One of the most important questions, both for the party itself and for Soviet work, is the relation between the party and the state apparatus. In fact, this question is passed over in the theses [for the Eleventh Party Congress], and to the extent that it is touched on (in regard to economic training, and so on) nudges in the right direction.

Without freeing the party as a party from the functions of direct administration and management, it is impossible to cleanse the party of bureaucratism and the economy of indiscipline. This is the fundamental question. It is a ruinous “policy” when meetings of the provincial [party] committee decide, in passing, questions concerning the province's sowing campaign or whether or not to lease a factory. And it is in no wise better in the district committee or the central one. Such a method is propaganda in deed against serious specialization, against responsibility, against study of the matter in practice, against respect for specialized knowledge, against serious, unremitting, properly organized work.

When the Central Committee encountered, in different questions, the most egregious instances of direct interference by the provincial committees in judiciary matters, it fought such tendencies. But in all its practice, unconsciously, it has de facto instilled such a manner of acting, depriving all government organs of personal responsibility, removing responsibility for actual work, undermining self-confidence, and at the same time fostering the party's extreme bureaucratization.

We have now passed a resolution that will finally free the trade unions from the functions of economic management. With the change in economic policy, this is unquestionably correct. But for the sake of efficiency, i.e., for actual success, it makes no difference whether the interference comes from the trade unions or from the Central Committee, provincial committees, district committees, or party cells. If the New Economic Policy requires that trade unions be trade unions, then this same policy requires that the party be a party. Training for the correct implementation of commercial functions and economic functions in general is not the task of the party, but the task of the appropriate economic organs for which the party ensures solid leadership and provides the opportunity to select employees and train them without sporadic and incompetent outside interference. The party explains to the working masses the importance and significance of commercial operations as a method of socialist construction. The party combats prejudices that hinder the proper development of economic activity. The party fights attempts to use the New Economic Policy as a device for instilling bourgeois morals in the Communist Party itself. The party firmly establishes what is allowed and what is forbidden. But the party does not direct commercial operations, because it is incapable of doing that. The party does not train people for economic activity, and, in particular, commercial activity, because it is not capable of that.

The party has power in its hands, but it governs only through the properly functioning state apparatus. It sends back 99 percent of the matters submitted to it for decision, on the grounds that they contain nothing of concern to the party.

At the same time, the party concentrates its attention on the theoretical education of party youth to a far greater extent than in the past.