Leninism - Leninism After 1924

Leninism After 1924

In post–Revolutionary Russia, Stalinism (Socialism in one country) and Trotskyism (Permanent world revolution) were the principal philosophies of Communism that claimed legitimate ideological descent from Leninism' thus, within the Communist Party, each ideological faction denied the political legitimacy of the opposing faction.

Lenin vs. Stalin

Until shortly before his death, Lenin worked to counter the disproportionate political influence of Joseph Stalin in the Communist Party and in the bureaucracy of the soviet government, partly because of abuses he had committed against the populace of Georgia, and partly because the autocratic Stalin had accumulated administrative power disproportionate to his office of General Secretary of the Communist Party. The counter-action against Stalin aligned with Lenin’s advocacy of the right of self-determination for the national and ethnic groups of the former Tsarist Empire, which was a key theoretic concept of Leninism. Lenin warned that Stalin has “unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution”, and formed a factional bloc with Leon Trotsky to remove Stalin as the General Secretary of the Communist Party. To that end followed proposals reducing the administrative powers of Party posts, in order to reduce bureaucratic influence upon the policies of the Communist Party. Lenin advised Trotsky to emphasize Stalin’s recent bureaucratic alignment in such matters (e.g. undermining the anti-bureaucratic Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection), and argued to depose Stalin as General Secretary. Despite advice to refuse “any rotten compromise”, Trotsky did not heed Lenin’s advice, and General Secretary Stalin retained power over the Communist Party and the bureaucracy of the soviet government.

Trotskyism vs. Stalinism

After Lenin’s death (21 January 1924), Trotsky ideologically battled the influence of Stalin, who formed ruling blocs within the Russian Communist Party (with Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, then with Nikolai Bukharin, and then by himself) and so determined soviet government policy from 1924 onwards. The ruling blocs continually denied Stalin’s opponents the right to organise as an opposition faction within the Party — thus, the re-instatement of democratic centralism and free speech within the Communist Party were key arguments of Trotsky’s Left Opposition, and the later Joint Opposition.

In the course of instituting government policy, Stalin promoted the doctrine of Socialism in One Country (adopted 1925), wherein the USSR would establish socialism upon Russia’s economic foundations (and support socialist revolutions elsewhere). Conversely, Trotsky held that socialism in one country would economically constrain the industrial development of the USSR, and thus required assistance from the new socialist countries that had arisen in the developed world, which was essential for maintaining Soviet democracy, in 1924 much undermined by civil war and counter-revolution. Furthermore, Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution proposed that socialist revolutions in underdeveloped countries would go further towards dismantling feudal régimes, and establish socialist democracies that would not pass through a capitalist stage of development and government. Hence, revolutionary workers should politically ally with peasant political organisations, but not with capitalist political parties. In contrast, Stalin and allies proposed that alliances with capitalist political parties were essential to realising a revolution where Communists were too few; said Stalinist practice failed, especially in the Northern Expedition portion of the Chinese Revolution (1925–1927), wherein it resulted in the right-wing Kuomintang’s massacre of the Chinese Communist Party; nonetheless, despite the failure, Stalin’s policy of mixed-ideology political alliances, became Comintern policy.

The Oppositionists

Until exiled from Russia in 1929, Leon Trotsky helped develop and led the Left Opposition (and the later Joint Opposition) with members of the Workers’ Opposition, the Decembrists, and (later) the Zinovievists. Trotskyism ideologically predominated the political platform of the Left Opposition, which demanded the restoration of soviet democracy, the expansion of democratic centralism in the Communist Party, national industrialisation, international permanent revolution, and socialist internationalism. The Trotskyist demands countered Stalin’s political dominance of the Russian Communist Party, which was officially characterised by the ‘cult of Lenin’, the rejection of permanent revolution, and the doctrine of Socialism in One Country. The Stalinist economic policy vacillated between appeasing capitalist kulak interests in the countryside, and destroying them. Initially, the Stalinists also rejected the national industrialisation of Russia, but then pursued it in full, sometimes brutally. In both cases, the Left Opposition denounced the regressive nature of the policy towards the kulak social class of wealthy peasants, and the brutality of forced industrialisation. Trotsky described the vaccillating Stalinist policy as a symptom of the undemocratic nature of a ruling bureaucracy.

During the 1920s and the 1930s, Stalin fought and defeated the political influence of Leon Trotsky and of the Trotskyists in Russia, by means of slander, anti-Semitism, programmed censorship, expulsions, exile (internal and external), and imprisonment. The anti–Trotsky campaign culminated in the executions (official and unofficial) of the Moscow Trials (1936–38), which were part of the Great Purge of Old Bolsheviks (who had led the Revolution). Once established as ruler of the USSR, General Secretary Stalin re-titled the official Socialism in One Country doctrine as “Marxism-Leninism”, to establish ideologic continuity with Leninism, whilst opponents continued calling it “Stalinism”.