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The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931-36 (Annals of Communism Series)

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This is an interesting compilation of letters between Joseph Stalin and Lazar Kaganovich. In the 1930s, Kaganovich was Stalin's deputy on party matters, a secretary of the Central Committee, secretary of the Moscow Regional Party Committee, and Stalin's deputy in the Defence Commission. Despite the intentions of the anti-Soviet editors, we can learn much about how the Soviet working class governed the Soviet Union.

During these years, the Soviet working class collectivised agriculture, industrialised the country and hugely expanded the health and education services. The first Five-Year Plan (1928-33) successfully laid the foundations of a heavy industry able to re-equip the national economy. This reconstruction doubled industrial output between 1929 and 1933, while the capitalist world was mired in slump. The Soviet working class built a workers' state in the teeth of hostile encirclement by the capitalist states, and of sharpening class struggle in the country and in the party.

The Soviet Union also, alone, aided the Spanish Republic's heroic struggle against the Hitler-Mussolini invasion. Stalin urged that the Soviet Union sell oil, grain and food to the Republic `on the most favourable terms for them'.

The book shows how the capitalist class used splits in the Bolshevik party, supporting oppositions `left' or `right' to try to defeat socialism and restore capitalism. The party continually struggled to defeat the kulaks (the rural capitalist class) and the Opposition.

The Opposition assisted the Soviet Union's enemies abroad and adopted a strategy of terrorism: Trotsky wrote, "Inside the Party, Stalin has put himself above all criticism and the State. It is impossible to displace him except by assassination. Every oppositionist becomes ipso facto a terrorist."

In 1936, the Soviet Union responded by trying members of the Anti-Soviet United Trotskyite-Zinovievite Centre for their terrorist activities, including the assassination of Sergei Kirov, a member of the Politburo. This focused and open response is surely a better way to fight terrorism than the Bush/Blair method of holding terrorist suspects forever without charge or trial.