The Russia which emerged from the terrible civil war after the 1917 Revolution was far from the Bolsheviks’
original ideal of a non-exploitative society governed by workers and peasants. By 1921, the regime was
weakened by widespread famine, persistent peasant revolts, a collapse of industrial production stemming from
the civil war, and the consequent dispersal of the industrial working class – the Bolsheviks’ original base of
support. To buy time for recovery, the government in 1921 introduced the New Economic Policy, which allowed
private trade in farm products (previously banned) and relied on a fixed grain tax instead of forced requisitions
to provide food for the cities. The value of the ruble was stabilized. Trade unions were again allowed to seek
higher wages and benefits, and even to strike. However, the Bolsheviks maintained a strict monopoly of power
by refusing to legalize other parties.
After the death of the Revolution’s undisputed leader, Lenin, in January 1924, disputes over the long-range
direction of policy led to an open struggle among the main Bolshevik leaders. Since open debate was still
possible within the Bolshevik Party in this period, several groups with differing programs emerged in the course
of this struggle.
The program supported by Nikolai Bukharin – a major ideological leader of the Bolsheviks with no power base
of his own – called for developing agriculture through good relations with wealthy peasants, or “kulaks.”
Bukharin favored gradual industrial development, or “advancing towards Socialism at a snail’s pace.” In foreign
affairs, Bukharin’s policy was to ally with non-Socialist regimes and movements that were favorable to Russia.
A faction led by Leon Trotsky, head of the Red Army and the most respected revolutionary leader after Lenin,
called for rapid industrialization and greater central planning of the economy, financed by a heavy tax on the
kulaks. Trotsky rejected the idea that a prosperous, human Socialist society could be built in Russia alone
(Stalin’s slogan of “Socialism in One Country”), and therefore called for continued efforts to promote workingclass revolutions abroad. As time went on, he became bitterly critical of the new privileged elite emerging within
both the Bolshevik Party and the Russian state.
Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Bolshevik Party, was initially considered a “center,” conciliating figure,
not clearly part of a faction. Stalin’s eventual supremacy was ensured by three successive struggles within the
party, and only during the last did his own program become clear.
First, in 1924-25, Stalin isolated Trotsky, allying for this purpose with Grigori Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev,
Bolshevik leaders better known than Stalin himself, whom Trotsky mistakenly considered his main rivals. Stalin
maneuvered Trotsky out of leadership of the Red Army, his main potential power base. Next, Stalin turned on
Zinoviev and Kamenev, using his powers as head of the Party organization to remove them from party
leadership in Leningrad and Moscow, their respective power bases. Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev then
belatedly formed the “Joint Opposition” (1926-27). With Bukharin’s help, Stalin easily outmaneuvered the
Opposition: Bukharin polemicized against Trotsky, while Stalin prevented the newspapers from printing
Trotsky’s replies, organized gangs of toughs to beat up his followers, and transferred his supporters to
administrative posts in remote regions. At the end of 1927, Stalin expelled Trotsky from the Bolshevik Party and
exiled him. (Later, in 1940, he had him murdered.) Zinoviev and Kamenev, meanwhile, recanted their views in
order to remain within the Party.
The final act now began. A move by kulaks to gain higher prices by holding grain off the market touched off a
campaign against them by Stalin. Bukharin protested, but with the tradition of Party democracy now all but
dead, Stalin had little trouble silencing Bukharin. Meanwhile, he began a campaign to force all peasants – not
just kulaks – onto state-controlled “collective farms,” and initiated a crash industrialization program during which
he deprived the trade unions of all rights and cut real wages by 50%. Out of the factional struggle in which he
emerged by 1933 as sole dictator of Russia, Stalin’s political program of building up heavy industry on the
backs of both worker and peasant emerged with full clarity.
The passage supports the idea that struggles within the Bolshevik Party were primarily:
Section: Verbal Reasoning
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