To conflict and to control: study of practices of the opposition’s political struggle in the RCP(b) in 1923-1924

Abstract

The author reexamines political practices of the oppositionists in the period of 1923-1924 intraparty struggle in the Bolshevist party, known in the historiography as the “struggle for Lenin’s mantle”, between the leftists led by Trotsky and the Stalin-Zinoviev faction. Special attention is paid to the oppositionists’ tactics in the party conflicts during public debates and shortly after the opposition failed to succeed. The author focuses on the party control commissions’ activities and the “conflict behavior” of the oppositionists. The commissions established in 1920 for guarding the party’s political “unity” gave strong political support for the majority’s faction and became one of the most important instruments of anti-oppositionist politics. Despite negative attitude toward those semi-judicial political institutions, the oppositionists appealed toward them and toward the Central Control Commission first of all in order to obtain reexamination or commutation of “unfair” decisions of the local party courts. Oppositionists’ tactical pragmatism, however, led to legitimization and strengthening of not only the “party courts”, but the Control Commission’s politics and intraparty regime in general. A combination of political heterogeneity of the opposition and “soft line” of the control commissions produced an informal truce, nonetheless unprofitable for the following intraparty oppositionists.