Cassius Clay
24th February 2003, 21:22
Trotskyism or Leninism
By Harpal Brar
Preface
One of the myths perpetrated by Trotskyites, with not inconsiderable help from the imperialist bourgeoisie, is that Leninism and Trotskyism are synonymous; that Trotsky was, after Lenin, the most brilliant and greatest Bolshevik (some even implying that Lenin was a great Trotskyist); that Trotsky was the true inheritor of Leninism, and a worthy successor to Lenin, but was, alas, deprived of his rightful place by the cunning manoeuvres of a third-class mediocrity and oriental despot to boot, i.e., Joseph Stalin. This anti-communist myth, repeated ad nauseam decade after decade in truly Goebbels fashion, not only in Trotskyite publications but also in classrooms by petty-bourgeois professors and teachers of history and sociology, not to mention the imperialist press and electronic media, this myth has acquired the force of a public prejudice. This prejudice is the product of deliberate distortion and falsification by Trotskyism and its bourgeois allies, of Marxism-Leninism, of deliberate inventions, deceptions, innuendoes, omissions and their tendentious interpretations of the history of the Great October Revolution and the revolutionary practice and role of the USSR, on the one hand, and the ignorance of those on whom these deceptions, distortions and downright falsifications are practised, on the other hand. Anyone who has made some study, let alone a deep study, of the subject cannot but be aware of the total falsity of this myth. It is the aim of this book to expose this myth and lay bare the truly reactionary, counter-revolutionary, essence of the petty-bourgeois ideology of Trotskyism, which is as irreconcilably hostile to Marxism-Leninism as is the bourgeoisie to the proletariat – notwithstanding its pseudo-Marxist, ultra-'left' and ultra-'revolutionary' terminology.
The task I set myself in this book is to show that Leninism and Trotskyism are mutually exclusive; that Trotskyism is irreconcilably opposed to Leninism; that those claiming to be Marxist-Leninists are duty bound, in the interests of the proletariat, to wage a ruthless and uncompromising struggle against Trotskyism; that they have to bury Trotskyism, as an ideological trend in the working-class movement. Further, I seek to demonstrate that after the death of Lenin in January 1924, as Leninism was upheld by the Bolshevik Party, now under the leadership of Stalin, Trotskyism continued its ceaseless onslaught on Leninism, with some tactical adjustments to the form of its attack. It now attacked Leninism and the Party's Leninist policy under the guise of attacking 'Stalinism' in the name of Leninism. For all that, Trotskyism continued its counter-revolutionary struggle against revolutionary Leninism, albeit without overtly and specifically naming Lenin as its target. Be it-said to the honour of the Bolshevik Party and to its leader, Stalin, Trotskyism was dealt blows equally as shattering as those delivered against it during Lenin's lifetime, causing it to suffer ignominious defeat. In particular I seek to emphasise three specific features of Trotskyism – features which bring it into irreconcilable contradiction with Leninism.
Three specific features of Trotskyism
1. 'Permanent revolution'
Trotskyism stands for the theory of 'permanent' revolution, failing to take into account the vast mass of the poor peasantry as a revolutionary force and reliable ally of the proletariat. As Lenin rightly pointed out, Trotsky's 'Permanent' revolution is tantamount to 'skipping' the peasant movement and "playing at the seizure of power." Any attempt at such a revolution as was advocated by Trotsky would have ended in certain failure, for it would have denied the Russian proletariat the support of its most dependable ally, the poor peasantry. Only this explains Leninism's unrelenting struggle against Trotskyism from 1905 onwards.
For its part Trotskyism regarded Leninism as a theory possessing "antirevolutionary features" for no better reason that at the proper time Leninism correctly advocated and upheld the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. Going far beyond this indignant opinion, Trotskyism asserts:
"The entire edifice of Leninism at the present time is built on lies and falsification and bears within itself the poisonous elements of its own decay." (Trotsky's letter to Chkeidze, 1913).
Leninism, on the other hand, asserts:
"Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any important question of Marxism. He always contrives to worm his way into the cracks of any given difference of opinion, and desert one side for the other. At the present moment he is in the company of the Bundists and the liquidators. And these gentlemen do not stand on ceremony where the Party is concerned" (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 20 p. 448, 1914).
2. Distrust of Leninism in matters of organisation
Trotskyism stands for the distrust of Leninism, of Bolshevism, in matters of organisation. Whereas Bolshevism stands for the principle of a revolutionary proletarian party of a new type, a disciplined and monolithic Party, hostile to opportunist elements, Trotskyism stands for the co-existence of revolutionaries and opportunists and for the formation of groups, factions and coteries within a single Party. Anyone who is at all aware of the history of Trotsky's notorious August Bloc, in which the Martovites and Otzovists,(1) the Liquidators(2) and Trotskyites happily co-operated in their struggle against Bolshevism, cannot have failed to notice this liquidationist feature of Trotskyism. Thus, during this crucial historical period, whereas Leninism regarded the destruction of the August Bloc as a precondition for the development of the proletarian party, Trotskyism regarded the liquidationist August Bloc as the basis for building a 'real' party.
Throughout this entire period – from 1903 to 1917 – Lenin again and again denounced Trotsky for his "careerism", "Menshevism", "conciliationism" and "liquidationism." Here are a few samples chosen at random from scores of Lenin's writings in the same vein:
In a letter to Zinoviev dated 24 August 1909, Lenin writes: Trotsky behaves like a despicable careerist and factionalist of the Ryazanov-and-co type. Either equality on the editorial board, subordination to the central committee and no one's transfer to Paris except Trotsky's (the scoundrel, he wants to 'fix up' the whole rascally crew of 'Pravda' at our expense!) – or a break with this swindler and an exposure of him in the CO. He pays lip-service to the Party and behaves worse than any other of the factionalists." (Collected Works, Vol. 34, p. 400).
When Lenin was waging a life and death struggle to purge the Party of liquidators and otzovists, Trotsky, assuming the role of a conciliator, tried his worst to reconcile the Party with these two bourgeois trends. This caused Lenin to denounce Trotsky in these terms:
"In the very first words of his resolution Trotsky expressed the full spirit of the worst kind of conciliation, 'conciliation' in inverted commas, of a sectarian and philistine conciliation, which deals with 'given persons' and not the given line of policy, the given spirit the given ideological and political content of Party work.
"It is in this that the enormous difference lies between real partyism; which consists in purging the Party of liquidationism and otzovism, and the 'conciliation' of Trotsky and Co., which actually RENDERS THE MOST FAITHFUL SERVICE TO THE LIQUIDATORS AND OTZOVISTS, AND IS THEREFORE AN EVIL THAT IS ALL THE MORE DANGEROUS TO THE PARTY THE MORE CUNNINGLY, ARTFULLY AND RHETORICALLY IT CLOAKS ITSELF WITH PROFESSEDLY PRO-PARTY, PROFESSEDLY ANTI-FACTIONAL DECLAMATIONS." (Notes of a Publicist, Collected Works, Vol. 16, June 1910, p 211 – emphasis added).
In November 1910, accusing Trotsky of following "in the wake of the Mensheviks, taking cover behind particularly; sonorous phrases, " of "putting before the German comrades liberal views with a Marxist coating." of being a master of "resonant but empty phrases, " of failing to understand and ignoring the "economic content of the Russian revolution, " and thereby depriving himself "of the possibility of understanding the historical meaning of the inner-Party struggle in Russia," Lenin goes on to state:
"The struggle between Bolshevism and Menshevism is... a struggle over the question whether to support the liberals or to overthrow the hegemony of the liberals over the peasantry. Therefore to attribute [as did Trotsky] our splits to the influence of the intelligentsia, to the immaturity of the proletariat, etc, is a childishly naive repetition of liberal fairy-tales."
Adding: "Trotsky distorts Bolshevism, because he has never been able to form any definite views on the role of the proletariat in the Russian bourgeois revolution."
Countering Trotsky's lies and falsifications in the German Social-Democratic press and accusing Trotsky of following a policy of "advertisement" of "shamelessness in belittling the Party and exalting himself before the Germans, " Lenin concludes:
"Therefore, when Trotsky tells the German comrades that he represents the 'general Party tendency" I am obliged to declare that Trotsky represents only his own faction and enjoys a certain amount of confidence exclusively among the otzovists and the liquidators." (The Historical Meaning of the Inner-Party Struggle in Russia, Collected Works, Vol. 16 pp. 374-392).
When Trotsky's Vienna Club, stepping up its activities, passed a resolution in November 1910 to organise a 'general Party fund for the purpose of preparing and convening a conference of the RSDLP", Lenin characterised this as a "direct step towards a split... a clear violation of Party legality and the start of an adventure in which Trotsky will come to grief."
Continues Lenin:
"It is an adventure in the ideological sense. Trotsky groups all the enemies of Marxism, he unites Potresov and Maximov, who detest the 'Lenin-Plekhanov' bloc, as they like to call it. TROTSKY UNITES ALL THOSE TO WHOM IDEOLOGICAL DECAY IS DEAR; ALL WHO ARE NOT CONCERNED WITH THE DEFENCE OF MARXISM, all philistines who do not understand the reasons for the struggle and who do not wish to learn, think and discover the ideological roots of the divergence of views. At this time of confusion, disintegration, and wavering it is easy for Trotsky to become the 'hero of the hour' and gather all the shabby elements around himself. The more openly this attempt is made, the more spectacular will be the defeat." (Emphasis added).
Lenin ends this letter by calling, inter alia, for "struggle against the splitting tactics and the unprincipled adventurism of Trotsky." (Letter to the Russian Collegium of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, Collected Works, Vol. 17, pp. 17-22 – December 1910).
In December 1911, being sick and tired of Trotsky's dirty work as an attorney and diplomat for the liquidators and otzovists, Lenin, exposing Trotsky's factionalism, wrote:
"It is impossible to argue with Trotsky on the merits of the issue, because Trotsky holds no views whatever. We can and should argue with confirmed liquidators and otzovists, but it is no use arguing with a man whose game is to hide the errors of both these trends; in his case the thing to do is to expose him as a diplomat of the smallest calibre." (Trotsky's Diplomacy and a Certain Party Platform, Collected Works, Vol. 17 pp. 360362).
In July 1912, in a letter to the editor of Pravda, the daily legal Bolshevik paper printed in Petersburg from 5 May 1912, Lenin advises the editor not to reply to Trotsky's "disruptive and slanderous letters," adding:
"Trotsky's dirty campaign against Pravda is one mass of lies and slander... This intriguer and liquidator goes on lying right and left." (Collected Works, Vol. 35, pp. 40-41).
In The Break-up of the 'August' Bloc (March 1914), Lenin writes:
"Trotsky, however, has never had any 'physiognomy' at all; the only thing he does have is a habit of changing sides, of skipping from the liberals to the Marxists and back again, of mouthing scraps of catchwords and bombastic parrot phrases."
And: "Actually under the cover of high-sounding, empty and obscure phrases that confuse the non-class-conscious workers, Trotsky is defending the liquidators by passing over in silence the question of the 'underground' by asserting that there is no liberal labour policy in Russia, and the like.
"... Unity means rallying the majority of the workers in Russia about decisions which have long been known, and which condemn liquidationism...
"But the liquidators and Trotsky,... who tore up their own August bloc, who flouted all the decisions of the Party and dissociated themselves from the 'underground' as well as from the organised workers, are the worst splitters. Fortunately, the workers have already realised this, and all class-conscious workers are creating their own real unity against the liquidator disrupters of unity." (Collected Works, Vol. 20 pp. 158-161).
In his article Disruption of unity under cover of outcries for unity, written in June 1914, Lenin denounces Trotsky for his factionalism and liquidationism and exposes the utter falsity of the charge of splittism hurled by Trotsky and the liquidators at the Bolsheviks. Writing in his allegedly nonfactional journal, Borba, Trotsky, having accused the Bolsheviks of splittism for the sole reason that they exposed and opposed liquidationism, goes on to admit that the Bolshevik "splittist tactics are winning one suicidal victory after another." This said, Trotsky adds:
"Numerous advanced workers, in a state of utter political bewilderment themselves often become active agents of a split."
Here is Lenin's retort to this accusation and 'explanation':
"Needless to say, this explanation is highly flattering, to Trotsky... and to the liquidators… Trotsky is very fond of using with the learned air of the expert pompous and high-sounding phrases to explain historical phenomena in a way that is flattering to Trotsky. Since 'numerous advanced workers' become 'active agents' of apolitical and Party line [Bolshevik Party line] which does not conform to Trotsky's line, Trotsky settles the question unhesitatingly, out of hand these advanced workers are 'in a state of utter political bewilderment', whereas he, Trotsky, is evidently 'in a state' of political firmness and clarity, and keeps to the right line!... And this very same Trotsky, beating his breast, fulminates against factionalism parochialism, and the efforts of the intellectuals to impose their will on the workers!
"Reading things like these, one cannot help asking oneself. – is it from a lunatic asylum that such voices come?" (Collected Works, Vol. 20 pp. 327-347).
Continues Lenin: "The reason why Trotsky avoids facts and concrete references is because they relentlessly refute all his angry outcries and pompous phrases. It is very easy, of course, to strike an attitude and say: 'a crude and sectarian travesty.' Or to add a still more stinging and pompous catchphrase, such as 'emancipation from conservative factionalism.'
"But is this not very cheap? Is not this weapon borrowed from the arsenal of the period when Trotsky posed in all his splendour before audiences of high-school boys?" (ibid.)
Lenin concludes his article with a brilliant description of Trotsky's wavering and vacillation between the Party and the liquidators, calling him a "Tushino turncoat" appearing before the Party with incredibly pretentious claims, unwilling absolutely to reckon with either the Party decisions, which since 1908 have defined and established our attitude towards liquidationism, or with the experience of the present-day movement in Russia, which has actually brought about the unity of the majority on the basis of full recognition of the aforesaid decisions." (ibid.)
This brilliant description appears in the main body of this work and is, therefore, excluded from the preface.
About the same time – early 1914 – Trotsky, writing in issue no. 2 of his journal Borba falsely attributed to the "Polish Marxists" – not just Rosa Luxemburg – the position according to which the right to national self-determination "is entirely devoid of political content and should be deleted from the programme." This falsehood drew from Lenin the following observation:
"The obliging Trotsky is more dangerous than an enemy! Trotsky could produce no proof except 'private conversations' (i.e., simply gossip, on which Trotsky always subsists), classifying the 'Polish Marxists' in general as supporters of every article by Rosa Luxemburg...
"Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any important question of Marxism. He always contrives to worm his way into the cracks of any given difference of opinion, and desert one side for the other. At the present moment he is in the company of the Bundists and the liquidators. And thee gentlemen do not stand on ceremony where the Party is concerned." (The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Collected Works, Vol. 20 p. 447-8).
In his letter to Henriette Roland-Hoist, dated 8 March 1916, Lenin asks:
"What are our differences with Trotsky?"
To this question he gives the following answer:
"In brief – he is a Kautskyite, that is, he stands for unity with the Kautskyites in the International and with Chkheidze's parliamentary group in Russia. We are absolutely against such unity ... " (Collected Works, Vol. 43, pp. 515-516).
Writing to Alexandra Kollontai on 17 February, 1917, Lenin says:
"...What a swine this Trotsky is – Left, phrases, and a bloc with the Right against the Zimmerwald Left!! He ought to be exposed (by you) if only in a brief letter to Sotsial-Demokrat!" (Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 285).
Finally, in this letter of 19 Feb, 1917, to Inessa Armand, Lenin writes, inter alia:
"There is also a letter from Kollontai who... has returned to Norway from America. N. Iv. and Pavlov... had won Novy Mir, she says,... but ... Trotsky arrived, and this scoundrel at once ganged up with the Right wing of Novy Mir against the Left Zimmerwaldists!! That's it!! That's Trotsky for you!! Always true to himself, twists, swindles, poses as a Left, helps the Right, so long as he can... "(Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 288).
In the light of the foregoing historic evidence, of the most impeccable and irrefutable kind, it can safely be asserted that Trotsky was during this long period – between 1903 and 1917 – a Menshevik and a liquidator who waged a most dirty and factional campaign against the Bolsheviks' attempts to build a revolutionary Party of the proletariat.
Although people with knowledge about the history of the Bolshevik Party know only too well that from 1903 to August 1917 Trotsky was a Menshevik and a liquidator, Trotskyites generally maintain a studied silence over this question or, worse still, they try and excuse him on this account. It is, therefore, very refreshing to discover some ardent Trotskyites who condemn Trotsky's Menshevism, centrism, conciliationism and factionalism. In this category fall the Trotskyites of the International Communist League (ICL) of the so-called Fourth International (the official Fourth International, of course, since each of the milliard Trotskyist organisations claims to be the official Fourth International and describes every other Trotskyist organisation as a fake – a hilarious phenomenon reminiscent of the Life of Brian). The ICL publish the theoretical journal Spartacist. The occasion for their frank admission and condemnation of Trotsky's Menshevism was the review, in Spartacist numbers 45 and 46, Winter 1990-91, English edition, by a certain ICL member, Daniel Dauget, of a biography of Leon Trotsky published in 1988 by Pierre Broué. Pierre Broué was a Professor at the Institute of Political Studies of Grenoble University who had been for 40 years a member of "the ostensibly Trotskyist Lambertist tendency in France" (ICL's description in the said review), i.e., of the Parti Communiste Internationale (PCI).
Broué praises Trotsky for being a "freelancer" – praise winch rouses the ICL to indignation and downright outrage. So as not to lose the full force of ICL's fluent prose, the full burning anger and shame, and the thrust of their argument, and so as not to be accused of quoting them out of context, we reproduce here almost the entire section of the review that was concerned with Trotsky's factionalism and Menshevism between 1903 and 1917
Trotsky as "Freelancer"
"Broué's treatment of Trotsky's political activity between the decisive 1903 Bolshevik-Menshevik split and the October Revolution is at the core of his interpretation; because it is here that he deals with the debates within Russian Social Democracy over the nature, form and structure a revolutionary party must have if it is to take state power, as well as with the role of political and programmatic debate in forging such a party. After the 1903 split between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Trotsky became a sort of freelancer in the party.
"Broué praises Trotsky for this, seeing in it the cause for Trotsky's leading role in the 1905 Revolution as chairman of the St Petersburg Soviet and his brilliant propagandist use of his trial following the 1905 defeat:
"'In fact, effectively fired from any factional obligations, at a good distance from the up and downs of the conflicts between the two main factions, satisfied in this respect with his unitary' position whose victory seemed to him assured in the future, Trotsky had his hands completely free to devote his attention and activity to the events that were unfolding in Russia...' – Broué, p. 97.
"To read this, one would conclude that Lenin's factional struggle against Menshevism was irrelevant – if not outright counterposed – to intervening in and leading the revolutionary struggle. Indeed, Broué views Trotsky's role as the leading 'conciliator' between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks as exemplary.
"Earlier, as Broué notes, 'Trotsky, partisan of centralization and of the authority of the Central Committee ever since he bad been deported to Siberia, was seen in the émigré circles as Lenin's 'hatchet man',' At the 1903 Congress Trotsky began a programmatic struggle against Lenin on the question of the party. For example Trotsky opposed the sovereignty of the party congress: 'The Congress is a register, a controller, but not a creator' (Report of the Siberian Delegation, 1903) Although the programmatic implications were far from clear at the time, the 1903 split was a fundamental spilt on the party question Trotsky's federalist position on this question was also reflected in 'Report of the Siberian Delegation' with his rejection of the Bolshevik definition of a party member that required 'personal participation in one of the Party bodies.' In practical terms Trotsky was in favour of the Menshevik definition of a party member as one who gave Personal assistance 'to the party – he wished to allow all the broad 'workers organisations' which existed alongside the party committees in many major Russian cities, to act in the name of the party regardless of their adherence to the statutes or decisions of party congresses.
"At the same time that Broué enthuses over Trotsky's independence, he mentions in passing that Trotsky was wrong on the party question during this entire period. But what he says pales in comparison with Trotsky's own judgement:
"'The deep differences that divided me from Bolshevism for a whole number of years and in many cases placed me in sharp and hostile opposition to Bolshevism, Were expressed most graphically in relation to the Menshevik faction. I began with the radically wrong perspective that the course of the revolution and the pressure of the proletarian masses would ultimately force both factions to follow the same road. Therefore I considered a split to be an unnecessary" disruption of the revolutionary forces. But because the active role in the split by with the Bolsheviks – since it was only by ruthless demarcation, not only ideological but organizational as well, that it was possible, in Lenin's opinion, to assure the revolutionary character of the proletarian party (and the entire subsequent history has fully confirmed the correctness of those policies) – my 'conciliationism' led me at many sharp turns in the road into hostile clashes with Bolshevism.' – Trotsky, 'Our Differences' (Nov. 1924).
"The traditional 'center' and right wing of the Social Democracy were only too happy to use Trotsky's name and journalistic brilliance as a left cover for their own positions and as a weapon against Lenin. Thus Broué reports that 'Trotsky was on good terms with Kautsky and the 'center of the German Social Democracy until at least 1912... It was Kautsky during this period who, to Lenin's great anger, opened the pages of 'Die Neue Zeit' and 'Vorwarts' to Trotsky, Broué also details Trotsky's warm relations with the Austro-Marxists of Vienna, noting that he rapidly became 'the uncontested head of the Social Democratic colony in Vienna' from 1909 to 1912 .He passes rapidly over the fact that during the same period Rosa Luxemburg viewed Trotsky with 'systematic suspicion' and as a 'dubious individual', no doubt due to his ties to her right-wing opponents in the German Social Democracy.
"Broué's attitude toward Trotsky during these years is exemplified by his treatment of the infamous August bloc. The Vienna 'Pravda' edited by Trotsky attempted to 'conciliate' the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions- – Broué approvingly quotes the professional anti-communist Leonard Schapiro's praise of the Vienna 'Pravda' for not being as polemical as the Bolshevik press. A 1910 agreement between the factions provided for Bolshevik financial support to the Vienna 'Pravda', with Kamenev (who was close to Lenin and was Trotsky's brother-in-law) responsible for administering the Bolshevik funds The agreement stipulated that the Mensheviks would get rid of their right wing, and the Bolsheviks of their left wing. While the Bolsheviks respected the agreement, the Mensheviks did not, and in the subsequent polemics, Trotsky sided with the Mensheviks and got rid of Kamenev. Trotsky's articles, aimed at militants inside Russia who were unfamiliar with the details of the dispute, denounced the Bolsheviks as a 'conspiracy of the émigré clique.' Kautsky solicited and published several articles by Trotsky attacking the Bolsheviks, which provoked angry rejoinders not just from Lenin, but also from Plekhanov and Rosa Luxemburg. When the Bolshevik Prague Congress in 1912 proclaimed that it represented the party as a whole, Trotsky organised a unity' counter-conference in Vienna in August.
"In Trotsky's mind [the conference] was to have been the general unification, the reunification of the party. In fact, the Bolsheviks' rejection of it reduced the participants to a bloc against them, which they baptized the 'August bloc'. The Polish Social Democrats and Plekhanov also chose not to appear ... In fact, Trotsky's return to the factional arena proved particularly unfortunate. Independent of his intentions, and even of his precautions, the positions he took after the Prague conference and his role in forming the August bloc made him appear, despite himself, as the soul of a general coalition against the Bolsheviks and an indirect supporter of the 'liquidators'.' – Broué, pp. 139-140.
"Every qualifier in Broué's description of Trotsky's role in the August bloc is wrong or misleading. As is clear from Trotsky's denunciation of the Bolsheviks as an 'émigré clique', he was well aware that what Broué so delicately terms 'general unification', was a polemical cudgel with which to attack Lenin. Trotsky did not just 'appear' to be the soul of the anti-Bolshevik coalition, he was in fact that soul in that he was the most left-wing, most respected force outside the Bolsheviks. Trotsky's actions were not misconstrued 'despite himself,' but were an accurate reflection of the role he played vis-à-vis the Bolsheviks in the entire period from 1903 to at least 1915."
"The outbreak of WWI and the betrayal by the parties of the Second International most of whose leaders supported their own' governments in the bloody inter-imperialist war, shifted the grounds of dispute within the world socialist movement, forcing realignments and regroupments. Lenin and Trotsky both fought against the imperialist war, and both attended the gathering of antiwar socialists held in Zimmerwald Switzerland in September 1915." (pp. 33-34).
Be it noted in passing that the last sentence is either born out of dishonesty or simple ignorance – most likely the former – for everyone with the least knowledge about this matter knows that the Bolshevik slogan of working for the defeat of one's own government in the imperialist war then raging was countered by Trotsky with his chauvinist slogan demanding 'Neither victory nor defeat'. Further, we have provided, quotations above from Lenin to the effect that during this period Trotsky was a Kautskyite and fought against the Zimmerwald left headed by Lenin's Bolsheviks. But that does not concern us here. ICL continue:
"Broué argues that after Zimmerwald despite 'real disagreements' between Lenin and Trotsky, there was 'a reasonable prospect for a gradual rapprochement between the two men who in reality were divided only [sic] by the 1903 split, which had long since been outdated.' What Broué slides over is the fact that Lenin never repudiated the 1903 split – instead he generalized from it to a fully-formed theoretical position on the necessity for revolutionary cadres to organize a vanguard party, separate from reformist and centrist tendencies. Trotsky was ultimately won to Lenin's side on this question in 1917.
"There is something anachronistic and evocative of the worst aspects of French political traditions in Broué's repeated presentation of Trotsky as a simple star, freelancer, too busy being 'a leader of men' and giving brilliant speeches before and after the Revolution to have been a 'party man' or to have had the time to familiarize himself with [the] faction fights in the corridors'. Trotsky was a factionalist before 1917 – on the wrong side. But his program of conciliationism could never have built the sort of hard faction that could win leadership in the party, nor the kind of Party that could take state power." (p. 34).
Well said, Messrs the Trotskyites of the ICL! We think any comment on ibis would be superfluous!
All this does not, however, prevent the Trotskyites of the ICL from asserting, without as much as a blush, that Trotsky, after the death of Lenin, was best placed "to carry forward the authentic Bolshevik programme against Stalin's usurpers." Very strange logic indeed, according to which Trotsky, the Menshevik liquidator, who, spent two decades in a mortal struggle against every aspect of Leninism, was better suited to, carrying out the 'authentic' Bolshevik programme than someone like Stalin who, had spent two and a half decades faithfully supporting and actually carrying out the Bolshevik programme. Here is how ICL put it:
"In his admiration for Trotsky the left-Menshevik, Broué also never considers the potential authority that Trotsky would have gained and retained among stalwart Bolsheviks had he come over to Lenin's side as a hard party man in 1903 – an authority that would have served him well in the subsequent period when he fought to carry forward the authentic Bolshevik programme against Stalin's usurpers." (Ibid. p. 35).
Pigs might fly! The above statement of ICL amounts, if it amounts to anything at all, to a meaningless tautology, namely, had Trotsky been a staunch supporter of Leninism in the period 1903-17, he would have been well placed to carry out the authentic Bolshevik programme after Lenin's death. The problem, however, is that he was not during this long period, nor was he in the subsequent period, a staunch supporter of Leninism. The one who was a staunch Leninist, namely Joseph Stalin, was quite correctly chosen by the Bolshevik Party to lead it in carrying forward the authentic Bolshevik programme against the would-be usurper, to wit, Trotsky.
There is method in ICL's madness. They admit Trotsky's pre-1917 Menshevism in order to present gullible, readers with a sanitised version of Trotsky who, it is claimed, suddenly saw the light and after 1917 became a better Bolshevik than anyone else.
"The fact is," write the ICI, "that Broué... agrees with Trotsky's conciliationism before 1917, and much prefers Trotsky the anti-Leninist to Trotsky the Bolshevik."
Unlike Broué, in a vain attempt to gain credibility for Trotskyism, the ICL would rather make a clean admission of Trotsky's pre-1917 Menshevism and anti-Leninism in order to be able all the more zealously to fasten the label of staunch Leninist on Trotsky's lapel. This trick will not work, however, for apart from the short period during October when he hid his anti-Leninist stock-in-trade in the cupboard, Trotsky continued to practise his anti-Leninism, his anti-Bolshevism, with a zeal worthy of a better cause. It is not only the case that Broué, as is justly claimed by the ICI, "subtly puts Lenin under the gun" in order to gain the appreciation of the "anti- Leninist Soviet intelligentsia" (these words were written in the winter of 1990-91), but also the fact that the Trotskyites of the ICI, in common with all other Trotskyites, are attempting to substitute Trotskyism for Leninism, albeit by denouncing pre-1917 Trotskyism. No subterfuges, no tricks, no artful dodging, no deception, can detract from this fact – not even the pretence of praising Leninism.
3. Distrust of Bolshevik leadership
Trotsky stands for the distrust of the leaders of Bolshevism, for discrediting and defaming them. As Stalin correctly observed:
"I do not know of a single trend in the party that could compare with Trotskyism in the matter of discrediting the leaders of Leninism or the central institutions of the Party." (Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 366).
In Trotsky's letter to Chkeidze, already cited, Trotsky described Lenin as "a professional exploiter of every kind of backwardness in the Russian working-class movement."
If Trotsky could express such ill-mannered views about Leninism, is there anything surprising in the fact that he showered, after Lenin's death, even more vile abuse on Lenin's most faithful pupil, Stalin.
How could Trotsky end up in Bolshevik ranks?
How was it that Trotsky, having such an impeccably anti-Bolshevik and anti-Leninist record, found himself in the Bolshevik ranks in the period of the October revolution? Stalin, in a speech on 19 November 1924, asked and answered this question:
"How could it happen that Trotsky, who carried such a nasty stock-in-trade on his back; found himself, after all, in the rank of the Bolsheviks during the October movement? It happened because at that time Trotsky abandoned (actually did abandon) that stock-in-trade; he hid it in the cupboard .Had he not performed that 'operation', real co-operation with him would have been impossible. The theory of the August bloc, i.e., the theory of unity with the Mensheviks, had already been shattered and thrown overboard by the revolution, for how could there be any talk about unity when an armed struggle was raging between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks? Trotsky had no alternative but to admit that this theory was useless.
"The same misadventure 'happened' to the theory of permanent revolution, for not a single Bolshevik contemplated the immediate seizure of power on the morrow of the February Revolution, and Trotsky could not help knowing that the Bolsheviks would not allow him, in the words of Lenin, 'to play at the seizure of power.' Trotsky had no alternative but recognise the Bolsheviks' policy of fighting for influence in the Soviets, of fighting to win over the peasantry As regards the third specific feature of Trotskyism (distrust of (he Bolshevik leaders), it had naturally to retire into the background owing to the obvious failure of the first two features.
"Under the circumstances, could Trotsky do anything else but hide his stock-in-trade in the cupboard and follow the Bolshevik; considering that he had no group of his own of any significance, and that he came to the Bolsheviks as a political individual without an army? Of course, he could not!
"What is the lesson to be learnt from this? Only one: that prolonged collaboration between the Leninists and Trotsky is possible only if the latter completely abandons his old stock-in-trade, only if he completely accepts Leninism. Trotsky writes about the lessons of October, but he forgets ... the one I have just mentioned, which prime importance for Trotskyism. Trotskyism ought to learn that lesson of October too." (Collected Works, Vol. 6, pp. 366-367).
Trotskyism, however, failed to learn this lesson, and its old stock-in-trade, hidden in the cupboard in the period of the October movement, was dragged into daylight once more, especially after the death of Lenin, through Trotskyist literary pronouncements aimed at undermining the Bolshevik Party principle, belittling and discrediting Lenin (albeit under the guise of praising and exalting Lenin) and asserting the correctness of the much-discredited theory of permanent revolution, which was shattered by the experience of the three Russian revolutions – ie, that of 1905 and those of February and October 1917.
On arriving in Petrograd in 1917, Trotsky affiliated to the Mezhrayontsi (inter-regional), a group that vacillated between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. In August 1917, declaring that they had no differences with the Bolsheviks, the Mezhrayontsi joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks). Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks with them. On joining the Bolshevik Party, quite a number of Mezhrayontsi broke with opportunism; but, as subsequent events were to reveal, for Trotsky and some of his followers, joining the Bolsheviks was only a ruse. They continued to propound their harmful and reactionary views, flout discipline and undermine the Party's organisational and ideological unity.
As Trotskyism, Ear from abandoning its old nasty stock-in-trade, on the contrary dragged it out into the light of day, it was bound, owing to its entire inner content, to become the centre and rallying point not only of the non-proletarian elements in the USSR who were then (in the 1920s and 1930s) striving to disintegrate the proletarian dictatorship, but also of the imperialist bourgeoisie seeking by a thousand means to overthrow the proletarian regime that had been ushered in by the mighty October revolution. At every crucial stage in the development of the Russian revolution and the existence of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR, Trotskyism continued to maintain its reactionary anti-Bolshevik, anti-Leninist stance in matters of theory as well as organisation, cloaking it under thick layers of 'revolutionary' rhetoric.
Brest-Litovsk
In 1918 the young Soviet Republic, bereft of any army with the will and ability to fight, was fighting for its very survival through signing the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with German imperialism, thus gaining a much-needed respite for the exhausted population. At a crucial moment in these negotiations, Trotsky, as the head of the Soviet delegation to the peace talks, in violation of the instructions of the Party central committee and the Soviet government, declared the unilateral withdrawal of the Soviet Republic from the war, demobilisation of the Russian Army, and he then left Brest-Litovsk on the spurious ground that "we can only be saved in the true meaning of the word by a European Revolution" (Extraordinary Seventh Congress of the RCP(B)).
This gave the German Command the pretext it needed for ending the armistice, mounting an offensive and obliging the Soviet government to sign "a much more humiliating peace, and the blame for this rests on those who refused to accept the former peace." (Lenin, Political Report of the CC to the Extraordinary Seventh Congress of the RCP (B), 7 March 1918, Collected Works, Vol. 27).
Apropos the failure of the European revolution to come to maturity thus leaving the Bolshevik Revolution to solve its problems on its own, and forcing the Bolsheviks to face reality as it was rather than as they would wish it to be, Lenin admonished Trotsky and his ilk in the Party in the following terms:
"If you are unable to adapt yourself, if you are not inclined to crawl on your belly in the mud you are not a revolutionary but a chatterbox; and I propose this, not because I like it, but because we have no other road, because history has not been kind enough to bring the revolution to maturity everywhere simultaneously." (Ibid.)
Thus the young Soviet Republic paid a very heavy price for Trotsky's adventurism and phrase-mongering defeatism, which is the chief characteristic of his rotten theory of permanent revolution, according to which nothing good can ever come of any revolution unless it is accompanied by a world revolution.
Trade union debate
With the victorious conclusion of the Civil War of 1918-1920, as the Soviet Republic under Lenin's guidance, switched from war communism to the New Economic Policy (NEP) and embarked on a programme of economic revival and rejuvenation – of restoration of industry through an upsurge in agriculture and by drawing the workers and trade unions into active socialist construction through planned organisation and persuasion (and not coercion), Trotsky and his supporters forced on the Party a discussion on the question of trade unions (a luxury and a diversion from the work of economic construction, from the fight against famine and economic dislocation that the Party could ill afford at the time). Trotsky, the patriarch of bureaucrats, as Stalin rightly called him insisted on "tightening up the screws" and "shaking up" the trade unions, and turning the latter into state agencies, and on replacing persuasion by coercion.
The Party discussion on the trade unions resulted in the total rout of Trotsky and his supporters. When the Central Committee of the Party rejected Trotsky's Prussian sergeant's proposal, Trotsky went outside and gathered a group of his supporters with the aim of fighting against the Central Committee. So alarmed was Lenin by Trotsky's factionalism and flouting of Party discipline that he caused the 10th Party Congress (March 1921) to pass a resolution forbidding the formation of factions and disbanding existing factions forthwith. It was further stated that the "non-fulfilment of this decision of the Congress shall be followed by unconditional and immediate expulsion from the Party."
Trotsky's return to fully-fledged factionalism
This resolution was to arouse Trotsky's bitter hatred and opposition, for whenever he could not get his own way on any question, he rushed to form a Trotskyist faction within the Party, even if that meant threatening a split.
During 1921 Lenin's health began to decline. Cerebral arteriosclerosis was already blocking his blood circulation and taking its toll, with the result that this man of inexhaustible energy and drive was tiring easily, and spent most of the summer resting in the village of Gorki, not far from Moscow. The 11th Party Congress, meeting at the end of March 1922, created the new office of General Secretary, to which, one day after the conclusion of that Congress (i.e., on 3 April 1922), on Lenin's initiation and sponsorship, Stalin was appointed. On 26 May 1922, while resting in Gorki, Lenin suffered a severe stroke, which caused a partial paralysis of the right side of his body and loss of speech. He recovered from this stroke remarkably quickly and was back at his desk in early October 1922. After two further minor strokes on December 13 and 16, 1922, he suffered on March 10, 1923, a massive stroke, from which he never recovered and after which he took no further part in politics.
Following the latest stroke suffered by Lenin, Trotsky, with an eye on the leadership, stepped up his factional activity and intensified his vile and slanderous attacks on the Party leadership, its central institutions and its policy. On 8 October 1923 he sent a letter to the Central Committee, in which he asserted that the country was being inexorably led by the Party leadership to a catastrophe, to prevent which he demanded greater inner-Party democracy. Stripped of its Trotskyite verbiage, this meant the right to form factional groupings. A group of 46 followers of Trotsky also issued a manifesto – known as the Statement of 46 – to the same effect. Trotsky's letter and the Statement of 46 were discussed and condemned at a joint plenary meeting of the CC and the CCC with representatives of ten of the largest Party organisations in October 1923.
Trotsky followed his letter with a pamphlet entitled New Course, in which in addition to the demand for more Party democracy, he accused the old Bolsheviks – the Party leadership – of degeneration. He counterposed young people, especially students, to veteran Bolsheviks, declaring the former to be the barometer of the Party.
In talking about the degeneration of the 'old guard', Trotsky had used the expression "we, the old Bolsheviks," which provoked Stalin to make this observation, full of biting sarcasm:
"First, I must dispel a possible misunderstanding. As is evident..., Trotsky includes himself among the Bolshevik old guard, thereby showing readiness to take upon himself the charges that may be hurled at the old guard if it does indeed take the path of degeneration. It must be admitted that his readiness for self-sacrifice is undoubtedly a noble trait. But I must protect Trotsky from Trotsky, because, for obvious reasons, he cannot and should not bear responsibility for the possible degeneration of the principal cadres of the Bolshevik old guard..."
With more than a covert reference to Trotsky's long Menshevik past, Stalin, while admitting the possibility of degeneration of the Bolshevik old guard, goes on to add:
"Nevertheless, there are a number of elements within our Party who are capable of giving rise to a real danger of degeneration of certain ranks of our Party. I have in mind that section of the Mensheviks who joined our Party unwillingly and who have not yet got rid of their opportunist habits." (Collected Works, Vol. 5 p. 395).
The Thirteenth Conference of the RCP(B), held on 16-18 January 1924, strongly condemned the factionalism of Trotsky and his followers, stating that "the present opposition is not only an attempt to revise Bolshevism not only a flagrant departure from Leninism but patently a petty-bourgeois deviation .There is no doubt whatever that this opposition mirrors the pressure of the petty-bourgeoisie on the position of the proletarian party and its policy." (Resolution On the Results of the Discussion and on the Petty-Bourgeois Deviation in the Party – CPSU in Resolutions, etc. Vol. 2).
Lenin's death and Trotsky's attempt to substitute Trotskyism for Leninism
Lenin, after a further stroke on the morning of 21 January, 1924, died in the evening. Trotsky, although a newcomer to the Party, had convinced himself that he had a better claim to succeed Lenin than old, trusted and tried Bolsheviks such as Stalin. So in October 1924 Trotsky published an introduction to his collected works entitled Lessons of October, which purported to deal with the reasons for the Bolshevik victory in the October Revolution. Having made general ritual references in it to the necessity of a revolutionary party for the success of a revolution, Trotsky went on to belittle the role of the Bolshevik Party, extol his, own part in the revolution, hinting that Lenin had suddenly changed his previous position for that of Trotsky, to which fact alone was to be attributed the success of the October Revolution. He also dragged out of the cupboard his old and much-discredited theory of 'permanent revolution!, arguing that hostile collisions between the proletarian vanguard and the broad masses of the peasantry were inevitable. One gets the impression from reading his Lessons of October that it was Trotsky who organised the October victory.
In other words, the man who had fought against Bolshevism and Leninism for 14 long years, who had sided with the Mensheviks and liquidators to oppose the building by Lenin's Bolsheviks of the proletarian revolutionary party capable of leading the proletariat and the broad masses in seizing political power, who had spent his life opposing Lenin's theory of proletarian revolution with his absurd theory of 'permanent revolution', who had opposed the Bolshevik slogan of defeat of one's own government in the imperialist war (the first world war) with his chauvinistic slogan demanding Neither victory nor defeat, suddenly and providentially descended on the scene in Petersburg to rescue the revolution from the frightened and useless lot that constituted the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, the majority of whom, according to this fairy tale worthy of the Arabian Nights, were opposed to the October uprising!!
Nothing could be further from the truth. Trotsky's special role in October originated with John Reed, the author of Ten Days that Shook the World, who, being remote from the Bolshevik Party, had no knowledge of the secret meeting of its central committee on 23 October, 1917, and was therefore taken in by the gossip spread by people such as Sukhanov. These fairy tales about Trotsky's special role in October were later passed round and repeated in several pamphlets written by Trotskyites, including Syrkin's pamphlet on October. After Lenin's death Trotsky strongly supported these rumours in his literary pronouncements.
Since a systematic attempt was being made by Trotskyites to re- write the history of October and bring up Soviet youth on such legends, Stalin, in a speech delivered at the Plenum of the Communist Group of the AUCCTU,(3) refuted – by reference to hard facts – these Arabian Nights fairy tales in his characteristically devastating manner. Citing the minutes of the meeting of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party on 23 October 1917, he proved that the resolution on the uprising was adopted by a majority of 10 against 2; that the same meeting elected a political centre, called the Political Bureau, to direct the uprising, the members of the Centre being Lenin, Zinoviev, Stalin, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sokolnikov and Bubnov. Thus the Centre included even Zinoviev and Kamenev who were the only two to vote against the resolution on the uprising. This was possible in spite of the political disagreements between them because there was at that time a unity of views between these two (Zinoviev and Kamenev) and the rest of the Central Committee on such fundamental questions "as the character of the Russian revolution, the driving forces of the revolution, the role of the peasantry, the principles of Party leadership, and so forth." (Stalin, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 341). Thus the decision on the uprising was taken by the Central Committee and the Central Committee alone. Hence the political direction of the uprising was firmly in the hands of the Central Committee.
As to the legend that Trotsky played a 'special' role in that he 'inspired', and was the 'sole leader' of the October uprising – this legend was spread by Lentsner, and Stalin dealt with it as follows:
"The Trotskyites are vigorously spreading rumours that Trotsky inspired and was the sole leader of the October uprising. These rumours are being spread with exceptional zeal by the so- called editor of Trotsky's works, Lentsner. Trotsky himself, by consistently avoiding mention of the Party, the Central Committee and the Petrograd Committee of the Party, by saying nothing about the leading role of these organisations in the uprising and vigorously pushing himself forward as the central figure in the October uprising, voluntarily or involuntarily helps to spread the rumours about the special role he is supposed to have played in the uprising, I am far from denying Trotsky's undoubtedly important role in the uprising. I must say, however, that Trotsky did not play any special role in the October uprising, nor could he do so; being chairman of the Petrograd Soviet he merely carried out the will of the appropriate Party bodies, which directed every step that Trotsky took .To philistines like Sukhanov, all this may seem strange, but the facts, the true facts, wholly and fully confirm what I say." (Ibid, pp. 341- 342).
Stalin then passes on to an examination of the minutes of the next Central Committee meeting held on 29 October, 1917. Apart from the members of the Central Committee, there were present at this meeting representatives of the Petrograd Committee as well as representatives of military organisations, factory committees, trade unions and the railwaymen. At this meeting Lenin's resolution on the uprising was adopted by a majority of 20 against 2, with three abstentions. At this meeting too a practical centre was elected for the organisational leadership of the uprising. To this practical centre were elected the following five: Sverdlov, Stalin, Dzerzhinksy, Bubnov and Uritsky. Let Stalin speak:
"The functions of the practical centre: to direct all the practical organs of the uprising in conformity with the directives of the Central Committee. Thus, as you see, something terrible happened at this meeting of the Central Committee, i.e., 'strange to relate', the Inspirer, the 'chief figure', the 'sole leader' of the uprising, Trotsky, was not elected to the practical centre, which was called upon to direct the uprising. How is this to be reconciled with the current opinion about Trotsky's special role? Is not all this somewhat 'strange', as Sukhanov, or the Trotskyites, would say? And yet strictly speaking there is nothing strange about it for neither in the Party, nor in the October uprising did Trotsky play any special role, nor could he do so, for he was a relatively new man in our Party in the period of October. He, like all the responsible workers, merely carried out the will of the Central Committee and of its organs. Who-ever is familiar with the mechanics of Bolshevik Party leadership will have no difficulty in understanding that it could not be otherwise; it would have been enough for Trotsky to go against the will of the Central Committee to have been deprived of all influence on the course of events. This talk about Trotsky's special role is a legend that is being spread by obliging 'Party' gossips.(4)
"This, of course, does not mean that the October uprising did not have its inspirer. it did have its inspirer and leader, but this was Lenin, and none other than Lenin, that same Lenin whose resolution the Central Committee adopted when deciding the question of the uprising, that same Lenin who, in spite of what Trotsky says, was not prevented by being in hiding from being the actual inspirer of the uprising. It is foolish and ridiculous to attempt now, by gossip about Lenin having been in hiding to obscure the indubitable fact that the inspirer of the uprising was the leader of the Party, V.I. Lenin.
"Such are the facts." (Collected Works, Vol. 6, pp 342-344.)
Continues Stalin:
"Granted, we are told but it cannot be denied that Trotsky fought well in the period of October. Yes, that is true, Trotsky did, indeed, fight well in October, but Trotsky was not the only one who fought well in the period of October. Even people like the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, who then stood side by side with the Bolsheviks, also fought well, In general I "must say that in the period of a victorious uprising when the enemy is isolated and the uprising is growing; it is not difficult to fight well. At such moments even backward people become heroes.
"The proletarian struggle is not however, an uninterrupted advance, an unbroken chain of victories. The proletarian struggle also has its trials, its defeats. The genuine revolutionary is not one who displays courage in the period of a victorious uprising; but one who, while fighting well during the victorious advance of the revolution, also displays courage when the revolution is in retreat when the proletariat suffers defeat, who does not lose his head and does not funk when the revolution suffers reverses, when the enemy "achieves success; who does not become panic-stricken or give way to despair when the revolution is in a period of retreat The Left Socialist- Revolutionaries did not fight badly in the period of October, and they supported the Bolsheviks. But who does not know that those 'brave' fighters became panic-stricken in the period of Brest when the advance of German imperialism drove them to despair and hysteria. It is a very sad but indubitable fact that Trotsky, who fought well in the period of October, did not in the period of Brest in the period when the revolution suffered temporary reverses, possess the courage to display sufficient staunchness at that difficult moment and to refrain from following in the footsteps of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Beyond question; that moment was a difficult one; one had to display exceptional courage and imperturbable coolness not to be dismayed, to retreat in good time, to accept peace in good time, to withdraw the proletarian army out of range of the blows of German imperialism; to preserve the peasant reserves and, after obtaining a respite in this way, to strike at the enemy with renewed force. Unfortunately, Trotsky was found to lack this courage and revolutionary staunchness at that difficult moment.
"In Trotsky's opinion, the principal lesson of the proletarian revolution is 'not to funk' during October. That is wrong; for Trotsky's assertion contains only a particle of the truth about the lessons of the revolution. The whole truth about the lessons of the proletarian revolution is not to funk, not only when the revolution is advancing but also when it is retreat when the enemy is gaining the upper hand and the revolution is suffering reverses. The revolution did not end with October. October was only the beginning of the proletarian revolution. It is bad to funk when the tide of insurrection is rising but it is worse to funk when the revolution is passing through severe trials after power has been captured. To retain power on the morrow of the revolution is no less important that to capture power." (Ibid. pp. 344-345).
Stalin asked the question: "For what purpose did Trotsky need all these legends about October and the preparation for October, about Lenin and the Party of Lenin? What is the purpose of Trotsky's new literary pronouncements against the Party?..." (Ibid. p.363)
By way of an answer, Stalin continues:
"Trotsky asserts that all this is needed for the purpose of 'studying' October. But is it not possible to study October without giving another kick at the Party and its leader Lenin? What sort of a 'history' of October is it that begins and ends with attempts to discredit the chief leader of the October uprising to discredit the Party, which organised and carried through the uprising?... That is not the way to study October. That is not the way to write the history of October. Obviously, there is a different 'design' here, and everything goes to show that this 'design' is that Trotsky by his literary pronouncements is making another (yet another!) attempt to create the conditions for substituting Trotskyism for Leninism. Trotsky needs 'desperately' to discredit the Party, and its cadres who carried through the uprising in order, after discrediting the Party, to proceed to discredit Leninism. And it is necessary for him to discredit Leninism in order to drag in Trotskyism as the 'sole' 'proletarian' (don't laugh!) ideology. All this, of course (oh, of course!) under the flag of Leninism, so that the dragging operation may be performed 'as painlessly as possible'.
"That is the essence of Trotsky's latest literary pronouncements." (Ibid. pp. 363-364).
Trotskyism – a rallying point for counter-revolution
Stalin went on to conclude that the danger was "... that Trotskyism, owing to its entire inner content stands every chance of becoming the centre and rallying point of the non-proletarian elements who are striving to weaken to disintegrate the proletarian dictatorship," in view of which it was "the duty of the Party to bury Trotskyism as an ideological trend." (Ibid. p. 373).
In later years Trotsky himself was obliged to admit that "in the wake of this vanguard [i.e., the Trotskyist opposition] there dragged the tail end of all sorts of dissatisfied, ill-equipped and even chagrined careerists," adding, however, that the opposition had managed to free itself from "its accidental and uninvited fellow wayfarers." On the contrary, as the contents of the pages that follow reveal, it is precisely the non-proletarian elements, with their irreconcilable hostility to the proletarian dictatorship, their striving for the disintegration of the proletarian dictatorship, who supported the Trotskyist opposition in the USSR and who continued to support him abroad after his expulsion from the Soviet Union. It is precisely the same type of person who has since those times rallied around Trotskyism, driven by an innate hatred of Marxism-Leninism and of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Even the Trotskyite Deutscher is compelled to say. 'Outside the party, formless revolutionary frustration mingled with distinctly counter-revolutionary trends Since the ruling group had singled out Trotsky as a target for attack he automatically attracted the spurious sympathy of many who had hitherto hated him. As he made his appearance in the streets of Moscow [in. the spring of 19241, he was spontaneously applauded by crowds in which idealist communists rubbed shoulders with Mensheviks Social Revolutionaries; and the new bourgeoisie of the NEP, by all those indeed who, for diverse reasons hoped for a change [i.e., for the disintegration of the proletarian dictatorship through the weakening and disintegration of the Bolshevik Party]" (Isaac Deutscher, Stalin, Pelican, 1966, p. 279).
At its plenary meeting held on 17-20 January, 1925, the Central Committee of the RCP(B) characterised Trotskyism as a variety of Menshevism" and Trotsky's ceaseless attacks on Bolshevism as an attempt to substitute Trotskyism for Leninism. This meeting resolved to remove Trotsky from the office of Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR, and he was "warned in the most emphatic term that membership of the Bolshevik Party demands real, not verbal subordination to Party discipline and total and unconditional renunciation of any attacks on the ideals of Leninism "
Emergence of the New Opposition
After the above meeting pronounced against Trotsky and warned that his splitti
By Harpal Brar
Preface
One of the myths perpetrated by Trotskyites, with not inconsiderable help from the imperialist bourgeoisie, is that Leninism and Trotskyism are synonymous; that Trotsky was, after Lenin, the most brilliant and greatest Bolshevik (some even implying that Lenin was a great Trotskyist); that Trotsky was the true inheritor of Leninism, and a worthy successor to Lenin, but was, alas, deprived of his rightful place by the cunning manoeuvres of a third-class mediocrity and oriental despot to boot, i.e., Joseph Stalin. This anti-communist myth, repeated ad nauseam decade after decade in truly Goebbels fashion, not only in Trotskyite publications but also in classrooms by petty-bourgeois professors and teachers of history and sociology, not to mention the imperialist press and electronic media, this myth has acquired the force of a public prejudice. This prejudice is the product of deliberate distortion and falsification by Trotskyism and its bourgeois allies, of Marxism-Leninism, of deliberate inventions, deceptions, innuendoes, omissions and their tendentious interpretations of the history of the Great October Revolution and the revolutionary practice and role of the USSR, on the one hand, and the ignorance of those on whom these deceptions, distortions and downright falsifications are practised, on the other hand. Anyone who has made some study, let alone a deep study, of the subject cannot but be aware of the total falsity of this myth. It is the aim of this book to expose this myth and lay bare the truly reactionary, counter-revolutionary, essence of the petty-bourgeois ideology of Trotskyism, which is as irreconcilably hostile to Marxism-Leninism as is the bourgeoisie to the proletariat – notwithstanding its pseudo-Marxist, ultra-'left' and ultra-'revolutionary' terminology.
The task I set myself in this book is to show that Leninism and Trotskyism are mutually exclusive; that Trotskyism is irreconcilably opposed to Leninism; that those claiming to be Marxist-Leninists are duty bound, in the interests of the proletariat, to wage a ruthless and uncompromising struggle against Trotskyism; that they have to bury Trotskyism, as an ideological trend in the working-class movement. Further, I seek to demonstrate that after the death of Lenin in January 1924, as Leninism was upheld by the Bolshevik Party, now under the leadership of Stalin, Trotskyism continued its ceaseless onslaught on Leninism, with some tactical adjustments to the form of its attack. It now attacked Leninism and the Party's Leninist policy under the guise of attacking 'Stalinism' in the name of Leninism. For all that, Trotskyism continued its counter-revolutionary struggle against revolutionary Leninism, albeit without overtly and specifically naming Lenin as its target. Be it-said to the honour of the Bolshevik Party and to its leader, Stalin, Trotskyism was dealt blows equally as shattering as those delivered against it during Lenin's lifetime, causing it to suffer ignominious defeat. In particular I seek to emphasise three specific features of Trotskyism – features which bring it into irreconcilable contradiction with Leninism.
Three specific features of Trotskyism
1. 'Permanent revolution'
Trotskyism stands for the theory of 'permanent' revolution, failing to take into account the vast mass of the poor peasantry as a revolutionary force and reliable ally of the proletariat. As Lenin rightly pointed out, Trotsky's 'Permanent' revolution is tantamount to 'skipping' the peasant movement and "playing at the seizure of power." Any attempt at such a revolution as was advocated by Trotsky would have ended in certain failure, for it would have denied the Russian proletariat the support of its most dependable ally, the poor peasantry. Only this explains Leninism's unrelenting struggle against Trotskyism from 1905 onwards.
For its part Trotskyism regarded Leninism as a theory possessing "antirevolutionary features" for no better reason that at the proper time Leninism correctly advocated and upheld the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. Going far beyond this indignant opinion, Trotskyism asserts:
"The entire edifice of Leninism at the present time is built on lies and falsification and bears within itself the poisonous elements of its own decay." (Trotsky's letter to Chkeidze, 1913).
Leninism, on the other hand, asserts:
"Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any important question of Marxism. He always contrives to worm his way into the cracks of any given difference of opinion, and desert one side for the other. At the present moment he is in the company of the Bundists and the liquidators. And these gentlemen do not stand on ceremony where the Party is concerned" (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 20 p. 448, 1914).
2. Distrust of Leninism in matters of organisation
Trotskyism stands for the distrust of Leninism, of Bolshevism, in matters of organisation. Whereas Bolshevism stands for the principle of a revolutionary proletarian party of a new type, a disciplined and monolithic Party, hostile to opportunist elements, Trotskyism stands for the co-existence of revolutionaries and opportunists and for the formation of groups, factions and coteries within a single Party. Anyone who is at all aware of the history of Trotsky's notorious August Bloc, in which the Martovites and Otzovists,(1) the Liquidators(2) and Trotskyites happily co-operated in their struggle against Bolshevism, cannot have failed to notice this liquidationist feature of Trotskyism. Thus, during this crucial historical period, whereas Leninism regarded the destruction of the August Bloc as a precondition for the development of the proletarian party, Trotskyism regarded the liquidationist August Bloc as the basis for building a 'real' party.
Throughout this entire period – from 1903 to 1917 – Lenin again and again denounced Trotsky for his "careerism", "Menshevism", "conciliationism" and "liquidationism." Here are a few samples chosen at random from scores of Lenin's writings in the same vein:
In a letter to Zinoviev dated 24 August 1909, Lenin writes: Trotsky behaves like a despicable careerist and factionalist of the Ryazanov-and-co type. Either equality on the editorial board, subordination to the central committee and no one's transfer to Paris except Trotsky's (the scoundrel, he wants to 'fix up' the whole rascally crew of 'Pravda' at our expense!) – or a break with this swindler and an exposure of him in the CO. He pays lip-service to the Party and behaves worse than any other of the factionalists." (Collected Works, Vol. 34, p. 400).
When Lenin was waging a life and death struggle to purge the Party of liquidators and otzovists, Trotsky, assuming the role of a conciliator, tried his worst to reconcile the Party with these two bourgeois trends. This caused Lenin to denounce Trotsky in these terms:
"In the very first words of his resolution Trotsky expressed the full spirit of the worst kind of conciliation, 'conciliation' in inverted commas, of a sectarian and philistine conciliation, which deals with 'given persons' and not the given line of policy, the given spirit the given ideological and political content of Party work.
"It is in this that the enormous difference lies between real partyism; which consists in purging the Party of liquidationism and otzovism, and the 'conciliation' of Trotsky and Co., which actually RENDERS THE MOST FAITHFUL SERVICE TO THE LIQUIDATORS AND OTZOVISTS, AND IS THEREFORE AN EVIL THAT IS ALL THE MORE DANGEROUS TO THE PARTY THE MORE CUNNINGLY, ARTFULLY AND RHETORICALLY IT CLOAKS ITSELF WITH PROFESSEDLY PRO-PARTY, PROFESSEDLY ANTI-FACTIONAL DECLAMATIONS." (Notes of a Publicist, Collected Works, Vol. 16, June 1910, p 211 – emphasis added).
In November 1910, accusing Trotsky of following "in the wake of the Mensheviks, taking cover behind particularly; sonorous phrases, " of "putting before the German comrades liberal views with a Marxist coating." of being a master of "resonant but empty phrases, " of failing to understand and ignoring the "economic content of the Russian revolution, " and thereby depriving himself "of the possibility of understanding the historical meaning of the inner-Party struggle in Russia," Lenin goes on to state:
"The struggle between Bolshevism and Menshevism is... a struggle over the question whether to support the liberals or to overthrow the hegemony of the liberals over the peasantry. Therefore to attribute [as did Trotsky] our splits to the influence of the intelligentsia, to the immaturity of the proletariat, etc, is a childishly naive repetition of liberal fairy-tales."
Adding: "Trotsky distorts Bolshevism, because he has never been able to form any definite views on the role of the proletariat in the Russian bourgeois revolution."
Countering Trotsky's lies and falsifications in the German Social-Democratic press and accusing Trotsky of following a policy of "advertisement" of "shamelessness in belittling the Party and exalting himself before the Germans, " Lenin concludes:
"Therefore, when Trotsky tells the German comrades that he represents the 'general Party tendency" I am obliged to declare that Trotsky represents only his own faction and enjoys a certain amount of confidence exclusively among the otzovists and the liquidators." (The Historical Meaning of the Inner-Party Struggle in Russia, Collected Works, Vol. 16 pp. 374-392).
When Trotsky's Vienna Club, stepping up its activities, passed a resolution in November 1910 to organise a 'general Party fund for the purpose of preparing and convening a conference of the RSDLP", Lenin characterised this as a "direct step towards a split... a clear violation of Party legality and the start of an adventure in which Trotsky will come to grief."
Continues Lenin:
"It is an adventure in the ideological sense. Trotsky groups all the enemies of Marxism, he unites Potresov and Maximov, who detest the 'Lenin-Plekhanov' bloc, as they like to call it. TROTSKY UNITES ALL THOSE TO WHOM IDEOLOGICAL DECAY IS DEAR; ALL WHO ARE NOT CONCERNED WITH THE DEFENCE OF MARXISM, all philistines who do not understand the reasons for the struggle and who do not wish to learn, think and discover the ideological roots of the divergence of views. At this time of confusion, disintegration, and wavering it is easy for Trotsky to become the 'hero of the hour' and gather all the shabby elements around himself. The more openly this attempt is made, the more spectacular will be the defeat." (Emphasis added).
Lenin ends this letter by calling, inter alia, for "struggle against the splitting tactics and the unprincipled adventurism of Trotsky." (Letter to the Russian Collegium of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, Collected Works, Vol. 17, pp. 17-22 – December 1910).
In December 1911, being sick and tired of Trotsky's dirty work as an attorney and diplomat for the liquidators and otzovists, Lenin, exposing Trotsky's factionalism, wrote:
"It is impossible to argue with Trotsky on the merits of the issue, because Trotsky holds no views whatever. We can and should argue with confirmed liquidators and otzovists, but it is no use arguing with a man whose game is to hide the errors of both these trends; in his case the thing to do is to expose him as a diplomat of the smallest calibre." (Trotsky's Diplomacy and a Certain Party Platform, Collected Works, Vol. 17 pp. 360362).
In July 1912, in a letter to the editor of Pravda, the daily legal Bolshevik paper printed in Petersburg from 5 May 1912, Lenin advises the editor not to reply to Trotsky's "disruptive and slanderous letters," adding:
"Trotsky's dirty campaign against Pravda is one mass of lies and slander... This intriguer and liquidator goes on lying right and left." (Collected Works, Vol. 35, pp. 40-41).
In The Break-up of the 'August' Bloc (March 1914), Lenin writes:
"Trotsky, however, has never had any 'physiognomy' at all; the only thing he does have is a habit of changing sides, of skipping from the liberals to the Marxists and back again, of mouthing scraps of catchwords and bombastic parrot phrases."
And: "Actually under the cover of high-sounding, empty and obscure phrases that confuse the non-class-conscious workers, Trotsky is defending the liquidators by passing over in silence the question of the 'underground' by asserting that there is no liberal labour policy in Russia, and the like.
"... Unity means rallying the majority of the workers in Russia about decisions which have long been known, and which condemn liquidationism...
"But the liquidators and Trotsky,... who tore up their own August bloc, who flouted all the decisions of the Party and dissociated themselves from the 'underground' as well as from the organised workers, are the worst splitters. Fortunately, the workers have already realised this, and all class-conscious workers are creating their own real unity against the liquidator disrupters of unity." (Collected Works, Vol. 20 pp. 158-161).
In his article Disruption of unity under cover of outcries for unity, written in June 1914, Lenin denounces Trotsky for his factionalism and liquidationism and exposes the utter falsity of the charge of splittism hurled by Trotsky and the liquidators at the Bolsheviks. Writing in his allegedly nonfactional journal, Borba, Trotsky, having accused the Bolsheviks of splittism for the sole reason that they exposed and opposed liquidationism, goes on to admit that the Bolshevik "splittist tactics are winning one suicidal victory after another." This said, Trotsky adds:
"Numerous advanced workers, in a state of utter political bewilderment themselves often become active agents of a split."
Here is Lenin's retort to this accusation and 'explanation':
"Needless to say, this explanation is highly flattering, to Trotsky... and to the liquidators… Trotsky is very fond of using with the learned air of the expert pompous and high-sounding phrases to explain historical phenomena in a way that is flattering to Trotsky. Since 'numerous advanced workers' become 'active agents' of apolitical and Party line [Bolshevik Party line] which does not conform to Trotsky's line, Trotsky settles the question unhesitatingly, out of hand these advanced workers are 'in a state of utter political bewilderment', whereas he, Trotsky, is evidently 'in a state' of political firmness and clarity, and keeps to the right line!... And this very same Trotsky, beating his breast, fulminates against factionalism parochialism, and the efforts of the intellectuals to impose their will on the workers!
"Reading things like these, one cannot help asking oneself. – is it from a lunatic asylum that such voices come?" (Collected Works, Vol. 20 pp. 327-347).
Continues Lenin: "The reason why Trotsky avoids facts and concrete references is because they relentlessly refute all his angry outcries and pompous phrases. It is very easy, of course, to strike an attitude and say: 'a crude and sectarian travesty.' Or to add a still more stinging and pompous catchphrase, such as 'emancipation from conservative factionalism.'
"But is this not very cheap? Is not this weapon borrowed from the arsenal of the period when Trotsky posed in all his splendour before audiences of high-school boys?" (ibid.)
Lenin concludes his article with a brilliant description of Trotsky's wavering and vacillation between the Party and the liquidators, calling him a "Tushino turncoat" appearing before the Party with incredibly pretentious claims, unwilling absolutely to reckon with either the Party decisions, which since 1908 have defined and established our attitude towards liquidationism, or with the experience of the present-day movement in Russia, which has actually brought about the unity of the majority on the basis of full recognition of the aforesaid decisions." (ibid.)
This brilliant description appears in the main body of this work and is, therefore, excluded from the preface.
About the same time – early 1914 – Trotsky, writing in issue no. 2 of his journal Borba falsely attributed to the "Polish Marxists" – not just Rosa Luxemburg – the position according to which the right to national self-determination "is entirely devoid of political content and should be deleted from the programme." This falsehood drew from Lenin the following observation:
"The obliging Trotsky is more dangerous than an enemy! Trotsky could produce no proof except 'private conversations' (i.e., simply gossip, on which Trotsky always subsists), classifying the 'Polish Marxists' in general as supporters of every article by Rosa Luxemburg...
"Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any important question of Marxism. He always contrives to worm his way into the cracks of any given difference of opinion, and desert one side for the other. At the present moment he is in the company of the Bundists and the liquidators. And thee gentlemen do not stand on ceremony where the Party is concerned." (The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Collected Works, Vol. 20 p. 447-8).
In his letter to Henriette Roland-Hoist, dated 8 March 1916, Lenin asks:
"What are our differences with Trotsky?"
To this question he gives the following answer:
"In brief – he is a Kautskyite, that is, he stands for unity with the Kautskyites in the International and with Chkheidze's parliamentary group in Russia. We are absolutely against such unity ... " (Collected Works, Vol. 43, pp. 515-516).
Writing to Alexandra Kollontai on 17 February, 1917, Lenin says:
"...What a swine this Trotsky is – Left, phrases, and a bloc with the Right against the Zimmerwald Left!! He ought to be exposed (by you) if only in a brief letter to Sotsial-Demokrat!" (Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 285).
Finally, in this letter of 19 Feb, 1917, to Inessa Armand, Lenin writes, inter alia:
"There is also a letter from Kollontai who... has returned to Norway from America. N. Iv. and Pavlov... had won Novy Mir, she says,... but ... Trotsky arrived, and this scoundrel at once ganged up with the Right wing of Novy Mir against the Left Zimmerwaldists!! That's it!! That's Trotsky for you!! Always true to himself, twists, swindles, poses as a Left, helps the Right, so long as he can... "(Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 288).
In the light of the foregoing historic evidence, of the most impeccable and irrefutable kind, it can safely be asserted that Trotsky was during this long period – between 1903 and 1917 – a Menshevik and a liquidator who waged a most dirty and factional campaign against the Bolsheviks' attempts to build a revolutionary Party of the proletariat.
Although people with knowledge about the history of the Bolshevik Party know only too well that from 1903 to August 1917 Trotsky was a Menshevik and a liquidator, Trotskyites generally maintain a studied silence over this question or, worse still, they try and excuse him on this account. It is, therefore, very refreshing to discover some ardent Trotskyites who condemn Trotsky's Menshevism, centrism, conciliationism and factionalism. In this category fall the Trotskyites of the International Communist League (ICL) of the so-called Fourth International (the official Fourth International, of course, since each of the milliard Trotskyist organisations claims to be the official Fourth International and describes every other Trotskyist organisation as a fake – a hilarious phenomenon reminiscent of the Life of Brian). The ICL publish the theoretical journal Spartacist. The occasion for their frank admission and condemnation of Trotsky's Menshevism was the review, in Spartacist numbers 45 and 46, Winter 1990-91, English edition, by a certain ICL member, Daniel Dauget, of a biography of Leon Trotsky published in 1988 by Pierre Broué. Pierre Broué was a Professor at the Institute of Political Studies of Grenoble University who had been for 40 years a member of "the ostensibly Trotskyist Lambertist tendency in France" (ICL's description in the said review), i.e., of the Parti Communiste Internationale (PCI).
Broué praises Trotsky for being a "freelancer" – praise winch rouses the ICL to indignation and downright outrage. So as not to lose the full force of ICL's fluent prose, the full burning anger and shame, and the thrust of their argument, and so as not to be accused of quoting them out of context, we reproduce here almost the entire section of the review that was concerned with Trotsky's factionalism and Menshevism between 1903 and 1917
Trotsky as "Freelancer"
"Broué's treatment of Trotsky's political activity between the decisive 1903 Bolshevik-Menshevik split and the October Revolution is at the core of his interpretation; because it is here that he deals with the debates within Russian Social Democracy over the nature, form and structure a revolutionary party must have if it is to take state power, as well as with the role of political and programmatic debate in forging such a party. After the 1903 split between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Trotsky became a sort of freelancer in the party.
"Broué praises Trotsky for this, seeing in it the cause for Trotsky's leading role in the 1905 Revolution as chairman of the St Petersburg Soviet and his brilliant propagandist use of his trial following the 1905 defeat:
"'In fact, effectively fired from any factional obligations, at a good distance from the up and downs of the conflicts between the two main factions, satisfied in this respect with his unitary' position whose victory seemed to him assured in the future, Trotsky had his hands completely free to devote his attention and activity to the events that were unfolding in Russia...' – Broué, p. 97.
"To read this, one would conclude that Lenin's factional struggle against Menshevism was irrelevant – if not outright counterposed – to intervening in and leading the revolutionary struggle. Indeed, Broué views Trotsky's role as the leading 'conciliator' between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks as exemplary.
"Earlier, as Broué notes, 'Trotsky, partisan of centralization and of the authority of the Central Committee ever since he bad been deported to Siberia, was seen in the émigré circles as Lenin's 'hatchet man',' At the 1903 Congress Trotsky began a programmatic struggle against Lenin on the question of the party. For example Trotsky opposed the sovereignty of the party congress: 'The Congress is a register, a controller, but not a creator' (Report of the Siberian Delegation, 1903) Although the programmatic implications were far from clear at the time, the 1903 split was a fundamental spilt on the party question Trotsky's federalist position on this question was also reflected in 'Report of the Siberian Delegation' with his rejection of the Bolshevik definition of a party member that required 'personal participation in one of the Party bodies.' In practical terms Trotsky was in favour of the Menshevik definition of a party member as one who gave Personal assistance 'to the party – he wished to allow all the broad 'workers organisations' which existed alongside the party committees in many major Russian cities, to act in the name of the party regardless of their adherence to the statutes or decisions of party congresses.
"At the same time that Broué enthuses over Trotsky's independence, he mentions in passing that Trotsky was wrong on the party question during this entire period. But what he says pales in comparison with Trotsky's own judgement:
"'The deep differences that divided me from Bolshevism for a whole number of years and in many cases placed me in sharp and hostile opposition to Bolshevism, Were expressed most graphically in relation to the Menshevik faction. I began with the radically wrong perspective that the course of the revolution and the pressure of the proletarian masses would ultimately force both factions to follow the same road. Therefore I considered a split to be an unnecessary" disruption of the revolutionary forces. But because the active role in the split by with the Bolsheviks – since it was only by ruthless demarcation, not only ideological but organizational as well, that it was possible, in Lenin's opinion, to assure the revolutionary character of the proletarian party (and the entire subsequent history has fully confirmed the correctness of those policies) – my 'conciliationism' led me at many sharp turns in the road into hostile clashes with Bolshevism.' – Trotsky, 'Our Differences' (Nov. 1924).
"The traditional 'center' and right wing of the Social Democracy were only too happy to use Trotsky's name and journalistic brilliance as a left cover for their own positions and as a weapon against Lenin. Thus Broué reports that 'Trotsky was on good terms with Kautsky and the 'center of the German Social Democracy until at least 1912... It was Kautsky during this period who, to Lenin's great anger, opened the pages of 'Die Neue Zeit' and 'Vorwarts' to Trotsky, Broué also details Trotsky's warm relations with the Austro-Marxists of Vienna, noting that he rapidly became 'the uncontested head of the Social Democratic colony in Vienna' from 1909 to 1912 .He passes rapidly over the fact that during the same period Rosa Luxemburg viewed Trotsky with 'systematic suspicion' and as a 'dubious individual', no doubt due to his ties to her right-wing opponents in the German Social Democracy.
"Broué's attitude toward Trotsky during these years is exemplified by his treatment of the infamous August bloc. The Vienna 'Pravda' edited by Trotsky attempted to 'conciliate' the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions- – Broué approvingly quotes the professional anti-communist Leonard Schapiro's praise of the Vienna 'Pravda' for not being as polemical as the Bolshevik press. A 1910 agreement between the factions provided for Bolshevik financial support to the Vienna 'Pravda', with Kamenev (who was close to Lenin and was Trotsky's brother-in-law) responsible for administering the Bolshevik funds The agreement stipulated that the Mensheviks would get rid of their right wing, and the Bolsheviks of their left wing. While the Bolsheviks respected the agreement, the Mensheviks did not, and in the subsequent polemics, Trotsky sided with the Mensheviks and got rid of Kamenev. Trotsky's articles, aimed at militants inside Russia who were unfamiliar with the details of the dispute, denounced the Bolsheviks as a 'conspiracy of the émigré clique.' Kautsky solicited and published several articles by Trotsky attacking the Bolsheviks, which provoked angry rejoinders not just from Lenin, but also from Plekhanov and Rosa Luxemburg. When the Bolshevik Prague Congress in 1912 proclaimed that it represented the party as a whole, Trotsky organised a unity' counter-conference in Vienna in August.
"In Trotsky's mind [the conference] was to have been the general unification, the reunification of the party. In fact, the Bolsheviks' rejection of it reduced the participants to a bloc against them, which they baptized the 'August bloc'. The Polish Social Democrats and Plekhanov also chose not to appear ... In fact, Trotsky's return to the factional arena proved particularly unfortunate. Independent of his intentions, and even of his precautions, the positions he took after the Prague conference and his role in forming the August bloc made him appear, despite himself, as the soul of a general coalition against the Bolsheviks and an indirect supporter of the 'liquidators'.' – Broué, pp. 139-140.
"Every qualifier in Broué's description of Trotsky's role in the August bloc is wrong or misleading. As is clear from Trotsky's denunciation of the Bolsheviks as an 'émigré clique', he was well aware that what Broué so delicately terms 'general unification', was a polemical cudgel with which to attack Lenin. Trotsky did not just 'appear' to be the soul of the anti-Bolshevik coalition, he was in fact that soul in that he was the most left-wing, most respected force outside the Bolsheviks. Trotsky's actions were not misconstrued 'despite himself,' but were an accurate reflection of the role he played vis-à-vis the Bolsheviks in the entire period from 1903 to at least 1915."
"The outbreak of WWI and the betrayal by the parties of the Second International most of whose leaders supported their own' governments in the bloody inter-imperialist war, shifted the grounds of dispute within the world socialist movement, forcing realignments and regroupments. Lenin and Trotsky both fought against the imperialist war, and both attended the gathering of antiwar socialists held in Zimmerwald Switzerland in September 1915." (pp. 33-34).
Be it noted in passing that the last sentence is either born out of dishonesty or simple ignorance – most likely the former – for everyone with the least knowledge about this matter knows that the Bolshevik slogan of working for the defeat of one's own government in the imperialist war then raging was countered by Trotsky with his chauvinist slogan demanding 'Neither victory nor defeat'. Further, we have provided, quotations above from Lenin to the effect that during this period Trotsky was a Kautskyite and fought against the Zimmerwald left headed by Lenin's Bolsheviks. But that does not concern us here. ICL continue:
"Broué argues that after Zimmerwald despite 'real disagreements' between Lenin and Trotsky, there was 'a reasonable prospect for a gradual rapprochement between the two men who in reality were divided only [sic] by the 1903 split, which had long since been outdated.' What Broué slides over is the fact that Lenin never repudiated the 1903 split – instead he generalized from it to a fully-formed theoretical position on the necessity for revolutionary cadres to organize a vanguard party, separate from reformist and centrist tendencies. Trotsky was ultimately won to Lenin's side on this question in 1917.
"There is something anachronistic and evocative of the worst aspects of French political traditions in Broué's repeated presentation of Trotsky as a simple star, freelancer, too busy being 'a leader of men' and giving brilliant speeches before and after the Revolution to have been a 'party man' or to have had the time to familiarize himself with [the] faction fights in the corridors'. Trotsky was a factionalist before 1917 – on the wrong side. But his program of conciliationism could never have built the sort of hard faction that could win leadership in the party, nor the kind of Party that could take state power." (p. 34).
Well said, Messrs the Trotskyites of the ICL! We think any comment on ibis would be superfluous!
All this does not, however, prevent the Trotskyites of the ICL from asserting, without as much as a blush, that Trotsky, after the death of Lenin, was best placed "to carry forward the authentic Bolshevik programme against Stalin's usurpers." Very strange logic indeed, according to which Trotsky, the Menshevik liquidator, who, spent two decades in a mortal struggle against every aspect of Leninism, was better suited to, carrying out the 'authentic' Bolshevik programme than someone like Stalin who, had spent two and a half decades faithfully supporting and actually carrying out the Bolshevik programme. Here is how ICL put it:
"In his admiration for Trotsky the left-Menshevik, Broué also never considers the potential authority that Trotsky would have gained and retained among stalwart Bolsheviks had he come over to Lenin's side as a hard party man in 1903 – an authority that would have served him well in the subsequent period when he fought to carry forward the authentic Bolshevik programme against Stalin's usurpers." (Ibid. p. 35).
Pigs might fly! The above statement of ICL amounts, if it amounts to anything at all, to a meaningless tautology, namely, had Trotsky been a staunch supporter of Leninism in the period 1903-17, he would have been well placed to carry out the authentic Bolshevik programme after Lenin's death. The problem, however, is that he was not during this long period, nor was he in the subsequent period, a staunch supporter of Leninism. The one who was a staunch Leninist, namely Joseph Stalin, was quite correctly chosen by the Bolshevik Party to lead it in carrying forward the authentic Bolshevik programme against the would-be usurper, to wit, Trotsky.
There is method in ICL's madness. They admit Trotsky's pre-1917 Menshevism in order to present gullible, readers with a sanitised version of Trotsky who, it is claimed, suddenly saw the light and after 1917 became a better Bolshevik than anyone else.
"The fact is," write the ICI, "that Broué... agrees with Trotsky's conciliationism before 1917, and much prefers Trotsky the anti-Leninist to Trotsky the Bolshevik."
Unlike Broué, in a vain attempt to gain credibility for Trotskyism, the ICL would rather make a clean admission of Trotsky's pre-1917 Menshevism and anti-Leninism in order to be able all the more zealously to fasten the label of staunch Leninist on Trotsky's lapel. This trick will not work, however, for apart from the short period during October when he hid his anti-Leninist stock-in-trade in the cupboard, Trotsky continued to practise his anti-Leninism, his anti-Bolshevism, with a zeal worthy of a better cause. It is not only the case that Broué, as is justly claimed by the ICI, "subtly puts Lenin under the gun" in order to gain the appreciation of the "anti- Leninist Soviet intelligentsia" (these words were written in the winter of 1990-91), but also the fact that the Trotskyites of the ICI, in common with all other Trotskyites, are attempting to substitute Trotskyism for Leninism, albeit by denouncing pre-1917 Trotskyism. No subterfuges, no tricks, no artful dodging, no deception, can detract from this fact – not even the pretence of praising Leninism.
3. Distrust of Bolshevik leadership
Trotsky stands for the distrust of the leaders of Bolshevism, for discrediting and defaming them. As Stalin correctly observed:
"I do not know of a single trend in the party that could compare with Trotskyism in the matter of discrediting the leaders of Leninism or the central institutions of the Party." (Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 366).
In Trotsky's letter to Chkeidze, already cited, Trotsky described Lenin as "a professional exploiter of every kind of backwardness in the Russian working-class movement."
If Trotsky could express such ill-mannered views about Leninism, is there anything surprising in the fact that he showered, after Lenin's death, even more vile abuse on Lenin's most faithful pupil, Stalin.
How could Trotsky end up in Bolshevik ranks?
How was it that Trotsky, having such an impeccably anti-Bolshevik and anti-Leninist record, found himself in the Bolshevik ranks in the period of the October revolution? Stalin, in a speech on 19 November 1924, asked and answered this question:
"How could it happen that Trotsky, who carried such a nasty stock-in-trade on his back; found himself, after all, in the rank of the Bolsheviks during the October movement? It happened because at that time Trotsky abandoned (actually did abandon) that stock-in-trade; he hid it in the cupboard .Had he not performed that 'operation', real co-operation with him would have been impossible. The theory of the August bloc, i.e., the theory of unity with the Mensheviks, had already been shattered and thrown overboard by the revolution, for how could there be any talk about unity when an armed struggle was raging between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks? Trotsky had no alternative but to admit that this theory was useless.
"The same misadventure 'happened' to the theory of permanent revolution, for not a single Bolshevik contemplated the immediate seizure of power on the morrow of the February Revolution, and Trotsky could not help knowing that the Bolsheviks would not allow him, in the words of Lenin, 'to play at the seizure of power.' Trotsky had no alternative but recognise the Bolsheviks' policy of fighting for influence in the Soviets, of fighting to win over the peasantry As regards the third specific feature of Trotskyism (distrust of (he Bolshevik leaders), it had naturally to retire into the background owing to the obvious failure of the first two features.
"Under the circumstances, could Trotsky do anything else but hide his stock-in-trade in the cupboard and follow the Bolshevik; considering that he had no group of his own of any significance, and that he came to the Bolsheviks as a political individual without an army? Of course, he could not!
"What is the lesson to be learnt from this? Only one: that prolonged collaboration between the Leninists and Trotsky is possible only if the latter completely abandons his old stock-in-trade, only if he completely accepts Leninism. Trotsky writes about the lessons of October, but he forgets ... the one I have just mentioned, which prime importance for Trotskyism. Trotskyism ought to learn that lesson of October too." (Collected Works, Vol. 6, pp. 366-367).
Trotskyism, however, failed to learn this lesson, and its old stock-in-trade, hidden in the cupboard in the period of the October movement, was dragged into daylight once more, especially after the death of Lenin, through Trotskyist literary pronouncements aimed at undermining the Bolshevik Party principle, belittling and discrediting Lenin (albeit under the guise of praising and exalting Lenin) and asserting the correctness of the much-discredited theory of permanent revolution, which was shattered by the experience of the three Russian revolutions – ie, that of 1905 and those of February and October 1917.
On arriving in Petrograd in 1917, Trotsky affiliated to the Mezhrayontsi (inter-regional), a group that vacillated between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. In August 1917, declaring that they had no differences with the Bolsheviks, the Mezhrayontsi joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks). Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks with them. On joining the Bolshevik Party, quite a number of Mezhrayontsi broke with opportunism; but, as subsequent events were to reveal, for Trotsky and some of his followers, joining the Bolsheviks was only a ruse. They continued to propound their harmful and reactionary views, flout discipline and undermine the Party's organisational and ideological unity.
As Trotskyism, Ear from abandoning its old nasty stock-in-trade, on the contrary dragged it out into the light of day, it was bound, owing to its entire inner content, to become the centre and rallying point not only of the non-proletarian elements in the USSR who were then (in the 1920s and 1930s) striving to disintegrate the proletarian dictatorship, but also of the imperialist bourgeoisie seeking by a thousand means to overthrow the proletarian regime that had been ushered in by the mighty October revolution. At every crucial stage in the development of the Russian revolution and the existence of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR, Trotskyism continued to maintain its reactionary anti-Bolshevik, anti-Leninist stance in matters of theory as well as organisation, cloaking it under thick layers of 'revolutionary' rhetoric.
Brest-Litovsk
In 1918 the young Soviet Republic, bereft of any army with the will and ability to fight, was fighting for its very survival through signing the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with German imperialism, thus gaining a much-needed respite for the exhausted population. At a crucial moment in these negotiations, Trotsky, as the head of the Soviet delegation to the peace talks, in violation of the instructions of the Party central committee and the Soviet government, declared the unilateral withdrawal of the Soviet Republic from the war, demobilisation of the Russian Army, and he then left Brest-Litovsk on the spurious ground that "we can only be saved in the true meaning of the word by a European Revolution" (Extraordinary Seventh Congress of the RCP(B)).
This gave the German Command the pretext it needed for ending the armistice, mounting an offensive and obliging the Soviet government to sign "a much more humiliating peace, and the blame for this rests on those who refused to accept the former peace." (Lenin, Political Report of the CC to the Extraordinary Seventh Congress of the RCP (B), 7 March 1918, Collected Works, Vol. 27).
Apropos the failure of the European revolution to come to maturity thus leaving the Bolshevik Revolution to solve its problems on its own, and forcing the Bolsheviks to face reality as it was rather than as they would wish it to be, Lenin admonished Trotsky and his ilk in the Party in the following terms:
"If you are unable to adapt yourself, if you are not inclined to crawl on your belly in the mud you are not a revolutionary but a chatterbox; and I propose this, not because I like it, but because we have no other road, because history has not been kind enough to bring the revolution to maturity everywhere simultaneously." (Ibid.)
Thus the young Soviet Republic paid a very heavy price for Trotsky's adventurism and phrase-mongering defeatism, which is the chief characteristic of his rotten theory of permanent revolution, according to which nothing good can ever come of any revolution unless it is accompanied by a world revolution.
Trade union debate
With the victorious conclusion of the Civil War of 1918-1920, as the Soviet Republic under Lenin's guidance, switched from war communism to the New Economic Policy (NEP) and embarked on a programme of economic revival and rejuvenation – of restoration of industry through an upsurge in agriculture and by drawing the workers and trade unions into active socialist construction through planned organisation and persuasion (and not coercion), Trotsky and his supporters forced on the Party a discussion on the question of trade unions (a luxury and a diversion from the work of economic construction, from the fight against famine and economic dislocation that the Party could ill afford at the time). Trotsky, the patriarch of bureaucrats, as Stalin rightly called him insisted on "tightening up the screws" and "shaking up" the trade unions, and turning the latter into state agencies, and on replacing persuasion by coercion.
The Party discussion on the trade unions resulted in the total rout of Trotsky and his supporters. When the Central Committee of the Party rejected Trotsky's Prussian sergeant's proposal, Trotsky went outside and gathered a group of his supporters with the aim of fighting against the Central Committee. So alarmed was Lenin by Trotsky's factionalism and flouting of Party discipline that he caused the 10th Party Congress (March 1921) to pass a resolution forbidding the formation of factions and disbanding existing factions forthwith. It was further stated that the "non-fulfilment of this decision of the Congress shall be followed by unconditional and immediate expulsion from the Party."
Trotsky's return to fully-fledged factionalism
This resolution was to arouse Trotsky's bitter hatred and opposition, for whenever he could not get his own way on any question, he rushed to form a Trotskyist faction within the Party, even if that meant threatening a split.
During 1921 Lenin's health began to decline. Cerebral arteriosclerosis was already blocking his blood circulation and taking its toll, with the result that this man of inexhaustible energy and drive was tiring easily, and spent most of the summer resting in the village of Gorki, not far from Moscow. The 11th Party Congress, meeting at the end of March 1922, created the new office of General Secretary, to which, one day after the conclusion of that Congress (i.e., on 3 April 1922), on Lenin's initiation and sponsorship, Stalin was appointed. On 26 May 1922, while resting in Gorki, Lenin suffered a severe stroke, which caused a partial paralysis of the right side of his body and loss of speech. He recovered from this stroke remarkably quickly and was back at his desk in early October 1922. After two further minor strokes on December 13 and 16, 1922, he suffered on March 10, 1923, a massive stroke, from which he never recovered and after which he took no further part in politics.
Following the latest stroke suffered by Lenin, Trotsky, with an eye on the leadership, stepped up his factional activity and intensified his vile and slanderous attacks on the Party leadership, its central institutions and its policy. On 8 October 1923 he sent a letter to the Central Committee, in which he asserted that the country was being inexorably led by the Party leadership to a catastrophe, to prevent which he demanded greater inner-Party democracy. Stripped of its Trotskyite verbiage, this meant the right to form factional groupings. A group of 46 followers of Trotsky also issued a manifesto – known as the Statement of 46 – to the same effect. Trotsky's letter and the Statement of 46 were discussed and condemned at a joint plenary meeting of the CC and the CCC with representatives of ten of the largest Party organisations in October 1923.
Trotsky followed his letter with a pamphlet entitled New Course, in which in addition to the demand for more Party democracy, he accused the old Bolsheviks – the Party leadership – of degeneration. He counterposed young people, especially students, to veteran Bolsheviks, declaring the former to be the barometer of the Party.
In talking about the degeneration of the 'old guard', Trotsky had used the expression "we, the old Bolsheviks," which provoked Stalin to make this observation, full of biting sarcasm:
"First, I must dispel a possible misunderstanding. As is evident..., Trotsky includes himself among the Bolshevik old guard, thereby showing readiness to take upon himself the charges that may be hurled at the old guard if it does indeed take the path of degeneration. It must be admitted that his readiness for self-sacrifice is undoubtedly a noble trait. But I must protect Trotsky from Trotsky, because, for obvious reasons, he cannot and should not bear responsibility for the possible degeneration of the principal cadres of the Bolshevik old guard..."
With more than a covert reference to Trotsky's long Menshevik past, Stalin, while admitting the possibility of degeneration of the Bolshevik old guard, goes on to add:
"Nevertheless, there are a number of elements within our Party who are capable of giving rise to a real danger of degeneration of certain ranks of our Party. I have in mind that section of the Mensheviks who joined our Party unwillingly and who have not yet got rid of their opportunist habits." (Collected Works, Vol. 5 p. 395).
The Thirteenth Conference of the RCP(B), held on 16-18 January 1924, strongly condemned the factionalism of Trotsky and his followers, stating that "the present opposition is not only an attempt to revise Bolshevism not only a flagrant departure from Leninism but patently a petty-bourgeois deviation .There is no doubt whatever that this opposition mirrors the pressure of the petty-bourgeoisie on the position of the proletarian party and its policy." (Resolution On the Results of the Discussion and on the Petty-Bourgeois Deviation in the Party – CPSU in Resolutions, etc. Vol. 2).
Lenin's death and Trotsky's attempt to substitute Trotskyism for Leninism
Lenin, after a further stroke on the morning of 21 January, 1924, died in the evening. Trotsky, although a newcomer to the Party, had convinced himself that he had a better claim to succeed Lenin than old, trusted and tried Bolsheviks such as Stalin. So in October 1924 Trotsky published an introduction to his collected works entitled Lessons of October, which purported to deal with the reasons for the Bolshevik victory in the October Revolution. Having made general ritual references in it to the necessity of a revolutionary party for the success of a revolution, Trotsky went on to belittle the role of the Bolshevik Party, extol his, own part in the revolution, hinting that Lenin had suddenly changed his previous position for that of Trotsky, to which fact alone was to be attributed the success of the October Revolution. He also dragged out of the cupboard his old and much-discredited theory of 'permanent revolution!, arguing that hostile collisions between the proletarian vanguard and the broad masses of the peasantry were inevitable. One gets the impression from reading his Lessons of October that it was Trotsky who organised the October victory.
In other words, the man who had fought against Bolshevism and Leninism for 14 long years, who had sided with the Mensheviks and liquidators to oppose the building by Lenin's Bolsheviks of the proletarian revolutionary party capable of leading the proletariat and the broad masses in seizing political power, who had spent his life opposing Lenin's theory of proletarian revolution with his absurd theory of 'permanent revolution', who had opposed the Bolshevik slogan of defeat of one's own government in the imperialist war (the first world war) with his chauvinistic slogan demanding Neither victory nor defeat, suddenly and providentially descended on the scene in Petersburg to rescue the revolution from the frightened and useless lot that constituted the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, the majority of whom, according to this fairy tale worthy of the Arabian Nights, were opposed to the October uprising!!
Nothing could be further from the truth. Trotsky's special role in October originated with John Reed, the author of Ten Days that Shook the World, who, being remote from the Bolshevik Party, had no knowledge of the secret meeting of its central committee on 23 October, 1917, and was therefore taken in by the gossip spread by people such as Sukhanov. These fairy tales about Trotsky's special role in October were later passed round and repeated in several pamphlets written by Trotskyites, including Syrkin's pamphlet on October. After Lenin's death Trotsky strongly supported these rumours in his literary pronouncements.
Since a systematic attempt was being made by Trotskyites to re- write the history of October and bring up Soviet youth on such legends, Stalin, in a speech delivered at the Plenum of the Communist Group of the AUCCTU,(3) refuted – by reference to hard facts – these Arabian Nights fairy tales in his characteristically devastating manner. Citing the minutes of the meeting of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party on 23 October 1917, he proved that the resolution on the uprising was adopted by a majority of 10 against 2; that the same meeting elected a political centre, called the Political Bureau, to direct the uprising, the members of the Centre being Lenin, Zinoviev, Stalin, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sokolnikov and Bubnov. Thus the Centre included even Zinoviev and Kamenev who were the only two to vote against the resolution on the uprising. This was possible in spite of the political disagreements between them because there was at that time a unity of views between these two (Zinoviev and Kamenev) and the rest of the Central Committee on such fundamental questions "as the character of the Russian revolution, the driving forces of the revolution, the role of the peasantry, the principles of Party leadership, and so forth." (Stalin, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 341). Thus the decision on the uprising was taken by the Central Committee and the Central Committee alone. Hence the political direction of the uprising was firmly in the hands of the Central Committee.
As to the legend that Trotsky played a 'special' role in that he 'inspired', and was the 'sole leader' of the October uprising – this legend was spread by Lentsner, and Stalin dealt with it as follows:
"The Trotskyites are vigorously spreading rumours that Trotsky inspired and was the sole leader of the October uprising. These rumours are being spread with exceptional zeal by the so- called editor of Trotsky's works, Lentsner. Trotsky himself, by consistently avoiding mention of the Party, the Central Committee and the Petrograd Committee of the Party, by saying nothing about the leading role of these organisations in the uprising and vigorously pushing himself forward as the central figure in the October uprising, voluntarily or involuntarily helps to spread the rumours about the special role he is supposed to have played in the uprising, I am far from denying Trotsky's undoubtedly important role in the uprising. I must say, however, that Trotsky did not play any special role in the October uprising, nor could he do so; being chairman of the Petrograd Soviet he merely carried out the will of the appropriate Party bodies, which directed every step that Trotsky took .To philistines like Sukhanov, all this may seem strange, but the facts, the true facts, wholly and fully confirm what I say." (Ibid, pp. 341- 342).
Stalin then passes on to an examination of the minutes of the next Central Committee meeting held on 29 October, 1917. Apart from the members of the Central Committee, there were present at this meeting representatives of the Petrograd Committee as well as representatives of military organisations, factory committees, trade unions and the railwaymen. At this meeting Lenin's resolution on the uprising was adopted by a majority of 20 against 2, with three abstentions. At this meeting too a practical centre was elected for the organisational leadership of the uprising. To this practical centre were elected the following five: Sverdlov, Stalin, Dzerzhinksy, Bubnov and Uritsky. Let Stalin speak:
"The functions of the practical centre: to direct all the practical organs of the uprising in conformity with the directives of the Central Committee. Thus, as you see, something terrible happened at this meeting of the Central Committee, i.e., 'strange to relate', the Inspirer, the 'chief figure', the 'sole leader' of the uprising, Trotsky, was not elected to the practical centre, which was called upon to direct the uprising. How is this to be reconciled with the current opinion about Trotsky's special role? Is not all this somewhat 'strange', as Sukhanov, or the Trotskyites, would say? And yet strictly speaking there is nothing strange about it for neither in the Party, nor in the October uprising did Trotsky play any special role, nor could he do so, for he was a relatively new man in our Party in the period of October. He, like all the responsible workers, merely carried out the will of the Central Committee and of its organs. Who-ever is familiar with the mechanics of Bolshevik Party leadership will have no difficulty in understanding that it could not be otherwise; it would have been enough for Trotsky to go against the will of the Central Committee to have been deprived of all influence on the course of events. This talk about Trotsky's special role is a legend that is being spread by obliging 'Party' gossips.(4)
"This, of course, does not mean that the October uprising did not have its inspirer. it did have its inspirer and leader, but this was Lenin, and none other than Lenin, that same Lenin whose resolution the Central Committee adopted when deciding the question of the uprising, that same Lenin who, in spite of what Trotsky says, was not prevented by being in hiding from being the actual inspirer of the uprising. It is foolish and ridiculous to attempt now, by gossip about Lenin having been in hiding to obscure the indubitable fact that the inspirer of the uprising was the leader of the Party, V.I. Lenin.
"Such are the facts." (Collected Works, Vol. 6, pp 342-344.)
Continues Stalin:
"Granted, we are told but it cannot be denied that Trotsky fought well in the period of October. Yes, that is true, Trotsky did, indeed, fight well in October, but Trotsky was not the only one who fought well in the period of October. Even people like the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, who then stood side by side with the Bolsheviks, also fought well, In general I "must say that in the period of a victorious uprising when the enemy is isolated and the uprising is growing; it is not difficult to fight well. At such moments even backward people become heroes.
"The proletarian struggle is not however, an uninterrupted advance, an unbroken chain of victories. The proletarian struggle also has its trials, its defeats. The genuine revolutionary is not one who displays courage in the period of a victorious uprising; but one who, while fighting well during the victorious advance of the revolution, also displays courage when the revolution is in retreat when the proletariat suffers defeat, who does not lose his head and does not funk when the revolution suffers reverses, when the enemy "achieves success; who does not become panic-stricken or give way to despair when the revolution is in a period of retreat The Left Socialist- Revolutionaries did not fight badly in the period of October, and they supported the Bolsheviks. But who does not know that those 'brave' fighters became panic-stricken in the period of Brest when the advance of German imperialism drove them to despair and hysteria. It is a very sad but indubitable fact that Trotsky, who fought well in the period of October, did not in the period of Brest in the period when the revolution suffered temporary reverses, possess the courage to display sufficient staunchness at that difficult moment and to refrain from following in the footsteps of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Beyond question; that moment was a difficult one; one had to display exceptional courage and imperturbable coolness not to be dismayed, to retreat in good time, to accept peace in good time, to withdraw the proletarian army out of range of the blows of German imperialism; to preserve the peasant reserves and, after obtaining a respite in this way, to strike at the enemy with renewed force. Unfortunately, Trotsky was found to lack this courage and revolutionary staunchness at that difficult moment.
"In Trotsky's opinion, the principal lesson of the proletarian revolution is 'not to funk' during October. That is wrong; for Trotsky's assertion contains only a particle of the truth about the lessons of the revolution. The whole truth about the lessons of the proletarian revolution is not to funk, not only when the revolution is advancing but also when it is retreat when the enemy is gaining the upper hand and the revolution is suffering reverses. The revolution did not end with October. October was only the beginning of the proletarian revolution. It is bad to funk when the tide of insurrection is rising but it is worse to funk when the revolution is passing through severe trials after power has been captured. To retain power on the morrow of the revolution is no less important that to capture power." (Ibid. pp. 344-345).
Stalin asked the question: "For what purpose did Trotsky need all these legends about October and the preparation for October, about Lenin and the Party of Lenin? What is the purpose of Trotsky's new literary pronouncements against the Party?..." (Ibid. p.363)
By way of an answer, Stalin continues:
"Trotsky asserts that all this is needed for the purpose of 'studying' October. But is it not possible to study October without giving another kick at the Party and its leader Lenin? What sort of a 'history' of October is it that begins and ends with attempts to discredit the chief leader of the October uprising to discredit the Party, which organised and carried through the uprising?... That is not the way to study October. That is not the way to write the history of October. Obviously, there is a different 'design' here, and everything goes to show that this 'design' is that Trotsky by his literary pronouncements is making another (yet another!) attempt to create the conditions for substituting Trotskyism for Leninism. Trotsky needs 'desperately' to discredit the Party, and its cadres who carried through the uprising in order, after discrediting the Party, to proceed to discredit Leninism. And it is necessary for him to discredit Leninism in order to drag in Trotskyism as the 'sole' 'proletarian' (don't laugh!) ideology. All this, of course (oh, of course!) under the flag of Leninism, so that the dragging operation may be performed 'as painlessly as possible'.
"That is the essence of Trotsky's latest literary pronouncements." (Ibid. pp. 363-364).
Trotskyism – a rallying point for counter-revolution
Stalin went on to conclude that the danger was "... that Trotskyism, owing to its entire inner content stands every chance of becoming the centre and rallying point of the non-proletarian elements who are striving to weaken to disintegrate the proletarian dictatorship," in view of which it was "the duty of the Party to bury Trotskyism as an ideological trend." (Ibid. p. 373).
In later years Trotsky himself was obliged to admit that "in the wake of this vanguard [i.e., the Trotskyist opposition] there dragged the tail end of all sorts of dissatisfied, ill-equipped and even chagrined careerists," adding, however, that the opposition had managed to free itself from "its accidental and uninvited fellow wayfarers." On the contrary, as the contents of the pages that follow reveal, it is precisely the non-proletarian elements, with their irreconcilable hostility to the proletarian dictatorship, their striving for the disintegration of the proletarian dictatorship, who supported the Trotskyist opposition in the USSR and who continued to support him abroad after his expulsion from the Soviet Union. It is precisely the same type of person who has since those times rallied around Trotskyism, driven by an innate hatred of Marxism-Leninism and of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Even the Trotskyite Deutscher is compelled to say. 'Outside the party, formless revolutionary frustration mingled with distinctly counter-revolutionary trends Since the ruling group had singled out Trotsky as a target for attack he automatically attracted the spurious sympathy of many who had hitherto hated him. As he made his appearance in the streets of Moscow [in. the spring of 19241, he was spontaneously applauded by crowds in which idealist communists rubbed shoulders with Mensheviks Social Revolutionaries; and the new bourgeoisie of the NEP, by all those indeed who, for diverse reasons hoped for a change [i.e., for the disintegration of the proletarian dictatorship through the weakening and disintegration of the Bolshevik Party]" (Isaac Deutscher, Stalin, Pelican, 1966, p. 279).
At its plenary meeting held on 17-20 January, 1925, the Central Committee of the RCP(B) characterised Trotskyism as a variety of Menshevism" and Trotsky's ceaseless attacks on Bolshevism as an attempt to substitute Trotskyism for Leninism. This meeting resolved to remove Trotsky from the office of Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR, and he was "warned in the most emphatic term that membership of the Bolshevik Party demands real, not verbal subordination to Party discipline and total and unconditional renunciation of any attacks on the ideals of Leninism "
Emergence of the New Opposition
After the above meeting pronounced against Trotsky and warned that his splitti