To mark the 70th anniversary of the General Strike of May 1926, the Weekly Worker will carry contemporary articles from the communist press each week
Zinoviev’s report - keen duel with Bukharin
From The Workers’ Weekly, paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, January 8 1926
Following the delivery by Stalin of the political report of the central committee ... Zinoviev, supported by the Leningrad deputation, claimed and was accorded the right to submit a minority report.
Zinoviev urged that too many concessions had been made to the rich peasants who were dislocating plans of the Soviet government’s planning commission by a greedy hoarding of surplus grain.
It was this, he claimed, and not any error of education, which had produced the disappointing yield to the state of the last harvest.
He contended that the policy which had been pursued was one of state capitalism and not of state socialism - it was in fact an illusion to imagine that any such thing as ‘state’ socialism could be developed in any country, especially one at such a relatively backward state of economic development as Russia.
Failing an extension of the world revolution through Europe, Russia, remaining an oasis in a capitalist desert, would be driven more and more to develop in a capitalist direction or face the alternative of collapse.
Bukharin, replying for the central committee, said that Zinoviev had failed to discriminate between the rich and the middle peasantry. Such concessions as had been made had been directed towards the winning of these latter into closer cooperation with the socialist policy of the Soviet government.
To suggest that it was impossible to build a foundation for socialism without a world revolution was a complete deviation from the correct Leninist policy.
He contended that Zinoviev regarded the New Economic Policy as a retreat pure and simple, whereas it was a forward step in the only possible direction, that of developing the economic resources on which a Soviet economy must rest.
After a long and earnest debate, in which Kamenev and Krupskaya (Lenin’s widow) opposed the central committee and Tomsky and Rykov supported it, a resolution endorsing the report of the central committee was carried with only 67 dissentients - these being exclusively from the Leningrad delegation.
Number 125
Thursday January 11 1996
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Blair woos the market
Businessmen and ex-dictators in Asia have been wooed by Tony Blair, as
he makes clear his determination to safeguard the ‘enterprise’
economy
Letters
Sectarian Communists?; Diverse youth; Against liberalism; Workers’
theory; Remember Saklatvala
Scotland blazes the trail!
The Scottish Socialist Alliance is set to transform itself into a fully-fledged
party. Mark Fischer reports
Time is right for SLP
Over the next few months the Weekly Worker will be speaking to
working class activists about their attitude to Arthur Scargill’s
call for a Socialist Labour Party. Here we talk to Brenda Nixon, formerly
of Doncaster Women Against Pit Closures
World politicians
The fight for communism internationally demands the highest concentration
of our forces argues Mark Fischer
Canadian SWP faces continuing crisis
We expect SWP members will not feel able to respond to this post from
the Internet. Nevertheless they might find the information interesting
Not the Stalin Society ...
Bob Smith - For a Permanent Party Polemic Committee
Turkish elections herald attack on political
prisoners
Aziz Demir reports on recent events
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