Lenin's Testament - Contents of Lenin's Last Testament

Contents of Lenin's Last Testament

The letter constitutes a critique of the Soviet government as it then stood, warning of dangers he anticipated and making suggestions for the future. Some of those suggestions include increasing the size of the Party's Central Committee, giving the State Planning Committee legislative powers and changing the nationalities policy which had been implemented by Stalin.

The criticism of Stalin and Trotsky:

Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution. Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand, as his struggle against the C.C. on the question of the People's Commissariat of Communications has already proved, is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present C.C., but he has displayed excessive self-assurance and shown excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work.

These two qualities of the two outstanding leaders of the present C.C. can inadvertently lead to a split, and if our Party does not take steps to avert this, the split may come unexpectedly

Lenin felt that Stalin had more power than he could handle and might be dangerous if allowed to succeed him. In a postscript written a few weeks later, Lenin recommended Stalin's removal from the position of General Secretary of the Party:

Stalin is too coarse and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc. This circumstance may appear to be a negligible detail. But I think that from the standpoint of safeguards against a split and from the standpoint of what I wrote above about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky it is not a detail, but it is a detail which can assume decisive importance.

By power Trotsky argued Lenin meant administrative power rather than political influence within the Party and pointed out that Lenin had effectively accused Stalin of a lack of loyalty.

In the 30 December 1922 article "Nationalities Issue" or about "Autonomization" Lenin criticized the actions of Felix Dzerzhinsky, Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze, and Stalin in the "Georgian Affair", accusing them of "Great Russian chauvinism".

I think that a fatal role was played here by hurry and the administrative impetuousness of Stalin and also his infatuation with the renowned "social-nationalism". Infatuation in politics generally and usually plays the worst role.

Lenin also criticized other Politburo members. He wrote that

the October episode with Zinoviev and Kamenev was, of course, no accident, but neither can the blame for it be laid upon them personally, any more than non-Bolshevism can upon Trotsky.

Finally, he criticized two younger Bolshevik leaders, Bukharin and Pyatakov:

They are, in my opinion, the most outstanding figures (among the younger ones), and the following must be borne in mind about them: Bukharin is not only a most valuable and major theorist of the Party; he is also rightly considered the favorite of the whole Party, but his theoretical views can be classified as fully Marxist only with the great reserve, for there is something scholastic about him (he has never made a study of dialectics, and, I think, never fully appreciated it).

As for Pyatakov, he is unquestionably a man of outstanding will and outstanding ability, but shows far too much zeal for administrating and the administrative side of the work to be relied upon in a serious political matter.

Both of these remarks, of course, are made only for the present, on the assumption that both these outstanding and devoted Party workers fail to find an occasion to enhance their knowledge and amend their one-sidedness.

One puzzling question is why is Pyatakov listed as one of the six major figures of the Communist Party in 1923. The answer may be found in Louis Fischer's Life of Lenin where he writes that Pyatakov was a frequent visitor to Lenin's home while he was away from Moscow recuperating. The occasion of the visits was to play the piano selections that Lenin loved since Pyatakov was an accomplished pianist. This close and frequent contact at the time that Lenin composed the letter may be the answer.