100 years of the Great Socialist October Revolution
Four hard years of New Economical Policy (NEP) application were necessary to finish the heroic work of restoration of the economy, destroyed by the imperialist war and sharpened by the civil war to sweep the white counterrevolution. After the main bases and veins of economy were restored in the perspective of the socialist construction the Soviet Union would convert in an economic and political power in one decade more.
The selfless labour of workers and peasants, led by the Bolshevik party, produced its fruits: the national economy would quickly develop with the restoration of the industrial and agriculture production, the plan of electrification has an advance and important successes in the struggle against the private capital in industry and commerce are achieved.
The improving in life conditions of workers and peasants anchored the mood and improved the political activity of the masses by leaps. The dictatorship of the proletariat was being strengthened.
The construction work gone forward after the economic restoration.
The industrial basis of the country – which was very reduced at that moment – was improved with the development of the heavy industry which was equipped with new production techniques.
A whole series of industrial trends – machines and tools, automotive, chemical products and metallurgic factories unknown in Russia until then – were built; the own production of engines and materials for the installation of electrical centres; the extraction of metals and coal were improved, guaranteeing the development of socialism in USSR in large steps.
A new war industry – with artillery, aircraft, tanks etc. factories for the defence of USSR under the conditions of capitalist siege – was built.
Tractor and modern agriculture machinery to supply agriculture, deployed through the Machines and Tractors Stations, allowed that millions of individual small peasants the possibility to pass, through socialist associations and cooperatives, to the big production of the kolkoses1.
Different from the capitalist countries – which created its heavy industries based in the resources exploited at expense of the plunder of the colonies and the constraints imposed to the defeated peoples – the Soviet country – which was not a rich nation yet – achieved the industrialization with the own resources of the country, without even counting on foreign loans.
The profits reached by the factories, industrial companies, commerce and banks – state owned by the proletarian revolution – that stopped being consumed by the parasitical capitalist class were converted in important resources for the development of industry. Giant leaps in industrialization took place mainly starting from the end of NEP, the beginning of the Five-Year Plans and the realisation of the collectivization in the countryside based in agriculture.
The construction of the great Electrical Centre of Dnieper, the reconstruction of the train factory of Lugansk in Donets basin, and new factories, mines and big furnaces were undertaken. The factory of machinery and chemical mixtures of Berenski and Solikamsk were built in the Urals. Giant factories of tractors and harvesters were built.
With the grasp of new production techniques and constantly revolutionising them, such grasp stopped being monopoly of the bourgeois “specialists” to convert into a vital interest of the Bolshevik themselves and the workers broke work productivity world records.
In 1927 the production increased 18% compared to the previous year. It was a record in the production development, uneforceable even to the big industry of the most advanced capitalist countries.
Socialism advances in the countryside
It was necessary to advance in agriculture collectivization in the countryside – which demanded the kkulaks2 to the hands of the kolkoses. For this reason it was demanded that the Soviet Power stopped the kulaks and, supported by the peasant forces, seized the lands under their domain, expropriating them, taking the cattle and machines.
Comrade Stalin, following Lenin directives, showed the conditions for the advances in production in the countryside: “the solution is on the passage from the small scattered peasant exploration into the big unified explorations, based in the common cultivation of the land, in the passage to collective cultivation of the land based in a new and greater technique. The solution is in that the small and tiny peasant explorations would group gradually but unfailingly, not by means of coercion, but on the base of example and persuasion into big explorations, on the base of the common cultivation, the cooperative collective cultivation of the land through the implementation of agriculture machinery and tractors and application of scientific methods aimed at intensifying agriculture.”.
The peasants of whole villages and districts flock to the kolkhozes, sweeping the kulaks from its path and getting free from its grasp. This movement was intensified in the end of 1929.
The sovkhozes3 and political sections of the Machines and Tractors Stations – which had tractors and other agriculture machines at the service of the kholkoses – contributed considerably to this. Organized by the Bolshevik Party, these Stations together with the 17 thousand militants sent to the countryside to aid the masses of millions of poor peasants to be organized in kholkoses put an end to the kulaks sabotages in the kholkoses, eliminated the debilities in the education of the kholkos cadres and accelerated their strengthening.
Until 1929, the Soviet Power followed a restriction policy against the kulaks, forcing them to sell the wheat to the state in fixed prices. This policy was necessary as long as the kolkhozes and sovkhozes were still weak and could not fulfil the country needs with its own production, but to pass to the policy of the liquidation of the kulaks was now necessary.
The liquidation of the kulaks meant to end with the most numerous exploiting classes in the soviet country, which was the bastion for capitalism restoration. At the same time it warded off the most numerous working class of the soviet country, the peasants, from the individual explorations, which were a source of capitalism, to lead them to the path of kolkhoz, socialist collective economy.
Many different rates of land collectivization were established with this goal, according to the diverse conditions in the different regions of USSR.
Many of the “leftist” excesses to substitute the socialist accumulation to try to oblige collectivization deficiency were corrected during the process of collectivization. Such deviations ended in generating discontentment among peasants, aiding the enemies of the classes that instigated them.
The article of comrade Stalin entitled The successes raises to our heads and the resolution of the Bolshevik Party On the struggle against the distortions in the Party line on the kolkosian movement fulfilled a decisive role in the rectification of these deviations in the policy of the Party.
The kolkhozes had converted into a solid and invincible force that covered around 90% of the whole sown surface in the end of 1934.
in beginnings of 1933, at the end of the first Five-year Plan, which were concluded before the foreseen time, USSR was converted from an agrarian country into an industrial country, given that the specific importance of the industrial production and all the national economy had increased 70%.
The kolkosian regime has ended with misery, poverty in the countryside, raising tens of millions of poor peasants to the level of men and women with guaranteed life.
The socialist system in industry had ended with unemployment, keeping the eight hours work journey in a series of production fields, establishing the seven hours journey in the immense majority of companies with health harmful working conditions. Around this time the socialist industry was already 99% of the total industry of the country. In socialist agriculture, the kolkhozes and sovkhozes covered around 90% of the total sown surface of the country.
The New Economic Policy was oriented in a way that aimed to the complete triumph of the socialist forms of economy.
Relentless struggle against the opportunists
The victory of NEP application and advance of socialism were achieved in hard struggle against opportunists, capitulators and saboteurs, among whom the trotskyists had the most vile role.
Taking advantage of the hard moment the Bolshevik Party was passing through in the absence of Lenin, away because of his grave illness, the defeat of revolution in Germany and Bulgaria and the still not overcome economic difficulties inside the country, the trotskyist initiated an aggression against the Bolshevik Party and its leadership.
Grouping all the antileninist elements around itself, the trotskyist created a platform named the “declaration of the 46 oppositionists” in which they waged a struggle meat to re-establish fractions inside the Party, what has been forbidden in the X Congress of the Party by Lenin proposal.
The contend acquired specially acute characters in Moscow, in which the trotskyist aspired to seize the organization of the capital. The discussion, however, served the trotskyist nothing but to show their infamy.
In January 1924, the XII Conference of the Party condemned the trotskyist opposition, declaring that it was a petty bourgeois deviation of marxism, these resolutions were accepted in may by the XIII Congress of the Party and by the V Congress of the Communist International. The international communist proletariat supported the Bolshevik Party in its struggle against trotskyism.
Despite being isolated, the trotskyis did not cease, however, its dirty work and in the fall of 1924 Trotsky published an article entitled The teachings of October, in which he tried to substitute leninism by trotskyism.
This ideological abortion was immediately unmasked by comrade Stalin who in his extraordinary theoretical work On the fundaments of Leninism, published in 1924, he made a masterful exposition of the theoretical fundaments of leninism. This work, in synthesising leninism affirming it as the second stage of development of marxism, marxism-leninism, he fulfilled the role to smash trotskyism as an anti-proletarian conception.
In the struggle against trotskyism, comrade Stalin closed the party ranks around its Central Committee and mobilized it to keep struggling for the triumph of socialism in the soviet country and impulse the Proletarian World Revolution. Comrade Stalin knew how to demonstrate that the ideological smashing of trotskyism was indispensable condition to secure the proceed of the victorious march to socialism and impulsing the World Revolution.
comrade Stalin said, when making an assessment of this period of struggle against trotskyism:
“without smashing trotskyism, it is not possible to triumph under the conditions of NEP, it is not possible to achieve the transformation of the current Russia in a Socialist Russia”.
The death of Lenin
In January 21, 1924, in Gorki, near Moscow, the founder master of the Bolshevik Party, the Red Army and the Soviet State (USSR), Lenin had died. Great homages were given and in the day of Lenin burial, the international proletariat suspended work during 5 minutes, stopping trains and interrupting the work in factories and workshops.
The working class in Soviet Union answered to the death of Lenin closing the ranks around the leninist Party even more. Thousands of declarations ofpartyless workers, asking to join the Bolshevik Party, which opened its doors to the called leninist promotion. More than 240 thousand workers, the most advanced part of the working class, the most conscious, revolutionary, bold and disciplined joined in the ranks of the Party.
As a result, an enormous importance to reinforce in the work of education and political instruction for the Party militants, specially the new affiliates as a result of this, instructing them in the fundaments of Leninism was given.
Affirmation of socialism in USSR
During discussions of the XIV Congress of the Party, the Bolsheviks took the stand that, despite victorious, socialism in USSR could not be considered definitive as long as the capitalist siege took place and, soon, the danger of an armed foreign intervention and restoration of capitalism. So, with the triumph of the proletarian revolution in the capitalists countries and for the vital interests for the workers in USSR.
This definition caused unrest among the member of the opposition. The trotskyists who denied the possibility of triumph of socialism in one single country, in USSR, opposed through the manshevik “theory of the permanent revolution”. The bukarinists for instance, stealthily started to try to impose their own “theory” of pacific evolution of the bourgeoisie to socialism, Zinoviev and Kamenev were initially against the stand of the Central Committee, but finding themselves prodded, they retreated.
The XIV Conference of the Party in April, 1925, condemned all these capitulationists “theories” and affirmed the stand of the Party on the triumph of socialism in USSR.
In the XIV Congress of the Party, the zinovievists rose against the general line of the Party. They presented a bourgeois “plan”, opposed to the Stalin’s socialist industrialization plan, which had acceptance among the sharks of capitalism, and was immediately smashed by the Congress and pointed as a plan to enslave USSR. The zinovievists, after defeated, did not submit to the Party discipline, starting to fight against the resolutions of the XIV Congress and intensified their divisionist and anti-soviet work.
Comrade Stalin unmasked the trotskyist-manshevik background of the “new opposition” of Zinoviev and Kamenev and smashed unanimously the opposition elements` plans in the evaluation of the debates around the economic construction. The Congress of the Party smashed the capitulationist plans of the opposition elements unanimously.
In this Congress the new statutes of the Party were approved, and it started to be called Communist Party of USSR (Bolshevik).
Not satisfied, in the summer of 1926, the trotskyist and the zinovievist united in an antibolshevik block and laid the basis for a clandestine antileninist party, this way gravelly breaching the statutes of the Party which prohibited the formation of fractions.
The XV Conference of the Party smashed again their attempts and their elements were again compromised to rectify their positions, keeping loyalty to the party. However the block continued existing in fact and its components did not cease their clandestine actions against the Party.
In 1927, they returned to intensify their attacks against the Party with a new antileninist platform, the so called “platform of the 83”, more hypocrite and self-righthious of all the previously presented by the opposition. Despite not formally opposing to the Party unity, they followed a divisionist line in which demanded concessions of factories and industrial companies to be handed to the foreigners and put their hopes in the “civilized tenants” in the countryside, which means, the kulaks.
The Party smashed this platform of the block by crushing majority in the XV Congress.
Not satisfied they even organized an open protest demonstration in Moscow and in Leningrad (San Pittsburgh nowadays) parallel to the official during the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. As it was expected, the henchmen of the block could only gather a ridiculous bunch of associates in the streets.
As a result of all these antiparty practices, in November 14, 1927, a joint meeting of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission expelled Trotsky and Zinoviev.
Some time later, the expelled antileninists started to formulate the declarations of split with trotskyism and to implore for their readmissions.
The Party submitted the readmission of these ones to the following conditions: to openly condemn trotskyism as an ideology, recognize openly the Party policy, submitunconditionally to the resolutions of the Party and its organs, and also a fixed proof period, in which the Party would observe their conduct and only after the results it would be evaluated if they would be readmitted or not, separately each of the expelled individuals.
However, with time, it was evident that the declarations the “active militants” of the trotskyist-zinovievist block signed, apart from some exceptions, were fake and decieving, from toe to head.
The saboteurs revealed
In the same year, a big sabotage organization, formed by bourgeois technicians in Shajti sector in Donets basin, was discovered. These saboteurs kept close relations with the former owners of the capitalist enterprises, Russian or foreign, and foreign military espionage. They destroyed machines, burned mines, factories and electric centres, they hindered the improvement of the material situation of the workers and breached the soviet laws on the labour protection. These saboteurs were sent to court and condemned.
In 1929, as soon as the party took the measure of expropriation of the kulaks, the group of right capitulationists of Bukharin and Rykov started to act openly against the Party policy. It was clear that through Kamenev they established a link with the trotskyist in the struggle against the Party. Bukharin was expelled by making propaganda of the right opportunist ideas, as for Rykov, Tomski and other adepts of this opposition were warned.
In December 1st, 1934, Sergo Mironovich Kirov was vilely murdered in Leningrad, in Smolny, by a shot made by a former component of the zinovievist opposition, which constituted a clandestine counterrevolutionary terrorist group, keeping relations with representatives of capitalist countries from whom they received money.
An year later it was discovered that the authentic, direct and effective organizers of the murder of Kirov and the preparatory measures destined to assassinate the members of the Central Committee had been Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bakaiev, Evdokimov, Pikel, I. M. Smirnov, Marchkovski, Ter-Vagarin, Reingold and others. Among them, the Judas Trotsky was the main inspiration and organizer of these bunch of murderers and spies.
The criminals had no other remedy than to recognize openly, in front of the judges that not only they organized the murder of Kirov but also prepared the murder of all the remaining leaders of the government.
This way the processes made clear that the trotskyist-bukarinists monsters, fulfilling the orders of their masters, the espionage services of the foreign bourgeoisie, they were put with the objective to destroy the Party and the Soviet State, undermine the defences of the country, ease the armed foreign intervention and the capitalist restoration.
This way, purging and strengthening its ranks, destroying the enemies of the Party and struggling fiercely against the deformations of its line, the bolshevik Party reinforced even more its cohesion around the Central Committee, under which the leadership of the Party and the Soviet Country marched in the socialism path.
At the same time the socialist economy of the USSR developed without precedent, the situation of deep economical crisis of capitalism sharpened the contradictions in world scale and precipitated a new imperialist war in World level.
1 – Kolkhozes: Collective farms in the USSR, organized in form of peasant cooperatives reunited based in volunteering to manage the big agricultural property based in the socialization of the means of production and collective labour. They developed their production in state property lands conceded for the perpetual use and supported by the Machines and Tractors Stations provided by the Socialist State. This was the second form of socialist property, it was inferior to the Property of the Whole People, because only the land and the machines and tractors were of this type, the production was Collective Property of the kolkosians.
2 – Kulaks: Rural bourgeoisie that systematically used paid work and constituted the support base of the tsarist regime. They fought actively to sabotage the Soviet Power after the October Socialist Revolution.
3 – Sovkhozes: Big state agricultural enterprise of the USSR based in state property of the land and means of production, they played a great role in the socialist transformation of agriculture, as the superior form of socialist property – Property of the Whole People – acting as a school of social and agricultural production management to the kolkosian peasantry.
References:
– Historyof theCommunist Party of U.S.S.R. (Bolshevik), [Writtenby theCommissionof the Central Committee of theCPof the URSS, approvedin 1938], Rio de Janeiro: Vitória, 1945.
