Ban on factions in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

In 1921, factions were banned in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Since 1920 Lenin had become concerned about oppositionist groups within the Communist Party. For example, the Democratic Centralists had been set up in March 1919 and by 1921 Alexander Shlyapnikov had set up the Workers' Opposition. Lenin regarded these as distractions within the party when unity was needed in order to neutralise the major crises of 1921, such as the famines, and Kronstadt Rebellion. As Lenin stated:

"all members of the Russian Communist Party who are in the slightest degree suspicious or unreliable ... should be got rid of"[1]

Resolution on Party Unity


Factions were also commencing to criticize Lenin's leadership. Consequently, the 10th Party Congress passed a Resolution On Party Unity, a ban on factions to eliminate factionalism within the party in 1921. [2]. The resolution stated as follows.

  • Under the present conditions (the ongoing Kronstadt rebellion), party unity was more necessary than ever.
  • The Kronstadt rebellion was being exploited by "the bourgeois counter-revolutionaries and whiteguards in all countries of the world" in order to "secure the overthrow of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia".
  • Criticism, "while absolutely necessary", was supposed to be "submitted immediately, without any delay", that is, without prior deliberation in any faction, "for consideration and decision to the leading ... bodies of the Party."
  • The "deviation towards syndicalism and anarchism" was rejected "in principle", but the central proposals of the Democratic Centralism group were accepted.
  • All factions were dissolved.

The ban on factions after Lenin's death


If accused of factionalism members would subsequently be expelled from the Party, such as Workers' Truth in December 1923. Big opposition factions again appeared after the end of the civil war, such as Leon Trotsky's Left Opposition, as well as oppositionist groups around Nikolai Bukharin and Grigory Zinoviev. These factions were tolerated for several years, leading some modern Marxists to claim that the ban on factions was intended to be temporary.[3] When Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled on November 12, 1927, the ban on factions was however used to justify this, and there is no language in the discussion at the 10th Party Congress suggesting that it was intended to be temporary (Protokoly 523-548).

A sense of a deficit in democracy was present in calls by Trotsky and The Declaration of 46 echos in 1923, but more significantly the autumn purges of 1921. Every Communist was subpoenaed in front of a purge commission and forced to justify their credentials as a revolutionary, or face being dubbed as a "careerist" or a "class enemy". (i.e. those who joined the Bolshevik Party only because they were now being painted as the "winning" party) Lenin argued this was necessary as to not cause the direction of the revolution to be deviated from its original aims. As T. H. Rigby wrote it would be near inconceivable to believe that opposition was nonexistent amongst the 25% of the party that were deemed "unworthy".[4]

References

  1. ↑ The Russian Revolution, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Page 102
  2. ↑ T.Fiehn, C.Corin Communist Russia under Lenin and Stalin (2005)
  3. ↑ https://www.marxist.com/russia-rev-to-counterrev-part-one.htm
  4. ↑ Rigby, Communist Party Membership
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