Preface

Source: Works, Vol. 12, April 1929 - June 1930, pp. XI-XIV
Publisher: Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954
Transcription/Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2008). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.

The twelfth volume of J. V. Stalin’s Works contains writings and speeches of the period from April 1929 to June 1930.

This was a time when the Bolshevik Party was developing a general offensive of socialism along the whole front, mobilising the working class and the labouring classes of the peasantry for the fight to reconstruct the entire national economy on a socialist basis, and to fulfil the first five-year plan. The Bolshevik Party was effecting a decisive turn in policy—the transition from the policy of restricting the exploiting tendencies of the kulaks to the policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class on the basis of complete collectivisation. The Party was accomplishing a historic task of the proletarian revolution—the most difficult since the conquest of power—the switching of millions of individual peasant farms to the path of collective farming, the path of socialism.

In his speech at the plenum of the C.C. and C.C.C., C.P.S.U.(B.) in April 1929 on “The Right Deviation in the C.P.S.U.(B),” published in full for the first time in this volume, J. V. Stalin analyses the class changes which had taken place in the U.S.S.R. and in the capitalist countries, and points to the increasing socialist offensive in our country against the capitalist elements of town and country and the consequent sharpening of the class struggle. J. V. Stalin shows that the partial stabilisation of capitalism was being shattered and that the elements of a revolutionary upsurge in the capitalist countries were accumulating, and he substantiates the need for intensifying the struggle against the Right elements in the Communist Parties.

J. V. Stalin denounces the anti-Party factional activities of Bukharin’s group, their double-dealing and their secret negotiations with the Trotskyists for the organisation of a bloc against the Party.

J. V. Stalin stresses that the Right deviation and conciliation towards it were the chief danger at that period, exposes the Right capitulators as enemies of Leninism and agents of the kulaks, and lays bare the bourgeois-liberal, anti-revolutionary nature of the Right-opportunist “theory” that the kulaks would grow peacefully into socialism. In the struggle against the Bukharin opposition, J. V. Stalin develops Lenin’s thesis that the exploiting classes must be eliminated by means of a fierce class struggle of the proletariat. He shows that the Right capitulators’ opportunist line on questions of class struggle was linked with Bukharin’s anti-Leninist errors concerning the theory of the state.

In the struggle against the Right opportunists, J. V. Stalin upholds and develops the Marxist-Leninist theory of the state and of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In the article “Emulation and Labour Enthusiasm of the Masses,” J. V. Stalin defines socialist emulation as the communist method of building socialism, as the lever with which the working people are destined to transform the entire economic and cultural life of the country on the basis of socialism.

In “A Year of Great Change,” J. V. Stalin assesses the year 1929 as one of great achievements on all fronts of socialist construction: in the sphere of labour productivity, and in the development of industry and agriculture. Noting the success of the collective-farm movement, he shows that the main mass of the peasantry—the middle peasants—were joining the collective farms, and that, as a result of the individual peasant farming taking the path of socialism, the last sources for the restoration of capitalism in the country were being eliminated.

Proceeding from V. I. Lenin’s co-operative plan, J. V. Stalin elaborates the theory of collectivisation of agriculture and indicates the practical ways and means of putting it into practice.

In his speech “Concerning Questions of Agrarian Policy in the U.S.S.R.,” J. V. Stalin exposes the bourgeois and Right-opportunist theories of “equilibrium,” of “spontaneity” in socialist construction, and of the “stability” of small-peasant farming, and demonstrates the advantages of large-scale collective economy in agriculture. He defines the nature of collective farming as a socialist form of economy, and substantiates the change from the policy of restricting and ousting the capitalist elements in the countryside to the policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class on the basis of complete collectivisation.

In “Dizzy With Success,” “Reply to Collective-Farm Comrades” and other works, J. V. Stalin denounces “Leftist” distortions of the Party line in the development of collective farms, indicates the ways and means of correcting these distortions, and shows that the chief and basic link in the collective-farm movement at the given stage was the agricultural artel.

This volume contains the “Political Report of the Central Committee to the Sixteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U. (B.),” in which J. V. Stalin gives a profound analysis of the crisis of world capitalism and reveals the sharpening of the contradictions of the capitalist system. Describing the relations between the U.S.S.R. and the capitalist states, he defines the foreign policy of the Soviet state as a consistent policy of peace. He shows the growing economic progress of the U.S.S.R. and the superiority of the socialist economic system over the capitalist system, and defines the nature and tasks of the sweeping socialist offensive along the whole front. Mobilising the Party to combat deviations in the national question, he shows that the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the building of socialism in the U.S.S.R. is one of the development of national cultures, socialist in content and national in form.

The volume contains hitherto unpublished letters of J. V. Stalin to Felix Kon, A. M. Gorky and Comrades Bezymensky and Rafail.

Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute
of the C.C., C.P.S.U.(B.)