ABSTRACT
Bukharin and the party leadership had thought of war communism as leading to socialism quite separate from the prospects of European revolution. Neither in Germany nor in Russia had the matter ever been an object of an official party debate. The debate about socialism in one country began in late 1924. Stalin explained that socialism in one country did not imply reduced attention to the world revolution. The matter to be debated at length was the Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the Comintern Executive Committee. Without the world revolution, collapse was inevitable: In concluding, Edward Carr was on the mark when he noted that the Great Debate had an ‘air of unreality’ about it. To refer to Vollmar, to Kautsky or to any other social democrat who had anticipated them in exploring the theme of single-country socialism, could only have detracted from their own Bolshevik legitimacy. The history of socialism in one country was reduced to Lenin’s observations.
