Leon Trotsky: A Letter to Friends in the USSR

October 1929

[Writings of Leon Trotsky. Vol 1, 1929, New York 1975, p. 358-361]

Dear Friends,

You are right when you insist on the need for a balance sheet to be drawn on the period just past. A beginning has been made with the thesis of C.G. Of course we cannot stop there. We must overcome the obstacles created by the terrible dispersion of our forces. We have only recently begun to receive Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn [Economic Life] here. In addition, West European problems have suddenly thrust themselves forward, especially the problem of the third period. But then, these problems constitute the very bedrock of our platform.

Nevertheless, tactically the situation seems quite clear to me. The collective appeal [the August 22 declaration] was as far as anyone could go on the road of concessions to the apparatus. Whoever goes one step farther breaks with the Opposition. But we cannot stand still where we are, either. The Opposition must be rallied together around an appeal to the party. The outline for such an appeal would seem to me to be as follows:

* An explanation of the meaning of the declaration to the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission and of the answer to it (along the lines of the editorial “What Next?” in Biulleten Oppozitsii, number 6).

* The point that it is nonsense to argue that the five-year plan, by itself, can change the party regime. On the contrary, changing the party regime is now the prerequisite not only for further success but also for protection against the dangers which are mounting more rapidly than the successes.

* A probe must be made, no matter what, of the new relationship of forces within the country and in the party itself, and it must be done at least to the same depth as at the time of the transition from War Communism to the NEP.

At this time, however, there remains in the country not a single organ by which one might judge the moods of the various layers of the proletariat or the overall relationship of class forces. Long term planning statistics, control figures, etc., are no substitute for this, not in the least.

Even if we assumed that the Politburo reflects the apparatus as a whole, could we doubt even for a minute that at the first serious push by the elemental Thermidorean mass, not only Bukharin and Rykov but, even before them, Kalinin, Voroshilov, and Rudzutak would overturn the Stalinists — if the Stalinists tried to oppose the elemental mass itself and not just its prefigurations within the apparatus? Behind Kalinin and the others stand the Bessedovskys and the semi-Bessedovskys. What percentage do they constitute within the apparatus?

What is the attitude of the working class to the real results of the government’s policies? Have the masses experienced an improvement in their conditions of existence? What is the proportion of those who are discontented to those who are content? What is the proportion of those who are vaguely and elementally dissatisfied to those who are consciously hostile?

What are the proportions among the various layers in the countryside? How much real political weight does the poor peasantry have? What part of the middle peasantry is ready to side with the poor in the event of an open kulak revolt (which of course could not help but be reflected within the army)?

Reprisals were taken against the right wing by methods of a kind that only drew the noose tighter around the neck of the party and trade unions. That fact, with all its consequences, outweighs the positive features in the shrill, theatrical, harsh but not deep-going, break with the right wing.

The party continues to be held artificially in a state of ideological and organizational anarchy, above which the apparatus rises, with a very large percentage of it, too, eaten away by the same condition of anarchy.

In 1923, when the Opposition called for an initial five-year plan to be worked out in rough draft, they accused us groundlessly of making a fetish out of the principle of planning. Now having finally come round to working out a five-year plan, they themselves have turned it into a fetish standing above the real class relations and attitudes of the various layers of the proletariat. The carrying out of the five-year plan is a political task, in which concessions to class enemies, for reasons of maneuver, are possible and inevitable along the way, and therefore this task presupposes the presence of the basic instrument of proletarian politics, the party.

Politically a new point of departure for the five-year plan needs to be sought. The present starting point-of universal discontent and universal uncertainty — is completely worthless. The struggle with the kulak should be placed in the framework of a carefully thought-out economic system and not one of naked bureaucratic violence. But in order to do this, one must first of all take stock of one’s own forces, as well as of the other forces in society — not in an a priori way, not statistically, but through living organizations, by means of proletarian democracy.

In these circumstances, the slogans “Party Democracy and Workers’ Democracy” (in the trade unions and soviets) and “Unions of the Poor in the Countryside” are the first prerequisite for any success whatsoever.

Short of a party crisis of the most profound kind, which would in all likelihood be the result of a subterranean push by the Thermidorean forces, a transition to a new stage is, unfortunately, no longer conceivable. Such a new stage could be either a stage of revival or the Thermidor stage. A party crisis would be accompanied by a new crystallization of the Bolshevik Party out of the present apparatus-stifled ideological chaos. The intensified crackdown by the apparatus is prompted not only and not so much by fear of the Left Opposition as by fear of the chaos in the party itself.

Things being what they are, the sooner the crisis in the party begins, the better for the revolution.

To the extent that the capitulators, through their lying declarations, consciously support the authority of the apparatus and the predominance of the bureaucracy, standing over and above the chaos of the disorganized party, they are helping to pile up explosive materials under the tightly clamped lid of the apparatus. This means that the party crisis, instead of preceding the imminent class crisis of the revolution, could break out simultaneously with it, with the party being swamped in the midst of it and the chances of victory being reduced to the minimum.

The party crisis will above all be the crisis of centrism. What lines will the crystallization of the present chaos follow? Any you can name — except the centrist one. In all of its chaotic manifestations, the crisis will be directed against the Stalinist regime, the Stalinist apparatus, the Stalinist apparatchiks. The responsibility will be brought down on their heads not only for their real mistakes and crimes but also for all the objective difficulties and contradictions. It must be remembered that the reprisals, first against the Left Opposition and then against the Right, gave an outlet for a certain amount of discontent with the party. But now the denuded centrist apparatus stands face to face with the masses, who are keeping their thoughts to themselves, face to face with the unsolved problems, the growing contradictions, and the accumulating consequences of their own mistakes.

We have stated that we are willing to help the party, from within, to carry out an inspection and a cleansing of its ranks. The centrist apparatus has rejected this proposal once again. Can we under these conditions refrain from faction work? By no means. Are we steering a course toward a second party? No, we are, as before, building and reinforcing an ideological base for the proletarian core of the party, which will be compelled, under the blows of its enemies, to emerge from its present state of disorganization, asphyxiation, and passivity and to take up combat positions. At the time of danger, we and the proletarian nucleus of the party are sure to meet along the line of defense of the proletarian dictatorship. It is precisely for that purpose that we are tightening the ranks of the Left Opposition and strengthening our faction within the Soviet Union and on an international scale.

This must be stated clearly, openly, and without mincing words.