Another view of Stalin (26 page)

 .

Ibid. , p 36.

Solomon  and Krassin  appeared to hesitate as to whether they should join the `real' Marxists,  the Mensheviks, with whom they shared concern for the bourgeoisie, which was to bring progress. What could be done without it? Surely not develop the country with `factories run by committees of ignorant workers'?

 .

Ibid. , p. 19.

But Bolshevik power stabilized:

`(A) gradual change ... took place in our assessment of the situation. We asked ourselves if we had the right to remain aloof .... Should we not, in the interests of the people that we wanted to serve, give the Soviets our support and our experience, in order to bring to this task some sane elements? Would we not have a better chance to fight against this policy of general destruction that marked the Bolsheviks' activity We could also oppose the total destruction of the bourgeoisie .... We thought that the restoration of normal diplomatic relations with the West ... would necessarily force our leaders to fall in line with other nations and ... that the tendency towards immediate and direct communism would start to shrink and ultimately disappear forever ....

`Given these new thoughts, we decided, Krassin  and myself, to join the Soviets.'

 .

Ibid. , pp. 36--37.

So, according to Solomon,  he and Krassin  formulated a secret program that they followed by reaching the post of Minister and vice-Minister under Lenin:  they opposed all measures of the dictatorship of the proletariat, they protected as much as they could the bourgeoisie and they intended to create links with the imperialist world, all to `progressively and completely erase' the Communist line of the Party! Good Bolshevik, Comrade Solomon. 

On August 1, 1923, during a visit to Belgium, he joined the other side. His testimony appeared in 1930, published by the Belgo-French `International Centre for the Active Struggle Against Communism' (CILACC). Solomon  the old Bolshevik now had set ideas:

`(T)he Moscow government (is) formed of a small group of men who, with the help of the G.P.U., inflicts slavery and terror on our great and admirable country ....'

 .

Ibid. , p. 348.

`Already the Soviet despots see themselves as surrounded everywhere by anger, the great collective anger. Seized by crazed terror .... They become more and more vicious, shedding rivers of human blood.'

 .

Ibid. , p. 351.

These are the same terms used by the Mensheviks a few years earlier. They would soon be taken up by Trotsky  and, fifty years later, the Belgian Army's chief ideologue would say things no better. It is important to note that the terms `crazed terror', `slavery' and `rivers of blood' were used by the `old Bolshevik' Solomon  to describe the situation in the Soviet Union under Lenin  and during the liberal period of 1924--1929, before collectivization. All the slanders of `terrorist and bloodthirsty rйgime', hurled by the bourgeoisie against the Soviet rйgime under Stalin, were hurled, word for word, against Lenin's  Soviet Union.

Solomon  presented an interesting case of an `old Bolshevik' who was fundamentally opposed to Lenin's  project, but who chose to disrupt and `distort' it from the inside. Already in 1918, some Bolsheviks had, in front of Lenin,  accused Solomon  of being a bourgeois, a speculator and a German spy. Solomon  denied everything in a self-righteous manner. But it is interesting to note that as soon as he left the Soviet Union, he publicly declared himself to be an avowed anti-Communist.

Frunze

Bazhanov's  book, mentioned above, contains another particularly interesting passage. He spoke of the contacts that he had with superior officers in the Red Army:

`(Frunze)  was perhaps the only man among the communist leaders who wished the liquidation of the rйgime and Russia's return to a more human existence.

`At the beginning of the revolution, Frunze  was Bolshevik. But he entered the army, fell under the influence of old officers and generals, acquired their traditions and became, to the core, a soldier. As his passion for the army grew, so did his hatred for communism. But he knew how to shut up and hide his thoughts ....

`(H)e felt that his ambition was to replay in the future the rфle of Napoleon .... 

`Frunze  had a well defined plan. He sought most of all to eliminate the Party's power within the Red Army. To start with, he succeeded in abolishing the commissars who, as representatives of the Party, were above the commanders .... Then, energetically following his plans for a Bonapartist  coup d'йtat, Frunze  carefully chose for the various commander positions real military men in whom he could place his trust .... so that the army could succeed in its coup d'йtat, an exceptional situation was required, a situation that war, for example, might have brought ....

`His ability to give a Communist flavor to each of his acts was remarkable. Nevertheless, Stalin found him out.'

 .

Bajanov,  op. cit. , pp. 105--109.

It is difficult to ascertain whether Bazhanov's  judgment of Frunze  was correct. But his text clearly showed that in 1926, people were already speculating about militarist and Bonapartist  tendencies within the army to put an end to the Soviet rйgime. Tokaev  would write in 1935, `the Frunze  Central Military Aerodrome (was) one of the centres of (Stalin's) irreconcilable enemies'.

 .

G. A. Tokaev,  Comrade X (London: The Harvill Press, 1956), p. 33.

When Tukhachevsky  was arrested and shot in 1937, he was accused of exactly the same intentions that were imputed to Frunze  by Bazhanov  in 1930.

Alexander Zinoviev

In 1939, Alexander Zinoviev,  a brilliant student, was seventeen years old. `I could see the differences between the reality and the ideals of communism, I made Stalin responsible for this difference'.

 .

Zinoviev,  op. cit. , p. 105.

This sentence perfectly describes petit-bourgeois idealism, which is quite willing to accept Communist ideals, but abstracts itself from social and economic reality, as well as from the international context under which the working class built socialism. Petit-bourgeois idealists reject Communist ideals when they must face the bitterness of class struggle and the material difficulties they meet when building socialism. `I was already a confirmed anti-Stalinist at the age of seventeen', claimed Zinoviev. 

 .

Ibid. , p. 104.

`I considered myself a neo-anarchist'.

 .

Ibid. , p. 126.

He passionately read Bakunin  and Kropotkin's  works, then those of Zheliabov  and the populists.

 .

Ibid. , pp. 110, 118.

The October Revolution was made in fact `so that apparatchiks ... could have their state car for personal use, live in sumptuous apartments and dachas;' it aimed at `setting up a centralized and bureaucratic State'.

 .

Ibid. , pp. 111, 113.

`The idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat was nonsense'.

 .

Ibid. , p. 115.

Zinoviev  continued:

`The idea of killing Stalin filled my thoughts and feelings .... I already had a penchant for terrorism .... We studied the ``technical'' possibilities of an attack ...: during the parade in Red Square ... we would provoke a diversion that would allow me, armed with a pistol and grenades, to attack the leaders.'

 .

Ibid. , pp. 118, 120.

Soon after, with his friend Alexey, he prepared a new attack `programmed for November 7, 1939'.

 .

Ibid. , p. 122.

Zinoviev  entered a philosophy department in an йlite school.

`Upon entry ... I understood that sooner or later I would have to join the CP .... I had no intention of openly expressing my convictions: I would only get myself in trouble ....

`I had already chosen my course. I wanted to be a revolutionary struggling for a new society .... I therefore decided to hide myself for a time and to hide my real nature from my entourage, except for a few intimate friends.'

 .

Ibid. , p. 116.

These four cases give us an idea of the great difficulty that the Soviet leadership had to face against relentless enemies, hidden and acting in secret, enemies that did everything they possibly could to undermine and destroy the Party and Soviet power from within.

The struggle against opportunism in the Party

During the twenties and thirties, Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders led many struggles against opportunist tendencies within the Party. The refutation of anti-Leninist  ideas coming from Trotsky,  then Zinoviev  and Kamenev,  finally Bukharin,  played a central rфle. These ideological and political struggles were led correctly, according to Leninist  principles, firmly and patiently.

The Bolshevik Party led a decisive ideological and political struggle against Trotsky  during the period 1922--1937, over the question of the possibility of building socialism in one country, the Soviet Union. Using `leftist' ideology, Trotsky  pretended that socialist construction was impossible in the Soviet Union, given the absence of a victorious revolution in a large industrialized country. This defeatist and capitulationist thesis was the one held since 1918 by the Mensheviks, who had concluded that it was impossible to build socialism in a backward peasant country. Many texts by Bolshevik leaders, essentially by Stalin and Bukharin,  show that this struggle was correctly led.

In 1926--1927, Zinoviev  and Kamenev  joined Trotsky  in his struggle against the Party. Together, they formed the United Opposition. The latter denounced the rise of the kulak class, criticized `bureaucratism' and organized clandestine factions within the Party. When Ossovsky  defended the right to form `opposition parties', Trotsky  and Kamenev  voted in the Politburo against his exclusion. Zinoviev  took up Trotsky's  `impossibility of building socialism in one country', a theory that he had violently fought against only two years previous, and spoke of the danger of the degeneration of the Party.

 .

Edward Hallett Carr.  Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926--1929, Volume 2 (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1971), pp. 7, 10--12, 20.

Trotsky  invented in 1927 the `Soviet thermidor', analogous with the French counter-revolution where the right-wing Jacobins executed the left-wing Jacobins.

Then Trotsky  explained that at the beginning of World War I, when the German army was 80 kilometres (50 miles) from Paris, Clйmenceau  overthrew the weak government of Painlevй  to organize an effective defence without concessions. Trotsky  was insinuating that in the case of imperialist attack, he would implement a Clйmenceau-like  coup d'йtat.

 .

Ibid. , pp. 28--29.

Through these acts and his writings, the opposition was thoroughly discredited and, during a vote, received only 6000 votes as against 725,000.

 .

Ibid. , p. 42.

On December 27, 1927, the Central Committee declared that the opposition had allied itself with anti-Soviet forces and that those who held its positions would be expelled from the Party. All the Trotskyist  and Zinovievite  leaders were expelled.

 .

Ibid. , p. 49.

However, in June 1928, several Zinovievites  recanted and were re-integrated, as were their leaders Zinoviev,  Kamenev  and Evdokimov. 

 .

Ibid. , p. 60.

A large number of Trotskyists  were also re-integrated, including Preobrazhensky  and Radek. 

 .

Ibid. , p. 67.

Trotsky,  however, maintained his irreconcilable opposition to the Party and was expelled from the Soviet Union.

The next great ideological struggle was led against Bukharin's  rightist deviation during the collectivization. Bukharin  put forward a social-democratic line, based on the idea of class re-conciliation. In fact, he was protecting the development of the kulaks in the countryside and represented their interests. He insisted on a slowing down of the industrialization of the country. Bukharin  was torn asunder by the bitterness of the class struggle in the countryside, whose `horrors' he described and denounced.

During this struggle, former `Left Opposition' members made unprincipled alliances with Bukharin  in order to overthrow Stalin and the Marxist-Leninist   leadership. On July 11, 1928, during the violent debates that took place before the collectivization, Bukharin  held a clandestine meeting with Kamenev.  He stated that he was ready to `give up Stalin for Kamenev  and Zinoviev',  and hoped for `a bloc to remove Stalin'.

 .

Ibid. , p. 65.

In September 1928, Kamenev  contacted some Trotskyists,  asking them to rejoin the Party and to wait `till the crisis matures'.

 .

Ibid. , p. 73, n. 3.

After the success of the collectivization of 1932--1933, Bukharin's  defeatist theories were completely discredited.