Interview With a Rosta Correspondent

January 9, 1924

The discussion which has extensively developed in the R.C.P.(B.) and its press will be conclusively summed up only by the All-Union Party Conference that is to take place in a week's time. But the resolutions that have already been received from local Party organisations leave no room for doubt that the Central Committee's position has the endorsement of over 90 per cent of the entire R.C.P.(B.) membership.

The Party is well aware that our enemies are trying to make use of the discussion in order to spread all manner of fabrications about the supposed disintegration of the R.C.P.(B.), the weakening of Soviet power, etc. Such an appraisal of our discussion is, to say the least, ludicrous. In actual fact the discussions which have repeatedly arisen in our Party have invariably resulted in the elimination of differences. The Party has always emerged from these discussions still stronger and more united. The present discussion has revealed the extremely high degree of political maturity of the working-class masses, who have in their hands the state power in the U.S.S.R. I must say—and anyone acquainted with the discussion can convince himself of this—that complete unanimity of opinion prevails among the overwhelming majority of the Party on all basic political and economic questions. The fundamentals of our foreign and home policy remain inviolable.

The issues which are being so passionately debated at all meetings of Party organisations without exception are essentially the following:

1) Ought our Party to be a united, independently acting organism with a united will; or, on the contrary, should we allow the formation of various factions and groups as contracting parties within the Party? 2) Has the so-called New Economic Policy been justified in the main, or does it need to be reconsidered? Together with the overwhelming majority of the Party, the Central Committee is of the opinion that the Party must be united, and that the NEP does not require reconsideration. A small opposition group, which includes a couple of well-known names, holds a view different from that of the Party as a whole.

By an exhaustive and, moreover, absolutely open discussion the Party is trying to elucidate all the details of this question. The Party conference will give its authoritative decision on it, and that decision will be binding on all Party members.

I am convinced—Comrade Stalin said in conclusion— that as a result of the discussion the Party will be stronger and more united than ever and will be able to cope still more successfully with the task of directing the life of our vast country in the conditions of the rapid economic and cultural progress that has begun. Newspaper Zarya Vostoka, No. 473,

January 10, 1924