1925-27 - Defeat of the Left

• By mid-1925, Kamenev and Zinoviev saw that they had been outmaneuvered by Stalin.
• Stalin had used the desire to beat Trotsky to fill the party bureaucracy with his own supporters.
• In order to remove Zinoviev and Kamenev from the race, Stalin formed a new alliance with Bukharin in support of the NEP.
• The debate over the NEP came to a had at the 14th Party Congress in December 1925.
• When Lenin had established the NEP in 1921, he made it clear it was a "temporary deviation" from orthodox Marxist ideology.
• However, Lenin never indicated how long the NEP was going to last.
• There was disagreement about the precise timing to end the NEP.
• In 1925 and 1926, Stalin and Bukharin argued that the NEP should be allowed to continue for a few more years whereas Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky argued that it should be ended immediately.
• The NEP was popular and Stalin now had full control at Party Congresses, so the party retained the NEP in 1925.
• In response to the party retaining the NEP, Kamenev, Zinoviev and Trotsky came together to form the "United Opposition", arguing against the NEP and in favour of "Permanent Revolution".
• The United Opposition was an uneasy and ineffective alliance as Kamenev and Zinoviev had bitterly attacked Trotsky in 1924 and 1925 and were accused of hypocrisy.
• The United Opposition had to be constantly wary of the accusation of factionalism for disagreeing with decision made at Party Congresses.
• The United Opposition put forward their views at a meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee in 1926 but were defeated.

  • They continued to work in secret and eventually made an appeal to the workers of Moscow to go on strike in opposition of government policy.
• The United Opposition were removed from their position in power and were replaced in the Politburo by men loyal to Stalin.
• In 1927, Zinoviev and Kamenev were allowed to retain their membership of the party after renouncing their "Trotskyite" views but Trotsky himself refused to abandon his principles and was exile to Alma-Ata in Central Asia.
• Still refusing to abandon his opposition to Stalin, Trotsky was eventually exiled out of the USSR in 1929.