Page:Building Up Socialism - Nikolai Bukharin (1926).pdf/71

 Rh idea to the one that it is impossible completely to construct Socialism in Russia because of our technical backwardness is absolutely wrong and must be combatted. Such an interpretation must be combatted because otherwise it will be impossible to advocate the line of policy outlined by Lenin.

All the silly jokes about building Socialism "in a single street in Stupidtown," or in "Gotham," should cause a feeling of revulsion among real revolutionaries. Some people think these jokes are extremely witty. They fail to see that they are merely pitiful, because they simply repeat the doubtful wit of Kautsky about "Socialism in Turkestan" and Hilferding's clumsy jest on the "Socialism of Bokharan mullahs." It is positively nonsensical to pretend that these bits of Social-Democratic humour stand for revolutionary internationalism. They simply conceal desertion from the front at the most difficult moment of the struggle.

At the present time fresh difficulties have hurled themselves against us, difficulties arising from our technico-economic backwardness, from the fact that we must seek means for capital expenditure and from the fact that the rate of development is much slower than it would be in the event of a victorious proletarian revolution in Europe. Of course, a victorious revolution would radically alter the whole state of things; the rate of industrialistion of our country after a certain interval of time would become greatly accelerated. We should have to re-organise our forces of production differently, we would have to "plan" and "group into regions" on different lines; the relations between town and village would be different; we would be able much more rapidly to draw our backward agriculture into the orbit of industry. At the present time we are proceeding far too slowly. But this relatively