During the entire period of internal struggle in the party only once was a totally new idea proposed. A worker named Yakov Ossovsky, a Communist since 1918, proposed the formation of a second party in the Soviet Union, the creation of a two-party system. As an orthodox Marxist, he believed that the presence of two economic sectors (one private, the other state) made two parties necessary: "As long as we hold to the principle that ours is the only party and that it requires absolute unity," Ossovsky wrote, "a free exchange of opinions in our organizations and party press is not permitted, despite the fact that within the party a difference of opinion does exist, owing to the diversity in the economy."19 Ossovsky was censured by the Central Control Commission and expelled from the party.20 Bukharin declared that open discussion, such as Ossovsky proposed, was impermissible "because it would shake the very foundations of the proletarian dictatorship, the unity of our party and its dominant position in our country, because it would bring grist to the mill of the groups and splinter groups that are yearning for political democracy."21 Even the oppositionists condemned Ossovsky's proposal. There had never been two parties in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, in the years 1923—1928, the views of the opposition did have an effect on the "general line."
In the fall of 1926 the peasants sharply reduced the sale of grain and other products to the state. Ante Ciliga, a Yugoslav Communist who had arrived in Moscow in 1926 to represent his party, wrote in his memoirs: 'The autumn of 1927 was marked by an occurrence new to me: in the stores there was no meat, no cheese, no milk. Then there began to be interruptions in the sale of bread."22 The crisis in grain deliveries and the attendant difficulties in food supply were taken by Stalin as an occasion to strike a new blow at the opposition. In October 1927, Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the Central Committee. After their attempt to
organize a counterdemonstration on November 7, the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, they and dozens of others were expelled from the party.
Having driven the Opposition leaders out of the party, Stalin began to take over their program and follow their suggestions. To overcome the crisis he resorted to "extraordinary measures." Thirty thousand party members were sent into the countryside to wring grain out of the peasantry. Party leaders, too, traveled into the field. On January 15, 1928, Stalin left Moscow for the Urals and western Siberia. It was the last time he was to travel through the country in that way. Stalin issued some drastic orders to local party officials: in the case of peasants who refused to sell their grain, he told them, article 107 should be applied. This article (added to the Criminal Code in 1927) stipulated imprisonment for one year, with possible confiscation of property, for anyone who "concealed goods." Poor peasants were invited to join in the search for hidden grain, with 25 percent of the confiscated grain to be distributed to them at a discount or on credit. Stalin's method of collecting grain, the so-called Urals-Siberia method, was extended to the entire country.
The peasants said, "1919 has returned." The roofs of peasant huts were torn off for insufficient deliveries. Military units were sent into the villages to search for hidden grain. It was officially declared that the kulak was to blame for everything. But not long before, Kalinin had written, 'The kulak is a bugbear, a ghost of the old world. This is not a social layer or a group, not even a handful. It's a matter of a few individuals, and they are dying out."23 Rykov complained: "God only knows what we're doing. To please Trotsky, Pyatakov, and Zinoviev we use the term kulak for the genuine middle peasant who, entirely in accordance with the law, wants to be prosperous."24 In July 1928 Stalin proudly told the Central Committee plenum: "We will press down and gradually squeeze the capitalist elements in the countryside, even if in some cases it brings them to ruin."25
The situation in the Russian countryside at the end of the NEP was neatly summed up by Boris Pilnyak:
The peasants at that time were perplexed by the following problematical dilemma, completely incomprehensible to them. .. . Fifty percent of the peasants got up at three in the morning and went to bed at eleven at night, and everyone in the household worked without letup, from the smallest to the largest.... Their huts were in good shape, and so were their wagons. Their cattle were well fed and well cared for. They themselves were well fed and up to their ears in work. They conscientiously paid their tax in kind and other obligations to the state. But the authorities were afraid of them and considered them enemies of the revolution, no more, no less. The other 50
percent of the peasants each had a hut open to the wind, one skinny cow, one mangy sheep, and that was all. ... The state exempted them from the tax in kind, reimbursed them for the cost of sowing, and regarded them as friends of the revolution. The "enemy" peasants maintained that 35 percent of the "friendlies" were drunks,... 5 percent were unlucky,... and 60 percent were good-for-nothings, windbags, philosophizers, goof-ofTs, stum- blebums, and clods. The village "enemies" were pressured in every way to become "friendlies," and thus lose the capacity to pay their taxes and let their homes get torn open by the wind.26
Neither Pilnyak nor the peasants he described imagined what would be done to the peasants and their villages when the NEP was over.
On July 11, 1928, a secret meeting took place between Kamenev, representing the no longer united opposition, and Bukharin, leader of the "right wing." After collaborating with Stalin closely for several years, Bukharin suddenly informed Kamenev: "We consider Stalin's line disastrous for the revolution as a whole. ... Our differences with Stalin are many times more serious than all the differences we had with you." Suddenly Bukharin discovered that Stalin was "an unprincipled intriguer who subordinates everything to the preservation of his own power. He changes his theories depending on whom he wants to get rid of at any particular moment." Kamenev's notes of this conversation with Bukharin fell into the hands of the Trotskyists, who took perverse pleasure in publishing them in early 1929. For Stalin this was one more piece of ammunition in the battle he was undertaking against the right wing. He readily accepted support from the "left" in his struggle against the "right." Many former Left Oppositionists, who had been sent into internal exile or confined in special prisons for political opponents ("polit-isolators"), took this occasion to announce their capitulation, their agreement with Stalin's new policy, which they were convinced was actually their policy. According to Ciliga, Preobrazhensky's book on primitive socialist accumulation was reprinted, and Stalin even tried to win Preobrazhensky over. In response to doubts Preobrazhensky expressed, his suspicions that the Central Committee still favored right- wing policies, Stalin assured him: "If necessary, I shall have the entire Central Committee arrested, but I shall carry out the five-year plan."27 The arrest of almost the entire Central Committee did not come about until 1935—1938. For the time being, Stalin merely deported Trotsky to Turkey in February 1929, after having him forcibly removed from Moscow on January 17, 1928, and confining him to Alma-Ata in Central Asia for a year.