After the death of Lenin, the party apparatus around Stalin, Bukharin Zinoviev and Kamenev launched a campaign to stifle criticism, suppress open discussion and ban independent thought among party cadres under the cover of democratic centralism. The degeneration of the party and the state was accelerated. Over time the bureaucracy became further estranged from the working class in whose name it ruled. It acquired the traits of an autonomous social layer with its own distinct interests, aspirations and psychology antithetical to those of the working class. One of the leaders of the revolution in attempting to illuminate the emerging trends within Soviet society wrote “on the foundation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in a backward country surrounded by capitalism, for the first time a powerful bureaucratic apparatus has been created from the upper layers of the working class, lays down the Law to them, has at its disposal colossal resources that is bound together by an inner mutual responsibility and that intrudes into the policies of the workers states its own interests, methods and regulations” (L.D. Trotsky – what next, Vital Questions for the German Proletariat in The struggle against fascism in Germany P256).
The tragedy of the Russian revolution lay in the premature death of Lenin. More than any other party leader and earlier than anyone else, he had perceived the danger which the bureaucratic degeneration posed to the political health of the workers state. After his departure other party leaders like Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin and Rakovsky perceived the danger at various times and attempted in an uncoordinated fashion to combat it which enabled Stalin to play one grouping against the other and to eventually crush all of them. The triumvirate of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev were initially pitted against the left opposition organised around Trotsky which argued for restoration of inner party democracy and a turn towards a more coherent and well thought out industrialisation strategy. Alarmed by the increasing erosion of inner party democracy and the formidable power base which Stalin had cultivated for himself, Zinoviev and Kamenev joined the left opposition to form the united opposition in 1926. Bukharin who had played a supportive ideological role in support of the triumvirate now moved to the centre stage of the factional struggle on the side of Stalin. Demoralised and disoriented by the intense repression to which the left opposition were subjected by the Stalin faction, Zinoviev and Kamenev recoiled from their position, apologised to the party leadership and re-joined Stalin’s camp. Having defeated the left opposition, the Stalin faction now prepared to attack its erstwhile allies Bukharin and Rykov who objected to the party’s strategic turn in economic policy.
Faced with a grain procurement crisis which was attributed to the rich peasants hoarding of grain and speculation, the Communist party leadership adopted a decision to take extra ÔÇô ordinary measurers against the peasants. Bukharin and Rykov objected to these measures and were denounced for a rightist deviation, for which they were expelled from the politbureau in November, 1929. This completed Stalin’s triumph over his opponents. With the defeat of the Bukharin / Rykov faction, the stage was now set for the implementation of Stalin’s revolution from above which was to radically transform not only the socio ÔÇô economic foundations of the soviet state, but the nature of the political system (S. Cohen ÔÇô Bukharin and the Bolshevik revolution p337).
This programme had two major components. First was the adoption of the five year economic plans which were aimed at an accelerated industrialisation. The second component was forced collectivisation of Agriculture. In pursuit of the latter programme, the middle and poor peasants were driven into collective farms. Implemented against the will of the majority of the peasants, and without the preliminary technical preparation such training of thousands of Agricultural scientists and mass production of fertilizers, combine harvesters and tractors, collectivisation led to a catastrophic decline of agricultural production from which soviet union never fully recovered (R. Medvedev ÔÇô Let history judge p276). The implementation of these policies engendered such severe social tensions that the Soviet Union was pushed to the brink of civil war, Repression reached unprecedented levels. Starting with the so called Menshevik trial in 1931, successive purges were unleashed, against the so called enemies of the people. Millions of Communist party members, intellectuals, ordinary workers and peasants were either shot, imprisoned, or sent to labour camps (see R. Medvedev ÔÇô let history Judge P300 and W. Goldman ÔÇô Terror and democracy in the age of Stalin, the social dynamics of repression). This reached it’s most horrific phase between 1936 and 1939 when an entire generation of Bolshevik revolutionaries who had played a prominent role in the revolution and civil war was exterminated. Among these were Zinoviev and Kamenev, Lenin’s closest comrades, who were accused of various crimes ranging from collaboration with foreign intelligence agencies, to plotting the assassination of Soviet leaders and restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union. Needles to point out that all these accusations were utterly false as the Soviet communist Party leadership itself was later to admit (N. Kruschev ÔÇô Report to the 20th congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union.
However on the socio ÔÇô economic plane, on the basis of the nationalised property relations and planned economy, the Soviet Union registered phenomenal advances. In 1936, Trotsky wrote “The underlying service of the Soviet regime lies in its intense and successful struggle against Russian backwardness (L.D Trotsky ÔÇô Revolution Betrayed p21). Between 1928 and 1937 industrial production had increased more than three times, steel production quadrupled coal and cement production more than tripled, electrical output had grown sevenfold, machine tools twentyfold. The industrial working class doubled and the number of students increased from 12 million to 31 million (S. Cohen ÔÇô Bukharin and the Bolshevik revolution p338). The superiority of the planned Economy was further demonstrated during the Second World War when the Soviet Union was involved in a titanic battle with Germany. Nazi Germany which had the most advanced economy in Europe and had more than half the resources of the whole of Europe at its disposal could not defeat the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union initially suffered huge losses. Its Cities were reduced to ruins more than 1.2 million houses in urban areas and 3.5 million houses in rural areas were utterly, destroyed. Many factories, dams, bridges were destroyed, states the eminent economic historian Alec Nove (Alec Nove ÔÇô An Economic History of the USSR P292). Yet by 1944, the Soviet Union produced more fighter jets, more tanks of a higher quality than Germany and was able to singlehandedly drive Germany out of the Soviet territory and out of the whole of Eastern Europe thus making an invaluable contribution to the defeat of fascism. But even more impressively in the postÔÇôwar period without any Marshall aid, the Soviet Union was able to rebuild its industries with annual growth rates of over 10% throughout the 1950’s. Alec Nove correctly points out that this was unprecedented in world economic history.
Between 1945 and 1960 Soviet steel production had risen from 12.25 million tons to 65 million tons, oil production from 19.4 million to 65 million tons, coal from 149.3 million to 513 million tons. Between 1945 and 1964, the soviet national income rose by 570%. By the 1980’s the Soviet Union occupied the first position in key industrial sectors such as steel, iron, coal, gas, cement, tractors. Within a few decades the Soviet Union had been transformed from a backward agricultural economy into the second mightiest industrial power
Nevertheless the advance of the Soviet Economy was uneven and contradictory. From a Marxist view point, the historic durability of any social regime ultimately lies in its ability to definitively surpass the productive technique and of capacity of the regime which it has replaced. In this respect the record of the Soviet regime was decidedly mixed. In the earlier stage of socialist construction and laying solid foundations for the development a modern economy the Soviet Bureaucracy achieved huge success, but when the main task became that of harnessing the creative initiative and talent of the Soviet people to transform the economy to a more advanced level, the Bureaucracy floundered. Herein lies the key to the understanding of why the Soviet Union ultimately collapsed. Unlike capitalism under which the market ensures the allocation of resources through the mechanism of supply and demand, a socialist economy requires a conscious planning and direction. In a relatively developed and sophisticated modern economy, this task cannot be successfully accomplished by a handful of bureaucrats based in the capital. In the late 70’s and 80’s the Soviet Economy stagnated. This problem could only be resolved if the mass of producers were fully involved from the inception, formulation, preliminary checking and correction of the plan to its implementation. This required the most luxuriant flowering of democracy, the unrestricted, active participation of the masses in the running of the economy and the state. Only in this way could the full potential of the planned economy be realised and a fortiori the harmonious satisfaction of the people’s material needs be accomplished
However despite the many problems and obstacles the Soviet experience provided indubitable proof of the fact that society could be run without capitalists, landlords and financiers. Furthermore it afforded a glimpse at the tremendous potentiality, for the advance of humanity inherent in socialism, particularly if it was run on a genuinely democratic basis. For these reasons the Russian October Revolution was more than historically justified.
*Otsweletse Moupo is a well-known leftist scholar and former Leader of Botswana National Front
