Socialism in One Country
일국사회주의
The doctrine that socialism could be completed in the Soviet Union alone, without the support of world revolution. Formulated by Stalin in late 1924 and given theoretical backing by Bukharin, it became party orthodoxy in the struggle against the theory of permanent revolution.
In depth
Formulation
The line of socialism in one country was formulated at the end of 1924. In Foundations of Leninism that April Stalin had kept the received formulation that the proletariat of one country could not finally complete socialism, but at the end of the year, in October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists, he revised the position and argued that the USSR could build socialism by its own efforts. Bukharin supplied the theoretical grounding, and after the Fourteenth Party Congress of 1925 it became the official line.
The background of the shift was international. When the failure of the German revolution of 1923 pushed the prospect of revolution in the West into the distance, a development strategy that did not presuppose international support was required. Socialism in one country answered that situation and at the same time matched the political demand of a party apparatus that wanted to concentrate on domestic construction.
Structure of the dispute
The opposing case had two layers. One was a question of reading Marx and Lenin, with repeated citation of passages holding that the final victory of socialism was possible only on an international scale. The other was economic: could a backward agrarian country obtain technology and capital in isolation?
Stalin's side answered that the size and resources of the USSR, together with the political condition of working-class power, made self-reliant construction possible. The argument soon passed beyond textual interpretation into a test of political loyalty, and permanent revolution was defined as a defeatism that denied the possibility of Soviet construction.
Consequences
Socialism in one country became the frame justifying several directions of Soviet policy. Crash industrialization and collectivization were explained as the building of a self-reliant economic base, the work of the Comintern was subordinated to the defence of Soviet state interests, and the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943 can be understood as an extension of the same logic.
The line also left its mark on communist movements elsewhere. The proposition that socialism can be built within one country was later used as ground for parties asserting independent courses based on their own national conditions, and the self-reliance discourses of Yugoslavia, China, and North Korea are treated as examples. Juche is discussed as the extreme form in this line.