The Stalin school of falsification - Marxists Internet Archive

Stalin School of Falsification - Chapter 5
development of capitalist concessions to a delimited extent, and of state capitalism, on the ground that
state capitalism was a higher economic form than that which prevailed in most of agri cultural Russia.
The retreat sounded by Lenin was to allow a breathing spell during which, while waiting for the decisive
aid of the European revolution, Russia could reconstruct her indus tries, electrify and modernize them,
and establish a more har monious relationship with the mass of her population, the peas antry.
Capitalism, in industry and agriculture, was to be allowed a considerable field of possibilities in which to
develop, provided, however, that the workers' state retained control of the so-called "commanding
heights," namely, the nationalized key industries, state banking, nationalization of the land, monopoly of
foreign trade. The N.E.P., despite the inherent dangers of capitalist restoration, greatly facilitated not
only the re-establishment of good relations between worker and peasant, but also the recon struction of
Russia's industrial life. [BACK TO TEXT]
20. On March 1, 1921, the sailors of Kronstadt, the fortress out side of Petrograd, rose in armed rebellion
against the Soviet Gov ernment, mainly around the demands for new elections to the Soviets and for
eliminating the Communist Party monopoly. Attempts at peaceful negotiations and settlement of
differences proved unsuccessful. The government called upon the Kron' stadters to lay down their arms
and acknowledge the discipline of the federal government, but the rebels refused. The decisive strategic
importance of Kronstadt, the key to Petrograd, made it impossible to allow it to remain in hostile hands
for any length of time, and a couple of days after the uprising, it was suppressed by troops led across ice
floes from Petrograd. The suppression of the Kronstadt rising was one of the saddest necessities of the
Russian Revolution. Unlike the sailors of the November, 1917, revolution, who were drawn largely from
the industrial heart of Petrograd, and who were subsequently dispersed to the four cor ners of Russia
during the civil war, the sailors in 1921 were drawn largely from southern ports (like Odessa), usually the
sons of Ukrainian peasants (four members of the Kronstadt rebels' committee were Ukrainian, as was
their chief, Petri chenko). On furlough in their home towns, they were heavily influenced by the
complaints of the peasants against the stren uous régime of War Communism, and against the
Communists who led the régime. In Kronstadt itself, anti-Communist elements —anarchists and Social
Revolutionaries — were active in sharp ening relations between Kronstadt and Petrograd. Outside of
Russia, the reactionary elements regarded the Kronstadt upris ing as a rallying pole for the
counter-revolution-at first under the war-cry of "Soviets without Communists "-a bridge to no Soviets at
all. The Kronstadt sailors were, for the most part, the unwitting victims of these forces. The uprising did
serve, how ever, to call sharply to the attention of the Bolsheviks the impera tive need of putting an end
to the War Communism course, which had brought relations with the peasantry, and even with sections
of the working class, to a breaking point. The Tenth Congress of the Party, which met during the
uprising, was the one that initiated the New Economic Policy. [BACK TO TEXT]
21. The call of the German Communist Party in March, 1921, for an armed insurrection to seize power,
in connection with the struggles in Central Germany, was a direct manifestation of the so-called "theory
of the offensive," whose principal inspirers and theorizers in the Comintern were Bukharin and, to a
somewhat lesser extent, Zinoviev. The party leadership not only plunged its membership into what was
obviously doomed in advance as a futile military action by a small minority of the working class, but
after the collapse of the March Action, it declared that it would repeat the action at the first opportunity.
These actions, it was stated by the ultra-Leftists, would electrify or galvanize the working class and cause
them, each time, to mobilize into an ever greater force which would eventually overthrow capitalist rule.
"If it is asked what was actually new about the March Action, it must be answered: precisely that which
our opponents reprove, namely, that the party went into struggle without concerning itself about who
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