THIS WEEK is the 60th anniversary of the death Lenin. His life and work have been misrepresented decades by the rulers deologues of both East and West. Here PHIL HEARSE looks at Lenin's against bureaucracy in Soviet Union.
NEIL KINNOCK recently said that be Militant tendency in the Labour Party was incompatible with the Party because it was 'democratic entralist, not cialist'. Leaving aside the queson of the politics of Militant, Neil anock's statement reflects a very mmon misconception that has en fostered by social democrats, archists and cold war warriors ke - that Lenin's method of My organisation was dictatorial I a precursor of Stalinism. -Lenin recovering after his first stroke of Communist for any interest struggle ter battle the Secretary. 'democratic order to achieve this. • Socialist Action 20 January 1984 The idea that Stalin merely continued Lenin's work was of course argued for decades by the official Parties themselves.
Very few political tendencies have in revealing the Russia. historical fact that during the last years of his life Lenin waged a bitagainst growing bureaucracy inside the Soviet Communist Party and the Soviet state, that he proposed a political bloc to Trotsky to fight bureaucracy and tually that he intended to drive Stalin from his position as party General Furthermore in the 1930s, when Stalin was consolidating his position in the Soviet Union he had to execute all the remaining members of Lenin's Central Committee in During the last two years of his life, from 1922 to 1924, Lenin suffered several strokes, which made his political activity intermittent tens WaN which and physically difficult. Yet during this time he waged a bitter and growing struggle against development of Stalin and the rising power of the bureaucracy in The situation in which the Russian revolution found itself at the beginning of the 1920s was one of an economy which had been wrecked by war and the foreign invasions of 1918-20. Russian industry vircollapsed. While economic life of the country was dislocated thousands of the best most self-sacrificing munists were killed in the civil war. The organised working class was itself dispersed as industrial enter-. prises ceased functioning. Strangled Outside Russia the Democrats — the equivalent of the Labour Party - in Germany had strangled the revolution. First they had voted for the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, under which Bolsheviks had been forced to lose one third of Russia's industrial areas to the government Kaiser. Then, when the German working class rose up and overthe Kaiser's regime 1918/19, the Social Democrats had allied with the fascists to murder of thousands of German workers and maintain capitalism in Germany.
By 1921 the Russian revolution internationally isolated blockaded both economically and politically. Around ten people had died through the direct and indirect effects of the foreign invasions of the country.
In this period the Soviets, the elected worker's committees from the Soviet government theoretically derived its authority, progressively ceased operating. The Bolshevik government became more and more based on the state apparatus. The apparatus of the Bolshevik party became more anc more intertwined with the mainlucracy, itself composed mainly the old bureaucracy. A danger appeared of the creation of a bureaucratic layer whose interests would be separate and apart from the interests of the ordinary workers and peasants.
At the Eleventh Party Congress in March-April 1922 — the last national conference at which Lenin was able to speak - he devoted much of his contribution to warning of the the bureaucratism.
Lenin saw the bureaucratic threat coming from outside the party, a danger of the state apparatus direc. ting the Communist Party, rather than the other way around.
In his Political Report he spoke of the huge bureaucratic machine, gigantic heap'. He asked: 'who is the directing whom?
much whether it can be truthfully said that the Communists are direccom- ting that heap.
they are not directing, they are being directed'.
Social • the of the in million Further he machine 'was like a car that was not going in the direction that the driver desired, but in the direction that someone else desired as if it were being driven mysterious, knows whose, perhaps of a profiteer, or a private capitalist, or both.
Until November Czarist still saw the problem in terms of putting able and responsible communists in key positions to fight the bureaucratic danger. He maintained his confidence in the party ap paratus. there was a sudden change, as proposed monopoly of foreign trade, which dangers of leadership.
But at this stage Wing of the state bureaucracy as 'that that doubt very members and To tell the truth, Lenin, Trotsky and Kamenov in discussion at the Second Congress.
said the state within the by some lawless hand, God tryside, 1922 Lenin the Soviet But in December 1922 the … to Trotsky a bloc to defend the state was under threat inside the party Then between December 1922 and January 1923 Lenin dictated a scathing critique of Stalin's hand!problem of the non-Russian nationalities in the Soviet • proposed Stalin's removal from the post of General Secretary. In addition Lenin called for a general reorganisation of the state apparatus, enlarging the party Central Committee to 50 or 100 strengthening the role of central state planning.
The struggle inside the party leadership over the state monopoly of foreign trade has to be seen context of the New Economic Policy (NEP) which was introduced into Russia in 1921. During the civil war, given the breakdown. of normal relations between the town and the counthe Bolsheviks had resorted to forcible requisitions of food from the peasantry to feed the towns. With the end of the civil war government sought to boost productivity in agriculture and stabilise relations between the workers in the towns the peasants in the countryside.
To that end they proposed strengthening market relations in countryside. The peasants would be subject to only a very limited tax paid in agricultural products. The rest of production the
ST peasants could sell on the market - and keep the profit. As private agriculture reasserted itself, a new layer of wealthy ('Nepmen') came with their own private capital, employing other peasants.
For the Bolsheviks troduction of the NEP necessary retreat. The strengthening of capitalism in the countryside unless severely controlled threatened the creation of a rural class opposed to socialism.
It was in this context that the OVCH the monopoly foreign trade erupted. In October 1922, the Central Lenin and Trotsky's absence, passed a resolution aimed at weakening the monopoly. Its removal would have enabled Russian capitalists to establish direct links capitalist world market, determining imports and exports on the basis of their own profits rather than the needs of the socialised Lenin supported monopoly of foreign trade and his opponents were Stalin Bukharin.
Lenin appealed to Trotsky for a common bloc to defend the existing state monopoly. During meeting on 12 December he proposed to Trotsky a bloc not only on the monopoly question, but against "bureaucracy in general' against Stalin's Bureau in particular. losing confidence machine controlled by Stalin. peasalls into existence 'nationalities' question the inwas Soviet state.
Socialist
federation of Committee, in in Moscow.
with the USSR) who undermine of the right determination. the Bolshevik leaders to abuse, in Moscow violence.
their Orgainsation Lenin was in the After the dispute on the state which monopoly of foreign trade, Lenin's next clash with Stalin was over the - the rela- Stalin tions between Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian and other nations in the The Union of Soviet Republics was only established on 30 December 1922. Before this there was only a loose between the Russian Socialist Republic and five other national republics. Stalin, who was in charge of the nationalities question, proposed a new federation in Led had Lenin with Trotsky non. which central power would reside This was rejected by the Georgian Bolshevik leaders (a nation in the South West of the thought it would their position in Georgia, and that it was a violation to national self- Stalin Stalin and his hatchet man Ordzhonikidze subjected the Georgian 'exile'. even physical When Lenin found out the facts of Stalin's action he again formed a bloc with Trotsky to defend the right of the Georgians to autonomy and self-determination. Kamenev noted 'Illich is going to war to defend independence'. This time Stalin attempted to fight.
Lenin now prepared to launch a fight at the 12th party congress, scheduled for March 1923, was delayed until April. Fotieva, Lenin's secretary, Trotsky: 'He (Lenin) does not trust walls come out against him in front of the whole party. He is preparing a bomb.
The basis on which Lenin proposed to intervene in the party congress was against bureaucratism in the party, defence of the rights of nationalities, and the importance of state planning in face of the rise of the 'nepmen'. He provided Trotsky, from his sickbed, with notes and correspondence to use in the fight if he was too ill to attend himself.
In the event, Lenin was recovering from a new stroke. The party • was dominated by emerging triumverate of Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev. Trotsky, making a major error, compromiswith them, rather detonating the 'bomb' which Lenin prepared. AS newcomer to the Bolshevik Party Trotsky felt that, without Lenin's presence, he was unable challenge the 'old Bolsheviks'.
Removed • Lenin was now effectively removed the inner-party fight. But in his last writings, and especially his article Better Fewer, But Better he returned repeatedly to the question of bureaucratism. He proposed a 'purging of our government machine, especially the Workers and Peasants InspecThis body, he argued, had been set up to control bureaucracy, but had become one of the prime culprits.
The proposals in Better Fewer, But Better have to be put in context with his "Testament', written December 1922-January 1923. His proposal in this document that be removed as General Secretary because of his rude and overbearing behaviour represents a growing awareness that the StalinKamenev-Zinoviev faction was the political representation of growing bureaucratism. Lenin's alliances and struggles were aimed at blowing up this bloc, rooting out 'the cancer of bureaucratism.
At the end of 1923 46 party leaders published platform against the growth of bureaucracy. but told the than Executed relative to Execute The statement heralded the beginnthe Left forerunner of the Trotskyist movement. This was the real continuain tion of Lenin's last struggle.
In 1927 Lenin's widow, skaya, ventured the opinion that if Lenin had lived he would be in one of Stalin's prisons. Lenin did indeed intitiate the struggle against bureaucracy in the USSR, but this struggle was too brief and too difficult for him to fully grasp the last topic theoretically through to its end. The Bolsheviks had the privilege and the 'misfortune to lead the first socialist revolution in the world. They had no previous experience to guide them. But Lenin characterised the USSR as 'a Lenin's central committee in 1929. Rakovsky and Radek later disappeared Opposition, rule KrupIsolation Evasion.
bureaucracy or carry it the world.
successful the time Executed worker's state with bureaucratic deformations' in 1918 he showed how grave a danger he regarded the processes that led finally to Stalin's It was not Leninist organisation which created bureaucracy but the of the revolution, the poverty of the economy, and the ravages of civil war and foreign inLenin fought the rising Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia — a later hailed as "realistic', and even as an ally, by capitalists and reformists arounc Lenin's programme remained that of control of the state by the masses and control of the party by its membership. That is the very essence of democractic socialism.