10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)

The 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was held during March 8–16, 1921 in Moscow. Halfway through the Congress, the Kronstadt uprising started.

The Congress was attended by 694 voting delegates and 296 non-voting delegates.^[1]

The Agenda consisted of:

1. ) Report of the Central Committee;
2. ) Report of the Control Commission;
3. ) The trade unions’ economic role;
4. ) The Socialist Republic in a capitalist encirclement foreign trade, concessions, etc.;
5. ) Food supply, surplus-food appropriation, tax in kind and fuel crisis,
6. ) Problems of Party organisation;
7. ) The Party’s current tasks in the nationalities question;
8. ) Reorganisation of the army and the militia question;
9. ) The Chief Administration for Political Education and the Party’s propaganda and agitation work;
10. ) Report of the R.C.P.’s representative in the Comintern, and its current tasks;
11. ) Report of the R.C.P.’s representatives in the International Trade Union Council;
12. ) Elections to the Central Committee, the Control Commission and the Auditing Commission.

Major decisions included:

• A ban on internal factions in the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (Resolution No. 12: "On Party Unity”). These factions included Workers' Opposition (who supported syndicalism), and Democratic Centralists, who wanted more Soviet autonomy.
• The New Economic Policy was decided. Foreign trade, banks and heavy industry would stay in state hands, the rest was privatized.

Trade unions

The result of the debate on the trade unions was a rejection by the congress of the views of Trotsky, who was supported by the 9th Secretariat, the Workers' Opposition and the Democratic Centralists. The resolution On the Role and Tasks of the Trade Unions, which incorporated Lenin’s definition of the role of the trade unions as educational organizations and schools of administration, economic management, and communism, was adopted by a majority vote.^[2]

References

External links

• Speeches by V. I. Lenin at the Tenth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.), Collected Works, 1st English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 32, pages 165-271