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TheRight Opposition (Russian:Правая оппозиция,romanized: Pravaya oppozitsiya) orRight Tendency (Правый уклон,Praviy uklon) in theAll-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was a label formulated byJoseph Stalin in Autumn of 1928 for the opposition against certain measures included within thefirst five-year plan, an opposition which was led byNikolai Bukharin,Alexei Rykov,Mikhail Tomsky, and their supporters within theSoviet Union that did not follow the so-called "general line of the party". It is also the name given to "right-wing" critics within the Communist movement internationally, particularly those who coalesced in theInternational Communist Opposition, regardless of whether they identified with Bukharin and Rykov.
The struggle for power in the Soviet Union after the death ofVladimir Lenin saw the development of three major tendencies within theCommunist Party. These were described byLeon Trotsky as left, right, and centre tendencies, each based on a specific class or caste. Trotsky argued that his tendency, theLeft Opposition, represented the internationalist traditions of theworking class. The tendency led byJoseph Stalin was described as being in thecentre, based on the state and party bureaucracy, tending to shift alliances between the left and the right.
"He is an unprincipled intriguer, who subordinates everything to the preservation of his own power. He changes his theory according to whom he needs to get rid of."
— Bukharin on Stalin's theoretical position, 1928[1]
The right tendency was identified with the supporters of Nikolai Bukharin and Rykov. It was asserted that they represented the influence of the peasantry and the danger ofcapitalist restoration.[citation needed] Their policy was closely identified with theNew Economic Policy (NEP), with formerleft communist Bukharin slowly moving to the right of the Bolshevik Party and becoming a strong supporter of the NEP starting in 1921. Right Opposition policies encouragingkulaks andNEPmen to "get rich" were seen by Right Opposition supporters as encouraging kulaks and NEPmen to "grow into" socialism.[2]
Robert J. Alexander has questioned whether the various Right Oppositions could be described as a single international tendency, since they were usually concerned only with the issues relevant for their own countries and their own communist parties. Therefore, the Right Opposition was far more fragmented than the Left Opposition. Nevertheless, the various Right Opposition groups did come together to form an International Communist Opposition (ICO). Unlike the Left Opposition, they did not tend to form separate parties as they considered themselves loyal to theCommunist International (Comintern).[citation needed]
Stalin and his "centre" faction were allied with Bukharin and the Right Opposition from late 1924, with Bukharin elaborating Stalin's theory ofsocialism in one country. Together, they expelled Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and theUnited Opposition from theCommunist Party in December 1927. However, once Trotsky was out of the way and the Left Opposition had been illegalized, Stalin soon became alarmed at the danger posed to the Soviet state by the rising power of the capitalistic kulaks and NEPmen, who had become emboldened by the Left Opposition's illegalization. Sensing this danger, Stalin then turned on his Right Opposition allies. Bukharin and the Right Opposition were, in their turn, sidelined and removed from important positions within the Communist Party and the Soviet government from 1928 to 1930, with Stalin ending the NEP and beginning the firstfive-year plan.
One of the last attempts of the Rightists to resist Stalin was theRyutin affair in 1932, where a manifesto against the soviet policy of collectivization and Stalin was circulated. It openly called for "The Liquidation of the dictatorship of Stalin and his clique".[3][page needed] Later, some rightists joined asecret bloc withLeon Trotsky,Grigory Zinoviev, andLev Kamenev in order to oppose Stalin. Historian Pierre Broué stated that it dissolved in early 1933.[4]
Bukharin was isolated from his allies abroad, and, in the face of increasing Stalinist repression, was unable to mount a sustained struggle against Stalin. Unlike Trotsky, who built an anti-Stalinist movement, Bukharin and his allies capitulated to Stalin and admitted their "ideological errors". They were temporarily rehabilitated, though they were allowed only minor posts and did not return to their former prominence. Bukharin and his allies were later executed during theGreat Purge trials.[citation needed]
The various right oppositional groups loosely aligned with Bukharin within the Comintern were forced to form their own organisations when they were, in their turn, purged from the national sections of the Comintern. In Europe, the most important and substantial of these new organisations was theCommunist Party Opposition (KPO) in Germany, led byHeinrich Brandler. In the United States,Jay Lovestone,Bertram Wolfe, and their supporters founded theCommunist Party (Opposition) and published the newspaperWorkers Age. In Canada, the Marxian Educational League was formed as part of Lovestone's CP(O), and it became affiliated with theCo-operative Commonwealth Federation. However, by the end of 1939, both theToronto andMontreal groups of this organization had ceased to function.
In a few places, communist groups affiliated with the ICO achieved more success than the Comintern-affiliated organizations. For example, in Sweden, theSocialist Party ofKarl Kilbom andNils Flyg, affiliated with the ICO, received 5.7% of the vote inthe 1932 elections to theRiksdag, outpolling the Comintern section that received 3.9%.
InCatalonia, Spain, the ICO-affiliatedBloc Obrer i Camperol (BOC), led byJoaquín Maurín, was for a time larger and more important than the official Spanish Communist Party. Later, the BOC merged withAndrés Nin'sIzquierda Comunista in 1935 to form the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) which was to be a major party backing theSecond Spanish Republic in theSpanish Civil War. Maurín becamegeneral secretary of the POUM but was arrested early in the civil war. As a result, Nin, a formerTrotskyist, became the POUM's new leader.
In all, the ICO had member parties in fifteen countries during the 1930s. However, the ICO and its affiliates did not consider themselves a new international, but a "faction" that was involuntarily excluded from the Comintern and that was anxious to return to it if only the Comintern would change its policies and allow ICO members the freedom to advocate their positions.
Despite being identified with Bukharin, the ICO generally supported Stalin's economic policies (which Bukharin opposed),[citation needed] such as the five-year plans to achieve rapid industrialization, and thecollectivization of agriculture. Furthermore, they even supported the earlyMoscow trials. Their main difference with Stalin and the Comintern was over the issue of democracy within the Communist International and the influence of the CPSU in the Comintern and its sections, and over Stalin's international policy, particularly theThird Period and the subsequentpopular front policies.
In addition, as the Moscow trials entered their second phase and turned against Bukharin and his supporters, disputes broke out within the ICO regarding whether there was any point in continuing with the concept of being an opposition within the communist movement rather than openly create a new international rival to the Comintern, as Trotsky did with hisFourth International.
The ICO began to disintegrate in 1933. With the coming to power of the Nazis, the German party had to go underground and establish an exile branch in Paris. Paris was also the new home of the international ICO headquarters, which became dominated by the Germans. The Norwegian and Swedish groups left later that year to join the new "centrist"International Buro for Revolutionary Socialist Unity (or London Bureau) established in Paris that August. The Czechoslovak affiliate was weakened by the defection of its Czech members in December, making the party a largelySudeten German group at a time when that community was becoming increasingly attracted to the Nazis. The Austrian group had to go underground after theDollfus putsch of March 1934, and the majority of the Alsatian section was expelled that summer for its pro-Nazi sympathies. The Swiss affiliate went over to the Social Democrats in 1936, andM. N. Roy took his Indian group out in 1937. Furthermore, the suppression of POUM in May 1937 and the execution of Bukharin and other "rights" in the Soviet Union had convinced many that the Communist International could not be reformed and the idea of being an "opposition" within it was untenable.[5]
At a conference in February 1938, the International Communist Opposition affiliated with the London Bureau. This led to some confusion as to whether affiliates of the ICO were also affiliates of the London Bureau as organizations themselves. To straighten out this overlapping another conference was held in Paris in April 1939 which dissolved both entities into a new organization, theInternational Revolutionary Marxist Centre, to be headquartered in Paris. Membership in the new group was quickly ratified by the ILLA, the KPO, POUM, PSOP, the ILP, and the Archeio-Marxists. It ceased to exist after the fall of France.[6]
A few groups continue the tradition of this current today. The Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik in Germany is one such group.
The Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik, founded by Heinrich Brandler, is effectively a successor organisation.
The Communist Opposition of Austria was established in late 1929 when the politburo of the officialCommunist Party of Austria expelledWilli Schlamm, A. Reisinger, Joseph Klein, and Richard Vovesny. They had their own periodical,Der Neue Mahnruf until the Dolfuss dictatorship came to power in 1934. Jay Lovestone happened to be in Austria at the time of the anchluss in early March 1938 at the invitation of a group called Der Funke and was able to arrange eight fake passports for eight leaders of the Austrian opposition. They left Vienna on March 14, the day before Hitler arrived in the city.[11] Schlamm later edited a paper for Austrian exiles in Prague,Weltbühne, then emigrated to the US.[12]
An Opposition group was established in Hungary in 1932. At that time theHungarian Communist Party was already an underground movement, and the opposition claimed about 10% of its membership.[13]
While never a formal organization, there was a tendency within thePolish Communist Party usually known as the "three Ws" after the leaders:Adolf Warski,Henryk Walecki, andMaria Koszutska (pseudonym Wera Kostrzewa). As the Party was already underground inPoland, and the communists already weak the group decided not to create a formal organization, though they were often depicted as followers of Brandler and Thalheimer by the leadership. All three died in gulags.[8]
In Switzerland, the official Communist Party's leader,Jules Humbert-Droz, was sympathetic to the Right Opposition, and because of that lost his powerful position in the Comintern.[14][page needed] Later, he self-criticized and capitulated to the Communist leadership, only to be expelled in 1943.[15][page needed] One cantonal section of theSwiss Communist Party, inSchaffhausen, did secede and form acommunist opposition group. For a while, it was quite successful, dominating the local labor movement, especially among tool and watchmakers. In the 20 October 1933 elections, the CPO elected 10 of the 30 local councilors and CPO leaderWalther Bringolf was chosen as mayor. By 1936, the CPO had merged with theSwiss Socialist Party.[16]
There was some resistance in the Italian party to the new Third Period line. At first the two Italian ECCI members,Palmiro Togliatti andAngelo Tasca, opposed the Comintern's actions with regard to the German party. However, at the Tenth Plenum in June 1929, Togliatti capitulated to Stalin's wishes while Tasca was expelled. Later, at a May 1930 plenum of the Party, Politburo members Pasquini and Santini were removed for opposing the Third Period and "organizational measures" were taken against lower cadres.[16]
A Danish Opposition group was founded in 1933. It lasted at least until February 1938 when its representative attended the ICO unity conference with the London Bureau.[17]
In France the initial purge of the Communist Party in 1929 took mayors or city councilors fromClichy,Auffay,Saint-Denis,Pierrefitte-sur-Seine,Villetaneuse and Paris. The party's general secretary and the editor ofL'Humanité were also demoted. However, not all of the expelled necessarily adhered to the ICOs positions; the Parisian councilors, for instance, formed their own party,Workers and Peasants Party, which in turn joined theParty of Proletarian Unity in December 1930. The small national Opposition group joined the expelled Seine Federation of theSFIO in 1938 to form theWorkers and Peasants' Socialist Party.[18]
A separate ICO party, theOpposition Communist Party of Alsace-Lorraine (KPO), was created inAlsace. The Alsatian KPO campaigned for autonomy for Alsace, and formed an alliance with clerical autonomist. The Alsatian KPO was led byCharles Hueber (mayor ofStrasbourg, 1929–1935) andJean-Pierre Mourer (member of theFrench National Assembly). It ran a daily newspaper of its own,Die Neue Welt. The Alsatian KPO gradually moved towards pro-Nazi positions, and was expelled from ICO in 1934.[19] A small group remained loyal to the ICO and published a weekly,Arbeiter Politik, but had little influence.[20]
During most of its history the right Opposition in the United Kingdom was represented principally within theIndependent Labour Party. Oppositionists joined theRevolutionary Policy Committee, part of which represented their line within the ILP. An independent Opposition group was formed in 1935, but had little influence. By 1938 the line of the ICO had turned towards the "centrist" position of the ILP leadership underFenner Brockway and the work of independent factions within the party became less tenable.[21]
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The leading Indian communist M. N. Roy was an early and outspoken supporter of the Right Opposition. While he never had more than a marginal following, he wielded extraordinary influence on the left wing of theIndian National Congress and played an instrumental role in the election ofSubhas Chandra Bose to the leadership of Congress. However, after Bose split with Congress and formed theAll India Forward Bloc, Roy sharply diverged to the point where he even came to oppose the Congress-ledQuit India campaign. The split between Bose and Roy was in many ways analogous to the American split between Bertram Wolfe and Jay Lovestone.
While never an official member of the ICO, a Right Oppositionist group led byJosé Penelon split from theCommunist Party of Argentina in 1928. Penelon's group formed thePartido Comunista de Region Argentina ("Communist Party of the Argentine Region"), which was later renamed thePartido Concentracion Obrera ("Labour Gathering Party"). It merged with the Social Democrats in 1971.[22]
TheMarxist Workers Bloc of Mexico was founded in early 1937. It published a few issues of a newspaper calledLa Batalla (after POUM's journal) and announced its adherence to the ICO. It was never heard from again.[23]
