Stalin and the Proletariat's Battle for Democracy
2023 Update
The content of this article, published in 2018, is overall in the correct track. However, there was room for improvement. The improvement can be viewed in my 2023 book "The History of the USSR & the Peoples' Democracies," which provides more evidence, a sharper and more precise portrayal of reality, and a stronger historical materialist analysis of the character of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its relations to democratization.
Saed
August 10, 2023
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The bourgeois press symbolizes Stalin as history’s most tyrannical, most murderous dictator. The propaganda is so strong that some self-described ‘Marxist-Leninists’ partially buy into the lie – that Stalin’s “rule” was “autocratic” or “authoritarian.” Such assertions could not be farther from the truth.
Not only was Stalin not a dictator, he in fact launched a campaign to democratize the USSR. This article provides a timeline of Stalin’s struggle to entrench the power of the proletariat in the polity, by further democratizing the socialist state.
1918: The first Soviet constitution was written. Article Four of the 1918 Soviet constitution allowed only workers, farmers, and exploited classes to vote. The "reactionary classes" could not vote. This was justified on grounds that the USSR was in a state of war and the government of the proletariat could not permit its class enemies to vote. This would later change.
1921: A "pro-democracy" colour revolution backed by Finnish and French imperialists and led by the White Guards in Kronstad was crushed by the Bolsheviks. The Kronstad colour revolution which - according to declassified Finnish military intelligence documents - hosted "anarchists," white guards, and imperialists was picked up by Western propagandist "critics" of the USSR as supposed "evidence" that Soviet Vanguardism was hostile to democracy and socialism. This colour revolution was supposed "proof" that Lenin abolished the workers' councils and Soviet democracy!
Yet, a Finnish military intelligence document from the “National Center in Finland” with the title "Memorandum on the Question of Organizing an Uprising in Kronstad," was declassified years after the Kronstad Uprising. This formerly “Top Secret” document – as described in page 105-107 of the book Kronstad, 1921 written by anarchist historian Paul Avrich and published by Princeton University Press in 1970 – confirmed the Bolshevik claim that Kronstad “revolutionaries,” who posed themselves as anarchists and pro-democracy rebels, were White Guards directed by the Finnish and French military units against the Bolsheviks.
Contrary to the anti-Soviet claims, there is no evidence that Lenin abolished the Soviets of Workers’ and Peasants’ deputies. In fact, these Soviets were enshrined in the Soviet Constitution (1918).
1922: A census showed that only 15% of the Party members worked in manual industrial jobs whereas some 65% worked in "white-collar" jobs (Siegelbaum). There was critique of the Vanguard Party for being an exclusive and 'elitist' party of just intellectuals, increasingly separate from the working masses (Furr 2005).
1923: Stalin and his supporters in the Party began the "Lenin Enrollment" Program. The program was attacked by the opportunist "left opposition” also known as the “Trotskyites.” The goal of this program was to recruit numerous workers and trade unionists into the communist party in order to counter the 'elitist' tendencies of the Vanguard Party members. By incorporating the working class into the Party, while politically educating these new members, the opportunist elements in the Party could be held more accountable.
Between the years 1924 and 1925, 638,070 new members entered the party, of which 69% were workers.
1926: Party membership rises to slightly above a million members, the overwhelming majority of the Party members now being workers.
Most of the new members were young male skilled workers. Most had experience in factory committees or trade unions. Half had served in the Red Army (Siegelbaum).
Intensive political education was provided for the new members. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union had become a Party of the proletarian masses (Furr 2005).
1928: The Communist Party began the First Five Year Program. In five years, 10% of agriculture was to be collectivized (CIA 1956). The strategy was to give generous loans and tech to the peasants as incentives to form agricultural cooperatives (Lenin 1923). According to page 2 of a CIA file titled “China: Socialization Speed-Up,” (see the Appendix for a screenshot of the CIA text) in just a matter of two years, 50% of the peasants applied for forming agricultural collectives! The generous state aid to the peasants helped them mass produce agricultural products which caused agricultural goods to become dramatically cheaper in the cooperative markets. The cheaper price caused the petty bourgeois kulaks to go bankrupt. As a response, the kulaks began burning farms in order to increase the price of agriculture, and this led to a famine in Ukraine (Puntis 2016). The state cracked down on these kulak rebels, either executing some of these saboteurs or sending them to prisons. The workers’ state had launched a class struggle against the bourgeois elements in the rural areas (Puntis 2016).
State investments in heavy industry and welfare, armed by scientific central planning and financed by taxing the cooperatives got the USSR on the path of rapid growth. The capitalist class had lost the battle for the mode of production. It was time to further democratize the Soviet State.
1929: The opportunist "Left opposition" had resisted the proletarianization of the Party - i.e. the process of recruiting workers into the CP (Siegelbaum). The "Left" Opposition was led by Trotsky. After being demoted several times, Trotsky was exiled from the USSR.
1936: The Soviet leaders – not just Stalin himself – wrote a new constitution, establishing universal suffrage (in contrast to the previous constitution), secret ballot, and elections for all the major governing bodies. The candidates for elections could only be from proletarian institutions such as CP members, unions and cooperatives, hence to ensure Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Stalin 1936).
Besides these however, Stalin was pushing for a very significant reform: multi-candidate elections. Despite long hours of debates, discussions, and much of effort to push for multi-candidate elections, it seems like the Party elites did not accept such democratization (Ploss 2010). Part of the fear was that counter-revolutionaries could more easily worm themselves in. (Lomb 2018).
Stalin's goal from the multi-candidate elections was to increase accountability and to keep the parasitic elements in the Party more easily in check. As one may expect, he did not have enough allies in the Party for multi-candidate elections, which caused his proposal to be rejected (Furr 2005). A fair critique of the USSR would be the lack of accountability of the Party members and the lack of multi-candidate elections. The fact that the USSR did not have multi-candidate elections is what led to the rift between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the working masses, leading to the opportunist downslide of the CPSU since the death of Stalin.
Soon after, the Bloc of the ‘Bukharinites’ (i.e. a term used to describe the 1930s version of Gorbachevites and Dengists) and Trotskyites joined each other to stage a coup so to topple the Soviet State. Finding out about this plot, the Soviet leadership quickly neutralized this conspiracy and punished the coup perpetrators in a process known as the "Moscow Trials." While Western imperialist media calls these "Show Trials," US Ambassador to Moscow at the time, in his diaries wrote that the trials were real and legitimate, and that there really was a coup plan.
The following is a quote from pages 37 to 38 of US Ambassador Joseph Davies’ 1941 diaries book “The Mission to Moscow”:
“Naturally I must confess that I was predisposed against the credibility of the testimony of these defendants… Viewed objectively, however, and based upon my experience in the trial of cases and the application of the tests of credibility which past experience had afforded me, I arrived at the reluctant conclusion that the state had established its case, at least to the extent of proving the existence of a widespread conspiracy and plot among the political leaders against the Soviet government, and which under their statutes established the crimes set forth in the indictment.”
On page 177 he adds that the “extraordinary testimony of … Bukharin, and the rest would appear to indicate that the Kremlin's fears were well justified. For it now seems that a plot existed in the beginning of November 1936, to project a coup d’état, with Tukhatchevsky at its head, for May of the following year."
There was a real coup planned in order to halt the efforts to democratize the Soviet State. The coup perpetrators were Bukharinites – who opposed collectivization, central planning, and the increasing democratization of the state – and the ultra-left Trotskyites.
1937: From February 22 to March 5, the Communist Party held a historic plenum. At this time, the hunt for the spies, Trotskyites, and Bukharinites was still on. Nikolai Yezhov, appointed as the head of the NKVD in September 1936 had arrested more than 1,000 officials in the industrial sector for industrial sabotage. The Second Moscow Trials occurred, with the new Trotskyites being prosecuted for collaboration with fascist Germany and causing industrial damage.
Zhdanov again gave a speech in support of multi-candidate elections, intra-Party democracy, replacing lists with candidates, elections at every level of the Party hierarchy, the involvement of the working masses in government, and the promotion of ‘criticism and self criticism’.
During the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party, Nikolai Shvernik, the head of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (VTsSPS) delivered his speech to the delegates of the Plenum. Shvernik pointed out that saboteurs had seized leadership positions in the trade unions. Stalin was shocked. Shvernik then proceeded by arguing that the trade unions needed democratic reform as well, perhaps much more than the Party (Goldman 2005).
It was from this moment that the struggle for union democracy began. The Party plenum intensified the class struggle for entrenching the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat. In less than three weeks after the Party Plenum, the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (VTsSPS) had its own plenum. The themes discussed in the Party Plenum were also disseminated throughout the VTsSPS – the need to combat the bureaucratic perversions, arrogance, and unaccountability. The call for the democratization of the unions, not surprisingly, involved clashes with the oppositionist saboteurs. The struggle for proletarian democracy was married to the purges of the bourgeois oppositionists within trade union organizations.
Workers complained about the lack of safety, the fact that the union meetings were about anything but the demands of the workers, the undemocratic leadership of the unions, the poor factory conditions, and the discrimination against women in the workplace. Throughout the ranks of the union organizations, every member was criticizing his or her superiors, and the critique would go all the way to the top leadership (Goldman 2005).
In the sixth Plenum of the VTsSPS, it was decided to provide secret-ballot elections, to replace the voting by list with individual candidates, to bring about multi-candidate elections, and to promote the process of “criticism and self-criticism.” Before the union elections, every union central and factory committee was to send a report on the members’ activities, criticize and self-criticize, and provide suggestions for the newly elected leadership.
Factory committees in the larger enterprises then had specific Soviets designated for social insurance and monitoring the proper management of funds, and the managers’ observation of laws on overtime pay, vacation and rest. The control of the funds was to be democratized and decentralized. The workers’ control of the social insurance provided a fairer and prompter distribution.
The workers did not take control over the factories and manage it by themselves, because doing so would have come in conflict with the Marxist principle of scientific central planning, and the Leninist emphasis on one-man management. Nevertheless, clearly the workers had real unionized power.
Providing multi-candidate elections at every level, from top to bottom allowed the workers to democratically replace the corrupt saboteurs with accountable leaders. An example of the success of this union democracy can be provided with the statistics of the trade unions in the woolen industry. 65% of the approximately 1,300 people elected in 195 factory committees were new to their leadership positions. 43% had no experience in union activities. Almost 50% of the old factory chairmen were replaced. More than a thousand people were elected to shop committees; another thousand became shop organizers. There was an unprecedented level of voluntary participation by the working class, causing the paid officials in the shops to be replaced with volunteers (Goldman 2005).
Factory committees met frequently to discuss life conditions for workers. More than half of the new 41-member central committee of the industry was composed of Stakhnovite workers as opposed to Party members. Such sweeping changes in the union leadership did not just occur in the Woolen Workers’ unions; they were replicated in other industries as well. During the fall of 1937, 23,300 delegates attended congresses held by 116 trade unions. Democracy was once again married with purges of the corrupt union officials, with intense periods of criticism against bureaucrats occurring. According to Goldman (p. 1445), “[m]ore than 70 percent of the old factory committee members, 66 percent of the 94,000 factory committee chairmen, and 92 percent of the 30,723 members of the regional committee plenums had been replaced.” While many elected union leaders at top positions were from white collar workers, technicians, etc. the primary-level union organizations had blue-collar workers in their elected leadership. As Goldman (p.1445) points out, “65 percent of those elected were Stakhanovites or shock workers; in the shop committees, 62 percent; in the factory committees, 45 percent, and in the regional committees, 25 percent.”
Goldman adds (p. 1446):
There was also a much fairer distribution of income throughout the union leadership, with the effort to distribute wages according to labour.
Over the next two years, the proletarian class struggle against corruption inside the unions would continue, with the working class achieving many gains.
On December 12, first Soviet elections based on the 1936 constitution took place. The constitution would have some minor amendment years later. While the struggle for multi-candidate union elections had succeeded, such a struggle in the government unfortunately did not succeed. This was a factor that led to the reduced accountability of the CPSU – thus the take over of the corrupt revisionist oligarchy in the post-Stalin Soviet Union.
1956: Three years after Stalin’s death, the CIA published a long report titled “The Management of the Soviet Industrial Enterprise.” In pages 59 to 62 of that report, the CIA confirmed the active role of the factory committees. The managers and the workers would frequently meet to discuss the needs of the workers, and the discussions would be led by Party officials. The workers also could file complaints against abusive managers and succeed in their case.
References
Article Four. (n.d.). Retrieved August 28, 2018, from https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/constitution/1918/article4.htm
Avrich, P. (2014). Kronstadt, 1921. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Pres.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (1956, April 4). CHINA: 'SOCIALIZATION' SPEED-UP. Retrieved April 1, 2018, from https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79R00890A000700040019-6.pdf
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (1956, August 7). MANAGEMENT OF THE SOVIET INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES. Retrieved May 7, 2018, from https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000969891.pdf
Furr, G. (2005). Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform. Retrieved August 1, 2018, from https://clogic.eserver.org/grover-furr-stalin-and-struggle-democratic-reform-part-one-0
Goldman, W. (2005, December). Stalinist Terror and Democracy: The 1937 Union Campaign. Retrieved August 3, 2018.
Siegelbaum, L. (2016, January 04). Lenin Enrollment. Retrieved August 6, 2018, from http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1924-2/lenin-enrollment/
Lenin, V. (n.d.). On Cooperation (1923). Retrieved February 10, 2018, from https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/06.htm
Lomb, S. (2018). Stalin's constitution: Soviet participatory politics and the discussion of the 1936 draft constitution. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Ploss, S. I. (2010). The roots of perestroika: The Soviet breakdown in historical context. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Company. Page 62 explains Stalin’s struggle for democratization.
Puntis, J. (2016, February 17). Retrieved June 15, 2018, from http://stalinsociety.net/?p=114
Stalin, J. V. (n.d.). Constitution (Fundamental law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Retrieved August 2, 2018, from https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/12/05.htm
Appendix – CIA Files’ Screenshots
CHINA: 'SOCIALIZATION' SPEED-UP; Page 2
Management of Soviet Industrial Enterprise – Pages 59 to 62
