ON DECEMBER 27, 1929, Stalin addressed a conference of Marxist students of the agrarian question. He exposed the bourgeois theory of “equilibrium” between the various sectors of the national economy, and demolished the anti-Marxist theories of “spontaneity” in Socialist construction and of the “stability” of small peasant farming. Disposing (if these bourgeois, anti-Marxist, Right-opportunist theories, he proceeded to make a profound analysis of collective farming as a Socialist form of enterprise and demonstrated the necessity for a transition to the policy of solid collectivization of agriculture, and, on this basis, to the elimination of the kulaks as a class.
At the Eleventh Party Congress Lenin had spoken of the last, decisive fight against Russian capitalism, which was being continually engendered by small peasant economy. But at that time it was impossible to say exactly when that fight would take place. Now Stalin proved with his characteristic scientific cogency and brilliant insight that the moment for the last, decisive fight against domestic capitalism had already arrived. With his masterly command of dialectics, he showed that the elimination of the kulaks as a class was not just a continuation of the former policy of restricting and squeezing out the kulaks, but a distinct turn in the policy of the Party.
“While the confiscation of the landed estates was the first step of the October Revolution in the countryside,” it was stated in the resolution of the Sixteenth Party Congress, “the adoption of collective farming is the second, and, moreover, a decisive, step, marking a highly important stage in the process of laying the foundations of Socialist society in the U.S.S.R.”1
The peasantry came to adopt Socialist forms of husbandry because economic necessity demanded a change to large-scale co-operative farming, to collective, mechanized agriculture. For a number of years the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government had been fostering new productive forces in the countryside, introducing modern machinery—tractors, harvester combines, etc.—and training skilled forces for Socialist farming, millions of people who had mastered modern technique.
Congratulating the workers of the Stalingrad Tractor Works on its opening day (June 17, 1930), Stalin wrote:
“Greetings and congratulations to the workers and executives of the mammoth Red Banner Tractor Plant, the first in the U.S.S.R., on their victory. The 50,000 tractors which you are to produce for our country every year will be 50,000 projectiles, shattering the old, bourgeois world and clearing the way for the new, Socialist system in the countryside. My best wishes for the fulfilment of your program.”2
The new productive forces which had been created in the countryside inevitably gave rise to new, Socialist relations between Man and man.
On the basis of a thorough scientific analysis of the Marxist-Leninist theory of Socialism, Stalin demonstrated that the transition to collectivization could not be expected to take place as a simple and peaceful influx of the peasants into the collective farms, but would be accompanied by a struggle of the peasant masses against the kulaks. The kulaks would have to be defeated in open battle in full view of the peasantry, so that the peasants might see for themselves how weak the capitalist elements were. Hence solid collectivization inevitably entailed the elimination of the kulaks as a class.
Stalin’s views on the necessity of a turn in Party policy from restricting the exploiting proclivities of the kulaks to eliminating the kulaks as a class formed the basis of the resolution on “The Rate of Collectivization and State Measures to Assist the Development of Collective Farms,” adopted by the Central Committee on January 5, 1930.
The enemies of the Party did their utmost to frustrate the Party’s policy of collectivizing agriculture. These inimical attempts found expression, not only in open attacks on collectivization by the Right capitulators, but also in “Leftist” distortions of the Party lame, in violations of the rates of collectivization laid down by the Party and of the Leninist-Stalinist principle that the formation of collective farms must be voluntary, in blockheaded attempts to skip the artel form and pass straight to the commune, and in compulsory socialization of dwellings, small livestock, poultry, and the like.
The enemies at home and abroad, the interventionists and their agents, hoped that these “Leftist,” and sometimes deliberately provocative, practices, would incense the peasantry against the Soviet regime. The General Staffs of the imperialist powers were already fixing the date for a fresh attempt at intervention. But the leader of the Party saw the new danger in time.
On March 2, 1930, bar decision of the Central Committee, Stalin published his article, “Dizzy With Success,” in which he denounced the “Leftist” excesses as jeopardizing the collective-farm movement. “The article laid the utmost emphasis on the principle that the formation of collective farms must be voluntary, and on the necessity of making allowances for the diversity of conditions in the various districts of the U.S.S.R. when determining the pace and methods of collectivization. Comrade Stalin reiterated that the chief form of the collective-farm movement was the agricultural artel. . . . Comrade Stalin’s article was of the utmost political moment. It helped the Party organizations to rectify their mistakes and dealt a severe blow to the enemies of the Soviet Government who had been hoping to take advantage of the distortions of policy to set the peasants against the Soviet Government.”3
While dealing a crushing blow to the “Leftist” distortions, and at the same time shattering the hopes of the interventionists, Stalin, as the teacher of the masses, explained to the Party and non-Party cadres wherein lies the art of leadership.
“The art of leadership,” he wrote, “is a serious matter. One must not lag behind the movement, because to do so is to become isolated from the masses. But neither must one rush ahead, for to rush ahead is to lose contact with the masses. He who wants to lead a movement and at the same time keep in touch with the vast masses must wage a fight on two fronts—against those who lag behind and against those who rush on ahead.”4
On April 3, 1930, Stalin followed this up with another article, his “Reply to Collective Farm Comrades,” addressed to the collective farmers as a body, in which he exposed the root cause of the mistakes in the peasant question and the major blunders committed in the collective-farm movement, and, with irresistible logic, explained the essential laws of an offensive on the class war front. It is impossible to conduct a successful offensive, he pointed out, unless the positions already captured are consolidated, the forces regrouped, the front supplied with reserves, and the rear brought up. The opportunists did not understand the class nature of the offensive: against which class, and in alliance with which class, it was being conducted. It was not any kind of offensive we needed, Stalin wrote, but an offensive in alliance with the middle peasants against the kulaks.
Thanks to Stalin’s guidance, the distortions were rectified and a firm basis was created for a mighty advance in the collective-farm movement. Headed by Stalin, the Party solved what was, after the conquest of power, the most difficult problem of the proletarian revolution, the problem of placing the small peasant farms on Socialist lines and of eliminating the kulaks, the largest of the exploiting classes.
“This was a profound revolution, a leap from an old qualitative state of society to a new qualitative state, equivalent in its consequences to the Revolution of October 1917.
“The distinguishing feature of this revolution is that it was accomplished from above, on the initiative of the state, and directly supported from below by the millions of peasants, who were fighting to throw off kulak bondage and to live in freedom in the collective farms.”5
Guided by Lenin’s pronouncements on the necessity of passing from small peasant farming to large-scale, co-operative, collective farming, and taking Lenin’s co-operative plan as a basis, Stalin worked out and gave practical effect to the theory of the collectivization of agriculture. His new contributions to this sphere were the following:
(1) He made a thorough analysis of the question of collective farming as a form of Socialist enterprise;
(2) He showed that the key link in collective farm development at the present stage is the agricultural artel, for it is the most rational and the one most comprehensible to the peasants, making it possible to combine the personal interests of the collective farmers with their collective interests, to adapt their personal interests to the public interests;
(3) He showed that the policy of restricting and squeezing out the kulaks must be changed to one of eliminating them as a class, on the basis of solid collectivization;
(4) He revealed the significance of the machine and tractor stations as a base for the Socialist reorganization of agriculture and as a means by which the Socialist state rendered assistance to agriculture and the peasantry.
In February 1930, in response to numerous requests from organizations and from general meetings of workers, peasants and Red Army men, the Central Executive Committee of the U.S.S.R. conferred upon Stalin a second Order of the Red Banner, for his outstanding services in the construction of Socialism.
The Sixteenth Party Congress, which sat from June 26 to July 13, 1930, is known as the Congress of the sweeping offensive of Socialism along the whole front. In his report, Stalin explained the significance of this sweeping offensive of Socialism against the capitalist elements along the whole front, and showed that the Soviet Union had already entered the period of Socialism.
Reporting to the Congress on the results so far achieved in the work of industrializing the country and collectivizing agriculture, he went on to outline the new tasks that confronted the country in the new period of development. While the Soviet Union had overtaken and outstripped the advanced capitalist countries in rate of development, it was still far behind them as regards the level of industrial output. Hence the need for a further acceleration of the rate of development in order to overtake and outstrip the capitalist countries in level of industrials output as well. Stalin then proceeded to explain what the Party must do in order to ensure the fulfilment of the First Five-Year Plan in four years.
The working people of the whole country applied themselves enthusiastically to the accomplishment of the gigantic tasks set by the Congress. Socialist emulation and shock work developed on a wide scale. Already on the eve of the Sixteenth Congress no less than 2,000,000 workers were taking part in the Socialist emulation movement, while over a million workers belonged to shock brigades.
“The most remarkable feature of emulation,” Comrade Stalin said at the Sixteenth Congress, “is the radical revolution it brings with it in men’s views of labour, for it transforms labour from a disgraceful and painful burden, as it was regarded before, into a matter of honour, a matter of glory, a matter of valour and heroism. There is not, nor can there be, anything similar to it in capitalist countries.”6
The fulfilment of the First Five-Year Plan called for the reconstruction of every branch of the national economy on the basis of the new technique, of modern machinery and methods. Technique was becoming a matter of decisive importance. In this connection, the leader of the Party, in his speech on “The Tasks of Business Executives” at the First All-Union Conference of Managers of Socialist Industry, on February 4, 1931, put forward a new slogan: “Bolsheviks must master technique”; “In the period of reconstruction technique decides every thing.”
At a time when the Party was engaged in the strenuous work of building Socialism, it became more important than ever to educate the members and candidate members of the Party in the teachings of Marxism Leninism, to study the historical experience of the Bolshevik Party, and to wage a fight against all falsifiers of the history of the Party.
In November 1931 Stalin published his well-known letter to the magazine Proletarskaya Revolutsia. Its effect in consolidating the ideological unity of the Party has been immense. In this letter Stalin denounced the Trotskyite falsifiers of the history of Bolshevism, and pointed out that Leninism had originated, matured and grown strong in a relentless struggle against opportunism of all shades, that the Bolsheviks were the only revolutionary organization in the world to have utterly routed the opportunists and centrists and driven them from its ranks. Me- convincingly proved that Trotskyism is the vanguard of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, a force working against Communism, against the Soviet system, and against the construction of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.
The First Five-Year Plan was fulfilled by the beginning of 1933—ahead of schedule. At the Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the Party, held in January 1933, Stalin reported on “The Results of the First Five-Year Plan.” The U.S.S.R., he said, had been transformed from an agrarian into an industrial country, from a small peasant country into a country with an advanced, Socialist agriculture, conducted on the largest scale in the world. The exploiting classes had been dislodged from their positions in production. The remnants of them had scattered over the face of the country and were carrying on the fight against the Soviet regime by stealth. It was therefore essential to heighten, vigilance, to take the strictest measures for the protection of Socialist property—the foundation of the Soviet system—and to strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat to the utmost.
In another speech at this Plenum—on “Work in the Rural Districts”—Stalin made a profound analysis of the defects in Party work in the countryside and indicated an exhaustive program of measures for the consolidation of the collective-farm system.
A new task now faced the Party—that of consolidating the collective farms, properly organizing their work, making them Bolshevik collective farms, and purging them of hostile kulak elements and wreckers. For this purpose Stalin proposed that political departments be set up in the machine and tractor stations and the state farms. This was done, and in the space of two years (1933-34) the political departments of the machine and tractor stations did a great deal to consolidate the collective farms.
At the first All-Union Congress of Collective Farm Shock Workers, held on February 19, 1933, Stalin proclaimed the slogan: “Make the collective farms Bolshevik and the collective farmers prosperous.”
“Only one thing is now needed for the collective farmers to become prosperous,” Stalin said, “and that is for them to work in the collective farms conscientiously; to make efficient use of the tractors and machines; to make efficient use of the draught cattle; to cultivate the land efficiently and to cherish collective farm property.”7
Stalin’s speech made a profound impression on the millions of collective farmers and became a practical program of action for the collective farms.
In his review of the experience of Socialist construction, Stalin took up the question of Soviet trade as the means of distribution and exchange of the products of labour under Socialism. He said:
“Soviet trade is trade without capitalists, big or small; it is trade without profiteers, big or small. It is a special form of trade, which has never existed in history before, and which is practised only by us, the Bolsheviks, under the conditions of Soviet development.”8
“If the economic life of the country is to make rapid progress, and industry and agriculture to have a stimulus for further increasing their output,” he said on another occasion, “one more condition is necessary—namely, fully developed trade between town and country, between the various districts and regions of the country, between the various branches of the national economy.”9
He sharply criticized those who underrated the importance of Soviet trade or treated it with scorn. “There is still among a section of Communists,” he said, “a supercilious, contemptuous attitude towards trade in general, and towards Soviet trade in particular. These Communists, save the mark, look upon Soviet trade as a thing of secondary importance, hardly worth bothering about, and regard those engaged in trade as doomed. . . . These people do not realize that Soviet trade is our own, Bolshevik work, and that the workers employed in trade, including those behind the counter—if they only work conscientiously—are doing our revolutionary, Bolshevik work.”10
These utterances of Stalin on the subject of trade were to have a great influence in expanding commodity exchange in the country and strengthening Soviet trade.
Speaking on the activities of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.) in Leningrad on the eve of the Seventeenth Congress of the Party, Sergei Kirov, that inspired tribune of the revolution and one of the most popular figures in the Party, paid the following tribute to the great organizer of the Socialist victories of the working class:
“Comrades, when one speaks of the services of our Party, of its achievements, one cannot help speaking of the great organizer of the gigantic victories we have achieved. I refer to Comrade Stalin.
“I must say that he is a truly accomplished, a truly perfect successor and continuer of the cause committed to our care by the great founder of our Party, whom we lost ten years ago.
“It is not easy to grasp the figure of Stalin in all its gigantic proportions. In these latter years, ever since we have had to carry on our work without Lenin, there has been no major development in our labours, no innovation, slogan or trend of policy of any importance of which Comrade Stalin was not the author. All the major work—and this the Party should know—is guided by the instructions, the initiative and the leadership of Comrade Stalin. The decision of all important problems of international policy is guided by his recommendations. And not only important problems, but even what might seem third-rate, even tenth-rate problems interest him, if they affect the workers, the peasants, the labouring people generally of our country.
“I must say that this applies not only to the construction of Socialism as a whole, but even to special aspects of our work. For instance, if we take the defence of our country, it must be emphatically stressed that it is entirely to Stalin that we are indebted for all the achievements which I have mentioned.
“The mighty will and organizational genius of this man ensure our Party the timely accomplishment of the big historical turns involved in the victorious construction of Socialism.
“Take Comrade Stalin’s slogans—‘Make the collective farmer prosperous,’ ‘Make the collective farms Bolshevik,’ ‘Master technique’ and his six historic conditions—all that goes to direct the construction of Socialism at the present stage of our work emanates from this man, and all that we have achieved in the period of the First Five-Year Plan has been due to his directions.”11
The Seventeenth Congress of the Party, which met at the beginning of 1934, and which is known as the Congress of Victors, was guided by Stalin. In his report to this Congress on the work of the Central Committee, he reviewed the historic victories of the Party, the victories of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.
He spoke of the triumph of the policy of industrialization, and of the policy of the solid collectivization of agriculture and the elimination of the kulaks as a class; he spoke of the triumph of the doctrine that Socialism could be built in one country. The Socialist formation, he showed, now held undivided sway over the entire national economy, while all the other social-economic formations had gone to the bottom. The collective-farm system had triumphed finally and completely.
But Stalin warned the Party that the fight was by no means over. Although the enemies had been smashed, survivals of their ideology still lingered and often made their influence felt. The U.S.S R. was still encircled by a capitalist world, which was trying to foster the survivals of capitalism in the minds of people and to utilize them for its own ends.
The survivals of capitalism in the minds of men, Stalin pointed out, were much more tenacious in the sphere of the national question than in any other. In reply to the question—which deviation in the national question was the major danger: the deviation towards Great-Russian nationalism or the deviation towards local nationalism?—Stalin said that under present conditions “the major danger is the deviation against which we have ceased to fight, thereby allowing it to grow into a danger to the state.”12
Hence the need for systematic effort to overcome the survivals of capitalism in the minds of men, for systematic criticism of the ideologies of all trends hostile to Leninism, for the tireless propaganda of Leninism, for raising the ideological level of the Party members, and for the internationalist education of the working people. He laid special stress on the need for greater vigilance on the part of the Party:
“. . . We must not lull the Party,” he said, “but sharpen its vigilance; we must not lull it to sleep, but keep it ready for action; not disarm it, but arm it; not demobilize it, but hold it in a state of mobilization for the fulfilment of the Second Five-Year Plan.”13
Stalin in this report outlined a concrete program for the future work of the Party in the sphere of industry, agriculture, trade and transport. He also outlined a program of organizational measures (training of personnel, checking up on fulfilment, etc.). The task, he said, was to raise “organizational leadership to the level of political leadership.” He further mapped a program in the sphere of culture, science, education and the ideological struggle.
Stalin also dwelt in this report on the foreign policy of the U.S.S.R. An economic crisis was rampant in the capitalist world, he said, and feverish preparations for war were being made in a number of countries, especially in Germany, since the fascists had come to power. Amid these economic upheavals and military and political cataclysms, the U.S.S.R. held firmly and unwaveringly to its course of peace, trying to avert the danger of war and persistently pursuing a policy of peace.
“Our foreign policy is clear,” Stalin said. “It is a policy of preserving peace and strengthening commercial relations with all countries. The U.S.S.R. does not think of threatening anybody let alone of attacking anybody. We stand for peace and champion the cause of peace. But we are not afraid of threats and are prepared to answer the instigators of war blow for blow. . . . Those who try to attack our country will receive a crushing repulse to teach them not to poke their pig snouts into our Soviet garden.”14
On the motion of Sergei Kirov, the Seventeenth Congress endorsed Stalin’s report in toto as a Congress decision, as a Party law, as the Party’s program of work for the coming period. The Congress also endorsed the Second Five-Year Plan for the development of the national economy.
1. “C.P.S.U.(B.): Resolutions, Decisions of Congresses, Conferences and Plenal Sessions of the Central Committee,” Part II, 2nd Russ. ed., 1941, p. 428.
2. Pravda, No. 186, June 18, 1930.
3. History of the C.P.S.U.(B.), p. 308, Moscow, 1945.
4. J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, p. 331, Moscow, 1945.
5. History of the C.P.S.U.(B.), p. 305, Moscow, 1945.
6. J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, 10th Russ. ed., p. 395.
7. J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, p. 448. Moscow, 1945.
8. Ibid., p. 419.
9. Ibid., p. 493.
10. J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, p. 439-494, Moscow, 1945.
11. S. M. Kirov, Selected Speeches and Articles, 1912-1934. Russ. ed., pp. 609-610, Moscow, 1939.
12. J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, p. 507, Moscow, 1945.
13. J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, p. 517, Moscow, 1945.
14. Ibid., p. 469.
Next: Chapter X