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New International, August 1939

A Graphic History of Bolshevism

From New International, Vol.5 No.8, August 1939, pp.240-243.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

PRINTED BELOW IS THE history of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party in statistical form. These tables, carefully compiled from data in the Soviet press, are eloquent enough in themselves. But it would not be superfluous to append a brief commentary as an introduction to them.

Beginning with the Sixth Party Congress (July 1917) there were thirteen party congresses held in a period of 22 years. Between the Sixth and the Seventh Congresses eight months elapsed. The next six congresses were held at intervals of one year; furthermore, under Lenin this interval fixed in the party statutes was very rigidly observed. Thereafter, the schedule was violated. The Twelfth Congress was convened in April 1923 and the Thirteenth was held in May 1924, after a month’s delay. The next congress, the Fourteenth, was held only in December 1925, that is, one year and a half later. The Fifteenth Party Congress at which the Left Opposition was expelled from the party convened in December 1927, that is, two years after the Fourteenth. Violations of the party statutes had already become the rule. The Sixteenth Congress was called only after a lapse of two and a half years, in June 1930. But even this interval was found to be too brief. The Seventeenth Party Congress was called after three years and eight months had elapsed. Finally, the last Congress – the Eighteenth – was held in March of this year, more than five years after the preceding one.

This prolongation of time intervals was of coarse no accident. In the years of the revolution and the civil war the party found it possible to adhere to its own statutes; the Central Committee remained an organ subject to the control of the party. The Central Committee began to rise above the party simultaneously with the rise of the Soviet bureaucracy over the workers’ state. The control of the party, however terrorized, became an irksome fetter for the Central Committee. The intervals between the Congresses were henceforth determined to an ever larger measure by the administrative exigencies of the ruling nucleus in the Central Committee, that is, Stalin’s clique. Thus, the Fourteenth Congress was convened after a half year’s delay in connection with the internal struggle in the “troika” (Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev). Before presenting himself at the Congress, Stalin had to make sure of his majority in the provinces. It was no longer a question of solving controversial issues, nor of exercizing control over the CC but of setting the seal of approval on accomplished facts. The Fifteenth Congress was convened for the sole purpose of drawing the balance sheet of the strangulation of the Left Opposition. The time for its convocation was determined by this very task. An identical task was fulfilled by the Sixteenth Congress, this time, in relation to the Right opposition. The Seventeenth Congress was called only after the crisis in collectivization had passed its acutest phases and the CC was already in position to report certain “consoling” items. Finally, the Eighteenth Congress was convened after the purges of Yagoda, Yezhov and Berya had succeeded in rooting out opposition, in terrorizing the party, and reconstituting the ruling apparatus in the state and the army. The interrelationship between the party and the apparatus has been stood completely on its head.

The choice of the personnel of the CC was not left to chance but came as the result of years of work, testing and selection. It was only in the nature of things that a stable nucleus should be formed in the personnel of the CC which was reelected from one year to the next. The CC was renewed on the one hand by the dying out of the older men and on the other by the coming to the fore of young forces. Generally speaking, as appears from Table No.I, from 60% to 86% of the outgoing CC composed the members of the incoming committees up to the Seventeenth Congress. The foregoing statement must be qualified to this effect that these bare percentages do not of themselves provide a sufficiently correct picture of the actual process whereby the CC had been renewed. During the first seven congresses – from the Sixth to the Twelfth – one and the same nucleus was in reality reflected, and the changes in the composition of the CC amounted to the inclusion of new elements who were then subjected to test and selection. The Thirteenth Congress marked a breaking point. In the initial period of Thermidor, changes in the political character of the Bolshevik staff were attained through an artificial expansion of the CC, i.e., by a dilution of the old revolutionists with new office-holders grateful for a rapid career and firmly clinging to the coat-tails of the General Secretary. Up to 1923 the number of members of the CC varied between 15 and 27. From 1923 on, it was increased first to 40 and later to 71. Stalin’s clique found it easier at the outset to introduce docile or semi-docile novices into the CC than to remove immediately the basic nucleus of Lenin’s party. Toward the latter part of 1927 a stabilization was achieved in point of the number of members but there began a shunting of the old Leninist nucleus. However, even as pariahs, the old Bolsheviks represented a political danger. A far greater danger was the growth of the Fourth International. Stalin in his own fashion “combined” these two dangers so as to cope with them through the medium of Yagoda and Yezhov. The shunting aside of old Bolsheviks as well as the revolutionists of the new generation was supplanted by a drive to exterminate them physically.

Of necessity, these complex processes are abstracted from Table No.I. It only registers in figures the proportions to which each new Central Committee was renewed. As we have already observed, up to a certain time each CC passed on to its successor from 60% to 86.6% of its personnel. In the last five years we find this continuity violently disrupted. The Eighteenth Congress held in March of this year took over from the outgoing CC only 22.5% of its members! The personnel of the CC which in the preceding eleven years had smashed the Left Opposition and then the United opposition and then the Right opposition and had secured the complete “monolithism” of Stalin’s party thus proved to have consisted of more than three-quarters traitors, betrayers, or just plain “enemies of the people”.

Table No.II shows how many members from the staff of each of the preceding twelve Central Committees have been preserved in the composition of the present Central Committee; and it also registers the fate suffered by the members who were removed. As an instance in point we take the Central Committee that was elected in August, 1917 and which led the October revolution. This historical staff consisted of 21 members. Of them only one remains at the present time in the party leadership – Stalin. Seven have died of disease or have fallen at the hands of the enemy (we shall not engage in a dispute over the causes). Shot or condemned to the firing squad – seven; three have disappeared during the purges; three others have been liquidated politically – and perhaps also physically; a total of thirteen, that is, almost 62% of the participants in the October staff turned out to be “enemies of the people”.

Stalin here provides a statistical confirmation sui generis of the hoary theory of Miliukov-Kerensky that the October revolution was the handiwork of the agents of the German General Staff.

The Tenth Congress, held in March 1921, which launched the “New Economic Policy”, elected a Central Committee of 24 members. At the present time, participating in the leadership are five of them, that is, about 20%. Fifteen members, that is 62.5% have been liquidated physically and politically. The Fifteenth Congress which expelled the “Trotskyists” in December, 1927 established a Central Committee of 71 members. Of them, ten have remained at the present time in the party leadership, i.e., 14%; fifty men have been liquidated, i.e., over 70%. Of the personnel of the CC established by the Sixteenth Congress (1930), 76% have been exterminated physically and politically. Lastly, of the 71 members of the CC elected by the Seventeenth Congress (1934), only 16 souls now remain in the leadership; 48 have been liquidated, i.e., 67.6%. We cannot tell as yet just how or to what extent the incumbent CC will be extirpated, but its horoscope is a dark one.

In the sphere of candidates the purges have taken even a more devastating toll. At the last Congress less than 12% of the candidates to the previous CC were reflected; 86.7% of the candidates have been liquidated physically and politically. In almost all the congresses we observe the workings of one and the same law: the proportion of re-elected candidates is smaller while the proportion of those liquidated is much larger than the corresponding proportions among the actual members. This fact is of exceptional interest: the fate of the candidates, recruited from among new party cadres, indicates the direction in which the new party bureaucracy is developing. Contrary to the constantly reiterated assertions that the youth is unconditionally “loyal” to Stalin it turns out that the proportion of “traitors”, “betrayers” and generally unreliable elements among the young cadres is even larger than among the personnel of the old guard. This is the irrefutable testimony of figures! However, the difference lies in this, that the “criminals” from among the old guard were in most instances guilty of devotion to the revolutionary tradition, whereas the “criminals” from among the young bureaucracy are apparently pulling more resolutely than Stalin himself in the direction of class society. But both the former and the latter are dangerous!

The changes in the composition of the CC were accompanied by even more drastic changes in its role. The old Bolshevik CC was the undisputed leader of the party and was most conscientious in its attitude toward questions of theory and the voice of the workers. The incumbent CC has no independent meaning whatever. It is handpicked as an auxiliary to the ruling nucleus, and it is altered by the nucleus in the interval between the Congresses. Changes in the personnel of the CC are effected through the state apparatus, or, to put it more correctly, through certain “secret” departments of this apparatus, above all the GPU Among the staff of 71 members of the incumbent CC there is Berya, the head of the GPU, and Vyshinsky, former chief prosecutor, now Molotov’s deputy. Berya’s past in the party is at best an obscure one. Vyshinsky’s past in the party is quite clear: he adhered to Menshevism in the “heroic” periods of his career, at a time when it was impossible not to belong to a “leftist” party; but for the most part he was an attorney for the oil trust. He appeared on the Soviet arena during the period of the crushing of the Trotskyist opposition. This individual did not become a Bonapartist lackey, he was born such. Stalin leans not upon the CC but on Berya, Vyshinsky and their assistants in whose presence the ordinary members of the CC quake.

From among the diplomats, the personnel of the latest CC includes Litvinov and Potemkin. Litvinov is an old Bolshevik who participated in the party from its day of foundation. Potemkin is a former bourgeois professor who joined the Bolsheviks after they were victorious; and who enjoyed, as an avowed and importunate courtier, the merited contempt of all those who knew him. Today Potemkin has not only replaced Litvinov as head of the diplomatic corps but he also plays a far more important part in the party line than does Litvinov. From among the old military men in the CC there is Budenny who has no essential ties with the party; and among the candidates there is the former General Shaposhnikov. [1] Shaposhnikov’s political physiognomy may be characterized by the fact that during the Soviet-Polish war, the then head of the War Department suspended the publication of the periodical Military Art (Voyennoye Dyelo) in which Shaposhnikov had printed an exceptionally coarse chauvinist article in the style of the good old Czarist days. Even as a military man, Shaposhnikov is lacking in any stature. He is a docile functionary of the Czarist General Staff, and nothing more; his political stature calls for absolutely no comments. Surviving the purge which has destroyed the flower of the commanding staff, Shaposhnikov is today along with Potemkin a figure symbolic of the Stalinist CC.

The Central Committee as a committee is a many-headed myth. It goes without saying, that the most important questions, such as purging the CC itself, cannot even be discussed in the Committee, inasmuch as 32.4% of its members cannot possibly pass a decision to destroy 67.6%. Such questions are decided by the Super-Central Committee of Stalin-Yagoda-Yezhov-Vishinsky. The fate of the party depends as little on the CC as the fate of the latter does on the party.

The Political Bureau, in its turn, does not at all depend on the CC. This is most glaringly demonstrated in the fact that the Political Bureau has undergone relatively little change in the Stalinist Era, while the CC “electing” it has been periodically subjected to extermination. But this immutable Political Bureau serves itself only as a more or less stable piece of decoration. It wields no power. In contrast to the CC, the Political Bureau is composed predominantly of old Bolsheviks. Of them, Stalin alone served as a member of the Political Bureau under Lenin; Kalinin was for a while a candidate. The majority of the remaining members, men like Molotov, Andreyev, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Mikoyan are by no means youngsters whose talents bloomed in the recent period. They were sufficiently well-known fifteen and even twenty years ago; but it was precisely for this reason that the idea never entered anyone’s mind that these people were capable of leading the party. They are kept in the Political Bureau primarliy because in the guise of “old Bolsheviks” they provide a species of cover for shysters of the Vyshinksy-Berya-Potemkin-et al. type. On every important question Stalin confronts his “Political Bureau” with an accomplished fact.

To sum up, on the basis of the tables printed below, we can draw two extremely important conclusions:

1. What is now being designated as party “monolithism” has acquired a social and political content which is the diametrical opposite of Bolshevism. A genuine Bolshevik party prides itself on its unanimity but only in the sense that it groups the vanguard of the workers on the basis of an irreconcilable revolutionary program. The party demarcates itself from all other tendencies along the line of the proletarian class struggle. The Stalinist party has the following characteristic trait: there is a systematic shift away from proletarian politics toward the policy of defending the privileged layers (the kulak, the Nepman, the bureaucrat – in the first period; the bureaucrat, the labor and kolkhoz aristocracy, in the second period). This social shift is intimately bound up with the recasting of the entire program both in domestic as well as world politics (the theory of socialism in one country, the struggle against equality, the defense of imperialist democracy, People’s Fronts, etc.) The ruling apparatus systematically adapts the party and its institutions to this changing program, that is, in the service of new and ever more privileged social tiers. The principal methods of this adaptation are the dictatorial purges. The monolithism of the party signifies today not its unity on the basis of the proletarian program but its docility to the apparatus that betrays this program. Renewals in the personnel of the CC have reflected and continue to reflect the social shift of the party from the oppressed to the oppressors.

2. The second conclusion is indissolubly linked with the first. The unimpeachable language of figures mercilessly refutes the assertion so current among the democratic intellectuals that Stalinism and Bolshevism are “one and the same”. Stalinism originated not as an organic outgrowth of Bolshevism but as a negation of Bolshevism consummated in blood. The process of this negation is mirrored very graphically in the history of the Central Committee. Stalinism had first to exterminate politically and then physically the leading cadres of Bolshevism in order to become that which it now is: an apparatus of the privileged, a brake upon historical progress, an agency of world imperialism. Stalinism and Bolshevism are mortal enemies.

Footnotes

1. Latest reports declare that Shaposhnikov has since been liquidated! – Ed.

2. Tables compiled by the Editorial Board of the Bulletin of the Opposition.

 
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