Chapter 4: Socialism in one country

1. STALIN’s VIEWS

i) Stalin’s Theoretical Formulation

Stalin says that initially, his pamphlet Foundations of Leninism (May 1924) contained the formulation:

“But the overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and establishment of the power of the proletariat in one country does not yet mean that the complete victory of socialism has been ensured, the principal task of socialism -- the organization of socialist production -- has still to be fulfilled. Can this task be fulfilled, can the final victory of socialism be achieved in one country, without the joint efforts of the proletarians in several advanced countries? No, it cannot. To overthrow the bourgeoisie the efforts of one country are sufficient; this is proved by the history of our revolution. For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of one country, particularly of a peasant country like Russia, are insufficient; for that, the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries are required.”

He explains the reason for subsequently changing this formulation (in a later article):

“This ... formulation was directed against the assertions of the critics of Leninism, against the Trotskyists, who declared that the dictatorship of the proletariat in one country, in the absence of victory in other countries, could not “hold out in the face of a conservative Europe. To that extent – but only to that extent – this formulation was then (May 1924) adequate ...

“Subsequently, however, when the criticism of Leninism in this sphere had already been overcome in the Party, when a new question had come to the fore – the question of building a complete socialist society by the efforts of our country, without help from abroad – the ... formulation became obviously inadequate, and therefore incorrect.

“What is the defect in this formulation?

“Its defect is that it joins two different questions into one: it joins the question of the possibility of building socialism by the efforts of one country -- which must be answered in the affirmative -- with the question whether a country in which the dictatorship of the proletariat exists can consider itself fully guaranteed against intervention, and consequently against the restoration of the old order, without a victorious revolution in a number of other countries -- which must be answered in the negative. This is apart from the fact that this formulation may give occasion for thinking that the organization of a socialist society by the efforts of one country is impossible -- which, of course, is incorrect.”

“On this ground,” Stalin says, “I modified and corrected this formulation, in my pamphlet The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists (December 1924).” [1]

The subsequent editions of Foundations of Leninism too contained the modified formulation, which now read:

“But the overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and establishment of the power of the proletariat in one country does not yet mean that the complete victory of socialism has been ensured. After consolidating its power and leading the peasantry in its wake the proletariat of the victorious country can and must build a socialist society. But does this mean that it will thereby achieve the complete and final victory of socialism, i.e., does it mean that with the forces of only one country it can finally consolidate socialism and fully guarantee that country against intervention and, consequently, also against restoration? No, it does not. For this the victory of the revolution in at least several countries is needed.” [2]

Stalin explains this new formulation:

“What is meant by the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country?

“It means the possibility of solving the contradictions between the proletariat and the peasantry by means of the internal forces of our country, the possibility of the proletariat seizing power and using that power to build a complete socialist society in our country, with the sympathy and the support of the proletarians of other countries, but without the preliminary victory of the proletarian revolution in other countries.

“Without such a possibility, building socialism is building without prospects, building without being sure that socialism will be completely built. It is no use engaging in building socialism without being sure that we can build it completely, without being sure that the technical backwardness of our country is not an insuperable obstacle to the building of a complete socialist society. To deny such a possibility means disbelief in the cause of building socialism, departure from Leninism.

“What is meant by the impossibility of the complete, final victory of socialism in one country without the victory of the revolution in other countries?

“It means the impossibility of having a full guarantee against intervention, and consequently against the restoration of the bourgeois order, without the victory of the revolution in at least a number of countries. To deny this indisputable thesis means departure from internationalism, departure from Leninism.” [3]

ii) On the History of this Question

One of the criticism’s made by Trotsky of the theory of socialism in one country was that this theory was Stalin’s creation, which he made in 1924, and it was in direct opposition to Lenin’s and the Bolshevik Party’s conception of the revolution.

Stalin asserted that this was not true; this question “was first raised in the Party by Lenin as early as 1915.” He further said: “Lenin was opposed at that time by none other than Trotsky... since then, that is, since 1915, the question of the building of a socialist economy in one country was repeatedly discussed in our press and in our Party.” [4] In support of his contention, he gave some quotations from Lenin, in chronological order, wherein Lenin had spoken of the possibility of building socialism in one country, and also pointed out how on each occasion Trotsky had opposed Lenin. (In numerous debates with the Left Opposition on this issue during 1925-27, Stalin has generally given the same five quotations given below.)

(a) ...in1915

“Lenin was the first Marxist ... who presented the question of the possibility of the victory of socialism in individual capitalist countries in a new way and answered it in the affirmative.” Stalin says that Lenin first wrote of it in 1915, in his article The United States of Europe Slogan (published then in Sotsial Demokrat, the Central Organ of the Bolsheviks):

“As a separate slogan, however, the slogan of a United States of the World would hardly be a correct one, firstly, because it merges with socialism; secondly, because it may give rise to a wrong interpretation in the sense of the impossibility of the victory of socialism in a single country and about the relation of such a country to the rest. Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country taken separately. The victorious proletariat of that country, having expropriated the capitalists and organised its own socialist production, would stand up against the rest of the world, the capitalist world, attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, raising revolts in those countries against the capitalists, and in the event of necessity coming out even with armed force against the exploiting classes and their states.” . . . For “the free union of nations in socialism is impossible without a more or less prolonged and stubborn struggle of the socialist republics against the backward states.” [5]

Trotsky wrote a rejoinder to this article in the same year, 1915:

“The only more or less concrete historical argument advanced against the slogan of a United States of Europe was formulated in the Swiss Sotsial-Demokrat in the following sentence: ‘Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism.’ From this the Sotsial-Demokrat draws the conclusion that the victory of socialism is possible in one country, and that therefore there is no reason to make the dictatorship of the proletariat in each separate country contingent upon the establishment of a United States of Europe. That capitalist development in different countries is uneven is an absolutely incontrovertible argument. But this unevenness is itself extremely uneven. The capitalist level of Britain, Austria, Germany or France is not identical. But in comparison with Africa and Asia all these countries represent capitalist ‘Europe,’ which has grown ripe for the social revolution. That no country in its struggle must ‘wait’ for others, is an elementary thought which it is useful and necessary to reiterate in order that the idea of concurrent international action may not be replaced by the idea of temporising international inaction. Without waiting for the others, we begin and continue the struggle nationally, in the full confidence that our initiative will give an impetus to the struggle in other countries; but if this should not occur, it would be hopeless to think -- as historical experience and theoretical considerations testify -- that, for example, a revolutionary Russia could hold out in the face of a conservative Europe, or that a socialist Germany could exist in isolation in a capitalist world.” [6] (Stalin’s italics.)

Stalin says that Lenin, in the above passage, has clearly stated that victory of socialism in one country is possible, that the proletariat after having seized power can go further and “organize its own socialist production,” that Lenin stated this as far back as 1915.

Trotsky’s view is entirely different. He considers that a proletariat which has taken power becomes a semi-passive force which requires immediate assistance in the shape of an immediate victory of socialism in other countries. But what if this does not happen? “Then chuck up the job... and run to cover.” [7]

(b) ...in 1919

Lenin wrote in 1919 in his article Economics and Politics in the Era of Dictatorship of the Proletariat:

“In spite of the lies and slanders of the bourgeoisie of all countries and of their open or masked henchmen the ‘Socialists’ of the Second International), one thing remains beyond dispute, viz., that from the point of view of the basic economic problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the victory of communism over capitalism in our country is assured. Throughout the world the bourgeoisie is raging and fuming against Bolshevism and is organising military expeditions, plots, etc., against the Bolsheviks, just because it fully realises that our success in reconstructing the social economy is inevitable, provided we are not crushed by military force. And its attempts to crush us in this way are not succeeding.” (Stalin’s italics.)

Here again, Lenin speaks of “reconstructing the social economy” with a view to the “victory of communism,” and this means, Stalin says, nothing else than the building of socialism in one country. [8]

(c) ...in 1921

Lenin again said the same thing in his pamphlet The Tax in Kind in 1921 where he says that we can and must lay “a socialist foundation for our economy,” “together with the peasantry,” and “under the leadership of the working class.” [9]

While preparing the synopsis of the above pamphlet, Lenin therein also had made the same point:

“Ten or twenty years of correct relations with the peasantry, and victory on a world scale is assured (even if the proletarian revolutions, which are growing, are delayed)” (“Outline and Synopsis of the Pamphlet The Tax in Kind,” Lenin, 1921). (Stalin’s italics.)

From this too, it is clear that Lenin was of the opinion that given a correct policy towards the peasantry, we could completely build socialism. [10]

As though in reply to this, Trotsky, in January 1922, published a “Preface” to his book The Year 1905 where he wrote:

“Having assumed power, the proletariat would come into hostile collision not only with all the bourgeois groupings which supported the proletariat during the first stages of its revolutionary struggle, but also with the broad masses of the peasantry with whose assistance it came into power. The contradictions in the position of a workers’ government in a backward country with an overwhelmingly peasant population can be solved only on an international scale, in the arena of the world proletarian revolution.” [11](Stalin’s italics.)

Here again, Stalin says, two different theses stand contrasted. Whereas Lenin grants the possibility of laying a socialist foundation for our economy together with the peasantry, Trotsky, on the contrary, holds that the proletariat and the peasantry cannot work together in laying a socialist foundation, that the political life of the country would instead be a series of hostile collisions between the two, that these contradictions can only be solved in the arena of the world revolution. [12]

(d) ...in 1922

Lenin in a speech in the Moscow Soviet a year later, in 1922, again returned to the same question. He said, “We have dragged socialism into everyday life”, and that “NEP Russia will become socialist Russia.” [13]

Once again, as though in answer to this, Trotsky published in 1922 a “Postscript” to his pamphlet Peace Programme, where he stated:

“The assertion reiterated several times in the Peace Programme that a proletarian revolution cannot culminate victoriously within national bounds may perhaps seem to some readers to have been refuted by the nearly five years’ experience of our Soviet Republic. But such a conclusion would be unwarranted. The fact that the workers’ state has held out against the whole world in one country, and a backward country at that, testifies to the colossal might of the proletariat, which in other, more advanced, more civilised countries will be truly capable of performing miracles. But while we have held our ground as a state politically and militarily, we have not arrived, or even begun to arrive, at the creation of a socialist society. . . . As long as the bourgeoisie remains in power in the other European countries we shall be compelled, in our struggle against economic isolation, to strive for agreement with the capitalist world; at the same time it may be said with certainty that these agreements may at best help us to mitigate some of our economic ills, to take one or another step forward, but real progress of a socialist economy in Russia will become possible only after the victory of the proletariat in the major European countries.” [14] (Stalin’s italics.)

Here too, Stalin affirms, two antithetical theses stand contrasted. Whereas Lenin considered that despite the difficulties, we are in a position to turn NEP Russia into socialist Russia, Trotsky, on the contrary, believes that that is not possible, that we cannot even achieve real progress of socialist economy until the proletariat is victorious in other countries.

(e) ...in1923

And here is what Lenin wrote in the article On Co-operation, which Stalin describes as Lenin’s “political testament”:

“As a matter of fact, state power over all large-scale means of production, state power in the hands of the proletariat, the alliance of this proletariat with the many millions of small and very small peasants, the assured leadership of the peasantry by the proletariat, etc. -- is not this all that is necessary for building a complete socialist society from the co-operatives, from the co-operatives alone, which we formerly looked down upon as huckstering and which from a certain aspect we have the right to look down upon as such now, under NEP? Is this not all that is necessary for building a complete socialist society? This is not yet the building of socialist society, but it is all that is necessary and sufficient for this building.” (Stalin’s italics.)

While Trotsky says that socialist construction within the framework of national states is impossible, Lenin however clearly affirms that we, that is, the proletariat of the USSR, have now, in the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, “all that is necessary and sufficient” “for building a complete socialist society.” The antithesis of views is absolute. [15]

Thus, Stalin concludes, there are two lines on the basic question of the possibility of victoriously building socialism in the Soviet Union – the line of Lenin and Leninism, in the first place, and the line of Trotsky and Trotskyism, in the second place. [16]

iii) On Development of the “Theory of Socialism in One Country” by Lenin

According to Stalin, in the mid-nineteenth century, the law of uneven development of capitalism had not been discovered, because monopoly capitalism did not yet exist. [17] That is why Marx and Engels were unaware of the law of uneven development of capitalism. [18] And that is why Marx and Engels in their time, during the period of pre-monopoly capitalism, were of the opinion that the victory of socialism in one country taken separately was impossible, that for socialism to be victorious, a simultaneous revolution was necessary in a number of countries, at least in a number of the most developed civilised countries. And at that time this formulation of Marx and Engels was correct. [19]

Lenin’s greatness as the continuer of the work of Marx and Engels consists precisely in the fact that he was never a slave to the letter of Marxism; for him Marxism was never a dogma, but a guide to action. When capitalism advanced to a new phase, that of monopoly, imperialist capitalism, Lenin was the first Marxist who made a really Marxist analysis of imperialism, as a new and last phase of capitalism. In these new conditions of imperialism, Stalin says, Lenin discovered that a new law now operates, the law of uneven development of capitalism. Stalin explains this law:

“What, then, is the law of the uneven development of capitalist countries under imperialism?

“The law of uneven development in the period of imperialism means the spasmodic development of some countries relative to others, the rapid ousting from the world market of some countries by others, periodic redivisions of the already divided world through military conflicts and catastrophic wars, the increasing profundity and acuteness of the conflicts in the imperialist camp, the weakening of the capitalist world front, the possibility of this front being breached by the proletariat of individual countries, and the possibility of the victory of socialism in individual countries.” [20]

From the law of uneven development of capitalism, Lenin directly and immediately deduced the possibility of victory of socialism in individual countries. Stalin says that Lenin first advanced his thesis about the possibility of victory of socialism in one country is possible in his article The United States of Europe Slogan which appeared in 1915:

“Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country taken separately.” [21] (Stalin’s italics.)

Stalin explains the reasons for the Opposition’s disbelief in the victory of socialism in one country: (a) The fundamental error of the opposition consists in the fact that it does not see the difference between the two phases of capitalism, or avoids stressing this difference. And why does it avoid doing so? Because this difference leads to the law of uneven development in the period of imperialism. (b) The second error of the opposition is that it does not understand, or underestimates, the decisive significance of the law of uneven development of the capitalist countries under imperialism. And why does it underestimate it? Because a correct appraisal of the law of uneven development of the capitalist countries leads to the conclusion that the victory of socialism in individual countries is possible. [22]

iv) Stalin’s Comments on Trotsky’s Criticism of “Socialism in One Country”

Stalin, in his Reply to the Discussion on the Report on the “Social-Democratic Deviation in our Party” (on November 3, 1926), first replied to Zinoviev’s speech (Zinoviev was with the Left Opposition in 1926):

“Zinoviev, and Trotsky as well, quote passages from the works of Lenin to the effect that “the complete victory of the socialist revolution in one country is inconceivable, and requires the most active co-operation of several advanced countries at least,” and in some strange way they arrive at the conclusion that it is beyond the power of our proletariat to completely build socialism in one country. But that is a sheer muddle, comrades! Has the Party ever said that the complete victory, the final victory of socialism is possible in our country, that it is within the power of the proletariat of one country? Let them tell us where and when it has said so. Does not the Party say, has it not always said, together with Lenin, that the complete and final victory of socialism is possible only if socialism is victorious in several countries? Has not the Party explained scores and hundreds of times that the victory of socialism in one country must not be confused with the complete and final victory of socialism?

“The Party has always held that the victory of socialism in one country signifies the possibility of completely building socialism in that country, and that this task can be accomplished by the efforts of one country alone, whereas the complete victory of socialism signifies a guarantee against intervention and restoration, and that this task can be accomplished only in the event of the victory of the revolution in several countries. How is it possible then to confuse the two tasks so preposterously? ...

“Zinoviev, and Trotsky as well, put forward a number of quotations from Lenin’s works of the period of the Brest Peace, where it is said that our revolution may be crushed by external enemies. But is it so hard to understand that these quotations have no bearing on the question of the possibility of building socialism in our country? ...How is it possible on these grounds to assert that it is beyond the power of our proletariat to completely build socialism in our country?”

Further, Stalin adds, Zinoviev accuses our Party of having forgotten the international conditions for the victory of the proletarian revolution. Stalin dismisses this criticism as ludicrous: we have taken the initiative in founding the Comintern, which is the expression of the uniting of the efforts of proletarians of all countries of the world; we are promoting the uniting of efforts of workers of all countries through our trade-union united front policy; our revolution has always supported the development of revolution in all countries; Zinoviev is mixing up this with the cardinal question whether, under present day international conditions, proletarian rule in Russia can hold out in the face of a conservative Europe. [23]

Stalin then goes on to comment on Trotsky’s speech:

“Did you notice, comrades, that Trotsky’s whole speech was plentifully larded with the most diverse quotations from Lenin’s works? One reads these quotations torn from various articles of Lenin, and one fails to understand what Trotsky’s main object is: whether to fortify his own position by means of them, or to “catch out” Comrade Lenin as “contradicting” himself. He cited one batch of quotations from Lenin’s works which say that the danger of intervention can be overcome only by the victory of the revolution in several countries, evidently thinking thereby to “expose” the Party. But he does not realise, or will not realise, that these quotations testify not against the Party’s position, but for it and against his own position, because the Party’s estimate of the relative importance of the danger from abroad fully agrees with Lenin’s line. Trotsky cited another batch of quotations which say that the complete victory of socialism is impossible without the victory of the revolution in several countries, and he tried to juggle with these quotations in every possible way. But he does not realise, or will not realise, that the complete victory of socialism (guarantee against intervention) must not be confused with the victory of socialism in general (the complete building of a socialist society); he does not realise, or will not realise, that these quotations from the works of Lenin testify not against the Party, but for it and against his own position.” [24]

Stalin concludes that Trotsky’s operations with Lenin’s quotations are empty jugglery.

In his pamphlet Concerning Questions of Leninism, Stalin argued that without the possibility of victory of socialism in one country, “building socialism is building without prospects, building without being sure that socialism will be completely built. It is no use engaging in building socialism without being sure that we can build it completely, without being sure that the technical backwardness of our country is not an insuperable obstacle to the building of a complete socialist society. To deny such a possibility means disbelief in the cause of building socialism, departure from Leninism.”

He went on to say that if the possibility of completely building socialism in one country is denied, then, “is it at all worthwhile fighting for victory over the capitalist elements in our economy? Does it not follow from this that such a victory is impossible?” He then stated that the inherent logic of the Opposition’s line of argument leads to: “Capitulation to the capitalist elements in our economy.” [25]

2. TROTSKY’s VIEWS

i) Socialism and Internationalism

Marx’s popular formula –- “No social formation disappears before all the productive forces have developed for which it has room” -– takes its departure, not from the country taken separately, but from the sequence of universal social structures (slavery, medievalism, capitalism). The Mensheviks, however, taking this statement from the point of view of a single state, drew the conclusion that Russian capitalism has still a long way to travel before it will reach the European level. But productive forces do not develop in vacuum! You cannot talk of the possibilities of a national capitalism, and ignore on the one hand the class struggle developing out of it, or on the other its dependence upon world conditions. The structure of capitalist industry in Russia, and also the character of the class struggle in Russia were determined to a decisive degree by international conditions. Capitalism had reached a point on the world arena where it had ceased to justify its costs of production (in the sociological and not commercial sense) -- militarism, crises, and other scourges swallow up and squander so much creative energy that in spite of all the achievements in technique, there remains no room for further growth of prosperity and culture.

Which explains why the first victim to suffer from the sins of the world system was the bourgeoisie of a backward country -- under the monstrous burdens of imperialism, that state must necessarily fall first which has not yet accumulated large national capital, but to which world competition offers no special privileges. The collapse of Russian capitalism was a local avalanche in a universal social formation. “A correct appraisal of our revolution is possible only from an international point of view,” said Lenin.

And therefore, the future destiny of Russia can also only be understood from an international point of view.

The bourgeois revolutions were directed in similar degree against the feudal property relations and against the particularism of the provinces. Nationalism stood beside liberalism on their liberation banners. However, western societies since then have considerably matured, they long ago wore out such baby shoes. Trotsky writes, “The productive forces of our time have out grown not only the bourgeois forms of property, but also the boundaries of national states. Liberalism and nationalism have become in like degree fetters upon world economy.”

Which is why the proletarian revolution is directed both against private property in the means of production and against the national splitting up of world economy. The struggle of the colonies for independence is included in this world process and will subsequently merge with it. The creation of socialism in one country, a “national socialist society” (as Trotsky puts it), if such a goal were somehow attainable, would mean an extreme reduction of the economic power of men. But for this very reason, it is unattainable. The socialist principle of internationalism flows from this understanding of the proletarian revolution. It is not an abstract principle, it is the expression of an economic fact. Just as liberalism was national, so socialism is international. Starting from the worldwide division of labor, the task of socialism is to carry the international exchange of goods and services to its highest development. [26]

Such is the Marxian understanding of proletarian revolution and internationalism. The concept of “socialism in one country” is totally alien to this understanding.

ii) The Understanding of the Bolshevik Party about the International Character of Socialism During Lenin’s Time

From its very birth, the understanding of the Bolshevik Party about socialism was that it had to be international in character, that it couldn’t be anything else. This was the conception of the Party even during the period before the February 1917 revolution, when the Party saw its immediate historic task in the overthrow of czarism and the inauguration of a democratic structure. The socialist revolution was pushed away into the future. Even during those days, it was considered irrefutable that the socialist revolution would take place only after the victory of the proletariat in the west. Some hypothetical considerations accompanied this formulation. The Bolsheviks hoped that in case the democratic revolution assumed a mighty scope in Russia, it may give a direct impetus to the socialist revolution in the west, and this will enable the Russian proletariat to come to power afterwards with a swifter pace. Lenin had written: The Russian revolutionists, standing on the shoulders of a whole series of revolutionary generations in Europe have the right to “dream” that they will succeed in “achieving with a completeness never before seen the whole democratic transformation, all of our minimum programme... And if that succeeds -– then... then the revolutionary conflagration will set fire to Europe... The European worker will rise in his turn and show us ‘how it is done’; then the revolutionary rising of Europe will have a retroactive effect upon Russia and the epoch of several revolutionary years will become an epoch of several revolutionary decades.” [27]

Thus for the Bolsheviks, the independent content of the Russian revolution, even in the highest development, did not transcend the boundaries of a bourgeois-democratic revolution; they believed only a victorious revolution in the west can open the era of struggle for power for the Russian proletariat. No Bolshevik in those days even imagined of a socialist revolution in Russia in isolation, independent of socialist revolutions in the west.

In his condemnation of “Trotskyism”, Stalin (and along with him, the Communist International too) has attacked with special force Trotsky’s opinion that the Russian proletariat, having come to the helm and not meeting support from the West, “will come into hostile conflicts ... with the broad masses of the peasantry with whose co-operation it came to power...” Trotsky writes that even though historic experiment has completely refuted this prognosis -- formulated by him in 1905 -- even in that case, it remains an indisputable fact that this view of the peasantry as an unreliable and treacherous ally was a common property of all Russian Marxists including Lenin in those days. Lenin wrote in 1905:

“Once the epoch of democratic revolution in Russia is past then it will be ridiculous even to talk of the ‘united will’ of proletariat and peasantry...” “The peasantry, as a land-owning class will play the same treacherous, unstable role in this struggle (for socialism) that the bourgeoisie is now playing in the struggle for democracy. To forget that is to forget socialism, to deceive oneself and others about the genuine interests and tasks of the proletariat.”

Trotsky had further written (in the same article of 1905 quoted by Stalin above): “The contradiction in the situation of a workers’ government in a backward country with the peasant population an overwhelming majority can find its solution only on an international scale, in the arena of the world revolution of the proletariat.” Stalin subsequently quoted these words in order to show “the vast gulf separating the Leninist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat from the theory of Trotsky.” In spite of indubitable differences between the revolutionary conceptions of Lenin and Trotsky at that time, Trotsky says that it was exactly upon the question of the “unstable” and “treacherous” role of the peasantry that their views essentially coincided. “The Russian revolution,” Lenin declared in April 1906, “has enough forces of its own to conquer. But it has not enough forces to retain the fruits of its victory ...for in a country with an enormous development of small-scale industry, the small-scale commodity producers, among them the peasants, will inevitably turn against the proletarian when he goes from freedom toward socialism... In order to prevent a restoration, the Russian revolution has need, not of a Russian reserve; it has need of help from outside. Is there such a reserve in the world? There is: the socialist proletariat in the west.” [28]

This conception of the Party remained throughout the years of reaction and the war. However, there is no need to give more examples from this period, because, as Trotsky rightly points out: “The party’s conception of the revolution must have received its most finished and succinct form in the heat of the revolutionary events. If the theoreticians of Bolshevism were before the revolution already inclining towards “socialism in a separate country,” this theory would necessarily have come to full bloom in the period of the direct struggle for power. Did it prove so in reality? The year 1917 will give the answer.”

When departing for Russia after the February revolution, Lenin wrote in a farewell letter to the Swiss workers:

“The Russian proletariat cannot with its own forces victoriously achieve the socialist revolution. But it can . . . improve the situation in which its chief, its reliable ally, the European and American socialist proletariat, will enter the decisive battle.” [29]

Did Lenin revise some of his views on this question in his April (1917) thesis? Not for a moment. The only part of his earlier views that he revised in his April thesis was that he declared here for the first time, that the Russian proletariat might come to power before the proletariat of the advanced countries, because the February revolution was unable to solve either the agrarian problems or the national problem. But, this change of revolutionary order between west and east had only a historically limited import. No matter how far the Russian revolution skipped ahead, its dependence upon the world revolution had not disappeared nor even decreased. The Bolsheviks were unanimous in their opinion on this. The resolution of Lenin ratified by the April conference reads:

The resolution of Lenin ratified by the April conference reads: “The proletariat of Russia, taking action in one of the most backward countries of Europe among the masses of a petty-peasant population, cannot set itself the goal of an immediate realisation of the socialist transformation.” Although in these initial lines firmly clinging to the theoretical tradition of the party, the resolution does, however, take a decisive step on a new road. It declares: The impossibility of an independent socialist transformation in peasant Russia does not in any case give us the right to renounce the conquest of power, not only for the sake of democratic tasks, but also in the name of “a series of practically ripened steps towards socialism,” such as the nationalisation of land, control over the banks and so forth. Anti-capitalist measures may receive a further development thanks to the presence of “the objective premises of a socialist revolution . . . in the more highly developed of the advanced countries.” This must be our starting point. “To talk only of Russian conditions,” explains Lenin in his speech, “is a mistake... What tasks will rise before the Russian proletariat in case the world-wide movement brings us face to face with a social revolution -- that is the principal question taken up in this resolution.” [30] Trotsky writes: It is clear that the new point of departure occupied by the party in April 1917, is as different from the theory of socialism in a separate country as heaven is from earth!

After this, all the organizations of the party whatever, whether in the capital or the provinces, upheld this some formulation of the question: in the struggle for power, we must remember that the further fate of the revolution as a socialist revolution will be determined by the victory of the proletariat of the advanced countries.

At the Sixth Congress of the party, taking place at the end of July (1917), the speech of Bukharin was built upon the idea that a world-wide socialist revolution is the sole way out of the existing situation: “If the revolution in Russia conquers before a revolution breaks out in the west, we will have to . . . kindle the fire of the world-wide socialist revolution.” Stalin too was at that time compelled to pose the question in much the same way: “The moment will come when the workers will rise and unite round them the poor layers of the peasantry, raise the banner of the workers’ revolution, and open an era of socialist revolution in the west.”

At the general party conference in April, at the Party Congress in July, at the conferences in Petrograd, Moscow and Kiev, all the principal speakers and all those who took part in the debates were in agreement upon three fundamental propositions: the workers’ state cannot stand unless it overthrows imperialism in the west; in Russia the conditions were not yet ripe for socialism; the problem of socialist revolution is international in essence. [31] Not one voice was raised in the party which might be interpreted as a presentiment of the future theory of socialism in a separate country.

On the 13th of August 1917, the central organ of the party explained:

“Full power to the soviets, although far from as yet meaning ‘socialism,’ would in any case break the resistance of the bourgeoisie and -- in dependence upon the existing productive forces and the situation in the west -- would guide and transform the economic life in the interests of the toiling masses. Having thrown off the fetters of capitalist government, the revolution would become permanent -- that is, continuous. It would apply the state power, not in order to consolidate the régime of capitalist exploitation, but in order to overcome it. Its final success on this road would depend upon the successes of the proletariat revolution in Europe... Such was and remains the sole perspective of the further development of the revolution.”

The author of this article was Trotsky, who wrote it in Kresty prison. The editor of the paper that published it was Stalin. The article appeared without any editorial comment whatever.

Ten days later Trotsky wrote again in the same paper: “Internationalism for us is not an abstract idea . . . but a directly guiding, deeply practical principle. A permanent decisive success is unthinkable for us outside the European revolution.” Again Stalin did not object. Moreover two days later he himself repeated it: “Let them know (the workers and soldiers) that only in union with the workers of the west, only after shaking loose the foundations of capitalism in the west, can we count upon the triumph of the revolution in Russia!” [32]

“The bourgeoisie,” wrote Lenin in September, “is shouting about the inevitable defeat of the commune in Russia -- that is, the defeat of the proletariat if it wins the power.” We must not be frightened by these shouts. “Having conquered the power, the proletariat of Russia has every chance of holding it and bringing Russia through to the victorious revolution in the west.” Trotsky remarks: The perspective of the revolution is here defined with utter clearness -- to hold the power until the beginning of the socialist revolution in Europe. This formula was not hastily thrown out, Lenin repeats it from day to day. He sums up his programme article, Will the Bolshevik Be Able to Hold the State Power? in these words: “There is no power on earth which can prevent the Bolsheviks, if they do not let themselves be frightened and succeed in seizing the power, from holding it until the victory of the world-wide socialist revolution.” [33]

In Lenin’s Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People—presented by the Soviet of People’s Commissars for the approval of the Constituent Assembly during its brief hours of life—the “fundamental task” of the new regime was thus defined: “The establishment of a socialist organization of society and the victory of socialism in all countries... The soviet power will proceed resolutely along this road until the complete victory of the international workers’ insurrection against the yoke of capital.” [34] The international character of the revolution was thus written into the basic document of the new regime. No one at that time would have dared present the problem otherwise!

At the time of the Brest Litovsk, negotiations, there were disagreements among the Bolsheviks, but not on the issue of the international perspective of the revolution. All the Bolsheviks without a single exception were at one in the Brest period in thinking that if a revolution did not break out in Europe in the very near future, the Soviet Republic was doomed to destruction. Some counted the time in weeks, others in months: nobody counted it in years. Trotsky cites from the minutes of the Central Committee for 1917 and the beginning of 1918 to substantiate this. Likewise, a secret decision adopted at the seventh Congress of the Party in March 1918 read: “The Congress sees the most reliable guarantee of the consolidation of the socialist revolution which has won the victory in Russia only in its conversion into an international workers’ revolution.” [35]

Trotsky has given numerous quotations from Lenin’s writings and speeches of this period, expressing his conviction that the Russian revolution could only survive if the revolution began in the west, and that too very soon. To avoid repetition, we mention just two here. On April 23, Lenin said at a session of the Moscow Soviet: “Our backwardness has pushed us forward, and we shall perish if cannot hold out until we meet a mighty support on the part of the insurrectionary workers of other countries.” “We must retreat (before imperialism) even to the Urals,” he wrote in May 1918, “for that is the sole chance of winning time for the maturity of the revolution in the west...” [36]

During his struggle with the “anti-Leninist” line of Trotsky, Stalin denounced Trotsky (for his statement of 1915) thus: “What meaning can Trotsky’s assertion that revolutionary Russia could not stand in the face of a conservative Europe have? It can have only one meaning: Trotsky does not feel the inward might of our revolution.” Trotsky replies: Here is what Lenin wrote to the American workers, in July-August 1918: “We are in a besieged fortress until other armies of the international socialist revolution come to our aid.” He expressed himself still more categorically in November: “The facts of world history have shown that the conversion of our Russian revolution into a socialist revolution was not an adventure but a necessity, for there was no other choice. Anglo-French and American imperialism will inevitably strangle the independence and freedom of Russia unless world-wide socialist revolution, unless world-wide Bolshevism, conquers.” To repeat the words of Stalin, Lenin obviously did not feel the “inner might of our revolution.”

In reality, the whole Party was unanimous in the conviction that “before the face of the conservative Europe”, the Soviet Republic could not stand. Trotsky explains that this was not defeatism: “that was only the reverse side of a conviction that a conservative Europe could not stand before the face of revolutionary Russia. In negative form it expressed an unconquerable faith in the international power of the Russian revolution. And fundamentally the party was not mistaken. Conservative Europe did not at any rate wholly stand. The German revolution, even betrayed as it was by the social democracy, was still strong enough to trim the claws of Ludendorff and Hoffmann. Without this operation the Soviet Republic could hardly have avoided destruction.” [37]

The world situation took an exceptionally favorable form; as a result, the revolution revealed far more stability than even the most optimist Bolsheviks expected. In April 1920, Lenin said at a session of the Central Executive Committee: “We got a breathing spell only because the imperialist war still continued in the west, and in the Far East imperialist rivalry is raging wider and wider; this alone explains the existence of the Soviet Republic.” On the third anniversary of the October Revolution, which coincided with the rout of the Whites, Lenin recalled and generalised: “If on that night (the night of the October revolution) someone had told us that in three years ... this would be our victory, nobody, not even the most cocksure optimist, would have believed it. We knew then that our victory would be a victory only when our cause should conquer the whole world, for we began our work counting exclusively upon world revolution.”

The transformation of the original “breathing spell” into a prolonged period of unstable equilibrium was made possible not only by the struggle of capitalist groupings, but also by the international revolutionary movement. As a result of the November revolution in Germany, the German troops were compelled to abandon the Ukraine, the Baltic States and Finland. The penetration of the spirit of revolt into the armies of the Entente compelled the French, English and American governments to withdraw their troops from the southern and northern shores of Russia.

In July 1921, Lenin summarised the situation: “We have got a certain equilibrium, although extremely fragile, extremely unstable, nevertheless such an equilibrium that a socialist republic can exist -- of course not for long -- in a capitalist environment.” Thus passing from weeks to months, from months to years, the party only by degrees assimilated the idea that a workers’ state might for a certain time -- “of course not for long” -- peacefully continue to exist in a capitalist environment. [38]

One not unimportant conclusion flows from the above data quite irrefutably, says Trotsky: “If according to the general conviction of the Bolsheviks the Soviet state could not long hold out without a victory of the proletariat in the west, then the programme of building socialism in a separate country is excluded practically by that fact alone.” [39]

Trotsky writes that it would be a mistake to assume from the above quotations, as Stalinists have suggested in recent years, that the sole obstacle seen by the Party to the victory of socialism in Russia in isolation was the capitalist armies. While the threat of armed intervention was a practical reality, a fact of life, the war danger itself was merely the acute expression of the technical and industrial predominance of the capitalist nations. In the ultimate analysis, the problem reduced itself to the isolation of the Soviet Republic and to its backwardness.

Socialism is the organization of a planned and harmonious social production for the satisfaction of human wants. This cannot be achieved within an isolated state. At the present stage of human development, productive forces are world wide in their very essence. When the separate state has become too narrow for capitalism, when capitalism itself has come to rest upon a world-wide division of labor which is to receive its highest development under socialism, how then can a separate state become the arena for building a finished socialist society, how can socialism be completely built in one country? Economic construction in an isolated workers’ state, however important in itself, will remain abridged, limited, and contradictory: it cannot reach the heights of a new harmonious society. In rejecting the conception of isolated socialist development, the Bolsheviks had in view not just a mechanically isolated problem of military intervention, but the perspective that socialism by its very nature has an international economic basis.

This perspective was expressed time and again by Lenin unto his death, as well as in innumerable writings of Bolsheviks in those days. In his theses on the national and colonial questions at the second Congress of the Communist International, Lenin defines the general task of socialism, rising above the national stages of the struggle, as “the creation of a united world-wide economy, regulated according to a general plan by the proletariat of all nations, as a whole the tendency towards which is already revealed with complete clarity under capitalism, and undoubtedly will receive further development and full achievement under socialism.”

The A B C of Communism, the party text-book composed by Bukharin and Preobrazhensky, which went through a great many editions, reads: “The communist revolution can be victorious only as a world revolution... In a situation where the workers have won only in a single country, economic construction becomes very difficult... For the victory of communism the victory of the world revolution is necessary.”

In a well-known book of Stepanov-Skvortzov, entitled Electrification, issued under the editorship of Lenin and with an introduction by him, in a chapter which the editor recommends with special enthusiasm to the attention of the reader, it says: “The proletariat of Russia never thought of creating an isolated socialist state. A self-sufficient ‘socialist’ state is a petty- bourgeois ideal. A certain approach to this is thinkable with an economic and political predominance of the petty-bourgeoisie; in isolation from the outside world it seeks a means of consolidating its economic forms, which are converted by the new technique and the new economy into very unstable forms.” Trotsky observes that these admirable lines, which were undoubtedly gone over by the hand of Lenin, cast a clear beam of light upon the most recent evolution of the present Party leadership under Stalin. [40]

On the theme of the coming hunger, Lenin said to the Moscow workers: “In all our agitation we must ... explain that the misfortune which has fallen upon us is an international misfortune, that there is no way out of it but the international revolution.” Trotsky compares the two antithetical theses of Lenin and Stalin: “In order to overcome the famine we must have a world revolution, says Lenin; in order to create a socialist society, revolution in a separate country is enough, says Stalin. Such is the scope of the disagreement!” [41]

Stalin, while criticizing the Opposition, often cited Trotsky’s words of 1922: “Real progress of a socialist economy in Russia will become possible only after the victory of the proletariat in the major European countries.” Trotsky points out while in later years these words became an indictment, in their time they expressed the general thought of the Party. The work of construction,” said Lenin in 1919, “depends entirely upon how soon the revolution is victorious in the most important countries of Europe. Only after this victory can we seriously undertake the business of construction.” Those words expressed not a lack of confidence in the Russian revolution, but a faith in the nearness of the world revolution. [42]

Stalin tears out a few lines from Lenin’s writings of 1921 and 1922 and interprets them thus: in 1921, Lenin clearly expressed the opinion that given a correct policy towards the peasantry, we will be able to completely build socialism; and in 1922, Lenin considered that in spite of the difficulties, we are fully in a position to turn NEP Russia into socialist Russia. [43] Trotsky demonstrates in detail that if one considers these two quotations in conjunction with the general spirit of Lenin’s writings of that period, they lend themselves to a totally different interpretation.

The deep internal crisis in 1921, at the end of the three years of civil war, threatened to break the bond between the proletariat and the peasantry. A retreat along the line of the New Economic Policy became necessary. Lenin explained: “We have to satisfy economically the middle peasant, and adopt freedom of trade, otherwise it will be impossible to preserve the power of the proletariat in Russia in view of the delay of the international revolution.” Lenin explained the historic position of the NEP at the Tenth Congress of the Party:

“In the countries of developed capitalism, there is a class of hired agricultural labourers which has been forming itself in the course of some decades... Where this class is sufficiently developed, the transition from capitalism to socialism is possible. We have emphasised in a whole series of writings, in all our speeches, in all our press, the fact that in Russia the situation is not like this -- that in Russia we have a minority of workers in industry and an enormous majority of petty land-owners. In such a country the social revolution could achieve its final success only on two conditions: first, on condition of its timely support by a social revolution in one or several advanced countries...The other condition is an agreement between...the proletariat which holds the state power and the majority of the peasant population...Only an agreement with the peasants can save the socialist revolution in Russia until the revolution begins in other countries.”

All the various aspects have been very lucidly explained by Lenin here. Lenin is very clear that while the transition to the NEP, the union with the peasantry, were essential for the very existence of Soviet power, these do not replace the international revolution, which alone can create the economic basis of a socialist society.

It is in this context that Lenin penned the following lines in 1921 while working out his ideas about introducing a ‘Tax in Kind’:

“Ten or twenty years of correct relations with the peasantry, and victory on a world scale is assured (even if the proletarian revolutions, which are growing, are delayed)”

If these lines are read in conjunction with the two quotations given above (as well as the innumerable quotations given earlier), Lenin’s meaning is very clear: The aim of the new policy changes is to enable the proletariat to hold on to power in the new prolonged period which may be necessary for the maturing of the proletarian revolutions in the west. Lenin was confident, that the revolutions in the west may have been delayed, but they are inevitable. Once they begin, the Soviet Republic will march together with them into building socialism. In this sense and only this, Lenin expressed his confidence that: “NEP Russia will become socialist Russia.” [44]

Stalin repeatedly affirms that whereas Lenin granted the possibility of laying a socialist foundation for our economy together with the peasantry under the leadership of the working class, Trotsky denies this. At the Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the ECCI (December 1926), Stalin charged that Trotsky’s postulate that “without direct state support from the European proletariat, the working class of Russia will not be able to maintain itself in power” was fundamentally at variance with Leninism. [45] Trotsky replies, that to this manufactured contrast, Lenin had made his answer in advance: “Not for one minute have we forgotten, nor will we forget,” he said on May 14, 1918, at a session of the Central Executive Committee. “the weaknesses of the Russian working class in comparison with other detachments of the international proletariat... But we must remain at our post until our ally comes, the international proletariat.” On the third anniversary of the October revolution, Lenin confirmed this: “We always staked our play upon an international revolution and this was unconditionally right... We always emphasised the fact that in one country it is impossible to accomplish such a work as a socialist revolution.” In February 1921, Lenin declared at a congress of the workers in the needle trades: “We have always and repeatedly pointed out to the workers that the underlying chief task and basic condition of our victory is the propagation of the revolution at least to several of the more advanced countries.” [46] Trotsky is justified in exclaiming: “No. Lenin is too much compromised by his stubborn desire to find forces in the world arena: you cannot wash him white!”

The Communist International, while indicting and sentencing Trotsky, pronounced: “Trotskyism derived and continues to derive from the proposition that our revolution in and of itself is not in essence socialistic, that the October revolution is only the signal, impetus and starting-point for a socialist revolution in the west.” The October revolution “in and of itself” does not exist, writes Trotsky while analysing this indictment; it would have been impossible without the whole preceding history of Europe, and it would be hopeless without its continuation in Europe and the whole world. “The Russian revolution is only one link in the chain of international revolution” (Lenin). Its strength lies exactly where Stalin sees its weakness; what Stalin believes is capitulation to capitalism is in actuality the real essence of socialism, it is what makes it a socialist revolution.

“Of course the final victory of socialism in one country is impossible,” said Lenin at the third Congress of Soviets in January 1918, “but something else is possible: a living example, a getting to work somewhere in one country -- that is what will set fire to the toiling masses in all countries.” In July at a session of the Central Executive Committee: “Our task now is...to hold fast...this torch of socialism so that it may continue to scatter as many sparks as possible to the increasing conflagration of the social revolution.” A month later at a workers’ meeting: “The (European) revolution is growing...and we must hold the Soviet power until it begins. Our mistakes must serve as a lesson to the western proletariat.” A few days later at a congress of educational workers: “The Russian revolution is only an example, only a first step in a series of revolutions.” In March 1919, at a Congress of the Party: “The Russian revolution was in essence a dress-rehearsal...of the world-wide proletarian revolution.” [47] Not a revolution “in and of itself” but a torch, a lesson, an example only, a first step only, only a link! Not an independent performance, but only a dress-rehearsal! Such was Lenin’s revolutionary internationalism.

Trotsky examines another oft-repeated argument of Stalin “against Trotskyism, in defense of Leninism.” “Our party has no right to deceive the working class,” said Stalin at a plenary session of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in 1926. “It ought to say frankly that a lack of confidence in the possibility of building socialism in our country will lead to a renunciation of power, and the passing of our party from the position of a ruling to that of an opposition party.” The Communist International canonised this view in its resolution: “The denial of this possibility (the possibility of a socialist society in a separate country) on the part of the opposition, is nothing but a denial of the premises for a socialist revolution in Russia.”

A lie upon a fundamental question, if political interest compels you to cling to it, leads to innumerable resulting mistakes and gradually revises all your thinking, replies Trotsky. He analyses in considerable detail this argument, Stalin has often repeated it throughout 1925-27 while defending the theory of socialism in one country against the attacks of the Left Opposition. If the philosophy of the Stalin school is taken seriously, Trotsky argues, the Bolsheviks ought to have known in advance on the eve of October, both that they would hold out against a legion of enemies, and that they would pass over from military communism to the NEP; also that in case of need they would build their own national socialism. In a word, before seizing the power they ought to have added up their accounts accurately, and made sure of a credit balance. What happened in reality had little similarity to this timidity; in fact, with such pusillanimity, the Bolsheviks would never have been able to seize power.

In a report at the Party Congress in March 1919, Lenin said: “We often have to grope our way along; this fact becomes most obvious when we try to take in with one glance what we have been through. But that did not unnerve us a bit, even on the 10th of October 1917, when deciding the question about the seizure of power. We had no doubt that it was up to us, according to Comrade Trotsky’s expression, to experiment -- to make the trial. We undertook a job which nobody in the world had ever before undertaken on such a scale.” And further: “Who could ever make a gigantic revolution, knowing in advance how to carry it through to the end? Where could you get such knowledge? It cannot be found in books. No such books exist. Our decision could only be born of the experience of the masses.” The Bolsheviks did not seek any assurance that Russia would be able to create a socialist society. They had no need of it. They had no use for it. It contradicted all that they had learned in the school of Marxism.

Placing before the world proletariat as an example and a reproach the manner in which the bourgeoisie boldly risks war in the name of its interests, Lenin branded with hatred those socialists who “are afraid to begin the fight until they are ‘guaranteed’ an easy victory. ...Boot-tickers of international socialism, lackeys of bourgeois morality who think this way deserve triple contempt.” Lenin, when indignant, was not known to choose his words carefully. [48]

Stalin inquired, repeatedly, “But if the victory of the revolution in other countries should not ensue immediately -- what then?” (And answered, sarcastically: “Then, chuck up the job. Yes, and run to cover.”) [49] Trotsky ruthlessly dissects this question. The Stalinists “demand historic privileges for the Russian proletariat: it must have a road-bed laid down for an uninterrupted movement towards socialism, regardless of what happens to the rest of humanity. History, alas, has prepared no such road-bed. “If you look at things from a world-wide historic scale,” said Lenin at the seventh Congress of the Party, “there is not the slightest doubt that the ultimate victory of our revolution, if it should remain solitary... would be hopeless.” But even in this case it would not have been fruitless. “Even if the imperialists should overthrow the Bolshevik power to-morrow,” said Lenin in May 1919, at a teachers’ congress, “we would not regret for one second that we took the power. And not one of the class-conscious workers ... would regret it, or would doubt that our revolution had nevertheless conquered.” For Lenin thought of victory only in terms of an international succession of development in struggle.” [50]

Lenin explained with utmost simplicity the meaning of the Bolshevik strategy on July 5, 1921, at one of the sessions of the Third Congress of the Comintern:

“When we began at the time we did the international revolution, we did this not with the conviction that we could anticipate its development, but because a whole series of circumstances impelled us to begin this revolution. Our thought was: Either the international revolution will come to our aid, and in that case our victories are wholly assured, or we will do our modest revolutionary work in the consciousness that in case of defeat we have nevertheless served the cause of the revolution, and our experiment will be of help to other revolutions. It was clear to us that without the support of the international world revolution a victory of the proletarian overturn was impossible. Even before the revolution, and likewise after it, our thought was: immediately, or at any rate very quickly, a revolution will begin in the other countries, in capitalistically more developed countries -- or in the contrary case we will have to perish. In spite of this consciousness we did everything to preserve the soviet system in all circumstances and at whatever cost, since we knew that we were working not only for ourselves, but for the international revolution. We knew this, we frequently expressed this conviction before the October revolution, exactly as we did immediately after it and during the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace. And, generally speaking, this was right.” [51]

Trotsky concludes: This was the line of the Bolshevik Party, right unto Lenin’s death, unto a few months after Lenin’s death. Stalin was only modestly repeating it when he wrote, in April 1924, in his pamphlet Foundations of Leninism: “To overthrow the bourgeoisie the efforts of one country are sufficient; this is proved by the history of our revolution. For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of one country, particularly of a peasant country like Russia, are insufficient; for that, the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries are required.” Stalin concludes his exposition of these thoughts with the words: “Such in general are the characteristic features of the Leninist theory of the proletarian revolution.”

Thus, Trotsky points out, till April 1924, till three months after Lenin’s death, Stalin was still expounding the traditional views of the Party.

By the autumn of the same year, Stalin had changed his position on this question. It was suddenly discovered that Russia will be able to build the socialist society with her own forces, if she is not hindered by intervention. In the later editions of Stalin’s book, the above passage was altered to read in just the opposite way. The proclamation of this new conception ended with the same words: “Such in general are the characteristic features of the Leninist theory of the proletarian revolution.” Trotsky remarks: In the course of one year, Stalin imputed to Lenin two directly opposite views upon a fundamental problem of socialism! [52]

At a plenary session of the Central Committee in 1927, Trotsky said about these two contradictory opinions of Stalin: “You may say that Stalin made a mistake and afterward corrected himself. But how could he make such a mistake upon such a question? If it were true that Lenin already in 1915 gave out the theory of building socialism in a separate country (which is utterly untrue), if it were true that subsequently Lenin only reinforced and developed this point of view (which is utterly untrue) -- then how, we must ask, could Stalin think up for himself during the life of Lenin, during the last period of his life, that opinion upon this most important question which finds its expression in the Stalinist quotation of 1924? It appears that upon this fundamental question Stalin had always been a Trotskyist, and only after 1924 ceased to be one. It would be well if Stalin could find at least one quotation from his own writings showing that before 1924 he said something about the building of socialism in one country. He will not find it!” Trotsky affirms: this challenge remained unanswered. [53]

Stalin avers that Lenin changed his views on the question of victory of socialism in one country in 1915. In 1921, six years after this alleged change by Lenin, and four years after the October Revolution, the Central Committee headed by Lenin approved the program of the Young Communist League, which was drawn up by a commission directed by Bukharin. Paragraph 4 of this program reads:

“In the U.S.S.R. state power is already in the hands of the working class. In the course of three years of heroic struggle against world capitalism, the proletariat has maintained and strengthened its Soviet government. Russia, although it possesses enormous natural resources, is, nevertheless, from an industrial point of view, a backward country, in which a petty bourgeois population predominates. It can arrive at socialism only through the world proletarian revolution, which epoch of development we have now entered.” [54]

After giving this quotation to prove that Stalin, Bukharin and other members of the ruling group in Soviet Russia were falsifying the history of the Party, Trotsky asks, with justifiable indignation (in a detailed critique formally sent to the delegates to the Comintern’s Sixth World Congress in 1928):

“This single paragraph from the program of the Young Communist League (not a chance article but a program!) renders ridiculous and really infamous the attempts of ... (Stalin and Bukharin)... to prove that the party “ always” held the construction of a socialist society to be possible in one country and, moreover, precisely in Russia. If this was “ always” so, then why did Bukharin formulate such a paragraph in the program of the Young Communist League? Where was Stalin looking at the time? How could Lenin and the whole Central Committee have approved such a heresy? How was it that no one in the party noticed this “ trifle” or raised a voice against it? Doesn’t this look like a sinister joke which is turning into a downright mockery of the party, its history, and the Comintern? Is it not high time to put a stop to this? Is it not high time to tell the revisionists: don’t you dare hide behind Lenin and the theoretical tradition of the party (!)?” [55]

In 1936, at the Tenth Congress of the Communist Youth League (the Congress was being called after five years), the above formulation was condemned as Trotskyite. The Congress adopted a new program. The spokesman at the Congress explained the very necessity of the new program for the Communist Youth in the following words:

“The old program contains a deeply mistaken anti-Leninist assertion to the effect that Russia ‘can arrive at socialism only through a world proletarian revolution’. This point of the program is basically wrong. It reflects Trotskyist views.” [56] He should have added: the same views that Stalin was still defending in April 1924.

iii) Trotsky’s Interpretation of ‘Quotations from Lenin’s Writings’ given by Stalin in Support of his Thesis

Of the great treasure of Lenin’s writings, Stalin has basically given just two quotations (one from Lenin’s article on the United States of Europe, written in 1915, and another from his work on cooperation in 1923) in defense of his thesis of socialism in one country: these are the two that are the most significant and which Stalin quotes most often in his numerous writings against Trotsky and Trotskyism. (The few other quotations from Lenin’s works given by Stalin are weak and inconsequential; Trotsky has analysed most of them in passing, his analysis has been given in the previous section wherein Trotsky has shown that Stalin has misinterpreted them – Stalin has torn out a line or two, sometimes just a few words, from Lenin’s writings, and twisted their meaning.) Trotsky analyses both these quotations in considerable detail:

a) ...in 1915

This is what Lenin said, in 1915: “Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country taken separately. The victorious proletariat of that country, having expropriated the capitalists and organised its own socialist production, would stand up against the rest of the world, the capitalist world, attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, raising revolts in those countries against the capitalists, and in the event of necessity coming out even with armed force against the exploiting classes and their states.”

What did Lenin mean by the words “organized its own socialist production”? Was Lenin talking of completely building a socialist society in Russia, as Stalin implies? The question will appear in a different light from the following two quotes. On April 29, 1918, Lenin said in his report to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviet government: “It is hardly to be expected that our next generation, which will be more highly developed, will effect a complete transition to socialism.” On December 3, 1919, at the Congress of Communes and Artels, Lenin spoke even more bluntly, saying: “We know that we cannot establish a socialist order at the present time. It will be well if our children and perhaps our grandchildren will be able to establish it.”

Is Lenin here contradicting what he wrote in 1915? No, he was right in both cases, because he had in mind two entirely different and incommensurable stages of socialist construction. In his article of 1915, Lenin meant by the organization of “socialist production” not the creation of a socialist society, but an immeasurably more elementary task: he meant the restoration of production in mills and factories in the hands of the proletarian state, and thus the assuring of the possibility to exchange products between city and country. And this had been realized in the Soviet Union by mid-1920s. [57]

This can be the only possible meaning of the two lines from Lenin’s article of 1915 quoted by Stalin. If Lenin had indeed changed his understanding about completely building socialism in one country in 1915, as Stalin says, how could he have forgotten it during the years following, and repeatedly emphasize the dependence of the fate of the socialist revolution in Russia on the world revolution? (Trotsky here is referring to the numerous quotations from Lenin’s writings of 1915-23 given by him to contradict Stalin’s thesis. We have given some of these in the previous section.) In fact, in the very same year, 1915, in which Lenin allegedly changed his theoretical position on this question, the programme theses drafted by him reads: “The task of the proletariat of Russia is to carry through to the end the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia, in order to kindle the socialist revolution in Europe. This second task has now come extremely near to the first, but it remains nevertheless a special and a second task, for it is a question of different classes co-operating with the proletariat of Russia. For the first task the collaborator is the petty-bourgeois peasantry of Russia, for the second the proletariat of other countries.” [58] Lenin couldn’t have spelt out his views more clearly.

[We would like to add a comment at this point. According to Stalin, Lenin was the first Marxist who, continuing the work of Marx and Engels without clinging to the letter of Marxism, advanced the thesis that the victory of socialism in one country is possible. Stalin says that Lenin first wrote about it in his article United States of Europe Slogan, and he quotes a few lines from this article.

If Lenin was indeed advancing a new idea, if he was indeed developing Marxism creatively upon an issue of great significance, then, while presenting this idea for the first time wouldn’t he have written an entire article, or at least a few paragraphs in an article, on this? It sounds unbelievable that he first raised this issue, an important issue at that, in passing, in just a few lines, in an article which is devoted to a different issue. Or at least in subsequent articles, Lenin would have pointed out that he was advancing a new idea, propounding a new thesis, and elaborated on it. Lenin does not do so. In each of the quotations of Lenin given by Stalin, which are also just a few, there are just two or three lines, sometimes just a few words, which Stalin refers to in support of his thesis.

This observation too indicates that Stalin is lifting a few words or lines from the great wealth of Lenin’s writings and quoting them out of context in order to present his theory in the name of Lenin.]

b) ...in 1923

Now for the second quotation, from Lenin’s article On Cooperation:

“As a matter of fact, the state power over all large-scale means of production, state power in the hands of the proletariat, an alliance of that proletariat with the many millions of peasants with small and petty holdings, security of proletarian leadership in relationship to the peasant —is this not all that is necessary for the cooperatives, the cooperatives alone, which we have formerly treated as mere traders, and which, from a certain viewpoint, we still have the right to treat as such even now under the N.E.P., is this not all that is necessary for the construction of a complete socialist society? It is not yet the construction of a socialist society but it is all that is necessary and sufficient for this construction.” [59]

Note that the text of the passage contains an unfinished phrase: “the cooperatives alone”. This proves that this is an uncorrected draft, which was dictated by Lenin. If is therefore all the more inadmissible to cling to few isolated words of the text rather than try to get a general idea of the article.

Fortunately, even if we leave aside the spirit, and go merely by the letter, of the cited passage, it becomes obvious that Stalin is misusing it. In the article, Lenin deals only with the question as to the ways and means by which the atomized and diffused peasant enterprises will reach socialism, having the prerequisites of the Soviet regime as the basis. Further, its clear from the text, the article is entirely devoted only to the political conditions of the transition from small private commodity economy to collective economy. He enumerates these conditions in the cited passage. They are: power of the state over all large-scale means of production; state power in the hands of the proletariat; alliance of the proletariat with millions of peasants; security of proletarian leadership in relation to the peasants. After enumerating these four purely political conditions, Lenin arrives at the conclusion that these are “all that is necessary and sufficient” for the building of socialism. But, adds Lenin right there and then, “it is not yet the construction of a socialist society.” Why not? Lenin answers this question in a subsequent passage: because the political conditions alone, even if they are met, do not solve the problem, the productive and cultural premises are inadequate. In Lenin’s words:

“Strictly speaking, there is “only” one thing we have left to do and that is to make our people so “enlightened” that they understand all the advantages of everybody participating in the work of the cooperatives, and organize this participation. “Only” that. There are now no other devices needed to advance to socialism. But to achieve this “only”, there must be a veritable revolution—the entire people must go through a period of cultural development.” [60](Lenin’s italics.)

Note the emphasis on the word “only”, which is also repeated thrice. Lenin is emphasizing this word “only” in order to show the importance of the prerequisites Russia lacks.

At the end of the article he again repeats:

“This cultural revolution would now suffice to make our country a completely socialist country; but it presents immense difficulties of a purely cultural (for we are illiterate) and material character (for to be cultured we must achieve a certain development of the material means of production, we must have a certain material base).” [61]

Thus, this article too does not contain the slightest hint about building socialism in isolation. Lenin here too points out that the productive and cultural premises are just not there. And, as he asserted most categorically, in innumerable articles and speeches, from 1905 to 1923, for these conditions to be met, the world revolution is a must, the task of building a socialist society is in essence an international task. Even though it is not necessary, for the point is more than proven, one last quotation is given below, because it is of the same last period of Lenin’s creative work (On Cooperation was written in January 1923). In March 1923, Lenin wrote: “We stand ... at the present moment before the question: shall we succeed in holding out with our petty and very petty peasant production, with our ruined condition, until the west European capitalist countries complete their development to socialism?” [62]

Trotsky concludes, sardonically: That faith in the international revolution – according to Stalin a “distrust in the inner forces of the Russian Revolution” – went with the great internationalist to his grave. Only after pinning Lenin down under a mausoleum, were the Stalin school of falsifiers able to nationalise his views.

iv) Trotsky’s Comments on: Stalin’s Interpretation of the Law of Uneven Development of Capitalism

Trotsky commented in detail on this formulation by Stalin in his work The Draft Program of the Communist International – A Criticism of Fundamentals, written in 1928. In this writing, he presented a critique of the draft program of the Comintern authored by Bukharin and Stalin and submitted to the Sixth Congress of the Comintern (July-September 1928).

Trotsky first observes that the draft states that “the unevenness of economic and political development is an unconditional law of capitalism. This unevenness becomes still more accentuated and aggravated in the epoch of imperialism.” He points out that this formulation, which is correct, in part condemns Stalin’s recent formulation of the question, according to which both Marx and Engels were ignorant of the law of uneven development which was allegedly first discovered by Lenin. He further adds that though the text of the draft had taken a step forward in this respect, nevertheless, what the draft said about the law of uneven development was in essence one-sided and inadequate.

In the first place, writes Trotsky, it would have been more correct to say that the entire history of mankind is governed by the law of uneven development. Capitalism finds various sections of mankind at different stages of development. It gradually gains mastery over the inherited unevenness, breaking and altering it, employing therein its own means and methods. In contrast to the economic systems that preceded it, capitalism inherently and constantly aims at economic expansion, at the penetration of new territories, the surmounting of economic differences, the conversion of self-sufficient provincial and national economies into a system of financial interrelationships. Thereby it brings about their rapprochement and equalizes the economic and cultural levels of the most progressive and the most backward countries.

In drawing the countries economically closer to one another and leveling out their stages of development, capitalism however operates by anarchistic methods. These constantly undermine its own work, set one country against another, one branch of industry against another, developing some parts of the world economy while hampering and throwing back the development of others.

Only the correlation of these two fundamental tendencies – both of which arise from the very nature of capitalism – can explain the living texture of the historical process in the period of pre-monopoly capitalism.

Trotsky continues: Imperialism, thanks to the universality, penetrability, mobility and the break-neck speed of the formation of finance capital as the driving force of imperialism, lends vigor to both these tendencies. Imperialism links up incomparably more rapidly and more deeply the individual national and continental units into a single entity, bringing them into the closest and most vital dependence upon each other and rendering their economic methods, social forms, and levels of development more identical. At the same time, it attains this “goal” by such antagonistic methods, such tiger-leaps, and such raids upon backward countries and areas that the unification and leveling of world economy which it has effected, is upset by it even more violently and convulsively than in the preceding epochs.

Such is the dialectical understanding of the law of uneven development, concludes Trotsky. He remarks: Stalin, however, understands this law in a purely mechanical way; proceeding from this one-sided characterization of the law, Stalin says that from this it directly and immediately follows that the victory of socialism is possible in one isolated capitalist country. But this conclusion does not follow at all, says Trotsky; Stalin is trying to deduce from the law of uneven development something which the law does not and cannot imply. Uneven or sporadic development of various countries acts constantly to upset, but in no case to eliminate, the growing economic bonds and interdependence between those countries. Which is why, the very next day after the first world war, after four years of hellish slaughter, the combatant countries were compelled to exchange bread, coal, oil and powder with each other.

Because of the two fundamental and antagonistic tendencies of capitalism, Marx and Engels, even prior to the imperialist epoch, had arrived at the conclusion that on the one hand, unevenness, i.e., sporadic historical development, stretches the proletarian revolution through an entire epoch in the course of which nations will enter the revolutionary flood one after another; while, on the other hand, the organic interdependence of the several countries, developing toward an international division of labor, excludes the possibility of building socialism in one country. Such is the Marxian doctrine, which posits that the socialist revolution can begin only on a national basis, while the building of socialism in one country is impossible. In the modern epoch, when imperialism has developed, deepened and sharpened both these antagonistic tendencies, this Marxian doctrine has been rendered doubly and trebly true. [63]

v) More on “Socialism in One Country”

In his critique of the Draft Program of the Comintern submitted in Bukharin’s and Stalin’s name to the Sixth Congress of the Comintern, Trotsky wrote:

“The proletariat of Czarist Russia could not have taken power in October if Russia had not been a link—the weakest link, but a link, nevertheless —in the chain of world economy. The seizure of power by the proletariat has not at all excluded the Soviet republic from the system of the international division of labor created by capitalism...

“At the Eleventh Congress, that is, at the last Congress at which Lenin had the opportunity to speak to the party, he issued a timely warning that the party would have to undergo another test: ‘ ... a test to which we shall be put by the Russian and international market to which we are subordinated, with which we are connected and from which we cannot escape.’” [64]

Nearly a decade after the October Revolution, the dependence of the economy, including the industry, of the young Soviet Republic upon foreign trade is evident from an article devoted to the system of planning in the journal Planned Economy (the theoretical organ of the State Planning Commission): “ ... in drawing up our control figures for the current year we had to take methodologically our export and import plans as a starting point for the entire plan; we had to orient ourselves on that in our plans for the various branches of industry and consequently for industry in general and particularly for the construction of new industrial enterprises,” etc., etc. (January 1927, p. 27.) [65]

Trotsky remarks: These lines, just these lines alone, deal a deathblow to the theory of an isolated “complete socialism”.

The capitalist world through its imports and exports has other means of intervention in the Soviet Republic, besides military intervention, wrote Trotsky. He added: the new theory of the Stalin school has made a point of honour of the freakish idea that the USSR can perish from military intervention, but never from its own economic backwardness. The question arises: why should military intervention threaten us with disaster? “Because the enemy is infinitely stronger in his technology,” replies Trotsky; “Bukharin concedes the preponderance of the productive forces only in their military technical aspect. He does not want to understand that a Ford tractor is just as dangerous as a Creusot gun, with the sole difference that while the gun can function only from time to time, the tractor brings its pressure to bear upon us constantly. Besides, the tractor knows that a gun stands behind it, as a last resort.” He quotes Lenin:

“So long as our Soviet Republic remains an isolated borderland surrounded by the entire capitalist world, so long will it be an absolutely ridiculous fantasy and utopianism to think of our complete economic independence and of the disappearance of any of our dangers.”

Thus, Trotsky explains, the chief dangers arise from the objective position of the U.S.S.R. as the “ isolated borderland” in a capitalist economy which is hostile to us. These dangers may, however, diminish or increase. This depends on the action of two factors: our socialist construction on the one hand, and the development of capitalist economy on the other hand. In the last analysis, the second factor, that is, the fate of world capitalism –- that is to say, upon its stagnation, upsurge or collapse, or in other words, upon the course of world economy and world revolution -- is, of course, of decisive significance. [66]

Trotsky analyses the theory of socialism in one country from yet another angle. The Draft Program (of Bukharin and Stalin) says in its introduction:

“Imperialism ... aggravates to an exceptional degree the contradiction between the growth of the national productive forces of world economy and national state barriers.”

Trotsky writes: “But it is precisely this proposition which excludes, rejects and sweeps away a priori the theory of socialism in one country as a reactionary theory ... The productive forces are incompatible with national boundaries. Hence flow not only foreign trade, the export of men and capital, the seizure of territories, the colonial policy, and the last imperialist war, but also the economic impossibility of a self-sufficient socialist society. The productive forces of capitalist countries have long since broken through the national boundaries. Socialist society, however, can be built only on the most advanced productive forces, ... From Marx on, we have been constantly repeating that capitalism cannot cope with the spirit of new technology to which it has given rise and which tears asunder not only the integument of bourgeois private property rights but, as the war of 1914 has shown, also the national hoops of the bourgeois state. Socialism, however, must not only take over from capitalism the most highly developed productive forces but must immediately carry them onward, raise them to a higher level and give them a state of development such as has been unknown under capitalism. The question arises: how then can socialism drive the productive forces back into the boundaries of a national state which they have violently sought to break through under capitalism?” [67]

3. OUR COMMENTS

“The basis for the theory of socialism in one country, as we have seen, sums up to sophistic interpretations of several lines from Lenin on the one hand, and to a scholastic interpretation of the “law of uneven development” on the other,” wrote Trotsky; “By giving a correct interpretation of the historic law as well as of the quotations in question we arrive at a directly opposite conclusion, that is, the conclusion that was reached by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and all of us, including Stalin and Bukharin, up to 1925.” [68]

Trotsky is absolutely correct. He has analysed each and every quotation given by Stalin (which are in any case very few in number), and shown that Stalin has torn them out of their context and distorted their meaning to suit his thesis.

Trotsky has given innumerable quotations from the writings and speeches of Lenin, right unto Lenin’s last writings in 1923, and not only that, also from Stalin’s and Bukharin’s writings up to 1924, to establish that the theoretical formulation that ‘the problem of a socialist transformation of society was in its very essence international, that Soviet Russia can advance towards socialism only with the direct cooperation of the west, only after the victory of the world revolution’ was a fundamental doctrine of the Bolshevik Party right up to 1924. Trotsky convincingly demonstrates that there is not even a hint of the theory of “victoriously building socialism in a separate country” in any of Lenin’s writings. He also explains theoretically why this is so, why it is an ABC truth of Marxism that the socialist revolution is and can only be international in character; simultaneously, he has also demolished the theoretical formulation given by Stalin in support of his theory of ‘building socialism in an isolated country’.

On the other hand, Stalin has not refuted a single quotation from Lenin’s writings given by Trotsky. He dismisses these quotations, saying that:

“(Trotsky has) cited one batch of quotations from Lenin’s works which say that the danger of intervention can be overcome only by the victory of the revolution in several countries, evidently thinking thereby to “expose” the Party. But he does not realise, or will not realise, that these quotations testify not against the Party’s position, but for it and against his own position, because the Party’s estimate of the relative importance of the danger from abroad fully agrees with Lenin’s line. Trotsky cited another batch of quotations which say that the complete victory of socialism is impossible without the victory of the revolution in several countries, and he tried to juggle with these quotations in every possible way. But he does not realise, or will not realise, that the complete victory of socialism (guarantee against intervention) must not be confused with the victory of socialism in general (the complete building of a socialist society); he does not realise, or will not realise, that these quotations from the works of Lenin testify not against the Party, but for it and against his own position.” [69]

We have given Trotsky’s arguments in considerable detail above. It’s obvious that Stalin is distorting Trotsky’s position. Trotsky has not given two separate batches of quotations from Lenin’s works; all the quotations repeat the same point consistently. That is why Stalin has not even attempted to analyse even a single quotation given by Trotsky, he can only dismiss Trotsky’s arguments through general, vague statements.

References

[1] J. V. Stalin, Concerning Questions of Leninism, On The Opposition, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, pp.318-319

[2] J. V. Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism, Problems of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1976, p. 37

[3] J. V. Stalin, Concerning Questions of Leninism, op. cit., pp. 321-322

[4] J. V. Stalin, The Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the E.C.C.I., On The Opposition, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, p.542

[5] J. V. Stalin, The Social-Democratic Deviation in our Party, On The Opposition, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, pp.399-400

[6] Ibid., p. 402

[7] Ibid., p. 403; see also: J. V. Stalin, The Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the E.C.C.I., op. cit., pp. 543-544

[8] J. V. Stalin, The Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the E.C.C.I., ibid., pp.544-545

[9] Ibid., p. 545; and also: J. V. Stalin, The Social-Democratic Deviation in our Party, op. cit., p. 404

[10] J. V. Stalin, The Results of the Work of the Fourteenth Conference of the RCP (B), On The Opposition, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, pp. 212-213

[11] J. V. Stalin, The Social-Democratic Deviation in our Party, op. cit., pp. 404-405

[12] Ibid., p. 405

[13] J. V. Stalin, The Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the E.C.C.I., op. cit., p. 545; see also: J. V. Stalin, The Social-Democratic Deviation in our Party, op. cit., pp. 405-406

[14] J. V. Stalin, The Social-Democratic Deviation in our Party, op. cit., pp. 406-407

[15] J. V. Stalin, The Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the E.C.C.I., op. cit., pp. 546-547

[16] J. V. Stalin, The Social-Democratic Deviation in our Party, op. cit., p. 408

[17] Ibid., p. 395

[18] Ibid., pp. 395-397; see also: Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1970, p. 18

[19] J. V. Stalin, The Social-Democratic Deviation in our Party, ibid., p. 395

[20] J. V. Stalin, The Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the E.C.C.I., op. cit., p. 615

[21] Ibid., p. 617; see also J. V. Stalin, The Social-Democratic Deviation in our Party, op. cit., pp. 399-400

[22] J. V. Stalin, The Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the E.C.C.I., op. cit., pp. 617-618

[23] J. V. Stalin, Reply to the discussion on the report on “The Social-Democratic Deviation in our Party”, On The Opposition, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, pp. 471-474

[24] Ibid., pp. 484-485

[25] J. V. Stalin, Concerning Questions of Leninism, op. cit., pp. 322-324

[26] Leon Trotsky, Socialism in a Separate Country, “The History of the Russian Revolution, Appendix II”, Victor Gollancz Ltd., London, 1934, pp. 1219-1221

[27] Ibid., pp. 1223-1224

[28] Ibid., pp. 1225-1226

[29] Ibid., pp. 1226-1227

[30] Ibid., p. 1227

[31] Ibid., pp. 1227-1229

[32] Ibid., pp. 1229-1230

[33] Ibid., p. 1230

[34] Ibid., p. 1231

[35] Ibid., pp. 1232-1233

[36] Ibid., pp. 1233-1234

[37] Ibid., pp. 1234-1235

[38] Ibid., pp. 1235-1236

[39] Ibid., p. 1237

[40] Ibid., pp. 1237-1239

[41] Ibid., p. 1238

[42] Ibid., p. 1241

[43] These quotations are given in the previous section on Stalin’s views on ‘history of the question of socialism in one country.’

[44] Ibid., pp. 1242-1243

[45] J. V. Stalin, The Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the E.C.C.I., op. cit., p.546

[46] Leon Trotsky, Socialism in a Separate Country, op. cit., p. 1244

[47] Ibid., pp. 1246-1247

[48] Ibid., pp. 1247-1249

[49] J. V. Stalin, The Social-Democratic Deviation in our Party, op. cit., p. 403

[50] Leon Trotsky, Socialism in a Separate Country, op. cit., p. 1249

[51] Ibid., p. 1250

[52] Ibid., p. 1254

[53] Ibid., pp. 1254-1255

[54] Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, op. cit., pp. 38-39

[55] Ibid., p. 39

[56] Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1972, p.299

[57] Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, op. cit., pp. 25-27

[58] Leon Trotsky, Socialism in a Separate Country, op. cit., p. 1251

[59] Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, op. cit., pp. 31-32

[60] V. I. Lenin, On Cooperation, Selected Works in Three Volumes, Vol. 3, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, p.700

[61] Ibid., p. 704

[62] Leon Trotsky, Socialism in a Separate Country, op. cit., p. 1252

[63] Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, op. cit., pp. 18-22

[64] Ibid., p. 46

[65] Ibid., p. 47

[66] Ibid., pp. 48-49

[67] Ibid., pp. 52-53

[68] Ibid., p. 51

[69] J. V. Stalin, The Social-Democratic Deviation in our Party, op. cit., p. 484-485

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