The question of a five-year plan of development of the national economy, on the agenda of the coming Fifteenth Party Congress, ought properly to occupy the center of the party's attention. The five-year plan is not an officially accepted document and hardly will be accepted in its present form. Nevertheless, it does provide the most systematic and finished expression of the main line of the present economic leadership.
Capital investments in industry will hardly grow at all from year to year, according to this plan (1,142 million next year, 1,205 million in 1931). And in proportion to the total sum invested in the national economy, they will fall from 36.4 percent to 27.8 percent. The net investments in industry from the state budget will fall during the same years approximately from 200 million to 90 million. The annual increase in production is fixed at from 4 to 9 percent each year over the year preceding - the rate of growth in capitalist countries during boom periods. The tremendous advantages resulting from the nationalization of the land, the means of production, and the banks, and from centralized management - that is, the advantages deriving from socialist revolution - find almost no expression in the five year plan.
The individual consumption of industrial goods, beggarly at the present time, is to grow by only 12 percent in all during the five-year period. The consumption of cotton fabrics in 1931, which is to be 97 percent of the prewar amount, will be one-fifth of that in the United States in 1923. The consumption of coal will be one-seventh of that in Germany in 1926, one-seventeenth that in the United States. The consumption of pig-iron will be something over one-quarter of that in Germany, one-eleventh of that in the United States. The production of electric power will be one-third of that in Germany, one-seventh of that in the United States. The consumption of paper at the end of the five years will be 83 percent of the prewar amount. All this, fifteen years after October! To propose such a parsimonious, thoroughly pessimistic plan on the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution really means to work against socialism. The lowering of retail prices by 17 percent, as projected by the five-year plan, even if it is realized, will hardly have any affect upon the relation between our prices and world prices, which are two and a half to three times lower than ours.
But even with this insignificant price reduction (and that, too, still only projected), the five-year plan anticipates a shortage of 400 million rubles worth of industrial goods each year in relation to effective demand within the country. If we assume that the present appalling wholesale prices will be lowered by 22 percent over the five year period - a more than modest reduction - that alone would result in a shortage of goods amounting to a full billion rubles. The disproportion between supply and demand is thus preserved inviolate, a constant source of new increases in retail prices. The five-year plan promises the peasants by 1931 approximately the prewar volume of industrial goods at prices one and a half times higher. To the worker in a large-scale industry it promises an increase of 33 percent in the money wage over five years, aside from the ill-founded hope for a reduction in prices. The disproportion between supply and demand is to be overcome, according to the scheme of the State Planning Commission, by increasing the rent presently paid by the workers by a factor of two or two and a half, i.e., by approximately 400 million rubles a year. Since well-to-do sections of the population have some excess purchasing power, the officials of the Planning Commission are going to correct that situation by cutting down the real wages of the workers. It is hard to believe that such a method of achieving market equilibrium is proposed by the responsible agencies of a workers' state. This entire wrong perspective forcibly impels the consumer to seek a way out through the disastrous method of abolishing the monopoly of foreign trade.
The construction of 6, 000 to 7, 000 versts [one verst = 3, 500 feet] of new railroad tracks projected by the five year plan - as against 14, 000 constructed, for example, during the first five years from 1895 to 1900 - will be dangerously inadequate, not only from the point of view of socialist industrialization, but from that of the most elementary economic needs of the principle regions.
With allowance for slight adjustments in one direction or another, we have here the essential orientation of the government bodies in charge of our economy. This is how the political line of the present leadership looks in practice.
In the long struggle between two irreconcilably hostile social systems - capitalism and socialist - the outcome will be determined in the last analysis by the relative productivity of labor under each system. And this, under market conditions, is measured by the relation between domestic and world prices. It was this fundamental fact that Lenin had in mind when in one of his last speeches he warned the party of the "test" that would be imposed "by the Russian and international market, to which we are subordinated, and with which we are connected, and from which we cannot isolate ourselves." [Collected Works, vol. 33, pp. 276-77]. For that reason, Bukharin's notion that we proceed toward socialism at any pace, even at a "snail's pace," is a banal and vapid petty-bourgeois fantasy.
We cannot escape from capitalist encirclement by retreating into a nationally exclusive economy. Just because of its exclusiveness, such an economy would be compelled to advance at an extremely slow pace, and in consequence would encounter not weaker, but stronger pressure, not only from the capitalist armies and navies ("intervention"), but above all from cheap capitalist commodities.
The monopoly of foreign trade is a vitally necessary instrument for socialist construction, under the circumstances of a higher technological level in the capitalist countries. But the socialist economy now under construction can be defended by the monopoly only if it continually comes closer to the prevailing levels of technology, production costs, quality, and price in the world economy. The aim of economic management ought to be not a closed-off, self-sufficient economy, for which we would pay the price of an inevitably lower level and rate of advance, but just the opposite - an all-sided increase of our relative weight in the world economy, to be achieved by increasing our rate of development to the utmost.
For this it is necessary: (1) To understand the colossal importance of our export trade, now so dangerously lagging behind the development of our economy as a whole (the USSR's share of world trade fell from 4.2 percent in 1913 to 0.97 percent in 1926); (2) Above all, to change our policy towards the kulaks, a policy that makes it possible for them to undermine our socialist export by the usurious hoarding of produce; (3) To develop our ties with the world economy by speeding up industrialization in every way and strengthening the socialist element, as opposed to the capitalist element, in our own economy; (4) Not to fritter away our meager accumulated reserves in the period ahead, but gradually and with a deliberate plan to invest in new types of production - and above all mass production - of the most necessary and most easily obtained machinery; (5) To supplement and stimulate our own industry skillfully and prudently by systematically utilizing the achievements of world capitalist technology.
The orientation toward the isolated development of socialism and a rate of development independent of the world economy distorts the entire prospective, throws our planning efforts off the track, and fails to provide any guideline for correctly managing our relations with the world economy. As a result we have no way of deciding what to manufacture ourselves and what to bring in from the outside. Firm rejection of the theory of an isolated socialist would mean, even in the next few years, an incomparably more rational use of our resources, a swifter industrialization, and an increasingly well-planned and powerful growth of our own machine industry. It would mean a swifter increase in the number of employed workers and a real lowering of prices - in a word, a genuine strengthening of the Soviet Union despite capitalist encirclement.
Won't the growth of our ties with world capitalism involve a danger in case of blockade and war? The answer to this question follows from everything that has been said above.
Preparations for war of course require the stockpiling of strategic foreign raw materials and the timely establishment of vitally necessary new industries - for example, the production of aluminum, etc. But the most important thing in the event of a prolonged and serious war is to have industry developed to the highest degree and capable both of mass production and of rapid switching from one kind of production to another. The recent past has shown that the highly industrialized country of Germany, bound up by thousands of threads with the world market, nevertheless revealed tremendous vitality and powers of resistance, even though war and blockade at one blow severed its ties with the entire world.
If with incomparable advantages of our social system we can, during this "peaceful" period, utilize the world market in order to speed up our industrial development, we shall meet any blockade or intervention infinitely better prepared and better armed.
No domestic policy can by itself deliver us from the economic, political, and military dangers of the capitalist encirclement. The task at home is to move forward as far as possible on the road of socialist construction by strengthening ourselves with a proper class policy, by proper relations between the working class and the peasantry. The internal resources of the Soviet Union are enormous and make this entirely possible. While we make use of the world capitalist market for this purpose, our fundamental historical expectations continue to be linked with the further development of the world proletarian revolution. Its victory in the advanced countries will break the ring of capitalist encirclement, deliver us from our heavy military burden, enormously strengthen us technologically, accelerate our entire development - in town and countryside, in factory and school - and give us the possibility of really building socialism- that is, a classless society, based on the highest level of technology and real equality among all its members both at work and in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labor.
To the question of where to find the means for a bolder and more revolutionary solution of the problem of real industrialization, and a swifter elevation of the culture of the masses - the two problems upon whose solution the fate of the socialist dictatorship depends - the Opposition answers as follows:
The fundamental source is the redistribution of the national income by means of a correct use of budget, credit, and prices. A supplementary source is a correct utilization of the world economy.
1. According to the five-year plan, the budget, both state and local, will increase in five years from 6 to 8.9 billion rubles, and will amount in 1931 to 16 percent of the national income. This will be a smaller share of the national income than the prewar tsarist budget, which was 18 percent. The budget of a workers' state not only may but should occupy a larger place in the national income than a bourgeois budget. This assumes, of course, that it will really be a socialist budget and, along with increased expenditures for popular education, will allot incomparably larger sums for the industrialization of the country. The net appropriations from the budget for the needs of industrialization can and should reach 500 to 1,000 million a year during the next five years. 2.
3. The tax system is not keeping up with the growth of accumulation among the upper layers of the peasants and the new bourgeoisie in general. It is necessary: (a) to tax all kinds of excess profits from private enterprises to the extent of not less than 150 to 200 million rubles, instead of 5 million as at present; (b) in order to strengthen our export, to assure a collection from the well-to-do kulak strata, constituting approximately 10 percent of all peasant households, of not less than 2,700,000 tons of grain. This should be collected in the form of a loan from those stores of grain which in 1926-27 amounted to 14,400,000 to 16,200,000 tons, and which are concentrated, for the most part, in the hands of the upper strata of the peasantry. 4.
5. A decisive policy of systematic and steady lowering of wholesale and retail prices and narrowing of the scissors between them must actually be put into effect. And this must be done in such a way that the lowering of prices applies to consumer goods needed by the mass of the workers and peasants. (In contrast to the present practice, this must be done without the adulteration of quality, which is low enough already.) This lowering of prices should not deprive state industry of the accumulation it needs. It should be carried out chiefly by increasing the volume of goods produced, lowering the cost of production, reducing overhead costs, and cutting down the bureaucratic apparatus. A more elastic price-lowering policy, more adapted to the conditions of the market, and more individualized - that is, taking into greater consideration the market position of each kind of goods - would retain enormous sums in the hands of state industry which now nourish private capital and commercial parasitism in general. 6.
7. The regime of economy which, according to last year's announcement by Stalin and Rykov, was supposed to yield 300 to 400 million rubles a year, has in fact brought completely insignificant results. A regime of economy is a question of class policy and can be realized only under direct pressure from the masses. The workers must dare to exercise this pressure. It is entirely possible to lower nonproductive expenditures by 400 million rubles a year. 8.
9. The skillful use of such tools as the monopoly of foreign trade, foreign credit, concessions, contracts providing for technical aid, etc., can provide supplementary capital. More important, it could greatly increase the efficiency of our own expenditures, multiplying their effect through the latest technology and accelerating the whole course of our development, thus strengthening our real socialist independence despite capitalist encirclement. 10.
11. The question of choosing personnel - from top to bottom - and of the proper relations among them is, to some extent, a financial question. The worse the personnel, the more funds are needed. The bureaucratic regime runs counter to proper selection of personnel and proper relations. 12.
13. The "tail-endism" of our present economic leadership means in practice the loss of many tens of millions. That is the price we pay for the lack of foresight, lack of coordination, petty-mindedness, and foot-dragging. 14.
15. Tax receipts alone cannot cover the continually growing demands of our economy. Credit must become a more and more important lever for redistributing the national income to serve the aims of socialist construction. This assumes, above all, a stable currency and a healthy circulation of money. 16.
17. A firmer class policy in our economy, narrowing the limits of speculation and usury, would make it easier for government and credit institutions to mobilize private savings. It would make possible an incomparably broader financing of industry through long-term credits. 18.
19. The government sale of vodka was originally introduced as and experiment, with the idea that the bulk of the income from it should go toward industrialization, primarily to build up the metal industry. In reality industrialization has only lost through the state sale of vodka. It is necessary to acknowledge that the experiment has proved completely unsuccessful. Under the Soviet system the state sale of vodka is a negative factor, not only from the standpoint of the individual's budget, as was true under tsarism - but also and chiefly from the standpoint of state industry. The increase of absenteeism, careless workmanship, waste, accidents, fires, fights, injuries, etc. - these things add up to hundreds of millions of rubles a year. State industry loses from vodka no less than the budget receives from the vodka, and many times more than the industry itself receives from the budget. The abolition of the state sale of vodka as soon as possible (within two to three years) will automatically increase the material and spiritual resources for industrialization. 20.
Such is the answer to the question where to find the means. It is not true that the slow pace of industrialization is directly due to the absence of resources. The means are scanty, but they exist. What we need is a correct policy.
The five-year plan of the State Planning Commission should be categorically rejected and condemned as basically incompatible with the task of "transforming the Russia of the NEP into socialist Russia." We must carry out in practice a redistribution of the tax burden among the classes - placing a heavier load on the kulak and the NEPman and relieving the workers and poor peasants.
We must reduce the relative importance of indirect taxes. We must in the near future abolish the state sale of vodka.
We must put in order the finances of the railway transport service.
We must put in order the finances of industry.
We must restore to health the neglected forestry industry, which can and must become the source of an immense income.
We must guarantee the unconditional stability of our basic unit of currency. The stabilization of the chervonets requires the lowering of prices, on the one hand, and a balanced budget, on the other. The issuing of paper currency to cover a budget deficit must not be permitted.
We must have a strictly purposeful budget, without deficits, harsh and intolerant of everything superfluous or incidental.
In the budget of 1927-28 we must considerably increase the appropriation for defense (primarily for the war industries), for industry in general, for electrification, for transport, for housing construction, and for measures leading to the collectivization of agriculture.
We must emphatically reject all attempts to tamper with the monopoly of foreign trade.
We must chart a firm course toward industrialization, electrification, and rationalization, with the aim of building a technologically more powerful economy and improving the material conditions of the masses.
The bureaucratic apparatus in every bourgeois state, regardless of the form of that state, stands over and above the population, binding the bureaucracy together through the system of mutual protection typical of any ruling caste, and systematically promoting among the workers fear and subservience toward the rulers. The October Revolution, replacing the old state machinery by the workers', peasants, and soldiers' soviets, dealt the heaviest blow in history to the old idol of the bureaucratic state.
Our party program says on this question:
"Waging the most determined struggle against bureaucratism, the Russian Communist Party fights for the following measures to overcome this evil completely:
"1. The obligatory involvement of every member of a soviet in the performance of a particular task in administering the state;
"2. Regular rotation of such tasks, so that eventually all branches of administration are covered;
"3. Gradual involvement of the entire working population, without exception, in the work of administering the state.
"Complete and thoroughgoing realization of all these measures - representing a further step along the trail blazed by the Paris Commune - and a simplification of all administrative functions, combined with a rise in the cultural level of all workers, will result in the elimination of the state."
The question of Soviet bureaucratism is not only a question of red tape and swollen staffs. At bottom it is a question of the class role played by the bureaucracy, of its social ties and privileged position, its relation to the NEPman and the unskilled worker, to the intellectual and the illiterate, to the wife of a Soviet grandee and the most ignorant peasant woman, etc., etc. Whose hand does the official grasp? That is the fundamental question which is daily being tested in life's experience by millions of working people.
On the eve of the October Revolution, Lenin, referring to Marx's analysis of the Paris Commune, strongly emphasized the idea that: "Under socialism officials will cease to be bureaucrats, to be chinovniks [high officials in the old tsarist civil service]. They will cease insofar as elections are supplemented by the right of instant recall; when besides this, their pay is brought down to the level of pay of the average workers; when besides this, parliamentary institutions are replaced by 'working bodies' - that is, by institutions which both pass laws and carry them into effect" [from The State and Revolution; the translation in Collected Works, vol. 25, p. 493 is inadequate].
In what direction has the apparatus of the Soviet state been developing in recent years? In the direction of simplification and lowering of costs? Of proletarianization? Drawing near to the toilers of the city and the village? Diminishing the gulf between rulers and ruled? How do things stand as to the introduction of greater equality in the conditions of life, in rights and obligations? Are we making progress in this sphere? It is quite obvious that you cannot give an affirmative answer to a single one of these questions.
It goes without saying, of course, that the actual and full equality can be achieved only with the abolition of classes. In the epoch of the NEP, the task of equalization is hindered and delayed but it is not abolished. For us, NEP is not a road to capitalism but a road to socialism. Therefore the gradual involvement of the entire working population without exception in the work of state administration and the systematic struggle for greater equality remain under NEP the two most important tasks of the party. That struggle can be successful only on the basis of a growing industrialization of the country and an increase in the leading role of the proletariat in all branches of material and cultural construction. This struggle for greater equality does not exclude in the transition period, higher pay for skilled workers, increased remuneration for experts, better payment of teachers than in bourgeois countries, etc.
It is necessary to be fully aware that the army of officials has been growing in number in the last few years. It is consolidating itself, raising itself above the general population, and interlocking with the wealthier elements of town and country. The "instructions" of 1925, which gave electoral rights to numerous exploiting elements, were only one very clear expression of the fact that the bureaucratic apparatus, to its very top, has become responsive to the importunities of the upper strata, the wealthy, accumulating elements, those who have enriched themselves. The annulment of these instructions - which were, as a matter of fact, in violation of the Soviet constitution - was a result of the criticism from the Opposition. But the first election under the new instruction had already revealed, in a number of localities, the tendency, encouraged from above, to reduce as much as possible the number of those in the better-off groups who are disenfranchised. With the continual relative growth of the new bourgeoisie and the kulaks, and their drawing together with the bureaucracy, with the incorrect policy of our leadership in general, the kulak and the NEPman, even when deprived of electoral rights, remain able to influence the composition and the policy of at least the lower soviet institutions, although remaining behind the scenes.
The penetration of the soviets by the lower kulak and "semi-kulak" elements and the urban bourgeoisie, which began in 1925 and was partially stopped by the attacks of the Opposition, is the kind of profound political process which, if ignored or glossed over, could threaten the proletarian dictatorship with very dire consequences.
The urban soviets, the fundamental instruments for involving the industrial workers and all working people, without exception, in the task of state administration, in recent years have been losing importance. This undoubtedly reflects a shift in the relation of class forces to the disadvantage of the proletariat. It is not possible to counter these phenomena by a mere administrative "revival" of the soviets. They can be countered only by a firm class policy, by a decisive rebuff to the new exploiters, by an increase in the activity and importance of the proletariat and the poor peasants in all the institutions and agencies of the Soviet state without exception.
The "theory" of Molotov that we cannot demand that the state come closer to the workers because our state is already, in and of itself, a workers' state (Pravda, December 13, 1925) is the most malignant imaginable formula of bureaucratism. It sanctions in advance all possible bureaucratic distortions. Any criticism of this anti-Leninist "theory" - which enjoys the open or silent sympathy of broad circles of Soviet officialdom - is characterized, under the present leadership, as a Social Democratic deviation. But a harsh condemnation of this, and of all similar "theories," is an indispensable condition for any real struggle against bureaucratic deformations. Such a struggle does not mean merely transforming a certain number of workers into officials. It means bringing the whole state apparatus in all of its daily work closer to the workers and the poorer peasants.
The present official struggle against bureaucratism - not basing itself on the class activity of the workers but trying to replace this with the efforts of the apparatus itself - is giving no essential results. In many cases it even promotes and reinforces the existing bureaucratism.
In the recent past a number of obviously negative processes in the inner life of the soviets are also to be observed. The soviets have had less and less to do with the settling of fundamental political, economic, and cultural questions. They have become mere appendages to the executive committees and presidiums. The work of administration has been entirely concentrated in the hands of the latter. The discussion of problems at the plenary sessions of the soviets is merely for show. At the same time the period between elections to the soviet bodies from control by the mass of workers is increasing. All this greatly increases the influence of the officials upon the decision of all questions.
The administration of important branches of municipal affairs often lies in the hands of one or two Communists, who select their own experts and their own staff, and often becomes completely dependent upon them. There is no proper training of the members of the soviet. They are not drawn into the work from the bottom to the top. Hence the continual complaints about the lack of skilled workers in the soviet machinery. Hence a still further shifting of power to the officialdom.
The elected leaders in important spheres of soviet administration are removed at the first conflict with the chairman of the soviet. They are removed still more quickly in cases of conflict with the secretary of the regional committee of the party. In consequence of this the elective principle is being reduced to nothing, and responsibility to the electors is losing all meaning.
It is necessary:
1. To adopt a firm policy of struggle against chinovnichestvo [the virulent old Russian form of bureaucratism] - to wage this struggle as Lenin would, on the basis of a real fight to check the exploitative influence of the new bourgeoisie and the kulaks, by way of a consistent development of a workers' democracy in the party, the trade unions, and the soviets. 2.
To make it our watchword to draw the state power nearer to the worker, the farmhand, the poor peasant, and the middle peasant - against the kulak - unconditionally subordinating the state apparatus to the essential interests of the toiling masses. 3.
As the basis for reviving the soviets, to increase the class activity of the workers, farmhands, and poor and middle peasants. 4.
To convert the urban soviets into real institutions of proletarian power and instruments for drawing the broad mass of the working people into the task of administering socialist construction - to realize, not in words but in deeds, control by the urban soviets over the work of the regional executive committees and the bodies subject to those committees. 5.
To put a complete stop to the removal of elected soviet officials, except in case of real and absolute necessity, in which cases should be made clear to the electors. 6.
We must see that the most backward unskilled worker and the most ignorant peasant woman become convinced by experience that in any state institution whatsoever they will find attention, counsel, and all possible support.
The slowing up of the general rate of socialist development; the growth of the new bourgeoisie in town and countryside; the strengthening of the bourgeois intelligentsia; the increase of bureaucratism in the state institutions; the bad regime in the party; and bound up with all this the growth of great-power chauvinism and the spirit of nationalism in general - all this finds its most unhealthy expression in the national regions and republics. The difficulties are redoubled by the existence in some of the republics of remnants of pre-capitalist economic forms.
Under the New Economic Policy, the role of private capital has grown especially rapidly in the industrially backward areas remote from the center. Here the economic agencies often rely entirely upon the private capitalist. They fix prices without considering the real situation of the masses of poor and middle peasants. They artificially lower the wages of the farmhands. They have expanded the system of private and bureaucratic mediation between industry and the peasants who supply raw material to an excessive degree. They have turned the cooperatives in the direction of greater service to the richer elements in the villages. They neglect the interests of the especially backward group, the cattle breeders and those partly engaged in cattle breeding. The vital task of carrying out a plan of industrial construction in the national areas - especially a plan for industrializing the processing of agricultural raw materials - is kept completely in the background.
Bureaucratism, sustained by the spirit of great-power chauvinism, has succeeded in transforming Soviet centralization into a source of quarrels as to the allotment of official positions among the nationalities (the Transcaucasian Federation). It has spoiled the relations between the center and the outlying areas. It has reduced to nothing, as a matter of actual fact, the significance of the Soviet of Nationalities. It has carried bureaucratic tutelage over the autonomous republics to the point of depriving the latter of the right to settle land disputes between the local and Russian population. To the present day this great-power chauvinism, especially as it expresses itself through the state machinery, remains the chief enemy of integration and unity among workers of different nationalities.
Real support to the rural poor, bringing the bulk of the middle peasantry into closer relations with the poor and the farmhands, organizing the latter into an independent class force - all this is of special importance in the national regions and republics. Without real organization of the farm laborers, without the formation of cooperatives and associations of the rural poor, we run the risk of leaving the backward and rural eastern part of our country in its traditional condition of slavery, and depriving our party groups in that area of all genuine ties with the working people.
The task of Communists among the more backward, newly awakened nationalities should be to direct the process of national awakening along Soviet socialist channels. We should draw the working masses into the economic and cultural work of construction, particularly by promoting the development of the local language and schools, and by the "nationalization" of the Soviet machinery.
In regions where there is friction between nationalities or national minorities, nationalism accompanying the growth of the bourgeois elements often becomes sharply aggressive. In these circumstances "nationalization" of the local apparatus takes place at the expense of the national minorities. Boundary disputes become a source of national rancor. The atmosphere of party, soviet, and trade union work is poisoned with nationalism.
Ukrainization, Turkification, etc., can proceed properly only by overcoming bureaucratic and great-power habits in the institutions and agencies of the Soviet Union. That is one side of the problem. The other side is that it can proceed properly only if the leading role of the proletariat is preserved in the national republics, only if we base ourselves on the lower strata in the countryside and carry on a continuous and irreconcilable struggle against kulak and chauvinist elements.
These questions are especially important in such industrial centers as the Donbas of Baku, whose proletarian population is largely of a different nationality from that of the surrounding countryside. In these cases correct cultural and political relations between town and countryside demand: (1) and especially attentive and genuinely fraternal attitude on the part of the town toward the material and spiritual requirements of the countryside where the nationality is different; (2) a determined resistance to every bourgeois attempt to drive a wedge between the town and countryside - whether by cultivating a bureaucratic arrogance toward the rural districts, or a reactionary kulak resentment of the town.
Our bureaucratic regime has entrusted the actual implementation of its superficial show of "nationalization" to bureaucrats, bourgeois specialists, and petty-bourgeois teachers, who are connect by countless social ties with the upper strata in both town and countryside. They adapt their policies to the interests of these upper strata. This repels the local poor from the party and from Soviet power and throws them into the arms of the commercial bourgeoisie, the usurers, the reactionary priests, and feudal-patriarchal elements. At the same time our bureaucratic regime pushes into the background the genuinely Communist elements of the nationality, often denouncing them as "deviators" and persecuting them in every possible manner. This happened, for example, to an important group of Old Bolsheviks in Georgia who incurred the displeasure of the Stalin group and were hotly defended by Lenin in the last period of his life.
The elevation of the working masses of the national republic and territories, made possible by the October Revolution, is the reason why these masses aspire to direct and independent participation in practical constructive work. Our bureaucratic regime is attempting to paralyze this aspiration by frightening the masses with the cry of local nationalism.
The Twelfth Congress of our party recognized the necessity of a struggle against "surviving elements of great-power chauvinism," against "economic and cultural inequality between nationalities within the Soviet Union," against "survivals of nationalism in a whole series of people who have endured the heavy yoke of national oppression." The fourth conference on nationality questions, with responsible leaders of the national republics and regions in attendance (1923), declared that "one of the basic tasks of the party is to nurture and develop Communist organizations among the proletarian and semi-proletarian elements of the local population in the national republics and regions." The conference unanimously declared that Communists who go from the center to the backward republics and regions ought to play the role "not of pedagogues and nursemaids by of helpers" (Lenin). In recent years matters have developed in exactly the opposite direction. The heads of the national party apparatus, appointed by the Secretariat of the Central Committee, take upon themselves the actual decision of all party and soviet questions. They force out active workers from the non-Russian nationalities as some kind of second-rate Communists whom one brings into work merely to fulfill a formal "representative function" (Crimea, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tartaria, the mountain area of the Northern Caucasus, etc.). An artificial division from above of all local party workers into the "right" and "left" is carried out as a system in order that the secretaries appointed by the center may arbitrarily command both groups.
In the sphere of our national policy, just as in other spheres, it is necessary to return to Leninist positions:
1. To carry out an incomparably more systematic, more consistent, more vigorous, effort to overcome national divisions among workers of different nationalities - especially by an attitude of consideration toward newly recruited "national" workers, training them in skilled trades and improving their living and cultural conditions; to firmly remember that the real lever for bringing the backward national countryside into the work of Soviet construction is the creation and development of proletarian cadres in the local population.
2. To reconsider the five-year economic plan with a view to increasing the rate of industrialization in the backward periphery, and to work out a fifteen-year plan which shall take into consideration the interests of the national republics and regions; to adapt our state purchasing policy to the development of special crops among the poor and middle peasants (cotton in Central Asia, tobacco in the Crimea, Abkhazia, etc.) The cooperative credit policy and also the policy of land improvement (in Central Asia, Transcaucaisa, etc.) ought to be carried out strictly on class lines, in keeping with the fundamental tasks of socialist construction; to give greater attention to the development of cattle-raising cooperatives, to carry out industrialization in the processing of agricultural raw materials in a manner adapted to local conditions. To revise our policy of settling new inhabitants in more backward regions to conform to the aim of a correct policy on the national question.
3. To carry out conscientiously the policy of nationalization of the soviet apparatus, as well as the party, trade union, and cooperative apparatuses, with genuine consideration for the relations between classes and between nationalities; to wage a real struggle against "colonialist" deviations in the activities of government, cooperative, and other agencies; to reduce bureaucratic mediation between the center and the periphery; to study the experience of the Transcaucasian Federation from the standpoint of its promoting or failing to promote the industrial and cultural development of the nationalities concerned.
4. Systematically to remove every obstacle to the fullest possible union and cooperation of the working people of different nationalities of the Soviet Union, on the basis of socialist construction and the international revolution; to wage a determined struggle against the mechanical imposition upon the workers and peasants of other nationalities of the predominant national language. In this matter the laboring masses should have full freedom of choice. The real rights of every national minority within the boundaries of every national republic and region must be guaranteed. In all this work special attention must be given to those exceptional conditions arising between formerly oppressed nationalities who were formerly their oppressors.
5. A consistent implementation of inner-party democracy in all the national republics and regions; an absolute repudiation of the attitude of command toward non-Russians, of appointment and transfer from above; a repudiation of the policy of arbitrary division of non-Russian Communists into "rights" and "lefts"; a most attentive promotion and training of local proletarian, semi-proletarian, agricultural proletarian and (anti-kulak) peasant activists.
6. A repudiation of the Ustryalov tendency, and of all kinds of great-power tendencies - especially in the central commissariats and in the state apparatus in general. An educational struggle against local nationalism upon the basis of a clear and consistent class policy on the national question.
7. Transformation of the Soviet of Nationalities into a really functioning institution bound up with the life of the national republics and regions, and really capable of defending their interests.
8. Adequate attention to the national problem in the work of the trade unions and to the task of forming national proletarian cadres. Business in these unions to be transacted in the local language; the interests of all nationalities and national minorities to be protected.
9. No franchise under any circumstances for exploiting elements.
10. A fifth conference on nationality questions to be called on a basis of real representation of the rank and file.
Publication in the press of Lenin's letter on the national question, which contains a criticism of Stalin's line on this question [see Collected Works, vol. 36, pp. 605-11].
No party in world history ever won such tremendous victories as our party, which has stood for ten years now at the head of a proletariat which has put its dictatorship into effect. The Russian Communist Party is the fundamental instrument of the proletarian revolution. The Russian Communist Party is the leading party of the Comintern. No party has ever borne such worldwide historic responsibility as ours. But exactly for this reason, and because of the power it wields, our party must criticize its mistakes fearlessly. It must not cover up the darker aspects of its own situation. It must clearly see the danger of an actual degeneration, in order to take timely measures to prevent it. It was always so in the time of Lenin, who warned us most of all against becoming a party of "swelled heads" [Collected Works, vol. 30, p. 528]. In giving the following picture of the present condition of the party, with all its darker aspects, we Oppositionists express the firm hope that with a correct Leninist line the party can conquer its weaknesses and rise to the height of its historic tasks.
1. The social composition of the party has deteriorated more and more in the past few years. On January 1, 1927, we had in the party, in round numbers:
Workers actually employed in industry and transport: 430, 000
Agricultural workers: 15, 700
Peasants (more than half of them now office workers): 303, 000
Office workers
(more than half of whom were formerly industrial workers): 462, 000
Thus, on January 1, our party had only one-third workers in the factories (in fact, only 31 percent), and two-thirds peasants, office workers, former industrial workers, and "miscellaneous."
In the last year and a half our party has lost about 100, 000 workers in the factories. "Automatic attrition" from the party for 1926 amounted to 25, 000 rank-and-file Communists, among whom 76.5 percent were factory workers (Izvestia, nos. 24, 25). The recent so-called "sifting" process that accompanied the new registration of party members resulted, according to the official data (which unquestionably minimize the facts), in the removal from the party of about 80, 000 members, the immense majority of them industrial workers. "In relative figures the registration embraced 93.5 percent of the party membership at the beginning of the present year" (Ibid.). Thus, by the simple process of a new registration, 6.5 percent of the whole party membership was "sifted out" (amounting to 80, 000 members). Among those "sifted out" about 50 percent were skilled, and more than a third semiskilled, workers. The attempt of the Central Committee apparatus to minimize these already sufficiently minimized data is obviously unsuccessful. In place of the Lenin levy we now have a Stalin "sifting".
On the other hand, 100, 000 peasants have been admitted to the party since the Fourteenth Congress, the majority of them middle peasants. The percentage of agricultural workers is totally insignificant.
2. The social composition of the leadership bodies of the party has deteriorated still more. In the county committees, 29.5 percent are peasants (in origin); 24.4 percent are office workers, etc.; 81.6 percent of the members of these committees work for government agencies. The number of factory workers in the leading bodies of the party is next to nothing. In the regional committees, it is 13.2 percent; in the county committees, from 9.8 to 16.1 percent (see the Review of the Statistical Department of the Central Committee, June 10, 1927).
In the party itself about one-third of the members are workers in industry, and in the decision-making bodies of the party only one-tenth are workers in industry. This constitutes a grave danger to the party. The trade unions have traveled the same road [See Chapter 2, on the situation of the workers and the trade unions]. This shows what an enormous share of the power the "administrators" have taken away from us - and also those from the "labor aristocracy." This is the surest road to the "deproletarianization" of the party.
3. The role of the former Social Revolutionaries (SRs) and Mensheviks in the party apparatus and in positions of leadership has increased. At the time of the Fourteenth Congress, 38 percent of those occupying responsible and directing positions in our press were persons who had come to us from other parties (Report of the Fourteenth Congress, p. 83). At present the situation is even worse. The actual direction of the Bolshevik press is either in the hands of the revisionist school of the "young" (Slepkov, Stetsky, Maretsky, and others) or of former Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. About a quarter of the higher cadres of the active elements in the party is composed of former Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks.
4. Bureaucratism is growing in all spheres, but its growth is especially ruinous in the party. Today's "leading" party bureaucrat looks at things in the following manner: "We have members of the party who still inadequately understand the party itself, just what it is. They think that the party starts with the cell or local unit - the cell is the building block; then comes the district committee, and so on, higher and higher, until you arrive at the Central Committee. That is not right (!!!). Our party must be looked at from the top down. And this view must be adhered to in all practical relationships and in the entire work of the party" (speech of the second secretary of the Northern Caucasus Regional Committee of the Russian Communist Party in Molot, May 27, 1927).
The definitions of inner-party democracy given us by comrades in top positions, such as Uglanov, Molotov, Kaganovich, etc., come essentially to the same thing (see Pravda, June 4, 1926).
This "new" conception is dangerous in the extreme. If we really acknowledged that our party "must be looked at from the top down," that would mean that the Leninist party, the party of the mass of the workers, no longer exists.
5. The last few years have seen a systematic abolition of inner-party democracy - in violation of the whole tradition of the Bolshevik Party, in violation of the direct decisions of a series of party congresses. The genuine election of officials in actual practice is dying out. The organizational principles of Bolshevism are being perverted at every step. The party constitution is being systematically changed, to increase the rights at the top and diminish the rights of the base party units. The mandates of the county, district, and regional committees have been extended by the Central Committee to a year, to two years, and more.
6. The leaderships of the regional committees, the regional executive committees, the regional trade union councils, etc., are, in actual fact, irremovable (for periods of from three to five years and longer). The right of each member of the party, of each group of party members, to "appeal its radical differences to the court of the whole party," is in actual fact annulled. Congresses and conferences are called without a preliminary free discussion (such as was always held under Lenin) of all questions by the whole party. The demand for such a discussion is treated as a violation of party discipline. The saying of Lenin is completely forgotten, that the Bolshevik "general staff" must "really be backed by the good and conscious will of an army that follows and at the same time directs its general staff" [Collected Works, vol. 7, p. 118].
Within the party there is taking place - as a natural accompaniment of the general course - an extremely significant process of pushing out the veteran party members, who lived through the underground period, or at least through the civil war, and are independent and capable of defending their views. They are being replaced by new elements, distinguished chiefly by their unquestioning obedience. This obedience, encouraged from above under the name of revolutionary discipline, has really nothing whatever to do with revolutionary discipline. Not infrequently new Communists, selected from among workers who were always distinguished by their subservience to the old prerevolutionary authorities, are now being promoted to the leading positions in the working class cells and in the administration. They curry favor by a demonstrative and abusive hostility toward the old worker-members, the leaders of the working class in the hardest moments of the revolution.
Similar changes have been made in a far uglier form in the state apparatus, where it is no longer a rare thing to meet the perfected figure of the "party" Soviet officials. On solemn occasions he swears by October; he distinguishes himself by a complete indifference to his task; he lives with all his roots in a petty-bourgeois philistine milieu, abuses the leadership in private life, and in party meetings gives the Opposition a "good going over."
The real rights of one member of the party at the top (above all, the secretary) are many times greater than the real rights of a hundred members at the bottom. This growing substitution of the apparatus for the party is promoted by a "theory" of Stalin's which denies the Leninist principle, inviolable for every Bolshevik, that the dictatorship of the proletariat is and can be realized only through the dictatorship of the party.
The dying out of inner-party democracy leads to a dying out of workers' democracy in general - in the trade unions, and in all other nonparty mass organizations.
Inner-party disagreements are distorted. A vicious polemic is carried on for months and years on the end against the views of Bolsheviks who are denounced as "the Opposition," while these Bolsheviks are not permitted to expound their real views in the party press. Yesterday's Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries, Cadets, Bundists, Zionists, attack and denounce in the pages of Pravda documents submitted to the Central Committee by certain of its own members. They take isolated sentences from these documents out of context and distort them. But the documents themselves are never printed. Party units are compelled to vote "denunciations" of documents that are totally unknown to them.
The party is compelled to judge our disagreements on the basis of the universally despised official summaries, or study outlines, and speeches "working over" the Opposition, almost all of which are illiterate and full of lies. The saying of Lenin - "Whoever believes things simply on someone else's say-so is a hopeless idiot" - has been replaced by a new formula: "Whoever does not believe the official say-so is an Oppositionist." Factory workers who incline toward the Opposition are compelled to pay for their opinions with unemployment. The rank-and-file party members cannot state their views out loud. Veteran party activists are deprived of the right to express themselves either in the press or at meetings.
Bolsheviks who defend the ideas of Lenin are slanderously accused of desiring to create "two parties." This accusation was deliberately invented in order to arouse the workers, who naturally passionately defend the unity of their party, against the Opposition. Every word of criticism against the crude Menshevik mistakes of Stalin (on the problems of the Chinese revolution, the Anglo-Russian committee, etc.) is described as a "struggle against our party," although Stalin has never asked the party in advance about his policy in China or about any other important problem. This accusation that the Opposition desires to create "two parties" is repeated every day by those whose own purpose is to force the Bolshevik-Leninists out of the party in order to have a free hand in carrying out an opportunist policy.
7. Almost all advanced educational work in the party and all elementary political education has now been reduced to a course in Opposition-baiting. The method of persuasion is not only replaced on an immense scale by the method of compulsion; it is also supplemented by a method of deceiving the party. Since party education has been reduced to mere official propaganda, the general tendency is to evade it. Attendance at meetings, party schools, and study groups, dedicated as they are to Opposition-baiting, has dropped enormously. The party is employing passive resistance against the present wrong course of its apparatus.
8. Not only have careerism, bureaucratism, and inequality grown in the party in recent years, but muddy streams from alien and hostile class sources are flowing into it - for example, anti-Semitism. The very self-preservation of the party demands a merciless struggle against such defilement.
9. In spite of these facts, the fire of repression is directed exclusively against the left. It has become quite common for Oppositionists to be expelled for speaking at cell meetings, for making sharp replies, for attempting to read the Testament of Lenin. In their level of political understanding and, what is more important, in their devotion to the cause of the party, the expelled frequently stand higher than those who expel them. Finding themselves outside the party - for "lack of faith" and "pessimism" in regard to Chiang Kai-shek, Purcell, or their own bureaucrats - these comrades continue to live the life of the party. They serve it far more loyally than many party careerists and philistines.
10. The present hall of repressions and threats, visibly increasing with the approach of the Fifteenth Congress, is designed to frighten the party more than ever. This shows that the united faction of Stalin and Rykov, in order to cover up its political mistakes, is resorting to the most extreme measures, confronting the party with a fait accompli in every instance.
11. The political line of the Central Committee (which was formulated at the Fourteenth Congress in terms of the principle "solidarity with Stalin") is erroneous. Although wavering, the present nucleus of the Central Committee moves continually to the right. The abolition of inner-party democracy is an inevitable result of the fact that the political line is radically wrong. Insofar as it reflects the pressure of petty-bourgeois elements, the influence of the non-proletarian layers which surround our party, it must inevitably be carried through by force from above.
12. In the theoretical sphere the actual subjection of the Politburo to the Secretariat, and the Secretariat to the general secretary, has long been an accomplished fact. The worst fear expressed by Lenin in his Testament - the fear that Stalin would not be sufficiently loyal, would not employ in a party manner the "unlimited power" which he had "concentrated in his hands" - has been justified [Lenin's letters of December 24, 1922, and January 4, 1923].
At the present time there are three fundamental tendencies in the Central Committee and in the leading organs of the party and the state in general.
The first tendency is a frank and open drift to the right. This tendency, in turn, is composed of two groups. One of them, in its opportunism and pliability, to a great extent reflects the interests of the "economically strong" middle peasant, toward whom it steers its course and by whose ideals it is inspired. This is a group of Comrades Rykov, A.P. Smirnov, Kalinin, G. Petrovsky, Chubar, Kaminsky, and others. Around them and in their immediate vicinity work the "nonparty" politicians - the Kondratievs, the Sadyrins, Chayanovs, and other "business agents" of the wealthy peasantry, more or less openly preaching the doctrines of Ustryalov. In every province, often in every country, are to be found the little Kondratievs, and Sadyrins enjoying their bit of real power and influence. The other group in this first general tendency is composed of trade union leaders who represent the better-paid class of industrial and office workers. This group is particularly characterized by a desire for closer association with the Amsterdam International. Its leaders are Comrade Tomsky, Melnichansky, Dogadov, and others. Between these two groups there is a certain amount of friction, but they are at one in the desire to turn the course of the party and the Soviet state to the right, both international and domestic policies. They are both distinguished by their contempt for the theories of Leninism and their inclination to renounce the orientation toward world revolution.
The second tendency is the "centrism" of the official apparatus. The leaders of this tendency are Comrades Stalin, Molotov, Uglianov, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, Kirov. It is, de facto, the present Poliburo. Bukharin, wavering between the one side and the other, "generalizes" the policies of this group. In itself this centrist-official group least of all expresses the attitude of any broad mass, but it is trying - not without success - to substitute itself for the party, the trade unions, the industrial agencies, the cooperatives, and the state apparatus - now numbers in the tens of thousands. Among these there is no small number of "worker" bureaucrats - former workers, that is, who have lost all connection with the masses of workers. There is no need to add that in the agencies of administration and leadership, so enormously important to the fate of the revolution, there are to be found many thousands of sturdy revolutionists, workers who have not lost their ties with the masses but who give themselves heart and soul to the workers' cause. It is they who are doing the real work of communism in these institutions.
This does not alter the fact that the degeneration of our political course and our party regime is giving birth to an enormous caste of genuine bureaucrats.
The actual power of this caste is enormous. It is precisely this group of "administrators" That insists upon "tranquility" and "attending to business" - and above all, no discussion. It is this very group that complacently announces (and even sometimes sincerely believes) that we have already "nearly reached socialism," that "nine-tenths of the program" of the socialist revolution has already been fulfilled. It is this group that looks "from the top down" upon the whole party, and still more, from the top down upon the unskilled workers, the unemployed, and the farmhands. This group sees the principal enemy on the left - that is, among the revolutionary Leninists. This is the group that has issued the call for "Fire against the Left."
For the time being these two tendencies, the right and the "center," are united by their common hostility to the Opposition. Removal of the Opposition would inevitably accelerate the conflict between them.
The third tendency is the so-called Opposition. It is the Leninist wing of the party. The pitiful attempts to pretend that it is an Opposition from the right (accusing it of a "Social Democratic deviation," etc.) arise from the desire of the ruling group to hide its own opportunism. The Opposition is for the unity of the party. Stalin propagates his own program - to ostracize the Opposition - under the false flag of the charge that the Opposition wants to create a "second party." The Opposition answers with its slogan: "Unity of the Leninist Communist Party at all costs." The Platform of the Opposition is set forth in the present document. The working class sections of the party and all genuine Leninist Bolsheviks will be for it.
Personal desertions from the Opposition are unavoidable in the hard circumstances under which it is compelled to struggle for the cause of Lenin. Separate personal regroupings among the leaders of all these three tendencies will occur, but they will not alter the fundamental facts of the matter.
1. All the above facts taken together constitute a party crisis. The inner-party disagreements have deepened continually since the death of Lenin, embracing an ever broader range of increasingly crucial questions.
2. The basic mood of the party ranks is for unity. The present regime prevents the party from understanding where the threat to unity comes from. The machinations of Stalin are all designed to place this dilemma before the party membership, upon every sharp or important question that arises: either renounce your own opinion or find yourself accused of favoring a split.
Our task is to preserve the unity of the party at all costs, to resist firmly the policy of splits, ostracism, expulsions, etc. - but at the same time to guarantee to the party its right to a free discussion and decision of all disputed questions within the framework of this unity.
In exposing the mistakes and abnormalities of the present situation in the party, the Opposition is deeply convinced that the fundamental mass of the working class section of the party will prove able in spite of everything to bring the party back to the Leninist road. To help in that process is the essential task of the Opposition.
It is necessary to prepare for the Fifteenth Congress on the basis of real inner-party democracy, as was done in Lenin's time. "All members of the party," wrote Lenin, "must begin to study, completely dispassionately and with the utmost honesty, first the essence of the differences and second the course of the dispute in the party... It is necessary to study both the one and the other, unfailingly demanding the most exact, printed documents, open to verification by all sides" [for another translation, see Collected Works, vol. 32, pp.43-47]. The Central Committee should make it possible for every member of the party to study both the essence of the present inner-party disagreements and the course of the present dispute. It should do this by publishing, in the press and in special collections and pamphlets, all the documents which it has up to this time hidden from the party.
Every comrade and every group of comrades ought to have an opportunity to defend their point of view before the party in the press, at meetings, etc. The draft theses (the platform) of the Central Committee, of local organizations, of individual members of the party and groups of members, ought to be published in Pravda (or in supplements to Pravda) and also in local party papers, at least two months before the Fifteenth Congress.
1. The debate ought to be conducted in a businesslike and strictly comradely manner, without personalities and exaggerations. The chief slogan for the whole preparation of the Fifteenth Congress ought to be unity - not a pretended, but a genuine Leninist unity of the Russian Communist Party and the whole Communist International.
2. It is necessary to adopt immediately a series of measures for the improvement of the social composition of the party and of its leading bodies. To that end we must reaffirm the decision of the Thirteenth Congress, that "the vast majority of the party members in the near future ought to consist of workers directly employed in industry." In the next two or three years, as a general rule, the party ought to admit only working men and women from the factories and hired men and women working on the farms. From other social groups we should accept members only upon a basis of strict personal selection: Red soldiers and sailors only if they are of working class, or rural proletarian, or poor peasant origin; poor and economically weak peasants, only after they have been tested in social-political work for a minimum of two years. The admission of members who come to us from other parties must be stopped. 3.
We must carry out the decision of the Thirteenth Congress, in practice annulled by the Fourteenth Congress (against the will of the Opposition) - to the effect that no less than 50 percent of the district committees, the regional committees, etc., should be workers from the factories (not less than three-fourths of the total). In the county committees, a similar majority of workers, farmhands, and poor peasants.
4. To confirm and carry out in practice the resolution on inner-party democracy adopted at the Tenth Party Congress, reaffirmed by the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission on December 5, 1923, and by the Twelfth and Thirteenth Congresses of the party.
5. We must affirm in the name of the whole party that - contrary to the new anti-Leninist definitions of inner-party democracy devised and circulated by Uglanov, Molotov, Kaganovich, Zhivov, and others - "Workers' democracy means the liberty of frank discussion of the most important questions of party life by all members, and the freedom to have organized discussions on these questions, and the election of all leading party functionaries and commissions from the bottom up" ["The New Course Resolution," December 5, 1923, in The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1923-25), p. 408, where the translation is slightly different.
We must take punitive measures against everyone who violates in practice this fundamental right of every member of the party.
As a rule, the point of view of the party minority upon any question of principle ought to be brought up to the attention of all the members through the party papers, etc. Exceptions should be permitted only when the matters under discussion are secret. It goes without saying that after the adoption of a decision it is to be carried out with iron Bolshevik discipline. The network of party discussion clubs should be broadened and a real criticism of the mistakes of the party leadership made possible in the party press (in discussion bulletins, printed symposia, etc.)
All those changes for the worse that have been introduced into the party rules since the Fourteenth Congress (articles 25, 33, 37, 42, 50, etc.) must be annulled.
6. We must adopt a firm course toward proletarianization of the party apparatus as a whole. Workers from the factories, advanced Communist workers who are popular with the mass of the party and nonparty workers, should constitute a decisive majority of the whole party apparatus. The apparatus should by no means consist entirely of paid personnel, and it should be regularly replenished with working class members. The budget of the local organizations (not omitting the regional organizations) should consist mainly of membership dues. The local organizations should render an amount of their income and expenses regularly, and in actual fact, to the mass membership of the party. The present swollen budget of the party ought to be cut down vigorously, as well as the size of the paid apparatus. A considerable portion of party work should be done gratis by members of the party giving time outside their industrial or other work. One measure for regularly revivifying the party apparatus should be the systematic ending down of a part of the comrades from the apparatus into industry and other rank-and-file work. We must struggle against the tendency of secretaries to make themselves irremovable. We must establish definite terms for the occupation of secretarial and other responsible posts. We must struggle ruthlessly against the actual corruption and decay of the upper-most groups, against patronage, "mutual protection," etc. (examples: Syzran, Kherson, Chita, etc.).
7. As early as the Tenth Congress, under the leadership of Lenin, a series of resolutions were passed, emphasizing the need for greater equality within the party and among the masses of workers. As early as the Twelfth Congress the party noticed the danger, under the NEP, of a degeneration of that part of the party workers whose activities bring them into contact with the bourgeoisie. It is necessary to: "Work out completely adequate practical measures to eliminate inequality (in living conditions, wages, etc.) between specialists and functionaries, on the one hand, and the masses of workers, on the other, insofar as this inequality destroys democracy and is a source of corruption of the party and lowering of the authority of the Communists" (Resolution of the Tenth Party Conference, p. 18).
8.In view of the fact that inequality has grown at an extraordinarily swift pace in recent years, we must bring up this question again and solve it as revolutionists.
1. It is necessary to reorganize the party education along the line of study of the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, driving out of circulation the false interpretations of Marxism and Leninism now being manufactured on a large scale.
2. It is necessary to restore the expelled Oppositionists to party membership immediately.
3. It is necessary to reconstruct the Central Control Commission in the real spirit of Lenin's advice. Members of the Central Control Commission must be: (a) closely associated with the masses; (b) independent of the apparatus; (c) possessed of authority in the party.
4. Only thus can real confidence in the Central Control Commission be restored and its authority raised to the necessary level.
5. In forming the Central Committee and Central Control Commission and their agencies, we must be guided by the advice of Lenin, as given in his letters of December 25 and 26, 1922, and January 4, 1923 (the Testament). These letters ought to be published for the information of all members of the Central Committee. 6.
As Lenin wrote in his letters of December 26, 1922: "The working class members of the CC must mainly be workers of a lower stratum than those promoted in the last five years to work in the Soviet bodies; they must be people closer to being rank-and-file workers and peasants, who, however, do not fall into the category of direct or indirect exploiters."
Also: "In my opinion, the workers admitted to the Central Committee should come preferably not from among those who have had long service in Soviet bodies, ... because those workers have already acquired the very traditions and the very prejudices which it is desirably to combat."
Those letters were written by Lenin in the period when he gave the party his last and most carefully weighed advice upon the fundamental questions of the revolution ["Better Fewer But Better," "How to Reorganize the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection," "On Cooperation"].
The Fifteenth Congress of our party ought to select its Central Committee precisely from the point of view of the above-quoted advice of Lenin.
Pravda The wrong political line and organizational repression have been carried over with full force, sometimes with increased force, into the Communist League of Youth. The internationalist education of the young workers is more and more pushed into the background. All critical thinking is suppressed and persecuted. For positions of leadership in the Communist youth organization, the party apparatus demands first of all "obedience" and readiness to bait the Opposition. The proletarian element among rank-and-file activists, the fundamentally healthy elements, are denied any encouragement by this regime. Here, even more than in the party, the mistaken policy pursued at the top opens the road for petty-bourgeois influences.
In recent years the Communist League of Youth has grown rapidly in membership, but at the cost of a deterioration in its social composition. Since the Thirteenth Party Congress, the proletarian nucleus within this organization has fallen from 40.1 percent to 34.4 percent, and affiliation to the League by the young workers employed in industry has dropped from 49.8 percent to 47 percent. The political activity of young workers in general has declined.
In these circumstances, a number of recent decisions add up to an exceedingly crude mistake, capable only of widening the separation between the League and the mass of working class youth, because they worsen the position of young workers more than ever, and do so in violation of the Fourteenth Congress (reduction in the number of apprenticeship openings in the industrial schools - and here also belongs the attempt to introduce unpaid apprenticeship).
The Communist League of Youth in the countryside is more and more losing its proletarian and poor peasant base. Its cultural and economic work in the countryside tends to focus primarily on the development of individual farming. The relative weight of the poor is systematically falling everywhere - in the general composition of the rural party cells, in the active membership, and in the nuclei of party members within the League. Along with the continual diminishing of the influx of young urban workers, the League is filling up in the countryside with middle and well-to-do peasant youth.
Both in urban and in rural areas, the tendency of the petty-bourgeois elements to get hold of the leadership of the League is growing. The categories of office workers and "miscellaneous" are playing a more and more significant role, especially in the rural organizations.
Thirty-six percent of all new party members come from the ranks of the Communist League of Youth (Pravda, July 14, 1927). However, within the party nucleus of the League from one-fourth to one-third are nonproletarian. In the party nuclei of the rural youth organizations, the middle peasants are rapidly gaining at the expense of the farmhands and the poor peasants. (Twenty percent were middle peasants in 1925, 32.5 percent in 1927.) Thus the Communist League of Youth is turning into another source of dilution of the party by petty-bourgeois elements. In order to prevent a further undermining of the leading role of the proletarian nucleus and its relegation to the background by newcomers from the intelligentsia, clerical workers, and well-to-do strata in the countryside, inevitably entailing a petty-bourgeois degeneration of the League, the following measures are necessary:
1. To put an immediate stop to the gradual negation of our revolutionary conquests in the sphere of labor and education for young workers - to revoke all those recent measures which worsen conditions for them. That is one of the principal premises for the struggle against the unhealthy tendencies in the Communist League of Youth (drunkenness, delinquency, etc.).
2. As the general living standards of the working class rise, the material and cultural level of the young workers must be elevated systematically and resolutely, by means of higher wages, broadening of the network of industrial schools and trade courses, etc.
3. To carry out the decisions of the previous party and Communist Youth congresses for enrolling in the League 100 percent of the young urban and rural proletarians over the next few years.
4. To intensify the work of attracting into the League the poor peasant youth, not just in words but in deeds.
5. To attract into the League the economically weak middle peasants, and from the rest of the middle peasants only those who have been tested in public work, especially the work of struggling against the kulak.
6. To increase the League's defense of the interests of the poor, directing its work toward the creation of a new rural society, not through individual enrichment, but through cooperation and the collectivization of agriculture.
7. To improve the social composition of the party nucleus, permitting recruitment during the next two years only from workers, farmhands, and poor peasants.
8. To make the leadership bodies of the Communist youth essentially proletarian and to systematically and resolutely advance farmhands and the poor peasant youth to positions of leadership. To establish the rule that in the great proletarian centers the regional committees and district committees of the League, and the bureaus of these committees, should consist in an overwhelming majority of workers from the factories, and that the latter should be really drawn into the task of leadership.
9. To wage a serious struggle against bureaucratism. To cut down decisively the paid officialdom, reducing it to the absolutely necessary minimum. To accomplish at least a half, and in the industrial centers three-quarters, of the work of the League through the unpaid efforts of its members. To attract more and more of the rank-and-file members to carry out the work of the League.
10. The cultural and educational work of the League should be closely bound up with an active daily participation by the League in the general political life (the soviets, the trade unions, and the cooperatives) and in the party.
11. Put an end to the rubber-stamp regime, the deadening regime of orders from above, the lying and ignorant "study outlines." Introduce instead the serious study of Marxism and Leninism, upon the basis of live discussion, comradely exchange of opinions, and a real, not a sham, acquisition of knowledge.
12. Introduce, in deeds and not words, a democratic regime. Do away with administrative pressure tactics. Stop the persecution and expulsion of those who hold independent opinions about party questions and League questions. Adhere strictly to the timetables provided in the constitution for calling conferences and congresses on the district, county, and province levels.