*/9у
15. Krupskaia and Lenin, Gori<i, 1922
Trotsky was by far the most charismatic of Lenin's heirs yet he was heartily detested by the triumvirate. Not least of the factors that prevented him from stepping into Lenin's shoes was what A. Lunacharsky called 'his tremendous imperiousness and inability or unwillingness to be at all amiable and attentive to people'. Not until October 1923, against the background of the 'scissors crisis', did he come out in opposition to the triumvirate, lambasting the bureaucratization of the party and calling for accelerated industrialization in order to strengthen the proletariat. During 1924 Stalin and Zinoviev waged a vituperative campaign against this left opposition, impugning Trotsky's claim to be a Bolshevik by drawing attention to his conflicts with Lenin prior to 1917. Since Trotsky had been no friend to earlier opposition groups, his belated conversion to the cause of inner-party democracy was seen by many as no more than a cover for'bonapartisf ambitions.
In late 1924, to counter the left's claim that international revolution was the sole means of guaranteeing Russia's survival as a socialist regime, Stalin enunciated a new doctrine of 'socialism in one country', thereby inaugurating a process that would end in the 1930s in the full-scale rehabilitation of Russia's history and traditions. Once Trotsky had been removed from the presidency of the Revolutionary Military Council in January 1925, Zinoviev and Kamenevturned their fire on Bukharin,the most eloquent defender of NEP. They believed that excessive concessions were now being made to the peasantry and knew that Stalin, about whose ambitions they had been concerned for a long time, stood full-square behind Bukharin. At the Fourteenth Party Congress in December 1925, they attacked the general secretary's vast concentration of power, but Stalin was by now powerful enough to have them removed from key positions. In summer 1926, in an astonishing turn of events, Zinoviev and Kamenev joined forces with their erstwhile foe, Trotsky, to form the United Opposition. Stalin, determined to annihilate this new challenge, aligned himself with a right-wing bloc of Bukharin, A. Rykov, head of the Council of People's Commissars, and
Tomsky, the trade-union leader. In October 1926 Trotsky and Zinoviev were hounded from the Central Committee, accused of representing a 'social democratic deviation', and by November 1927 both had been expelled from the party. In January 1928 Trotsky was exiled to Alma Ata, a prelude to his deportation and ultimate assassination at the hands of Stalin's henchmen. As the grain procurement crisis deepened in 1927-8, however, Stalin shifted position decisively. Spurning the gradualism favoured by the right, he called in 1928 for a 'decisive struggle' against 'right opportunism'. Brilliant theoretician though he was, Bukharin was no match for him politically. By April 1929 the 'right opposition', which barely functioned as an organized faction, was smashed and Bukharin expelled from the Politburo.
At the heart of the inner-party struggle was a conflict about the optimal strategy for industrializing Russia in conditions of economic and social ? backwardness and international isolation. Yet the central place of class
g within Bolshevik ideology meant that the debate focused less on
I
e technical questions than on whether particular policies were
jg 'proletarian' or 'bourgeois' in their implications. Trotsky accepted the
with the peasantry - but emphasized the primacy of building state industry and defending the proletariat. Bukharin, by contrast, argued that the preservation of the alliance with the peasantry was the overriding priority. Peasants should be allowed to prosper - thus his slogan 'Enrich yourselves', which so outraged the left - since the more efficient state sector would meet the rising demand for consumer goods, gradually squeezing out the private sector. Bukharin recognized that progress would be slow, likening his programme to'riding into socialism on a peasant nag', but the United Opposition was alarmed because they believed that this would allow 'kulak' forces to strengthen. So long as NEP appeared to be working, Stalin pursued a middle course, successfully exploiting divisions among his opponents. In 1926 he inclined to the right rather than to the left, opposing the Dnieprostroi dam on the grounds that it was like a peasant buying a gramophone
112
when he should be repairing his plough. But as the perception gained ground that NEP was running into the sand, he switched course sharply, demanding by 1928 a pace of industrialization far more hectic than anything ever contemplated by the left. Since the country was falling ever further behind the advanced capitalist powers, the Stalin faction insisted that speed was of the essence and that a decisive breakthrough could come about only by breaking with NEP.
Although one cannot interpret the inner-party conflict as a naked struggle for power, the issue of power was nevertheless at its heart. Lenin, who had ruled by virtue of his charisma rather than formal position, bequeathed a structure of weak but bloated institutions that relied for direction on a strong leader. No one in the oligarchy enjoyed anything like his personal authority. The question of who should succeed him thus raised thorny issues about the institutionalization of power. Though hardly champions of socialist democracy, the left opposition stood for collective leadership, against the extreme concentration of power in the central organs of the party, and for tolerance of a range of opinion within the party. Yet they believed in the paramount importance of discipline and unity and were terrified of being seen as splitters. This disarmed them psychologically - no more pathetic evidence for which exists than Trotsky's admission to the Thirteenth Party Congress in Mayig24that'the party in the last analysis is always right.' Stalin ably traded on the widespread fear of disunity, building up a reputation as a champion of orthodoxy against assorted malcontents. By harping on Trotsky's differences with Lenin in the past, he attached himself to the growing cult of Lenin, notably with the publication in 1924 of his
waiting for international revolution. Trotsky, against whom the new doctrine was targeted, never in fact denied that it was possible to begin socialist construction; but he saw international revolution as necessary in the longer term if Russia were not to be forced into autarchy and diplomatic isolation. Stalin characterized Trotsky's perspective of permanent revolution as one of 'permanent gloom' and 'permanent hopelessness'. He and his supporters, by contrast, presented themselves as optimistic, loyal and disciplined, 'doers' rather than whiners. This played to the latent nationalism in the burgeoning ranks of young party members, mostly working-class, who whilst parroting the language of class and internationalism, deeply resented the notion that Russia was inferior to the West.
Dear Comrade Leaders
I am writing you a letter because I want to tell you what impression is being made on us, the dark, undeveloped, backward people, by the case of comrade Zinoviev and other of our officials. Comrades, as a
