«We still have no developed system of products-exchange, but the rudiments of such a system exist in the shape of the "merchandising" of agricultural products. For quite a long time already, as we know, the products of the cotton-growing, flax-growing, beet-growing and other collective farms are "merchandised". They are not "merchandised" in full, it is true, but only partly, still they are "merchandised." Be it mentioned in passing that "merchandising" is not a happy word, and should be replaced by "products-exchange". The task is to extend these rudiments of products-exchange to all branches of agriculture and to develop them into a broad system, under which the collective farms would receive for their products not only money, but also and chiefly the manufactures they need. Such a system would require an immense increase in the goods allocated by the town to the country, and it would therefore have to be introduced without any particular hurry, and only as the products of the town multiply. But it must be introduced unswervingly and unhesitatingly, step by step contracting the sphere of operation of commodity circulation and widening the sphere of operation of products-exchange.
Such a system, by contracting the sphere of operation of commodity circulation, will facilitate the transition from socialism to communism. Moreover, it will make it possible to include the basic property of the collective farms, the product of collective farming, in the general system of national planning». (“Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.”, “Reply to Comrades A.V. Sanina and V.G. Venzher” part 2).
If the state regarded this undertaking seriously more and more enterprises of all economic sectors would be involved in this system of self-regulation of production and consumption in the course of social and historic development. It could be achieved on the basis of virtual management structures of production and consumption products exchange[428]. But when J.V. Stalin died this way of development was cut short. Some economic reformers of the age of Khrushchev and Brezhnev and the period after the USSR break-up showed their readiness to capitulate to Capitalism, others showed their feeble mind for they concentrated on the problem of introducing a market machinery into Russian economy. First they tried it as a means to improve the planned beginning function, then as a supposed alternative to it[429].
While reading the given fragments concerning the substitution for commodity production (and trade correspondingly) by direct products exchange one should not think that J.V. Stalin was an idiot. He was not like those reformers of early 90-s of the 20th century who could not cope with adjustment of the financing system to maintaining product exchange because of their stupidity and grabbling and who drove the country to barter. Barter was a type of exchange trade of primitive society. Those who take his words about direct products exchange this way are idiots themselves, they insensible to the tenor of life and incapable of thinking. J.V. Stalin had figurative ideas of the way Socialism planned economy was to work in the process of changing to communism. But in the culture of society there was no conceptual system to express his thought clearly. J.V. Stalin did not create this system himself. It appeared too much for him to bear to govern the country day-to-day and at the same time to create philosophy and sociology afresh that agreed with ideals of Communism, building of it in practice and the atmosphere of Marxism cult that was essentially hostile to Communism.
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Keeping the supreme public authority of the USSR under his thumb J.V. Stalin being the leader of the Party and the head of the state for thirty years led society successfully to another point of re-examining the past and forming intentions for the future. With the help of the means of expressing thoughts available in the culture of society at that time he revealed and defined the unsolved problems that prevented the USSR society and the global civilization from developing.
That is the reason for us to be thankful to him. Another reason is that he managed to organize the victory in the Great Patriotic War in spite of the tendencies characteristic of the crowd-“elitism”. It will not to do to succeed at others’ expense: these problems as well as some others were to be solved by science. The fact that mostly on the territory of the USSR they were not solved moreover forgotten demonstrates parasitism, mental and professional weakness. This refers to everybody with an academic degree in philosophy or economics and other branches of sociology beginning from Ph. D. “Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.” is their verdict of guilty.
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All the things cited here show that “Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.” also contains the answer to the following questions:
Why was not the economic reform of the age of N. Khrushchev with its system of «state public farms» designed to manage regional production systems justified?
Why did the reform of Kosygin of early 60-s of the 20th century lose its way? Why did not it produce a beneficial effect on Socialism and Communism as well as the generation of pro-bourgeois dissidents of the sixties who did not manage to «snatch the time of their life» at once.
But the present generation of Russian reformers has no future either if they do not solve the problems posed directly or touched upon indirectly by J. Stalin. Consequently the general global crisis of Capitalism will continue to aggravate assuming new faces such as ecology, terrorism, epidemics of insanity, etc.
Besides the discussed issues there are some less important (in our view) problems in the work “Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.”. We shall not broach them in the present work for they do not correspond to the subject matter. Alongside with examining problems that were to be solved J.V. Stalin expressed his opinion on admissible and inadmissible management decisions in the course of the USSR further approaching Communism. His opinion was mostly conditioned by the social and economic reality of the USSR of those years. His mind was inseparably linked with it. Khrushchev’s rule adopted a new policy to drive the country to elimination of the achievements of Stalin’s Bolshevism. As a result social and economic circumstances changed. Therefore J. Stalin’s opinion lost its topicality. Now it is interesting only from the point of view of history. That is why if anybody is interested in these questions he/she should turn to J. Stalin’s direction to Bolsheviks for the future.
However to all appearance J.V. Stalin went beyond publishing “Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.”. That was a work oriented towards the specific conditions of the USSR mainly. In 1952 in Madrid the «NOS» publishers released a book by a Josef Landovskiy called “The Red Symphony” (“Sinfonia en Rojo Mayor”) translated by Mauricio Carlavia. The after word written by the translator said that the manuscript had been found in the years of World War II in a hut in the suburbs of Leningrad with a dead body together with Josef Landovskiy’s documents. A Spanish man called «A.I.» found it. He was probably one from Franco’s «Blue Division» fighting on Hitler’s side at the front of Leningrad. Later he brought it to Spain.
One of the chapters called «Radiography of Revolution» was published in Russia in the journal «Molodaya Gvardiya» numbers 3 and 4 in 1992. Spanish edition number 9 released in Barcelona[430] was cited there. In the first Madrid edition this chapter is on pages 421 — 461. All in all the book consists of 488 pages. This chapter is about the examination of the Trotskyist G. Rakovskiy. It supposedly took place in a special cottage of People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs[431] (PCIA) in 1938. The examination was held as a talk over dinner. It is said that during the examination G. Rakovskiy was under a psychotropic that made him unable to restrain himself. Therefore he answered frankly to the questions asked speaking what he really had on his mind.