BUKHARIN-KAMENEV MEETING, 1928 with an Introductory
Cohen, Stephen F.
The document entitled here "Bukharin-Kamenev Meeting, July 1928" is translated by George Saunders. Although the document is cited by virtually all Western historians of the period, this is the...
...Bukharin was preparing a draft program of the Comintern for the upcoming congress...
...3) There was no group of "Four" or "Five" in the Politburo—he swears it...
...You will of course decide your own line, but I would beg you not to help Stalin cut our throats by giving him your approval...
...8. I: "What do you want us to do...
...I go out to write a resolution...
...Uglanov is with us completely...
...Much of Stalin's attack was based on the July meeting with Kamenev as evidence of Bukharin's betrayal of party discipline and attempted alliance with discredited oppositionists...
...Also on his mind was the Sixth Comintern Congress, scheduled to open in Moscow on July 17...
...2. Both Mikhail Kalinin and Voroshilov were full members of the nine-member Politburo...
...As noted in the original document, Efim Tseitlin, Bukharin's secretary...
...7. We cannot start a discussion because it will immediately turn into armed conflict...
...The ban on intraparty factions adopted in 1921 and the basis on which earlier oppositionists had been castigated and even expelled from the party...
...Finally, paragraphing and quotation marks have been made somewhat more consistent, but with no effort to alter the document's often slovenly and repetitive character...
...it was he who proposed that no one be shot in the Shakhty affair (we voted against);' 0 and in all 83 negotiations he is inclined to make concessions...
...The question of removal [of Stalin] was posed concretely...
...2) If the country pulls through, Stalin will make a quick about-face and we will still perish...
...They still live daily with what was wrought, and lost, in 1928-29...
...Bukharin: "Rykov plus Tomsky plus Uglanov (absolutely) plus myself...
...Stalin's remarks at the expanded Politburo session of January 30-February 9, 1929, in J. Stalin, Works, Vol...
...But at any rate within a couple of months it is inevitable...
...Despite a superficial resemblance to those of the left, Stalin's increasingly extremist policies in agriculture and industry in 1928-29 were, however, profoundly new, and they quickly ramified from the center to the smallest village...
...In this respect, the document refutes the notion that Stalin's victory was effortless and his revolution from above virtually predetermined...
...Our task is to gradually explain Stalin's disastrous role and to persuade the average Central Committee member of the necessity for his removal...
...332-40...
...I would like us to keep each other informed, but not through secretaries or intermediaries...
...In all these respects, Bukharinism and nascent Stalinism were antithetical...
...Perhaps it won't happen that quickly, because both sides are still leery of appealing to you...
...Bukharin stated it simply to 81 the differences we had with you...
...24 16...
...That would be terrible...
...Andrei Andreev, party boss of the North Caucasus region, actually sided with Stalin and was not removed...
...While Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev interpreted Stalin's draconian policies as merely bureaucratic maneuvers, and contemplated an alliance with him against the right, Bukharin saw immediately that Stalin's new course transcended old disputes and was, he believed, "disastrous for the revolution as a whole...
...juncture in Soviet history...
...They still saw Stalin in his earlier role as a man of the cautious center...
...We consider Stalin's line disastrous for the revolution as a whole...
...Other than that, a mass of trifles, details...
...But the defeat of Bukharin and his allies was due also to their refusal to carry the struggle beyond these high councils, where Stalin's power was greatest, to the larger arenas of their own support...
...You of course, as political people, will take advantage of the situation to `up the ante.' But I do not fear that...
...Stalin knows only one method— revenge, and he does it with the stab in the 85 back...
...Although the document is cited by virtually all Western historians of the period, this is the first full translation into English, and possibly into any language...
...I: "And you...
...Rykov cut Kaganovich to pieces...
...We passed a resolution reprimanding him for violating the decision...
...They don't discuss that with us...
...At the same time, in foreign policy, Stalin is following a right-wing line: he had the Comintern removed from the Kremlin...
...Before coming to the main point of our discussion I should clear up two rumors: (1) There was no vote of 4 to 5 on [your] assignment...
...The Petrograders wavered and disavowed Stetsky...
...On this occasion or on another one, [Bukharin] said to Stalin, "Don't think that the Politburo is just a consultative body under the general secretary...
...and "Within the RightCentrist Bloc," in Writings of Leon Trotsky [1929] (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975), pp...
...What will be decisive is the political line and I want you to know what the struggle is about...
...5 Sokolnikov is smuggling in Trotskyism...
...When this will happen I do not know...
...Fifty years later, these programmatic ideas remain officially proscribed in the Soviet Union...
...7. That is, private merchants and better-off peasants...
...Bukharin and his followers later protested that the document gave a one-sided picture of the meeting, and this, too, seems clear...
...Xl (Moscow, 1954), pp...
...8 Now to the main point...
...It would be extremely important...
...The policy resolutions of the Central Committee were still strongly Bukharinist...
...politically speaking, of course...
...FROM THE DEBATES ON COLLECTIVE FARMS only the following is of interest...
...Don't praise Stalin...
...Self-criticism should not touch the leaders but only those who carry out the policies...
...The Orgburo is ours...
...MARGINAL NOTE: All this was fawning...
...3) I write a second letter—he calls me into his office...
...Stalin's victory derived from 79 several factors, including his organizational power as general secretary and the fact that many high party officials did not yet perceive the ultimate direction of his extremism...
...The whole Shakhty affair, and the trial that followed, remains murky...
...The direct consequences and enduring legacy of Stalinism, inside and outside the Soviet Union, rank it among the major political phenomena of the 20th century, and 1928-29 as a seminal turning point...
...the low cultural level of the Central Committee...
...5. A reference to a diagram portraying the discrepancy between high industrial and low agricultural prices as the open blades of a pair of scissors...
...Bukharin had arranged the secret meeting through Sokolnikov to solicit the support of Kamenev and Zinoviev (both having just been readmitted to the party) against Stalin...
...Good by...
...demand at least the removal of Molotov...
...With great agitation, talking for an hour without any interruption on my part, he recounted the following...
...SUMMARY: (1) Things have gone much farther...
...The document should not be read as a verbatim report of the meeting...
...The Russian original is preserved in the Trotsky archives at Harvard University Library in the form of a five-page, single-spaced typescript of Kamenev's elliptical notes...
...The GPU 84 follows me and the GPU is watching you...
...4. Earlier in the 1920s, "restorative prices" meant state industrial prices sufficient to cover the cost of production and to return a profit to state industry...
...it won't work...
...What can we do...
...Stalin will very likely seek to contact you...
...1) I called for a general discussion of overall policy...
...Stalin had already begun to move privately against Bukharin's control and united-front policies, and toward the extreme anti-Social Democratic course that from 1929 did so much to undercut resistance to fascism in Europe...
...Molotov: "The middle peasants have become strong...
...55 people were accused of sabotage and treason...
...Likewise Mikoyan: "The scissors will be with us for a long time...
...Inseparably, an ideological terror was unleashed in 1929 against all Bukharinist and NEP policies as "rotten liberalism...
...They were bitterly opposed by three senior Politburo members, who until then had been his allies: Nikolai Bukharin, the * For a full account of the struggle, and documentation, see my Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938 (New York: Knopf, 1973 and 1975...
...We will see what they say...
...Chatting over wine with Kamenev and Feliks Dzerzhinsky in 1923, Stalin had described what he loved most in life as follows: "The greatest delight is to mark one's enemy, prepare everything, avenge oneself thoroughly, and then go to sleep...
...The version circulated widely and quickly came into the hands of Stalin, who seized upon it as the occasion for a major showdown with the Bukharinists...
...That is capitulationism...
...Sokolnikov: Assume a more active policy...
...It's all accepted unanimously...
...Kaganovich was probably the ablest and most despised of Stalin's lieutenants...
...It became an important part of Stalin's subsequent assault on the nonparty intelligentsia in 192930...
...I: "Did Stalin show you Zinoviev's memorandum...
...Part III is preceded in the original by the words "What is underlined is verbatim" and "Copy of a copy...
...and Mikhail Tomsky, chief of the Soviet trade unions...
...Bukharin: "Stalin spoiled the [Comintern draft] program for me in many places...
...Previous intraparty struggles, which ended in the defeat of left oppositions led by Lev Trotsky in 1923-24, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev in 1925, and by all three in 1926-27, had not significantly affected the population...
...If we do, they'll cut our throats with the no-splitting clause.t 5 If we don't, they'll cut us down by petty chess maneuvers...
...Let us remember the theory of "sweet revenge...
...The differences between us and Stalin are many times more serious than all the differences we had with you...
...You can hound the kulak as much as you want, but you have to make peace with the middle peasant...
...Better than any other major Bolshevik, indeed almost alone among them, he understood what was truly involved in 1928-29: "The fate of the revolution is at stake...
...Hoping to see you soon...
...4. I [Kamenev]: "Is this really a serious struggle...
...The Central Committee fears a discussion...
...An ugly scene...
...that is why they have begun to clash with us...
...What to do with this report I still don't know...
...And in Stalin's murderous theory (put forth to justify the civil strife) that as socialism draws closer, class struggle must grow stronger, Bukharin saw, rightly, an ideology of permanent terror: "The result of this will be a police state...
...In the next few days I'll be very busy with the Comintern Congress and won't be able to see you...
...Molotov got nasty and fired a volley at Pravda (hitting at Astrov in particular, the "one-sidedness" of Pravda in general, the footnote to Kritsman, etc...
...Pierre Semard, leader of the French Communist party, and Ernst Thalmann and Arthur Ewert, leaders of the German party...
...Tomsky formulated it this way: I (Tomsky) am 30 kilometers to the right of you (Bukharin) in international questions, but I (Tomsky) am 100 kilometers to the left of Stalin...
...There have been small-scale [peasant] revolts in 150 cases...
...You too should tell no one...
...I think Stalin has some special hold on them...
...Eugene Varga, a prominent economist and Comintern official...
...Stalin demurred, saying an industrial-financial plan was necessary, etc...
...Because the subjective conditions within the Central Committee for removing Stalin, while they are maturing, have not yet matured...
...I therefore want you to know the situation...
...15.On the Comintern...
...Sokolnikov (taking up Bukharin's remarks): At one drinking bout, Tomsky, completely loaded, leaned over to Stalin and said, "Soon our workers will be shooting at you...
...13 Our potential forces are enormous, but (1) the average Central Committee member still doesn't understand the depth of the differences, and (2) such members are terribly afraid of a split...
...In general we have to observe strict secrecy...
...This is idiotic illiteracy...
...G.S...
...8. The party and the state have completely merged—that is the whole trouble...
...Conclusions: Stalin's line will be defeated...
...Kalinin and Voroshilov betrayed us...
...His weaknesses as political leader of the opposition are evident—his Hamlet-like indecision and wavering, his alternate flights of despair and false optimism, his self-defeating tactics, and his deference to ritualistic antifactionalism...
...889, 80 Zinoviev was acquired by Moscow Trotskyists, and by early fall a copy had reached Trotsky in his distant exile in Kazakhstan...
...It is an account of a secret meeting between Bukharin and Kamenev on July 11, 1928...
...Stalin replied...
...The plenum, apparently, will end tomorrow...
...Swarthy, sour, vindictive, and wrathful...
...This line could bring our downfall...
...We understand this, but he maneuvers in such a way as to make us look like the splitters...
...67-73...
...For the Bolsheviks, economics was still the main determinant of their revolution...
...3. A reference to informal caucuses of Politburo members during the earlier factional struggles led by Bukharin and Stalin against Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev...
...we don't know anything for sure...
...Stalin was seeking support among Young Communists (Komsomols) by arguing that the industrial and trade-union policies of Bukharin and Tomsky deprived young people of job opportunities...
...He [Bukharin] is extremely upset...
...Headings, based on those of Kamenev, have been given to the five main sections...
...Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky were soon ousted from the Politburo, and their followers everywhere hounded from office...
...He starts shouting at me...
...Wouldn't it be possible for you to come here for a short while during the next Jew days...
...The rightist views of Kalinin, titular president of the Soviet Union, were well-known...
...For years they had been divided among themselves over real issues, but while shunning equally real possibilities of compromise...
...Of Lenin's successors, Stalin alone remained, now an unrivaled leader and shortly to become a despot...
...I did a turnabout in the nick of time and wrote the resolution myself...
...At the same time, some minimal concessions have been made to mcke the text comprehensible to the reader...
...4) We go to the "Seven...
...A reference to the grain requisitioning measures during the Russian civil war of 1918-21...
...Bukharin: "That's the whole problem...
...3) Since tribute is necessary and resistance is bound to grow, a strong leadership is necessary...
...25 Without waiting for that, Stalin wrote a reply and sent it himself...
...But when a crisis comes, I should speak out plainly and completely openly...
...Or a peasant union...
...And there, as even disgruntled Stalinists later complained, they were defeated "not with argument but with party cards," and "strangled behind the back of the party...
...many confessed...
...We don't want to appear as splitters, because then they would cut our throats...
...Sitting as late as December 1927, the Fifteenth Party Congress had at once expelled the left from the party and legislated Bukharin's policies as guidelines for a first five-year plan in industry and agriculture...
...On June 15, 1928, Moshe Frumkin, Deputy Commissar of Finance, sent the Politburo a letter bleakly evaluating the consequences of Stalin's policy in the countryside and urging Bukharinist remedies...
...Rykov's report will be given on Friday...
...A critical editorial note had been attached to an article by the economist Lev Kritsman praising Stalin's coercive measures in the countryside...
...This is taken as a basis...
...26 Then Tomsky attacked Molotov, but in a mild fashion...
...Stalin's reasoning is this: I got grain by using extraordinary measures...
...I: "But what are they counting on, to get grain...
...His [Bukharin's] look was extremely troubled and tormented...
...2) The farther socialism advances, the greater will be the resistance (see the sentence in the resolution...
...Some of these characterizations are scholarly...
...besides this, they'll dump all the blame on us if there is no grain in October...
...We part ways...
...In making concessions to us, he kept the key to the leadership, and having kept it, he will cut our throats at a later time...
...THE POLITICAL DECISIONS leading to this turning point were accompanied by the last, and most fateful, of the factional struggles inside the Soviet Communist party after Lenin's death in 1924.* Though the disputes of 1928-29 encompassed the whole of public affairs, from the party-state's relations with all segments of Soviet society to the direction of the Comintern (Communist International) and foreign policy, economic policy was the heart of the controversy...
...But the fact is he will bring us to ruin...
...2 They are taking a more lenient attitude now, in view of his [Stalin's] concessions...
...They claim that Trotsky too wanted to close the scissors...
...Finally Stalin attacked Tomsky openly and crudely...
...I quote his remarks about the Himalayas...
...Now everyone has understood that not only Bukharin, but Stalin too is on the offensive...
...Bukharin: "Perhaps it will be necessary to try an even more far-reaching maneuver in order to make peace with the middle peasant...
...Bukharinist policies enjoyed widespread sympathy throughout lower party ranks, the state apparatus, and, it would seem, most segments of society...
...It isn't some question of `Who fouled the nest?' In reality, the fate of the revolution is at stake...
...Rykov makes one...
...Aleksei Rykov, Lenin's successor as Soviet Premier...
...What we have to fall back on are the state farms and our work among the poor peasants...
...All obscure the real significance of 1928-29 as a turning point in modern history, and the difficulty of explaining it...
...Therefore, you should not come here now...
...Various euphemisms have attached to the events in the Soviet Union that began in early 1928 and culminated in the frenzy of Stalin's revolution from above at the end of 1929...
...On January 20, 1929, apparently at Trotsky's urging and to the great resentment of Bukharin and his friends, Trotskyists in Moscow published the document as an underground (or samizdat) pamphlet...
...These comments and the underlining (or rendering in italics) have been omitted...
...Bukharin: "Stalin boasts that he has you in his pocket...
...Grigory Ordzhonikidze, head of the Central Control Commission, the party's disciplinary body...
...Either Stalin will try to `buy you off with high appointments or he'll appoint you to such posts in order to commit you in advance...
...He thinks that is the only thing he doesn't yet have...
...6. I: "But so far he is removing you...
...From this reasonably factual, though partisan, interpretation, the document, henceforth suppressed, passed into the obscene mythology of Stalinist politics...
...He read it and said he is afraid of having things on paper...
...For what will be the charges...
...Kamenev's Account of His Conversation with Bukharin AN HOUR HAD PASSED since my arrival when (at 10 a.m., July 11) without warning or ringing Bukharin and Sokolnikov came in, Sokolnikov leaving toward the end...
...1) If the country perishes, we perish...
...A ll parentheses were in the original...
...The rhetoric of Preobrazhensky's argument was ferocious and caused a major political dispute, but his actual proposal merely called for "nonequivalent exchange" through relatively high industrial prices in market relations between the two sectors...
...His phrase: I wonder if all our "fuss" is just masturbation...
...Valentin Astrov was a young follower of Bukharin and one of his deputy editors at Pravda...
...After the Kuomintang led by Chiang Kai-shek had suddenly massacred its Communist allies in Shanghai in 87 April 1927, a separatist left-Kuomintang regime had been set up in Wuhan (Hankow) with Comintern support...
...Stalin violated the decision of the Politburo (the Seven...
...Bukharin has made a final break with Stalin...
...Though Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky seem not to have doubted the original criminal charges, they fought hard in the Politburo to limit the ramifications of the affair...
...Having created a narrow covert politics at the top, they were trapped where Stalin excelled...
...Molotov pronounces it anti-Leninist and an antiparty document...
...Moreover, Kamenev's often unflattering commentary on Bukharin's behavior should be read in the context of their own recently concluded struggle that had disgraced and driven Kamenev and Zinoviev from power...
...He will cut our throats...
...His line is disastrous, but he does not give anyone a chance to discuss it...
...but in the evening Ugarov went out of his way to apologize to me for Komarov...
...Concessions there too...
...I very much need to talk some things over with you and get your advice...
...But he would not agree to a discussion...
...The decision was to send Frumkin's letter to all members of the Politburo and draft a reply...
...If historians have been slow to recognize this fact, and to treat it as a major problem of historical explanation, ordinary Soviet citizens have known it all along...
...Finally, Bukharin realized the mistake of the original Bolshevik leaders, himself included, once Lenin's successors and now pilloried outcasts...
...And what if the middle peasants demand concessions on the monopoly of foreign trade...
...A history of the plenum resolution and the fight [within the Politburo...
...He sets traps and accuses people of deviations...
...In addition, they had been ratified officially, and repeatedly, as the only correct policies by the defeats of the left...
...6 Reply by Tomsky: "If Molotov is right, what is the perspective...
...Recent scholarship points, however, to the presence of alternatives...
...He yells, "Liar...
...You want NEP without nepmen, kulaks, 7 or concession-holders...
...Industrialization and collectivization were also primary goals for the Bukharinists...
...Here, speaking to Kamenev, he warned, with remarkable prevision, "Stalin's policy is leading to civil war...
...Semard is for Stalin, Thalmann is for Stalin...
...What can you do when you are dealing with such an opponent: a Genghis Khan...
...The real significance of 1928-29 was the coming of Stalinism—the first appearance of specific policies, political practices, and 78 ideological propositions that were to be characteristics of the Stalinist system for the next 25 years...
...there was no discussion of this question at all...
...Every other Bolshevik oppositionist had likewise been crushed by Stalin, while displaying almost identical failings at one critical moment or another...
...That is capitulationism and lack of faith in the building of socialism...
...STEPHEN F. COHEN q...
...Sometimes I say to Efim, 18 Aren't things hopeless for us...
...Bukharin himself wants to have a talk...
...I I Andreev is for us...
...He will have to drown the revolts in blood...
...At the same time there was wavering over whether to come out openly or not to come out...
...Bukharin: "No...
...I know (or assume) that the Stalinists will approach you also...
...Kamenev's Additions to the Account of Bukharin's Remarks Night of July 11-12 1. GENERAL IMPRESSION, more than anything, a sense of doom...
...and S.F.C...
...Soviet and Western writers alike speak of a first "five-year plan" in the economy, implying a high level of calculation...
...his three-year tyranny, when he was general secretary of the Ukrainian party, had outraged native Ukrainian leaders...
...8. These two points refer to Politburo discussions about restoring Zinoviev and Kamenev to some official position...
...21 12...
...When the struggle began in early 1928, over Stalin's forcible ("extraordinary") measures in grain collection, the Bukharin group had significant advantages...
...5) Bukharin's reply: The tribute theory does not differ in any way from Preobrazhensky's "law of primitive socialist accumulation...
...6. Evgeny Preobrazhensky had been the leading economist of the Trotskyist opposition...
...In order to develop industry, "tribute from the peasantry is necessary...
...7. As supplements to all this, and in between these supplements [Bukharin presented] a great heap of "revelations" about the "Seven," etc...
...2. Molotov and Stalin on withdrawing from the Wuhan government...
...But their own ambitious proposals were based on a continuation of NEP (the New Economic Policy introduced in 1921), on its dual publicprivate economy with market relations between state industry and peasant farming, and on its political and economic principles of civil peace, moderation, gradualism, and balanced development...
...What to do...
...Voroshilov, commissar of war, was a long-time crony of Stalin, but the Bukharin group apparently assumed that unrest in the peasant army would incline him to their side...
...The expression "average Central Committee member" (seredniak tsekist) is ambiguous here...
...17...
...Sometimes he gives the impression of a man who knows he is doomed...
...At times his lips twitch from nervousness...
...There we will dot all the i's...
...But Tomsky in his last speech at the plenum showed plainly that Stalin was the splitter...
...Things have gone so far in the Central Committee and in the party that you (and probably the Trotskyists too) will inevitably be drawn in and play an important role in deciding the outcome...
...Only Rykov and Tomsky know that I have talked with you...
...The translator has tried to reproduce Kamenev's choppy, abbreviated style to preserve the drama of that historical moment...
...Finally, Bukharin's defeat was prelude to revolution from above, the opening chapter of Stalinism...
...I can find no other word for it...
...In March 1928, the security police announced the uncovering of a counterrevolutionary plot involving technical specialists and foreign governments at the Shakhty mines in the Donbass industrial complex...
...Yagoda and Trilisser are ours...
...The result of this will be a police state...
...the resolution in KPSS v rezotiutsiiakh i resheniiakh, Vol...
...At this time [his] removal will not go through the Central Committee...
...But there was no real plan, even in industry, only pell-mell heavy industrialization through wildly escalated targets, menacing exhortations, recurrent crises, makeshift measures, and wasteful imbalances...
...2) Bukharin said twice: Don't you understand that I would now give up Stalin for Kamenev and Zinoviev...
...It was the beginning of this farrago of mountainous achievements and monstrous crimes that created the Soviet Union we know today and transformed the nature of world politics...
...They refused partly because they themselves had helped to traduce, and finally expel, the left for these same acts of public "factionalism" and "splitting...
...Varga will argue that famine is inevitable during industrialization...
...But tell your people not to attack us...
...All three later perished in Stalin's great purges, Tomsky a suicide in 1936, and Bukharin and Rykov by execution after the Moscow Trial of 1938...
...But in fact, self-criticism has been directed against Tomsky and Uglanov...
...His "law," set out in 1924, argued that Soviet state industry could expand rapidly only by exploiting, or obtaining surplus value from, the private peasant sector...
...12 Stalin has bought the support of the Ukrainians by taking Kaganovich out of the Ukraine...
...It would be better to talk about the program in person...
...And for several weeks I have not spoken with Stalin...
...we call him `stone bottom'—nothing can be done...
...You can't trust him with even the smallest document...
...More admirable, and perhaps most important in historical perspective, was the quality of Bukharin's ideological opposition to nascent Stalinism, even in defeat...
...I make three corrections...
...Rykov, Tomsky, and I unanimously agree on the formulation that `It would be much better if we had Zinoviev and Kamenev in the Politburo now, instead of Stalin.' I have discussed this with Rykov and Tomsky quite openly...
...In the Politburo group of 'Seven,'9 we argued with him to the point of saying `You lie!' `You're talking nonsense!' and so on...
...4) Stalin's speech at the plenum: Two streams of Trotskyism, the genuine one—for restorative prices4—and the Bukharinist-Trotskyists...
...theorist of Bolshevism, head of the Comintern, and co-leader of the party with Stalin since 1925...
...In the context above, the document speaks for itself...
...You understand that this is the same as Preobrazhensky's theory...
...20 4. If we begin a discussion, they will cut our throats...
...Nor does the term collectivization, with its overtones of rationality, evoke the needless tragedy of the Soviet countryside in 1929-33—a virtual civil war between the state and the peasantry that left millions dead and agriculture wrecked...
...And yet, it is hard to conclude that another political personality would have changed the outcome...
...Western historians sometimes speak, for example, of 1928-29 as the onset of "fullblown totalitarianism," suggesting a continuous, ineluctable, and thus easily understood outcome...
...Then Bukharin dug in and made 86 himself a trench, but failed to fire a single shot...
...V. Sokolnikov Related the Following: [Kamenev's Account] July 12, 11 a.m...
...He will have to drown the revolts in blood...
...And he would say, They are defending the kulaks and nepmen...
...See Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), p. 211...
...18.Stalin's policy is leading to civil war...
...A forbidding sight...
...Call me with your answer tomorrow at 8. July 11, 6p.m...
...He was right about this, and about what was to come...
...5. I: "What are your forces...
...This record is as accurate as possible...
...Stalin gave a rude and vituperative speech against Tomsky...
...This Bukharinist group, or right opposition as it became known, insisted that Stalin's policies were politically dangerous, economically disastrous, and, in their fundamental coercive aspects, incompatible with socialism...
...He begins by saying, "You and I are the Himalayas...
...If possible, answer by telephone (3-4924...
...He is being removed from the North Caucasus...
...Everywhere your people (Zhuk., for an individual example) are being lined up to support Stalin...
...Bukharin is in a tragic situation...
...But Stalin used it to discredit Bukharin's conciliatory class policies, Rykov's management of the state apparatus, and Tomsky's leadership of the trade unions...
...Unexpectedly they bring in a resolution stolen from my declaration...
...the scissors cannot be closed...
...I listened to Tomsky's speech with great surprise...
...I: "What will they do with us...
...q Kamenev who, along with Trotsky, remained unmoved: "The differences between us and Stalin are many times more serious than all Bukharin-Kamenev Meeting, July 1928 L Letter from Sokolnikov to Kamenev Moscow, July 9, 1928 DEAR L. B.[KAMENEV], It has been several days since we returned to Moscow just in time for the plenum.' I thought I would find you here, but it seems you are still sitting quietly out in Kaluga...
...Bukharin's position is tragic: he fears most of all that you [Kamenev and Zinoviev] will say Stalin's line is correct...
...19 3. Stalin tells the Young Communists: The way the question of juvenile employment will be decided depends on whether Bukharin puts an end to his bad policies...
...It was a crucial moment...
...He came directly from an ongoing plenum of the full Central Committee...
...Stalin is circulating rumors that he has you in his pocket...
...Nonetheless, by April 1929, Stalin had defeated the Bukharinist opposition overwhelmingly, and made his new policies official, inside the Politburo and the Central Committee...
...9. "There is no reason anyone should know of our meeting...
...He is driven by a desire for recognition as a theorist...
...Sometimes at night I think to myself, Do we have the right to remain silent...
...556-67...
...But that's war communism, 16 and sure death...
...I am going to print a series of articles in Pravda...
...But careful reflection tells us to act cautiously...
...82 III...
...We have no colonies, they won't give us loans, and therefore our base has to be tribute from the peasantry...
...We would say, Here is the man who has brought the country to ruin and starvation...
...Written hastily by Kamenev as a report to Zinoviev on what Bukharin had said, it also includes commentary by Grigory Sokolnikov, an anti-Stalinist member of the Central Committee who participated in part of the conversation...
...Later in July, a copy of Kamenev's report to * For the authenticity and history of the document, see Angelo Tasca's account in Istituto Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Annali, Anno Ottavo (Milan, 1966), pp...
...It may be that another blow is needed for the party to understand where he is leading it...
...The introductory essay, "Premonitions of Stalinism," and annotations are by Stephen F. Cohen...
...Will you be here anytime soon...
...They do too...
...By December 1929, unrestrained by effective opposition, Stalin's "extraordinary measures" in the countryside led to the act from which so much else was to follow— forcible collectivization of 125 million peasants and all-out war on any who resisted...
...We have to wait for them calmly...
...His aim now is to take the Moscow Pravda and Leningrad Pravda away from us and replace Uglanov (with Kaganovich...
...It is a major source of our knowledge about 1928-29...
...The tone was of absolute hatred for Stalin and a complete break with him...
...Stalin: 9/10 of it I can accept...
...The resolution was adopted unanimously because he disavowed Molotov—announcing that he accepted 9/10 of my declaration, which I read to the `Seven' without letting it out of my hands...
...The Leningrad (formerly called Petrograd) delegation to the Central Committee plenum included Nikolai Komarov, the Bukharinist Aleksei Stetsky, and Tomsky's trade-union colleague Feodor Ugarov...
...This is sure to be...
...He changes his theories depending on whom he wants to get rid of at the moment...
...First I've heard...
...10...
...Best wishes, G. Sokolnikov II...
...He is an unprincipled intriguer who subordinates everything to the preservation of his own power...
...Stalin: "The reply was acknowledged to be correct, though not complete...
...Its leaders commanded important offices of power and were of greater personal stature than those of the Stalinist faction, which, apart from Stalin, general secretary of the party, relied upon such secondary figures as Kliment Voroshilov, Anastas Mikoyan, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Lazar Kaganovich, whose authority, and notoriety, came later...
...Above all, the document illuminates Bukharin's own role at this momentous 893-94, 897-98...
...Part of the price seems to have been a repentant article by Zinoviev, to be published in Pravda, of which Bukharin was editor: 9. A reference suggesting that the seven senior members of the Politburo—Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, Stalin, Molotov, Kalinin, and Voroshilov—met or voted at this time without the two other full members, Valerian Kuibyshev and Ian Rudzutak...
...He comes to see me: `Bukharin my friend, you could strain the nerves of an elephant...
...Meanwhile, and as a result, Stalin has gained the power to become a "Genghis Khan," to "cut our throats," and to launch a course none of them, left or right, had ever desired...
...Bukharin: "What can we do...
...Here, at the July 1928 plenum, Stalin accused the Bukharinists of advocating "restorative prices" for agricultural goods— that is, higher prices for grain to coax peasant surpluses back onto the market...
...Among other things, it documents the intense opposition of the Bukharin group and its support even at the highest levels—from the Moscow party organization headed by Nikolai Uglanov, the secret police (GPU, or OGPU, as it was then known), whose deputy chiefs Genrikh Yagoda and Mikhail Trilisser sympathized with the Bukharinists, to Stalin's supposed bailiwick, the Organizational Bureau (Orgburo) of the Central Committee...
...Sergo [Ordzhonikidze] is no knight in shining armor...
...But at closed sessions Bukharin had discovered the full programmatic nature of Stalin's "extraordinary measures" of grain collection, the defection of leaders on whom he had counted, and the reluctance of uncommitted Central Committee members to move against the general secretary...
...II (Moscow, 1954), pp...
...At an expanded session of the Politburo, sitting intermittently between January 30 and February 9, the warring factions exchanged bitter recriminations...
...Elsewhere, Bukharin characterized Stalin's policies in the countryside as "military-feudal exploitation of the peasantry...
...With this theory everything can be destroyed...
...My thinking is that, any day now, signals will come from the other camp...
...9. Stalin is interested in nothing but holding on to power...
...the others are nobodies...
...others, frankly political...
...Isn't this lack of courage...
...But it was too late...
...2) I write Stalin a letter and demand a general discussion...
...Tomsky thinks that we have nothing at all to fall back on except concessions to the peasants...
...14 That was why I had yielded to Stalin on the question of the extraordinary measures, and that made our offensive against him more difficult...
...Only one section claims to be a literal account of what Bukharin said, but even this is clearly elliptical...
...Comintern policy in the Chinese civil war had been a major subject of contention between the Bukharin-Stalin leadership and the left opposition in 1927...
...He himself wanted to give the report on the program at the plenum...
...Kamenev's Account of His Conversation with Sokolnikov Wednesday, July 11, 9 a.m...
...Translated by GEORGE SAUNDERS q Annotations I. Plenum of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist party, July 4-12, 1928...
...He has made concessions now, so that later he can cut our throats...
...As for Stalin's line, it is as follows (as he expressed it at the plenum): (1) Capitalism grew either at the expense of colonies or through loans or through the exploitation of the workers...
...The rudeness of it was astonishing...
...I HAD ARRANGED for Sokolnikov to come by again before my departure...
...Bukharin: "That is what I wanted to talk with you about...
...You made it up to turn the Politburo against me...
...Today discussion is still going on, on Mikoyan's report, and "battles" are breaking out...
...There is a sentence in his speech where he says that only `big landowners' can think this way, and refers word for word to a passage in a speech by Uglanov...
...It could mean average, middle-ranking, or uncommitted member...
...I want you to know what it's all about...
...SOKOLNIKOV'S UNDERSTANDING of the mechanics of the plenum is as follows: Rykov opened the offensive...
...5. But what if we jointly submit our resignations—Rykov, Tomsky, and I? 6. If I am not removed for a while—two months—I shouldn't get entangled in day-today politics...
...Bukharin: "I don't know...
...22 He used to come to see me and curse Stalin roundly, but at the decisive moment he betrayed us...
...Abbreviations have been spelled out and some material has been inserted in brackets...
...Kamenev: Why haven't they done anything...
...The Petrograders are generally with us, but they got frightened when the possibility of replacing Stalin came up, because Komarov disavowed Stetsky's speech...
...5) I read a 20-page declaration, without letting it out of may hands...
...Varga will give the report, 23 because Stalin doesn't want Rykov to give it...
...Voroshilov and Kalinin betrayed us at the last moment...
...I can't keep dragging things out...
...On reviving the extraordinary measures if difficulties reappear...
...THE IMPORTANT DOCUMENT printed below provides a unique inside view of this fateful struggle...
...But under Stalin, and that blockhead Molotov—who presumes to instruct me in Marxism...
...And despite irrefutable documentation about subsequent decades of official abuses and privilege, there are those who still speak of 1928-29 as the "beginning of socialism" in the Soviet Union...
...2) The note on Zinoviev's article was dictated by Stalin over my objection, as a compromise with Molotov, who was strenuously opposed to printing Zinoviev's article...
...If measures become necessary again, I can carry them out alone...
...It was cited at Bukharin's trial in 1938 as early proof of the criminal conspiracy of the "anti-Soviet bloc of rightists and Trotskyites...
...I had great difficulty fighting him off...
...He is afraid a written article would bring trouble...
...Molotov leaves...
...Ewert is not a rightwing Communist but they are forcing him to become one...
...A bloc to remove Stalin...
...A positive program can be drawn up jointly with you [Kamenev and Zinoviev...
...Don't talk with me by phone, because my phones are tapped...
...There is, however, no doubt about the document's authenticity, which was confirmed by several sources, including Bukharin himself.* Indeed, it came to play a role in the struggle between Bukharin and Stalin...
...Sokolnikov: To him [Bukharin] you are x and y, unknown quantities...
...I gave [Bukharin] your (personal) letter...
...The defeat of the Bukharinist opposition had far-reaching consequences...
Vol. 26 • January 1979 • No. 1
