8. The New Course and the 1926 Family Code¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 8: The New Course and the 1926 Family Code¶
The formation of the Troika—Kamenev, Stalin, and Zinoviev—marked a qualitative degeneration of Bolshevik leadership, as factional loyalty supplanted party loyalty. While Lenin lay incapacitated, Stalin exploited the Orgburo to construct a pyramid of control over local organisations, demanding written reports and imposing directives from above. This apparatus simultaneously enacted privileges for senior functionaries: salaries up to ten times the national average, plus goods distributions, creating a new social layer of roughly 20,000 senior functionaries and 40,000 others receiving additional supplies. Stalin controlled access to these perks. Lenin’s January 1923 proposals to curb the Secretariat and Orgburo through an enlarged Central Control Commission were suppressed, then turned to Stalin’s advantage: Kuibyshev was appointed head of the Control Commission, and the Twelfth Party Congress packed both the Central Committee and Control Commission with Stalin’s supporters. The ‘New Course’ resolution of December 1923, adopted unanimously, accepted the need for greater party democracy, but the accompanying ban on factions removed its teeth. The Troika controlled the press, refused to distribute opposition documents, reduced discussion to a question of loyalty, and used administrative removals—sending oppositionists abroad or to distant localities—to suppress dissent.
The Troika defeated the Trotskyist Opposition by silencing its leaders, suppressing their writings, barring them from meetings, and intimidating supporters with threats of job loss, expulsion from university, or violence. Jewish Trotskyists were blamed for moral degeneracy among youth. Despite majorities in Moscow and other centres, the Opposition secured only three delegates at the Thirteenth Party Conference, with archival evidence confirming widespread vote-rigging. The Conference condemned the Opposition as petty-bourgeois and wanting to destroy the party apparatus. The remedy was the Lenin Levy—rapid recruitment of over 100,000 factory workers—tightened discipline, and enforcement of the ban on factions. After the Conference, Trotsky wrote Lessons of October, arguing Lenin had effectively adopted the theory of permanent revolution in 1917. The preface was virtually suppressed. Stalin responded by rewriting history to claim he co-led the October Revolution. Lenin’s “Testament” warned against a split between Stalin and Trotsky and called for Stalin’s removal as General Secretary. Krupskaya kept it secret until after Lenin’s death, when Stalin was sufficiently in control to contain its impact. The Testament was read only to a meeting of provincial delegation leaders, where Stalin’s group was strongest, and banned from plenary sessions. The Troika transformed Lenin into an infallible icon, erasing his 1917 shift to a permanentist perspective and his final fight against Stalin.
The Zhenotdel was drawn into party factional struggles. Nikolaeva, a long-time activist, was appointed Director in May 1924 but was removed after supporting the Leningrad Opposition. The Central Committee appointed the Stalinist Aleksandra Artyukhina (1925-1930), who silenced opposition within Zhenotdel and mobilised support for Stalin. She expanded Zhenotdel membership and readership, using its journals to justify wage differentials, contradicting Lenin’s call for equal pay. At the Fourteenth Party Congress (December 1925), Krupskaya spoke for the Leningrad opposition, invoking Lenin to defend party minorities, but was shouted down. The Trotskyist and Leningrad Oppositions formed the United Opposition, advocating rapid industrialisation, opposition to kulaks and NEPmen, better conditions for women workers, and against party degeneration. The United Opposition met clandestinely to evade OGPU surveillance. Stalin accused them of factionalism. The party used brutal methods against political opposition. In September 1926, Trotsky signed a Politburo statement denying Lenin’s Testament existed, despite all Politburo members having read it. The New York Times published it in October. Trotsky was removed from the Politburo, Zinoviev from the Communist International.
The 1925 draft of the Family Code recognised NEP realities, simplifying divorce via ZAGS and granting greater rights to de facto marriages, while balancing these with alimony rights and wives’ formal entitlement to property acquired with a husband’s wages. Zhenotdel and Trotsky supported the draft, arguing it protected vulnerable women