"Debates about party policy were more important than personalities in deciding the outcome of the struggle for power in the USSR in the years 1924 to 1929." Assess the validity of this judgement
"Debates about party policy were more important than personalities in deciding the outcome of the struggle for power in the USSR in the years 1924 to 1929."Assess the validity of this judgement. [20 marks]The incidence, expression and outcomes of debates about party policy were decided primarily by the personalities and decisions of their participants (for example, Trotsky's reluctance and refusal to take up Lenin's recommendations on the Georgian question against Stalin, which meant a missed opportunity to oppose him publicly), rather than the functional content of the debates themselves. The debates about party policy were less important in themselves than the loyalties and power relations they represented - Stalin's attacks on "Comrade Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution" were not meant to discredit the theory (much less were the attacks, for example, by Trotsky upon Zinoviev and Kamenev's record especially concerning the October Revolution, being attacks on people rather than their arguments), but were meant
to discredit the person. The forming of the triumvirate, for another example, against Trotsky, was not done primarily because Trotsky's views on policy were vastly divergent from the rest of the party's or the Stalin, et al themselves, but because they (Zinoviev and Kamenev especially) considered Trotsky a "Bonaparte" figure whose personality - decried slightly in Lenin's Testament - made him someone dangerous, and in their eyes the most likely person to seize power.In addition, it is not necessarily personalities, either, which were the most important factor in deciding the outcome of the struggle for power, although they were more ...
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to discredit the person. The forming of the triumvirate, for another example, against Trotsky, was not done primarily because Trotsky's views on policy were vastly divergent from the rest of the party's or the Stalin, et al themselves, but because they (Zinoviev and Kamenev especially) considered Trotsky a "Bonaparte" figure whose personality - decried slightly in Lenin's Testament - made him someone dangerous, and in their eyes the most likely person to seize power.In addition, it is not necessarily personalities, either, which were the most important factor in deciding the outcome of the struggle for power, although they were more important. The structure and composition of the party by this time, governed as it largely was by two lists (the nomenklatura), made those with the administrative power to hire and fire those who could command and control the party, and thus government, most easily. As head of the Rabkrin and General Secretary, Stalin was the man who was most well placed to take advantage of this weakness. And - his personality being such - he very well did so.It could also be argued that the structure of the party also in its way contributed to the power struggle itself. There being no concrete mechanism for determining leadership, the administrative arm of the party became a de facto determinant, and the concentration of power in Stalin's hands created a focal point of power to be fought for. The vacuum left behind by Lenin not only left the party without a definite leader on policy (while policy was still debated hotly when Lenin was in power, he still to an extent represented an authority), but without a natural political leader. This personality vacuum would have increased the importance of personality in deciding the outcome of the leadership struggle - the party was not missing its primary strategist; other members could form policy ideas, etc; it was missing its primary polemicist, its primary figurehead.However, it is not the case that debates about party policy were completely irrelevant to the power struggle. Given that one who disagreed with the party line could be tarred with the factionalist brush, the event of diverging from the party line put one at a severe disadvantage when it came to finding a contender. Trotsky, for example, was at this time increasingly at odds with party policy, and was particularly vocal in his criticism of the New Economic Policy. In 1926, Trotsky also criticised the structure of the party, claiming that is was becoming increasingly bureaucratic and less democratic, with power delegated from above rather than given from below (his view was rejected by the party, largely, of course, Stalin's bureaucrats). This made Trotsky himself a target for criticism and derision and heavily weakened his stance in the party, especially as he (and anyone supporting him) could simply be accused of factionalism and thus, essentially, tainted. In comparison, where Stalin proposed policy changes and took initiative, for example, in grain requisition during a "scissors crisis" in spring 1928, it was not for ideological reasons (unlike the kinds of issues which Trotsky was most famed for - the NEP was a concession from communism, and the idea of "permanent revolution" was not an immediate practical consideration), it was for pragmatic reasons; this had the advantage of making him appear a flexible moderate (Lenin, too, was rather pragmatic in conceding to the NEP in the first place, amongst other things), rather than a dogmatic ideologue. So debates about party policy were important not in the sense that certain figures had better policy ideas than others and thus were more successful in the party, but in the sense that debates about party policy led to party splits and dynamics which worked more in the favour of centrists who espoused (and later, especially when it came to the defeat of the Right, e.g. Bukharin, defined) the party line, that is - Stalin; and less in the favour of outspoken and heterodox figures like Trotsky.Overall, the judgement has some validity - debates about party policy were of importance in deciding the outcome of the power struggle between 1924 and 1929. However, it may not be the case that they were more important, appearing as they do to be subsumed under a larger landscape in which structures of power and dynamics of personality had more sway in deciding even the outcome of those policy debates, as well as the power struggle itself.
