The Party’s Tasks

Stalin’s report delivered at the enlarged meeting of the Krasnaya Presnya District Committee of All-Russian Communist Party (B) on December 2, 1923. It was written in November 1923 and was first published in Pravda issue No. 277, December 6, 1923. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 5 of the Complete Works of Stalin.

In the summer and autumn of 1923, during Lenin’s serious illness, All-Russian Communist Party (B) encountered serious economic and political difficulties. The “scissors gap” in the price of industrial and agricultural products were further widened, the ruble was devalued, a large number of industrial products were in overstock, some factories had to end production; the number of unemployed in the country has reached more than 100,000, and there were riots and strikes by workers. Some opposition groups in the Party tried to use the discontent of the masses to put pressure on the Central Committee. Internationally, the Bulgarian revolution had just failed, and the labor movement in some Western European countries had entered into a low ebb. After several setbacks, the German proletariat is still brewing a new impact. The domestic economic crisis and political turbulence, as well as the complex international situation, caused the Central Committee’s divergent views on a series of issues, and gradually developed into a serious inner-Party struggle, that is, the whole party debate in the autumn of 1923. At the same time, due to the Party’s failure to focus on anti-bureaucracy, there have been different degrees of bureaucratic phenomena throughout the country. Bureaucratism makes the party deviate from the nature of the proletarian party and causes the dissatisfaction of the proletariat and the masses. In order to clarify the problem and seek unity of thinking, Stalin wrote this article and systematically expounded the tasks of the Party at that time.

The article consists of five parts. The first part emphasized that the intra-party debates can be seen as the sign of the Party’s strength. Stalin said that this debate is neither the degeneration nor the disintegration of the Party, but a sign of the Party’s strength, firmness, the improvement of the quality of Party members and the enhancement of the Party’s enthusiasm.

The second part is to analyze the causes of the dispute. Stalin argued that the first reason was the wave of discontent and strikes in some areas of the Soviet Union over wage issues in August 1923. The strike wave has exposed the defects of the Party organizations and trade unions that do not pay attention to what happened in the enterprises, and also exposed the existence of several secret organizations of an essentially anti-communist nature within the Party. The second cause of the acuteness of the question of internal Party policy precisely at the present moment was the wholesale release of Party comrades to go on vacation. It is natural, of course, for comrades to go on vacation, but this assumed such a mass character, that Party activity became considerably weaker precisely at the time when the discontent arose in the factories.

The third part of the speech deals with the defects in the inner-party life. According to Stalin, the chief defect in the internal party life was that, although the Party’s line, as expressed in the resolutions of the Party Congresses, was correct, in some work spheres it was put into practice in an incorrect way. Although the Party’s proletarian democratic-centralism line was correct, in practice it was distorted by the bureaucratic leadership conducts.

The fourth part is to point out the causes of the defects. Stalin listed five reasons: (1) The Party organization did not eliminate the remnants of the military style left in the minds of the staff during the war, did not regard the Party as an independently acting organism, not an independently acting, militant organization of the proletariat, but something in the nature of a system of institutions. This is the most real danger. (2) The second cause is that the state apparatus, which is bureaucratic to a considerable degree, exerts a certain amount of pressure on the Party and the Party workers. Stalin emphasized that there would be a Commune, a free association of working people, that would put an end to bureaucracy in government institutions, and that it would be possible, if not in the immediate period, then within two or three short periods, to transform the state into a free association of working people. Practice has shown, however, that this is still an ideal which is a long way off. To rid the state of the elements of bureaucracy, to transform Soviet society into a free association of working people, the people must have a high level of culture. (3) The third cause of the defects is that some of the units are not sufficiently active, they are backward, and in some cases, particularly in the border regions, they are even wholly illiterate. (4) The fourth cause is the absence of a sufficient number of trained Party members in the localities and some provincial Party committees are too enthusiastic and follow the old traditions. (5) The fifth cause—insufficient information. And communication between superiors and subordinates, and between the central and local governments was very weak. This is also a serious cause of the defects that have accumulated within the Party.

The fifth part is about what measures must be adopted to remove these defects: (1) The first thing is, by every means, to combat the survivals and habits of the war period in the Party, to combat the erroneous view that the Party is a system of institutions, and not a militant organization of the proletariat, which is intellectually vigorous, acts independently, lives a full life, is destroying the old and creating the new. (2) Secondly, the activity of the mass of the Party membership must be increased; all questions of interest to the membership in so far as they can be openly discussed must be submitted to it for open discussion. (3) Thirdly, the principle of election must be applied in practice to all Party bodies and official posts. (4) Staff meetings of all departments under the Central Committee, Provincial Committee and Regional Committee shall be held regularly to eliminate bureaucracy. (5) Fifthly, our Party units in the factories must be drawn into dealing with the various questions relating to the course of affairs in the respective enterprises and trusts, and to become an expert body of business to do well in production. (6) Sixthly, the quality of the membership of the Party units must be improved, strengthen education, abandon formalism, and attract outstanding workers to join the party. (7) Seventhly, work must be intensified among the Non-Party workers and we should pay attention to uniting Non-Party workers. (8) Eighthly, work among the peasants must be intensified and we should pay attention to practical work, prohibit empty talk and gain the trust of farmers. (9) Ninthly, intensify Party and political educational work among the youth, the source of new cadres, in the Red Army, among women delegates, and among Non-Party people in general. (10) Tenthly, increasing the supply of information from the top downwards and from below upwards.

At the end of the article, Stalin put forward his own views on the two extremes on the question of workers’ democracy exposed in some argumentative essays in Pravda: (1) The point of having elections “throughout”, Stalin pointed out that democracy is necessary and election is necessary, but the restrictive measures adopted by the Party Congresses, at least the chief ones, must still remain in force. (2) In response to the so-called “unlimited discussion” argument, Stalin pointed out that it is necessary to discuss the issue, and it is also necessary to argue, but there must be a scope for the debate, so as to prevent the Party, the fighting force of the proletariat, from degenerated into a debate club. Stalin stressed that steering the course towards internal Party democracy that the Central Committee set already, an improvement in the Party work will be achieved.

Stalin’s speech played a positive role in stabilizing the situation of the Soviet Union at that time, unifying the whole Party’s thought and ensuring the smooth progress of socialist construction. However, when we look into the content of this article, Stalin’s understanding on the disputes within the party in 1923 was superficial. In fact, the essence of these disputes and debates was how the Soviet Union would lead the transition from the class wars period to the period of peaceful economic construction and realize the democratization of the party’s political life. However, the outcome of this debate not only failed to solve the problem of intra-party democracy from the aspects of theory and ideology and bring about systematical approaches, instead it evolved into a large-scale struggle to criticize and suppress the opposition.