In 1947, just as the Arab League and the United Nations were at loggerheads over Israel's independence, an ideological conflict began to erupt in the Soviet Union.

In the same year, Nikolai Voznesensky, Chairman of the USSR State Planning Economy Committee and First Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Council of Ministers (equivalent to the first deputy prime minister of the State Council), published a book entitled "The Military Economy of the USSR in the Period of the Great Patriotic War", which caused an uproar in Soviet politics.

Voznesensky's main point was that the distribution of labor between the different branches of the Soviet economy should be determined by the law of value (in this case, the profitability of individual enterprises and industries). Therefore, the price of a commodity should be the market price, and this "market price" is determined on the basis of the value of the product itself or the cost of production (in Marx's analysis of the capitalist economy, it is equal to the cost of production plus the average profit).

Voznesensky argues that in order for the production of enterprises to conform to what he calls the "law of values", it is necessary to strengthen the role of cost accounting (accounting based on the profitability of individual enterprises and industries) in organizing production, and at the same time use bonuses to economically reward enterprise personnel in order to "increase production through bonuses of individual incentives."

In addition to this, he argues that "state planning under the Soviet economic system should use the law of value to set the proportions necessary for the production and distribution of social goods." The law of value works not only in production, but also in the exchange of products. The law of value also played a role in the distribution of labor itself between the various branches of the national economy of the USSR. ”

To put it simply, Voznesensky believed that Soviet enterprises should be profitable, not only in production, but also in trading, in sales.

In other words, according to Voznesensky's idea, all enterprises in the Soviet Union had to produce products that would bring profits to the enterprises themselves, and the prices at which the products were sold should conform to the so-called "law of value" and raise the prices to the extent that they could bring profits to the enterprises.

In the eyes of many modern people, there is nothing wrong with this theory. In a market economy society, the idea of using material incentives to encourage production and "enterprises should make profits" is already some deep-rooted concepts.

If there are no material incentives for workers, what difference does it make if they do more or less? If the enterprise does not chase profits, then what district will it rely on to develop and grow, and how can it maintain its operation and not go bankrupt?

It is true that the idea of using material rewards to encourage workers to work hard is correct, whether in capitalist society or in socialist society, so since the establishment of the Soviet Union, workers who work hard have been rewarded in various ways, and "Stakhanov" has also launched a "capacity competition" to encourage workers to "burst production capacity".

Voznesensky's idea of the law of value may be correct in a capitalist market economy, after all, the enterprises of any capitalist society are aimed at making profits, and have no obligation to support the development of the state or improve the people's livelihood, and the whole market is naturally affected by the law of value, and the prices set are also higher than the cost of production, so as to ensure that the enterprises and the bourgeoisie behind them can obtain sufficient profits.

Therefore, the so-called distribution ratio of labor production in capitalist society is adjusted according to the law of value, and only by carrying out production and market planning according to the so-called law of value can enterprises obtain maximum profits.

But in the socialist planned economic system, is the law of value the criterion for regulating the proportion of labor distribution among the various branches of production? Is this theory correct?

In 1951, Stalin gave the answer to this question in his "Problems of the Soviet Socialist Economy": "If this is correct, then it is impossible to understand why in our country we have not given priority to the development of the most profitable light industry, and to the development of heavy industry, which is often less profitable and sometimes even unprofitable."

If this is correct, it is not understandable why we have not closed down in our country the enterprises of heavy industry, in which for the time being are not profitable, in which the labour of the workers is not able to produce the so-called desired effect, nor the establishment of new enterprises of light industry, in which the labour of the workers is capable of producing the so-called great effect.

If this is correct, it is not understandable why in our country the workers are not transferred from enterprises which are in great need of the national economy but which make little profit to more profitable enterprises according to the so-called law of value, which seems to regulate the distribution of labour among the various branches of production. ”

However, this is not the case with Voznesensky, and even one of his historical political opponents, Nikita Khrushchev, is highly consistent with Voznesensky on the issue of the "law of value."

Historically, after Stalin's death, Khrushchev's government began to overturn the case for Voznesensky, and began to put some of Voznesensky's ideas into practice, implementing a series of "reform policies" to make the Soviet economy and market more in line with the so-called "law of value".

This series of policies was called a "revisionist policy" by later generations, and Khrushchev was naturally labeled a "revisionist", and the Soviet Union embarked on the road of revisionism.

Later, during the Brezhnev period, the Soviet party and government leaders not only did not bring the Soviet economy back on track, but continued to increase the pace of revisionist reforms, so that the Soviet Union was reduced to a capitalist country (to be precise, state capitalism or state-owned capitalism) under the cloak of socialism, and the Soviet economy fell into a state of "stagnation" and no longer had the high-speed growth of the Stalin era. A series of policies that deviated from the Marxist path also laid the groundwork for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Stalin had always been jealous of the existence of such "revisionist ideas", but this time, he did not rush to take action against Voznesensky and others, but chose to wait and see what happened, waiting for more revisionists to jump out, and then hunt them out.

After the publication of his work, Voznesensky began to use his power as chairman of the State Planning Commission to initiate economic reforms aimed at making these ideas a reality, the main of which was to reformulate the prices of domestic commodities in order to correspond to the prices of production.

However, such a change will lead to the price of many basic means of production and transportation prices doubling or more than double, causing substantial inflation and increasing the people's living burden.

Even so, Voznesensky's reform plan was supported by many in the party. Among those who support revisionism are:

Secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPSU Alexei Kuznetsov;

Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Party Committee Popkov;

Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Federation Mikhail Rodionov;

Chairman of the Moscow Soviet, Georgy Popov;

First Secretary of the Chelyabinsk Regional Party Committee Patolicev;

Rector of Leningrad University Alexander Voznesensky (brother of Nikolai Voznesensky);

In addition to these people, Alexei Kosygin, deputy chairman of the Supreme Council of Ministers, also expressed cautious support for Voznesensky's reform program. Almost all of these supporters of the reform program, including Kosygin, were part of the "Leningrad faction", and if they were not, they maintained close ties with the Leningrad faction and were their political allies.

Surprisingly, however, Andrei Zhdanov, the second secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, who had always been regarded as the boss of the "Leningrad faction," not only did not express his support, but on the contrary connived at the "Siberian" faction to use the propaganda institutions and media under his control to make statements against Voznesensky.

With the "connivance" of Zhdanov, some articles against Voznesensky appeared in the major Soviet media.

The first to "fire" was Konstantin Chernenko, the first secretary of the Ukrainian party committee, who was regarded as an important figure in the "Siberian faction", and then the secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPSU Pantremont Ponomarenko, and then Manturov, the "third party of Andrei" (that is, the chairman of the Central Supervisory Commission Andrei Andreyevich Andreyev), as well as the first leaders of Belarus and the Novosibirsk region published similar articles.

To Manturov's delight and surprise, the first secretary of the Kazakh Party Committee Pegov (who was the deputy head of the Organization Department at the same time in history, and before that was the first secretary of the Primorsky Krai Party Committee) also expressed the same position as himself, and took the initiative to move closer to the "Siberian faction" and became Manturov's political ally.

In this way, the struggle for power between the "Leningrad faction" and the "Siberian faction", and at the same time the first anti-revisionist struggle in the USSR, began.