Leon
Trotsky: Stalin, the Peasant, and the Gramophone
April
14, 1927
[Leon
Trotsky, The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1926-1927), New York
1980, p. 222 f.]
At
the session of the plenum meeting on April 13 Comrade Stalin
permitted himself to say that it was “a lie” when I recalled his
words to the effect that the Dneprostroi project was equivalent to a
muzhik buying a gramophone. Here is what Comrade Stalin said, word
for word, at the April plenum in 1926: “What we are talking about …
is making Dneprostroi pay for itself. However, very large sums are
needed for this, several hundred million. How can we help but get
ourselves in the situation of the muzhik who, having saved a few
kopecks, instead of repairing the plow and renovating the farm,
bought a gramophone and … bankrupted himself? … [Laughter.]
Can’t we take into account the decision of the congress that our
industrial plans must correspond to our resources? Nevertheless
Comrade Trotsky obviously has not taken this decision of the congress
into account” (Stenographic record of the plenum, p. 110).
Comrade
Stalin attempts to explain his position on the question with the
argument that in 1926 we were talking about spending 500 million
rubles over five years but now we are only talking about 130 million.
But even if this were the case, my words did not constitute “a
lie.” In regard to the amounts under discussion, however, here too
Comrade Stalin is now introducing absolute confusion, which shows
that he still fails to understand the question today, just as he
failed to understand it last year. The outlays for Dneprostroi were
estimated a year ago at 110-120-130 million and not at all at several
hundred million. Since then the estimates have undoubtedly been made
more exact but they remain within the framework of those figures. As
for the new factories, which would be the consumers of the power
produced by the Dnepr power plant, their cost is very roughly
projected at 200-300 million. However, these plants are not being
built for Dneprostroi. They are needed for their own sake.
Dneprostroi is being built in order to serve these necessary
factories. Their cost will probably be determined more exactly
hereafter but essentially the difference cannot be very great. It is
absolutely nonsensical therefore to assert that at the plenum last
year we were talking about half a billion and not 110-130 million, as
we are now. Both then and now the amounts under discussion have been
on the same order.
It
is hardly necessary to qualify those traits of Comrade Stalin’s
character which enable him to throw the term “lie” around so
lightly.
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