42. The Last Period of Struggle Within the Party¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 42: The Last Period of Struggle Within the Party¶
By January 1925, Trotsky had been removed as People’s Commissar of War, yielding without resistance. He was appointed to three unconnected posts—chairman of the Concessions Committee, head of the electro-technical board, and chairman of the scientific-technical board of industry—designed to isolate him from party life and submerge him in routine. He attempted to work honestly, visiting laboratories, studying technical subjects, and organising foreign experts for the Dnieper hydroelectric project. He also advanced a project for comparative indices of the Soviet and world economy, which implicitly attacked the theory of ‘socialism in a single country’. The Stalin apparatus sabotaged his work, making it impossible to obtain necessary resources, and Trotsky eventually insisted on being relieved of his technical responsibilities.
A new crisis soon emerged. Zinoviev and Kamenev, once part of the trio opposing Trotsky, now found themselves in opposition to Stalin. They accepted the basic principles of Trotsky’s platform, leading to a bloc. Trotsky warned them the struggle would be long and serious. In spring 1926, he travelled to Berlin for medical treatment under a diplomatic passport and the name Kuzmyenko, undergoing a tonsillectomy that failed to cure his fever. During his stay, the police claimed to have uncovered a plot against his life, though Trotsky suspected the incident was manufactured to demonstrate their importance. His Berlin stay coincided with the British general strike and Pilsudski’s coup in Poland, events that sharpened his disagreements with the epigones.
Stalin, Bukharin, and initially Zinoviev had championed a diplomatic bloc between Soviet trade unions and the British General Council, naively believing that Purcell and other British union leaders would support the USSR against the British bourgeoisie. The 1926 British general strike exposed this policy’s bankruptcy. Trotsky had predicted the strike in his book Whither England?, submitted to the Politburo and published without objection. He demanded the bloc be broken; Zinoviev agreed, Radek opposed, and Stalin clung to it until the British unionists repudiated the alliance. Simultaneously in Poland, party leader Varski mistakenly declared Pilsudski’s rebellion a ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ and urged communist support. Trotsky condemned Varski, noting the Stalin apparatus shielded him from accountability.
In China, Stalin forced the Communist Party into the bourgeois Kuomintang, forbade Soviets, and restrained the agrarian revolution. Trotsky had demanded communist withdrawal since 1925. Stalin defended the coalition with Chiang Kai-shek days before Chiang massacred the Shanghai workers in April 1927. Trotsky argued the opposition could not rise on this defeat; the crushing of the Chinese proletariat intensified mass disappointment, the psychological source of Stalin’s national-reformism.
By late 1927, the opposition held secret meetings in workers’ apartments, attracting around 20,000 people in Moscow and Leningrad. The Central Committee appealed for force to break them up. At the Leningrad demonstration in October, the crowd spontaneously flocked to the opposition’s platform. At the 7 November Moscow demonstration, opposition placards were torn up, bearers were mauled by organised units, and a policeman shot at Trotsky. On 16 November, Joffe committed suicide, driven by the party crisis and his fury at the campaign against the theory of permanent revolution. He had told Trotsky of Lenin’s 1919 admission that “Trotsky proved to be right” on this, and wanted to publish it, but Trotsky dissuaded him. The Central Committee refused Joffe permission to go abroad for treatment. Trotsky’s expulsion from the Central Committee and the party convinced Joffe the revolution’s future was lost; unable to fight, he killed himself. In his letter to Trotsky, Joffe urged him to reject all compromise. Joffe’s funeral drew ten thousand people as an oppositionist demonstration. Zinoviev’s group capitulated, hoping to buy forgiveness by breaking with Trotsky, but achieved their own political elimination. The fifteenth congress expelled the opposition en bloc and placed them at the GPU’s disposal.