Leon
Trotsky et al: Letter to the Plenum of the CC and the CCC
Excerpts,
July
1926
[Leon
Trotsky, The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1926-1927), New York
1980, p. 96-100, title: “The
Elections to the Soviets”]
NOTE:
Village and urban soviets (councils) had sprung up during the
revolution as representative bodies of the insurgent workers and
peasants. Because the soviets were originally intended as a means of
mobilizing wage workers, poor peasants, and their allies among the
poor and oppressed sectors of the population to carry out the tasks
of the revolution, the Russian constitution and the constitutions of
the other republics had explicitly disenfranchised employers of hired
labor or persons living on interest from capital. When the
orientation toward the well-to-do peasant gained momentum, it was
reflected in changes in electoral policy as well as agrarian policy:
in the course of 1924 electoral rights were restored to kulaks who
employed labor and rented out land. The soviet elections held in the
winter of 1925-26 had been marked by aggressive participation by the
petty-bourgeois elements of town and countryside, including bribery,
threats, and physical violence, in an attempt to gain control of the
soviets.
The
party plenum of July 1926 examined the 1925-26 elections through a
resolution introduced by Molotov and Kaganovich, which condemned the
extension of the franchise to the kulaks and other petty-bourgeois
elements but issued no substantial criticism of party policy in the
previous period.
The
reference to the Amsterdam International on p. 100 throws light on
another Stalinist measure taken to try to discredit the Opposition.
Ever since 1923, feelers had been extended between the Prof intern
(Red International of Labor Unions, based in Moscow) and the IFTU
(International Federation of Trade Unions, based in Amsterdam) on the
subject of trade union unity. When it became obvious that the IFTU
would not
consider a
merger, the Soviet trade unions, through their All-Union Central
Council of Trade Unions, began negotiations to enter the Amsterdam
International.
Trotsky
viewed these developments with alarm, for they appeared to he an
extension of the line the Comintern was following in Britain, of
seeking an alternative to the hard road of party-building through the
inviting prospects of the large, Social Democratic-led trade unions.
The negotiations were protracted throughout 1924 and 1925, and only
came to an end when the IFTU refused unequivocally to entertain them
any longer.
Despite
Trotsky’s open opposition to the negotiations and to any talk of
affiliating the Soviet trade unions to the IFTU, Stalin
systematically spread the rumor that the Opposition advocated a bloc
with Amsterdam (possibly on the basis that Zinoviev, like virtually
every other majority leader, had been involved in one stage of the
negotiations in 1924). In similar fashion, on the eve of World War
II, Stalin would accuse his opponents of collusion with Hitler —
moments before signing the Hitler-Stalin pact.
By
permission of the Harvard College Library. The text has been slightly
abridged to avoid repetition.
To
the Plenum of the CC and the CCC:
We
are voting against the resolution, introduced by Comrade Molotov in
the name of the majority of the Politburo, because its political
conclusions are totally at variance with those facts of great
importance which the resolution itself acknowledges, though in
glossed-over fashion.
There
is no doubt that the moods of the middle peasants and of the urban
petty bourgeoisie have become incomparably more favorable than they
were, not only under war communism but also in the first years of
NEP. However, it would be impermissible to underestimate the dangers
to the proletarian revolution that the petty-bourgeois element
conceals within itself. The lag of industry behind the development of
the economy as a whole, accelerating the social differentiation
within the village and nourishing the private trader, heightens the
economic role and the political self-confidence of the petty
bourgeoisie. Less than ever, under such conditions, is it permissible
to expand the voting rights of the small property-owner, to bend the
policies of the cooperatives toward the upper strata in the villages,
or to minimize the dangers hidden within these trends.
The
essential facts about the elections, according to Comrade Molotov’s
resolution itself, are the following:
(a)
‘The rise in the political activity of the agricultural workers and
poor peasants has not kept pace with the increased activity of other
layers in the village.” But it is precisely the agricultural
workers and poor peasants who constitute the social base of the party
and the workers’ state in the village.
(b)
In the town, as the resolution states, “there has been a noticeable
increase in the proportional representation of the petty bourgeoisie
in the soviets.” This means a relative weakening of the
representation in the soviets of the proletariat, i.e., of the ruling
class.
(c)
There have been] violations of the Soviet constitution, in the form
of [electoral] instructions favoring the petty-bourgeois elements.
It
is fundamentally wrong, however, to try to portray these essential
facts as the result of accidental circumstances and individual
errors. The worst kind of policy is to make a partial acknowledgment
of certain dangers, in order to get past them and go on to the
immediate tasks of the day, that is, to continue the policies which
gave rise to the dangers in the first place. We consider correct,
although phrased with exaggerated caution, the conclusion drawn by
the party’s central newspaper: “The results of the election
campaign are to a certain extent in contradiction with the line laid
down by our party congress” {Pravda,
July 7, lead article entitled “Lessons of the Elections to the
Soviets”).
Without
understanding the contradiction referred to by Pravda,
one
cannot arrive at the proper conclusions. The contradiction is that
our general political directives declare that the main danger is
excessive pressure from the industrial workers, farmhands, and poor
peasants upon the kulaks and the petty bourgeoisie as a whole —
when in fact the main danger has shown itself to be the pressure from
the kulaks and petty bourgeoisie.
The
party’s fire was directed not against the real danger, but against
those who warned against this danger ahead of time.
It
is wrong to dump the blame for the passivity of the agricultural
workers solely on their “lack of culture.” It was by relying
above all on these elements in the countryside that the working class
and its party fought and won a colossal peasant war. Over the past
few years the cultural level of the lower strata in the villages has
risen, not fallen. If nevertheless their political activism has
lagged behind that of the other layers, a significant share of the
blame for this lies with the incorrectness of the party’s policies.
…
We
emphatically and categorically reject these tendencies, which have
not been evaluated properly in Comrade Molotov’s resolution. The
agricultural cooperatives are among the most powerful instruments in
the hands of the party and state for placing agriculture on the road
to socialism. To put this instrument in the hands of the upper strata
in the villages would be to transform the cooperatives from
instruments of socialism into instruments of capitalism.
A
prerequisite for raising the level of political activism among
industrial workers, farmhands, and poor peasants, given the existing
level of culture, is that the class content of the policies of the
party, and of all state and public organizations, must go to meet
such activism more than halfway, encourage it, and nourish it. The
course charted toward the strong middle peasant inevitably dampens
the activism of the farm laborers and poor peasants. The elections
have merely made this fact plain. From what we have said the
erroneousness of Comrade Kaganovich’s motion must be quite obvious.
It proposes to condemn that section of the CC and CCC which warned in
advance against the dangerous deviations reflecting the pressure of
the petty-bourgeois element and which pointed in a timely way toward
a more energetic policy of industrialization, a firmer and more
correct policy toward the kulak, and above all, the creation of the
conditions for greater activism by the proletarian vanguard. Every
party member must realize that we cannot rectify the party line, in
the sense of a more clear-cut proletarian policy, if blows are aimed
at those who defend and uphold this policy.
The
bourgeoisie and the Mensheviks now place their hopes primarily on the
degeneration of the soviets, just as during war communism they placed
their hopes on military intervention. The hopes of the bourgeoisie
and Mensheviks rest on the capitalist tendencies in our country’s
development, on the disproportion [between high prices for industrial
goods charged to the peasants by state industry and the relatively
low prices paid by the state for agricultural products], on the
scissors, on the growth of the kulaks, the growth of private trader
elements, and the increasing influence of the kulaks. Our policies
are aimed at ensuring the preponderance of the socialist elements in
our economy and preventing the slightest shift of real power from the
hands of the proletariat and the rural poor, in close alliance with
the middle peasant, into the hands of the petty-bourgeois elements
who are trying to draw the middle peasants and poor peasants along
after themselves, and who are in part succeeding. Especially in the
current period, when the economic disproportion between town and
country is intensifying, we must take a vigilant attitude toward any
and all signs of a reduction in the political weight of the
proletariat within the Soviet system.
We
must continually engage in criticism of our own mistakes even though
our enemies are watching. They will inevitably snap up every word of
self-criticism. However, those who seek to suppress self-criticism by
referring to the bourgeois enemy render the best service to that very
enemy. It is not criticism but the glossing over of mistakes that can
truly weaken us and aid our enemies.
We
categorically reject the charge that we have used inaccurate
statistics as the basis for our criticism of the line of the
Politburo majority. The fundamental political processes and trends
revealed in the soviet elections are beyond all question, regardless
of the accuracy of one or another particular set of figures, all of
which we took from the statistics of the Commissariat of the Interior
or of the Central Committee itself.
On
the contrary, we consider profoundly mistaken every attempt to play
with figures in order to gloss over the fundamental political
processes, on whose development in one direction or another the fate
of the proletarian dictatorship depends.
An
impermissible experiment in juggling statistics was made last autumn
in regard to the fodder and grain question, with the aim of
camouflaging the stratification of the village and minimizing the
economic growth of the kulak. Everything that has happened in the
area of economic policy since that time (the dumping of grain on the
market in the spring, on the one hand, and the elections to the local
soviets, on the other) constitutes a most emphatic warning against
any and all attempts to bend statistics to fit preconceived political
notions.
We
reject the attempt to portray our ideological struggle against
certain errors and deviations and for a definite line as the struggle
of a factional group dictated by certain petty motives.
Such
insinuations are insulting to the party as a whole and discredit
those who resort to them.
Equally
we reject any and all attempts to attribute to us certain ideas and
inclinations with which we have nothing in common and which are, if
anything, much closer to the views we are combating — and to do
this instead of direct and open criticism of our actual views, which
we have formulated clearly and precisely.
Only
disrespect for the opinions of the party as a whole can explain the
attempt made in a certain satirical article in Pravda
and
in several speeches at the plenum to attribute to us by hints,
insinuations, and patchwork combinations — a sympathetic or
tolerant attitude toward such proposals as the handing over of the
bulk of state industry, or its leading elements, to foreign capital
in the form of concessions; affiliation to the Amsterdam trade union
international; indiscriminate and unworthy attacks on the Comintern;
the counterposing of state industry to ruralism, etc., etc. We do not
have the slightest affinity with such ideas, nor have we had in the
past, nor could we — considering our fundamental positions. Only
ideological poverty and lack of discrimination in the choice of
tactics could dictate the use of such methods to fight us.
We
are obliged to state, at the same time, that while attributing to us
views that have nothing in common with those we really hold, the
proponents of the leading group absolutely do not fight against
similar mistakes, or even more glaring ones, when they are made by
supporters of their own faction. We do not doubt for a minute that
the party will separate the ideological core of the dispute from the
mound of trash heaped upon it and that the party will have the final
word both in the essence of the matter and in regard to the
impermissible methods used in the debate.
In
conclusion we declare that the incorrect positions of file
leadership, which we have made clear, and the political errors
flowing from them, do not in any way, or from any point of view,
diminish the tremendous work that the party has carried out in
educating and consolidating the ranks of the working masses in the
city and the countryside, in all areas of public life, especially in
the realm of Soviet construction.
Timely
and clear-cut correction of errors will provide the opportunity to
expand this positive work even more fully and to link it even more
closely with the proletariat and the rural poor.
N.
Muralov
N.
K. Krupskaya
L.
Kamenev
Yu.
Pyatakov
G.
Zinoviev
M.
Lashevich
Peterson
L.
Trotsky