsky and others were specially assigned by the Party to direct the uprising in the provinces. Comrade Zhdanov carried on the work among the armed forces in Shadrinsk, in the Urals. Comrade Yezhov made preparations for an uprising of the soldiers on the Western Front, in Byelorussia. The representatives of the Central Committee acquainted the leading members of the Bolshevik organizations in the provinces with the plan of the uprising and mobilized them in readiness to support the uprising in Petrograd. On the instructions of the Central Committee of the Party, a Revolutionary Military Committee of the Petrograd Soviet was set up. This body became the legally functioning headquarters of the uprising. Meanwhile the counter-revolutionaries, too, were hastily mustering their forces. The officers of the army formed a counter-revolutionary organization known as the Officers’ League. Everywhere the counterrevolutionaries set up headquarters for the formation of shock-battalions. By the end of October the counter-revolutionaries had 43 shock battalions at their command. Special battalions of Cavaliers of the Cross of St. George were formed. Kerensky’s government considered the question of transferring the seat of government from Petrograd to Moscow. This made it clear that it was preparing to surrender Petrograd to the Germans in order to forestall the uprising in the city. The protest of the Petrograd workers and soldiers compelled the Provisional Government to remain in Petrograd. On October 16 an enlarged meeting of the Central Committee of the Party was held. This meeting elected a Party Centre, headed by Comrade Stalin, to direct the uprising. This Party Centre was the leading core of the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and had practical direction of the whole uprising. At the meeting of the Central Committee the capitulators Zinoviev and Kamenev again opposed the uprising. Meeting with a rebuff, they came out openly in the press against the uprising, against the Party. On October 18 the Menshevik newspaper, Novaya Zhizn, printed a statement by Kamenev and Zinoviev declaring that the Bolsheviks were making preparations for an uprising, and that they (Kamenev and Zinoviev) considered it an adventurous gamble. Kamenev and Zinoviev thus disclosed to the enemy the decision of the Central Committee regarding the uprising, they revealed that an uprising had been planned 207 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 to take place within a few days This was treachery. Lenin wrote in this connection: “Kamenev and Zinoviev have betrayed the decision of the Central Committee of their Party on the armed uprising to Rodzyanko and Kerensky.” Lenin put before the Central Committee the question of Zinoviev’s and Kamenev’s expulsion from the Party. Forewarned by the traitors, the enemies of the revolution at once began to take measures to prevent the uprising and to destroy the directing staff of the revolution—the Bolshevik Party. The Provisional Government called a secret meeting which decided upon measures for combating the Bolsheviks On October 19 the Provisional Government hastily summoned troops from the front to Petrograd. The streets were heavily patrolled. The counter-revolutionaries succeeded in massing especially large forces in Moscow. The Provisional Government drew up a plan: on the eve of the Second Congress of Soviets the Smolny— the headquarters of the Bolshevik Central Committee—was to be attacked and occupied and the Bolshevik directing centre destroyed. For this purpose the government summoned to Petrograd troops in whose loyalty it believed. But the days and even the hours of the Provisional Government were already numbered. Nothing could now halt the victorious march of the Socialist revolution. On October 21 the Bolsheviks sent commissars of the Revolutionary Military Committee to all revolutionary army units. Throughout the remaining days before the uprising energetic preparations for action were made in the army units and in the mills and factories. Precise instructions were also issued to the warships Aurora and Zarya Svobody. At a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, Trotsky in a fit of boasting blabbed to the enemy the date on which the Bolsheviks had planned to begin the armed uprising. In order not to allow Kerensky’s government to frustrate the uprising, the Central Committee of the Party decided to start and carry it through before the appointed time, and set its date for the day before the opening of the Second Congress of Soviets. Kerensky began his attack on the early morning of October 24 (November 6) by ordering the suppression of the central organ of the Bolshevik Party, Rabochy Put (Workers’ Path), and the dispatch of armoured cars to its editorial premises and to the printing plant of the Bolsheviks. By 10 a.m., however, on the instructions of Comrade Stalin, Red Guards and revolutionary soldiers pressed back the armoured cars and placed a reinforced guard over the printing plant and the Rabochy Put editorial offices. Towards 11 a.m. Rabochy Put came out with a call HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 208 for the overthrow of the Provisional Government. Simultaneously, on the instructions of the Party Centre of the uprising, detachments of revolutionary soldiers and Red Guards were rushed to the Smolny. The uprising had begun. On the night of October 24 Lenin arrived at the Smolny and assumed personal direction of the uprising. All that night revolutionary units of the army and detachments of the Red Guard kept arriving at the Smolny. The Bolsheviks directed them to the centre of the capital, to surround the Winter Palace, where the Provisional Government had entrenched itself. On October 25 (November 7), Red Guards and revolutionary troops occupied the railway stations, post office, telegraph office, the Ministries and the State Bank. The Pre-parliament was dissolved. The Smolny, the headquarters of the Petrograd Soviet and of the Bolshevik Central Committee, became the headquarters of the revolution, from which all fighting orders emanated. The Petrograd workers in those days showed what a splendid schooling they had received under the guidance of the Bolshevik Party. The revolutionary units of the army, prepared for the uprising by the work of the Bolsheviks, carried out fighting orders with precision and fought side by side with the Red Guard. The navy did not lag behind the army. Kronstadt was a stronghold of the Bolshevik Party, and had long since refused to recognize the authority of the Provisional Government. The cruiser Aurora trained its guns on the Winter Palace, and on October 25 their thunder ushered in a new era, the era of the Great Socialist Revolution. On October 25 (November 7) the Bolsheviks issued a manifesto “To the Citizens of Russia” announcing that the bourgeois Provisional Government had been deposed and that state power had passed into the hands of the Soviets. The Provisional Government had taken refuge in the Winter Palace under the protection of cadets and shock battalions. On the night of October 25 the revolutionary workers, soldiers and sailors took the Winter Palace by storm and arrested the Provisional Government. The armed uprising in Petrograd had won. The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets opened in the Smolny at 10:45 p.m. on October 25 (November 7), 1917, when the uprising in Petrograd was already in the full flush of victory and the power in the capital had actually passed into the hands of the Petrograd Soviet. The Bolsheviks secured an overwhelming majority at the congress. 209 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 The Mensheviks, Bundists and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, seeing that their day was done, left the congress, announcing that they refused to take any part in its labours. In a statement which was read at the Congress of Soviets they referred to the October Revolution as a “military plot.” The congress condemned the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries and, far from regretting their departure, welcomed it, for, it declared, thanks to the withdrawal of the traitors the congress had become a real revolutionary congress of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies. The congress proclaimed that all power had passed to the Soviets: “Backed by the will of the vast majority of the workers, soldiers and peasants, backed by the victorious uprising of the workers and the garrison which had taken place in Petrograd, the Congress takes the power into its own hands”—the proclamation of the Second Congress of Soviets read. On the night of October 26 (November 8), 1917, the Second Congress of Soviets adopted the Decree on Peace. The congress called upon the belligerent countries to conclude an immediate armistice for a period of not less than three months to permit negotiations for peace. While addressing itself to the governments and peoples of all the belligerent countries, the congress at the same time appealed to “the class-conscious workers of the three most advanced nations of mankind and the largest states participating in the present war, namely, Great Britain, France and Germany.” It called upon these workers to help “to bring to a successful conclusion the cause of peace, and at the same time the cause of the emancipation of the toiling and exploited masses of the population from all forms of slavery and all forms of exploitation.” That same night the Second Congress of Soviets adopted the Decree on Land, which proclaimed that “landlord ownership of land is abolished forthwith without compensation.” The basis adopted for this agrarian law was a Mandate (Nakaz) of the peasantry, compiled from 242 mandates of peasants of various localities. In accordance with this Mandate private ownership of land was to be abolished forever and replaced by public, or state ownership of the land. The lands of the landlords, of the tsar’s family and of the monasteries were to be turned over to all the toilers for their free use. By this decree the peasantry received from the October Socialist Revolution over 150,000,000 dessiatins (over 400,000,000 acres) of land that had formerly belonged to the landlords, the bourgeoisie, the tsar’s family, the monasteries and the churches. Moreover, the peasants were released from paying rent to the landlords, which had amounted to about 500,000,000 gold rubles annually. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 210 All mineral resources (oil, coal, ores, etc.), forests and waters became the property of the people. Lastly, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets formed the first Soviet Government—the Council of People’s Commissars—which consisted entirely of Bolsheviks. Lenin was elected Chairman of the first Council of People’s Commissars. This ended the labours of the historic Second Congress of Soviets. The congress delegates dispersed to spread the news of the victory of the Soviets in Petrograd and to ensure the extension of the power of the Soviets to the whole country. Not everywhere did power pass to the Soviets at once. While in Petrograd the Soviet Government was already in existence, in Moscow fierce and stubborn fighting continued in the streets several days longer. In order to prevent the power from passing into the hands of the Moscow Soviet, the counter-revolutionary Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary parties, together with Whiteguards and cadets, started an armed fight against the workers and soldiers. It took several days to rout the rebels and to establish the power of the Soviets in Moscow. In Petrograd itself, and in several of its districts, counter-revolutionary attempts to overthrow the Soviet power were made in the very first days of the victory of the revolution. On November 10, 1917, Kerensky, who during the uprising had fled from Petrograd to the Northern Front, mustered several Cossack units and dispatched them against Petrograd under the command of General Krasnov. On November 11, 1917, a counter-revolutionary organization calling itself the “Committee for the Salvation of the Fatherland and the Revolution,” headed by Socialist-Revolutionaries, raised a mutiny of cadets in Petrograd. But the mutiny was suppressed by sailors and Red Guards without much difficulty by the evening of the same day, and on November 13 General Krasnov was routed near the Pulkovo Hills. Lenin personally directed the suppression of the anti-Soviet mutiny, just as he had personally directed the October uprising. His inflexible firmness and calm confidence of victory inspired and welded the masses. The enemy was smashed. Krasnov was taken prisoner and pledged his “word of honour” to terminate the struggle against the Soviet power. And on his “word of honour” he was released. But, as it later transpired, the general violated his word of honour. As to Kerensky, disguised as a woman, he managed to “disappear in an unknown direction.” In Moghilev, at the General Headquarters of the Army, General Dukhonin, the Commander-in-Chief, also attempted a mutiny. When the Soviet Government instructed him to start immediate negotiations for 211 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 an armistice with the German Command, he refused to obey. Thereupon Dukhonin was dismissed by order of the Soviet Government. The counter-revolutionary General Headquarters was broken up and Dukhonin himself was killed by the soldiers, who had risen against him. Certain notorious opportunists within the Party—Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov, Shlyapnikov and others—also made a sally against the Soviet power. They demanded the formation of an “all-Socialist government” to include Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who had just been overthrown by the October Revolution. On November 15, 1917, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party adopted a resolution rejecting agreement with these counter-revolutionary parties, and proclaiming Kamenev and Zinoviev strikebreakers of the revolution. On November 17, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov and Milyutin, disagreeing with the policy of the Party, announced their resignation from the Central Committee. That same day, November 17, Nogin, in his own name and in the names of Rykov, V. Milyutin, Teodorovich, A. Shlyapnikov, D. Ryazanov, Yurenev and Larin, members of the Council of People’s Commissars, announced their disagreement with the policy of the Central Committee of the Party and their resignation from the Council of People’s Commissars. The desertion of this handful of cowards caused jubilation among the enemies of the October Revolution. The bourgeoisie and its henchmen proclaimed with malicious glee the collapse of Bolshevism and presaged the early end of the Bolshevik Party. But not for a moment was the Party shaken by this handful of deserters. The Central Committee of the Party contemptuously branded them as deserters from the revolution and accomplices of the bourgeoisie, and proceeded with its work. As to the “Left” Socialist-Revolutionaries, they, desirous of retaining their influence over the peasant masses, who definitely sympathized with the Bolsheviks, decided not to quarrel with the latter and for the time being to maintain a united front with them. The Congress of Peasant Soviets which took place in November 1917 recognized all the gains of the October Socialist Revolution and endorsed the decrees of the Soviet Government. An agreement was concluded with the “Left” Socialist- Revolutionaries and several of their number were given posts on the Council of People’s Commissars (Kolegayev, Spiridonova, Proshyan and Steinberg). However, this agreement lasted only until the signing of the Peace of Brest-Litovsk and the formation of the Committees of the Poor Peasants, when a deep cleavage took place among the peasantry and when the “Left” Socialist-Revolutionaries, coming more and more to reflect the interests of the kulaks, started a revolt against the Bolsheviks and were routed by the Soviet Government. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 212 In the interval from October 1917 to February 1918 the Soviet revolution spread throughout the vast territory of the country at such a rapid rate that Lenin referred to it as a “triumphal march” of Soviet power. The Great October Socialist Revolution had won. 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. Economically still weak, and completely dependent on government contracts, the Russian bourgeoisie lacked sufficient political self-reliance and initiative to find a way out of the situation. It had neither the experience of the French bourgeoisie, for example, in political combination and political chicanery on a broad scale nor the schooling of the British bourgeoisie in broadly conceived crafty compromise. It had but recently sought to reach an understanding with the tsar; yet now that the tsar had been overthrown by the February Revolution, and the bourgeoisie itself had come to power, it was unable to think of anything better than to continue the policy of the detested tsar in all its essentials. Like the tsar, it stood for “war to a victorious finish,” although the war was beyond the country’s strength and had reduced the people and the army to a state of utter exhaustion. Like the tsar, it stood for the preservation in the main of big landed property, although the peasantry was perishing from lack of land and the weight of the landlord’s yoke. As to its labour policy the Russian bourgeoisie outstripped even the tsar in its hatred of the working class, for it not only strove to preserve and strengthen the yoke of the factory owners, but to render it intolerable by wholesale lockouts. It is not surprising that the people saw no essential difference between the policy of the tsar and the policy of the bourgeoisie, and that they transferred their hatred of the tsar to the Provisional Government of the bourgeoisie. As long as the compromising Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties possessed a certain amount of influence among the people, the bourgeoisie could use them as a screen and preserve its power. But after the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had exposed themselves as agents of the imperialist bourgeoisie, thus forfeiting their influence among the people, the bourgeoisie and its Provisional Government were left without a support. 2) The October Revolution was headed by so revolutionary a class 213 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 as the working class of Russia, a class which had been steeled in battle, which had in a short space passed through two revolutions, and which by the eve of the third revolution had won recognition as the leader of the people in the struggle for peace, land, liberty and Socialism. If the revolution had not had a leader like the working class of Russia, a leader that had earned the confidence of the people, there would have been no alliance between the workers and peasants, and without such an alliance the victory of the October Revolution would have been impossible. 3) The working class of Russia had so effective an ally in the revolution as the poor peasantry, which comprised the overwhelming majority of the peasant population. The experience of eight months of revolution —which may unhesitatingly be compared to the experience of several decades of “normal” development—had not been in vain as far as the mass of the labouring peasants were concerned. During this period they had had the opportunity to test all the parties of Russia in practice and convince themselves that neither the Constitutional-Democrats, nor the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks would seriously quarrel with the landlords or sacrifice themselves for the interests of the peasants; that there was only one party in Russia—the Bolshevik Party—which was in no way connected with the landlords and which was prepared to crush them in order to satisfy the needs of the peasants. This served as a solid basis for the alliance of the proletariat and the poor peasantry. The existence of this alliance between the working class and the poor peasantry determined the conduct of the middle peasants, who had long been vacillating and only on the eve of the October uprising wholeheartedly swung over towards the revolution and joined forces with the poor peasants. It goes without saying that without this alliance the October Revolution could not have been victorious. 4) The working class was headed by a party so tried and tested in political battles as the Bolshevik Party. Only a party like the Bolshevik Party, courageous enough to lead the people in decisive attack, and cautious enough to keep clear of all the submerged rocks in its path to the goal—only such a party could so skilfully merge into one common revolutionary torrent such diverse revolutionary movements as the general democratic movement for peace, the peasant democratic movement for the seizure of the landed estates, the movement of the oppressed nationalities for national liberation and national equality, and the Socialist movement of the proletariat for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Undoubtedly, the merging of these diverse revolutionary streams HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 214 FROM MARX TO MAO �� NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION into one common powerful revolutionary torrent decided the fate of capitalism in Russia. 5) The October Revolution began at a time when the imperialist war was still at its height, when the principal bourgeois states were split into two hostile camps, and when, absorbed in mutual war and undermining each other’s strength, they were unable to intervene effectively in “Russian affairs” and actively to oppose the October Revolution. This undoubtedly did much to facilitate the victory of the October Socialist Revolution. 7. STRUGGLE OF THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY TO CONSOLIDATE THE SOVIET POWER. PEACE OF BREST-LITOVSK. SEVENTH PARTY CONGRESS In order to consolidate the Soviet power, the old, bourgeois state machine had to be shattered and destroyed and a new, Soviet state machine set up in its place. Further, it was necessary to destroy the survivals of the division of society into estates and the regime of national oppression, to abolish the privileges of the church, to suppress the counterrevolutionary press and counter-revolutionary organizations of all kinds, legal and illegal, and to dissolve the bourgeois Constituent Assembly. Following on the nationalization of the land, all large-scale industry had also to be nationalized. And, lastly, the state of war had to be ended, for the war was hampering the consolidation of the Soviet power more than anything else. All these measures were carried out in the course of a few months, from the end of 1917 to the middle of 1918. The sabotage of the officials of the old Ministries, engineered by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, was smashed and overcome. The Ministries were abolished and replaced by Soviet administrative machinery and appropriate People’s Commissariats. The Supreme Council of National Economy was set up to administer the industry of the country. The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (Vecheka) was created to combat counter-revolution and sabotage, and F. Dzerzhinsky was placed at its head. The formation of a Red Army and Navy was decreed. The Constituent Assembly, the elections to which had largely been held prior to the October Revolution, and which refused to recognize the decrees of the Second Congress of Soviets on peace, land and the transfer of power to the Soviets, was dissolved. In order to put an end to the survivals of feudalism, the estates system, and inequality in all spheres of social life, decrees were issued abolishing the estates, removing restrictions based on nationality or religion, 215 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 separating the church from the state and the schools from the church, establishing equality for women and the equality of all the nationalities of Russia. A special edict of the Soviet Government known as “The Declaration of Rights of the Peoples of Russia” laid down as a law the right of the peoples of Russia to unhampered development and complete equality. In order to undermine the economic power of the bourgeoisie and to create a new, Soviet national economy, and, in the first place, to create a new, Soviet industry, the banks, railways, foreign trade, the mercantile fleet and all large enterprises in all branches of industry— coal, metal, oil, chemicals, machine-building, textiles, sugar, etc.—were nationalized. To render our country financially independent of the foreign capitalists and free from exploitation by them, the foreign loans contracted by the Russian tsar and the Provisional Government were annulled. The people of our country refused to pay debts which had been incurred for the continuation of the war of conquest and which had placed our country in bondage to foreign capital. These and similar measures undermined the very root of the power of the bourgeoisie, the landlords, the reactionary officials and the counterrevolutionary parties, and considerably strengthened the position of the Soviet Government within the country. But the position of the Soviet Government could not be deemed fully secure as long as Russia was in a state of war with Germany and Austria. In order finally to consolidate the Soviet power, the war had to be ended. The Party therefore launched the fight for peace from the moment of the victory of the October Revolution. The Soviet Government called upon “all the belligerent peoples and their governments to start immediate negotiations for a just, democratic peace.” But the “allies”—Great Britain and France—refused to accept the proposal of the Soviet Government. In view of this refusal, the Soviet Government, in compliance with the will of the Soviets, decided to start negotiations with Germany and Austria. The negotiations began on December 3 in Brest-Litovsk. On December 5 an armistice was signed. The negotiations took place at a time when the country was in a state of economic disruption, when war-weariness was universal, when our troops were abandoning the trenches and the front was collapsing. It became clear in the course of the negotiations that the German imperialists were out to seize huge portions of the territory of the former HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 216 tsarist empire, and to turn Poland, the Ukraine and the Baltic countries into dependencies of Germany. To continue the war under such conditions would have meant staking the very existence of the new-born Soviet Republic. The working class and the peasantry were confronted with the necessity of accepting onerous terms of peace, of retreating before the most dangerous marauder of the time—German imperialism—in order to secure a respite in which to strengthen the Soviet power and to create a new army, the Red Army, which would be able to defend the country from enemy attack. All the counter-revolutionaries, from the Mensheviks and Socialist- Revolutionaries to the most arrant Whiteguards, conducted a frenzied campaign against the conclusion of peace. Their policy was clear: they wanted to wreck the peace negotiations, provoke a German offensive and thus imperil the still weak Soviet power and endanger the gains of the workers and peasants. Their allies in this sinister scheme were Trotsky and his accomplice Bukharin, the latter, together with Radek and Pyatakov, heading a group which was hostile to the Party but camouflaged itself under the name of “Left Communists.” Trotsky and the group of “Left Communists” began a fierce struggle within the Party against Lenin, demanding the continuation of the war. These people were clearly playing into the hands of the German imperialists and the counterrevolutionaries within the country, for they were working to expose the young Soviet Republic, which had not yet any army, to the blows of German imperialism. This was really a policy of provocateurs, skilfully masked by Left phraseology. On February 10, 1918, the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk were broken off. Although Lenin and Stalin, in the name of the Central Committee of the Party, had insisted that peace be signed, Trotsky, who was chairman of the Soviet delegation at Brest-Litovsk, treacherously violated the direct instructions of the Bolshevik Party. He announced that the Soviet Republic refused to conclude peace on the terms proposed by Germany. At the same time he informed the Germans that the Soviet Republic would not fight and would continue to demobilize the army. This was monstrous. The German imperialists could have desired nothing more from this traitor to the interests of the Soviet country. The German government broke the armistice and assumed the offensive. The remnants of our old army crumbled and scattered be217 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 fore the onslaught of the German troops. The Germans advanced swiftly, seizing enormous territory and threatening Petrograd. German imperialism invaded the Soviet land with the object of overthrowing the Soviet power and converting our country into its colony. The ruins of the old tsarist army could not withstand the armed hosts of German imperialism, and steadily retreated under their blows. But the armed intervention of the German imperialists was the signal for a mighty revolutionary upsurge in the country. The Party and the Soviet Government issued the call—“The Socialist fatherland is in danger!” And in response the working class energetically began to form regiments of the Red Army. The young detachments of the new army—the army of the revolutionary people—heroically resisted the German marauders who were armed to the teeth. At Narva and Pskov the German invaders met with a resolute repulse. Their advance on Petrograd was checked. February 23—the day the forces of German imperialism were repulsed—is regarded as the birthday of the Red Army. On February 18, 1918, the Central Committee of the Party had approved Lenin’s proposal to send a telegram to the German government offering to conclude an immediate peace. But in order to secure more advantageous terms, the Germans continued to advance, and only on February 22 did the German government express its willingness to sign peace. The terms were now far more onerous than those originally proposed. Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov had to wage a stubborn fight on the Central Committee against Trotsky, Bukharin and the other Trotskyites before they secured a decision in favour of the conclusion of peace. Bukharin and Trotsky, Lenin declared, “actually helped the German imperialists and hindered the growth and development of the revolution in Germany.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. XXII, p. 307.) On February 23, the Central Committee decided to accept the terms of the German Command and to sign the peace treaty. The treachery of Trotsky and Bukharin cost the Soviet Republic dearly. Latvia, Esthonia, not to mention Poland, passed into German hands; the Ukraine was severed from the Soviet Republic and converted into a vassal of the German state. The Soviet Republic undertook to pay an indemnity to the Germans. Meanwhile, the “Left Communists” continued their struggle against Lenin, sinking deeper and deeper into the slough of treachery. The Moscow Regional Bureau of the Party, of which the “Left Communists” (Bukharin, Ossinsky, Yakovleva, Stukov and Mantsev) HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 218 had temporarily seized control, passed a resolution of no-confidence in the Central Committee, a resolution designed to split the Party. The Bureau declared that it considered “a split in the Party in the very near future scarcely avoidable.” The “Left Communists” even went so far in their resolution as to adopt an anti-Soviet stand. “In the interests of the international revolution,” they declared, “we consider it expedient to consent to the possible loss of the Soviet power, which has now become purely formal.” Lenin branded this decision as “strange and monstrous.” At that time the real cause of this anti-Party behaviour of Trotsky and the “Left Communists” was not yet clear to the Party. But the recent trial of the Anti-Soviet “Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites” (beginning of 1938) has now revealed that Bukharin and the group of “Left Communists” headed by him, together with Trotsky and the “Left” Socialist-Revolutionaries, were at that time secretly conspiring against the Soviet Government. Now it is known that Bukharin, Trotsky and their fellow-conspirators had determined to wreck the Peace of Brest- Litovsk, arrest V. I. Lenin, J. V. Stalin and Y. M. Sverdlov, assassinate them, and form a new government consisting of Bukharinites, Trotskyites and “Left” Socialist-Revolutionaries. While hatching this clandestine counter-revolutionary plot, the group of “Left Communists,” with the support of Trotsky, openly attacked the Bolshevik Party, trying to split it and to disintegrate its ranks. But at this grave juncture the Party rallied around Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov and supported the Central Committee on the question of peace as on all other questions. The “Left Communist” group was isolated and defeated. In order that the Party might pronounce its final decision on the question of peace the Seventh Party Congress was summoned. The congress opened on March 6, 1918. This was the first congress held after our Party had taken power. It was attended by 46 delegates with vote and 58 delegates with voice but no vote, representing 145,000 Party members. Actually, the membership of the Party at that time was not less than 270,000. The discrepancy was due to the fact that, owing to the urgency with which the congress met, a large number of the organizations were unable to send delegates in time; and the organizations in the territories then occupied by the Germans were unable to send delegates at all. Reporting at this congress on the Brest-Litovsk Peace, Lenin said that “. . . the severe crisis which our Party is now experiencing, owing to the formation of a Left opposition within it, is one of the gravest HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 219 crises the Russian revolution has experienced.” (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VII, pp. 293-94.) The resolution submitted by Lenin on the subject of the Brest-Litovsk Peace was adopted by 30 votes against 12, with 4 abstentions. On the day following the adoption of this resolution, Lenin wrote an article entitled “A Distressful Peace,” in which he said: “Intolerably severe are the terms of peace. Nevertheless, history will claim its own. . . . Let us set to work to organize, organize and organize. Despite all trials, the future is ours.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. XXII, p. 288.) In its resolution, the congress declared that further military attacks by imperialist states on the Soviet Republic were inevitable, and that therefore the congress considered it the fundamental task of the Party to adopt the most energetic and resolute measures to strengthen the selfdiscipline and discipline of the workers and peasants, to prepare the masses for self-sacrificing defence of the Socialist country, to organize the Red Army, and to introduce universal military training. Endorsing Lenin’s policy with regard to the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, the congress condemned the position of Trotsky and Bukharin and stigmatized the attempt of the defeated “Left Communists” to continue their splitting activities at the congress itself. The Peace of Brest-Litovsk gave the Party a respite in which to consolidate the Soviet power and to organize the economic life of the country. The peace made it possible to take advantage of the conflicts within the imperialist camp (the war of Austria and Germany with the Entente, which was still in progress) to disintegrate the forces of the enemy, to organize a Soviet economic system and to create a Red Army. The peace made it possible for the proletariat to retain the support of the peasantry and to accumulate strength for the defeat of the Whiteguard generals in the Civil War. In the period of the October Revolution Lenin taught the Bolshevik Party how to advance fearlessly and resolutely when conditions favoured an advance. In the period of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Lenin taught the Party how to retreat in good order when the forces of the enemy are obviously superior to our own, in order to prepare with the utmost energy for a new offensive. History has fully proved the correctness of Lenin’s line. It was decided at the Seventh Congress to change the name of the Party and to alter the Party Program. The name of the Party was changed to the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)—R.C.P.(B.). Lenin proposed to call our Party a Communist Party because this name HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 220 precisely corresponded to the aim of the Party, namely, the achievement of Communism. A special commission, which included Lenin and Stalin, was elected to draw up a new Party program, Lenin’s draft program having been accepted as a basis. Thus the Seventh Congress accomplished a task of profound historical importance: it defeated the enemy hidden within the Party’s ranks— the “Left Communists” and Trotskyites; it succeeded in withdrawing the country from the imperialist war; it secured peace and a respite; it enabled the Party to gain time for the organization of the Red Army; and it set the Party the task of introducing Socialist order in the national economy. 8. LENIN’S PLAN FOR THE INITIAL STEPS IN SOCIALIST CONSTRUCTION. COMMITTEES OF THE POOR PEASANTS AND THE CURBING OF THE KULAKS. REVOLT OF THE “LEFT” SOCIALIST- REVOLUTIONARIES AND ITS SUPPRESSION. FIFTH CONGRESS OF SOVIETS AND ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE R.S.F.S.R. Having concluded peace and thus gained a respite, the Soviet Government set about the work of Socialist construction. Lenin called the period from November 1917 to February 1918 the stage of “the Red Guard attack on capital.” During the first half of 1918 the Soviet Government succeeded in breaking the economic might of the bourgeoisie, in concentrating in its own hands the key positions of the national economy (mills, factories, banks, railways, foreign trade, mercantile fleet, etc.), smashing the bourgeois machinery of state power, and victoriously crushing the first attempts of the counter-revolution to overthrow the Soviet power. But this was by no means enough. If there was to be progress, the destruction of the old order had to be followed by the building of a new. Accordingly, in the spring of 1918, a transition was begun “from the expropriation of the expropriators” to a new stage of Socialist construction— the organizational consolidation of the victories gained, the building of the Soviet national economy. Lenin held that the utmost advantage should be taken of the respite in order to begin to lay the foundation of the Socialist economic system. The Bolsheviks had to learn to organize and manage production in a new way. The Bolshevik Party had convinced Russia, Lenin wrote; the Bolshevik Party had wrested Russia for the people from the hands of the rich, and now the Bolsheviks must learn to govern Russia. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 221 Lenin held that the chief task at the given stage was to keep account of everything the country produced and to exercise control over the distribution of all products. Petty-bourgeois elements predominated in the economic system of the country. The millions of small owners in town and country were a breeding ground for capitalism. These small owners recognized neither labour discipline nor civil discipline; they would not submit to a system of state accounting and control. What was particularly dangerous at this difficult juncture was the petty-bourgeois welter of speculation and profiteering, the attempts of the small owners and traders to profit by the people’s want. The Party started a vigorous war on slovenliness in work, on the absence of labour discipline in industry. The masses were slow in acquiring new habits of labour. The struggle for labour discipline consequently became the major task of the period. Lenin pointed to the necessity of developing Socialist emulation in industry; of introducing the piece rate system; of combating wage equalization; of resorting—in addition to methods of education and persuasion—to methods of compulsion with regard to those who wanted to grab as much as possible from the state, with regard to idlers and profiteers. He maintained that the new discipline—the discipline of labour, the discipline of comradely relations, Soviet discipline—was something that would be evolved by the labouring millions in the course of their daily, practical work, and that “this task will take up a whole historical epoch.” (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VII, p. 393.) All these problems of Socialist construction, of the new, Socialist relations of production, were dealt with by Lenin in his celebrated work, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government. The “Left Communists,” acting in conjunction with the Socialist- Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, fought Lenin over these questions too. Bukharin, Ossinsky and others were opposed to the introduction of discipline, one-man management in the enterprises, the employment of bourgeois experts in industry, and the introduction of efficient business methods. They slandered Lenin by claiming that this policy would mean a return to bourgeois conditions. At the same time, the “Left Communists” preached the Trotskyite view that Socialist construction and the victory of socialism in Russia were impossible. The “Left” phraseology of the “Left Communists” served to camouflage their defence of the kulaks, idlers and profiteers who were opposed to discipline and hostile to the state regulation of economic life, to accounting and control. Having settled on the principles of organization of the new, Soviet industry, the Party proceeded to tackle the problems of the countryside, HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 222 which at this period was in the throes of a struggle between the poor peasants and the kulaks. The kulaks were gaining strength and seizing the lands confiscated from the landlords. The poor peasants needed assistance. The kulaks fought the proletarian government and refused to sell grain to it at fixed prices. They wanted to starve the Soviet state into renouncing Socialist measures. The Party set the task of smashing the counter-revolutionary kulaks. Detachments of industrial workers were sent into the countryside with the object of organizing the poor peasants and ensuring the success of the struggle against the kulaks, who were holding back their grain surpluses. “Comrades, workers, remember that the revolution is in a critical situation,” Lenin wrote. “Remember that you alone can save the revolution, nobody else. What we need is tens of thousands of picked, politically advanced workers, loyal to the cause of Socialism, incapable of succumbing to bribery and the temptations of pilfering, and capable of creating an iron force against the kulaks, profiteers, marauders, bribers and disorganizers.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. XXIII, p. 25.) “The struggle for bread is a struggle for Socialism,” Lenin said. And it was under this slogan that the sending of workers’ detachments to the rural districts was organized. A number of decrees were issued establishing a food dictatorship and conferring emergency powers on the organs of the People’s Commissariat of Food for the purchase of grain at fixed prices. A decree was issued on June 11, 1918, providing for the creation of Committees of the Poor Peasants. These committees played an important part in the struggle against the kulaks, in the redistribution of the confiscated land and the distribution of agricultural implements, in the collection of food surpluses from the kulaks, and in the supply of foodstuffs to the working-class centres and the Red Army. Fifty million hectares of kulak land passed into the hands of the poor and middle peasants. A large portion of the kulaks’ means of production was confiscated and turned over to the poor peasants. The formation of the Committees of the Poor Peasants was a further stage in the development of the Socialist revolution in the countryside. The committees were strongholds of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the villages. It was largely through them that enlistment for the Red Army was carried out among the peasants. The proletarian campaign in the rural districts and the organization of the Committees of the Poor Peasants consolidated the Soviet power HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 223 in the countryside and were of tremendous political importance in winning over the middle peasants to the side of the Soviet Government. At the end of 1918, when their task had been completed, the Committees of the Poor Peasants were merged with the rural Soviets and their existence was thus terminated. At the Fifth Congress of Soviets which opened on July 4, 1918, the “Left” Socialist-Revolutionaries launched a fierce attack on Lenin in defence of the kulaks. They demanded the discontinuation of the fight against the kulaks and of the dispatch of workers’ food detachments into the countryside. When the “Left” Socialist-Revolutionaries saw that the majority of the congress was firmly opposed to their policy, they started a revolt in Moscow and seized Tryokhsvyatitelsky Alley, from which they began to shell the Kremlin. This foolhardy outbreak was put down by the Bolsheviks within a few hours. Attempts at revolt were made by “Left” Socialist-Revolutionaries in other parts of the country, but everywhere these outbreaks were speedily suppressed. As the trial of the Anti-Soviet “Block of Rights and Trotskyites” has now established, the revolt of the “Left” Socialist-Revolutionaries was started with the knowledge and consent of Bukharin and Trotsky and was part of a general counter-revolutionary conspiracy of the Bukharinites, Trotskyites and “Left” Socialist-Revolutionaries against the Soviet power. At this juncture, too, a “Left” Socialist-Revolutionary by name of Blumkin, afterwards an agent of Trotsky, made his way into the German Embassy and assassinated Mirbach, the German Ambassador in Moscow, with the object of provoking a war with Germany. But the Soviet Government managed to avert war and to frustrate the provocateur designs of the counter-revolutionaries. The Fifth Congress of Soviets adopted the First Soviet Constitution —the Constitution of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. B R I E F S U M M A R Y During the eight months, February to October 1917, the Bolshevik Party accomplished the very difficult task of winning over the majority of the working class and the majority in the Soviets, and enlisting the support of millions of peasants for the Socialist revolution. It wrested these masses from the influence of the petty-bourgeois parties (Socialist- Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and Anarchists), by exposing the policy of these parties step by step and showing that it ran counter to the interests of the working people. The Bolshevik Party carried on extensive political HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 224 FROM MARX TO MAO �� NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION work at the front and in the rear, preparing the masses for the October Socialist Revolution. The events of decisive importance in the history of the Party at this period were Lenin’s arrival from exile abroad, his April Theses, the April Party Conference and the Sixth Party Congress. 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 revolution. The April Conference directed the efforts of the Party to the struggle for the transition from the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution to the Socialist revolution. The Sixth Congress headed the Party for an armed uprising against the bourgeoisie and its Provisional Government. The compromising Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties, the Anarchists, and the other non-Communist parties completed the cycle of their development: they all became bourgeois parties even before the October Revolution and fought for the preservation and integrity of the capitalist system. The Bolshevik Party was the only party which led the struggle of the masses for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of the power of the Soviets. At the same time, the Bolsheviks defeated the attempts of the capitulators within the Party—Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, Bukharin, Trotsky and Pyatakov—to deflect the Party from the path of Socialist revolution. 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. The October Socialist Revolution smashed capitalism, deprived the bourgeoisie of the means of production and converted the mills, factories, land, railways and banks into the property of the whole people, into public property. It established the dictatorship of the proletariat and turned over the government of the vast country to the working class, thus making it the ruling class. The October Socialist Revolution thereby ushered in a new era in the history of mankind—the era of proletarian revolutions. C H A P T E R E I G H T THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY IN THE PERIOD OF FOREIGN MILITARY INTERVENTION AND CIVIL WAR ( 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 0 ) 1. BEGINNING OF FOREIGN MILITARY INTERVENTION. FIRST PERIOD OF THE CIVIL WAR The conclusion of the Peace of Brest-Litovsk and the consolidation of the Soviet power, as a result of a series of revolutionary economic measures adopted by it, at a time when the war in the West was still in full swing, created profound alarm among the Western imperialists, especially those of the Entente countries. The Entente imperialists feared that the conclusion of peace between Germany and Russia might improve Germany’s position in the war and correspondingly worsen the position of their own armies. They feared, moreover, that peace between Russia and Germany might stimulate the craving for peace in all countries and on all fronts, and thus interfere with the prosecution of the war and damage the cause of the imperialists. Lastly, they feared that the existence of a Soviet government on the territory of a vast country, and the success it had achieved at home after the overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie, might serve as an infectious example for the workers and soldiers of the West. Profoundly discontented with the protracted war, the workers and soldiers might follow in the footsteps of the Russians and turn their bayonets against their masters and oppressors. Consequently, the Entente governments decided to intervene in Russia by armed force with the object of overthrowing the Soviet Government and establishing a bourgeois government, which would restore the bourgeois system in the country, annul the peace treaty with the Germans and re-establish the military front against Germany and Austria. The Entente imperialists launched upon this sinister enterprise all the more readily because they were convinced that the Soviet Government was unstable; they had no doubt that with some effort on the part of its enemies its early fall would be inevitable. The achievements of the Soviet Government and its consolidation created even greater alarm among the deposed classes the landlords 225 HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 226 and capitalists; in the ranks of the vanquished parties—the Constitutional- Democrats, Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Anarchists and the bourgeois nationalists of all hues; and among the Whiteguard generals, Cossack officers, etc. From the very first days of the victorious October Revolution, all these hostile elements began to shout from the housetops that there was no ground in Russia for a Soviet power, that it was doomed, that it was bound to fall within a week or two, or a month, or two or three months at most. But as the Soviet Government, despite the imprecations of its enemies, continued to exist and gain strength, its foes within Russia were forced to admit that it was much stronger than they had imagined, and that its overthrow would require great efforts and a fierce struggle on the part of all the forces of counter-revolution. They therefore decided to embark upon counter-revolutionary insurrectionary activities on a broad scale: to mobilize the forces of counter-revolution, to assemble military cadres and to organize revolts, especially in the Cossack and kulak districts. Thus, already in the first half of 1918, two definite forces took shape that were prepared to embark upon the overthrow of the Soviet power, namely, the foreign imperialists of the Entente and the counterrevolutionaries at home. Neither of these forces possessed all the requisites needed to undertake the overthrow of the Soviet Government singly. The counter-revolutionaries in Russia had certain military cadres and man-power, drawn principally from the upper classes of the Cossacks and from the kulaks, enough to start a rebellion against the Soviet Government. But they possessed neither money nor arms. The foreign imperialists, on the other hand, had the money and the arms, but could not “release” a sufficient number of troops for purposes of intervention; they could not do so, not only because these troops were required for the war with Germany and Austria, but because they might not prove altogether reliable in a war against the Soviet power. The conditions of the struggle against the Soviet power dictated a union of the two anti-Soviet forces, foreign and domestic. And this union was effected in the first half of 1918. This was how the foreign military intervention against the Soviet power supported by counter-revolutionary revolts of its foes at home originated. This was the end of the respite in Russia and the beginning of the Civil War, which was a war of the workers and peasants of the nations of Russia against the foreign and domestic enemies of the Soviet power. 227 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 0 The imperialists of Great Britain, France, Japan and America started their military intervention without any declaration of war, although the intervention was a war, a war against Russia, and the worst kind of war at that. These “civilized” marauders secretly and stealthily made their way to Russian shores and landed their troops on Russia’s territory. The British and French landed troops in the north, occupied Archangel and Murmansk, supported a local Whiteguard revolt, overthrew the Soviets and set up a White “Government of North Russia.” The Japanese landed troops in Vladivostok, seized the Maritime Province, dispersed the Soviets and supported the Whiteguard rebels, who subsequently restored the bourgeois system. In the North Caucasus, Generals Kornilov, Alexeyev and Denikin, with the support of the British and French, formed a Whiteguard “Volunteer Army,” raised a revolt of the upper classes of the Cossacks and started hostilities against the Soviets. On the Don, Generals Krasnov and Mamontov, with the secret support of the German imperialists (the Germans hesitated to support them openly owing to the peace treaty between Germany and Russia), raised a revolt of Don Cossacks, occupied the Don region and started hostilities against the Soviets. In the Middle Volga region and in Siberia, the British and French instigated a revolt of the Czechoslovak Corps. This corps, which consisted of prisoners of war, had received permission from the Soviet Government to return home through Siberia and the Far East. But on the way it was used by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and by the British and French for a revolt against the Soviet Government. The revolt of the corps served as a signal for a revolt of the kulaks in the Volga region and in Siberia, and of the workers of the Votkinsk and Izhevsk Works, who were under the influence of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. A Whiteguard- Socialist-Revolutionary government was set up in the Volga region, in Samara, and a Whiteguard government of Siberia, in Omsk. Germany took no part in the intervention of this British-French- Japanese-American bloc; nor could she do so, since she was at war with this bloc if for no other reason. But in spite of this, and notwithstanding the existence of a peace treaty between Russia and Germany, no Bolshevik doubted that Kaiser Wilhelm’s government was just as rabid an enemy of Soviet Russia as the British-French-Japanese-American invaders. And, indeed, the German imperialists did their utmost to isolate, weaken and destroy Soviet Russia. They snatched from it the Ukraine—true, it was in accordance with a “treaty” with the HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 228 Whiteguard Ukrainian Rada (Council)—brought in their troops at the request of the Rada and began mercilessly to rob and oppress the Ukrainian people, forbidding them to maintain any connections whatever with Soviet Russia. They severed Transcaucasia from Soviet Russia, sent German and Turkish troops there at the request of the Georgian and Azerbaidjan nationalists and began to play the masters in Tiflis and in Baku. They supplied, not openly, it is true, abundant arms and provisions to General Krasnov, who had raised a revolt against the Soviet Government on the Don. Soviet Russia was thus cut off from her principal sources of food, raw material and fuel. Conditions were hard in Soviet Russia at that period. There was a shortage of bread and meat. The workers were starving. In Moscow and Petrograd a bread ration of one-eighth of a pound was issued to them every other day, and there were times when no bread was issued at all. The factories were at a standstill, or almost at a standstill, owing to a lack of raw materials and fuel. But the working class did not lose heart. Nor did the Bolshevik Party. The desperate struggle waged to overcome the incredible difficulties of that period showed how inexhaustible is the energy latent in the working class and how immense the prestige of the Bolshevik Party. The Party proclaimed the country an armed camp and placed its economic, cultural and political life on a war footing. The Soviet Government announced that “the Socialist fatherland is in danger,” and called upon the people to rise in its defence. Lenin issued the slogan, “All for the front!”—and hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants volunteered for service in the Red Army and left for the front. About half the membership of the Party and of the Young Communist League went to the front. The Party roused the people for a war for the fatherland, a war against the foreign invaders and against the revolts of the exploiting classes whom the revolution had overthrown. The Council of Workers’ and Peasants’ Defence, organized by Lenin, directed the work of supplying the front with reinforcements, food, clothing and arms. The substitution of compulsory military service for the volunteer system brought hundreds of thousands of new recruits into the Red Army and very shortly raised its strength to over a million men. Although the country was in a difficult position, and the young Red Army was not yet consolidated, the measures of defence adopted soon yielded their first fruits. General Krasnov was forced back from Tsaritsyn, whose capture he had regarded as certain, and driven beyond the River Don. General Denikin’s operations were localized within a 229 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 0 small area in the North Caucasus, while General Kornilov was killed in action against the Red Army. The Czechoslovaks and the Whiteguard- Socialist-Revolutionary bands were ousted from Kazan, Simbirsk and Samara and driven to the Urals. A revolt in Yaroslavl headed by the Whiteguard Savinkov and organized by Lockhart, chief of the British Mission in Moscow, was suppressed, and Lockhart himself arrested. The Socialist-Revolutionaries, who had assassinated Comrades Uritsky and Volodarsky and had made a villainous attempt on the life of Lenin, were subjected to a Red terror in retaliation for their White terror against the Bolsheviks, and were completely routed in every important city in Central Russia. The young Red Army matured and hardened in battle. The work of the Communist Commissars was of decisive importance in the consolidation and political education of the Red Army and in raising its discipline and fighting efficiency. But the Bolshevik Party knew that these were only the first, not the decisive successes of the Red Army. It was aware that new and far more serious battles were still to come, and that the country could recover the lost food, raw material and fuel regions only by a prolonged and stubborn struggle with the enemy. The Bolsheviks therefore undertook intense preparations for a protracted war and decided to place the whole country at the service of the front. The Soviet Government introduced War Communism. It took under its control the middle-sized and small industries, in addition to large-scale industry, so as to accumulate goods for the supply of the army and the agricultural population. It introduced a state monopoly of the grain trade, prohibited private trading in grain and established the surplus-appropriation system, under which all surplus produce in the hands of the peasants was to be registered and acquired by the state at fixed prices, so as to accumulate stores of grain for the provisioning of the army and the workers. Lastly, it introduced universal labour service for all classes. By making physical labour compulsory for the bourgeoisie and thus releasing workers for other duties of greater importance to the front, the Party was giving practical effect to the principle: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.” All these measures, which were necessitated by the exceptionally difficult conditions of national defence, and bore a temporary character, were in their entirety known as War Communism. The country prepared itself for a long and exacting civil war, for a war against the foreign and internal enemies of the Soviet power. By the end of 1918 it had to increase the strength of the army threefold, and to accumulate supplies for this army. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 230 Lenin said at that time: “We had decided to have an army of one million men by the spring; now we need an army of three million. We can get it. And we will get it.” 2. DEFEAT OF GERMANY IN THE WAR. REVOLUTION IN GERMANY. FOUNDING OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL. EIGHTH PARTY CONGRESS While the Soviet country was preparing for new battles against the forces of foreign intervention, in the West decisive events were taking place in the belligerent countries, both on the war fronts and in their interior. Germany and Austria were suffocating in the grip of war and a food crisis. Whereas Great Britain, France and the United States were continually drawing upon new resources, Germany and Austria were consuming their last meagre stocks. The situation was such that Germany and Austria, having reached the stage of extreme exhaustion, were on the brink of defeat. At the same time, the peoples of Germany and Austria were seething with indignation against the disastrous and interminable war, and against their imperialist governments who had reduced them to a state of exhaustion and starvation. The revolutionary influence of the October Revolution also had a tremendous effect, as did the fraternization of the Soviet soldiers with the Austrian and German soldiers at the front even before the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, the actual termination of the war with Soviet Russia and the conclusion of peace with her. The people of Russia had brought about the end of the detested war by overthrowing their imperialist government, and this could not but serve as an object lesson to the Austrian and German workers. And the German soldiers who had been stationed on the Eastern front and who after the Peace of Brest-Litovsk were transferred to the Western front could not but undermine the morale of the German army on that front by their accounts of the fraternization with the Soviet soldiers and of the way the Soviet soldiers had got rid of the war. The disintegration of the Austrian army from the same causes had begun even earlier. All this served to accentuate the craving for peace among the German soldiers; they lost their former fighting efficiency and began to retreat in face of the onslaught of the Entente armies. In November 1918 a revolution broke out in Germany, and Wilhelm and his government were overthrown. 231 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 0 Germany was obliged to acknowledge defeat and to sue for peace. Thus at one stroke Germany was reduced from a first-rate power to a second-rate power. As far as the position of the Soviet Government was concerned, this circumstance had certain disadvantages, inasmuch as it made the Entente countries, which had started armed intervention against the Soviet power, the dominant force in Europe and Asia, and enabled them to intervene more actively in the Soviet country and to blockade her, to draw the noose more tightly around the Soviet power. And this was what actually happened, as we shall see later. On the other hand, it had its advantages, which outweighed the disadvantages and fundamentally improved the position of Soviet Russia. In the first place, the Soviet Government was now able to annul the predatory Peace of Brest-Litovsk, to stop paying the indemnities, and to start an open struggle, military and political, for the liberation of Esthonia, Latvia, Byelorussia, Lithuania, the Ukraine and Transcaucasia from the yoke of German imperialism. Secondly, and chiefly, the existence in the centre of Europe, in Germany, of a republican regime and of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies was bound to revolutionize, and actually did revolutionize, the countries of Europe, and this could not but strengthen the position of the Soviet power in Russia. True, the revolution in Germany was not a Socialist but a bourgeois revolution, and the Soviets were an obedient tool of the bourgeois parliament, for they were dominated by the Social-Democrats, who were compromisers of the type of the Russian Mensheviks. This in fact explains the weakness of the German revolution. How weak it really was is shown, for example, by the fact that it allowed the German Whiteguards to assassinate such prominent revolutionaries as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht with impunity. Nevertheless, it was a revolution: Wilhelm had been overthrown, and the workers had cast off their chains; and this in itself was bound to unloose the revolution in the West, was bound to call forth a rise in the revolution in the European countries. The tide of revolution in Europe began to mount. A revolutionary movement started in Austria, and a Soviet Republic arose in Hungary. With the rising tide of the revolution Communist parties came to the surface. A real basis now existed for a union of the Communist parties, for the formation of the Third, Communist International. In March 1919, on the initiative of the Bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, the First Congress of the Communist Parties of various countries, held in Moscow, founded the Communist International. Although many of HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 232 the delegates were prevented by the blockade and imperialist persecution from arriving in Moscow, the most important countries of Europe and America were represented at this First Congress. The work of the congress was guided by Lenin. Lenin reported on the subject of bourgeois democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat. He brought out the importance of the Soviet system, showing that it meant genuine democracy for the working people. The congress adopted a manifesto to the proletariat of all countries calling upon them to wage a determined struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat and for the triumph of Soviets all over the world. The congress set up an Executive Committee of the Third, Communist International (E.C.C.I.). Thus was founded an international revolutionary proletarian organization of a new type—the Communist International—the Marxist- Leninist International. The Eighth Congress of our Party met in March 1919. It assembled in the midst of a conflict of contradictory factors—on the one hand, the reactionary bloc of the Entente countries against the Soviet Government had grown stronger, and, on the other, the rising tide of revolution in Europe, especially in the defeated countries, had considerably improved the position of the Soviet country. The congress was attended by 301 delegates with vote, representing 313,766 members of the Party, and 102 delegates with voice but no vote. In his inaugural speech, Lenin paid homage to the memory of Y. M. Sverdlov, one of the finest organizing talents in the Bolshevik Party, who had died on the eve of the congress. The congress adopted a new Party Program. This program gives a description of capitalism and of its highest phase—imperialism. It compares two systems of state—the bourgeois-democratic system and the Soviet system. It details the specific tasks of the Party in the struggle for Socialism: completion of the expropriation of the bourgeoisie; administration of the economic life of the country in accordance with a single Socialist plan; participation of the trade unions in the organization of the national economy; Socialist labour discipline; utilization of bourgeois experts in the economic field under the control of Soviet bodies; gradual and systematic enlistment of the middle peasantry in the work of Socialist construction. The congress adopted Lenin’s proposal to include in the program in addition to a definition of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, the description of industrial capitalism and simple commodity production contained in the old program adopted at the Second Party Con233 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 0 gress. Lenin considered it essential that the program should take account of the complexity of our economic system and note the existence of diverse economic formations in the country, including small commodity production, as represented by the middle peasants. Therefore, during the debate on the program, Lenin vigorously condemned the anti-Bolshevik views of Bukharin, who proposed that the clauses dealing with capitalism, small commodity production, the economy of the middle peasant, be left out of the program. Bukharin’s views represented a Menshevik-Trotskyite denial of the role played by the middle peasant in the development of the Soviet state. Furthermore, Bukharin glossed over the fact that the small commodity production of the peasants bred and nourished kulak elements. Lenin further refuted the anti-Bolshevik views of Bukharin and Pyatakov on the national question. They spoke against the inclusion in the program of a clause on the right of nations to self-determination; they were against the equality of nations, claiming that it was a slogan that would hinder the, victory of the proletarian revolution and the union of the proletarians of different nationalities. Lenin overthrew these utterly pernicious, imperialist, chauvinist views of Bukharin and Pyatakov. An important place in the deliberations of the Eighth Congress was devoted to policy towards the middle peasants. The Decree on the Land had resulted in a steady growth in the number of middle peasants, who now comprised the majority of the peasant population. The attitude and conduct of the middle peasantry, which vacillated between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, was of momentous importance for the fate of the Civil War and Socialist construction. The outcome of the Civil War largely depended on which way the middle peasant would swing, which class would win his allegiance—the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. The Czechoslovaks, the Whiteguards, the kulaks, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks were able to overthrow the Soviet power in the Volga region in the summer of 1918 because they were supported by a large section of the middle peasantry. The same was true during the revolts raised by the kulaks in Central Russia. But in the autumn of 1918 the mass of the middle peasants began to swing over to the Soviet power. The peasants saw that victories of the Whites were followed by the restoration of the power of the landlords, the seizure of peasants’ land, and the robbery, flogging and torture of peasants. The activities of the Committees of the Poor Peasants, which crushed the kulaks, also contributed to the change in the attitude of the peasantry. Accordingly, in November 1918, Lenin issued the slogan: HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 234 “Learn to come to an agreement with the middle peasant, while not for a moment renouncing the struggle against the kulak and at the same time firmly relying solely on the poor peasant.” (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VIII, p. 150.) Of course, the middle peasants did not cease to vacillate entirely, but they drew closer to the Soviet Government and began to support it more solidly. This to a large extent was facilitated by the policy towards the middle peasants laid down by the Eighth Party Congress. The Eighth Congress marked a turning point in the policy of the Party towards the middle peasants. Lenin’s report and the decisions of the congress laid down a new line of the Party on this question. The congress demanded that the Party organizations and all Communists should draw a strict distinction and division between the middle peasant and the kulak, and should strive to win the former over to the side of the working class by paying close attention to his needs. The backwardness of the middle peasants had to be overcome by persuasion and not by compulsion and coercion. The congress therefore gave instructions that no compulsion be used in the carrying out of Socialist measures in the countryside (formation of communes and agricultural artels). In all cases affecting the vital interests of the middle peasant, a practical agreement should be reached with him and concessions made with regard to the methods of realizing Socialist changes. The congress laid down the policy of a stable alliance with the middle peasant, the leading role in this alliance to be maintained by the proletariat. The new policy towards the middle peasant proclaimed by Lenin at the Eighth Congress required that the proletariat should rely on the poor peasant, maintain a stable alliance with the middle peasant and fight the kulak. The policy of the Party before the Eighth Congress was in general one of neutralizing the middle peasant. This meant that the Party strove to prevent the middle peasant from siding with the kulak and with the bourgeoisie in general. But now this was not enough. The Eighth Congress passed from a policy of neutralization of the middle peasant to a policy of stable alliance with him for the purpose of the struggle against the Whiteguards and foreign intervention and for the successful building of Socialism. The policy adopted by the congress towards the middle peasants, who formed the bulk of the peasantry, played a decisive part in ensuring success in the Civil War against foreign intervention and its Whiteguard henchmen. In the autumn of 1919, when the peasants had to choose between the Soviet power and Denikin, they supported the Soviets, and the proletarian dictatorship was able to vanquish its most dangerous enemy. 235 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 0 The problems connected with the building up of the Red Army held a special place in the deliberations of the congress, where the socalled “Military Opposition” appeared in the field. This “Military Opposition” comprised quite a number of former members of the now shattered group of “Left Communists”; but it also included some Party workers who had never participated in any opposition, but were dissatisfied with the way Trotsky was conducting the affairs of the army. The majority of the delegates from the army were distinctly hostile to Trotsky; they resented his veneration for the military experts of the old tsarist army, some of whom were betraying us outright in the Civil War, and his arrogant and hostile attitude towards the old Bolshevik cadres in the army. Instances of Trotsky’s “practices” were cited at the congress. For example, he had attempted to shoot a number of prominent army Communists serving at the front, just because they had incurred his displeasure. This was directly playing into the hands of the enemy. It was only the intervention of the Central Committee and the protests of military men that saved the lives of these comrades. But while fighting Trotsky’s distortions of the military policy of the Party, the “Military Opposition” held incorrect views on a number of points concerning the building up of the army. Lenin and Stalin vigorously came out against the “Military Opposition,” because the latter defended the survivals of the guerrilla spirit and resisted the creation of a regular Red Army, the utilization of the military experts of the old army and the establishment of that iron discipline without which no army can be a real army. Comrade Stalin rebutted the “Military Opposition” and demanded the creation of a regular army inspired with the spirit of strictest discipline. He said: “Either we create a real worker and peasant—primarily a peasant— army, strictly disciplined army, and defend the Republic, or we perish.” While rejecting a number of proposals made by the “Military Opposition,” the congress dealt a blow at Trotsky by demanding an improvement in the work of the central military institutions and the enhancement of the role of the Communists in the army. A Military Commission was set up at the congress; thanks to its efforts the decision on the military question was adopted by the congress unanimously. The effect of this decision was to strengthen the Red Army and to bring it still closer to the Party. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 236 FROM MARX TO MAO �� NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION The congress further discussed Party and Soviet affairs and the guiding role of the Party in the Soviets. During the debate on the latter question the congress repudiated the view of the opportunist Sapronov-Ossinsky group which held that the Party should not guide the work of the Soviets. Lastly, in view of the huge influx of new members into the Party, the congress outlined measures to improve the social composition of the Party and decided to conduct a re-registration of its members. This initiated the first purge of the Party ranks. 3. EXTENSION OF INTERVENTION. BLOCKADE OF THE SOVIET COUNTRY. KOLCHAK’S CAMPAIGN AND DEFEAT. DENIKIN’S CAMPAIGN AND DEFEAT. A THREE-MONTHS’ RESPITE. NINTH PARTY CONGRESS Having vanquished Germany and Austria, the Entente states decided to hurl large military forces against the Soviet country. After Germany’s defeat and the evacuation of her troops from the Ukraine and Transcaucasia, her place was taken by the British and French, who dispatched their fleets to the Black Sea and landed troops in Odessa and in Transcaucasia. Such was the brutality of the Entente forces of intervention that they did not hesitate to shoot whole batches of workers and peasants in the occupied regions. Their outrages reached such lengths in the end that after the occupation of Turkestan they carried off to the Transcaspian region twenty-six leading Baku Bolsheviks—including Comrades Shaumyan, Fioletov, Djaparidze, Malygin, Azizbekov, Korganov—and with the aid of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, had them brutally shot. The interventionists soon proclaimed a blockade of Russia. All sea routes and other lines of communication with the external world were cut. The Soviet country was surrounded on nearly every side. The Entente countries placed their chief hopes in Admiral Kolchak, their puppet in Omsk, Siberia. He was proclaimed “supreme ruler of Russia” and all the counter-revolutionary forces in the country placed themselves under his command. The Eastern Front thus became the main front. Kolchak assembled a huge army and in the spring of 1919 almost reached the Volga. The finest Bolshevik forces were hurled against him; Young Communist Leaguers and workers were mobilized. In April 1919, Kolchak’s army met with severe defeat at the hands of the Red Army and very soon began to retreat along the whole front. At the height of the advance of the Red Army on the Eastern Front, Trotsky put forward a suspicious plan: he proposed that the advance 237 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 0 should be halted before it reached the Urals, the pursuit of Kolchak’s army discontinued, and troops transferred from the Eastern Front to the Southern Front. The Central Committee of the Party fully realized that the Urals and Siberia could not be left in Kolchak’s hands, for there, with the aid of the Japanese and British, he might recuperate and retrieve his former position. It therefore rejected this plan and gave instructions to proceed with the advance. Trotsky disagreed with these instructions and tendered his resignation, which the Central Committee declined, at the same time ordering him to refrain at once from all participation in the direction of the operations on the Eastern Front. The Red Army pursued its offensive against Kolchak with greater vigour than ever; it inflicted a number of new defeats on him and freed of the Whites the Urals and Siberia, where the Red Army was supported by a powerful partisan movement in the Whites’ rear. In the summer of 1919, the imperialists assigned to General Yudenich, who headed the counter-revolutionaries in the north-west (in the Baltic countries, in the vicinity of Petrograd), the task of diverting the attention of the Red Army from the Eastern Front by an attack on Petrograd. Influenced by the counter-revolutionary agitation of former officers, the garrisons of two forts in the vicinity of Petrograd mutinied against the Soviet Government. At the same time a counter-revolutionary plot was discovered at the Front Headquarters. The enemy threatened Petrograd. 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. The defeat of Yudenich near Petrograd made it easier to cope with Kolchak, and by the end of 1919 his army was completely routed. Kolchak himself was taken prisoner and shot by sentence of the Revolutionary Committee in Irkutsk. That was the end of Kolchak. The Siberians had a popular song about Kolchak at that time: “Uniform British, Epaulettes from France, Japanese tobacco, Kolchak leads the dance. Uniform in tatters, Epaulettes all gone, So is the tobacco, Kolchak’s day is done.” HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 238 Since Kolchak had not justified their hopes, the interventionists altered their plan of attack on the Soviet Republic. The troops landed in Odessa had to be withdrawn, for contact with the army of the Soviet Republic had infected them with the revolutionary spirit and they were beginning to rebel against their imperialist masters. For example, there was the revolt of French sailors in Odessa led by André Marty. Accordingly, now that Kolchak had been defeated, the Entente centred its attention on General Denikin, Kornilov’s confederate and the organizer of the “Volunteer Army.” Denikin at that time was operating against the Soviet Government in the south, in the Kuban region. The Entente supplied his army with large quantities of ammunition and equipment and sent it north against the Soviet Government. The Southern Front now became the chief front. Denikin began his main campaign against the Soviet Government in the summer of 1919. Trotsky had disrupted the Southern Front, and our troops suffered defeat after defeat. By the middle of October the Whites had seized the whole of the Ukraine, had captured Orel and were nearing Tula, which supplied our army with cartridges, rifles and machine-guns. The Whites were approaching Moscow. The situation of the Soviet Republic became grave in the extreme. The Party sounded the alarm and called upon the people to resist. Lenin issued the slogan, “All for the fight against Denikin!” Inspired by the Bolsheviks, the workers and peasants mustered all their forces to smash the enemy. The Central Committee sent Comrades Stalin, Voroshilov, Ordjonikidze and Budyonny to the Southern Front to prepare the rout of Denikin. Trotsky was removed from the direction of the operations of the Red Army in the south. Before Comrade Stalin’s arrival, the Command of the Southern Front, in conjunction with Trotsky, had drawn up a plan to strike the main blow at Denikin from Tsaritsyn in the direction of Novorossisk, through the Don Steppe, where there were no roads and where the Red Army would have to pass through regions inhabited by Cossacks, who were at that time largely under the influence of the Whiteguards. Comrade Stalin severely criticized this plan and submitted to the Central Committee his own plan for the defeat of Denikin. According to this plan the main blow was to be delivered by way of Kharkov- Donetz Basin-Rostov. This plan would ensure the rapid advance of our troops against Denikin, for they would be moving through working class and peasant regions where they would have the open sympathy of the population. Furthermore, the dense network of railway lines in this region would ensure our armies the regular supply of all they required. 239 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 0 Lastly, this plan would make it possible to release the Donetz Coal Basin and thus supply our country with fuel. The Central Committee of the Party accepted Comrade Stalin’s plan. In the second half of October 1919, after fierce resistance, Denikin was defeated by the Red Army in the decisive battles of Orel and Voronezh. He began a rapid retreat, and, pursued by our forces, fled to the south. At the beginning of 1920 the whole of the Ukraine and the North Caucasus had been cleared of Whites. During the decisive battles on the Southern Front, the imperialists again hurled Yudenich’s corps against Petrograd in order to divert our forces from the south and thus improve the position of Denikin’s army. The Whites approached the very gates of Petrograd. The heroic proletariat of the premier city of the revolution rose in a solid wall for its defence. The Communists, as always, were in the vanguard. After fierce fighting, the Whites were defeated and again flung beyond our borders back into Esthonia. And that was the end of Denikin. The defeat of Kolchak and Denikin was followed by a brief respite. When the imperialists saw that the Whiteguard armies had been smashed, that intervention had failed, and that the Soviet Government was consolidating its position all over the country, while in Western Europe the indignation of the workers against military intervention in the Soviet Republic was rising, they began to change their attitude towards the Soviet state. In January 1920, Great Britain, France, and Italy decided to call off the blockade of Soviet Russia. This was an important breach in the wall of intervention. It did not, of course, mean that the Soviet country was done with intervention and the Civil War. There was still the danger of attack by imperialist Poland. The forces of intervention had not yet been finally driven out of the Far East, Transcaucasia and the Crimea. But Soviet Russia had secured a temporary breathing space and was able to divert more forces to economic development. The Party could now devote its attention to economic problems. During the Civil War many skilled workers had left industry owing to the closing down of mills and factories. The Party now took measures to return them to industry to work at their trades. The railways were in a grave condition and several thousand Communists were assigned to the work of restoring them, for unless this was done the restoration of the major branches of industry could not be seriously undertaken. The organization of the food supply was extended and improved. The drafting of a plan for the electrification of Russia was begun. Nearly HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 240 five million Red Army men were under arms and could not be demobilized owing to the danger of war. A part of the Red Army was therefore converted into labour armies and used in the economic field. The Council of Workers’ and Peasants’ Defence was transformed into the Council of Labour and Defence, and a State Planning Commission (Gosplan) set up to assist it. Such was the situation when the Ninth Party Congress opened. The congress met at the end of March 1920. It was attended by 554 delegates with vote, representing 611,978 Party members, and 162 delegates with voice but no vote. The congress defined the immediate tasks of the country in the sphere of transportation and industry. It particularly stressed the necessity of the trade unions taking part in the building up of the economic life. Special attention was devoted by the congress to a single economic plan for the restoration, in the first place, of the railways, the fuel industry and the iron and steel industry. The major item in this plan was a project for the electrification of the country, which Lenin advanced as “a great program for the next ten or twenty years.” This formed the basis of the famous plan of the State Commission for the Electrification of Russia (GOELRO), the provisions of which have today been far exceeded. The congress rejected the views of an anti-Party group which called itself “The Group of Democratic-Centralism” and was opposed to one-man management and the undivided responsibility of industrial directors. It advocated unrestricted “group management” under which nobody would be personally responsible for the administration of industry. The chief figures in this anti-Party group were Sapronov, Ossinsky and Y. Smirnov. They were supported at the congress by Rykov and Tomsky. 4. POLISH GENTRY ATTACK SOVIET RUSSIA. GENERAL WRANGEL’S CAMPAIGN. FAILURE OF THE POLISH PLAN. ROUT OF WRANGEL. END OF THE INTERVENTION. Notwithstanding the defeat of Kolchak and Denikin, notwithstanding the fact that the Soviet Republic was steadily regaining its territory by clearing the Whites and the forces of intervention out of the Northern Territory, Turkestan, Siberia, the Don region, the Ukraine, etc., notwithstanding the fact that the Entente states were obliged to call off the blockade of Russia, they still refused to reconcile themselves to the 241 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 0 idea that the Soviet power had proved impregnable and had come out victorious. They therefore resolved to make one more attempt at intervention in Soviet Russia. This time they decided to utilize both Pilsudski, a bourgeois counter-revolutionary nationalist, the virtual head of the Polish state, and General Wrangel, who had rallied the remnants of Denikin’s army in the Crimea and from there was threatening the Donetz Basin and the Ukraine. The Polish gentry and Wrangel, as Lenin put it, were the two hands with which international imperialism attempted to strangle Soviet Russia. The plan of the Poles was to seize the Soviet Ukraine west of the Dnieper, to occupy Soviet Byelorussia, to restore the power of the Polish magnates in these regions, to extend the frontiers of the Polish state so that they stretched “from sea to sea,” from Danzig to Odessa, and, in return for his aid, to help Wrangel smash the Red Army and restore the power of the landlords and capitalists in Soviet Russia. This plan was approved by the Entente states. The Soviet Government made vain attempts to enter into negotiations with Poland with the object of preserving peace and averting war. Pilsudski refused to discuss peace. He wanted war. He calculated that the Red Army, fatigued by its battles with Kolchak and Denikin, would not be able to withstand the attack of the Polish forces. The short breathing space had come to an end. In April 1920 the Poles invaded the Soviet Ukraine and seized Kiev. At the same time, Wrangel took the offensive and threatened the Donetz Basin. In reply, the Red Army started a counter-offensive against the Poles along the whole front. Kiev was recaptured and the Polish warlords driven out of the Ukraine and Byelorussia. The impetuous advance of the Red troops on the Southern Front brought them to the very gates of Lvov in Galicia, while the troops on the Western Front were nearing Warsaw. The Polish armies were on the verge of utter defeat. But success was frustrated by the suspicious actions of Trotsky and his followers at the General Headquarters of the Red Army. Through the fault of Trotsky and Tukhachevsky, the advance of the Red troops on the Western Front, towards Warsaw, proceeded in an absolutely unorganized manner: the troops were allowed no opportunity to consolidate the positions that they won, the advance detachments were led too far ahead, while reserves and ammunition were left too far in the rear. As a result, the advance detachments were left without ammuniHISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 242 tion and reserves and the front was stretched out endlessly. This made it easy to force a breach in the front. The result was that when a small force of Poles broke through our Western Front at one point, our troops, left without ammunition, were obliged to retreat. As regards the troops on the Southern Front, who had reached the gates of Lvov and were pressing the Poles hard, they were forbidden by Trotsky, that ill-famed “chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council,” to capture Lvov. He ordered the transfer of the Mounted Army, the main force on the Southern Front, far to the north-east. This was done on the pretext of helping the Western Front, although it was not difficult to see that the best, and in fact only possible, way of helping the Western Front was to capture Lvov. But the withdrawal of the Mounted Army from the Southern Front, its departure from Lvov, virtually meant the retreat of our forces on the Southern Front as well. This wrecker’s order issued by Trotsky thus forced upon our troops on the Southern Front an incomprehensible and absolutely unjustified retreat—to the joy of the Polish gentry. This was giving direct assistance, indeed—not to our Western Front, however, but to the Polish gentry and the Entente. Within a few days the advance of the Poles was checked and our troops began preparations for a new counter-offensive. But, unable to continue the war, and alarmed by the prospect of a Red counter-offensive, Poland was obliged to renounce her claims to the Ukrainian territory west of the Dnieper and to Byelorussia and preferred to conclude peace. On October 20, 1920, the Peace of Riga was signed. In accordance with this treaty Poland retained Galicia and part of Byelorussia. Having concluded peace with Poland, the Soviet Republic decided to put an end to Wrangel. The British and French had supplied him with guns, rifles, armoured cars, tanks, aeroplanes and ammunition of the latest type. He had Whiteguard shock regiments, mainly consisting of officers. But Wrangel failed to rally any considerable number of peasants and Cossacks in support of the troops he had landed in the Kuban and the Don regions. Nevertheless, he advanced to the very gates of the Donetz Basin, creating a menace to our coal region. The position of the Soviet Government at that time was further complicated by the fact that the Red Army was suffering greatly from fatigue. The troops were obliged to advance under extremely difficult conditions: while conducting an offensive against Wrangel, they had at the same time to smash Makhno’s anarchist bands who were assisting Wrangel. But although Wrangel had the superiority in technical equipment, although the Red Army had no tanks, it drove Wrangel into the Crimean Penin243 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 0 sula and there bottled him up. In November 1920 the Red forces captured the fortified position of Perekop, swept into the Crimea, smashed Wrangel’s forces and cleared the Peninsula of the Whiteguards and the forces of intervention. The Crimea became Soviet territory. The failure of Poland’s imperialist plans and the defeat of Wrangel ended the period of intervention. At the end of 1920 there began the liberation of Transcaucasia: Azerbaidjan was freed from the yoke of the bourgeois nationalist Mussavatists, Georgia from the Menshevik nationalists, and Armenia from the Dashnaks. The Soviet power triumphed in Azerbaidjan, Armenia and Georgia. This did not yet mean the end of all intervention. That of the Japanese in the Far East lasted until 1922. Moreover, new attempts at intervention were made (Ataman Semyonov and Baron Ungern in the East, the Finnish Whites in Karelia in 1921). But the principal enemies of the Soviet country, the principal forces of intervention, were shattered by the end of 1920. The war of the foreign interventionists and the Russian Whiteguards against the Soviets ended in a victory for the Soviets. The Soviet Republic preserved its independence and freedom. This was the end of foreign military intervention and Civil War. This was a historic victory for the Soviet power. 5. HOW AND WHY THE SOVIET REPUBLIC DEFEATED THE COMBINED FORCES OF BRITISH-FRENCH-JAPANESE-POLISH INTERVENTION AND OF THE BOURGEOIS-LANDLORD-WHITEGUARD COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA If we study the leading European and American newspapers and periodicals of the period of intervention, we shall easily find that there was not a single prominent writer, military or civilian, not a single military expert who believed that the Soviet Government could win. On the contrary, all prominent writers, military experts and historians of revolution of all countries and nations, all the so-called savants, were unanimous in declaring that the days of the Soviets were numbered, that their defeat was inevitable. They based their certainty of the victory of the forces of intervention on the fact that whereas Soviet Russia had no organized army and had to create its Red Army under fire, so to speak, the interventionists and Whiteguards did have an army more or less ready to hand. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 244 Further, they based their certainty on the fact that the Red Army had no experienced military men, the majority of them having gone over to the counter-revolution, whereas the interventionists and Whiteguards did have such men. Furthermore, they based their certainty on the fact that, owing to the backwardness of Russia’s war industry, the Red Army was suffering from a shortage of arms and ammunition; that what it did have was of poor quality, while it could not obtain supplies from abroad because Russia was hermetically sealed on all sides by the blockade. The army of the interventionists and Whiteguards, on the other hand, was abundantly supplied, and would continue to be supplied, with first-class arms, ammunition and equipment. Lastly, they based their certainty on the fact that the army of the interventionists and Whiteguards occupied the richest food-producing regions of Russia, whereas the Red Army had no such regions and was suffering from a shortage of provisions. And it was a fact that the Red Army did suffer from all these handicaps and deficiencies. In this respect—but only in this respect—the gentlemen of the intervention were absolutely right. How then is it to be explained that the Red Army, although suffering from such grave shortcomings, was able to defeat the army of the interventionists and Whiteguards which did not suffer from such shortcomings? 1. The Red Army was victorious because the Soviet Government’s policy for which the Red Army was fighting was a right policy, one that corresponded to the interests of the people, and because the people understood and realized that it was the right policy, their own policy, and supported it unreservedly. The Bolsheviks knew that an army that fights for a wrong policy, for a policy that is not supported by the people, cannot win. The army of the interventionists and Whiteguards was such an army. It had everything: experienced commanders and first-class arms, ammunition, equipment and provisions. It lacked only one thing—the support and sympathy of the peoples of Russia; for the peoples of Russia could not and would not support the policy of the interventionists and Whiteguard “rulers” because it was a policy hostile to the people. And so the interventionist and Whiteguard army was defeated. 2. The Red Army was victorious because it was absolutely loyal and faithful to its people, for which reason the people loved and supported it and looked upon it as their own army. The Red Army is the offspring of the people, and if it is faithful to its people, as a true son is to his 245 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 0 mother, it will have the support of the people and is bound to win. An army, however, that goes against its people must suffer defeat. 3. The Red Army was victorious because the Soviet Government was able to muster the whole rear, the whole country, to serve the needs of the front. An army without a strong rear to support the front in every way is doomed to defeat. The Bolsheviks knew this and that is why they converted the country into an armed camp to supply the front with arms, ammunition, equipment, food and reinforcements. 4. The Red Army was victorious because: a) the Red Army men understood the aims and purposes of the war and recognized their justice; b) the recognition of the justice of the aims and purposes of the war strengthened their discipline and fighting efficiency; and c) as a result, the Red Army throughout displayed unparalleled self-sacrifice and unexampled mass heroism in battle against the enemy. 5. The Red Army was victorious because its leading core, both at the front and in the rear, was the Bolshevik Party, united in its solidarity and discipline, strong in its revolutionary spirit and readiness for any sacrifice in the common cause, and unsurpassed in its ability to organize millions and to lead them properly in complex situations. “It is only because of the Party’s vigilance and its strict discipline,” said Lenin, “because the authority of the Party united all government departments and institutions, because the slogans issued by the Central Committee were followed by tens, hundreds, thousands and finally millions of people as one man, because incredible sacrifices were made, that the miracle took place and we were able to win, in spite of repeated campaigns of the imperialists of the Entente and of the whole world.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. XXV, p. 96.) 6. The Red Army was victorious because: a) it was able to produce from its own ranks military commanders of a new type, men like Frunze, Voroshilov, Budyonny, and others; b) in its ranks fought such talented heroes who came from the people as Kotovsky, Chapayev, Lazo, Shchors, Parkhomenko, and many others; c) the political education of the Red Army was in the hands of men like Lenin, Stalin, Molotov, Kalinin, Sverdlov, Kaganovich, Ordjonikidze, Kirov, Kuibyshev, Mikoyan, Zhdanov, Andreyev, Petrovsky, Yaroslavsky, Yezhov, Dzerzhinsky, Shchadenko, Mekhlis, Khrushchev, Shvernik, Shkiryatov, and others; d) the Red Army possessed such outstanding organizers and agitators as the military commissars, who by their work cemented the ranks of the Red Army men, fostered in them the spirit of discipline and military daring, HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 246 and energetically—swiftly and relentlessly—cut short the treacherous activities of certain of the commanders, while on the other hand, they boldly and resolutely supported the prestige and renown of commanders, Party and non-Party, who had proved their loyalty to the Soviet power and who were capable of leading the Red Army units with a firm hand. “Without the military commissars we would not have had a Red Army,” Lenin said. 7. The Red Army was victorious because in the rear of the White armies, in the rear of Kolchak, Denikin, Krasnov and Wrangel, there secretly operated splendid Bolsheviks, Party and non-Party, who raised the workers and peasants in revolt against the invaders, against the Whiteguards, undermined the rear of the foes of the Soviet Government, and thereby facilitated the advance of the Red Army. Everybody knows that the partisans of the Ukraine, Siberia, the Far East, the Urals, Byelorussia and the Volga region, by undermining the rear of the Whiteguards and the invaders, rendered invaluable service to the Red Army. 8. The Red Army was victorious because the Soviet Republic was not alone in its struggle against Whiteguard counter-revolution and foreign intervention, because the struggle of the Soviet Government and its successes enlisted the sympathy and support of the proletarians of the whole world. While the imperialists were trying to stifle the Soviet Republic by intervention and blockade, the workers of the imperialist countries sided with the Soviets and helped them. Their struggle against the capitalists of the countries hostile to the Soviet Republic helped in the end to force the imperialists to call off the intervention. The workers of Great Britain, France and the other intervening powers called strikes, refused to load munitions consigned to the invaders and the Whiteguard generals, and set up Councils of Action whose work was guided by the slogan—“Hands off Russia!” “The international bourgeoisie has only to raise its hand against us to have it seized by its own workers,” Lenin said. (Ibid., p. 405.) B R I E F S U M M A R Y Vanquished by the October Revolution, the landlords and capitalists, in conjunction with the Whiteguard generals, conspired with the governments of the Entente countries against the interests of their own country for a joint armed attack on the Soviet land and for the overthrow of the Soviet Government. This formed the basis of the military intervention of the Entente and of the Whiteguard revolts in the border 247 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 0 FROM MARX TO MAO �� NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION regions of Russia, as a result of which Russia was cut off from her sources of food and raw material. The military defeat of Germany and the termination of the war between the two imperialist coalitions in Europe served to strengthen the Entente and to intensify the intervention, and created new difficulties for Soviet Russia. On the other hand, the revolution in Germany and the incipient revolutionary movement in the European countries created favourable international conditions for the Soviet power and relieved the position of the Soviet Republic. The Bolshevik Party roused the workers and peasants for a war for the fatherland, a war against the foreign invaders and the bourgeois and landlord Whiteguards. The Soviet Republic and its Red Army defeated one after another the puppets of the Entente—Kolchak, Yudenich, Denikin, Krasnov and Wrangel, drove out of the Ukraine and Byelorussia another puppet of the Entente, Pilsudski, and thus beat off the forces of foreign intervention and drove them out of the Soviet country. Thus the first armed attack of international capital on the land of Socialism ended in a complete fiasco. In the period of intervention, the parties which had been smashed by the revolution, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Anarchists and nationalists, supported the Whiteguard generals and the invaders, hatched counter-revolutionary plots against the Soviet Republic and resorted to terrorism against Soviet leaders. These parties, which had enjoyed a certain amount of influence among the working class before the October Revolution, completely exposed themselves before the masses as counterrevolutionary parties during the Civil War. The period of Civil War and intervention witnessed the political collapse of these parties and the final triumph of the Communist Party in Soviet Russia. C H A P T E R N I N E THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY IN THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION TO THE PEACEFUL WORK OF ECONOMIC RESTORATION ( 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 ) 1. SOVIET REPUBLIC AFTER THE DEFEAT OF THE INTERVENTION AND END OF THE CIVIL WAR. DIFFICULTIES OF THE RESTORATION PERIOD Having ended the war, the Soviet Republic turned to the work of peaceful economic development. The wounds of war had to be healed. The shattered economic life of the country had to be rebuilt, its industry, railways and agriculture restored. B u t the work of peaceful development had to be undertaken in extremely difficult circumstances. The victory in the Civil War had not been an easy one. The country had been reduced to a state of ruin by four years of imperialist war and three years of war against the intervention. The gross output of agriculture in 1920 was only about one-half of the pre-war output—that of the poverty-stricken Russian countryside of tsarist days. To make matters worse, in 1920 there was a harvest failure in many of the provinces. Agriculture was in sore straits. Even worse was the plight of industry, which was in a state of complete dislocation. The output of large-scale industry in 1920 was a little over one-seventh of pre-war. Most of the mills and factories were at a standstill; mines and collieries were wrecked and flooded. Gravest of all was the condition of the iron and steel industry. The total output of pig-iron in 1921 was only 116,300 tons, or about 3 per cent of the pre-war output. There was a shortage of fuel. Transport was disrupted. Stocks of metal and textiles in the country were nearly exhausted. There was an acute shortage of such prime necessities as bread, fats, meat, footwear, clothing, matches, salt, kerosene, and soap. While the war was on, people put up with the shortage and scarcity, and were sometimes even oblivious to it. But now that the war was over, they suddenly felt that this shortage and scarcity were intolerable and began to demand that they be immediately remedied. Discontent appeared among the peasants. The fire of the Civil War 248 249 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 had welded and steeled a military and political alliance of the working class and the peasantry. This alliance rested on a definite basis: the peasants received from the Soviet Government land and protection against the landlords and kulaks; the workers received from the peasantry foodstuffs under the surplus-appropriation system. Now this basis was no longer adequate. The Soviet state had been compelled to appropriate all surplus produce from the peasants for the needs of national defence. Victory in the Civil War would have been impossible without the surplus-appropriation system, without the policy of War Communism. This policy was necessitated by the war and intervention. As long as the war was on, the peasantry had acquiesced in the surplus-appropriation system and had paid no heed to the shortage of commodities; but when the war ended and there was no longer any danger of the landlords returning, the peasants began to express dissatisfaction with having to surrender all their surpluses, with the surplus-appropriation system, and to demand a sufficient supply of commodities. As Lenin pointed out, the whole system of War Communism had come into collision with the interests of the peasantry. The spirit of discontent affected the working class as well. The proletariat had borne the brunt of the Civil War, had heroically and self-sacrificingly fought the Whiteguard and foreign hordes, and the ravages of economic disruption and famine. The best, the most classconscious, self-sacrificing and disciplined workers were inspired by Socialist enthusiasm. But the utter economic disruption had its influence on the working class, too. The few factories and plants still in operation were working spasmodically. The workers were reduced to doing odd jobs for a living, making cigarette lighters and engaging in petty bartering for food in the villages (“bag-trading”). The class basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat was being weakened; the workers were scattering, decamping for the villages, ceasing to be workers and becoming declassed. Some of the workers were beginning to show signs of discontent owing to hunger and weariness. The Party was confronted with the necessity of working out a new line of policy on all questions affecting the economic life of the country, a line that would meet the new situation. And the Party proceeded to work out such a line of policy on questions of economic development. But the class enemy was not dozing. He tried to exploit the distressing economic situation and the discontent of the peasants for his own purposes. Kulak revolts, engineered by Whiteguards and Socialist-RevHISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 250 olutionaries, broke out in Siberia, the Ukraine and the Tambov province (Antonov’s rebellion). All kinds of counter-revolutionary elements— Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Anarchists, Whiteguards, bourgeois nationalists—became active again. The enemy adopted new tactics of struggle against the Soviet power. He began to borrow a Soviet garb, and his slogan was no longer the old bankrupt “Down with the Soviets!” but a new slogan: “For the Soviets, but without Communists!” A glaring instance of the new tactics of the class enemy was the counter-revolutionary mutiny in Kronstadt. It began in March 1921, a week before the Tenth Party Congress. Whiteguards, in complicity with Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and representatives of foreign states, assumed the lead of the mutiny. The mutineers at first used a “Soviet” signboard to camouflage their purpose of restoring the power and property of the capitalists and landlords. They raised the cry: “Soviets without Communists!” The counter-revolutionaries tried to exploit the discontent of the petty bourgeois masses in order to overthrow the power of the Soviets under a pseudo-Soviet slogan. 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. The naval replenishments consisted of new men, who had not been schooled in the revolution. These were a perfectly raw peasant mass who gave expression to the peasantry’s discontent with the surplus-appropriation system. As for the Bolshevik organization in Kronstadt, it had been greatly weakened by a series of mobilizations for the front. This enabled the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and Whiteguards to worm their way into Kronstadt and to seize control of it. The mutineers gained possession of a first-class fortress, the fleet, and a vast quantity of arms and ammunition. The international counterrevolutionaries were triumphant. But their jubilation was premature. The mutiny was quickly put down by Soviet troops. Against the Kronstadt mutineers the Party sent its finest sons—delegates to the Tenth Congress, headed by Comrade Voroshilov. The Red Army men advanced on Kronstadt across a thin sheet of ice; it broke in places and many were drowned. The almost impregnable forts of Kronstadt had to be taken by storm; but loyalty to the revolution, bravery and readiness to die for the Soviets won the day. The fortress of Kronstadt fell before the onslaught of the Red troops. The Kronstadt mutiny was suppressed. 251 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 2. PARTY DISCUSSION ON THE TRADE UNIONS. TENTH PARTY CONGRESS. DEFEAT OF THE OPPOSITION. ADOPTION OF THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY ( NEP ) The Central Committee of the Party, its Leninist majority, saw clearly that now that the war was over and the country had turned to peaceful economic development, there was no longer any reason for maintaining the rigid regime of War Communism—the product of war and blockade. The Central Committee realized that the need for the surplus-appropriation system had passed, that it was time to supersede it by a tax in kind so as to enable the peasants to use the greater part of their surpluses at their own discretion. The Central Committee realized that this measure would make it possible to revive agriculture, to extend the cultivation of grain and industrial crops required for the development of industry, to revive the circulation of commodities, to improve supplies to the towns, and to create a new foundation, an economic foundation for the alliance of workers and peasants. The Central Committee realized also that the prime task was to revive industry, but considered that this could not be done without enlisting the support of the working class and its trade unions; it considered that the workers could be enlisted in this work by showing them that the economic disruption was just as dangerous an enemy of the people as the intervention and the blockade had been, and that the Party and the trade unions could certainly succeed in this work if they exercised their influence on the working class not by military commands, as had been the case at the front, where commands were really essential, but by methods of persuasion, by convincing it. But not all members of the Party were of the same mind as the Central Committee. The small opposition groups—the Trotskyites, “Workers’ Opposition,” “Left Communists,” “Democratic-Centralists,” etc.—wavered and vacillated in face of the difficulties attending the transition to peaceful economic construction. There were in the Party quite a number of ex-members of the Menshevik, Socialist-Revolutionary, Bund and Borotbist parties, and all kinds of semi-nationalists from the border regions of Russia. Most of them allied themselves with one opposition group or another. These people were not real Marxists, they were ignorant of the laws of economic development, and had not had a Leninist- Party schooling, and they only helped to aggravate the confusion and vacillations of the opposition groups. Some of them thought that it would HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 252 be wrong to relax the rigid regime of War Communism, that, on the contrary, “the screws must be tightened.” Others thought that the Party and the state should stand aside from the economic restoration, and that it should be left entirely in the hands of the trade unions. It was clear that with such confusion reigning among certain groups in the Party, lovers of controversy, opposition “leaders” of one kind or another were bound to try to force a discussion upon the Party. And that is just what happened. The discussion started over the role of the trade unions, although the trade unions were not the chief problem of Party policy at the time. It was Trotsky who started the discussion and the fight against Lenin, against the Leninist majority of the Central Committee. With the intention of aggravating the situation, he came out at a meeting of Communist delegates to the Fifth All-Russian Trade Union Conference, held at the beginning of November 1920, with the dubious slogans of “tightening the screws” and “shaking up the trade unions.” Trotsky demanded that the trade unions be immediately “governmentalized.” He was against the use of persuasion in relations with the working class, and was in favour of introducing military methods in the trade unions. Trotsky was against any extension of democracy in the trade unions, against the principle of electing trade union bodies. Instead of methods of persuasion, without which the activities of working-class organizations are inconceivable, the Trotskyites proposed methods of sheer compulsion, of dictation. Applying this policy wherever they happened to occupy leading positions in the trade unions, the Trotskyites caused conflicts, disunity and demoralization in the unions. By their policy the Trotskyites were setting the mass of the non-Party workers against the Party, were splitting the working class. As a matter of fact, the discussion on the trade unions was of much broader import than the trade union question. As was stated later in the resolution of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) adopted on January 17, 1925, the actual point at issue was “the policy to be adopted towards the peasantry, who were rising against War Communism, the policy to be adopted towards the mass of the non-Party workers, and, in general, what was to be the approach of the Party to the masses in the period when the Civil War was coming to an end.” (Resolutions of the C.P.S.U.[B.], Russ ed., Part I, p. 651.) Trotsky’s lead was followed by other anti-Party groups: the “Workers’ Opposition” (Shlyapnikov, Medvedyev, Kollontai and others), the 253 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 “Democratic-Centralists” (Sapronov, Drobnis, Boguslavsky, Ossinsky, V. Smirnov and others), the “Left Communists” (Bukharin, Preobrazhensky). The “Workers’ Opposition” put forward a slogan demanding that the administration of the entire national economy be entrusted to an “All-Russian Producers’ Congress.” They wanted to reduce the role of the Party to nought, and denied the importance of the dictatorship of the proletariat to economic development. The “Workers’ Opposition” contended that the interests of the trade unions were opposed to those of the Soviet state and the Communist Party. They held that the trade unions, and not the Party, were the highest form of working-class organization. The “Workers’ Opposition” was essentially an anarchosyndicalist anti-Party group. The “Democratic-Centralists” (Decists) demanded complete freedom for factions and groupings. Like the Trotskyites, the “Democratic- Centralists” tried to undermine the leadership of the Party in the Soviets and in the trade unions. Lenin spoke of the “Democratic-Centralists” as a faction of “champion shouters,” and of their platform as a Socialist- Revolutionary-Menshevik platform. Trotsky was assisted in his fight against Lenin and the Party by Bukharin. With Preobrazhensky, Serebryakov and Sokolnikov, Bukharin formed a “buffer” group. This group defended and shielded the Trotskyites, the most vicious of all factionalists. Lenin said that Bukharin’s behaviour was the “acme of ideological depravity.” Very soon, the Bukharinites openly joined forces with the Trotskyites against Lenin. Lenin and the Leninists concentrated their fire on the Trotskyites as the backbone of the anti-Party groupings. They condemned the Trotskyites for ignoring the difference between trade unions and military bodies and warned them that military methods could not be applied to the trade unions. Lenin and the Leninists drew up a platform of their own, entirely contrary in spirit to the platforms of the opposition groups. In this platform, the trade unions were defined as a school of administration, a school of management, a school of Communism. The trade unions should base all their activities on methods of persuasion. Only then would the trade unions rouse the workers as a whole to combat the economic disruption and be able to enlist them in the work of Socialist construction. In this fight against the opposition groupings, the Party organizations rallied around Lenin. The struggle took an especially acute form in Moscow. Here the opposition concentrated its main forces, with the object of capturing the Party organization of the capital. But these HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 254 factionalist intrigues were frustrated by the spirited resistance of the Moscow Bolsheviks. An acute struggle broke out in the Ukrainian Party organizations as well. Led by Comrade Molotov, then the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine, the Ukrainian Bolsheviks routed the Trotskyites and Shlyapnikovites. The Communist Party of the Ukraine remained a loyal support of Lenin’s Party. In Baku, the routing of the opposition was led by Comrade Ordjonikidze. In Central Asia, the fight against the anti-Party groupings were headed by Comrade L. Kaganovich. All the important local organizations of the Party endorsed Lenin’s platform. On March 8, 1921, the Tenth Party Congress opened. The congress was attended by 694 delegates with vote, representing 732,521 Party members, and 296 delegates with voice but no vote. The congress summed up the discussion on the trade unions and endorsed Lenin’s platform by an overwhelming majority. In opening the congress, Lenin said that the discussion had been an inexcusable luxury. He declared that the enemies had speculated on the inner Party strife and on a split in the ranks of the Communist Party. Realizing how extremely dangerous the existence of factional groups was to the Bolshevik Party and the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Tenth Congress paid special attention to Party unity. The report on this question was made by Lenin. The congress passed condemnation on all the opposition groups and declared that they were “in fact helping the class enemies of the proletarian revolution.” The congress ordered the immediate dissolution of all factional groups and instructed all Party organizations to keep a strict watch to prevent any outbreaks of factionalism, non-observance of the congress decision to be followed by unconditional and immediate expulsion from the Party. The congress authorized the Central Committee, in the event of members of that body violating discipline, or reviving or tolerating factionalism, to apply to them all Party penalties, including expulsion from the Central Committee and from the Party. These decisions were embodied in a special resolution on “Party Unity,” moved by Lenin and adopted by the congress. In this resolution, the congress reminded all Party members that unity and solidarity of the ranks of the Party, unanimity of will of the vanguard of the proletariat were particularly essential at that juncture, when a number of circumstances had, during the time of the Tenth Congress, increased the vacillation among the petty-bourgeois population of the country. 255 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 “Notwithstanding this,” read the resolution, “even before the general Party discussion on the trade unions, certain signs of factionalism had been apparent in the Party, viz., the formation of groups with separate platforms, striving to a certain degree to segregate and create their own group discipline. All class-conscious workers must clearly realize the perniciousness and impermissibility of factionalism of any kind, for in practice factionalism inevitably results in weakening team work. At the same time it inevitably leads to intensified and repeated attempts by the enemies of the Party, who have fastened themselves onto it because it is the governing party, to widen the cleavage (in the Party) and to use it for counter-revolutionary purposes.” Further, in the same resolution, the congress said: “The way the enemies of the proletariat take advantage of every deviation from the thoroughly consistent Communist line was most strikingly shown in the case of the Kronstadt mutiny, when the bourgeois counter-revolutionaries and Whiteguards in all countries of the world immediately expressed their readiness to accept even the slogans of the Soviet system, if only they might thereby secure the overthrow of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia, and when the Socialist- Revolutionaries and the bourgeois counter-revolutionaries in general resorted in Kronstadt to slogans calling for an insurrection against the Soviet Government of Russia ostensibly in the interest of Soviet power. These facts fully prove that the Whiteguards strive, and are able to disguise themselves as Communists, and even as people “more Left” than the Communists, solely for the purpose of weakening and overthrowing the bulwark of the proletarian revolution in Russia. Menshevik leaflets distributed in Petrograd on the eve of the Kronstadt mutiny likewise show how the Mensheviks took advantage of the disagreements in the R.C.P. actually in order to egg on and support the Kronstadt mutineers, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Whiteguards, while claiming to be opponents of mutiny and supporters of the Soviet power, only with supposedly slight modifications.” The resolution declared that in its propaganda the Party must explain in detail the harm and danger of factionalism to Party unity and to the unity of purpose of the vanguard of the proletariat, which is a fundamental condition for the success of the dictatorship of the proletariat. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 256 On the other hand, the congress resolution stated, the Party must explain in its propaganda the peculiarity of the latest tactical methods employed by the enemies of the Soviet power. “These enemies,” read the resolution, “having realized the hopelessness of counter-revolution under an openly Whiteguard flag, are now doing their utmost to utilize the disagreements within the R.C.P. and to further the counter-revolution in one way or another by transferring the power to the political groupings which outwardly are closest to the recognition of the Soviet power.” (Resolutions of the C.P.S.U.[B.], Russ. ed., Part I, pp. 373-74.) The resolution further stated that in its propaganda the Party “must also teach the lessons of preceding revolutions in which the counter-revolutionaries usually supported the petty-bourgeois groupings which stood closest to the extreme revolutionary Party, in order to undermine and overthrow the revolutionary dictatorship, and thus pave the way for the subsequent complete victory of the counter-revolution, of the capitalists and landlords.” Closely allied to the resolution on “Party Unity” was the resolution on “The Syndicalist and Anarchist Deviation in our Party,” also moved by Lenin and adopted by the congress. In this resolution the Tenth Congress passed condemnation on the so-called “Workers’ Opposition.” The congress declared that the propaganda of the ideas of the anarchosyndicalist deviation was incompatible with membership in the Communist Party, and called upon the Party vigorously to combat this deviation. The Tenth Congress passed the highly important decision to replace the surplus-appropriation system by a tax in kind, to adopt the New Economic Policy (NEP). This turn from War Communism to NEP is a striking instance of the wisdom and farsightedness of Lenin’s policy. The resolution of the congress dealt with the substitution of a tax in kind for the surplus-appropriation system. The tax in kind was to be lighter than the assessments under the surplus-appropriation system. The total amount of the tax was to be announced each year before the spring sowing. The dates of delivery under the tax were to be strictly specified. All produce over and above the amount of the tax was to be entirely at the disposal of the peasant, who would be at liberty to sell these surpluses at will. In his speech, Lenin said that freedom of trade would at first lead to a certain revival of capitalism in the country. It would 257 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 be necessary to permit private trade and to allow private manufacturers to open small businesses. But no fears need be entertained on this score. Lenin considered that a certain freedom of trade would give the peasant an economic incentive, induce him to produce more and would lead to a rapid improvement of agriculture; that, on this basis, the state-owned industries would be restored and private capital displaced; that strength and resources having been accumulated, a powerful industry could be created as the economic foundation of Socialism, and that then a determined offensive could be undertaken to destroy the remnants of capitalism in the country. War Communism had been an attempt to take the fortress of the capitalist elements in town and countryside by assault, by a frontal attack. In this offensive the Party had gone too far ahead, and ran the risk of being cut off from its base. Now Lenin proposed to retire a little, to retreat for a while nearer to the base, to change from an assault of the fortress to the slower method of siege, so as to gather strength and resume the offensive. The Trotskyites and other oppositionists held that NEP was nothing but a retreat. This interpretation suited their purpose, for their line was to restore capitalism. This was a most harmful, anti-Leninist interpretation of NEP. The fact is that only a year after NEP was introduced Lenin declared at the Eleventh Party Congress that the retreat had come to an end, and he put forward the slogan: “Prepare for an offensive on private capital.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. XXVII (p. 213.) The oppositionists, poor Marxists and crass ignoramuses in questions of Bolshevik policy as they were, understood neither the meaning of NEP nor the character of the retreat undertaken at the beginning of NEP. We have dealt with the meaning of NEP above. As for the character of the retreat, there are retreats and retreats. There are times when a party or an army has to retreat because it has suffered defeat. In such cases, the army or party retreats to preserve itself and its ranks for new battles. It was no such retreat that Lenin proposed when NEP was introduced, because, far from having suffered defeat or discomfiture, the Party had itself defeated the interventionists and Whiteguards in the Civil War. But there are other times, when in its advance a victorious party or army runs too far ahead, without providing itself with an adequate base in the rear. This creates a serious danger. So as not to lose connection with its base, an experienced party or army generally finds it necessary in such cases to fall back a little, to draw closer to and establish better contact with its base, in order to provide itself with HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 258 FROM MARX TO MAO �� NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION all it needs, and then resume the offensive more confidently and with guarantee of success. It was this kind of temporary retreat that Lenin effected by the New Economic Policy. Reporting to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International on the reasons that prompted the introduction of NEP, Lenin plainly said, “in our economic offensive we ran too far ahead, we did not provide ourselves with an adequate base,” and so it was necessary to make a temporary retreat to a secure rear. The misfortune of the opposition was that, in their ignorance, they did not understand, and never understood to the end of their days, this feature of the retreat under NEP. The decision of the Tenth Congress on the New Economic Policy ensured a durable economic alliance of the working class and the peasantry for the building of Socialism. This prime object was served by yet another decision of the congress —the decision on the national question. The report on the national question was made by Comrade Stalin. He said that we had abolished national oppression, but that this was not enough. The task was to do away with the evil heritage of the past—the economic, political and cultural backwardness of the formerly oppressed peoples. They had to be helped to catch up with Central Russia. Comrade Stalin further referred to two anti-Party deviations on the national question: dominant-nation (Great-Russian) chauvinism and local nationalism. The congress condemned both deviations as harmful and dangerous to Communism and proletarian internationalism. At the same time, it directed its main blow at the bigger danger, dominantnation chauvinism, i.e., the survivals and hangovers of the attitude towards the nationalities such as the Great-Russian chauvinists had displayed towards the non-Russian peoples under tsardom. 3. FIRST RESULTS OF NEP. ELEVENTH PARTY CONGRESS. FORMATION OF THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS. LENIN’S ILLNESS. LENIN’S CO-OPERATIVE PLAN. TWELFTH PARTY CONGRESS The New Economic Policy was resisted by the unstable elements in the Party. The resistance came from two quarters. First there were the “Left” shouters, political freaks like Lominadze, Shatskin and others, who argued that NEP meant a renunciation of the gains of the October Revolution, a return to capitalism, the downfall of the Soviet power. Because of their political illiteracy and ignorance of the laws of economic 259 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 development, these people did not understand the policy of the Party, fell into a panic, and sowed dejection and discouragement. Then there were the downright capitulators, like Trotsky, Radek, Zinoviev, Sokolnikov, Kamenev, Shlyapnikov, Bukharin, Rykov and others, who did not believe that the Socialist development of our country was possible, bowed before the “omnipotence” of capitalism and, in their endeavour to strengthen the position of capitalism in the Soviet country, demanded far-reaching concessions to private capital, both home and foreign, and the surrender of a number of key positions of the Soviet power in the economic field to private capitalists, the latter to act either as concessionaries or as partners of the state in mixed joint stock companies. Both groups were alien to Marxism and Leninism. Both were exposed and isolated by the Party, which passed severe stricture on the alarmists and the capitulators. This resistance to the Party policy was one more reminder that the Party needed to be purged of unstable elements. Accordingly, the Central Committee in 1921 organized a Party purge, which helped to considerably strengthen the Party. The purging was done at open meetings, in the presence and with the participation of non-Party people. Lenin advised that the Party be thoroughly cleansed “of rascals, bureaucrats, dishonest or wavering Communists, and of Mensheviks who have repainted their ‘façade’ but who have remained Mensheviks at heart.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. XXVII, p. 13.) Altogether, nearly 170,000 persons, or about 25 per cent of the total membership, were expelled from the Party as a result of the purge. The purge greatly strengthened the Party, improved its social composition, increased the confidence of the masses in it, and heightened its prestige. The Party became more closely welded and better disciplined. The correctness of the New Economic Policy was proved in its very first year. Its adoption served greatly to strengthen the alliance of workers and peasants on a new basis. The dictatorship of the proletariat gained in might and strength. Kulak banditry was almost completely liquidated. The middle peasants, now that the surplus-appropriation system had been abolished, helped the Soviet Government to fight the kulak bands. The Soviet Government retained all the key positions in the economic field: large-scale industry, the means of transport, the banks, the land, and home and foreign trade. The Party achieved a definite turn for the better on the economic front. Agriculture soon began to forge ahead. Industry and the railways could record their first successes. An economic revival began, still very slow but sure. The workers and the peasants felt and perceived that the Party was on the right track. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 260 In March 1922, the Party held its Eleventh Congress. It was attended by 522 voting delegates, representing 532,000 Party members, which was less than at the previous congress. There were 165 delegates with voice but no vote. The reduction in the membership was due to the Party purge which had already begun. At this congress the Party reviewed the results of the first year of the New Economic Policy. These results entitled Lenin to declare at the congress: “For a year we have been retreating. In the name of the Party we must now call a halt. The purpose pursued by the retreat has been achieved. This period is drawing, or has drawn, to a close. Now our purpose is different—to regroup our forces.” (Ibid., p. 238.) Lenin said that NEP meant a life and death struggle between capitalism and Socialism. “Who will win?”—that was the question. In order that we might win, the bond between the working class and the peasantry, between Socialist industry and peasant agriculture, had to be made secure by developing the exchange of goods between town and country to the utmost. For this purpose the art of management and of efficient trading would have to be learned. At that period, trade was the main link in the chain of problems that confronted the Party. Unless this problem were solved it would be impossible to develop the exchange of goods between town and country, to strengthen the economic alliance between the workers and peasants, impossible to advance agriculture, or to extricate industry from its state of disruption. Soviet trade at that time was still very undeveloped. The machinery of trade was highly inadequate. Communists had not yet learned the art of trade; they had not studied the enemy, the Nepman, or learned how to combat him. The private traders, or Nepmen, had taken advantage of the undeveloped state of Soviet trade to capture the trade in textiles and other goods in general demand. The organization of state and co-operative trade became a matter of utmost importance. After the Eleventh Congress, work in the economic sphere was resumed with redoubled vigour. The effects of the recent harvest failure were successfully remedied. Peasant farming showed rapid recovery. The railways began to work better. Increasing numbers of factories and plants resumed operation. In October 1922, the Soviet Republic celebrated a great victory Vladivostok, the last piece of Soviet territory to remain in the hands of 261 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 the invaders, was wrested by the Red Army and the Far Eastern partisan from the hands of the Japanese. The whole territory of the Soviet republic having been cleared of interventionists, and the needs of Socialist construction and national defence demanding a further consolidation of the union of the Soviet peoples, the necessity now arose of welding the Soviet republics closer together in a single federal state. All the forces of the people had to be combined for the work of building Socialism. The country had to be made impregnable. Conditions had to be created for the all-round development of every nationality in our country. This required that all the Soviet nations should be brought into still closer union. In December 1922 the First All-Union Congress of Soviets was held, at which, on the proposal of Lenin and Stalin, a voluntary state union of the Soviet nations was formed—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.). Originally, the U.S.S.R. comprised the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (R.S.F.S.R.), the Trancaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (T.S.F.S.R.), the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukr. S.S.R.) and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (B.S.S.R.). Somewhat later, three independent Union Soviet Republics—the Uzbek, Turkmen and Tadjik—were formed in Central Asia. All these republics have now united in a single union of Soviet states—the U.S.S.R.—on a voluntary and equal basis, each of them being reserved the right of freely seceding from the Soviet Union. The formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics meant the consolidation of the Soviet power and a great victory for the Leninist- Stalinist policy of the Bolshevik Party on the national question. In November 1922, Lenin made a speech at a plenary meeting of the Moscow Soviet in which he reviewed the five years of Soviet rule and expressed the firm conviction that “NEP Russia will become Socialist Russia.” This was his last speech to the country. That same autumn a great misfortune overtook the Party: Lenin fell seriously ill. His illness was a deep and personal affliction to the whole Party and to all the working people. All lived in trepidation for the life of their beloved Lenin. But even in illness Lenin did not discontinue his work. When already a very sick man, he wrote a number of highly important articles. In these last writings he reviewed the work already performed and outlined a plan for the building of Socialism in our country by enlisting the peasantry in the cause of Socialist construction. This contained his co-operative plan for securing the participation of the peasantry in the work of building Socialism. Lenin regarded co-operative societies in general, and agricultural coHISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 262 operative societies in particular, as a means of transition—a means within the reach and understanding of the peasant millions—from small, individual farming to large-scale producing associations, or collective farms. Lenin pointed out that the line to be followed in the development of agriculture in our country was to draw the peasants into the work of building Socialism through the co-operative societies, gradually to introduce the collective principle in agriculture, first in the selling, and then in the growing of farm produce. With the dictatorship of the proletariat and the alliance of the working class and the peasantry, with the leadership of the peasantry by the proletariat made secure, and with the existence of a Socialist industry, Lenin said, a properly organized producing cooperative system embracing millions of peasants was the means whereby a complete Socialist society could be built in our country. In April 1923, the Party held its Twelfth Congress. Since the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks this was the first congress at which Lenin was unable to be present. The congress was attended by 408 voting delegates, representing 386,000 Party members. This was less than was represented at the previous congress, the reduction being due to the fact that in the interval the Party purge had continued and had resulted in the expulsion of a considerable percentage of the Party membership. There were 417 delegates with voice but no vote. The Twelfth Party Congress embodied in its decisions the recommendations made by Lenin in his recent articles and letters. The congress sharply rebuked those who took NEP to mean a retreat from the Socialist position, a surrender to capitalism, and who advocated a return to capitalist bondage. Proposals of this kind were made at the congress by Radek and Krassin, followers of Trotsky. They proposed that we should throw ourselves on the tender mercies of foreign capitalists, surrender to them, in the form of concessions, branches of industry that were of vital necessity to the Soviet state. They proposed that we pay the tsarist government’s debts annulled by the October Revolution. The Party stigmatized these capitulatory proposals as treachery. It did not reject the policy of granting concessions, but favoured it only in such industries and in such dimensions as would be of advantage to the Soviet state. Bukharin and Sokolnikov had even prior to the congress proposed the abolition of the state monopoly of foreign trade. The proposal was also based on the conception that NEP was a surrender to capitalism. Lenin had branded Bukharin as a champion of the profiteers, Nepmen and kulaks. The Twelfth Congress firmly repelled the attempts to undermine the monopoly of foreign trade. 263 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 The congress also repelled Trotsky’s attempt to foist upon the Party a policy towards the peasantry that would have been fatal, and stated that the predominance of small peasant farming in the country was a fact not to be forgotten. It emphatically declared that the development of industry, including heavy industry, must not run counter to the interests of the peasant masses, but must be based on a close bond with the peasants, in the interests of the whole working population. These decisions were an answer to Trotsky, who had proposed that we should build up our industry by exploiting the peasants, and who in fact did not accept the policy of an alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry. At the same time, Trotsky had proposed that big plants like the Putilov, Bryansk and others, which were of importance to the country’s defence, should be closed down allegedly on the grounds that they were unprofitable. The congress indignantly rejected Trotsky’s proposals. On Lenin’s proposal, sent to the congress in written form, the Twelfth Congress united the Central Control Commission of the Party and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection into one body. To this united body were entrusted the important duties of safeguarding the unity of our Party, strengthening Party and civil discipline, and improving the Soviet state apparatus in every way. An important item on the agenda of the congress was the national question, the report on which was made by Comrade Stalin. Comrade Stalin stressed the international significance of our policy on the national question. To the oppressed peoples in the East and West, the Soviet Union was a model of the solution of the national question and the abolition of national oppression. He pointed out that energetic measures were needed to put an end to economic and cultural inequality among the peoples of the Soviet Union. He called upon the Party to put up a determined fight against deviations in the national question—Great- Russian chauvinism and local bourgeois nationalism. The nationalist deviators and their dominant-nation policy towards the national minorities were exposed at the congress. At that time the Georgian nationalist deviators, Mdivani and others, were opposing the Party. They had been against the formation of the Trancaucasian Federation and were against the promotion of friendship between the peoples of Transcaucasia. The deviators were behaving like outright dominant-nation chauvinists towards the other nationalities of Georgia. They were expelling non-Georgians from Tiflis wholesale, especially Armenians; they had passed a law under which Georgian women who married non-Georgians lost their Georgian citizenship. The Georgian HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 264 nationalist deviators were supported by Trotsky, Radek, Bukharin, Skrypnik and Rakovsky. Shortly after the congress, a special conference of Party workers from the national republics was called to discuss the national question. Here were exposed a group of Tatar bourgeois nationalists—Sultan- Galiev and others—and a group of Uzbek nationalist deviators—Faizulla Khodjayev and others. The Twelfth Party Congress reviewed the results of the New Economic Policy for the past two years. They were very heartening results and inspired confidence in ultimate victory. “Our Party has remained solid and united; it has stood the test of a momentous turn, and is marching on with flying colours,” Comrade Stalin declared at the congress. 4. STRUGGLE AGAINST THE DIFFICULTIES OF ECONOMIC RESTORATION. TROTSKYITES TAKE ADVANTAGE OF LENIN’S ILLNESS TO INCREASE THEIR ACTIVITY. NEW PARTY DISCUSSION. DEFEAT OF THE TROTSKYITES. DEATH OF LENIN. THE LENIN ENROLMENT. THIRTEENTH PARTY CONGRESS The struggle to restore the national economy yielded substantial results in its very first year. By 1924 progress was to be observed in all fields. The crop area had increased considerably since 1921, and peasant farming was steadily improving. Socialist industry was growing and expanding. The working class had greatly increased in numbers. Wages had risen. Life had become easier and better for the workers and peasants as compared with 1920 and 1921. But the effects of the economic disruption still made themselves felt. Industry was still below the pre-war level, and its development was still far behind the country’s demand. At the end of 1923 there were about a million unemployed; the national economy was progressing too slowly to absorb unemployment. The development of trade was being hindered by the excessive prices of manufactured goods, prices which the Nepmen, and the Nepman elements in our trading organizations, were imposing on the country. Owing to this, the Soviet ruble began to fluctuate violently and to fall in value. These factors impeded the improvement of the condition of the workers and peasants. In the autumn of 1923, the economic difficulties were somewhat 265 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 aggravated owing to violations of the Soviet price policy by our industrial and commercial organizations. There was a yawning gap between the prices of manufactures and the prices of farm produce. Grain prices were low, while prices of manufacturers were inordinately high. Industry was burdened with excessive overhead costs which increased the price of goods. The money which the peasants received for their grain rapidly depreciated. To make matters worse, the Trotskyite Pyatakov, who was at that time on the Supreme Council of National Economy, gave managers and directors criminal instructions to grind all the profit they could out of the sale of manufactured goods and to force up prices to the maximum, ostensibly for the purpose of developing industry. As a matter of fact, this Nepman policy could only narrow the base of industry and undermine it. It became unprofitable for the peasantry to purchase manufactured goods, and they stopped buying them. The result was a sales crisis, from which industry suffered. Difficulties arose in the payment of wages. This provoked discontent among the workers. At some factories the more backward workers stopped work. The Central Committee of the Party adopted measures to remove these difficulties and anomalies. Steps were taken to overcome the sales crisis. Prices of consumers’ goods were reduced. It was decided to reform the currency and to adopt a firm and stable currency unit, the chervonetz. The normal payment of wages was resumed. Measures were outlined for the development of trade through state and co-operative channels and for the elimination of private traders and profiteers. What was now required was that everybody should join in the common effort, roll up his sleeves, and set to work with gusto. That is the way all who were loyal to the Party thought and acted. But not so the Trotskyites. They took advantage of the absence of Lenin, who was incapacitated by grave illness, to launch a new attack on the Party and its leadership. They decided that this was a favourable moment to smash the Party and overthrow its leadership. They used everything they could as a weapon against the Party: the defeat of the revolution in Germany and Bulgaria in the autumn of 1923, the economic difficulties at home, and Lenin’s illness. It was at this moment of difficulty for the Soviet state, when the Party’s leader was stricken by sickness, that Trotsky started his attack on the Bolshevik Party. He mustered all the anti- Leninist elements in the Party and concocted an opposition platform against the Party, its leadership, and its policy. This platform was called the Declaration of the Forty-Six Oppositionists. All the opposition groupings— the Trotskyites, Democratic-Centralists, and the remnants of the “Left Communist” and “Workers’ Opposition” groups—united to fight HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 266 the Leninist Party. In their declaration, they prophesied a grave economic crisis and the fall of the Soviet power, and demanded freedom of factions and groups as the only way out of the situation. This was a fight for the restoration of factionalism which the Tenth Party Congress, on Lenin’s proposal, had prohibited. The Trotskyites did not make a single definite proposal for the improvement of agriculture or industry, for the improvement of the circulation of commodities, or for the betterment of the condition of the working people. This did not even interest them. The only thing that interested them was to take advantage of Lenin’s absence in order to restore factions within the Party, to undermine its foundations and its Central Committee. The platform of the forty-six was followed up by the publication of a letter by Trotsky in which he vilified the Party cadres and levelled new slanderous accusations against the Party. In this letter Trotsky harped on the old Menshevik themes which the Party had heard from him many times before. First of all the Trotskyites attacked the Party apparatus. They knew that without a strong apparatus the Party could not live and function. The opposition tried to undermine and destroy the Party apparatus, to set the Party members against it, and the young members against the old stalwarts of the Party. In this letter Trotsky played up to the students, the young Party members who were not acquainted with the history of the Party’s fight against Trotskyism. To win the support of the students, Trotsky flatteringly referred to them as the “Party’s surest barometer,” at the same time declaring that the Leninist old guard had degenerated. Alluding to the degeneration of the leaders of the Second International, he made the foul insinuation that the old Bolshevik guard was going the same way. By this outcry about the degeneration of the Party, Trotsky tried to hide his own degeneration and his anti-Party scheming. The Trotskyites circulated both oppositionist documents, viz., the platform of the forty-six and Trotsky’s letter, in the districts and among the Party nuclei and put them up for discussion by the Party membership. They challenged the Party to a discussion. Thus the Trotskyites forced a general discussion on the Party, just as they did at the time of the controversy over the trade union question before the Tenth Party Congress. Although the Party was occupied with the far more important problems of the country’s economic life, it accepted the challenge and opened the discussion. 267 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 The whole Party was involved in the discussion. The fight took a most bitter form. It was fiercest of all in Moscow, for the Trotskyites endeavoured above all to capture the Party organization in the capital. But the discussion was of no help to the Trotskyites. It only disgraced them. They were completely routed both in Moscow and all other parts of the Soviet Union. Only a small number of nuclei in universities and offices voted for the Trotskyites. In January 1924 the Party held its Thirteenth Conference. The conference heard a report by Comrade Stalin, summing up the results of the discussion. The conference condemned the Trotskyite opposition, declaring that it was a petty-bourgeois deviation from Marxism. The decisions of the conference were subsequently endorsed by the Thirteenth Party Congress and the Fifth Congress of the Communist International. The international Communist proletariat supported the Bolshevik Party in its fight against Trotskyism. But the Trotskyites did not cease their subversive work. In the autumn of 1924, Trotsky published an article entitled, “The Lessons of October” in which he attempted to substitute Trotskyism for Leninism. It was a sheer slander on our Party and its leader, Lenin. This defamatory broadsheet was seized upon by all enemies of Communism and of the Soviet Government. The Party was outraged by this unscrupulous distortion of the heroic history of Bolshevism. Comrade Stalin denounced Trotsky’s attempt to substitute Trotskyism for Leninism. He declared that “it is the duty of the Party to bury Trotskyism as an ideological trend.” An effective contribution to the ideological defeat of Trotskyism and to the defense of Leninism was Comrade Stalin’s theoretical work, Foundations of Leninism published in 1924. This book is a masterly exposition and a weighty theoretical substantiation of Leninism. It was, and is today, a trenchant weapon of Marxist-Leninist theory in the hands of Bolsheviks all over the world. In the battles against Trotskyism, Comrade Stalin rallied the Party around its Central Committee and mobilized it to carry on the fight for the victory of Socialism in our country. Comrade Stalin proved that Trotskyism had to be ideologically demolished if the further victorious advance to Socialism was to be ensured. Reviewing this period of the fight against Trotskyism, Comrade Stalin said: “Unless Trotskyism is defeated, it will be impossible to achieve victory under the conditions of NEP, it will be impossible to convert present-day Russia into a Socialist Russia.” HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 268 But the successes attending the Party’s Leninist policy were clouded by a most grievous calamity which now befell the Party and the working class. 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 working class of the whole world as a most cruel loss. On the day of Lenin’s funeral the international proletariat proclaimed a five-minute stoppage of work. Railways, mills and factories came to a standstill. As Lenin was borne to the grave, the working people of the whole world paid homage to him in overwhelming sorrow, as to a father and teacher, their best friend and defender. The loss of Lenin caused the working class of the Soviet Union to rally even more solidly around the Leninist Party. In those days of mourning every class-conscious worker defined his attitude to the Communist Party, the executor of Lenin’s behest. The Central Committee of the Party received thousands upon thousands of applications from workers for admission to the Party. The Central Committee responded to this movement and proclaimed a mass admission of politically advanced workers into the Party ranks. Tens of thousands of workers flocked into the Party; they were people prepared to give their lives for the cause of the Party, the cause of Lenin. In a brief space of time over two hundred and forty thousand workers joined the ranks of the Bolshevik Party. They were the foremost section of the working class, the most class-conscious and revolutionary, the most intrepid and disciplined. This was the Lenin Enrolment. The reaction to Lenin’s death demonstrated how close are our Party’s ties with the masses, and how high a place the Leninist Party holds in the hearts of the workers. 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 in the name of the Party. He said: “We Communists are people of a special mould. We are made of a special stuff. We are those who form the army of the great proletarian strategist, the army of Comrade Lenin. There is nothing higher than the honour of belonging to this army. There is nothing higher than the title of member of the Party whose founder and leader is Comrade Lenin. . . . “Departing from us, Comrade Lenin adjured us to hold high and guard the purity of the great title of member of the Party. We vow to you, Comrade Lenin, that we will fulfil your behest with honour! . . . 269 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 “Departing from us, Comrade Lenin adjured us to guard the unity of our Party as the apple of our eye. We vow to you, Comrade Lenin, that this behest, too, we will fulfil with honour! . . . “Departing from us, Comrade Lenin adjured us to guard and strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat. We vow to you, Comrade Lenin, that we will spare no effort to fulfil this behest, too, with honour! . . . “Departing from us, Comrade Lenin adjured us to strengthen with all our might the alliance of the workers and the peasants. We vow to you, Comrade Lenin, that this behest, too, we will fulfil with honour! . . . “Comrade Lenin untiringly urged upon us the necessity of maintaining the voluntary union of the nations of our country, the necessity for fraternal co-operation between them within the framework of the Union of Republics. Departing from us, Comrade Lenin adjured us to consolidate and extend the Union of Republics. We vow to you, Comrade Lenin, that this behest, too, we will fulfil with honour! . . . “More than once did Lenin point out to us that the strengthening of the Red Army and the improvement of its condition is one of the most important tasks of our Party. . . . Let us vow then, comrades, that we will spare no effort to strengthen our Red Army and our Red Navy. . . . “Departing from us, Comrade Lenin adjured us to remain faithful to the principles of the Communist International. We vow to you, Comrade Lenin, that we will not spare our lives to strengthen and extend the union of the toilers of the whole world—the Communist International!” (Joseph Stalin, The Lenin Heritage.) This was the vow made by the Bolshevik Party to its leader, Lenin, whose memory will live throughout the ages. In May 1924 the Party held its Thirteenth Congress. It was attended by 748 voting delegates, representing a Party membership of 735,881. This marked increase in membership in comparison with the previous congress was due to the admission of some 250,000 new members under the Lenin Enrolment. There were 416 delegates with voice but no vote. The congress unanimously condemned the platform of the Trotskyite opposition, defining it as a petty-bourgeois deviation from Marxism, as a revision of Leninism, and endorsed the resolutions of the Thirteenth HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 270 Party Conference on “Party Affairs” and “The Results of the Discussion.” With the purpose of strengthening the bond between town and country, the congress gave instructions for a further expansion of industry, primarily of the light industries, while placing particular stress on the necessity for a rapid development of the iron and steel industry. The congress endorsed the formation of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Trade and set the trading bodies the task of gaining control of the market and ousting private capital from the sphere of trade. The congress gave instructions for the increase of cheap state credit to the peasantry so as to oust the usurer from the countryside. The congress called for the maximum development of the co-operative movement among the peasantry as the paramount task in the countryside. Lastly, the congress stressed the profound importance of the Lenin Enrolment and drew the Party’s attention to the necessity of devoting greater efforts to educating the young Party members—and above all the recruits of the Lenin Enrolment—in the principles of Leninism. 5. THE SOVIET UNION TOWARDS THE END OF THE RESTORATION PERIOD. THE QUESTION OF SOCIALIST CONSTRUCTION AND THE VICTORY OF SOCIALISM IN OUR COUNTRY. ZINOVIEVKAMENEV “NEW OPPOSITION.” FOURTEENTH PARTY CONGRESS. POLICY OF SOCIALIST INDUSTRIALIZATION OF THE COUNTRY For over four years the Bolshevik Party and the working class had been working strenuously along the lines of the New Economic Policy. The heroic work of economic restoration was approaching completion. The economic and political might of the Soviet Union was steadily growing. By this time the international situation had undergone a change. Capitalism had withstood the first revolutionary onslaught of the masses after the imperialist war. The revolutionary movement in Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Poland and a number of other countries had been crushed. The bourgeoisie had been aided in this by the leaders of the compromising Social-Democratic parties. A temporary ebb in the tide of revolution set in. There began a temporary, partial stabilization of capitalism in Western Europe, a partial consolidation of the position of capitalism. But the stabilization of capitalism did not eliminate the basic contradictions rending capitalist society. On the contrary, the partial 271 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 FROM MARX TO MAO �� NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION stabilization of capitalism aggravated the contradictions between the workers and the capitalists, between imperialism and the colonial nations, between the imperialist groups of the various countries. The stabilization of capitalism was preparing for a new explosion of contradictions, for new crises in the capitalist countries. Parallel with the stabilization of capitalism, proceeded the stabilization of the Soviet Union. But these two processes of stabilization were fundamentally different in character. Capitalist stabilization presaged a new crisis of capitalism. The stabilization of the Soviet Union meant a further growth of the economic and political might of the Socialist country. Despite the defeat of the revolution in the West, the position of the Soviet Union in the international arena continued to grow stronger, although, it is true, at a slower rate. In 1922, the Soviet Union had been invited to an international economic conference in Genoa, Italy. At the Genoa Conference the imperialist governments, emboldened by the defeat of the revolution in the capitalist countries, tried to bring new pressure to bear on the Soviet Republic, this time in diplomatic form. The imperialists presented brazen demands to the Soviet Republic. They demanded that the factories and plants which had been nationalized by the October Revolution be returned to the foreign capitalists; they demanded the payment of the debts of the tsarist government. In return, the imperialist states promised some trifling loans to the Soviet Government. The Soviet Union rejected these demands. The Genoa Conference was barren of result. The threat of a new intervention contained in the ultimatum of Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, in 1923, also met with the rebuff it deserved. Having tested the strength of the Soviet Government and convinced themselves of its stability, the capitalist states began one after another to resume diplomatic relations with our country. In 1924 diplomatic relations were restored with Great Britain, France, Japan and Italy. It was plain that the Soviet Union had been able to win a prolonged breathing space, a period of peace. The domestic situation had also changed. The self-sacrificing efforts of the workers and peasants, led by the Bolshevik Party, had borne fruit. The rapid development of the national economy was manifest. In the fiscal year 1924-25, agricultural output had already approached the pre-war level, amounting to 87 per cent of the pre-war output. In 1925 the large-scale industries of the U.S.S.R. were already producing about HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 272 three-quarters of the pre-war industrial output. In the fiscal year 1924-25, the Soviet Union was able to invest 385,000,000 rubles in capital construction work. The plan for the electrification of the country was proceeding successfully. Socialism was consolidating its key positions in the national economy. Important successes had been won in the struggle against private capital in industry and trade. Economic progress was accompanied by a further improvement in the condition of the workers and peasants. The working class was growing rapidly. Wages had risen, and so had productivity of labour. The standard of living of the peasants had greatly improved. In 1924-25, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government was able to assign nearly 290,000,000 rubles for the purpose of assisting the small peasants. The improvement in the condition of the workers and peasants led to greater political activity on the part of the masses. The dictatorship of the proletariat was now more firmly established. The prestige and influence of the Bolshevik Party had grown. The restoration of the national economy was approaching completion. But mere economic restoration, the mere attainment of the prewar level, was not enough for the Soviet Union, the land of Socialism in construction. The pre-war level was the level of a backward country. The advance had to be continued beyond that point. The prolonged breathing space gained by the Soviet state ensured the possibility of further development. But this raised the question in all its urgency: what were to be the perspectives, the character of our development, of our construction, what was to be the destiny of Socialism in the Soviet Union? In what direction was economic development in the Soviet Union to be carried on, in the direction of Socialism, or in some other direction? Should we and could we build a Socialist economic system; or were we fated but to manure the soil for another economic system, the capitalist economic system? Was it possible at all to build a Socialist economic system in the U.S.S.R., and, if so, could it be built in spite of the delay of the revolution in the capitalist countries, in spite of the stabilization of capitalism? Was it at all possible to build a Socialist economic system by way of the New Economic Policy, which, while it was strengthening and augmenting the forces of Socialism in the country in every way, nevertheless still promoted a certain growth of capitalism? How was a Socialist economic system to be constructed, from which end should its construction begin? All these questions confronted the Party towards the end of the 273 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 restoration period, and no longer as theoretical questions, but as practical questions, as questions of everyday economic policy. All these questions needed straightforward and plain answers, so that our Party members engaged in the development of industry and agriculture, as well as the people generally, might know in what direction to work, towards Socialism, or towards capitalism. Unless plain answers were given to these questions, all our practical work of construction would be without perspective, work in the dark, labour in vain. The Party gave plain and definite answers to all these questions. 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 October 1917 the working class had vanquished capitalism politically, by establishing its own political dictatorship. Since then the Soviet Government had been taking every measure to shatter the economic power of capitalism and to create conditions for the building of a Socialist economic system. These measures were: the expropriation of the capitalists and landlords; the conversion of the land, factories, mills, railways and the banks into public property; the adoption of the New Economic Policy; the building up of a state-owned Socialist industry; and the application of Lenin’s co-operative plan. Now the main task was to proceed to build a new, Socialist economic system all over the country and thus smash capitalism economically as well. All our practical work, all our actions must be made to serve this main purpose. The working class could do it, and would do it. The realization of this colossal task must begin with the industrialization of the country. The Socialist industrialization of the country was the chief link in the chain; with it the construction of a Socialist economic system must begin. Neither the delay of the revolution in the West, nor the partial stabilization of capitalism in the non-Soviet countries could stop our advance— to Socialism. The New Economic Policy could only make this task easier, for it had been introduced by the Party with the specific purpose of facilitating the laying of a Socialist foundation for our economic system. Such was the Party’s answer to the question—was the victory of Socialist construction possible in our country? 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 HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 274 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. As for the domestic aspect of the question, i.e., the class relations within the country, the working class and the peasantry of the U.S.S.R. were fully capable of vanquishing their own bourgeoisie economically and building a complete Socialist society. But there was also the international aspect of the question, namely, the sphere of foreign relations, the sphere of the relations between the Soviet Union and the capitalist countries, between the Soviet people and the international bourgeoisie, which hated the Soviet system and was seeking the chance to start again armed intervention in the Soviet Union, to make new attempts to restore capitalism in the U.S.S.R. And since the U.S.S.R. was as yet the only Socialist country, all the other countries remaining capitalist, the U.S.S.R. continued to be encircled by a capitalist world, which gave rise to the danger of capitalist intervention. Clearly, there would be a danger of capitalist intervention as long as this capitalist encirclement existed. Could the Soviet people by their own efforts destroy this external danger, the danger of capitalist intervention in the U.S.S.R.? No, they could not. They could not, because in order to destroy the danger of capitalist intervention the capitalist encirclement would have to be destroyed; and the capitalist encirclement could be destroyed only as a result of victorious proletarian revolutions in at least several countries. It followed from this that the victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., as expressed in the abolition of the capitalist economic system and the building of a Socialist economic system, could not be considered a final victory, inasmuch as the danger of foreign armed intervention and of attempts to restore capitalism had not been eliminated, and inasmuch as the Socialist country had no guarantee against this danger. To destroy the danger of foreign capitalist intervention, the capitalist encirclement would have to be destroyed. Of course, as long as the Soviet Government pursued a correct policy, the Soviet people and their Red Army would be able to beat off a new foreign capitalist intervention just as they had beaten off the first capitalist intervention of 1918-20. But this would not mean that the danger of new capitalist intervention would be eliminated. The defeat of the first intervention did not destroy the danger of new intervention, 275 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 inasmuch as the source of the danger of intervention—the capitalist encirclement— continued to exist. Neither would the danger of intervention be destroyed by the defeat of the new intervention if the capitalist encirclement continued to exist. It followed from this that the victory of the proletarian revolution in the capitalist countries was a matter of vital concern to the working people of the U.S.S.R. Such was the Party’s line on the question of the victory of Socialism in our country. The Central Committee demanded that this line be discussed at the forthcoming Fourteenth Party Conference, and that it be endorsed and accepted as the line of the Party, as a Party law, binding upon all Party members. This line of the Party came as a thunderbolt to the oppositionists, above all, because the Party lent it a specific and practical character, linked it with a practical plan for the Socialist industrialization of the country, and demanded that it be formulated as a Party law, as a resolution of the Fourteenth Party Conference, binding upon all Party members. The Trotskyites opposed this Party line and set up against it the Menshevik “theory of permanent revolution,” which it would be an insult to Marxism to call a Marxist theory, and which denied the possibility of the victory of Socialist construction in the U.S.S.R. The Bukharinites did not venture to oppose the Party line outspokenly. But they furtively set up against it their own “theory” of the peaceful growing of the bourgeoisie into Socialism, amplifying it with a “new” slogan—“Get Rich!” According to the Bukharinites, the victory of Socialism meant fostering and encircling the bourgeoisie, not destroying it. Zinoviev and Kamenev ventured forth with the assertion that the victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. was impossible because of the country’s technical and economic backwardness, but they soon found it prudent to hide under cover. The Fourteenth Party Conference (April, 1925) condemned all these capitulatory “theories” of the open and covert oppositionists and affirmed the Party line of working for the victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., adopting a resolution to this effect. Driven to the wall, Zinoviev and Kamenev preferred to vote for this resolution. But the Party knew that they had only postponed their struggle and had decided to “give battle to the Party” at the Fourteenth Party Congress. They were mustering a following in Leningrad and forming the so-called “New Opposition.” HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 276 The Fourteenth Party Congress opened in December 1925. The situation within the Party was tense and strained. Never in its history had there been a case when the whole delegation from an important Party centre like Leningrad had prepared to come out in opposition to their Central Committee. The congress was attended by 665 delegates with vote and 641 with voice but no vote, representing 643,000 Party members and 445,000 candidate members, or a little less than at the previous congress. The reduction was due to a partial purge, a purge of the Party organizations in universities and offices to which anti-Party elements had gained entrance. The political report of the Central Committee was made by Comrade Stalin. He drew a vivid picture of the growth of the political and economic might of the Soviet Union. Thanks to the advantages of the Soviet economic system, both industry and agriculture had been restored in a comparatively short space of time and were approaching the pre-war level. But good as these results were, Comrade Stalin proposed that we should not rest there, for they could not nullify the fact that our country still remained a backward, agrarian country. Two-thirds of the total production of the country was provided by agriculture and only one-third by industry. Comrade Stalin said that the Party was now squarely confronted with the problem of converting our country into an industrial country, economically independent of capitalist countries. This could be done, and must be done. It was now the cardinal task of the Party to fight for the Socialist industrialization of the country, for the victory of Socialism. “The conversion of our country from an agrarian into an industrial country able to produce the machinery it needs by its own efforts—that is the essence, the basis of our general line,” said Comrade Stalin. The industrialization of the country would ensure its economic independence, strengthen its power of defence and create the conditions for the victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. The Zinovievites opposed the general line of the Party. As against Stalin’s plan of Socialist industrialization, the Zinovievite Sokolnikov put forward a bourgeois plan, one that was then in vogue among the imperialist sharks. According to this plan, the U.S.S.R. was to remain an agrarian country, chiefly producing raw materials and foodstuffs, exporting them, and importing machinery, which it did not and should not produce itself. As conditions were in 1925, this was tantamount to 277 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 a plan for the economic enslavement of the U.S.S.R. by the industriallydeveloped foreign countries, a plan for the perpetuation of the industrial backwardness of the U.S.S.R. for the benefit of the imperialist sharks of the capitalist countries. The adoption of this plan would have converted our country into an impotent agrarian, agricultural appendage of the capitalist world; it would have left it weak and defenceless against the surrounding capitalist world, and in the end would have been fatal to the cause of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. The congress condemned the economic “plan” of the Zinovievites as a plan for the enslavement of the U.S.S.R. Equally unsuccessful were the other sorties of the “New Opposition” as, for instance, when they asserted (in defiance of Lenin) that our state industries were not Socialist industries, or when they declared (again in defiance of Lenin) that the middle peasant could not be an ally of the working class in the work of Socialist construction. The congress condemned these sorties of the “New Opposition” as anti-Leninist. Comrade Stalin laid bare the Trotskyite-Menshevik essence of the “New Opposition.” He showed that Zinoviev and Kamenev were only harping on the old tunes of the enemies of the Party with whom Lenin had waged so relentless a struggle. It was clear that the Zinovievites were nothing but ill-disguised Trotskyites. Comrade Stalin stressed the point that the main task of our Party was to maintain a firm alliance between the working class and the middle peasant in the work of building Socialism. He pointed to two deviations on the peasant question existing in the Party at that time, both of which constituted a menace to this alliance. The first deviation was the one that underestimated and belittled the kulak danger, the second was the one that stood in panic fear of the kulak and underestimated the role of the middle peasant. To the question, which deviation was worse, Comrade Stalin replied: “One is as bad as the other. And if these deviations are allowed to develop they may disintegrate and destroy the Party. Fortunately there are forces in our Party capable of ridding it of both deviations.” And the Party did indeed rout both deviations, the “Left” and the Right, and rid itself of them. Summing up the debate on the question of economic development, the Fourteenth Party Congress unanimously rejected the capitulatory plans of the oppositionists and recorded in its now famous resolution: HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 278 “In the sphere of economic development, the congress holds that in our land, the land of the dictatorship of the proletariat, there is ‘every requisite for the building of a complete Socialist society’ (Lenin). The congress considers that the main task of our Party is to fight for the victory of Socialist construction in the U.S.S.R.” The Fourteenth Party Congress adopted new Party Rules. Since the Fourteenth Congress our Party has been called the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)—the C.P.S.U.(B.). Though defeated at the congress, the Zinovievites did not submit to the Party. They started a fight against the decisions of the Fourteenth Congress. Immediately following the congress, Zinoviev called a meeting of the Leningrad Provincial Committee of the Young Communist League, the leading group of which had been reared by Zinoviev, Zalutsky, Bakayev, Yevdokimov, Kuklin, Safarov and other double-dealers in a spirit of hatred of the Leninist Central Committee of the Party. At this meeting, the Leningrad Provincial Committee passed a resolution unparalleled in the history of the Y.C.L.: it refused to abide by the decisions of the Fourteenth Party Congress. But the Zinovievite leaders of the Leningrad Y.C.L. did not in any way reflect the mind of the mass of Young Communist Leaguers of Leningrad. They were therefore easily defeated, and soon the Leningrad organization recovered the place in the Y.C.L. to which it was entitled. Towards the close of the Fourteenth Congress a group of congress delegates—Comrades Molotov, Kirov, Voroshilov, Kalinin, Andreyev and others—were sent to Leningrad to explain to the members of the Leningrad Party organization the criminal, anti-Bolshevik nature of the stand taken up at the congress by the Leningrad delegation, who had secured their mandates under false pretences. The meetings at which the reports on the congress were made were marked by stormy scenes. An extraordinary conference of the Leningrad Party organization was called. The overwhelming majority of the Party members of Leningrad (over 97 per cent) fully endorsed the decisions of the Fourteenth Party Congress and condemned the anti-Party Zinovievite “New Opposition.” The latter already at that time were generals without an army. The Leningrad Bolsheviks remained in the front ranks of the Party of Lenin-Stalin. Summing up the results of the Fourteenth Party Congress, Comrade Stalin wrote: 279 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 5 “The historical significance of the Fourteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U. lies in the fact that it was able to expose the very roots of the mistakes of the New Opposition, that it spurned their scepticism and sniveling, that it clearly and distinctly indicated the path of the further struggle for Socialism, opened before the Party the prospect of victory, and thus armed the proletariat with an invincible faith in the victory of Socialist construction.” (Stalin, Leninism, Vol. I, p. 319.) B R I E F S U M M A R Y The years of transition to the peaceful work of economic restoration constituted one of the most crucial periods in the history of the Bolshevik Party. In a tense situation, the Party was able to effect the difficult turn from the policy of War Communism to the New Economic Policy. The Party reinforced the alliance of the workers and peasants on a new economic foundation. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed. By means of the New Economic Policy, decisive results were obtained in the restoration of the economic life of the country. The Soviet Union emerged from the period of economic restoration with success and entered a new period, the period of industrialization of the country. The transition from Civil War to peaceful Socialist construction was accompanied by great difficulties, especially in the early stages. The enemies of Bolshevism, the anti-Party elements in the ranks of the C.P.S.U.(B.), waged a desperate struggle against the Leninist Party all through this period. These anti-Party elements were headed by Trotsky. His henchmen in this struggle were Kamenev, Zinoviev and Bukharin. After the death of Lenin, the oppositionists calculated on demoralizing the ranks of the Bolshevik Party, on splitting the Party, and infecting it with disbelief in the possibility of the victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. In point of fact, the Trotskyites were trying to form another party in the U.S.S.R., a political organization of the new bourgeoisie, a party of capitalist restoration. The Party rallied under the banner of Lenin around its Leninist Central Committee, around Comrade Stalin, and inflicted defeat both on the Trotskyites and on their new friends in Leningrad, the Zinoviev- Kamenev New Opposition. Having accumulated strength and resources, the Bolshevik Party brought the country to a new stage in its history—the stage of Socialist industrialization. C H A P T E R T E N THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY IN THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SOCIALIST INDUSTRIALIZATION OF THE COUNTRY ( 1 9 2 6 - 1 9 2 9 ) 1. DIFFICULTIES IN THE PERIOD OF SOCIALIST INDUSTRIALIZATION AND THE FIGHT TO OVERCOME THEM. FORMATION OF THE ANTI-PARTY BLOC OF TROTSKYITES AND ZINOVIEVITES. ANTI-SOVIET ACTIONS OF THE BLOC. DEFEAT OF THE BLOC After the Fourteenth Congress, the Party launched a vigorous struggle for the realization of the general line of the Soviet Government— the Socialist industrialization of the country. In the restoration period the task had been to revive agriculture before all else, so as to obtain raw materials and foodstuffs, to restore and to set going the industries, the existing mills and factories. The Soviet Government coped with this task with comparative ease. But in the restoration period there were three major shortcomings: First, the mills and factories were old, equipped with worn-out and antiquated machinery, and might soon go out of commission. The task now was to re-equip them on up-to-date lines. Secondly, industry in the restoration period rested on too narrow a foundation: it lacked machine-building plants absolutely indispensable to the country. Hundreds of these plants had to be built, for without them no country can be considered as being really industrialized. The task now was to build these plants and to equip them on up-to-date lines. Thirdly, the industries in this period were mostly light industries. These were developed and put on their feet. But, beyond a certain point, the further development even of the light industries met an obstacle in the weakness of heavy industry, not to mention the fact that the country had other requirements which could be satisfied only by a well-developed heavy industry. The task now was to tip the scales in favour of heavy industry. All these new tasks were to be accomplished by the policy of Socialist industrialization. It was necessary to build up a large number of new industries, industries which had not existed in tsarist Russia—new machinery, machine- 280 281 1 9 2 6 - 1 9 2 9 tool, automobile, chemical, and iron and steel plants—to organize the production of engines and power equipment, and to increase the mining of ore and coal. This was essential for the victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. It was necessary to create a new munitions industry, to erect new works for the production of artillery, shells, aircraft, tanks and machine guns. This was essential for the defence of the U.S.S.R., surrounded as it was by a capitalist world. It was necessary to build tractor works and plants for the production of modern agricultural machinery, and to furnish agriculture with these machines, so as to enable millions of small individual peasant farms to pass to large-scale collective farming. This was essential for the victory of Socialism in the countryside. All this was to be achieved by the policy of industrialization, for that is what the Socialist industrialization of the country meant. Clearly, construction work on so large a scale would necessitate the investment of thousands of millions of rubles. To count on foreign loans was out of the question, for the capitalist countries refused to grant loans. We had to build with our own resources, without foreign assistance. But we were then a poor country. There lay one of the chief difficulties. Capitalist countries as a rule built up their heavy industries with funds obtained from abroad, whether by colonial plunder, or by exacting indemnities from vanquished nations, or else by foreign loans. The Soviet Union could not as a matter of principle resort to such infamous means of obtaining funds as the plunder of colonies or of vanquished nations. As for foreign loans, that avenue was closed to the U.S.S.R., as the capitalist countries refused to lend it anything. The funds had to be found inside the country. And they were found. Financial sources were tapped in the U.S.S.R. such as could not be tapped in any capitalist country. The Soviet state had taken over all the mills, factories, and lands which the October Socialist Revolution had wrested from the capitalists and landlords, all the means of transportation, the banks, and home and foreign trade. The profits from the state-owned mills and factories, and from the means of transportation, trade and the banks now went to further the expansion of industry, and not into the pockets of a parasitic capitalist class. The Soviet Government had annulled the tsarist debts, on which the people had annually paid hundreds of millions of gold rubles in interest alone. By abolishing the right of the landlords to the land, the Soviet Government had freed the peasantry from the annual payment of about HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 282 500,000,000 gold rubles in rent. Released from this burden, the peasantry was in a position to help the state to build a new and powerful industry. The peasants had a vital interest in obtaining tractors and other agricultural machinery. All these sources of revenue were in the hands of the Soviet state. They could yield hundreds and thousands of millions of rubles for the creation of a heavy industry. All that was needed was a business-like approach, the strictly economical expenditure of funds, rationalization of industry, reduction of costs of production, elimination of unproductive expenditure, etc. And this was the course the Soviet Government adopted. Thanks to a regime of strict economy, the funds available for capital development increased from year to year. This made it possible to start on gigantic construction works like the Dnieper Hydro-Electric Power Station, the Turkestan-Siberian Railway, the Stalingrad Tractor Works, a number of machine-tool works, the AMO (ZIS) Automobile Works and others. Whereas in 1926-27 about 1,000,000,000 rubles were invested in industry, three years later it was found possible to invest about 5,000,000,000 rubles. Industrialization was making steady headway. The capitalist countries looked upon the growing strength of the Socialist economic system in the U.S.S.R. as a threat to the existence of the capitalist system. Accordingly, the imperialist governments did everything they could to bring new pressure to bear on the U.S.S.R., to create a feeling of uncertainty and uneasiness in the country, and to frustrate, or at least to impede, the industrialization of the U.S.S.R. In May 1927, the British Conservative Die-hards, then in office, organized a provocative raid on Arcos (the Soviet trading body in Great Britain). On May 26, 1927, the British Conservative Government broke off diplomatic and trade relations with the U.S.S.R. On June 7, 1927, Comrade Voikov, the Soviet Ambassador in Warsaw, was assassinated by a Russian Whiteguard, a naturalized Polish subject. About this time, too, in the U.S.S.R. itself, British spies and diversionists hurled bombs at a meeting in a Party club in Leningrad, wounding about 30 people, some of them severely. In the summer of 1927, almost simultaneous raids were made on the Soviet Embassies and Trade Representations in Berlin, Peking, Shanghai and Tientsin. This created additional difficulties for the Soviet Government. 283 1 9 2 6 - 1 9 2 9 But the U.S.S.R. refused to be intimidated and easily repulsed the provocative attempts of the imperialists and their agents. No less were the difficulties caused to the Party and the Soviet state by the subversive activities of the Trotskyites and other oppositionists. Comrade Stalin had good reason to say that “something like a united front from Chamberlain to Trotsky is being formed” against the Soviet Government. In spite of the decisions of the Fourteenth Party Congress and the professions of loyalty of the oppositionists, the latter had not laid down their arms. On the contrary, they intensified their efforts to undermine and split the Party. In the summer of 1926, the Trotskyites and Zinovievites united to form an anti-Party bloc, made it a rallying point for the remnants of all the defeated opposition groups, and laid the foundation of their secret anti-Leninist party, thereby grossly violating the Party Rules and the decisions of Party congresses forbidding the formation of factions. The Central Committee of the Party gave warning that unless this anti- Party bloc—which resembled the notorious Menshevik August Bloc— were dissolved, matters might end badly for its adherents. But the supporters of the bloc would not desist. That autumn, on the eve of the Fifteenth Party Conference, they made a sortie at Party meetings in the factories of Moscow, Leningrad and other cities, attempting to force a new discussion on the Party. The platform they tried to get the Party members to discuss was a rehash of the usual Trotskyite-Menshevik anti-Leninist platform. The Party members gave the oppositionists a severe rebuff, and in some places simply ejected them from the meetings. The Central Committee again warned the supporters of the bloc, stating that the Party could not tolerate their subversive activities any longer. The opposition then submitted to the Central Committee a statement signed by Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Sokolnikov condemning their own factional work and promising to be loyal in the future. Nevertheless, the bloc continued to exist and its adherents did not stop their underhand work against the Party. They went on banding together their anti-Leninist party, started an illegal printing press, collected membership dues from their supporters and circulated their platform. In view of the behaviour of the Trotskyites and Zinovievites, the Fifteenth Party Conference (November 1926) and the Enlarged Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (December 1926) discussed the question of the bloc of Trotskyites and Zinovievites and adopted resolutions stigmatizing the adherents of this bloc as splitters whose platform was downright Menshevism. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 284 FROM MARX TO MAO �� NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION But even this failed to bring them to their senses. In 1927, just when the British Conservatives broke off diplomatic and trade relations with the U.S.S.R., the bloc attacked the Party with renewed vigour. It concocted a new anti-Leninist platform, the so-called “Platform of the Eighty-Three” and began to circulate it among Party members, at the same time demanding that the Central Committee open a new general Party discussion. This was perhaps the most mendacious and pharisaical of all opposition platforms. In their platform, the Trotskyites and Zinovievites professed that they had no objection to observing Party decisions and that they were all in favour of loyalty, but in reality they grossly violated the Party decisions, and scoffed at the very idea of loyalty to the Party and to its Central Committee. In their platform, they professed they had no objection to Party unity and were against splits, but in reality they grossly violated Party unity, worked for a split, and already had their own, illegal, anti-Leninist party which had all the makings of an anti-Soviet, counter-revolutionary party. In their platform, they professed they were all in favour of the policy of industrialization, and even accused the Central Committee of not proceeding with industrialization fast enough, but in reality they did nothing but carp at the Party resolution on the victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., scoffed at the policy of Socialist industrialization, demanded the surrender of a number of mills and factories to foreigners in the form of concessions, and pinned their main hopes on foreign capitalist concessions in the U.S.S.R. In their platform, they professed they were all in favour of the collective-farm movement, and even accused the Central Committee of not proceeding with collectivization fast enough, but in reality they scoffed at the policy of enlisting the peasants in the work of Socialist construction, preached the idea that “unresolvable conflicts” between the working class and the peasantry were inevitable, and pinned their hopes on the “cultured leaseholders” in the countryside, in other words, on the kulaks. This was the most mendacious of all the platforms of the opposition. It was meant to deceive the Party. The Central Committee refused to open a general discussion immediately. It informed the opposition that a general discussion could be opened only in accordance with the Party Rules, namely, two months before a Party congress. 285 1 9 2 6 - 1 9 2 9 In October 1927, that is, two months before the Fifteenth Congress, the Central Committee of the Party announced a general Party discussion, and the fight began. Its result was truly lamentable for the bloc of Trotskyites and Zinovievites: 724,000 Party members voted for the policy of the Central Committee; 4,000, or less than one per cent, for the bloc of Trotskyites and Zinovievites. The anti-Party bloc was completely routed. The overwhelming majority of the Party members were unanimous in rejecting the platform of the bloc. Such was the clearly expressed will of the Party, for whose judgment the oppositionists themselves had appealed. But even this lesson was lost on the supporters of the bloc. Instead of submitting to the will of the Party they decided to frustrate it. Even before the discussion had closed, perceiving that ignominious failure awaited them, they decided to resort to more acute forms of struggle against the Party and the Soviet Government and to stage an open demonstration of protest in Moscow and Leningrad. The day they chose for their demonstration was November 7, the anniversary of the October Revolution, the day on which the working people of the U.S.S.R. annually hold their countrywide revolutionary demonstration. Thus, the Trotskyites and Zinovievites planned to hold a parallel demonstration. As was to be expected, the supporters of the bloc managed to bring out into the streets only a miserable handful of their satellites. These satellites and their patrons were overwhelmed by the general demonstration and swept off the streets. Now there was no longer any doubt that the Trotskyites and Zinovievites had become definitely anti-Soviet. During the general Party discussion they had appealed to the Party against the Central Committee; now, during their puny demonstration, they had taken the course of appealing to the hostile classes against the Party and the Soviet state. Once they had made it their aim to undermine the Bolshevik Party, they were bound to go to the length of undermining the Soviet state, for in the Soviet Union the Bolshevik Party and the state are inseparable. That being the case, the ringleaders of the bloc of Trotskyites and Zinovievites had outlawed themselves from the Party, for men who had sunk to the depths of anti-Soviet action could no longer be tolerated in the ranks of the Bolshevik Party. On November 14, 1927, a joint meeting of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission expelled Trotsky and Zinoviev from the Party. HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 286 2. PROGRESS OF SOCIALIST INDUSTRIALIZATION. AGRICULTURE LAGS. FIFTEENTH PARTY CONGRESS. POLICY OF COLLECTIVIZATION IN AGRICULTURE. ROUT OF THE BLOC OF TROTSKYITES AND ZINOVIEVITES. POLITICAL DUPLICITY By the end of 1927 the decisive success of the policy of Socialist industrialization was unmistakable. Under the New Economic Policy industrialization had made considerable progress in a short space of time. The gross output of industry and agriculture (including the timber industry and fisheries) had reached and even surpassed the pre-war level. Industrial output had risen to 42 per cent of the total output of the country, which was the pre-war ratio. The Socialist sector of industry was rapidly growing at the expense of the private sector, its output having risen from 81 per cent of the total output in 1924-25 to 86 per cent in 1926-27, the output of the private sector dropping from 19 per cent to 14 per cent in the same period. This meant that industrialization in the U.S.S.R. was of a pronounced Socialist character, that industry was developing towards the victory of the Socialist system of production, and that as far as industry was concerned, the question—“Who will win?”—had already been decided in favour of Socialism. No less rapid was the displacement of the private dealer in the sphere of trade, his share in the retail market having fallen from 42 per cent in 1924-25 to 32 per cent in 1926-27, not to mention the wholesale market, where the share of the private dealer had fallen from 9 per cent to 5 per cent in the same period. Even more rapid was the rate of growth of large-scale Socialist industry, which in 1927, the first year after the restoration period, increased its output over the previous year by 18 per cent. This was a record increase, one beyond the reach of the large-scale industry of even the most advanced capitalist countries. But in agriculture, especially grain growing, the picture was different. Although agriculture as a whole had passed the pre-war level, the gross yield of its most important branch—grain growing—was only 91 per cent of pre-war, while the marketed share of the harvest, that is, the amount of grain sold for the supply of the towns, scarcely attained 37 per cent of the pre-war figure. Furthermore, all the signs pointed to the danger of a further decline in the amount of marketable grain. This meant that the process of the splitting up of the large farms that used to produce for the market, into small farms, and of the small farms 287 1 9 2 6 - 1 9 2 9 into dwarf farms, a process which had begun in 1918, was still going on; that these small and dwarf peasant farms were reverting practically to a natural form of economy and were able to supply only a negligible quantity of grain for the market; that while in the 1927 period the grain crop was only slightly below that of the pre-war period, the marketable surplus for the supply of the towns was only a little more than one-third of the pre-war marketable surplus. There could be no doubt that if such a state of affairs in grain farming were to continue, the army and the urban population would be faced with chronic famine. This was a crisis in grain farming which was bound to be followed by a crisis in livestock farming. The only escape from this predicament was a change to large-scale farming which would permit the use of tractors and agricultural machines and secure a several-fold increase of the marketable surplus of grain. The country had the alternative: either to adopt large-scale capitalist farming, which would have meant the ruin of the peasant masses, destroyed the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, increased the strength of the kulaks, and led to the downfall of Socialism in the countryside; or to take the course of amalgamating the small peasant holdings into large Socialist farms, collective farms, which would be able to use tractors and other modern machines for a rapid advancement of grain farming and a rapid increase in the marketable surplus of gain. It is clear that the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet state could only take the second course, the collective farm way of developing agriculture. In this, the Party was guided by the following precepts of Lenin regarding the necessity of passing from small peasant farming to largescale, co-operative, collective farming: a) “There is no escape from poverty for the small farm.” (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VIII, p. 195.) b) “If we continue as of old on our small farms, even as free citizens on free land, we shall still be faced with inevitable ruin.” (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VI, p. 370.) c) “If peasant farming is to develop further, we must firmly assure also its transition to the next stage, and this next stage must inevitably be one in which the small, isolated peasant farms, the least profitable and most backward, will by a process of gradual amalgamation form large-scale collective farms.” (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. IX, p. 151.) HISTORY OF C. P. S. U. 288 d) “Only if we succeed in proving to the peasants in practice the advantages of common, collective, co-operative, artel cultivation of the soil, only if we succeed in helping the peasant by means of co-operative or artel farming, will the working class, which holds the state power, be really able to convince the peasant of the correctness of its policy and to secure the real and durable following of the millions of peasants.” (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VIII, p. 198.) Such was the situation prior to the Fifteenth Party Congress. The Fifteenth Party Congress opened on December 2, 1927. It was attended by 898 delegates with vote and 771 delegates with voice but no vote, representing 887,233 Party members and 348,957 candidate members. In his report on behalf of the Central Committee, Comrade Stalin referred to the good results of industrialization and the rapid expansion of Socialist industry, and set the Party the following task: “To extend and consolidate our Socialist key position in all economic branches in town and country and to pursue a course of eliminating the capitalist elements from the national economy.” Comparing agriculture with industry and noting the backwardness of the former, especially of grain growing, owing to the scattered state of agriculture, which precluded the use of modern machinery, Comrade Stalin emphasized that such an unenviable state of agriculture was endangering the entire national economy. “What is the way out?” Comrade Stalin asked. “The way out,” he said, “is to turn the small and scattered peasant farms into large united farms based on the common cultivation of the soil, to introduce collective cultivation of the soil on the basis of a new and higher technique. The way out is to unite the small and dwarf peasant farms gradually but surely, not by pressure, but by example and persuasion, into large farms based on common, cooperative, collective cultivation of the soil with the use of agricultural machines and tractors and scientific methods of intensive agriculture. There is no other way out.” The Fifteenth Congress passed a resolution calling for the fullest development of collectivization in agriculture. The congress adopted a plan for the extension and consolidation of the collective farms and state farms and formulated explicit instructions concerning the methods to be used in the struggle for collectivization in agriculture.
 * Mek, an abbreviation for Menshevik.—Ed.