Trotsky
Page 63
The obelisk also reminds us of the international organization that Trotsky created. For a long time he protested and became indignant when his opponents manipulated the term ‘Trotskyism’. When he was expelled from ECCI, cornered and showered with abusive criticism from his former comrades, he denied the existence of ‘Trotskyism’, and would recognize only a ‘left’ opposition movement.162 He stuck to this position in the early 1930s. At the end of December 1932, while still on Prinkipo, he wrote to his translator Alexandra Ramm that he was sending her the manuscript of a long article entitled ‘Lenin’s Testament’.163 The article was typical in its anti-Stalinist tone, but it also contained a section called ‘The Legend of “Trotskyism”’. This legend, he wrote, had been created by Zinoviev and Kamenev. With Stalin’s agreement it was they who had dubbed the ‘left’ opposition ‘Trotskyism’. To be precise, however, the term had been put into official circulation by Stalin, when he had declared in his article ‘Trotskyism or Leninism’ that it was necessary to see ‘Trotskyism as a peculiar ideology that is incompatible with Leninism’.164
After that time, those Communists who shared Trotsky’s political views began to be called ‘Trotskyists’. From the beginning of the 1930s to have this label attached to one in the USSR was tantamount to a death sentence. Trotsky protested that these people were genuine ‘Bolshevik Leninists’, and he was right in principle: all Bolshevik Leninists were the same, believing as they did in the dictatorship of the proletariat, and they were all convinced that the world could be remade according to the Communist blueprint. Zinoviev might assert that ‘Trotskyism was (and to a certain extent still is) only a “left” nuance of “European” (i.e. opportunist) pseudo-Marxism, which is fundamentally hostile to Bolshevism,’165 but by 1926 he would declare that his struggle against Trotskyism had been the biggest mistake of his life, ‘more dangerous than the mistake of 1917’, when he had opposed the armed uprising of October. A year later, however, in begging Stalin’s forgiveness, Zinoviev would again speak of the ‘danger of Trotskyism’ as a manifestion of ‘pseudo-Marxism’.166
None of this is to deny the existence of Trotskyism, which we have already described as one of the three basic trends in Russian Marxism, the other two being Leninism and Stalinism. Lenin regarded Marxism primarily as a means to advance his ideas for the revolutionary movement. Apart from his theoretical reflections on the revolutionary party and organizational issues, he brought little that was new to Marxism. Stalinism emerged as a grotesque form of Leninism. In its turn, Trotskyism on the theoretical level can be seen as the most radical form of Marxism, and applicable not only to Russia but to the entire ‘world Communist revolution’. It is possible therefore to say that Trotskyism is the most sharply expressed attempt to apply European Marxism in Russia as its extreme radical variant. This view has been taken as the point of departure by the Israeli scholar Baruch Knei-Paz in his authoritative study of Trotsky’s ideas, namely, ‘that Trotsky’s theory of a Russian revolution constituted the only sustained attempt to explain the manner in which both Marxism and a socialist revolution were immediately relevant to the Russia of the early twentieth century … And following the events of [1917] Trotsky did not hesitate to claim that it had been confirmed by these events.’167
Trotskyism was an extreme form of Marxism, many elements of which Stalin borrowed in practice, naturally without acknowledgement. Trotskyism can only be understood by taking into account its unshakeable belief in class postulates, the highest justification of revolutionary violence and its faith in the inevitability of a world Communist future. At the Third Comintern Congress on 23 July 1921, Trotsky declared: ‘Only crisis can be the father of revolution, while a period of prosperity is its gravedigger.’168
Trotskyism is an expression of Lenin’s belief that it was possible by means of unbridled violence ‘to give history a shove’ and to achieve fundamental social change in the shortest possible time. As one of the Menshevik leaders, R. Abramovich, recalled, with the introduction of ‘War Communism’ Lenin at first believed that the strategic goal of revolution was close. At the beginning of 1918, wrote Abramovich, ‘at virtually every session of Sovnarkom Lenin insisted that it was possible to realize socialism in Russia in six months. Trotsky remarks that when he first heard the timetable he was surprised—six months, not six decades, or at least six years? But no, Lenin was insisting on six months.’169 Trotsky may have been surprised, but he did not object. As we have seen, after 1917 his own timetable for the world revolution also fluctuated between five and eight years, although later he avoided fixing any deadline for the universal conflagration, or postponed it for decades.170 The Russian social democrats, by contrast, advocated a more peaceful path of social change, fearful as they were that a new ‘time of troubles’ would erupt in the country, but they, of course, were excluded from politics after October. This did not save some of their leaders, however, from the attentions of the NKVD who, even when they were abroad in exile, maintained surveillance and reported on their doings to Moscow.171
Trotskyism expressed the Marxist postulates in their most refined form. As a counterweight to Stalin it formally rejected totalitarianism, although it is not clear how the dictatorship of the proletariat could be applied in such circumstances. Thus, Trotskyism was a Utopian attempt to combine dictatorship and democracy, the monopoly of one party with political pluralism. In fact, Trotskyism represented the Utopia of radical Marxism in Russia.
It would appear that the obelisk in Mexico was the final act in the drama of the movement founded by Trotsky. And yet it was not. Trotskyism lives on. Why? What is it that nourishes the hopes of his followers? Surely the historic failure of socialism in Eastern Europe and the USSR has disappointed their hopes and dreams? Present-day Trotskyists still believe that the revolutionary renewal of the world is not only necessary but possible. One need only glance at the Journal of International Marxism, which is still published by the International Committee of the Fourth International. In 1988, on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of that body, the Committee passed a resolution stating that the world was on the threshold of new revolutionary convulsions, and that Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution ‘is confirmed by all of life’. In the Journal’s words, at a time when ‘Gorbachev is grovelling before Wall Street, the rapid restoration of capitalism in the USSR is taking place … The defence of the conquests of October demands as a historic necessity the overthrow of the bureaucracy by means of political revolution.’ It was as if time for the Trotskyists had stood still: what in 1936 in The Revolution Betrayed Trotsky had demanded in relation to Stalin and Stalinism, was being repeated fifty years later by his followers in regard to Gorbachev. Such regurgitation of the outmoded idea of permanent revolution nevertheless displays the viability of left radicalism, above all the idea that the world can be reshaped by audacious proletarian action.
Reading the Journal gives one the illusion of plunging decades back into history. The following appeared in the 1989 issue:
The great historical goal of uniting the various national units of the international proletariat into a single army can be achieved at once. The battle cry of revolutionary Marxism—‘Proletarians of all lands, unite!’—will become the basis of class struggle in every country. The old Stalinist and social democratic parties, and the rotten remains of the long-dead Second and Third Internationals, cling with growing desperation to an outmoded national state system and the capitalist lords. Thus the epoch of the Fourth International has come. The tasks of the International Committee are to assemble the cadres that are ready to act decisively according to these plans, to rally the working class under the banner of the Fourth International, and to prepare for the victory of the forthcoming world socialist revolution.172
This resolution was passed in August 1988.
Over the last fifty years many organizations, parties and even entire states have disappeared, yet the international party of Trotskyists remains alive. One reason for this remarkable fact must be the
robust historical authority of its founder. The obelisk in Mexico bears witness therefore not to the death of Trotsky, but to the fact that revolutionism in its classic form still has life. Revolutionism for Trotsky was like the Bible for a believer. Even when everything indicated the ‘ebb’, in his words, of world revolution, he would speak of its imminent ‘flow’. On 21 June 1924, addressing the Fifth All-Union Congress of Health Workers, he drew loud applause as he concluded:
The Communists say to the European worker: if you come to power, if you create a Soviet United States, you will at once unite two mighty continents, you will acquire wonderful technology, limitless space and natural wealth, and the huge enthusiasm of the revolutionary class that is already in power. If you have to fight the armed world counterrevolution—and you will—you will build your own Red Army, but you won’t have to start from scratch, as you will get a good start from the Red Army of the Soviet Union which is already singed by war and winged with victory.173
The question arises of whether Trotsky tried by any practical means to broadcast the ideas of the left opposition inside the USSR, or other Communist parties. The Trotsky archives at Harvard, as well as the Sneevliet archive and other materials held by the NKVD, show clearly that concrete efforts were indeed made to revive and activate the struggle against the Stalinist regime. In the autumn of 1932, for instance, Lev Sedov in Berlin sent his father notes of a conversation he had had with Goltsman, a supporter who helped to despatch Trotskyist literature into the USSR and to receive political information for the exile. Sedov wrote, among other things, that the hopes they had had for creating a bloc with Zinoviev, Kamenev and Lominadze had collapsed. They were ‘broken’. He reported, however, that his ‘packages’ to Moscow and Leningrad so far were arriving and falling into the proper hands.174
It is clear that in 1932 Trotsky still had links with the thinning ranks of his supporters in the USSR. Sedov’s correspondents were reporting that thousands of people in the Ukraine were swollen with hunger and fleeing the villages. Kolkhoz chairmen who had failed to fulfil delivery quotas were being stripped naked on the ice on the orders of the chief prosecutor of the Ukraine. It was alleged that an anti-Stalinist document, written by Bukharin, was being passed from hand to hand. Lominadze’s group was more or less functional, but was being very cautious. Robbery was rife. Special retail outlets for Party workers were being established. Factories were being built and left unfinished when yet others were begun. Right-wing Communists had not accepted defeat.175
From these fragmentary reports it was clear that the opposition, although much weakened, still survived, and Trotsky therefore felt justified in attempting cautiously to re-ignite the embers of dissatisfaction with Stalin’s policies in the early 1930s. While he was still in Europe he sent letters to his supporters calling on them to reactivate the struggle against Comintern and Stalin.176 He did not, however, restrict himself to giving instructions of a purely ideological kind, but also advised his supporters ‘to work completely illegally’.177 In an NKVD file marked simply ‘Publications’ there are many hundreds of printed papers and leaflets of an anti-Stalinist content published by Trotskyist organizations. While the distribution of such literature inside the Soviet Union may have been severely limited, the fact is that some of it nonetheless got through.178
All this material confirms that Trotsky did make an effort to wage not only ideological but also political struggle against the Stalinist Communist Parties and the Russian Communist Party itself. Despite all these efforts, however, it was clear to him that the revolutionary tide had subsided. The left movement never became widespread. He did not give up, but continued to strike the bell of revolution in the form of his Bulletin. The notes sounded, however, dim and indistinct.
Even these slight efforts were, however, noted by the NKVD. Deliveries of literature that were intercepted, and the arrest of a number of people found with the Bulletin in their possession, led to an increase in repressive measures. Any contact between Soviet citizens and individuals suspected of Trotskyism was registered at once. For instance, a certain Baldoni, an ‘assumed Trotskyist’ who was under surveillance in Moscow, met Budu Mdivani, among others, and Preobrazhensky’s and Donat’s families. As soon as this was known, Agent ‘West’ informed the NKVD, and all these people were arrested.179
According to data supplied by Yezhov, at the end of 1936 and the beginning of 1937, in the central institutions of Moscow alone, thousands of ‘Trotskyist wreckers’ were arrested. Between October 1936 and February 1937 the following numbers of employees in the People’s Commissariats were arrested and sentenced: Transport—141, Food Industry—100, Local Industry—60, Internal Trade—82, Agriculture—102, Finance—35, Education—228; and the list continues.180
It was not necessary to have known Trotsky or served under him in the civil war to qualify as a state criminal: the mere mention of his name, or the possession of a book of his, or any indirect suggestion of association, would bring prison or worse. Widespread searches were conducted as Trotskyists were rooted out. An unspoken competition arose, so that, for instance, the Party Committee of the Finance Commissariat, which exposed the least number of Trotskyists, was itself purged. Figures were sent to superiors, as if reporting on conditions at the front: the numbers unmasked and the numbers arrested.
At a general meeting of the History Faculty of the Institute of Red Professors, for example, Professor A.V. Shestakov gave a lecture entitled ‘The Methods and Devices of Wrecking Work on the Historical Front’. Among other things, he declared: ‘In his letter to the editors of Proletarskaya revolyutsiya, Comrade Stalin indicated that the Trotskyists are carrying out their subversive activity by distorting historical reality. For example, in discussing the tyranny of the [sixth-century] Greek colony at Pantikapea, Drozdov discredits the idea of democracy when compared with Fascist tyranny.’181
In this lecture and elsewhere mention was made of the ‘Trotskyist definition of [the nineteenth-century Caucasian fighter] Shamil’s dictatorship’, also that ‘despite the indications of Comrades Stalin, Kirov and Zhdanov, it is asserted that Alexander I’s foreign policy was ambiguous’, and that ‘Professor Piontkovsky masked his wrecker’s snout while attempting to restore capitalism in the USSR.’182 All these ludicrous and ominous statements were uttered by people who held scientific degrees and academic titles. The mental tyranny crippled these people, teaching them to see enemies everywhere, and to display the harshest intolerance towards anything that might seem suspicious. Of course, such activities were far from restricted to the shameful public trials of the period.
A report from the acting director of the Institute of Red Professors of 27 December 1937 indicates that of the 408 teachers recruited between 1931 and 1937, 296 were fired, having been ‘unmasked and arrested as enemies of the people’.183 It is noteworthy that directors were being replaced so rapidly that such reports were commonly submitted by ‘acting directors’.
While Trotsky was writing his addresses, printing his Bulletin and seeking means to infiltrate his writings into the USSR, Stalin was following his own agenda. There were perhaps no more than three or four hundred genuine Trotskyists in the whole country, but in order to liquidate them Stalin destroyed hundreds of thousands of people. It therefore seems appropriate to suggest that the obelisk should stand not only as a memorial to the leader of the ‘left’ opposition, but also to those who remained loyal to him in those dreadful years.
People read Trotsky’s books about the Bolshevik revolution not merely because they are interesting in themselves, but because he was so closely associated with the events they describe. As early as 1921 G.A. Ziv in his book on Trotsky could write: ‘The name of Lenin will rightly enter the history of Bolshevism as its father and prophet; but for the broad contemporary masses, triumphant Bolshevism (and for as long as it triumphs) is naturally associated with the name of Trotsky. Lenin personifies the theory, the idea of Bolshevism (even Bolshevism has its idea), while Trotsky embodies its practice.’18
4 This assessment is too simple. Trotsky personified both the theory and the practice of Bolshevism. In the sphere of theory Trotsky’s name will always be associated with permanent revolution, while in that of practice his name evokes the idea of world revolution.
A large number of papers in the Houghton Library consist of material on the first four congresses of Comintern, with Trotsky’s letters to many foreign leaders of that organization. Trotsky recognized that even the highest functionaries of Comintern were gradually losing their independence, while also being turned into undercover agents for the NKVD. But even he could hardly have imagined that such figures as Dimitrov, Togliatti, Bela Kun and Kolarov would have to beg ignominiously for Yezhov’s permission to open a club for political émigrés in Moscow.185 Or that the Society of Political Exiles, among whose leaders were all the most prominent revolutionaries, including Stalin, was reporting on their ‘work’ on a regular basis to Yezhov.186 Even Maxim Gorky, who discussed a personal request from the veteran revolutionary Vera Figner with Stalin, reported on this to Yezhov.187 No doubt Gorky was taking no chances.
Realizing that Mexico was his last refuge, and lacking solid information about the situation in the USSR, Trotsky seems to have resorted increasingly to old arguments and recollections. The more he gazed into the dim future, the more he seemed to see shades of the distant past: conversations with Lenin, ecstatic crowds, the Red Cavalrymen, and his armoured train. Yet surprisingly in his writings we find nothing nostalgic or sentimental about his motherland, or his children and die other relatives who died there. Perhaps Ziv was right to declare that ‘Trotsky is morally blind’.188 On the other hand, Trotsky had spent more than twenty years in two phases of emigration and exile. He was by nature a cosmopolitan and lived entirely in the sphere of the political and intellectual. If he had any longings they were for revolution. He loved the first years of the Bolshevik regime, from 1917 to 1924, and detested the 1930s. In the early years he had enjoyed affection and respect, but in exile he was vilified and hated by millions of brutalized citizens whom the Stalinist functionaries knew how to manipulate.