On Socialism in One Country and Ideological Prostration

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“The epoch of wars and revolutions” is a harsh epoch. Pitilessly it uses up people — some physically, some morally. LN. Smirnov has been used up. No one considered him a theoretician. He was never an independent politician. But he is a serious revolutionist of high moral tempering. Nonetheless, he has surrendered. The words of Lenin involuntarily come to mind, that revolutionists who have passed the age of fifty should be “shot.” In jocular form is concealed a serious content.

In another note in this issue of the Biulleten it is shown that the first draft of Smirnov’s statement was still trying to assert that the theory of socialism in one country is anti-Leninist. The final draft asserts that the criticism of this theory is anti-Leninist Thus basic problems of Marxism are revised according to how party membership is registered.

When revolutionists become indifferent in the sphere of principles they debase themselves morally too. Isn’t it all the same, in fact, to say something is or something is not? Isn’t it all the same to quote accurately or inaccurately? Since the creation of the world there have hardly been so many liars as our centrists. Why? Because centrism is the epitome of the lack of principle.

Alas, Smirnov and Boguslavsky, having come to gray hairs, have joined the school of Yaroslavsky. They accompany their adherence to national socialism with falsification. There is no need to say that they defend the theory of socialism in one country by the same quotation from a posthumous Lenin article on cooperation. In the first chapter of my critique of the program of the Comintern [The Third International After Lenin] this argument is subjected (I make bold to think) to exhaustive analysis. I proved — and till now no one has refuted or tried to refute — that the article on cooperation stems entirely from an elementary postulate of Marxism that the modern development of productive forces excludes the possibility of building national socialism. But the essential proof of this idea I preface with the following completely incontrovertible consideration:

“If the article dictated by Lenin during his illness and published after his death really did say that the Soviet state possesses all the necessary and material, that is, first of all, productive prerequisites for an independent construction of complete socialism, one would only have to surmise that either Lenin slipped in his dictation or that the stenographer made a mistake in transcribing her notes. Either conjecture is at any rate more probable than that Lenin abandoned Marxism and his life-long teaching in two hasty strokes.”

What do Smirnov and Boguslavsky say about this?

“We consider the opinion of Leon Davidovich Trotsky that this formulation is the result of ‘a slip’ in dictation or ‘a mistake’ by the stenographer erroneous and anti-Leninist.”

I should like to compare what was said by me with Smirnov’s reply. This is clearly the height of dishonor! Yet Smirnov is an honorable man. But, alas, he has fallen into a dishonorable position.

Yes, I said that if in an unfinished posthumous article by Lenin there is a phrase which is contradictory to a basic position of Marxism, then I, of course, would suspect it was a slip or a mistake. But further on I say:

“Fortunately, however, there is not the slightest need for such an explanation. The remarkable, though unfinished article ‘On Cooperation’ … does not at all speak of those things which the revisionists of Leninism so light-mindedly ascribe to it.”

It would seem that all is clear? It is scarcely worthwhile dwelling any further on it. Let us note one more document of ideological ruin and prostration.

It will be remembered that one of Korolenko’s sketches finishes like this: “Hey, it’s your turn. The old bell-ringer has stopped ringing.”