Decists Working Group

The Left of the Left:

The Democratic Centralists in the Anti-Stalinist Opposition

Aleksei Gusev

The history of the 1920s Left anti-Stalinist opposition in the USSR is usually associated with names of Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev and political currents led by them. Much less attention has been paid to the third current – the Democratic Centralists, or the Group of 15, whose main leaders were Timofei Sapronov and Vladimir Smirnov. While the role of DC group in the factional struggle in the Bolshevik party in the early 1920s is more or less documented, this cannot be said about the period from 1923 onwards, especially about the second half of 1920s. Research on the political struggles in the RCP(b) usually refer to Sapronovites in passing as an “ultra-left” tendency in the Left Opposition, producing an impression of its marginal character. Thus, Robert Daniels discussing the events of 1926-1927 in his classical study of the communist opposition The Conscience of the Revolution (1960), mentions the Group of 15 only once – as a group that was expelled from the Communist Party, alongside with activists of Trotskyist-Zinovievist opposition, by the decision of the XVth Party congress.[1] Isaac Deutscher gives the Sapronovites a bit more space on the pages of his biography of Leon Trotsky’s, but produces a one-sided, almost caricatural picture of them as “Quixotic” extremists, lacking “realism” and “dialectic” of Trotskyists.[2]

Partial opening of archives in Russia and rise of researchers’ interest in the problems of anti-Stalinist resistance have given a new impetus to studies of Democratic Centralists (Decist) current. Many new and important documents by and on Decists were found in the Central Archive of the Russian Federal Security Service, Russian Archive of Social and Political History (former Central Archive of the CPSU) and in Hoover Institution and Harvard University’s archives in the USA. Some DC documents were included in seven volumes of The Trotsky Archive edited by Yuri Felshtinsky and published in Moscow and in Kharkov from 1990 to 2003. These sources provide an opportunity for a new look on Sapronovite current, which appears to have played a more important role in the anti-Stalinist opposition both in terms of activities and ideological impact.

It is known that the current of Democratic Centralism originated in the Russian Communist Party in 1919 and was one of earliest Bolshevik oppositions of the post-October period. Initially this tendency, that in 1920 developed into inner-party faction, had its base among personnel of local Soviet and party organs dissatisfied with bureaucratic authoritarianism of the central bodies of the party-state system. In their speeches at the party forums and in various documents Decists fiercely criticised the concentration of power in the hands of “party oligarchy” and the “tops” of Soviet apparatus. To the “vertical centralism” of bureaucracy they counterposed “democratic centralism”, meaning autonomy of local Soviets and party organisations, election of officials and control over them from below, and possibilities for criticism and discussion.[3] Valerian Osinsky, one of Decists’ leaders, wrote in 1920: “There can be no proletarian dictatorship without conflict of opinions, without struggle of currents and groups, without opposition”.[4] Among Bolsheviks, Democratic Centralists had the reputation of being “communist liberals”, defenders of rights and liberties allowed by the one-party regime.

Being far from a marginal group, Decists from time to time prevailed at Soviet and party forums (for instance, at the VIIth All-Russian Congress of Soviets in 1919 and IVth All-Ukrainian party conference in 1920).[5] However, Lenin’s Politbureau kept government system under tight control and was able to neutralize the Decists’ democratic initiatives in practice. Since the Bolshevik system evolved objectively in a direction opposite to those defended by Decists, their positions in the Party gradually weakened. In 1921, the Democratic Centralist group was dissolved, alongside other party factions, by the decision of the Xth Congress of the RCP(b)[6].

But, two years later, in 1923, a number of leading Decists took an active part in the another opposition, which demanded the democratisation of the party regime and changes in its economic policies. This opposition was not “Trotskyist” – this word had not been yet put into circulation. Leon Trotsky, though urging party to take a “new course” in his articles, did not participate personally in the open discussions at party meetings – partly for health reasons, partly because he tried to avoid an open break with the Politbureau’s majority. In the Soviet press of that time, oppositionists were called not Trotskyists, but “supporters of Sapronov and Preobrazhensky”.[7] Indeed, Timofei Sapronov and many other Decist leaders played a key role in formation and activities of the “1923 Opposition”. It was they who were considered by the party officials “initiators of struggle” and “core” of the group of 46 old Bolsheviks that authored the opposition’s platform – the “Declaration of 46”.[8] It is telling, that the opposition in Moscow organised its headquarters in the apartment of one of the leading Decists, Vladimir Maximovsky in the National hotel.[9] The same Maximovsky and Sapronov brought the Opposition its only serious electoral victory during  the 1923-4 factional struggle in Moscow. In January 1924, Maximovsky was elected by an oppositionist majority of Hamovnichesky district party conference as secretary of the district party committee. But, in less than two months, he had to step down under the strong pressure from higher party authorities and Central Committee loyalists.[10]

After Stalin’s apparatus, using a whole series of administrative technologies and tricks, defeated the opposition in the party discussion of 1923-4, core cadres of Decists suspended public activities for a while. But they continued to maintain communication and correspondence and, from time to time, met in private apartments to discuss political questions. In November 1925, the Central Committee stated that a number of Decists were continuing their “factional work”; one of them, Boris Pilipenko, who worked for the Kharkov gubernia’s party committee, was expelled from the RCP(b).[11]

In the same year, Decists made and began to distribute clandestinely the type-written pamphlet The Workers’ Question, devoted to the real conditions of the working class in the Soviet “workers’ state”. This pamphlet described the state pressure on workers, who were forced to work more intensively without respective wage increases; it talked about worsening of legal conditions of workers and establishment of “total autocracy of administration in factories”. These problems – and not the scholastic debates about possibilities of “building socialism in a single country” – had, from the authors’ point of view, major significance for socialist perspectives in the USSR. And they concluded that the working class needed means of defence from the existing state, including the legalisation of strikes.[12]

So, as we can see, by the mid-1920s, a serious shift took place in the views of Democratic Centralists: from polemics on the questions of inner-party regime and economic policies, they moved to concentrate their attention on the problems directly linked to the social interests of the workers. Such a re-orientation brought as a consequence a change in social composition of Decists’ supporters: according OGPU’s data, in the second half of 1920s, these were mainly working-class.[13]

In Summer 1926, Decist leaders played a crucial role in formation of the United Left Opposition (“Bolshevik-Leninist”), which brought together oppositionists of 1923 and Leningrad group of Zinoviev. The first meetings, where fusion of opposition factions was discussed, were chaired by Sapronov.[14] In several regions, such as the Donbass, Bryansk, Sverdlovsk, Decists had a major influence among local United Opposition activists.[15]

However, unity of opposition forces proved to be short-lived: as early as Autumn 1926, the Sapronovites left the “Bolshevik-Leninist” bloc, protesting against Trotsky and Zinoviev’s line, which they considered inconsistent and conciliatory in relation to Stalin’s ruling group. Especially negative was their reaction to the Trotskyists’ and Zinovievists’ public declaration of 16 October 1926, where the Oрposition leaders, yielding to Politbureau’s demands, recanted their factional sins and promised to stop “violations of party discipline”.[16] The Decists saw such tactical manoeuvres as unacceptable and leading only to disorientation and discreditation of the Opposition. Another factor of the split could have been a certain distrust of the Decists towards Trotsky; having been his opponents in the party discussions in 1919-1921, they remembered his enthusiasm  for war communism and feared his power ambitions. As Sapronov bluntly put it, “We are not going to shine Trotsky’s shoes!”[17]

Gradually, leaders of the Decists began to realise that the authoritarian bureaucratic system had become so entrenched in the USSR that it excluded possibilities to change situation in both socio-economic and political spheres by reformist means, through victory in inner-party discussions. According to the memoirs of Eduard Dune, an active member of this group, at that time some leading Decists, including Sapronov and Smirnov, came to the conclusion that proletarian revolution in Russia had been completely destroyed, and that the struggle had to be begin again from scratch.[18] But, initially, this conclusion was not been proclaimed openly and did not find a direct reflection in the new programmatic document of the group – the “Platform of 15” of 27 June 1927. The reason was twofold: first, not all members of the group at that time were ready to accept such radical idea, and, second, its open statement would have immediately cut Decists off from the existing Communist Party, closing off the last possibilities to work inside it. Though the Decists’ platform had generally more radical character than Trotskyist-Zinovievist “Platform of 13”, issued later in 1927, it did not say that “Thermidorian” forces in the USSR had won; it just stated cautiously that degenerated “ruling tops” in the RCP(b) had crossed “the line beyond which liquidation of the party and its transformation into auxiliary apparatus of the government begin”.[19]

But the new opposition organisation formed on the basis of “Platform of 15” had been built, from the beginning, not as an inner-party faction, but as a network of clandestine cells, designed for functioning in the underground. That differentiated the Sapronovites from the Trotskyist group, which focused on arguing at official party meetings, trying in vain to win the struggle with bureaucracy by “constitutional” means. The Decists had no such illusions. They saw their principal task as preparing cadres for a long future struggle in a context of state repression: they were sure that regime of bureaucratic dictatorship in the USSR would take a more and more oppressive character. The Sapronovites usually avoided public manifestations, they did not collect signatures under their documents, but preferred individual work with people and leaflets campaigns. For security reasons, their cells had no more than five members each. Serious attention was paid to the organisation of clandestine printshops and the acquisition of printing equipment. The Decistss also set up their Red Cross to help political prisoners.[20]

Because of the conspiratorial character of the Sapronovites’ activities, the GPU for a long time had no information about the number of their activists. As Yakov Agranov, one of the secret police chiefs, admitted, in 1927 the Chekists believed that “one room would have been enough” to embrace all the active Decists, whereas, in fact, they had about five hundred members in Moscow and Leningrad alone.[21] The Decists themselves estimated their membership as about two thousand people.[22] The advantages of the clandestine nature of their organisation became clear when the the Left Opposition was finally expelled from the Party and had to concentrate on entirely underground work. Under such conditions, the Sapronovites demonstrated their ability to perform quite well-coordinated and effective actions. Arrests and exile of several leaders (T. Sapronov, V. Smirnov, V. Oborin, T. Kharechko and some others) had not prevented them from the intensification of their activities in the situation of socio-economic crisis that began in the country. In 1928-9, underground centres of the group coordinated massive leaflets campaigns oriented mainly towards workers of industrial enterprises, where the Decists had a certain degree of support. In 1928, Agranov characterised the Sapronovites as “the most serious among existing underground factional organisations in terms of its activity”.[23]

In their leaflets, the Decists, who, by that time, began to call themselves the “Groups of the Proletarian Opposition”, used plain language: counterrevolution had triumphed in the USSR; the government, party and official “trade unions” were hostile to the proletariat, being means of its oppression and exploitation; workers were called on to prepare for the new revolution, build a new proletarian party and resist the ruling bureaucracy’s attacks on workers’ rights and interests.[24]

Isaac Deutscher writes in his biography of Trotsky that the Decists, at the end of 1920s, saw Stalin’s government as a representative of rich peasants (kulaks) and, accusing it of the restoration of capitalism in the middle of Stalin’s anti-NEP turn, “threw themselves on the windmills”.[25] But, in reality, the position of the Decists was quite different: they argued that although, before 1928, the government’s policy had favoured the kulaks and the NEPmen, after that, facing the crisis of the NEP, it turned against peasantry. Calling Stalin’s regime “a petty-bourgeois dictatorship”, most Decists meant by that the rule of a new bureaucratic social layer – the “urban petty bourgeoisie (from former workers and other elements) commanding the state apparatus”, as Taras Kharechko put it in one of his letters. The social group was hostile both to working and bourgeois classes and was trying to secure its dominance by “unleashing industrialisation in the forms of state capitalism”.[26] In 1931, this argument was developed by Timofei Sapronov in his 32-page work The Agony of the Petty-Bourgeois Dictatorship. Written in exile, this pamphlet was later used by Stalin’s judges as evidence of the Decist leader’s “counterrevolutionary activities” for which he was sentenced to death in 1937.[27] Sapronov characterised the economic system in the USSR as a “malformed state capitalism” that, by its bureaucratic mismanagement, necessitated the production of defective goods, chronic deficits and endemic disproportions. This system, stressed the author, was inferior to traditional capitalism and historically doomed.

On the political level, Sapronov made direct analogies between Stalinism, on the one hand, and fascism and Asiatic despotism, on the other. He described the declassing influence of bureaucratic dictatorship on society: by destroying all existing social collectivities, it transformed society into an amorphous mass, an easy object of manipulation from the top.[28] Here, we can see a direct anticipation of one of the central theses of the conception of totalitarianism, according to which the destruction of horizontal social interactions constitutes a basic feature of a totalitarian system.

Official party propaganda in the Soviet Union classified the Sapronovites’ views as a “mixture of Trotskyism, Menshevism and anarchism”.[29] Trotsky wrote that they were “approaching old Menshevik positions from the ‘left’”.[30] The Decists themselves believed that they were continuing the authentic Bolshevik tradition. But their views gradually evolved towards more and more critical evaluation of Leninism. As early as 1928, Sapronov admitted that Stalin’s regime had grown out of practices of the Lenin period.[31] Yugoslav oppositionist Ante Ciliga, who, in the early 1930s, served time in Verhneuralsk political prison together with supporters of the “Group of 15”, recollected their “critical, not to say hostile attitude towards the practice and the theories of the post-October Lenin”.[32] We can only guess how their views would have evolved had they survived the Stalinist terror of 1930s. But one example is telling: Eduard Dune, one of 15 signatories of the Decists’ platform, who managed to leave Russia for Western Europe during WW2, joined the Menshevik émigré organisation and, after the War, became representative of its journal Socialist Messenger in Paris; at the same time, he continued to maintain some ideas of early Bolshevism with a certain syndicalist inclination.[33]

Activities of the underground “Groups of the Proletarian Opposition” at the end of 1920s, their links to industrial workers and agitation for political and economic strikes were taken by the party leaders as a serious threat. In March 1928, the Presidium of the party Central Control Commission held a special meeting devoted to the question of the struggle against the Sapronovites. Yakov Agranov reported to the meeting: “The Decists are extremely embittered, some of them rebellious when being arrested, they call Soviet regime fascist”. They, continued GPU chief, even discussed possibilities of workers taking up arms against the party leaders.[34] Having received party directives, the GPU intensified its operations against the Sapronovite underground, and, by the beginning of 1930s, succeeded in generally destroying it. Activities of “proletarian opposition groups” ceased, and many of them were arrested. Thus, traditional methods of conspiratorial work, successfully used by revolutionaries in the times of czarist autocracy, proved to be ineffective under a totalitarian regime with its all-penetrating structures of party and police control and surveillance.

The final chapter of the history of the “Group of 15” is linked to the struggle for political prisoners’ rights in the Vorkuta and Kolyma GULAG camps in 1936-7. Such representatives of the Decists as Nikolay Baskakov, Alexander Slitinsky and others, were among leaders of hunger strikes and protests of imprisoned oppositionists.[35] Almost all of them were shot – but not a single Decist was used in show trial, as none agreed to publicly “confess” fabricated crimes.

In 1960, Robert Daniels remarked in his book that the leaders of the Democratic Centralists, such as Timofei Sapronov, “deserve much more recognition by history for sustaining as long as they did the courage of their antiauthoritarian convictions”.[36] When these words were written, only limited sources on the history of this most radical and intransigent current in the left anti-Stalinist opposition were available. Now, on the basis of new archival materials in our disposal, we can certainly confirm this conclusion.