May/June 2013

Current Moscow Time: 18:59:23
21 May 2013

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Suppressed Testament of Lenin - pt. 10

Author: Leon Trotsky
Website: RL Online
Department:
Page: 11 ( 15) pages

Summary: Disagreements Between Lenin and Stalin

Disagreements Between Lenin and Stalin

Organizational policy was not the only arena of Lenin's struggle against Stalin. The November Plenum of the Central Committee (1922), sitting without Lenin and without me, introduced unexpectedly a radical change in the system of foreign trade, undermining the very foundation of the state monopoly. In a conversation with Krassin, then People's Commissar of Foreign Trade, I spoke of this resolution of the Central Committee approximately as follows: "They have not yet knocked the bottom out of the barrel, but they have bored several holes in it." Lenin heard of this. On December 13 he wrote me:

I earnestly urge you to take upon yourself at the coming Plenum the defense of our common view as to the unconditional necessity of preserving and enforcing the monopoly....The previous Plenum took a decision in this matter wholly in conflict with monopoly of foreign trade.

Refusing any concessions upon this question; Lenin insisted that I appeal to the Central Committee and the Congress. The blow was directed primarily against Stalin, responsible as General Secretary for the presentation of questions at the Plenums of the Central Committee. That time, however, the thing did not go to the point of open struggle. Sensing the danger, Stalin yielded without a struggle, and his friends with him. At the December Plenum the November decision was revoked. "It seems we captured the position without firing a shot, by mere movements of maneuver," Lenin wrote me jokingly on December 21.

The disagreement in the sphere of national policy was still sharper. In the autumn of 1922 we were preparing the transformation of the Soviet state into a federated union of national republics. Lenin considered it necessary to go as far as possible to meet the demands and claims of those nationalists who had long lived under oppression and were still far from recovering from its consequences. Stalin, on the other hand, who in his position as People's Commissar for Nationalities directed the preparatory work, was conducting in this sphere a policy of bureaucratic centralism. Lenin, convalescing in a village near Moscow, carried on a polemic with Stalin in letters addressed to the Political Bureau. In his first remarks on Stalin's project for the federated union, Lenin was extremely gentle and restrained. He was still hoping in those days—toward the end of September 1922—to adjust the question through the Political Bureau and without open conflict. Stalin's answers, on the other hand, contained a noticeable irritation. He thrust back at Lenin the reproach of "hurriedness," and with it an accusation of "national' liberalism"—that is, indulgence to the nationalism of the outlanders. This correspondence, although extremely interesting politically, is still concealed from the party.

The bureaucratic national policy had already at that time provoked a keen opposition in Georgia, uniting against Stalin and his right hand man, Ordzhonikidze, the flower of Georgian Bolshevism. Through Krupskaya, Lenin got into private contact with the leaders of the Georgian opposition (Mdivani, Makharadze, etc.) against the faction of Stalin, Ordzhonikidze and Dzenhinsky. The struggle in the borderlands was too keen, and Stalin had bound himself too closely with definite groupings, to yield in silence as he had on the question of the monopoly of foreign trade. In the next few weeks Lenin became convinced that it would be necessary to appeal to the party. At the end of December he dictated a voluminous letter on the national question which was to take the place of his speech at the party Congress if illness prevented him from appearing.

Lenin employed against Stalin an accusation of administrative impulsiveness and spitefulness against an alleged nationalism. "Spitefulness in general," he wrote weightily, "plays the worst possible role in politics." The struggle against the just, even though at first exaggerated, demands of the nations formerly oppressed, Lenin qualified as a manifestation of Great-Russian bureaucratism. He for the first time named his opponents by name: "It is, of course, necessary to hold Stalin and Dzerzhinsky responsible for all this out-and-out Great-Russian nationalistic campaign." That the Great-Russian, Lenin, accuses the Georgian, Djugashvili, and the Pole, Dzerzhinsky, of Great-Russian nationalism, may seem paradoxical; but the question here is not one of national feelings and partialities, but of two systems of politics whose differences reveal themselves in all spheres, the national question among them. In mercilessly condemning the methods of the Stalin faction, Rakovsky wrote some years later:

To the national question, as to all other questions, the bureaucracy makes its approach from the point of view of convenience of administration and regulation.

Nothing better could be said.

Stalin's verbal concessions did not quiet Lenin in the least, but on the contrary sharpened his suspicions. "Stalin will make a rotten compromise," Lenin warned me through his secretary, "in order then to deceive." And that was just Stalin's course. He was ready to accept at the coming Congress any theoretical formulation of the national policy provided it did not weaken his factional support in the center and in the borderlands. To be sure, Stalin had plenty of ground for fearing that Lenin saw through his plans completely. But on the other hand, the condition of the sick man was continually growing worse. Stalin coolly included this not unimportant factor in his calculations. The practical policy of the General Secretariat became the more decisive, the worse became Lenin's health. Stalin tried to isolate the dangerous supervisor from all information which might give him a weapon against the Secretariat and its allies. This policy of blockade naturally was directed against the people closest to Lenin. Krupskaya did what she could to protect the sick man from contact with the hostile machinations of the Secretariat. But Lenin knew how to guess a whole situation from accidental symptoms. He was clearly aware of the activities of Stalin, his motives and calculations. It is not difficult to imagine what reactions they provoked in his mind. We should remember that at that moment there already lay on Lenin's writing table, besides the testament insisting upon the removal of Stalin, also the documents on the national question which Lenin's secretaries Fotieva and Glyasser, sensitively reflecting the mood of their chief, were describing as "a bombshell against Stalin."

Half Year of Sharpening Struggle