3.8 The struggle for power

The Bolshevik Party to a very large extent was Lenin’s creation. It was built on his principles, and its prominent figures were his personal disciples. He was a strong leader who insisted on having his way. However, he possessed such prestige that his fellow leaders willingly deferred to him – he rarely had to use dictatorial methods. People who disagreed with him, even on the most important issues, could always be forgiven, once the question was resolved. No successor to Lenin could rule the party as he did, since no one possessed comparably great and unquestioned authority.

In the spring of 1922 Lenin suffered a stroke which removed him from day-to-day participation in decision making. In his isolation, the maker of the revolution reflected on his achievements, and was less than fully satisfied. The new socialist human being with a communitarian worldview had not yet been born. Instead, Lenin saw the growth of bureaucracy, the decline of the old revolutionary spirit within his party, and the revival of Russian nationalism among communists. Like many strong leaders before and since, he had no confidence that any of his disciples could take his place and carry on his work. Indeed, his illness started a struggle for power that lasted for the rest of the decade.

In the 1920s Soviet society and the political system were in the process of evolution. The leaders time and again faced problems for which there had been no precedent. The struggle for power and the resolution of the many difficult issues came to be inextricably intertwined. Every issue – the proper organization of the Party, foreign policy, economic policy, ideology – became a battleground among the protagonists. The points of view of the protagonists actually did not differ much, because all Bolshevik leaders, perhaps without realizing it, shared basic assumptions. They all believed in building a modern industrial society, and all took the system of NEP for granted. However, because of their rhetoric, the issues became divisive and entangled in personal politics. That the politicians indulged in rhetorical flourishes does not mean that they did not take the issues seriously and cared only about political advantages. None of them were purely careerists, and it is likely that all of them, including Stalin, believed that their positions were necessary for the victory of the Bolshevik cause.

On some occasions the positions of the protagonists were determined by their own political situations. It stands to reason that those who had lost control over the decision-making bodies became the most fervent advocates of party democracy. These leaders conveniently forgot that a short time before, when they had possessed political power, they had been just as intolerant and arbitrary as the present victors. Stalin won, and in the 1930s the Soviet Union embarked on a radically new path. We must not conclude, however, that if the outcome of the political struggle had been different – say, if Trotsky or Bukharin had emerged victorious – the relative freedom that characterized the 1920s could have continued and the Soviet Union could have become a more or less democratic state. The problems to which Stalinist totalitarianism was an answer were real, even if the Stalinist solution was not the only one.

The course of the struggle for leadership can be quickly summarized. Shortly before he died, Lenin dictated a political testament in which he characterized all the members of the Politburo – that is, the most important leaders of the Party. His characterizations were rather acid; he had something damning to say about each major figure. He remembered that Zinoviev and Kamenev erred in October 1917 by opposing the plans for revolution. He regarded Bukharin as too scholastic and too young. Although Lenin admired Trotsky’s abilities, the commissar for war received heavy criticism: Lenin regarded him as arrogant and incapable of getting along with people. Although few of his contemporaries recognized this, Lenin rather perspicaciously noted that aside from Trotsky, the most powerful figure in the leadership was Stalin. Stalin received the most unflattering characterization: in a postscript Lenin wrote that Stalin was crude, had accumulated too much power, and should be removed.

The two major antagonists at the outset were Trotsky and Stalin. Trotsky had considerable support in the Army, which he had created and led to victory, and among the young, who admired his revolutionary fervor and his oratory. In retrospect, however, it is clear that Trotsky had little chance of assuming Lenin’s mantle. He showed a great ineptitude for political infighting, arrogantly underestimated the strength of his opponents, and lacked the talent for political timing. His fellow leaders neither liked nor trusted him. The political struggle for succession in the Soviet Union in the 1920s was not decided by popularity in the country at large, but by a rather small group of political actors; and within this all important circle Trotsky’s strength proved insufficient.

Stalin, by contrast, was a master of infighting. He would bide his time and come forward only when he possessed the political strength to defeat his opponents. He succeeded in getting political allies to serve his purposes. He skillfully removed from key positions the supporters of his opponents, replacing them with his own people. He knew how to define the terms of disagreement in such a way as to gain benefits in politically relevant parts of the population. He managed to present his own positions so that the middle-level cadres found them attractive and worthy of support.

The first stage of the struggle was the most dangerous period for Stalin. Using Lenin’s testament, Trotsky could probably have removed him from competition. Stalin, however, gained the support of Zinoviev and Kamenev, who feared Trotsky’s ascendancy, and Trotsky stupidly acquiesced in the collective decision not to publish Lenin’s testament. He never had another chance to deal a decisive blow to Stalin. By early 1925 he had lost most of his important jobs. Zinoviev and Kamenev soon realized that it was Stalin who had gained most from Trotsky’s defeat, and watched with dismay as Stalin consolidated his position by placing his followers in critical posts. Zinoviev and Kamenev came over to Trotsky’s side when it was too late. Stalin then allied himself with Bukharin, and by 1927 succeeded in politically destroying what came to be known as the left opposition. There remained only one powerful opponent, and that was Bukharin. The decisive struggle between these two leaders came to be associated with the end of the NEP and the beginning of forced collectivization.

The most contested issue between the left opposition and the Stalin-Bukharin leadership of the party concerned the strategy for economic development. Their passionate and often articulate exchange of opinions on economic strategy deserves attention, even though the outcome of the debate did not determine Soviet policy – indeed, what ultimately happened was not foreseen by any of the protagonists. The debate shows the mentality of the Bolshevik leadership at the time: their visions of the future, their fears, their goals. As in so many other matters, the Bolshevik theorists were pathbreakers. In dealing with immediate problems, they were also dealing with the major issues of developmental economics: how could the state bring about rapid economic growth and modernize a backward society? All Bolsheviks agreed that growth of the industrial sector of the economy was necessary and that the state had a leading role to play in bringing that about. They also all assumed that a mixed economy should survive for an indefinite period.

The most able theorist of the left was Evgenii Preobrazhenskii. He and his political allies disagreed with the economic policies pursued by the regime because they considered the pace of industrialization too slow. The question was where to get capital with which to finance industrial growth. In Preobrazhenskii’s view, it had to come from the private sector – that is, largely from the peasantry. The peasantry had to be taxed more heavily. Further, the socialist industrial sector of the economy had to siphon away resources by “exploiting” the peasantry, that is, by raising the prices of industrial goods that the peasants needed. On the basis of Marxist analogy with the process of industrialization in England, Preobrazhenskii called this policy “primitive socialist accumulation.” Preobrazhenskii and his comrades also criticized governmental policies as too favorable to the rich peasants. They feared that the Bukharin-Stalin economic policy line would encourage the growing political strength of the kulaks.

The debate, as usual with political debates, was not resolved by intellectual arguments. Both sides had valid points to make. Preobrazhenskii’s point that under the circumstances it was impossible to accumulate enough capital for sustained growth and industrialization was obviously well taken. But Bukharin was also right to be concerned about the political consequences of violating the spirit of the NEP by shifting the economic burden onto the peasantry. The NEP system had inherent flaws, and the two articulate and intelligent debaters inadvertently pointed them out.

At first Bukharin and his allies on the right prevailed. The neopopulist, pro-peasant policies received a try, and in some ways the second half of the 1920s was a golden period for the Russian peasantry. But this victory was short-lived, and it led to the economic and ultimately political crisis of 1928. Neither the right nor the left in the great controversy of the mid-twenties foresaw the course on which the country was to embark a few years later.

The economic debate became entangled with an ideological dispute. That dispute could be reduced to a slogan used by Stalin and his political allies at the time: “Socialism in one country.” Stalin presumably did not mean to challenge the Marxist notion that socialism could be realized only when capitalism has been destroyed worldwide. He meant that the country could work to bring about socialism by creating an industrial base and by raising the cultural level of the people without waiting for international revolution. The Trotskyists did not disagree with these propositions and did not have a competing strategy. After all, they were more consistent supporters of industrialization than the Stalinist-Bukharinist leadership. Nor was there any reason to accuse the Trotskyists of wanting a more adventurous foreign policy. To the extent that there were disagreements over foreign policy, they could not be reduced to a distinction between cautious and adventurous policies.

Nonetheless for Trotsky and his political friends Stalin’s slogan seemed a repudiation of the Marxist-Leninist internationalist heritage. To their own satisfaction they demonstrated that Stalin was betraying the most sacred ideas of the revolution. However correct they may have been from an ideological point of view, what mattered was political appeal, and in this area they were drawn into a battle they were bound to lose. Although the two sides agreed on matters of concrete policy, and even on questions of ideology, the middle-level party leaders perceived that Stalin stood for national independence and pride and Trotsky for revolutionary adventures, when the country needed peace above all. In view of the fact that Stalin was about to embark on an exceedingly adventurous policy, his image as a man of caution and peace was ironic.

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