task of constructing Socialism, because our technico-economic base is backward.[1]
This was discussed at the XIV Congress. Consequently the question is not as simple as it may seem at first sight: we must make a distinction between its correct presentation and the incorrect. Of course it may be asked: Why is such subtlety necessary? Why must we on the one hand raise the question of combatting the capitalist world, capitalist intervention, wars, etc., and on the other hand separate from this question the question of the internal combination of forces, when in real life the two things march together and are really inseparable? To reply to this, arguments of a weighty and convincing character must be advanced. It we can anticipate a certain period of peaceful development, for the next few years, say, then, according to the presentation of the question in which it is argued that we cannot construct Socialism in our country because of our technical economic backwardness, because the peasantry in our country are too numerous, we must inevitably, throughout the whole of this period, turn towards degeneration. A reply in the negative to the question to which Lenin replied in the affirmative, when he
- ↑ Now comrade Smilga follows at the heels of comrade Kamenev and considers that the postulate, "it is impossible to construct Socialism in a single technically backward country," is "the central point of Marxism and Leninism." Smilga lays emphasis on the backwardness of the country, and from this backwardness draws the conclusion that it is impossible to construct Socialism. The argument is not about the difficulties, but of the impossibility. Leninism, forsooth! (See the shorthand Report of the Discussion at the Communist Academy; see also an article by comrade Slipkov "Contradictions in the Economic Platform of the Opposition." "Pravda," No. 232.)
