Trotsky was hopelessly outpaced by Stalin because Trotsky continued to believe in certain unshakable truths, for example, that the proletariat was a class with a historical mission to perform and that there were certain invariable historical laws that would specifically ensure the victory of Trotsky, who represented the true interests of the proletariat. He also believed in the party as the only instrument history had provided for the proletariat. His faith in these eternal truths bound Trotsky and the entire Opposition hand and foot and prevented them from using all the means at their disposal for fighting Stalin. To them, Stalin in the last analysis represented the party, and thus the proletariat and the laws of history. Stalin did not have any such complexes. He knew that he was right because he had the power, and that meant that anything was permitted.
A central topic of debate was the NEP. The question under discussion was this: What economic levers could the state use to obtain the resources necessary for industrial development when agriculture remained almost entirely in private hands? Until 1925 all the party leaders had agreed with the policy of smychka, the alliance with the peasantry. As a British historian noted, "If anyone in January 1925 had been acute enough to predict an imminent break between Stalin and Zinoviev on this issue, he would almost certainly have seen in Zinoviev the prospective champion of a peasant policy and Stalin and its opponent."206 Even Trotsky in the fall of 1925 acknowledged that there was nothing threatening about the economic processes underway in the countryside, and he denounced any policy of "de- kulakization" at that time.207
Bukharin was the chief ideologist of the NEP and he defended it against
the attacks, first Trotsky's, then Zinoviev's and Kamenev's. But he was not opposed in principle to violence and exploitation. In 1920 Bukharin had advocated nationalization of all economic activities, militarization of labor, and rationing for everyone—in short, the universal use of force in regulating the economy.
Just as Stalin had "construed" Trotsky's political program in his own way, by reducing it to the slogan of permanent revolution and investing his own, Stalinist, meaning in that slogan, so too an economic program was devised for the United Opposition. A report by Preobrazhensky, 'The Fundamental Law of Socialist Accumulation," was said to be the essence of the Opposition's economic point of view. Preobrazhensky argued that the October revolution was premature in the sense that Russia had not yet reached the necessary level of capitalist development, that what Marx called the stage of "primitive accumulation of capital" had not been completed. In other words, Russia did not yet have the industrial base necessary for material goods to be distributed "to each according to his needs." The capitalists had accomplished their primitive accumulation through the exploitation of colonies. According to Preobrazhensky, primitive socialist accumulation, which was necessary for the building of a socialist industry, would have to take place at the expense of the lower forms of economic life, in particular that "internal colony," the peasantry.208
Preobrazhensky's ties with Trotsky provided a splendid opportunity for Stalin to attribute the primitive accumulation theory to the Opposition as a whole. Growing numbers of Oppositionists leaned toward such extreme views, especially those like Kamanev and Zinoviev who based themselves in Leningrad and Moscow, where the workers were discontented with the social inequities produced by the NEP. They were inclined in this direction also because of the moderate position of Stalin and his associates, who argued for a program of "civil peace," as Bukharin did at the Fourteenth Party Congress.209 Even Stalin asked whether there was any need for class warfare "now that we have the dictatorship of the proletariat and now that the party and trade union organizations function with full freedom." The general secretary answered his own question. "Of course not."210
Bukharin's program, supported by Stalin, stated that war against the peasantry would be fraught with fatal consequences, both political and economic, for the Soviet state. That was why economic development had to be based on an alliance with the peasants, providing them the opportunity to increase their productivity, organize cooperatives, and develop forms of exchange through the market. On April 17, 1925, Bukharin uttered the famous words: "We must tell the peasants, all the peasants, enrich yourselves. Develop your plots of land and don't be concerned about being pressured."211 Later when Stalin began manufacturing a "right deviation," he chose these words of Bukharin's as the essence of the deviationists' program.
Bukharin's words provoked indignation among Oppositionists. Among the peasants they aroused hope. One man, a keen observer who considered himself the unofficial "loyal opposition," greeted them enthusiastically. This was Nikolai Ustryalov, whom Stalin called the "spokesman for the bourgeois specialists in our country."212
Ustryalov had no doubt that a new period in Soviet history had begun, one more step toward the emancipation of Russia from alien internationalist ideas. He also had no doubt that this period was crucially linked with the name of Stalin, whom Ustryalov regarded as Lenin's true disciple, he who had grasped Lenin's doctrine "dynamically," as befits the teachings of a master dialectician. Ustryalov proclaimed the "twilight of the Leninist Old Guard," noting that the former "masters and favorites of the revolution, the October guard, the stalwarts of the iron cohort, the pride and glory of the proletarian vanguard," had been dethroned.213 In October 1926 Ustryalov declared, "Not only are we now 'Against Zinoviev'; we are definitely Tor Stalin.'"214 Ustryalov did not delude himself about his new hero; he quoted the "wise words" of Konstantin Leontiev: "Good people are not infrequently worse than bad people. It is known to happen. Personal honesty may be pleasing on the personal level and may inspire respect, but there is nothing political or organizational about these fragile qualities. Very good people sometimes do terrible damage to the state."215 From his peaceful nineteenth-century vantage point, Leontiev could not of course have imagined what terrible damage the bad people would do.
Ustryalov hailed Stalin's victory because he saw him as Lenin's true disciple. As early as 1923 Ustryalov had described Lenin and Mussolini as two equally important figures who "for all their political polarity... mark a new stage in the evolution of modern Europe."216 In 1926 Stalin too was marking a new stage in European history as he marched inexorably toward full personal power within the party—and consequently within the state.
The Fourteenth Party Congress, in December 1925, brought an end to the interregnum, the period of "collective leadership." Three years earlier, Lenin's appearance before the Fourteenth Comintern Congress was described this way: 'The applause is joyful and stormy because it has seemed a very long wait. ... The entire auditorium sings the Internationale—because the applause, the ovation, seemed insufficient to express the boundless love for the leader and the limitless faith in him."217 In December 1925 Stalin's speech to the party congress was greeted by "applause swelling to an ovation; all the delegates rose and sang the Internationale."
Stalin began consolidating his power at once. Kamenev and Zinoviev were removed from their posts in the Moscow and Leningrad party organizations, and Kamenev was demoted from full to alternate member of the Politburo. After the congress Kirov was sent to Leningrad to "restore order" there. In 1926 Zinoviev, Trotsky, and Kamenev were removed from the Politburo.
Stalin made use of every means to consolidate his power, including the art of medicine. In October 1925, by order of the Politburo, Commissar of War Frunze underwent an operation. (An ally of Zinoviev's, Frunze had replaced Trotsky as commissar of war a few months earlier.) The surgeons discovered that the ulcer they were ordered to remove had scarred over. The surgery was unnecessary, but the patient never rose from the operating table. He was replaced as commissar of war by Stalin's crony Voroshilov. At Frunze's funeral Stalin pronounced these mysterious words: "Perhaps this is the way, just this easily and simply, that all the old comrades should be lowered into their graves."218