The political uses of 'rehabilitations' (ii) The Red Army and the Left Opposition

behind grounds that they are British designed.

The Central Electricity Generating Board, under Sir Christopher Hinton, wants to go ahead with water-cooled reactors from the United States because they would be cheaper to build.

In tact, both types are almost equally inefficient and barely compare with conventional power stations.

Harold Wilson, of course, is very concerned at this inefficiency in the use of science and technology under the Tory government.

This is why last year, he proposed the establishment of a national research and development corporation which would employ scientists to undertake research work in a more efficient manner and then give the results to British industrialists so they can compete more efficiently in the world market.

Speed-up

For the working class, however, this will mean increased speed-up in the factories and higher unemployment, thanks to the increased mechanisation that is bound to arise from Wilson's streamlining of technology.

The labour movement must make it quite clear to Wilson that it will not accept this or any other attempt to help out big business at the expense of the working class.

If science and technology to be used for the benefit of mass of working people and merely for the profits of tew, then the working class n take over the industries. THE principal chiefs of the Red Army, liquidated b Stalin in 1937 and 1938, have all been 'rehabilitated' — Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Uborevich, Blücher, Eideman, Yegorov and Gamarnik.

These 'rehabilitations' were carried through tardily. They had to await the 22nd Congress before emerging from the framework of discreet and allusive quotations in magazines. (Izvestia)

The generals were 'rehabilitated' by Khrushchev himself at the Congress. "They were all victims of the repression, he stated. 'But nevertheless they were highly worthy of our army especially Tukhachevsky, Yakir and Uborevich.' Tukhachevsky's biography shares a place among the 12 life stories of great communists, published in "Almanac' in 1963, alongside those of P. Togliatti, W. Ulbricht and Mao Tse-tung!

Those of Gamarnik, Blücher and Kossior (mentioned last week) feature among eight biographies published in the 1964 edition of 'Almanac', with those of Khrushchev, Ernst Thaelman, Antonin Novotny and the former head of the Soviet Secret Police (GPU), Menzhinsky.

Notes on Gamarnik specify that 'he committed suicide in May 1937 because he could no longer tolerate the massive repressions engendered by Stalin's personality cult'.

The short history of these military 'rehabilitations' is devoid of interest but for two aspects.

Firstly, they are used as an explanation for the initial rout of the Red Army by the Nazis in 1941 (placing Stalin's responsibility for this in question). Secondly, the machinery of repression of the military chiefs is carefully concealed.

At the 22nd Congress, instead of referring to the archives, Khrushchev borrowed heavily from the foreign press.

FREQUENT tion of the planning system and continuous discussion about planning methods reflect the existence of problems which Soviet policy-makers are unable to overcome.

For over a decade they have been trying to adapt Stalinist methods to the needs of a technologically more advanced economy, and the demands of consumers for more and better goods, without success.

In the Soviet Union, of course, the main means of production are owned by the state and the collectives.

Legally they are 'the property of the whole people', , though they are administered by members of the privileged bureaucracy very conscious of their own interests.

There are no landlords and capitalists, so that production is not carried on for private profit. Instead it is based on plans drawn up in advance by the planning authorities.

AUTHORITY The main planning authority is now the Supreme Council of the National Economy.

Directly under this body come the Gosplan (State Planning Committee), the Sovnarkhoz (National Economic Council) and the Gosstroi (State Committee for Construction). In addition there are Regional Economic Boards (Sovnarkhoz) and various national ministries The same attitude was same attitude was adopted by the author, L. by the author, L. Nikulin, of a long account about Tukhachevsky, which appeared in the February, March, April and May 1963 editions of the ultra-Stalinist literary review 'Oktyabr'. He quotes from Churchill and writers such as Gunter Peis.

'On the personal order of Stalin, Marshal Tukhachevsky's wife, his sister Sofia Nikolaevna and his brothers, Alexander and Nicholas were physically annihilated.

'Three of his sisters were dispatched to a concentration camp as well as his young daughter, who was imprisoned as soon as she came of age.

His mother also died.' While one regrets the fact that Nikulin does not quote the various sources to which he had access, it is strikingly evident that the only point in Tukhachevsky's trial to which he made direct reference was the accusation about collusion with Trotsky and not that of collusion with Hitler and the Wehrmacht.

Thus the 'rehabilitation' serves to combat Trotsky, since Tukhachevsky considered as astounding the notion that he Antonov Ovseenko could have had relations with the creator of the Red Army.

The political use of the 'rehabilitations' is indirect here, but is often far more clearly defined. The rehabilitated' communist is shown as being at once opposed to 'capitulationist Trotskyism' and to the Stalinist repressions of 1936-39.

E. B. Kviring, first secretary of the Ukrainian CP from 1923 to 1925, who 'died prematurely' concerned with particular parts of the economy.

Gosplan deals with longterm planning, the Sovnarkhoz with current plan execution.

Actual production, construction and distribution are in the hands of separate boards and enterprises: factories, power stations, collective and state farms, cooperative societies and so on.

However, decisions about most matters regarding equipment, supply of raw materials and output are taken, not by the enterprises, but by the central planning boards.

TARGETS

The enterprises are given targets in advance output which they are supposed to fulfil.

Soviet theory assumes that what is good for society must be good for the individual enterprise, but to put this into practice is not easy.

Plans for each enterprise are usually based on past performance: next year's target will be set a bit higher, usually in terms of gross output, which often has a detrimental effect on quality.

Equipment is allocated centrally and there is no cost item corresponding to interest.

Defects in this system arise from excessive centralisation, the receipt of conflicting instructions from difterent bodies, the pressure to meet targets (which can mean that goods are produced for which there is no need) and poor use ¡'Left to. right: Top-Gamarnik (Political Commissar), Tukhachevsky, Yegorov, Khalepsky, Orlov (Navy), Yakir. Bottom-Kamenev, Ordzhonikidze, Alksnis (Air), Muklevich, Eidemann, Uborevich (sic) in 1937, 'vigorously defended the unity and cohesion of the party organisation against the Trotskyists, the nationalist deviationists and other antiparty groups'.

Chataievitch fought 'to put an end to despotism and to the undeserved slandering of honest Bolsheviks for the tiniest criticism, to finish with the atmosphere of showiness, of gaudy demonstrations and habitual boasting' Postycher is perhaps the best example of this use, insofar as he was without doubt one of the members of the Stalinist faction who, after having fought the Left Opposition, tried to stem the wave of Stalinist terror.

This is also probably the case with Rudzutak and Vlas Chubar.

If we leave aside the case of Skrypnik, an old Bolshevik, hostile to the Russification of the Ukraine, who committed suicide in 1933, and of Antonov Orseenko, an oppositionist up to 1928, who rallied so effectively to Stalin that he took part in the liquidation of POUMists and Trotskyists in Spain, the 'rehabilitation' of two oppositionists is of some magnitude.

The of equipment and lack of balance between different enterprises.

Various changes have beel introduced and many others discussed, intended to overcome these problems.

Lack of real control from below on the planners is the real core of all these problems.

Without full participation by the workers themselves in the drawing up and carrying out of plans, decisions are taken administratively with a large amount of bungling.

Incomes are paid out in money and goods are sold for money. The peasants may sell on the market the produce from their private plots. The USSR is still an economy of scarcity.

INCENTIVES

Incomes remain very unequal and money incentives are applied at every stage These conditions influence the planners in deciding what shall be produced and at what prices. They have three main problems: • To provide adequate supplies of equipment and raw materials to meet the requirements of planned total output of finished goods; To avoid overproduction of goods which will otherwise be wasted or unsold; who was legally rehabilitated in the course of summer 1962 during the secret session of an unidentified tribunal.

Its decision took the form of granting pensions (on occasion refused) to surviving members of his family, and the rumoured publication of part of Bukharin's works.

The second is more important. It concerns N. Krestinsky, sentenced at the same Moscow Trial (the third) as Bukharin.

(Pravda)

Krestinsky doubtless broke his ties with the opposition in 1928, like Antonov Ovseenko.

But while the latter was shot without the slightest legal proceedings on his return to the USSR, Krestinsky was one of the pillars of the Third Moscow Trial. He was one of the more important components of the judicial machinery engineered by Stalin against the Left Opposition.

The "Izvestia' article of October 27, 1963, 'rehabilitating' this 'diplomat of the Leninist school, quite implicitly questioned this machinery.

It should be noted To fix prices and incomes to equate supply and demand.

In Stalin's day a large measure of arbitrary central action entered into the plans.

Even now part of the planning is done in a crude way: e.g., by setting the enterprise gross output targets. As a result enterprises may resort to 'contact men' to buy, sell and exchange outside the plan.

Most of all, consumers have to put up with whatever is available and late-comers go empty away.

PLANNED PROFIT'

Each enterprise has to obtain money from sales as much or more than it pays out in cost, including a planned 'profit' Output sold in excess of the planned target will bring in additional 'profits'. These profits are really an accounting item, not a return to capital.

Where prices are fixed it is difficult to say, however, that high profits equal efficiency.

Some Soviet economists have been concerned about this problem. At present the State budget receives 70-75 per cent of planned profit, but only 25 per cent of excess profits; the rest of the profits go to the regional sovnarkhoz or to the 'director's fund' to be used for the benefit of the enterprise. Overshooting means bad planning or price fixing.

Some Soviet economists have been arguing that there was none other than that old Stalinist diplomat N. Maisky (a Menshevik who had rallied to Stalin after the Menshevik Party had expelled him for participation in a White Guard government!) who was entrusted with this 'rehabilitation'. This task falls usually to unknown historians.

One could add to that the sympathetic portrait of Zinoviev, painted by the novelist Kazakieviech in his novel 'The Blue Notebook', published in 1961. We can see that this chapter is poorly documented considering the huge number of rehabilitations carried through since 1953.

To go any further would presume that the present leaders are obliged to renounce their system of oversimplified explanation of the Stalinist terror.

Obviously it is difficult to rehabilitate the thousands of victims massacred by the regime and at the same time to explain that this regime was truly socialist and carried out …a correct policy. The explanation they provide is at the same time schematic and facile.

A quotation from 'Questions of History' 1962, No. 5, had this to say:

It must emphasised resources should be greater freedom for the enterprise and greater flexibility in the formation of prices.

Emphasis has also been laid on the need for more refined mathematical techniques in the preparation and controlling of plans.

Public discussions on those questions have been permitted and even encouraged in the past three years.

It is thus admitted that the planning system is far from perfect, but it is also clear that the bureaucracy is not agreed about what should be done to improve it.

One tendency leans towards maintaining central control while at the other extreme some wish to increase the power of the enterprise director, and thus the role of "profits' as an indicator of efficiency.

CLASH Behind these discussions can be seen a clash of interests within the bureaucracy when faced with the task of controlling an increasingly complex economy under pressure from the world market and from within.

So far the working class is left out of the question: though some have argued that the factory director should be able to fix wages. In fact, the full potentialities of planning cannot be realised until it is brought under its control.

Naturally, no one in the controversy has so far proposed this despite all the harm it did, despite all the harm Stalin's_personality cult Stalin's personality cult was not able to change the socialist nature of Soviet society, nor arrest its progress towards communism.

'It has in no way paralysed the activity of the Party and the government. It must be borne in mind that the Party as a whole and the Soviet people knew nothing of Stalin's scandalous abuses of power, or the gross violations of the Leninist principles of leadership in the activity of the central organisations.' Sometimes, however, an inept "rehabilitation', or a very able one, would go a little further than the others. It was in this way that in the article on Kossior in the 1964 'Almanac' (circulation 750,000 copies) the author Melchin wrote:

'S. V. Kossior vigorously defended the general Leninist line of the Party, and waged a resolute struggle against Trotskyism and the right deviationists.

'In this respeot Kossior frequently emphasised in his contributions that the Party's duty was "to wage essentially and especially an ideological struggle against rightist deviation and against the ideology of rightist deviation and against its slogans —we must insist on ideological struggle and not on organisational methods"?

This sentence is no doubt ambiguous. Is he trying to make Kossior say that the right opposition was the principal enemy or that on the contrary it alone deserves to be fought ideologically, while Trotskyism must be fought at all costs?

We cannot tell. 'But this ambiguity and uncertainty indicates that despite all the lies, the truth is slowly coming to light.

It is not really known why Kossior or Rudzutak were N. Krestinsky killed. But if it were true, as is probable, that it was for being opposed to the Stalinist wave of terror of 1936-37, this tardy opposition has no great political significance.

On the other hand the condemnation of Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov, Bukharin and the sentence in default on Trotsky, were directly linked with the policy carried out by Stalin and his collaborators, at least from 1929 onwards.

This policy has changed without a doubt. But, without Stalin and his policy, Khrushchev would not today be secretary of the CPSU.

The official explanation could no longer be maintained from that moment when not only loyal Stalinists but also oppositionists sentenced by the former or at the same time as them were considered just as undeserving victims.

From another point of view it would seem fairly difficult to check the machinery which was unleashed and which could, despite the most meddling controls, provoke some surprises for the very people who set it in motion.

In this field, as elsewhere, the ruling bureaucracy wavers in an unstable equilibrium between its subjective needs (to harmonise the administration of Soviet society) and its political heritage bound up with its objective parasitic social nature.