Review: Cohen and Deutscher on Stalin and Bukarin


Shane Tomashot


            Cohen and Deutscher, in their respective tomes, provide an excellent picture of the politics and behind the scenes maneuvering of Stalin and Bukharin during and shortly after NEP.  The key contention between Stalin and Bukharin involved views of economic stimulation of Russia’s countryside.  Bukharin and his close “leftist” allies, including Rykov and Tomskii, were advocates of agricultural reformation (pro-muzhik).  Stalin and his “rightist” allies leaned toward the urban worker and industrialization.  Ironically, Bukharin and Stalin, at the outset of NEP, were politically similar in their desire to approach industrialization slowly, allowing for the peasantry to, in essence, catch up.  Power plays and uncontrollable circumstances following Lenin’s death, however, divided these former allies.  Stalin became the dictator of a disastrous collectivization while Bukharin, by 1938, was a victim of Stalin’s purges.
            Cohen describes the NEP’s positive and negative aspects in his ninth chapter.  The early NEP era was one in which party members were more concerned with debating policy rather than political maneuvering and political capital.  Cohen labels this era the “golden era of Marxist thought (p. 272).  The arts flourished, at least in comparison with the coming Stalinist era.  Literacy, social welfare, and school attendance increased across the countryside.  Peasants had their own land, for the most part without arrears, governed by traditional communes.  Under NEP, the industrial worker witnessed reformation in working conditions, receiving eight hour days and higher pay.
            The negatives, however, fueled debate within the Communist Party.  Rampant alcoholism and homeless vagabonds made both leftists and rightists question the effectiveness of the NEP.  Agriculture was still primitive, as millions still hopelessly utilized wooden plows.  City workers operated under horrendous conditions as urbanization flooded the cities with unskilled labor.  Within the plenum, Trotsky defended the cultural diversity of the NEP while most Bolsheviks viewed it still as the “correct transition to socialism.”  The main question was: to what extent should industrialization and agricultural reformation be implemented?
            Bukharin’s group advocated an “emphasis on harmonious co-operation between the various sectors of the national economy,” with much attention to the agricultural sector.  Bolsheviks on the right sought more rapid industrialization (Deutscher, p. 300).  Increasingly, factions within the party sought support through covert meetings.  Public interactions consisted of “Aesopian polemic debate” and platitudes.  Economic disagreements amongst party members, according to Cohen, had been simmering throughout the 1920’s.  These disagreements were exacerbated by the 1927 grain shortages and collection drives carried out by the government.  The “pivotal event” that permanently split the Bukharin and Stalin factions occurred during January of 1928 during the grain collections (Cohen, p. 278).
            On February 6, 1928, Stalin verbally attacked Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomskii for their ‘“excesses,” victimization of the middle peasants and disruption of the local markets” (Cohen, p. 279).  Stalin believed that peasant agriculture was not capable of the changes that Bukharin believed were essential in the countryside.  Grain had to be requisitioned from hoarding peasants, according to Stalin.  Bukharin, on the other hand, believed that the state’s errors in price policy were to account for the problem of grain shortages. 
What became apparent by the end of the debate was Stalin’s political power.  As the General Secretary, Stalin was an “impeccable surgeon” with the power of implementing the directives of the Politburo to his advantage (Deutscher, p. 306).  Moreover, during the Shakhty Mine Affair, Stalin utilized rumors to provoke a national political scandal in March.  Bukharin was discredited.  By 1929, Stalin was powerful enough to have “non party intelligentsia” arrested in a regional “witch hunt” (Cohen, p. 281).  Stalin and Bukharin increasingly addressed party policy and the condition of the Soviet economy from radically different viewpoints.               
Stalin viewed the Shakhty strikes and grain crisis as evidence of coming class warfare, rather than “by-products of faulty planning.”  While Bukharin et al. sought moderate reforms to deal with the grain crisis, Stalin and his rightist allies pushed for radical solutions.  Stalin was, in Bukharin’s eyes, becoming militant and viewing “extraordinary” measures as a “normal” reaction to the situation.  By the summer of 1928, joint public appearances by Bukharin and Stalin became “thinly veiled confrontations” (Cohen, p. 285).  As of late 1928, they were no longer on speaking terms, as Stalin was using “evasive and deceitful” Politburo tactics to quell opposition from Bukharin and his associates.  Stalin had effectively created a “shadow government” within the party (p. 288).  Stalin’s movements toward collectivization and orders for a “peasant tribute” led Bukharin to openly refer to him as a “Genghis Khan” (p. 290).
July of 1928 was a key turning point.  Stalin openly criticized Bukharin’s stance (and hence the left) on foreign policy.  In Stalin’s estimation, the West’s capitalist system was in the initial stages of utter failure and ripe for socialist revolution.  This estimation, Bukharin felt, was short-sighted.  However, the “impeccable surgeon” was simply too powerful within Politburo circles to be criticized.  Stalin’s foreign agents spread rumors of Bukharin’s misguided “rightist deviation” and “political syphilis,” undermining his power over Comintern affairs (p. 293).  Soon, Stalin was on the verge of omnipotence, as previously “unimpeachable acts” became “unpardonable” acts within the Politburo (Deutscher, p. 314-315).     
Bukharin, by late 1928, was virtually a political outcast.  The right/left divide within the Politburo returned to the issue of domestic affairs, focusing on the rate of industrialization.  Citing the efforts of Peter the Great, Stalin called for rapid, assiduous industrialization.  In his “Notes of an Economist,” Bukharin chastised Stalin’s views as “adventurist,” calling instead for relatively gradual industrialization.  Stalin, however, was already in the process of preparing his first “Five Year Plan.”  Bukharin loyalists were strong-armed in the Politburo by Stalinists, as Stalin seized operation of the Party’s periodicals.               Stalin, despite adamant opposition by Bukharin, was able to muster enough votes to exile Trotsky in early 1929.  Stalin publicly acknowledged Bukharin as the leader of the right a month later (Deutscher, 314).  By late 1929, Bukharin, Rykov and Tomskii were simply “a minority opposition in Stalin’s Politburo” (Cohen, p. 301).  They simply could not compete with Stalin’s ability to covertly organize sycophants and loyal followers at the regional level and within the Politburo.                  
Bukharin’s eventual defeat was, in Cohen’s words, a “prelude to ‘revolution from above,”’ (p. 312).  “Political conflict within the party leadership grew increasingly covert” by late 1927 (Cohen, p. 277).  Factions emerged over the continuation of NEP policy, as Bukharin, an avid NEP supporter, argued for its continuation.  The Stalinist faction, on the other hand, was not necessarily adamantly anti-NEP.  However, Stalin and his supporters were increasingly concerned with addressing grain issues in the countryside in a more direct manner.  The 1927 grain shortages destroyed hopes for agreement between Bolshevik right and left factions.  Stalin was able to actively seek collectivization by late 1929 despite the unyielding protestations of Bukharin and the left, and their identification of Stalin’s “abuses of power.”  
Deutscher more directly addresses Stalin’s decision to carry out collectivization as well as his almost reciprocal shifts in policy and theory.  For example, Stalin did not always view kulaks with such disdain.  As late as May of 1928, he claimed the “’expropriation of kulaks would be folly”’ (p. 319).  Within a year, “Stalin was carried away by the momentum of the movement,” calling for the liquidation of “’the kulaks as a class”’ (p. 324).  Deutscher contends that “Stalin was precipitated into collectivization by the chronic danger of famine in 1928 and 1929” (p. 322).  To Stalin, Deutscher believes, the predicament of starvation was no less drastic or desperate than “the requisitioning of hidden stocks” of grain across the countryside.  Moreover, the peasant would view the collective farm as a “reward” since he had been forced to work without a horse or a cow for so long (p. 323).  A collective farm promised government goods requisitioned from kulaks, including tractors. 
Collectivization spiraled into “a cruel civil war” in the countryside (p. 324).  Russia’s economic situation was simply too “backward and primitive” for any type of radical industrialization such as Stalin’s Five Year Plans.  Hence, Stalin’s contrived industrial revolution met disastrous effects.  Although the production of steel and pig iron were exponentially increased, the production never met Stalin’s expectations.  Moreover, his dekulakization decimated hopes for a market and shattered any hope for bonding the government with the peasantry.  When signs of disaster became evident by early 1930, he issued his “Dizziness with Success” article, blaming over-zealous “opportunists” and regional managers.  Stalin slowed collectivization (the second revolution/great change, as Deutscher calls it) over the course of the next three years.  By the late 1930’s, he initiated his infamous purges.            

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