New Opposition

Categories / Social Life/Political Parties and Organizations
NEW OPPOSITION (Leningrad Opposition), a faction within the All-Union Communist Party, formed in 1925, with its strongest branch within the Leningrad party organization (hence the second name). Leaders of the New Opposition included G.E. Zinovyev, L.B. Kamenev, N.K. Krupskaya and G.Y. Sokolnikov, who supported the development of a "global revolution", criticized I. V. Stalin's theory admitting the possibility of Socialism's victory within a separate, single country; the opposition asserted that the Soviet structure possessed not a socialist, but a state-capitalist character that strove for a strict maintenance of class distinctions between peasantry and private capital, and included concession to "non-socialist elements". In the political sphere, the New Opposition was against the Stalin's policies and demanded his dismissal from the post of General Secretary of the Central Party Committee. Yet leaders of the New Opposition did not manage to create a strong enough opposition to Stalin. Another important part of the opposition, L. D. Trotsky, saw in the opposition a kind of anti-Stalinist branch with Soviet and Party bureaucracy, which he believed was disconnecting from the fight for workers' rights. At the Fourteenth Party Congress (1925), the New Opposition's views were attacked, but organizational measures were not taken against it, and its representatives were elected to the Central Committee and the Central Commission of the Committee of the All-Union Communist Party; Zinovyev and Kamenev were elected to the Politburo. After the congress, a number of New Opposition members abandoned their position, while others joined Trotsky. During the period of mass repression in the 1930s, the New Opposition was declared anti-Party; the majority of its members were repressed.

References: Роговин В. З. Была ли альтернатива?: "Троцкизм": Взгляд через годы. М., 1992.

D. O. Churakov. Kamenev (Rozenfeld) Lev Borisovich
Krupskaya Nadezhda Konstantinovna
Sokolnikov (real name Brilliant) Grigory Yakovlevich
Stalin (real name Dzhugashvili) Iosif Vissarionovich
Trotsky (real name Bronstein) Lev Davidovich
Zinovyev Grigory Evseevich
Роговин В. З. Была ли альтернатива?: «Троцкизм»: Взгляд через годы. М., 1992 1925