Bolshevik Leaders correspondence

Bolshevik leadership Correspondence. 1912-1927
Collection of documents 1996.
Compiled by: A.V.Kvashonkin, L.P.Kosheleva, L.A.Rogovaya, O.V.Khlevnyuk.

No. 192

F. E. Dzerzhinsky to G. L. Pyatakov

October 2, 1925

SECRET.

Yuri Leonidovich.

COPY.

I fully agree with your thought.

The Supreme Economic Council must unconditionally conclude a bloc with the NKZem in pursuance of our political line of an alliance of workers and peasants. Economically, this should result in an alliance between industry and agriculture, which should be organizationally consolidated by our departmental bloc. A program must be drawn up for this bloc, so that it is not divided by the current rubbish and in order to lead a common line that will strengthen the bloc, despite the disagreement on particular questions. A.P. Smirnov wants such an agreement and gives himself the task of working on the topics and program of the block. If we implement this idea, we will free the state budget and apparatus from unnecessary parts, unnecessary intermediaries, and win a great deal in time, that is, in pace.

What questions should be included in the block program:

I think the following:

1) The prices at which our products and agricultural products reach the worker. And quality.

2) The capacity and needs of the peasant market and how they can be satisfied by our industry.

3) Coordination of the export-import program.

4) Industrialization of agriculture, including electrification.

5) Raw material problems.

6) Issues of credit policy[ics] and credits.

7) Absorption by industry of the "surplus" rural population.

8) Industrialization of state farms.

Other.

How to organize this block. Here the difficulties are great. I think it would be worthwhile to create our common scientific institute on these issues, where all these issues would be coordinated and formulated. In addition, to outline a whole series of gears in our functional, planning and operational bodies in the form of mutual or unilateral permanent representation. Such representation would constantly remind us of the angle from which we must work.

Think and talk. It will be necessary to work out the issue in more detail and concretely, and then get together with Smirnov.

2/X-25

F. Dzerzhinsky.

RTSKHIDNI. F. 76. Op. 2. D. 197. L. 9. Certified typewritten copy.

No. 193

F. E. Dzerzhinsky to I. V. Stalin, G. K. Ordzhonikidze

October 5-6, 1925

I ask that the following letter of mine be read out at the meeting of the Leninist faction:

Leonov's letter read out by Comrade Uglanov reveals a conspiracy by the leaders of the Leningrad organization against the Party. The organizers of this conspiracy [were] Zinoviev and Kamenev. Unfortunately, I learned about this letter only when Comrade Uglanov read it out at the faction1, and, unfortunately, it was read out after a 6-hour discussion. If it had been announced at the beginning, the whole discussion and the whole course of the work of the faction would have had to take on a completely different character. The discussion should have been not about the work and inconsistencies in the seven, but about this new Kronstadt within our party.
Now the question is no longer only and not so much about the existence of our faction, but about a direct threat to the existence of the Party and Soviet power. In 1917, when Zinoviev and Kamenev betrayed the revolution,2 there was no Petrograd organization behind them, nor workers and peasants in general, and the leader of the workers and peasants lived, while Zinoviev and Kamenev were miserable cowards. Now it's not. There is no leader. The majority of the peasantry is not with us, although not against us - we have not yet managed to organize it in our favor - right now the Party is busy with this. By fighting Trotskyism, the Party has created for itself all the conditions to win over the peasantry—to organize its majority in favor of an alliance with the workers. The Party has worked out and is carrying out a most complicated plan on how to maneuver in our most difficult conditions, when the world revolution has dragged on and it is necessary to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat in a peasant country, which cannot exist without the maximum development of productive forces, primarily agriculture - on the soil, namely, not any, but on the basis of the NEP, that is, the commodity economy. It was clear to everyone - in the discussion about Trotsky - to everyone, at least in words - above all, Zinoviev and Kamenev and the Leningraders, who demanded the most draconian measures against Trotsky3 - that this plan in relation to the peasantry could be carried out only under one condition - with the unity of our party, with the unity of the proletariat itself. And this was absolutely true, because despite the fact that we are growing and recovering so quickly, without which we would surely have died, this growth itself creates and organizes ever greater difficulties and dangers, while simultaneously creating the prerequisites for overcoming them.

To use these prerequisites, time and endurance are needed, and the unity of the party and the proletariat is greater than ever, greater than before Kronstadt, which ended our discussion of the trade unions and our war communism. Then we had our entire victorious Red Army, which had not yet gone over to a peaceful position, was still thoroughly saturated with military gunpowder, not yet touched by the discussion on debunking its official leader Trotsky. Now, without the unity of the Party, its Central Committee, its Leninist composition, without the unity of the proletariat, we will not be able to carry out our plan. Without unity, without this condition, Thermidor is inevitable, because without this condition we will not fulfill our most complex plan, we will not be able to fulfill it. The dangers of forces that have not realized themselves and have not yet organized themselves against the dictatorship and the proletariat are enormous, and each of our splits, each crack among us is now, and cannot but be now, the only and sufficient organizer of these forces against us. The result is inevitable: the Leninists, like spiders, will devour themselves, according to the foresight of the Mensheviks and Trotsky - who will appear on the scene - one as "equality and democracy", the other as the "communist" Bonaparte - the savior of "the poor and the revolution." Zinoviev's formulas both from the "era" of the struggle against Trotsky and from the "epoch" of preparations for the struggle against "Bukharin-Ustryalov" will be useful to them, and not to Zinoviev. Such a fate is being prepared for us and for themselves by Zinoviev, Kamenev, Sokolnikov and the Leningrad elite. After all, it is now obvious that Zinoviev and Kamenev, having embarked on the path of Trotsky, having raised a struggle for their power, which the Party does not want - they do not understand this - the blind - as they did not want Trotsky's power, enter into this struggle, having previously disarmed the Party in a discussion with Trotsky when they forced the party to exalt them themselves, to forgive them all their past in order to debunk their predecessor, Trotsky*.

But they forgot that the party had to debunk Trotsky solely because, having actually attacked Zinoviev, Kamenev and other members of the Central Committee of our party, he raised his hand against the unity of the party, that is, only for what Zinoviev has now taken up with the only difference is that Trotsky's supporters then managed to prepare for the coup a small part of the Moscow organization, then led by Kamenev, and now Zinoviev has succeeded in preliminary, in a conspiratorial manner, to demoralize the entire official Leningrad organization and attract Nadezhda Konstantinovna. Thus, after the fight with Trotsky, the party enters this fight not only disarmed in relation to Zinoviev and Kamenev, but also with a split among the proletariat itself. All the falsity of Zinoviev's sincerity is there—and all his wretchedness. He does not understand and did not understand all the dangers in which we live and which he spoke about, when he needed it - these dangers - for him they were scares, in which he himself did not believe, he did not feel them the way he felt in [19]17 with his own skin - the flight of bullets, smoke, gunpowder. Meanwhile, it is my deepest conviction that I am not only talking about this now, but have always said both at the G-7 and in the Politburo that these dangers are just as real around us, as in [19]17 I followed Lenin, because really , unlike Zinoviev, I "physically" felt - yes, I felt with the instinct of a revolutionary "the steps of history" - for I am not a theoretician and I am not a blind supporter of persons - in my life I personally loved only two revolutionaries and leaders - Rosa Luxembourg and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - no one else*. Zinoviev and Kamenev - Sokolnikov opened your little souls. You claim to be the official and sole heirs of the leader of the workers and peasants. Ambition is killing you. You do not feel the dangers, although you can talk about them like no one else, and you think that it is Stalin or Bukharin that is preventing you from being recognized. Don't forget about Lenin's will - it's no coincidence that you weren't with him in October. Lenin said what the party feels with all its guts. And the party is now grouped around those who guarantee its unity and its collective creativity to the maximum.

F. Dzerzhinsky.

Written after the meeting of the faction, on the night of 5 to 6 October [19]25, in two copies.

I will give one to Stalin, the other to Sergo. Both copies were written by me 4 .

RTSKHIDNI. F. 76. Op. 2. D. 28. L. 1-8. Autograph. Political diary. 1964 - 1970. Amsterdam. 1972. S. 238-241.

Notes:

1 TOC \o "1-5" \h \z See note 1 to document no. 183.

2 See note 1 to document No. 209.

3 See note 1 to document No. 187.

4 At the beginning of the letter there is a note by Dzerzhinsky: “T. Stalin, a copy of Comrade Sergo” (crossed out: “copy to Nadezhda Konstantinovna”),