Leon Trotsky: Letter to Kote Tsintsadze

June 1930

[Writing of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 2, 1930, New York 1975, p. 262 f., title: “Reply to Comrade K.”]

Dear Friend,

Thank you for your letter of May 2 [published in Biulleten Oppozitsii, number 12-13]. There are no basic differences of opinion between us. In the Biulleten, especially number 11, this is explained, I hope, as fully as possible. Of course, as before, we favor a maximum rate of industrialization and collectivization. But insuring the highest rate possible in conditions of isolated development presupposes at each given moment not the statistically maximum but the economically optimum, i.e., most logical, most economically safe rate, which alone is capable of insuring a high rate in the future.

Not strategically, of course, but tactically, this meant at a given moment: "Don't get carried away, hold back!” I considered it necessary to shout these simple words at the top of my voice, although I did not doubt for a moment that the blinkered bureaucrats, who tomorrow will not so much hold back as leap back madly from the edge of the chasm they have come to, will today — accuse us of right-wing deviation. But that is wretched phrase-mongering! The fact that the Left Opposition, which for years has been demanding the speedup of industrialization and collectivization, was able to shout in time to the adventurist self-seekers and idlers of the bureaucracy "Hold back!" will be generally recognized.

Of course "holding back, slowing down collectivization" means restraining administrative collectivization, and not at all reducing real collective farm construction. But the rates for it must be economically based. The will to collectivize does not at all exclude economic pressure, which differs from administrative pressure in that it gives real advantages in place of threats from a militiaman. In a correctly constructed plan of collectivization, ideological activity is combined with economic pressure. But since this last operates with real quantities, it must be calculated exactly and reduced to a method that can insure the systematic growth of collectivization, with a weakening and not a strengthening of the administrative factor.

That the revolutionary power must and will strictly settle accounts with the kulaks who have risen in rebellion hardly needs saying. But if the kulaks, who yesterday were being patted on the head ("Get rich! Grow!"), are today threatened with de-kulakization, i.e., complete expropriation in a period of two or three years, that means they have been administratively driven to rebellion. It was against this de-kulakization that it was necessary to raise the cry "Hold back!"

As far as reducing expenditures is concerned, our platform remains in full force. Stalin, with Rykov and Kuibyshev, promised, if you remember, in the special manifesto of 1927 to reduce bureaucratic expenditures by three to four hundred million rubles. In fact, they have reduced nothing. Nobody has ever seen a bureaucracy reducing itself.

But the general demands of our program do not exclude the necessity for a decisive revision of all the supplementary industrial plans of the last year or two. Now the programs are being blown up as an inspiration of the general secretary and the secretariats of the regions and districts. How are they covered economically? Firstly, by reducing the quality of the production; secondly, by inflation. Both hit the workers and the poor peasantry, and prepare a cruel collapse of industrialization. That is why the cry "Hold back!" was necessary here too.

That today's self-seekers establishing the maximum rates will tomorrow — when the economic processes, which are a mystery to them, hit them still harder in the face — describe an arc above our heads to pull us onto the old Ustryalov path — on that there is not the slightest dispute between us. By the way, you were perfectly correct to read our solidarity between the lines of an article by one of the Stalinist yellow-red professors (they're called professors because of their unenviable profession).

I embrace you and wish you the best of health.

Yours,

L. T.