The Stalin school of falsification - Marxists Internet Archive

Stalin School of Falsfification - Chapter 6
"'It seems we captured the position without firing a shot by mere movements of manceuvre. I propose
that we should not stop but continue the attack, and to that effect introduce a resolution to raise the
question at the party congress of re-enforcing the monopoly of foreign trade and of measures looking to
its better enactment. Announce this at the frac tion of the Soviet congress. I hope you have no objection
and wrn not fail to make a report at the fraction.
" 'N. Lenin.'
"Vladimir Ilyich also asks you to telephone an answer.
"N. K. Ulia nova.
"Dec.21, 1922."
Neither the content nor the tone of these letters needs any comment.
On the question of foreign trade, the Central Committee adopted a new decision annulling the old one.
The joking words in Lenin's letter about a victory gained "without firing a shot," refer to that.
It remains to ask: Suppose that among those voting for the resolution disrupting the monopoly of foreign
trade had appeared the name of Trotsky, while Stalin, in agreement with Lenin, had fought for the
annullment of that resolution, how many books, brochures and "cribs" would have been written in proof
of the petty bourgeois and kulak deviation of Trotsky?
THE QUESTION OF THE STATE PLANNING COMMISSION
60. I related our "wastefulness" to the planlessness of our national economy in general. There were
differences in the Political Bureau on the question of planned management and the role of the State
Planning Commission. Among them, differences between Vladimir Ilyich and me. There were debates
about the composition of the planning bureaus.
In his letter to the members of the Political Bureau on the question of the State Planning Commission,
Vladimir Ilyich wrote as follows:
"As to giving legislative functions to the State Planning
Commission:
"Comrade Trotsky advanced this idea, it seems, long ago. I opposed it then because I thought that there
would be in that case a fundamental incoherence in our system of legis lative institutions, but after
attentively reconsidering the matter, I find that there is an essentially healthy thought here: The State
Planning Commission stands somewhat apart from our legislative institutions, notwithstanding the fact
that as a meeting center of the leaders, experts and representatives of science and technology, it
possesses, as a matter of fact, the best possible data for a correct judgment of things. . . . In that respect, I
think I should and must come over to comrade Trotsky, but not in respect to giving the chairmanship of
the State Planning Commission to any one of our political leaders, or to the Chairman of the Supreme
Council of National Economy, and so forth." (Dec. 27, 1922.)
These disagreements about the State Planning Commis sion were mentioned above in Lenin's letters to
me on the question of the monopoly of foreign trade. Lenin there pro posed to postpone that question,
describing it-not quite accurately-as a question of the administrative rights of the State Planning
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