15th Conference

Fifteenth conference of the All-Union Communist Party (b). October 26 - November 3, 1926

The fifteenth conference of the CPSU (b) took place on October 26 - November 3, 1926 in Moscow. There were 194 delegates with a casting vote and 640 with an advisory vote.

Order of the day: On the international situation (speaker NI Bukharin); On the economic situation in the country and the tasks of the party (AI Rykov); Results of work and immediate tasks of trade unions (MP Tomsky); On the opposition and the internal party situation (I.V. Stalin).

The conference was held in an atmosphere of struggle against the so-called "Trotskyite-Zinoviev bloc" (which arose in the summer of 1926). In the resolution "On the report of the delegation of the CPSU (b) to the ECCI" the conference condemned the factional activities of the Trotskyite-Zinovievites bloc in the Comintern and obliged the delegation of the CPSU (b) to the ECCI to continue the struggle against anti-Leninist deviations in the Comintern.

The conference summed up the results of the development of the country's national economy in 1925-26. In its decision, the conference stated the completion of the restoration period and the entry of the socialist national economy into the period of reconstruction. The resolution stated that "it is necessary to strive to overtake and then surpass the level of industrial development of the advanced capitalist countries in a relatively minimal historical period." The conference condemned the proposals of the leaders of the Trotskyite-Zinoviev bloc to industrialize the country at the expense of high taxes from peasants and an increase in prices for industrial goods, since this would inevitably lead to the undermining of agriculture, to a drop in the rate of industrialization. The sources of funds for industrialization were indicated: the accumulation of socialist industry, the use through the state budget of the incomes of other branches of the national economy, the use of savings of the population. Special emphasis was placed on the all-round increase in labor productivity as a decisive factor in achieving victory over capitalism.

The conference determined the immediate tasks for the 1926-27 financial year. It was planned to increase industrial production by 17-18% (in heavy industry by more than 20%), to accelerate the development of mechanical engineering, electrification, metallurgy, the fuel industry, and transport, on which the growth of the national economy as a whole depended. When planning a new location of productive forces, two problems were simultaneously solved: bringing industrial enterprises closer to sources of raw materials and creating industrial centers in the backward national regions of the country. In the field of agriculture, practical measures were determined to develop the productive forces, to strengthen and expand socialist forms of economy (agricultural co-operatives, state farms, collective farms) and to further strengthen the alliance of the working class with the bulk of the peasantry.

The conference outlined a program for enhancing the role of trade unions in the struggle for a regime of economy, for improving the work of production conferences at enterprises, and strengthening the communist education of the masses.

An important place in the work of the conference was occupied by the question of the opposition and the internal party situation. On this issue, a resolution was adopted "On the opposition bloc in the CPSU (b)", which characterized the Trotskyite-Zinoviev bloc as a social democratic, Menshevik deviation in the party in the main question of the nature and prospects of the October Revolution of 1917. The party's position on the victory of socialism was substantiated in the USSR, under conditions of capitalist encirclement, the "defeatist" ideology of Trotskyism, which denied the possibility of building socialism in the USSR in the absence of revolutions in the developed countries of Europe, was condemned.