Introduction
In September 1927, the United Opposition issued a programmatic document dealing with all the important questions of the day entitled “The Platform of the Opposition: The Party Crisis and How to Overcome It”.
The Platform exposed the opportunist line of the leadership and argued the Leninist position. It demanded a change of course away from concessions to the kulaks and for a planned industrialisation of the country. This was the only way things could be brought back from the brink and prevent the widening between agricultural and industrial prices, wholesale and retail prices, finally the “scissors” between domestic and world prices, which were a source of private gain. The five-year plan of development had been watered down, with miniscule growth of capital investment envisaged. “The tremendous advantages resulting from the nationalisation of the land, the means of production, and the banks, and from centralised management – that is, the advantages deriving from the socialist revolution – find almost no expression in the five year plan”, explained the document.
It demanded a timely increase in living standards, the restoration of workers democracy and the readmission of all those expelled for opposition views from the International. It demanded the end to all repression against the Opposition, including “the creation of gangs whose job is to break up all discussion of party problems by means of shouting, whistling, turning off lights, etc.” It ended with the slogans: “Against opportunism! Against a split! For the unity of the Leninist party!”
The Platform was submitted to the Politburo by thirteen members of the Central Committee for the Fifteenth Congress of the Party. Trotsky states that 200 party members contributed to the Platform. Trotsky considered very weak the parts that Zinoviev wrote, especially on China, but was forced to accept them for the sake of unity. Trotsky related the deep political tensions at the time. “In 1926 and 1927”, relates Trotsky, “I had uninterrupted conflicts with the Zinovievists on this question. Two or three times, the matter stood at the breaking point.” (Writings 1930-31, p.87)
Despite these differences within the Opposition, the Platform was a very important document around which there could be a common struggle against the Stalinist regime. It was hoped that the Platform would be distributed to the membership as part of the pre-Congress discussion. However, the CC rejected the request out of hand and forbid the distribution of the Opposition document. The Opposition had no alternative but to circulate it clandestinely. An old Communist and printer, Fishelev, managed to print several thousand copies of the document. As a result, he was arrested and sent to a labour camp near the Arctic Circle for “misappropriating paper and equipment”. Others who circulated the Platform were threatened with expulsion, imprisonment and even exile.
Rob Sewell
From ‘Origins of Trotskyism’, Marxist.com
6 September 2018