Among them was Gavriii ll'ich Miasnikov, a metalworker from the Urals and a Bolshevik since 1906. One of the most vocal of the early oppositionists, he is also one of the most obscure. Yet during the early 1920s he blazed into prominence as a critic of Lenin's policies, posing questions of the utmost importance: Who is to decide what is in the interests of the workers? What methods are permissible in resolving disputes among revolutionaries? At what point does honest criticism of party officials become "deviation" or insubordination? Miasnikov, seeing his deepest revolutionary aspirations thwarted, evolved an elaborate and penetrating critique of the dictatorship in the making, pointing to dangers whose full consequences were not yet apparent.
(...) He was deeply troubled by the oligarchical tendencies within the party, the drift towards authoritarianism and elite rule, a process greatly accelerated by the Civil War. He was dismayed by the growing concentration of power in the hands of the Central Committee, the divorce of the leadership from the rank and file, and the suppression of local initiative and debate. Equally disturbing, though he did not yet raise his voice in public protest, was the introduction of labor discipline in the factories, along with the elevation of technical specialists to positions of authority and the replacement of workers' control by one-man management and bureaucratic administration.
(...) In May 1921, moreover, he exploded a bombshell in the form of a memorandum to the,Central Committee, calling for sweeping reform. A crushing indictment of the Communist leaders, their theories and methods, the memorandum demanded the abolition of the death penalty, the liquidation of bureaucratic forms of organization, and the transfer of industrial administration to producers' Soviets-, it counterpoised revolutionary principle to the expedients promoted by the Central Committee.
(...) Freedom of the press, Lenin sought to convince Miasnikov, would, under existing circumstances, strengthen the forces of counter-revolution. Lenin rejected "freedom" in the abstract. Freedom for whom? he demanded. Under what conditions? For which class? "We do not believe in 'absolutes.' We laugh at 'pure democracy."' Freedom of the press, Lenin maintained, would mean "freedom of political organization for the bourgeoisie and its most loyal servants, the Mensheviks and SRs." The capitalists are still strong, he argued, stronger than the Communists. They mean to crush us. To give them freedom of the press would facilitate this task. But we will not do it. We have no intention of committing suicide. (32) Freedom of the press, according to Lenin, was a "nonparty, antiproletarian slogan."
(...) "The trouble is that, while you raise your hand against the capitalist, you deal a blow to the worker. You know very well that for such words as I am now uttering hundreds, perhaps thousands, of workers are languishing in prison. That I myself remain at liberty is only because I am a veteran Communist, have suffered for my beliefs, and am known among the mass of workers. Were it not for this, were I just an ordinary mechanic from the same factory, where would I be now? In a Cheka prison or, more likely, made to 'escape,' just as I made Mikhail Romanov 'escape.' Once more I say: You raise your hand against the bourgeoisie, but it is I who am spitting blood, and it is we, the workers, whose jaws are being cracked." (34)
(...) On February 15, 1922, the Orgburo commission, having completed its investigation, recommended his expulsion from the party. This recommendation was referred to the Politburo, which, on February 20, declared Miasnikov expelled for "repeated violations of party discipline," and especially for attempting to organize a faction within the party, contrary to the resolution on party unity passed by the Tenth Congress. The Politburo, however, added the proviso that, should Miasnikov reform his ways, he might apply for readmission after a year.(42) For the first time, then, the penalty prescribed by the Tenth Congress for factionalism had been imposed. This was the first instance, moreover, except for that of S. A. Lozovsky in 1918, who was reinstated the next year, where Lenin actually expelled a well-known Bolshevik of long standing.(43)
(...) In such circumstances, Lenin felt, to criticize the Central Committee, to call for democratic procedure, was to play into the hands of the counterrevolutionaries. Furthermore, if Miasnikov's demands were granted, if freedom of the press and free elections to the soviets were permitted, the party would be swept from power and a reaction inevitably follow, of which the Bolsheviks, Miasnikov included, would be the first victims.
(...) Miasnikov found no defenders at the [11th Party Congress]. But one delegate, V. V. Kosior, argued that Lenin had taken the wrong approach to the question of dissent. If someone, said Kcisior, had the courage to point out deficiencies in party work, he was marked down as an oppositionist, relieved of authority, placed under surveillance, and-a reference to Miasnikov-even expelled from the party. The party, Kosior, warned, was alienating itself from the workers. (51)
(...) For Miasnikov the NEP had come as a shock. He viewed it as a continuation of the retreat from socialism begun during the Civil War. Its roots could be traced to the Ninth Party Congress, which had endorsed one-man management and the employment of technical specialists. By this action, as Miasnikov saw it, Lenin had deprived the workers of their most fundamental revolutionary conquest, the chief lever with which to advance their cause. "The organization of industry since the Ninth Congress of the Russian Communist Party," declared the manifesto, had been carried forward in a "purely bureaucratic way" and "without the direct participation of the working class." (59) The manifesto demanded that the administration of industry be turned over to the workers themselves, beginning with the workers in each factory. It denounced the bureaucrats and apporatchiki for whom such words as "solidarity" and "brotherhood" were empty shibboleths and who were concerned only with increasing their privileges and power. It attacked them at every turn-their insolence and hypocrisy, their contempt for ordinary workers, their pious mouthing of socialist phrases, belied by their bourgeois ambitions and way of life.
(...) What then was to be done? For Miasnikov the degeneration of the revolution could be halted only by the restoration of proletarian democracy. He remained unshakable in his belief in the initiative and capacity of the workers, the class from which he himself had sprung. The defects of the regime could no longer be corrected by the Bolshevik leadership. Remedies, rather, must come from the working-class rank and file, both party and nonparty. Without worker participation in every area, he insisted, the attainment of socialism would be impossible. Lenin, by contrast, lacking Miasnikov's faith in mass initiative, clung to administrative solutions, rejecting any proposal that would have allowed a democratic breeze to blow through the party apparatus. This he considered more dangerous than bureaucratism itself. He relied, to the very end, on bureaucrats to reform the bureaucracy, setting one section of the apparatus against another.
(...) In Lenin's absence, the task of anathematizing the Workers' Group fell to Trotsky, Radek, and Zinoviev. Trotsky, denouncing Miasnikov's manifesto, recalled "the old theory of the now forgotten Machajski" that "under socialism the state will be the apparatus for the exploitation for the working class." Radek poured contempt on Miasnikov's "high-flown formula" of freedom of the press. Zinoviev declared that "every criticism of the party line, even a so-called left criticism, is now objectively a Menshevik criticism." Miasnikov, he added, maintains that "the worker is against us and we are against him." Such a notion is "rubbish ." "I was personally bothered by him for almost a year. Vladimir ll'ich occupied himself with Miasnikov, wrote to him, reasoned with him." A special commission, of which Bukharin was a member, sought to bring him around. To no avail. Miasnikov "has betrayed our party." Whatever its mistakes, insisted Zinoviev, the party had driven the old ruling elite from its entrenched power. The "hegemony of the proletariat has survived under the most difficult circumstances, and will continue to survive, I hope, to the end (applause)." (74)
(...) [once in Germany] Miasnikov was able to publish, in booklet form, the manifesto of the Workers' Group,(77) prefaced by an appeal, drafted by his associates in Moscow, "to Communist comrades of all lands." The appeal, in brief compass, recapitulated the main points of the manifesto. Quoting Marx's inaugural address to the First International ("the liberation of the workers must be the task of the, workers themselves") and the second stanza of the "Internationale," it concluded with a set of slogans proclaiming the aims of the Workers' Group: "The strength of the working class lies in its solidarity. Long live freedom of speech and press for the proletarians! Long live Soviet Power! Long live Proletarian Democracy! Long live Communism!"(78)