J. V. Stalin
Source: Works, Vol. 8, January-November, 1926, pp. 220-224
Publisher: Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954
First Published: J. V. Stalin, Concerning Questions of Leninism, Moscow and Leningrad, 1926
Transcription/Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2008). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
The pamphlet The Foundations of Leninism2 must be regarded as one of the basic components of the present collection. This pamphlet was first published nearly two years ago, in May 1924. It now appears in a second edition in the present collection. In these two years much water has flowed under the bridge: the Party has passed through two discussions, a number of pamphlets and manuals on Leninism have been published, new practical questions of socialist construction have come to the fore. Naturally, the new questions that have arisen during these two years, as well as the results of the discussions which have taken place since the pamphlet appeared, could not be taken into account in this pamphlet. Naturally, too, the concrete questions of our constructive work (NEP, state capitalism, the question of the middle peasantry, etc.) could not be fully treated in a small pamphlet which constitutes a “concise synopsis of the foundations of Leninism.” These and similar questions could be treated by the author only in subsequent pamphlets (The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists,3 The Results of the Work of the Fourteenth Conference of the R.C.P.(B.)4, Questions and Answers,5 etc.), which have been included in the present collection and which are organically linked with the basic theses expounded in the original pamphlet The Foundations of Leninism. This circumstance fully justifies the publication of the present collection, which thus constitutes a single and integral work on questions of Leninism.
The latest discussion, at the Fourteenth Party Congress, summed up the Party’s ideological and constructive activities in the recent period, from the Thirteenth to the Fourteenth. Congress. It also served in a way as a test of the views advanced by the “New Opposition.” It is permissible to ask: What has this test shown?
1. This “Preface” formed the introductory part to the work Concerning Questions of Leninism, written by J. V. Stalin in January 1926 in lieu of a preface to the collection Questions of Leninism, which was published in February 1926.
2. See J. V. Stalin, Works Vol. 6, pp. 71-196
3. See J. V. Stalin, Works Vol. 6, pp. 374-420
4. See J. V. Stalin, Works Vol. 7, pp. 90-134
5. See J. V. Stalin, Works Vol. 7, pp. 158-214