Letter from R.I. Kosolapov to the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, "Comrade" M.S. Gorbachev (1986)To the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Comrade M.S. Gorbachev
Dear Mikhail Sergeevich!
For several months now I have felt an urgent need for a frank conversation with you (even a brief one) about the nature and direction of the work of "Kommunist" in the current conditions. Usually the editor-in-chief of the magazine was invited for such a conversation by the newly elected General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.
Rumors persistently leak out from academic and literary, journalistic and even church circles, from foreign embassies about me as a "disgraced" editor, who "backed the wrong horse", came "out of place", etc. These rumors cannot help but make the Kommunist workers nervous and affect their attitude toward the editorial board. I must immediately note that I have never backed any "horses", have never attached myself to any "courts", have never belonged to any group, and have always considered myself a party man. All comrades who are impartial toward me, who have observed my behavior over the course of twenty years of work in the Central Committee apparatus, know this. The fact that I, like other party members, carried out the orders of the three previous general secretaries, cannot discredit me.
Of course, I did not contact you for career reasons. They have not played a role in my life. I am concerned with something else - maintaining the authority of the theoretical journal of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the trust in it of the readership that has grown in the last period, and the maximum use in the interests of the party of the potential of a talented, combat-ready team, which we have basically managed to put together over the past ten years.
Over the course of a quarter of a century, since my first major publication, in addition to the positive development of theoretical issues, I have had the opportunity to participate, to the best of my ability, in polemics against right and “left” opportunism, versions of Yugoslav and market socialism, Maoism, Czechoslovak revisionism, “Eurocommunism.” Against voluntary and involuntary burps of petty bourgeoisness, erroneous interpretations of current problems, which, alas, are still encountered, and sometimes intensified, in our press.
Thus, at the end of the 60s, I spoke out against the false version of A.P. Butenko, as if Lenin, having “rejected” the views of Marx and Engels on socialism, created “another” “model” of it on the threshold of the NEP.
In the mid-70s, it was necessary to correct V.S. Semenov, who suddenly began to write about a certain “unpreparedness” of the Soviet working class to be a leading force in a socialist society.
At the beginning of the 1980s, one could not help but object to the attempt to “clarify” Lenin on the issue of antagonism and contradictions under socialism (see the article by L.N. Fedoseyev in the journal “Problems of Peace and Socialism”, 1981, no. 9, p. 28).
In 1984, Kommunist (No. 11) made a critical remark about the same A.P. Butenko. He brought P.N. Fedoseyev’s point of view to the point of political absurdity, having come to the conclusion that there is supposedly a possibility of antagonism between those who govern and those who are governed (see Voprosy Filosofii, 1984, No. 2, p. 129).
"Kommunist" at one time gave a fundamental assessment of positivist tendencies in some philosophical works, biologizing passions in understanding the essence of man, analyzed the situation with teaching mathematics in schools. All these sharp publications had a great public resonance. We were supported by the party activists and workers, propagandists and teachers, university lecturers and scientists, including academicians V.A. Ambartsumyan, I.M. Vinogradov, N.P. Dubinin, B.M. Kedrov, F.V. Konstantinov, V.N. Kudryavtsev, D.S. But what is characteristic: there was not a single positive response and not a single editorial response from the leadership of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Instead, tension built up. In some cases, fair criticism was simply hushed up. In other cases, attempts were made to suppress it (as was done by the vice-president of the USSR Academy of Sciences P.N. Fedoseyev, who had become a permanent, to put it mildly, biased “opponent” of the journal), to throw a departmental academic bridle on the party organ.
A struggle is a struggle. And in it, those who take a clear, open position may find themselves somewhat defenseless against the masters of "secret diplomacy." The moment came, and I learned: some individuals resorted to anonymous letters. One of them appeared in September 1984 in the reception room of P.N. Fedoseyev and in the Letters Department of the Central Committee. It was signed with the names of familiar to me employees of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU M.P. Mchedlov and K.N. Orlova, who indignantly denied their "authorship."
It always seemed to me that slander does not stick. However, I have become convinced that it works. I am sure that an attempt was made here to knock out of the saddle, to isolate those people who had been conducting preparatory work for the coming stage for years, who did not compromise the ideological and moral principles of Bolshevism, and, on the contrary, to shield those who had sinned fairly before Marxism-Leninism. The "method" of slander and defamation was clearly an attempt to "fit" into the party's health-improving personnel policy.
The situation around the magazine and me personally became especially complicated last year. The bearers of very dubious views became more active. First of all, they include A.S. Tsipko, who works with A.P. Butenko and who published in 1983 a book called “Some Philosophical Aspects of the Theory of Socialism,” which many experts consider to be flawed (Kommunist alone received five negative reviews of it). In it, A.S. Tsipko questions the need for comprehensive socialization of labor and production, belittles the importance of scientific and technological progress and production relations, and arbitrarily, in the spirit of pre-Marxist petty-bourgeois teachings, reinterprets and falsifies the essence and evolution of the views of Marx, Engels, and Lenin on socialism and communism. It is known that, fearing the possibility of an unflattering analysis of his work in the magazine, he sent you a complaint about me as a “preventative measure.”
Among the publications of 1985, the article by O. R. Latsis in the newspaper Izvestia (July 24) stands out, where an
essentially nihilistic attitude toward scientific centralized planning under socialism is expressed, and the article by A. I. Volkov in the magazine Znamya (No. 11). This author, quoting excerpts from my works without quotation marks, “refutes” them in a typically individualistic, petty-proprietorial manner, revealing complete ignorance of the political economy of socialism and the theory of scientific communism.
It would be possible not to take up your time with details, but without them it is difficult to clearly show what kind of psychological pressure the “Communist” and its employees are experiencing.
In connection with the restructuring of economic management in the country, interest in Lenin's teaching on NEP has increased among social scientists. An important component of the party's economic policy and the implementation of the USSR Food Program were measures to support the personal subsidiary farms of collective farmers, workers, and employees. Some people (for example, G.S. Lisichkin) are trying to use all these necessary and sound things to contrast small-scale production as supposedly always more effective with large-scale production, in fact, to discredit the public form of ownership of the means of production. I dare say that with the general ideological and moral upsurge in the country, a certain variation of the "Smenovekh" views has appeared among the intelligentsia, which cannot go unnoticed when analyzing the modern ideological situation.
The key character of the period we are living through is obvious to everyone. The Party is developing an effective mechanism for planned management. This has to be done by eradicating the phenomena of "archeocracy" and conservatism, stagnation and bureaucracy, "show-off" and corruption.
I deeply doubt that an effective solution to the above-mentioned problems is possible with the support of the current Section of Social Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Department of Economics, and its institutions, which are in a neglected state. The responsibility for this should be presented, naturally, not so much to Party journalists as to those who have been doing business within the walls of the Academy of Sciences for decades.
The editorial board of Kommunist always considers it its duty to introduce readers, first of all, to classical Marxism-Leninism, freeing it from unnecessary and harmful layers and impurities, to fight for its purity and creative interpretation applicable to modern conditions. I am convinced that it is Marxism-Leninism in its original form, with its reliable dialectical-materialistic methodology, that will allow us to resolve the issue of intensifying socialist production, as our tense and responsible times require. “Not the market, not the elemental forces of competition,” it was noted in your Kyiv speech, “but first of all the plan should determine the main aspects of the development of the national economy. At the same time, it is necessary to implement new approaches to planning, actively apply economic levers, and give great scope to the initiative of work collectives. It is necessary to more clearly define what to plan at the union level, what at the level of the union republic, region, ministry, enterprise.” Kommunist has always defended this line.
It is at least puzzling that many economists are looking for ways to increase the efficiency of the socialist economy beyond the possibilities inherent in the planning principle, and do not even try to properly reveal them. The goal of socialist production, the satisfaction of the material and spiritual needs of society, is not yet organically involved in the activities of associations, enterprises, and in general in the links of socialist production. But it would seem that the main indicators of its management, wages, bonuses, and deductions for social and cultural needs should depend primarily on the degree of participation of any specific collective in achieving this goal.
Until now, the basis of the plan has not become a comprehensive study and forecast of public needs, realistically linked to the available production capacities and resources. The existing system of demand study is departmental in nature, weak and does not fulfill the specified role.
And one more thing: the currently used cost method of determining production results, although in form it is based on value units, is in fact a direct violation of the law of value. The law of value in our conditions should orient the manager toward minimizing costs while maximizing the final product: the cost method, however, pushes toward maximizing costs with relative indifference to the quality characteristics of the manufactured products. This method is one of the reasons for the existence of the notorious deficit in our country, one of the factors that, frankly speaking, have a ruinous effect on the national economy. In my opinion, there can be only one way out (and it corresponds to what Lenin was worried about, and not to what is sometimes attributed to him): this is to bring all enterprises to production indicators for the range, assortment, and quality of products with strict responsibility for their profitability (break-even or profitability). This provision, by the way, is reflected in the draft of the new edition of the CPSU Program.
As for the "recipes" for escaping the current difficulties in the possibilities of small-scale wholesale production and the market mechanism, they can, of course, produce a useful result, but a local, temporary, tactical result, and
only with the simultaneous strengthening of correct planned management. Any other strategy has thrown us back to those stages of economic development that have already been passed by our main and formidable enemy - state-monopoly capitalism. This is, without exaggeration, a question of our life, a question of the viability of our system. I have no faults with the party and Marxist-Leninist theory, although I, like any mortal, could not avoid mistakes. I gratefully take into account fair comments on the works I have written or edited. At the same time, I am surprised by attempts to claim that "Kommunist" is "arguing" with the pre-congress documents. I do not quite understand the unsubstantiated pinches in connection with the concept of developed socialism, as if it were not taken from Lenin's legacy, the sharp opposition of this concept and the concept of accelerating the socio-economic development of the country. I think that we should not break our theoretical foundation erected by a series of congresses, but rather correct, repair, strengthen and build on it in a businesslike manner.
I have no requests. My specific ideas about raising the level of work of Kommunist now, given the general busyness with preparations for the congress, are hardly appropriate. The only thing I would like to count on is that the Central Committee, if it deems my departure from the editorial board expedient, will make it painless for the magazine. It is important that the editor's fate does not cast a shadow on the respected ideological institution of the party. Kommunist - with or without Kosolapov - needs firm, energetic, openly expressed support and the guiding hand of the Politburo of the Central Committee.
With communist greetings.
Member of the Central Committee
R. Kosolapov
January 1986.
Note: The letter was forwarded to the addressee via A.I. Lukyanov. There is an unclear resolution from Gorbachev on the letter. A photocopy was received from V.M. Legostaev.
Gorbachev latter purged Kosolapov. Source:
https://csruso.ru/nashi-universitety/istorija/pismo-r-i-kosolapova-gorbachevu/