The Struggle Of Bukharin And Rykov Against The Party Of Lenin — Stalin
Bl. Sorin
(Historical Reference)15
I
The Plenum of the Central Committee of the AUCP(b), having examined the question of the anti-party activity of the right restorers of capitalism — Bukharin and Rykov, resolved to expel them from the party. The history of the stubborn struggle of Bukharin and Rykov against the party of the Bolsheviks has a long-standing history. Bukharin, who constantly manifested "diabolical instability in politics," as well as Rykov, for many years fiercely fought against Lenin, against the party of Lenin — Stalin, betraying the party and betraying Bolshevism.
Bukharin's struggle against the party, his anti-party political line, has deep roots in his theoretical views. Advertising himself as an "orthodox" Marxist, Bukharin in reality never was a Marxist and dialectician. His general theoretical and philosophical views were formed not under the influence of Marx, Lenin, and dialectical materialism, but under the influence of the bourgeois philosophy of empirio-criticism — Avenarius, Bogdanov. When in 1909, Lenin's brilliant work Materialism and Empirio-criticism was published, Bukharin hostilely treated Marxist philosophy. All of Bukharin's "works" are thoroughly imbued with the spirit of bourgeois-idealist systems of mechanicism, scholasticism, and eclecticism. To these views of Bukharin always remained faithful.
Lenin, summing up his long-term observation of Bukharin's activity, wrote that "his theoretical views can be attributed with very great doubt to entirely Marxist ones, because there is something scholastic in him (he never studied and, I think, never fully understood dialectics)"16. Comrade Stalin in his speech at the April Plenum of the CC (1929) showed the complete insolvency of Bukharin as a Marxist theoretician and characterized him as a "theoretician without dialectics," a "theoretician-scholastic." Bukharin is a "theoretician" hostile to the proletariat and Marxism of class forces and trends.
Already in 1909, Bukharin appears as a "left,"
representing one of the shades of otzovism. Bukharin and his group (the future
Sapronovites Smirnov, the future Decist Osinsky) believe that the bourgeois
revolution has already been completed with us (this in 1909!), and that questions
of democracy are removed from the agenda. Thus, like Trotsky, Bukharin leaped
over the bourgeois-democratic stage of the revolution. He opposed the necessity
of the struggle for democracy, did not understand democratic tasks, ignoring
democratic movements.
As a "left," Bukharin in 1913 tries, in a disguised form, to smuggle onto the pages of the press the rejection of support for the confiscation of landed estates in favor of the peasantry. Thereby, Bukharin, in a Menshevik-Trotskyite manner, ignoring the peasant movement, acts overtly against the serf-owning landlords.
Already at the very beginning of the imperialist war, sharp
disagreements with Lenin and the Bolshevik CC revealed themselves in Bukharin.
Bukharin and several of his friends, living in the village of Bozwi in
Switzerland (hence the name "God's group"), decided to undertake the
publication of their own newspaper. This newspaper was intended to be published
behind the back of the CC, without its permission, in order to propagate their
own views, different from the line of Social-
Democrat — the central organ of our party, published in Switzerland by
Lenin. Learning of the plan of the "Godites," the CC banned the
publication of the new newspaper, which caused a flood of complaints from
Bukharin, who swore to Vladimir Ilyich that he had absolutely no disagreements
with the CC line, that all suspicions on this score were unfounded and that
nothing in the world would force him to "form any new and oppositional
tactical position in relation to you."
All of Bukharin's assurances were one solid hypocrisy and shameless lie. Bukharin deceived Lenin. Less than two months passed when, at the Conference of Foreign Organizations of our Party in Bern (spring 1915), Bukharin spoke with a declaration of the "Godite" group and, moreover, with personal theses, opposing them to Lenin's line. Together with other "Godites," Bukharin, in a Trotskyite manner, rejected the most important Bolshevik slogan of the "defeat of the tsarist monarchy," declaring this slogan devoid of "any practical meaning."
Not daring to openly speak out against the Leninist slogan of
transforming the imperialist war into a civil war, Bukharin diluted it with the
pacifist slogan of peace. On the most important questions of tactics, Bukharin
took a Trotskyite position. Trotsky, as is known, had already spoken out
against the slogan of civil war and defeat. At the same conference, Bukharin
demanded an agreement with the Trotskyite- Menshevik Our Word, once again contrary to the party line, which permitted
agreement only with those groups that stand for a decisive break with
social-chauvinism. Our Word defended
unity with them. Lenin and the Bern Conference rejected Bukharin's and the
"Godites'" Trotskyite platforms. Of Bukharin's own theses, Lenin
spoke as follows: "...the height of absurdity; disgrace;
semi-anarchism," and wrote that Bukharin "...is clearly sliding into
a swamp"17.
Lenin's famous article "On the National Pride of the Great Russians," Bukharin slanderously declared it a social-patriotic article. Lenin's words: "We love our language and our homeland..." aroused the indignation of the "left" Bukharin. A refined petty-bourgeois intellectual, he did not appreciate the glorious revolutionary past of our country. He was alien to Lenin's fervent love for the homeland enslaved by tsars, capitalists, and landlords. An ill-fated prelude to the conspiracy of the right restorer of capitalism, Bukharin, with the leaders of the anti-Soviet Trotskyite center, traitors selling out our homeland to the fascists!
Together with his friend Pyatakov, Bukharin opposed
Lenin in the autumn of 1915 with theses in which he decisively rejected the
principle of the right of nations to self-determination.
Bukharin asserted that this slogan is "utopian" and
"harmful" and that the defense of this slogan leads the party to
slide away from proletarian positions. Practicing "indifference"
toward the "national movements," Bukharin thereby acted in the role
of an agent of great-power chauvinism and was an exponent of the great-power
influence of the bourgeoisie on the working class. Lenin wrote that Russian
socialists, not demanding freedom of secession for Finland, Poland, Ukraine,
"...behave like chauvinists, like lackeys of the blood- and filth- stained imperialist
monarchs and imperialist bourgeoisie"18.
To deny the national question in the epoch of imperialism and
proletarian revolutions meant to doom the proletarian revolution to isolation
and defeat. Bukharin could never accept the Marxist-Leninist attitude toward
national movements. On this most important question, he stubbornly disagreed
with the Bolshevik party. The "left" Bukharin in practice played the
role of standard-bearer and lackey of great-power chauvinist bourgeoisie.
In February 1916, a new turn to anarchism: Bukharin solidarizes with the ridiculed and smashed by Lenin semi- anarchist program of the Dutch left social-democrats, who later became renegades, repeating the opportunistic mistakes of their Bern theses.
Acting in the role of a "left," criticizing our party for
its supposedly insufficient revolutionariness, Bukharin in the years of the war
and later especially denied the necessity of the struggle for the minimum
program, for democracy. Lenin called Bukharin's direction "imperialist
economism" by analogy with the economists of the 90s, who did not
understand the necessity of political struggle.
Bukharin abstractly counterposed to the epoch of "pure
imperialism" the coming imperialist era. A petty-bourgeois scholastic and
doctrinaire, he completely misunderstood the concrete ways of the struggle of
the working class for socialism, for the proletarian dictatorship. Lenin showed
that the proletariat cannot prepare for victory over the bourgeoisie, for the
socialist revolution, for the victory of the proletarian dictatorship, if it
does not wage a preliminary all-sided, consistent revolutionary struggle for
democracy.
The pseudo-radical rejection by Bukharin of the struggle for
democracy in reality meant rejection of the effective struggle for socialism,
for the socialist revolution. Thereby he poured water on the mill of all
enemies of socialism. Instead of arming the proletariat with revolutionary
slogans, leading the masses to higher stages of struggle, Bukharin
"armed" the worker with empty, abstract phraseology. About Bukharin
and Pyatakov, Lenin wrote, "...that their ideas have nothing in common with
Marxism, with
revolutionary social-democracy"19.
On all
the most important stages of the
revolutionary struggle, Bukharin invariably manifested vacillations and
waverings on every major issue.
His "left-opportunistic," anarchist-syndicalist nonsense,
deeply hostile and alien to Bolshevism, Bukharin declared a "new
Bolshevism" — "Bolshevism on a West European scale,"
counterposing it to Lenin's teaching. Thus Bukharin slanderously denied the
internationalist character of Leninism. "I can only say," wrote Lenin
on this occasion, "that the Bolshevism proclaimed by the author on a West
European scale, according to my deep conviction, is neither Bolshevism nor
Marxism, but a small variant of that same stale 'economism'"20. Lenin showed
that Bukharin turns the
struggle with Kautskyism into an
apology for imperialism. Apology for imperialism, connivance with imperialism —
that is what Bukharin's position, masked by "left" phrases, actually
represented.
On the most important question of the revolution — on the proletarian state, the proletarian dictatorship — Bukharin most sharply disagreed with the party line. Bukharin in 1916 began to preach in the journal Jugend-Internationale a hostile attitude toward any state, including the state of the working class, the proletarian dictatorship. "For social-democracy," wrote Bukharin, "it is now more than ever necessary to emphasize its principled hostility to the state"21.
In the Bolshevik Collection of
the Social-Democrat, Lenin crushed Bukharin's gross mistake, his
non-Marxist, semi- anarchist views on the question of the state.
"Socialists," explained Lenin, "stand for the use of the modern
state and its institutions in the struggle for the emancipation of the working
class, as well as the necessity to use the state for its peculiar transitional
form from capitalism to socialism. Such a transitional form, which is also a
state, is the dictatorship of the proletariat”.
In a theoretical work on the state, prepared by Vladimir Ilyich for
the press, he gave the following critique of Bukharin's semi-anarchist views:
"What distinguishes us from the anarchists is (a) the use of the state now
and (β) during the revolution of the proletariat ("the dictatorship of the
proletariat") — points of the utmost practice, right now. (Bukharin has
forgotten them!)"22. By his mistakes on the question of the state, Bukharin
helped the Kautskyites, harmed the Bolsheviks. Speaking of the necessity to
restore a truly Marxist attitude to the question of the state, distorted by the
opportunists, Lenin wrote that "...Bukharin's mistakes can ruin
this 'right cause' in the struggle against Kautskyism." Instead of the Marxist proletarian state, Bukharin advocated the anarchist "blowing up" of any state. Bukharin denied that the proletariat needs a state, on the one hand, for the suppression of exploiters, on the other hand, for creative, constructive work in building a socialist society. This position on the question of the state he took in 1918, "not noticing" the creative role of the proletarian state, seeing in the state only an apparatus of oppression in the capacity of a petty bourgeois, which must be "blown up."
Shortly after Lenin's death, Bukharin, republishing his article on
the state rejected by Lenin during the war, had the audacity, counting on
impunity, to write that in the dispute over the state, Lenin was not right, but
Bukharin was!
At the VII Party Congress (March 1918), when the young Soviet state
was just beginning to take shape and when the task was to comprehensively
strengthen and consolidate Soviet power, Bukharin, with his hostility to the
proletarian state, hastened to include in the program a point on the withering
away, on the destruction of the proletarian state. Lenin, of course, speaks out
against this harmful amendment of Bukharin, and it is rejected by the Congress.
Bukharin's hostility to the proletarian state was especially openly
manifested during the period of the Brest-Litovsk Peace, when the "left
communists" led by Bukharin agreed to a monstrous "idea" — on
the expediency of going along with the loss of Soviet power. They did not value
the proletarian dictatorship and therefore so easily went to surrender power,
to its transfer into the hands of the bourgeoisie. Mensheviks and SRs could
only applaud such "revolutionaries" — accomplices of the bourgeoisie.
During the war in Switzerland, one issue of the journal The Communist came out with Lenin's
participation. Pyatakov and
Bukharin insisted on the continuation of the publication of this
journal so that its pages would be provided for the opportunistic articles of
Bukharin and Radek, denying the right of nations to self-determination and the
necessity of a complete break with social-chauvinists. Pyatakov and Bukharin
wanted to smuggle Radek into the journal, contrary to Lenin's opinion, and make
this journal the organ of their opportunistic vacillations. To give Radek
"freedom" to unpunishedly propagate anti-Marxist ideas from the pages
of the Bolshevik journal — this meant introducing ideological decay not only
into the ranks of the Bolsheviks, but also into the ranks of the
"Zimmerwald Left" — the embryo of the III International. This is
precisely what Pyatakov and Bukharin were striving for.
Lenin, of course, indignantly rejected these aspirations.
The financial resources at the disposal of our party were
negligible, and therefore Lenin published Social-Democrat
with great difficulty. Because of the lack of funds, the central organ came
out infrequently, which, of course, hampered the scope of Bolshevik agitation
and propaganda. Meanwhile, Pyatakov had large financial funds, which he,
however, did not wish to give for the all-party cause and agreed only to the
publication of The Communist on the
above conditions. Taking advantage of the fact that he had financial funds in
his hands, and therefore the possibility for publication, Pyatakov behaved
toward Lenin in the most insolent and unseemly manner, presenting Vladimir
Ilyich with the demand to open a discussion on the pages of The Communist and threatening, in case
of Vladimir Ilyich's refusal, not to provide the journal with funds. Like an
insolent merchant, like a kulak, he tried to
directly dictate terms to Vladimir Ilyich, trying to exploit the
difficult material situation of the central organ. In this shameful, repulsive
business, Bukharin acted in the role of Pyatakov's broker. Pyatakov and
Bukharin strove to make The Communist an
organ propagating anti-party views of them and their friends, like Radek, and
so that Vladimir Ilyich would endure this, because they had money in their
hands which the CC did not have. In correspondence, Lenin harshly branded the
vile behavior of Pyatakov, Bukharin and company. Having moved from Switzerland
to Stockholm, these gentlemen tried to seize the communication links of our
party with Russian organizations into their own hands and began to create a
faction, sending their agents to Russia.
Giving a general description of Bukharin's political
activity, Lenin wrote about him in the years of the war, that "he (1) is
gullible to gossip and (2) politically diabolically unstable."23
Bukharin carried out his old dream of cooperation with Trotsky at
the end of 1916, when together with Trotsky he entered the editorial board of
the New York newspaper New World.
Occupying a semi-Trotskyite position in previous years, Bukharin in New World continues the same line. With his denial of the struggle for democracy, for the liberation of oppressed nationalities, with his mistake on the question of the state, the Trotskyite denial of the possibility of the victory of socialism in a single country is united — this is the ideological preparation of the most vile betrayal of the proletarian dictatorship and the socialist homeland. In this decisive question of the revolution, Bukharin finds himself entirely within the framework of the Trotskyite scheme.
When the autocracy was overthrown in Russia, Bukharin, calculating
the prospects of the revolution after the victory of the proletarian
dictatorship, wrote: "Can the proletariat, numerically weak, organize
backward Russian economy?" To this question Bukharin answered as follows:
"One — he himself would not be in a position to do this." But the
Russian revolution will spill over into Western Europe. Then "the
proletariat, having seized power in European countries, by its support will
make impossible the return of the capitalist regime even in Russia." On
the other hand, the highly developed countries of the West will sort out the
economic backwardness of Russia."
This is the "concept" of the purest Trotskyite defeatism,
denying the socialist character of the October Revolution.
But perhaps Bukharin adhered to the Trotskyite thesis on the impossibility of the victory of socialism in our country only in the period after the February Revolution? Perhaps, after Lenin's April Theses, after the VI Congress of the party, at which Comrade Stalin smashed the scheme of Preobrazhensky and Bukharin, Bukharin abandoned Trotskyite ideas? Not at all. At the VI Congress of the party, Bukharin developed the usual Trotskyite "scheme," according to which after satisfying the peasantry with land, the next stage of the revolution will inevitably lead to the withdrawal of the peasant masses from it; the proletariat will find itself in isolation and can be saved only by the support of the proletarian revolution in the West. Comrade Stalin then called this scheme "toy-like."
In the days of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Bukharin in
the Moscow Social-Democrat painted
the following picture of the further development of the country after the
victory of the working class: "Cut off by war, economic ties are restored.
The victory of the proletariat in the West gives the opportunity to planarly
heal economic wounds in Russia with highly developed Western European
technology. The economic backwardness of Russia is compensated by the high
economic level of Europe, and the Russian economy is quickly drawn — upon the
victory of the proletariat in the West — into the pan- European socialist
organization." Thus, without the victory of the Western European
proletariat, it is impossible not only to build socialism, but even to heal the
economic wounds of Russia. Here is the basis of shameful capitulationism, the
betrayal of the October Revolution, the Trotskyite basis of the most vile
behavior and the Trotskyite-Zinovievite and right restorers of capitalism in
the USSR.
In the Brest-Litovsk period, the capitulationist tactics of Bukharin
and the "left communists" stemmed from this very profound disbelief
in the possibility of the victory of socialism in our country. In the Petrograd
Communist, Bukharin wrote: "The
isolated Russian workers' and peasants' revolution is not in a position to save
itself. It will cross the borders of Russia or perish. It will perish not only
from the military blows of capitalism, but from its own economic and
organizational impotence."
And in subsequent years, Bukharin stubbornly continues to defend the
counter-revolutionary idea of the impossibility of the victory of socialism in
our country. In the brochure Class
Struggle and Revolution in Russia (1919), Bukharin wrote, for example, that
"the durable victory of the Russian socialist proletariat is impossible
without the proletarian revolution in Europe." And further, on the
question of building socialism in our country, even more frankly: "This
task, which is put on the agenda in Russia too, cannot be solved within
national borders."
In the summer of 1921, Bukharin, already after the proclamation of
the New Economic Policy, continues to panic, not believing in victory:
"Shall we hold out or not? There is no possibility to answer with complete
certainty to this question."
By the time of the IV Congress of the Comintern (1922), Bukharin
continues to assert that if socialism also wins in our country, then this will
not be real socialism. He slanderously, slanderously snarls: "We can say
completely openly that Russian socialism, compared to others, will look
Asian."
In the Brest-Litovsk period, when the party was waging a heroic
struggle to tear our country from the clutches of the imperialist war,
Bukharin, together with Trotsky, wages a frantic struggle against the party,
seeking to disrupt the peaceful policy of the Soviet government. Initially, he
supports the criminal, treacherous policy of Trotsky, which serves the
interests of German imperialism. Refusing to sign peace leads to the fact that
the Soviet Republic loses huge territory and colossal military equipment. As a
result of the criminal policy of Trotsky and Bukharin, our country is brought
to the brink of
the abyss. When peace was nevertheless concluded, contrary to
Trotsky and Bukharin, Bukharin together with the SRs and Mensheviks seeks to
provocatively drag the republic into war. Lenin wrote in this period that
"...to maneuver in a Bukharinite manner, then it is possible to ruin a
good revolution completely"24. Bukharin's malice
against Lenin and the Party CC knows no bounds. This "frenzied petty
bourgeois" disrupts party discipline, sabotages work in the CC and Soviet
institutions (the policy of resignations), refuses to carry out party
decisions, in a number of documents, insolently and basely slanders the party
and Lenin. He even allows himself to call Lenin "the hero of opportunist
phrase," comparing him to Petlyura!
In the struggle against the party, Bukharin organizes a faction with
its own center and its own printing organ, with its own fractional discipline.
This faction of war-mongers and their instigators (Bukharin, Pyatakov, Radek,
Preobrazhensky, Sapronov) sends speakers and agents to all corners of the
country. The factional policy of Bukharin, who acted in the capacity of an
accomplice of the bourgeoisie, in the role of an agent of imperialist
provocation, causes the indignation of party organizations, which rally around
Lenin and the CC. Bukharin's group was utterly smashed.
In his malice against the party, Bukharin reaches the point of conducting negotiations with the Left SRs on organizing a coup d'état, arresting Lenin and appointing his old friend in the struggle against the party — Pyatakov — as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars.
In the period of the breathing spell, Lenin in The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Power, gave a plan for the
reorganization of Russia on socialist principles. The ideas laid at the basis
of this plan represented the first draft of that new economic policy which was
proclaimed by our party in 1921 at the X Congress. Bukharin waged a fierce struggle
against the Leninist plan for the socialist development of our economy.
In the period of the breathing spell, Bukharin and the
"lefts" waged Menshevik-SR agitation against labor discipline, against
one-man management, against the involvement of specialists, against firm
centralization in the management of the economy, i.e., they hindered the cause of
the economic revival of the country, disrupted socialist construction.
In the years of the civil war, Bukharin continued to
develop opportunistic theories on a number of most important issues (national,
party program).
In 1919, Bukharin sharply broke with Lenin on the question of the
theoretical justification of our program. In economic reality, Bukharin, as a
"left," wanted to see only "pure imperialism." From
Bukharin's scheme, counterposing "pure imperialism" to the
proletarian dictatorship, petty commodity producers fell out. Bukharin's
theoretical mistake politically signified Trotskyite-Menshevik forgetting and
misunderstanding of the role of the peasantry and, as Lenin noted, led to a
misunderstanding of our attitude toward the middle peasantry. The same decisive
mistake signified
Bukharin's unwillingness to see the constant emergence and growth of
kulak, capitalist elements from small peasant farming. At the VIII Party
Congress, Bukharin again spoke against the recognition of the right of nations
to self- determination, thereby feeding great-Russian chauvinism and causing
the distrust of previously oppressed nations toward the proletarian
dictatorship.
Known is the devastating critique given by Lenin to Bukharin's book The Economics of the Transition Period (1920),
written in close cooperation with Pyatakov and under the influence of the
anti-Marxist methodology of Bogdanov. Characteristically, in a number of places
in this book, Lenin notes Bukharin's mistakes on the question of classes and
class struggle.
During the trade union discussion, Bukharin once again opposed
Lenin.
At the end of 1920 and the beginning of 1921, in the period of the transition from civil war to peaceful economic construction, in the period of the transition from war communism to the new economic policy, a discussion on trade unions arose, started by Trotsky, who, taking advantage of the difficulties experienced in this period by the country, the party, the working class, waged a struggle against the Leninist policy of the CC. Bukharin initially acted in the role of a "buffer," supposedly called upon to fight against the "extremes" of both currents — the Leninist and Trotskyite, but in reality served as a cover for Trotsky, waged a struggle against Lenin, and when Bukharin's machinations were uncovered, he openly and shamelessly joined Trotsky's platform. The buffer group of Bukharin hindered the party's struggle against Trotsky and, according to Lenin, did more harm than anyone else.
The position of Trotsky and Bukharin led to a split in the party to
the separation of the party from the trade unions. Trotsky and Bukharin
disrupted the cause of building socialism, demanding an
administrative-bureaucratic pressure from above on the masses. Bukharin and
Trotsky treated initiative from the masses, their conscious struggle for
socialism, with contempt, assuring that the path to socialism is the path of
violence, extortion, commands, repressions, clubs. In reality, this line,
having nothing in common with Bolshevik methods of building socialism, laid
bare only enemies of socialism. Bukharin and Trotsky manifested the most crude,
baronial-bureaucratic misunderstanding of the role of mass organizations (trade
unions) in the cause of building socialism, carried out by the creative efforts
of millions under the leadership of the Bolshevik party.
Waging a Trotskyite position during the trade union discussion,
Bukharin at the same time manifested anarchist-syndicalist vacillations. He
spoke out against the leading role of the party in relation to economic
organizations, demanding that the trade unions apart from the party, without
the party, appoint the heads of economic main committees ("compulsory
candidates"). Lenin wrote on this occasion that the theses of Bukharin
& Co. are "...the peak of ideological decay," that Bukharin's
position is a "...break with communism and a
transition to the position of syndicalism," this is "...a
split of the party, or rather: a break of syndicalists with the party"25.
In the spring of 1921, the party was experiencing great
difficulties. The panicked Bukharin shouted at the X Congress that "the
republic is hanging by a thread." This in no way prevented him at the same
Congress from continuing the fight against Lenin, against the majority of the
party, thus further increasing the all-political difficulties of the situation.
The criminal anti-party, fractional activity of Trotsky, Bukharin,
Shlyapnikov, Sapronov and others prompted Lenin to include in the resolution on
party unity adopted by the Congress a paragraph which demanded the expulsion
from the party of those members of the CC who do not submit to the decision of
the Congress on the dissolution of all factions and will continue their
fractional activity. This paragraph had in mind also Bukharin.
Bukharin broke with Lenin in 1922 on the question of proletarian
culture. In this question, Bukharin defended Bogdanovian Menshevik views, which
consisted in the fact that under the guise of "proletarian culture,"
bourgeois views and philosophy were foisted on the workers, and in the sphere
of art, absurd, distorted tastes were instilled in the workers.
In 1922, during the trial of the Right SRs organizing terrorist acts against representatives of Soviet power, Bukharin and Radek, conspiring with the leaders of the II International, acted in the role of advocates for terrorists and petitioned for not applying the supreme penalty to the Right SRs, thereby encouraging them to continue their criminal activity. Lenin harshly and publicly condemned the vile act of Bukharin and Radek, who took bandits under their protection.
In that same 1922, Lenin gave a harsh rebuke to Bukharin as a kulak
hanger-on who tried to disrupt the monopoly of foreign trade. Waging a campaign
against the monopoly of foreign trade, Bukharin, as Lenin wrote, "...comes
to the defense of the speculator, the petty bourgeois and the upper strata of
the peasantry against the industrial proletariat"26.
Thereby, Bukharin disrupted the task of transforming Soviet Russia into a
powerful, economically independent industrial country.
On the eve of the discussion of 1923–1924, shortly before Trotsky
waged an open struggle against the Leninist line of the party, well-known
secret meetings of individual members of the CC on the leadership of the party
took place in Kislovodsk "in the cave." The leadership of the party
at this time in connection with the illness of Vladimir Ilyich, lay upon Comrade
Stalin. Opportunists of all stripes found the firmness of Comrade Stalin, his
Leninist principledness, his Bolshevik irreconcilability to any manifestations
of opportunism, to their liking. Therefore, Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kamenev
conspired to fight against the Leninist line of the party, against Comrade
Stalin.
Characteristically, on the eve of the discussion of 1923–1924, Bukharin had already begun to smuggle into the press views which were one of the first "drafts" of the ultra-opportunistic theory later developed by him of the "growing into" of the kulak into socialism. Believing that in the countryside socialism can win quietly, peacefully, without class struggle, Bukharin wrote in No. 219 of Pravda in 1923: "The faster economic life improves, the faster the proletariat assimilates the peasantry, and peasant farming in an evolutionary manner (underlined by Bukharin) through the process of circulation, state credit, cooperation, etc. gradually 'grows into' the all- socialist organization of society."
Rykov — another leader of the right restorers of capitalism — just
like Bukharin, constantly disagreed with the party, opposing its line as a
right capitulator. Characteristically, before joining our party, Rykov was a
member of the Saratov united organization of SRs and Social-Democrats. Rykov
never understood the significance of Marxist theory and treated it
dismissively, emphasizing his "practicality."
In 1909, when philosophical questions stood so sharply in the party,
when Lenin energetically defended the dialectical materialism of Marx and
Engels against the revisionism of Bogdanov and company, Rykov opposed the
illumination of central party questions of philosophy from the standpoint of
dialectical materialism, propagating the rotten "neutrality" of the
Bolsheviks in this sphere. This unprincipled position he occupied also at the
most expanded meeting of the editorial board of Proletary (1909), which excluded Bogdanov from the ranks of the
Bolsheviks.
In 1905, at the III Party Congress, Lenin, noting that in our party
committees there were comparatively few workers, emphasized the necessity of
including worker-Bolsheviks in party committees in as large a number as
possible. Rykov furiously opposed this proposal of Vladimir Ilyich.
In the period preceding the new rise of the revolutionary movement, in those years when the Bolshevik party was waging a fierce struggle on two fronts — against liquidators and otzovists and against conciliators-centrists like Trotsky — and when preparation for the famous Prague Conference was underway, which is a major milestone in the history of Bolshevism, Rykov held a conciliatory, semi-Trotskyite position. He was conciliatory toward liquidators, forward- looking people (Bogdanovites), and toward Trotsky. Lenin decisively warned Rykov against repeating his "idiotic conciliatory mistakes" of the 1910 Plenum. Instead of a merciless war with the forward-looking people (Bogdanovites), Rykov recommended a "union" with them. Lenin wrote on this score to Rykov: "They (i.e. the forward-looking people. — V. S.) have merged with the liquidators; they have set up a school against you; they are pulling wool over your eyes, saying: we are nothing, we are not otzovists, and you believe words and do not fight with deeds. This is the devil knows what!"27. While Lenin demanded an energetic struggle against forward-looking people and liquidators, Rykov "courted" these enemies of the party, braking the work of the Bolsheviks to rally truly revolutionary elements. Demanding from Rykov the conduct of the party line, Lenin wrote to him that it is necessary "...to work friendly (on the basis of agreement), and not to undermine, not to cross over to the Mensheviks"28.
As is known, in 1911 the liquidators with all their might sought the
destruction of the CC. To this end, Menshevik members of the CC refused to
enter it, disrupted CC meetings, etc. Rykov, not wanting to work in the
difficult conditions of that time, also decided to leave the CC, playing
thereby into the hands of the liquidators. Lenin harshly warned Rykov of the
criminality of such a capitulatory, treacherous act: "If you leave the CC,
this will be flight from the battlefield, betrayal of Bolshevism in a difficult
moment"29.
After the overthrow of the autocracy, in the period of the April
Conference, Rykov, just like Kamenev, stood on semi- Menshevik positions. He
sought to limit the tasks of the proletariat by the framework of the bourgeois
revolution, propagating the unification of all forces of "revolutionary
democracy," i.e., unity with Mensheviks and SRs, and resolutely fought
against the party's course on the growing over of the bourgeois-democratic
revolution into a socialist one.
Speaking at the April Conference against Lenin, against Vladimir
Ilyich's April Theses, Rykov asserted that in our country socialism cannot win.
"Where will the sun of the socialist coup rise? I think that according to
all conditions, the philistine level, the initiative of the socialist coup does
not belong to us. We do not have the forces, the objective conditions for this"30.
Rykov reacted with hostility to the Great Socialist Revolution. Together with Kamenev, Zinoviev and other strike-breakers, he deserted from responsible party and Soviet posts, wishing in this way to force our party to abandon the proletarian dictatorship and conclude an agreement with the Mensheviks and SRs, to capitulate to the bourgeoisie. Rykov's traitorous line was calculated to disrupt the proletarian revolution, to liquidate the proletarian dictatorship. Lenin branded Rykov's crime as strike-breaking and desertion.
In the CC resolution written by Lenin, it was emphasized that
"...the opposition that has arisen within the CC completely departs from
all the fundamental positions of Bolshevism and the proletarian class struggle
in general, repeating deeply non- Marxist cliches about the impossibility of a
socialist revolution in Russia"31.
Just like the Mensheviks, the Trotskyites, Rykov, reflecting the interests of the bourgeoisie, class hatred for socialism, preached the impossibility of a socialist revolution in our country. At the Moscow regional conference held in December 1917, he propagated the Trotskyite-Menshevik idea, which was shared by the right capitulators and strike-breakers. "Pure Bolshevik power cannot maintain itself," Rykov assured, "in a backward country at a time when the socialist revolution has not occurred in Europe". In Russia, he developed his thought, "the forces of the proletariat are insufficient for the organization of the socialist system". Rykov dragged along in the tail, in the baggage train, firmly convinced that socialism could not win, that the proletarian dictatorship and socialist construction were doomed to ruin.
In the spring and summer of 1918, famine gripped the industrial
centers of our country as a result of the occupation of Ukraine by German
imperialism and kulak sabotage. In these conditions, the party implemented the
grain monopoly with particular severity and proclaimed the food dictatorship in
the name of saving the working class from ruin. The food measures of Soviet
power were met with frantic howling by the bourgeoisie, the kulaks, the
Mensheviks, the SRs and all other forces of counter-revolution. Against the
food dictatorship, the opportunist Rykov spoke out. At the meeting of the
Council of People's Commissars on May 9, 1918, opposing his own view to the
line of Lenin and the party, Rykov directly stated that "the dictatorship
is superfluous". In unison with the Mensheviks, he demanded such a food
policy that would be profitable to speculators, kulaks, the rich upper strata
of the village (the establishment of bonuses, increased payment for the
delivery of grain, orientation toward private trade associations).
In 1920, during the period when the party was intensively discussing
questions of economic construction and emphasized the necessity of Bolshevik
one-man management in the management of industry, Rykov opposed the CC line,
demanding collegiality.
He solidarized on this issue with the Mensheviks and Sapronovites.
During the period of transition to the New Economic Policy, Rykov
fought against Lenin's electrification plan. Comrade Stalin gave a harsh
assessment of Rykov's opportunism at that time in a letter to Lenin:
"philistine 'realism' (actually manilovism) of Rykov, who is still
'criticizing' GOELRO and is knee-deep in routine"32.
During the period of acute struggle against the Trotskyites and
Zinovievites, who denied the possibility of the victory of socialism in a
single country and pushed the party toward a break of the alliance of the
working class with the broad masses of the peasantry, Bukharin threw out (in
April 1925) the kulak slogan "Enrich yourselves," which meant a call
to restore capitalism. Waging a struggle on two fronts, primarily against the
phantom Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc, the party simultaneously rebuffed Bukharin.
The proclamation of the slogan "Enrich yourselves" by Bukharin was by no means accidental. In the period following the rout of Trotskyism, the period when the party transitioned to a sweeping socialist offensive along the entire front and to the socialist reconstruction of the entire national economy, Bukharin, from 1928 onward, spoke even more fiercely against the party as the ideologue of the right capitulators. Together with Rykov, Tomsky, and Uglanov, he appeared as an apologist for capitalist elements in the country, primarily the kulaks, who fiercely resisted the offensive of socialism. Bukharin and Rykov, to please the kulaks and foreign imperialists, opposed industrialization and the development of state farms and collective farms.
During the grain procurements in the winter of 1928/29, the kulak
apostle Bukharin opposed pressure on the kulak, opposed the so-called emergency
measures that were used in the struggle for grain. He spoke at the April Plenum
of the CC 1928 with panicked statements about the "disjunction" [razmychka]
with the middle peasant and about the "economy standing on its head,"
assuring that the continuation of the party's policy would lead to the ruin of
Soviet power. The slanderous outcries about the "disjunction" with
the middle peasant represented a brazen attempt to shield the kulak from blows.
In July 1928, Bukharin, during the CC plenum, together with Sokolnikov, secretly, behind the party's back, like a thief, sneaks to a meeting with Kamenev, and with the knowledge of Rykov and Tomsky conducts negotiations with this bitter enemy of the party on changing the party leadership and on changing its policy, concluding thereby a bloc with the Trotskyites to fight against the Bolsheviks. And at the plenum he hypocritically declares the absence of any disagreements with the CC. Bukharin then undertakes steps to transfer his fractional activity to the international arena. During the VI Congress of the Comintern, he goes over the head of the AUCP(b) delegation to distribute his theses to foreign delegates. of the Comintern. In all his speeches, he gives a social-democratic assessment of the stabilization of capitalism (the theory of "recovery" of capitalism), glosses over the aggravation of contradictions in capitalist society, and takes under his protection, within the ranks of the Comintern, right-wing opportunists and conciliators. He tries in the Comintern to unite around himself all opportunistic elements and thus create for himself an international support in the struggle against the party.
In Notes of an Economist,
which essentially constituted the platform of the right restorers of
capitalism, in a number of speeches Bukharin wages agitation for curtailing the
socialist offensive, for lowering the rates of industrialization, for leveling
down to the bottlenecks. Seeking to frighten the party and the country with the
inevitable difficulties of the reconstruction period, he calls for capitulating
before them. In his slander against the party, the right restorer of capitalism, Bukharin reaches such audacity as accusing it of Trotskyism.
At the same time, Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky desert work and submit
resignations.
The socialist offensive and the aggravation of the class struggle
lead to an intensification of the anti-party activity of the Rights. On January
21, 1929, on the anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ilyich, Bukharin
shamelessly slandered Lenin, portraying him as a great revolutionary in the
guise of a bourgeois liberal. On January 30, 1929, Bukharin submitted a statement
to the CC, overflowing with unheard-of slanderous attacks against the party
leadership.
In February 1929, the Rights headed by Bukharin, came out with their
factional platform, condemned by a joint meeting of the Politburo of the CC
and the Presidium of the CCC.
Bukharin, Rykov and Uglanov tried to raise the Moscow organization
to fight against the CC, but the Moscow Bolsheviks gave a crushing rebuff to
the right opportunists.
Bukharin created his base of support in the form of a group of his
disciples, whom he scattered across command ideological heights. This
"school" of Bukharin, in which the spirit of "leaderism"
[vozhdizm] was intensively cultivated (its fosterlings, kulak mouthpieces —
Slepkov, Astrov, Maretsky, and others, whom Bukharin prophesied as leaders of
the party), rapidly degenerated into a counter-revolutionary gang of rabid
enemies of socialism, waging a direct struggle against the party and Soviet
power.
The April Plenum of the CC (1929) dealt a decisive blow to the right
capitulators and their leader Bukharin. Comrade Stalin left no stone unturned in exposing Bukharin's theory of the "growing of the kulak into socialism," and
his opportunistic ideas concerning the "dying out" of the class
struggle. Comrade Stalin showed the entire worthlessness of Bukharin as a
theoretician, his complete break with Marxism-Leninism.
The right opportunists, representing the main danger in
the period of the sweeping offensive of socialism, were utterly smashed.
Bukharin and Rykov, several times during the struggle against the Rights wrote statements on recognizing their mistakes, but all these declarations and declamations were nothing other than deception and a lie. Hypocritically, two-facedly declaring the recognition of their mistakes, Bukharin and Rykov in reality continued to adhere to their anti-party views. The rabid Bukharin allowed himself to revile the Russian nation as a "nation of Oblomovs," providing this with satisfaction to the fascists.
People who do not value the glorious revolutionary past of our
people, who are imbued with a spirit of hostility and contempt for it, who hate
the victory of socialism in the USSR and dream of the restoration of capitalism
in our country, naturally, converged with scoundrels from the Trotskyite
anti-Soviet center, traitors and betrayers of the USSR, seeking to give our
country over to fascist enslavement.
In 1932 and 1933, two counter-revolutionary groups were uncovered: the Ryutin-Slepkov group and the Eismont- Tolmachev group. Both these groups represented bourgeois- kulak organizations, setting as their goal the disruption of the country's industrialization policy and the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, in particular the kulak system. These rabid kulak mouthpieces negotiated terror against the leaders of the party and government. Already in 1933, during the examination of the case of the Eismont group, it was established that Tomsky, Rykov and other right opportunists maintained contact with this group and encouraged it in its anti-party work, rendering it support. As was later transpired, Bukharin and Rykov were the inspirers of the Ryutin counter- revolutionary platform, approved it, were the leaders of the Ryutin-Slepkov group. The right restorers of capitalism — Uglanov & Co., the young bucks from the Bukharinite "school" — went all out in the struggle against the party and Soviet power up to terror and wrecking.
In 1936–1937, participants of the united Trotskyite-Zinovievite
anti-Soviet center and the Trotskyite "parallel" anti-Soviet center
recounted at the court that they were connected with the leaders of the right
restorers of capitalism and conducted negotiations with them and that the
rights knew about the transition of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bandits to
methods of terror, espionage, sabotage, and wrecking.
Fighters repeatedly for years against the party, Bukharin and Rykov met, finally, full understanding, recognition and trust on the part of scoundrels from the Trotskyite center. Here they found kindred spirits. The Bukharinite theories of "growing into" and "dying out" merge with Trotskyism. The boundary between the "left" and right deviations is conditional. "Not for nothing do our workers say: 'go to the left — you will come to the right' (Stalin)". Not by chance did Sokolnikov and Radek in the Menshevik theory of "organized capitalism" of Bukharin gladly find "ideological" justification for their treason to the homeland. And Trotsky and Bukharin strive for a single goal — the restoration of capitalism. And Trotskyites and Bukharinites are united by a bestial hatred for the party leadership, for the Bolshevik party, for the Soviet people.
To honeyedly swear loyalty to the party — and right there secretly, underhandedly betray it; hypocritically recognize one's mistakes, and in reality cherish the dream of revenge; with feigned trembling in the voice pronounce the name of Lenin — and prostitute Leninism; incessantly repent, swear, smear on one's physiognomy the tears of offended innocence — and at the same time fraternize with the bandits who killed Sergei Mironovich Kirov and prepared the assassination of the leaders of our party, — this means falling lower than the female inhabitants of the licensed house described in Kuprin's The Pit. To the bottom of this stinking pit rolled Bukharin and Rykov.
And the right capitulators and Trotskyites — some earlier, others a
little later — ceased to be a political current in the ranks of the working
class. They turned into a rabid band of criminals, enemies of the people,
mercenaries of imperialism. Neither the one nor the other stop at any crime, at
any baseness in the struggle against the proletarian dictatorship, against the
socialist system, for the restoration of capitalism. Both the one and the other
are agents of fascism, ready wholesale and retail to sell our homeland for the
purpose of restoring capitalism in the USSR, for the purpose of destroying the
USSR as the base of the international revolution, as a guarantee of the victory
of socialism throughout the world. The complete rout of the band of right
restorers of capitalism, as well as the Trotskyites, masking their
counter-revolutionary work with two-facedness, and their severe revolutionary
punishment — such must be the attitude of the Bolsheviks and citizens of the
USSR toward these enemies of the people.
15 Izvestia No. 79 of April 2, 1937.
16 Quoted from Questions of Leninism, p. 272, 10th ed.
17 Lenin, vol. XXIX, pp. 230, 264.
18 Lenin, Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self- Determination, Works, vol. XIX, p. 46.
19 Lenin, On the Emerging Trend of "Imperialist Economism," Works, vol. XXX, p. 251.
20 Ibid., p. 256.
21 Lenin, Jugend-Internationale, Works, vol. XIX, p. 296.
22 Lenin Collection XIV, p. 257.
23 Lenin, vol. XXIX, p. 229.
24 Lenin, Seventh Congress of the RCP(b), Works, vol. XXII, p. 335.
25 Lenin, Party Crisis, Works, vol. XXVI, p. 92.
26 Lenin, On the Monopoly of Foreign Trade, Works, vol. XXVII, p. 381.
27 Lenin Collection XVIII, p. 26.
28 Ibid., p. 27.
29 Ibid., p. 33.
30 Protocols of the Seventh (April) Conference of the RSDLP(b), p. 93, Partizdat, 1934.
31 Lenin, Resolution of the CC of the RSDLP(b) on the question of the opposition within the CC of November 15 (2) 1917, Works, vol. XXX, p. 360.
32 Stalin, Collection of articles on the fiftieth anniversary of his birth, p. 33, Giz, 1930.
