The Return to Stalinism
NICOLAEVSKY, BORIS I.
The Return to Stalinism By Boris I. Nicolaevsky The restoration of Stalinism seems to be in full swing in the Soviet Union. True, it is Stalinism with variations and additions by Malenkov and...
...One can understand to what practical conclusions this turgid theory led: If the principal obstacle to building communism is the kolkhoz form of property, the building of communism must begin with the liquidation of this form of property...
...Thus, in place of the earlier emphasis on establishing egalitarian principles of distribution as the key to the transition to communism, there came an entirely new stress: liquidation of the remnants of the peasants' rights in the kolkhozes and the complete subordination of all farm production to the state...
...They correspond to the major themes of Stalin's famous article, "Dizziness from Success," in the spring of 1930, which pretended to announce a retreat from collectivization even as the civil war in the countryside was intensified...
...Lenin was strongly influenced by the French writers of the "egalitarian communism" school, particularly Babeuf and his followers...
...When he refers here to the "building of communism" as new thing in Russia, it should be remembered that Soviet leaders view what they have achieved till now as "socialism" ; the higher stage, "communism," is yet to come...
...That is, even up to the last war the problem was considered primarily to be one of distribution...
...See "Russian Slave Laborers Revolt," by Melvin J. Lasky, The New Leader, March 29.??Ed.] Later information tells of similar strikes in Karaganda and several other camps...
...If his death evoked such joy...
...Not only has the outlook on methods of solving the question changed...
...In those years, Stalin opposed this egalitarian philosophy on the same theoretical basis as his adversaries...
...True, it is Stalinism with variations and additions by Malenkov and Khrushchev, but it is Stalinism nonetheless...
...The reaction of the "free" citizens was little different from that of the slave laborers...
...not only did they continue their passive resistance, but they intensified it: There was an unusually long delay in spring field work...
...The concessions supposedly being made to them (such as reduced taxes, privileges for private garden plots, etc...
...If "building communism" was emphasized in a document on the basis of which the entire election was to be conducted, we can therefore assume that proceeding to "the building of communism" has been decided upon by the most authoritative echelon of the Party apparatus...
...This egalitarian "original sin" of Bolshevism was overcome very slowly...
...His successors waited less than ten months...
...It is my belief that these three decisions are actually three parts of one big decision--a decision which, in its significance for the Party and for Russia, must be ranked with the decisions taken in the fall of 1929 launching collectivization...
...Similarly, the attempts to secure a foreign-policy detente aroused great alarm among foreign Communists and among the Kremlin's allies in Eastern Europe and Asia...
...In kolkhoz enterprises, on the other hand, although the means of production (land, machinery) belong to the state, production output is the property of the individual kolkhozes, since the labor in the kolkhozes, like the seeds, is theirs, while the kolkhozes dispose of the land, which is turned over to them for their eternal use, as actually their own property, despite the fact that they cannot sell, buy, lease or mortgage it...
...of two forms of property, i.e., state property in industry and kolkhoz (collective-farm) property in agriculture...
...Similarly, this problem was central to the whole struggle against Beria...
...Stalin's new concept not only transformed the problem of "building communism" from one of organizing distribution to one of organizing production...
...These feelings determined the policy of the regime during the first months after the funeral...
...In the second part of the "Appeal," which constitutes a sort of political summation, the words seem to turn up in every paragraph...
...At various times, it has been decided in various ways...
...Zinoviev, in his articles called "The Philosophy of the Era" (fall, 1925), denned this philosophy as the philosophy of equality...
...The significance of this emphasis is shown by comparing it with similar pre-election appeals in 1946 and 1950...
...has already entered the period of the "building of communism...
...even during the postwar disputes, the old attitudes found echoes in the writings of the "Zhdanovites...
...even more important, there have been changes of outlook on the very essence of what constitutes communism...
...Blood, a special kind of liquid, is less often a cement binding alliances than an acid eating away the most solid links...
...This doctrine was formulated in Stalin's last work, Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R...
...Hero is the most probable line of immediate conflict within the Kremlin hierarchy...
...The regime decided to stop bidding for the favor of the kolkhoz peasants, and instead to smash them...
...Stalin began spilling the blood of his intra-Party foes ten years after setting up his personal dictatorship...
...That policy was characterized by a desire to ease tension on both the foreign and domestic fronts...
...Beria's arrest, Malenkov's speech at the August session of the Supreme Soviet, Khrushchev's report at the September Plenum of the Central Committee--these are the chief milestones marking the gradual return to the old, tested Stalinist policy...
...That echelon today is the Plenum of the Central Committee, which has been meeting regularly since Stalin's death at the intervals fixed by the Party constitution...
...Precisely these articles provided Stalin with a "last straw" in his break with Zinoviev and Kamenev...
...The basic idea linking these new decisions seems to be this: Having recognized that "in our country, we have enough of everything needed to build a complete communist society," the Plenum decided to chart a course for "the construction of communism" and to base all further Party activities on that course...
...Without a decision by the Plenum, "building communism" could not become the leading idea of Party policy which its place in the "Appeal" indicates...
...Today's "concessions" are aimed to divide the thinking of the peasants...
...Said the "Appeal to the Voters": " I n our country, we have enough of everything needed to build a complete communist society...
...In other words, Stalin had formally raised the question of liquidating the kolkhozes and of creating new production relations in the countryside under which peasant production would be placed at the complete disposal of the state...
...The key to an understanding of present Soviet trends is the official "Appeal to the Voters" issued by the Central Committee of the Communist party before last month's elections to the Supreme Soviet...
...By no means should one conclude, however, that this program means that the post-Beria regime is a stable one...
...The disappearance of Stalin's name from the press produced confusion among the most faithful, active workers in the Party apparatus: If Stalin had faded from memory so quickly, then what was there in the world that was lasting...
...Malenkov is obviously rallying his supporters in the state apparatus as rapidly as possible, relying particularly on the industrial managers...
...their execution was entrusted to Khrushchev...
...Very soon, however, it became apparent that these changes were creating new dangers for the regime...
...Most important, perhaps, confusion broke out in the ranks of the Communist party itself...
...Under these conditions, the immediate consolidation of a definite bloc on the Kremlin heights is highly unlikely...
...The furor being raised over the settlement of "virgin lands" in the Altai Hills and in Siberia is intended to distract active elements among the youth: Actually, very little such land exists in Russia...
...The 1946 appeal does not use the phrase "building communism" at all...
...Today's stern reality is the preparation for liquidation of the remnants of peasant self-government in the kolkhozes, for transformation of the kolkhoz form of property into "all-national" property, for giving the state complete power to dispose of all agricultural output...
...After a brief period of hesitation and doubt, the Soviet dictatorship, striding over the corpse of Beria, is now returning to old Stalinist paths...
...Before his death, Stalin had carried both foreign and domestic tension to its extreme point...
...Although Lenin himself abandoned these ideas fairly early, in the stormy years of the struggle for "Lenin's inheritance" many persons played the card of egalitarian communism...
...by exacerbating tensions within the non-Communist world...
...Boris I. Nicolaevsky (cut at right) is co-author of Forced Labor in Soviet Russia, and a biographer of Karl Marx...
...We have learned recently of the strike among the slave laborers of Vorkuta...
...If the Plenum took such a decision, it could only have done so at last September's meeting, when Khrushchev delivered his famous report "On Measures for the Further Development of Agriculture...
...The Central Committee of the Communist party of the Soviet Union summons [Soviet citizens] . . . to rally around the Communist party and the Soviet Government in the struggle for realization of the majestic tasks of building communism...
...Stalin's final work sheds considerable light on the last few years of his life and the first period of the struggle for his inheritance...
...The chief obstacle to building communism, said Stalin, was the existence in the U.S.S.R...
...The September Plenum of the Central Committee took three important decisions: 1. The unpublished decision to proceed to the immediate "building of communism," whose gist can be reconstructed from the Central Committee's "Appeal...
...We are now beginning to receive reliable information on how Russia reacted to Stalin's death...
...But in the struggle against such vestiges, a new Stalinist doctrine on the conditions and methods of "building communism" finally took shape...
...Even cursory reading reveals one major theme which had been missing for some time: The words "communism" and "communist" appear with startling frequency...
...It is very likely that the basic lines on which these conflicts will proceed are already being drawn: The section of the Party apparatus now headed by Khrushchev, which played the most active vole in the liquidation of Beria, is working hard to strengthen the role of the Party apparatus: likewise...
...In documents like this, every word is weighed and pondered...
...In Lenin's time, the problem of building communism was primarily a problem of organizing distribution, in accordance with the old formula: "To each according to his needs...
...At home, the kolkhoz-consolidation program completely disorganized farm production and drove the peasants to passive resistance, thus aggravating the crisis even further...
...The decree on agriculture adopted as a result of Khrushchev's report contains a list of measures to which the Plenum gave top priority...
...The latter's "sabotage" of "the most important Party and Government measures directed toward raising the economy of the kolkhozes and sovkhozes [state farms]" (to use the language of the Soviet Supreme Court) consisted of resistance to this anti-peasant drive...
...Stalin's definition of equality at the Seventeenth Congress of the Soviet Communist party in 1934...
...the word "communism" is used only once, in a cliche about the party's struggle "for the complete victory of communism...
...Within the Party apparatus, the death of Stalin was greeted by manifestations of joy...
...Wrote Stalin: "In state enterprises, the means of production and production output are all-national property...
...The first form of property Stalin called "all-national...
...Red China, in particular, had to be taken into account, and its militant revolutionary leaders viewed with evident alarm the conciliatory gestures from Moscow...
...mere chance has no place...
...3. The election of Khrushchev as First Secretary of the Central Committee...
...This leads to a state of affairs where the state can dispose of only the output of state enterprises, whereas only the kolkhozes dispose of kolkhoz output, since it is their property...
...The kolkhoz peasants could not be pacified by a few meaningless official phrases...
...2. A published decree "On Measures for the Further Development of Agriculture," adopted September 7 on the basis of Khrushchev's report...
...Of course, the Soviet leaders have often referred to communism in the past, but never quite in this fashion...
...Nor was this moderate course yielding positive results at home...
...Economic Problems of Socialism shows that, on the one hand, Stalin was preparing to liquidate the kolkhoz form of property, and, on the other, he was seeking to create a revolutionary situation outside the U.S.S.R...
...the basic ideas of many decrees of the War Communism period were derived from this ideological inheritance...
...what radical changes would the future bring...
...The basic idea in the "Appeal" is that the U.S.S.R...
...His foreign policy brought the country to the brink of conflict with the West...
...Far more probable are sharp new outbursts of conflict...
...Khrushchev's 1950 policy of "consolidating the kolkhozes" and resettling kolkhozniks in "agro-cities" was merely Stalin's preparation for making the problem of building communism the top-priority issue of the day...
...Stalin's name virtually disappeared from the columns of the Soviet press...
...the second, he said delicately, "cannot be called all-national...
...The question of "building communism" has been raised many times in Bolshevik writings...
...The first blood has been shed among Stalin's successors, and it was shed at a time when no new bloc had yet been securely welded together at the top level of the regime...
...In the 1954 appeal, however, "communism" descended from these rarefied propagandist^ heights, and "building communism" became a high-priority task of Party work...
...The voters will cast their ballots for the policy of the Central Committee, for the realization of the tasks it has set, for the further flourishing of our socialist industry and a sharp rise in agriculture, for the steady raising of the material well-being and cultural level of the people, for the strengthening of the might and power of our socialist state in every possible way and for new successes in its struggle for the preservation and consolidation of peace, for the building of a communist society in our country...
...are essentially smokescreens...
...For the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution, the building of communism is presented as the immediate task of the present moment...
...it also placed sharper emphasis, in organizing that production, on the relations between town and country, industry and agriculture...
...In the conditions of the gradual transition from socialism to communism, our people's moral and political unity is growing stronger...
...In the 1950 appeal, the word "communism" occurs more frequently, but always in more or less academic propaganda phrases, e.g.: "The All-Union Communist party . . . directs our homeland toward communism, subordinates all our economic and cultural construction to that great goal...
...What is the real meaning of this new policy...
Vol. 37 • April 1954 • No. 16
