Translator's Notes
[A] (p. 4) It is quite true that in recent years there has been growing interest throughout the world in the personality, ideas, and achievements of Leon Trotsky. One of the main sectors where this has occurred is among revolutionary-minded youth. Bourgeois publishing houses have viewed this with mixed emotions. On the one hand, immediate profits are to be gained by bringing out something by or about Trotsky; on the other hand, in the long run, to spread Trotsky's ideas strengthens the revolutionary-socialist movement and thereby undermines capitalism. This is why they always attach forewords or annotations intended as antidotes to "Trotskyism." To be honest, Mikeshin should have noted that besides Trotsky, there has also been a rise in public interest in Marx, Engels and Lenin, not to mention Castro, Guevara, Mao and even such personalities as Stalin and Khrushchev. In publishing books by or about these and other figures, the bourgeois houses handle them much as they do Trotsky's works. Mikeshin, of course, had his own reasons for presenting a distorted picture to his audience, which is not free to check the accuracy of his account.
[B] (p. 4) "Sovietologists" are of two types, most often combined to varying degrees in the same person. The one seeks to provide accurate information about the Soviet Union, which is required by the imperialist strategists in working out their anti-Soviet and counterrevolutionary policies. The other seeks to provide vitriolic propaganda for the bourgeois press. Usually tied closely to their imperialist governments, their financial as well as ideological existence hinges on their display of skill and unscrupulousness.
It is all the more remarkable, then, that contrary to Mikeshin's assertions, the general pack of Sovietologists are completely against Trotsky and everything he stood for.Whatever grudging admiration they may express for Trotsky as an individual, they show little sympathy for his main views on the USSR -- that the Soviet Union preserves
its basic anticapitalist structure; that the Stalinist regime represents a parasitic caste that usurped power but in its own way defends the workers state from imperialism, so that the Soviet workers cannot farm out the job of settling accounts with it; that the Soviet workers must reestablish proletarian democracy in the USSR as part of the general task of advancing socialist revolution on a world scale.
To label Isaac Deutscher as a "Sovietologist" in this sense is a smear. Deutscher defends the social gains of the October 1917 Revolution both within the Soviet Union and against imperialism, as anyone free to read his biography of Trotsky and other books and articles can easily ascertain for himself.
[Cc] (p. 4) Sensing the weakness of his amalgamation of Trotskyism with rightist reactionaries and capitalist publishing houses, Mikeshin develops a "theoretical" explanation for their "affinity." The capitalists, according to this, long ago saw through the mask of the "red dragon," and so forth. The "anti-Soviet nature" of Trotskyism, says Mikeshin, was understood even by the capitalist politician Milyukov.
In quoting Milyukov's paper, Mikeshin provides us with an instructive example of Stalinist frame-up methods. The statement in Poslednie novosti appears to provide crushing evidence of the correctness of his argument. But on checking the original source, we discover that Poslednie novosti specifically states that it is not referring to the Left Opposition headed by Trotsky but a rightist opposition that existed in the Communist party at the time. Thus Mikeshin lies, and lies deliberately, when he says that Poslednie novosti "without beating around the. bush characterized the Trotskyist opposition as the most dangerous enemy of Soviet power."
Polemicizing against another emigré paper, which had advocated calling for an uprising, Poslednie novosti argued that it was shrewder policy to take sides in the intraparty dispute among the Communists. Referring to the situation as a whole, without reference to a particular opposition, Poslednie novosti explained: "There in Russia we see no such outbreaks. The most dangerous enemy for Soviet power now is the one which creeps up on it unnoticed, wraps it round with its tentacles, and liquidates it before it notices it has been liquidated. Precisely this role [the significance of the quotation becomes clearer as we continue -- G.S.], necessary and unavoidable in the preparatory period, from which we have not yet issued, is played by the Soviet opposition. The conjunction within it of the left and right wings is completely fortuitous; this is called for exclusively by the circumstances of the struggle. And it is well known to our readers that while making our choice [i.e., among the Communist disputants -- G.S.], we have never in that choice come out on the side of the left opposition. [Emphasis in the original. -- G.S.] One must of course prefer Stalin to Zinoviev. [Zinoviev had temporarily joined Trotsky and his supporters in the Left Opposition so that Stalin stood to the right of Zinoviev. -~ G.S.] But one must prefer Medvedev and Ossovsky to Stalin. It was not for nothing that Zinoviev in the previous phase of the struggle complained that the party had been 'enveloped' by petty bourgeois and Cadetish moods."
Ossovsky, a one-time supporter of the Left Opposition, broke away and shifted to the right, coming out for the inclusion in the government of representatives of parties under the influence of the bourgeoisie -- perhaps something similar to the practice featured decades later in the people's democracies of Eastern Europe and China under Mao. Medvedev, head of the metalworkers union and an influential leader in the Workers Opposition, a distinct tendency headed by Shlyapnikov and Kollontai, advocated forgetting about revolution abroad and granting a vast extension of foreign concessions in order to finance building heavy industry. .
It is thus perfectly clear that Mikeshin does have a factual basis for referring to the hopes of the Cadet newspaper Poslednie novosti. It did hope that an opposition would succeed in establishing itself and eventually become strong enough to liquidate the regime. But the facts also show that as between Trotsky and Stalin, this bourgeois emigré group made a perfectly logical and understandable distinction and stated their preference for Stalin. In other words, by applying Mikeshin's own argumentation, we come to the inescapable conclusion that the "affinity" is between the counterrevolutionaries and Stalinism.
Even if we reject Mikeshin's whole methodology as specious, what conclusion must be drawn about a position that can only be "substantiated" through the deliberate concoction of "proofs" and the twisting of quotations into meanings that are the very opposite of the original? Trotsky aptly called this the "Stalinist school of falsification."
[D] (p. 4) Deutscher does discuss the "adventitious use" made of The Revolution Betrayed by anti-Communists, pointing out, though, that such use depends on taking pieces out of context. Much more apropos, however, is the following passage, appearing
14
on the very same page from which Mikeshin quoted:
"In our time, however, its ideas are already in the air in the U.S.S.R., where Trotsky's writings are still banned. The Soviet Jourdains who nowadays unknowingly speak his prose are legion: they are to be found in universities, factories, literary clubs, Komsomol cells, and even in the ruling circles."
Deutscher observes that "Trotsky's verdict that the Stalin era ‘will go down in the history of artistic creation preeminently as an epoch of mediocrities, laureates, and toadies' has come to be generally accepted." One cannot but marvel at the nature of "historians" like Mikeshin who can read this without blushing.
[LE] (p. 5) Mikeshin's attempted sarcasms over Lessons of October becloud the issue, of course. Trotsky did not assert that he rather than Lenin or the Bolsheviks organized and inspired the October Revolution. Quite the contrary. He often acknowledged that only a party led by a Lenin could have accomplished that. What Trotsky pointed to in 1924 was a well-known episode in the Bolshevik party's history --~ a very crucial episode. Lenin in April 1917, when he arrived in Russia from exile, had to carry out single-handed a fight to reorient Bolshevik policy.
Under the leadership of Kamenev and Stalin, before Lenin's arrival, the Bolsheviks in Petrograd were following in the train of the bourgeois Provisional Government and its continuation of the imperialist war. The perspective of the working class, the Soviets, taking power was not even whispered. Part of the fault lay with Lenin's formula of a "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry." This general slogan left open the question of the exact nature of the projected state. Trotsky, in contrast, “even before the revolution of 1905," to quote the notes to the Complete Works of Lenin, published while Lenin was still alive, "advanced the original and now especially famous theory of Permanent Revolution, asserting that the bourgeois revolution of 1905 would go directly over into a socialist revolution and prove the first of a series of national revolutions."
The political transformation that occurred among the Bolsheviks in April 1917 under Lenin's blows is fully documented and well known to any serious student of the Russian Revolution. Lenin did quickly win the support of the Bolshevik party to the perspective that the 1917 Russian Revolution should go directly over into a socialist revolution such was the fundamentally revolutionary character of the party which he had constructed.
Trotsky's point in Lessons of October, published seven years later in continua~ tion of the struggle opened by Lenin against the rising danger of bureaucratism, was that even within the most revolutionary party known to history, the Bolsheviks, a definite current had existed that opposed the perspective of a proletarian revolution in Russia in 1917. Kamenev, together with Zinoviev, had even broken ranks in October 1917 and announced to the bourgeoisie the Bolshevik plans to take power. Trotsky's purpose in reminding the party about these episodes was to point to the danger of an internal degeneration of the party, of its falling under petty-bourgeois or bourgeois influences.
But, as Mikeshin says rather needlessly, the CPSU rejected Trotsky's point of view on the questions raised in Lessons of October. Curiously, he mentions only the "well-known party decisions and literature on party history" in which "Trotskyism" was rejected. His tongue proves unwieldy when it comes to mentioning the names of the men who led that fight -- Stalin, Kamenev, 4Zinoviev. It would be even more embarrassing for Mikeshin to discuss their subsequent political evolution and personal fates.
{F] (p. 5) The English wording of this quotation is from Left-wing Communisn, An Infantile Disorder, pp. 21-22, in the Foreign Languages Publishing House edition, Moscow, no date, "Books for Socialism" series. Mikeshin clearly implies that Lenin had in mind Trotsky or Trotskyism. The context of Section IV of that pamphlet, from which the quotation is taken, shows that Lenin was dealing, not with "Trotskyism," but with anarchism and the Socialist Revolutionary party. For example, Lenin writes: "At its inception in 1904, Bolshevism took over the tradition of ruthless struggle against petty-bourgeois, semianarchist (or dilettante-anarchist) revolutionism, the tradition which has always existed in revolutionary Social-Democracy, and [which] became partic-— ularly strong in 1900-03, when the foundations for a mass party of the revolutionary proletariat were being laid in Russia. Bolshevism took over and continued the struggle against the party which more than any other expressed the tendencies of petty-—bourgeois revolutionism, namely, the 'Socialist-Revolutionary' Party, and waged this struggle on three main points."
Mikeshin's quotation, to be found on page 20 of the above-mentioned edition, is
worded as follows: "It is far from sufficientiy known as yet abroad that Bolshevism grew up, took shape, and became steeled in long years of struggle against pettypour eois revolutionism [here Mikeshin stopped; Lenin's sentence, though, went on -- 5. o, which smacks of, or borrows something from, anarchism, and which falls short, a “salting essential, of the conditions and requirements of a consistently proletar-
ian class struggle.' ee
[G] (p. 5) Mikeshin's reference to Lenin's "Letter to the Congress" constitutes perhaps his most grotesque. exhibition in pseudoscholarship. That letter is best known. today as "Lenin's Testament." It is the first item in an interesting little. collection called Lenin's Last Letters and Articles, which Progress Publishers of Moscow has nade widely available in English in pamphlet form.
Here is what Progress Publishers says in a . footnote: on the fate of the "Testament": "Lenin considered it necessary that after his death the letter should bé. communicated to the regular Party Congress. In accordance with his wishes the letter was read out to the delegates of the Thirteenth Party Congress, held from May 23 to 31, 1924. The Congress unanimously decided that the letter should not be published. just then since it was addressed to the Congress and not intended for publication.
"By a decision of the C.C. of the C. P.S. U.," Progress Publishers goes on, "the above-mentioned letters of Lenin's were communicated to the delegates of the Twentieth Congress of the C.P.S.U. and distributed to Party. organizations. As instructed by the C.C. of the C.P.5.U. these letters were published in 1956 by, the Journal Communist No. 9, and issued as a separate pamphlet in a. jarge edition." . *
The most famous part of this well-known document is Lenin's warning that "Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary,-has unlimited authority in-his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that: authority with sufficient caution." Lenin advised that he should be removed from this important post.
Why did the thirteenth congress and the subsequent..ones fail to heed lenin, going directly against him instead? We can search in vain in the works of Mikeshin or any other luminary of the bureaucratic press in the Soviet Union for enlightenment on this. Instead Mikeshin stresses Lenin's reference to Trotsky's "non-Bolshevism." But Lenin did not just refer to this. He said, again using the English version. supplied by Progress. Publishers: "...the October episode with Zinoviev.and Kamenev was, of course, no accident, but neither can the blame for it be laid upon him* [*Apparently a slip of. the pen: the context suggests 'them' for..'him.' -- Footnote in the Progress Publishers edition.] personally, any. more than non-Bolshevism can upon Trotsky."
The fact is that a campaign was opened up against Trotsky right after Lenin's death by none other than Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev, in which one of the main aims for the moment was to try to weaken Trotsky's authority and prestige by campaigning on his not having been a member of the Bolshevik party before 1917. Forty years later, . Mikeshin merely echoes this campaign -- without mentioning either its authors or Lenin's references to them, nor why it took more than three decades for Lenin's letter to be published in the Soviet Union.
Trotsky's 1934 discussion of the political significance of Lenin's Testament is well worth reading in the light of all that has happened since. It is available ina Pioneer Pocket Library edition. [For.a copy send $.25 to Merit Publishers, 5 East Third St., New York, N.Y. 10003.]
CH] (p. 5) For the concept of "permanent revolution" in germinal form and under that name, see Marx and Engéls' "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League" in their Selected Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1955), pp. 106-117.
Curiously, Mikeshin charges Leonard Schapiro with echoing Trotsky's claim that the theory of the permanent revolution goes hack to Marx. Schapiro, who likes to proclaim a reformist and Menshevik version of Marxism as the true one, stands on common ground with Mikeshin here. While Schapiro has to be a little more honest (because he can be answered in the press of the bourgeois countries), he too tries to get around the Marxist roots of the theory of permanent revolution. "But these views," Schapiro pleads, "were a temporary aberration from Marx's scientific analysis, formed under the impetus of what he believed was the rising tide of revolution."
[I] (p. 5) We have noted already that Trotsky did not claim to have tutored Lenin. In fact, he acknowledged more than once that Lenin was his teacher, particularly in the field of party building. But Lenin's and Trotsky's views on the nature of the Russian Revolution coincided sufficiently for them to lead the Bolshevik party jointly
in establishing Soviet power; i.e., the dictatorship of the proletariat in a backward country; and under their leadership the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution --~ land reform and national independence, for example -- were carried out under forms that were socialist in principle. The heights of the economy were expropriated and made public property, the old capitalist state was destroyed, and the workers in arms became the basis of the new state.
Before the Russian Revolution, Lenin and Trotsky had differences as to the nature of its probable course, but on the main political orientation they agreed. It seems that Lenin did not until after the October Revolution actually read Trotsky's theses on this question, written in 1905; but once he did, he apparently agreed with them. (This question is discussed at length in Trotsky's works: "Two Concepts of the Russian Revolution"; Chapters 15 and 16 of History of the Russian Revolution; of course in Permanent Revolution and My Life, especially Chapter 13, and pp. 203-204 and pp. 332-333; clarifying references are also given in the "explanatory notes 55-57" in The Stalin School of Falsification. See also Deutscher, The Prophet Armed, p. 162.)
Mikeshin's quotation comes from Lenin's "The Aim of the Proletarian Struggle in Our Revolution" (see Collected Works, Vol. 15, 1963, pp. 360-378). It appears in the context of an attack on Martov, the leading Menshevik. The context is as follows:
"As for Trotsky, whom Comrade Martov has involved in the controversy of third parties which he has organized -- a controversy involving everybody except the dissentient -- we positively cannot go into a full examination of his views here. A separate article of considerable length would be needed for this." [Italics mine -- G.S.] Lenin apparently never wrote such an article, and the fact that he rebuts quotations from Trotsky brought in by Martov suggests that he knew these bits and pieces of Trotsky's ideas only secondhand. None of the three points Lenin differs with are fundamental principles, but constitute differences of evaluation or prediction. Lenin argues that the possibility of a well-formed peasant party appearing in the revolution and taking part in the government beside the workers should not be excluded. And he disagrees with the suggestion that Trotsky seems to have made, according to Martov, that the peasantry would respond to a workers regime in the same way as to a bourgeois one.
"By just touching upon Trotsky's mistaken views, and quoting scraps of then," Lenin continues, "Comrade Martov only sows confusion in the mind of the reader, for scraps of quotations do not explain but confuse matters. Trotsky's major mistake is that he ignores the bourgeois character of the revolution and has no clear conception of the transition from this revolution to the socialist revolution. This major mistake leads to those mistakes on side issues which Comrade Martov repeats [my emphasis -- G.S.] when he quotes a couple of them with sympathy and approval." Lenin goes on to deal with these "side issues," but he does not develop the more fundamental charge about Trotsky's "major mistake." It is easy to cite such a quotation, but what does it mean? Life itself proved that Trotsky had seen very clearly that despite the "bourgeois" nature of the revolution it could only be carried out under the leadership of the working class and under a workers government.
As to the slogan "No tsar, but a workers government," it does not appear to have been a big point with Lenin. He mentions it in his "Concluding Remarks in the Debate Concerning the Report on the Present Situation, April 14(27)," found in the Collected Works, Vol. 24 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964). It isn't particularly "sharp criticism." And the report itself is very much in the spirit of "uninterrupted revolution."
The report was given at the Petrograd city conference of the Bolsheviks, April April 14-22 (01d styles, 1917. It was part of Lenin's struggle against the "old" Bolshevism and for the perspective of the April Theses. The "old" Bolsheviks, among other things, said he was advocating Trotskyism. It is in this context that the following "concluding remarks" must be understood:
"Trotskyism: 'No tsar, but a workers' government.' This is wrong. A petty bourgeoisie exists, and it cannot be dismissed. But it is in two parts. The poorer of the two is with the working class." (p. 150)
The following passages in the report itself are illuminating:
"Old Bolshevism should be discarded. The line of the petty bourgeoisie must be separated from that of the wage-earning proletariat." (p. 149) ;
"The Soviet is the implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the soldiers; among the latter the majority are peasants. It is therefore a dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. But this 'dictatorship' has entered into an agreement with the bourgeoisie. And this is where the 'old' Bolshevism needs revising." (p. 142)
"The bourgeois revolution in Russia is completed insofar as power has come into the hands of the bourgeoisie. Here the 'old Bolsheviks' argue: ‘It is not completed -for there is no dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.' But the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies is that very dictatorship." (p. 143)
[J] (p. 6) The quotation from Mitrany's thoroughly anti-Marxist work is said by Mikeshin to apply ouly to "Trotskyism" not to Marxism. In other words, he's saying the garbage is good; it was just thrown at the wrong target. Mitrany is a reactionary advocate of "back to the land," whose venom strikes at. the whole of modern urban industrial development. Mikeshin's sympathetic appreciation of Mitrany's mud-slinging reveals much about the true nature of the Kremlin's ideologists.
Trotsky put his finger on this kind of development long ago, since "underestim-. ating the peasantry" was one of the chief slanders the rising bureaucracy heaped on his head. "From what does this accusation of Trotsky's wishing to 'rob the peasant' derive -- that formula which the reactionary agrarians, the Christian socialists, and the Fascists at gays direct against socialists and against communists in particular?" (My Life, pp. 516-517.
See p. 222 of My Life for Trotsky's actual reply to this charge.
[K] (p. 6) Mikeshin took these phrases from a "collection of materials," edited by one G.Safarov and called "Trotsky on Lenin and Leninism." This was published in Leningrad, February 1925, in a run of 50,000 copies, as part. of the smear campaign which Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev quite deliberately opened up against "Trotskyism." Mike-. shin relied heavily on such material for his article, it would seem. Here's how Safarov introduced his "anthology":
"This. collection of materials is more in need of a postscript than a foreword. ©
"And for understandable reasons. Wide circles of our party are almost completely unfamiliar with the ferocious fight under the banner of Menshevism that Trotsky carried on against Lenin and Leninism, beginning with 1903, from the moment of origin of the Menshevik tendency, right down to 1917, to the moment of its. crushing.
"We set ourselves the task of making Trotskyism speak with its own tongue. We suppose that for a thorough and conclusive cleansing of the party's consciousness from the hypnotic spell cast by the 'left-' sounding phrase, which hides in itself the crassest opportunism, this will be of some use."
[LJ] (p. 6) On the question of the traditional attitude of Marxists toward the peasantry, while it is true that they have always held it to be wrong to underestimate 7 the peasantry, they have also held that an unqualified "high opinion for its revolutionary energy" is equally wrong. The class evaluation of the peasantry is entirely missing from Mikeshin's exercise in "historical" writing. But Lenin supplied that very analysis in the same work from which Mikeshin quotes ("Report on the Tactics of the Russian Communist Party," Collected Works, Vol. 32, pp. 478-496).
"In addition to this class of exploiters [capitalists and big landowners -- G.S.], there is in nearly all capitalist countries...a class of small producers and small farmers. The main problem of the revolution now is how to fight these two classes. In order to be rid of them we must adopt methods other than those employed against the big landowners and capitalists...other methods of struggle must be adopted in their case...we are now trying to determine the attitude the proletariat in power should adopt towards the last capitalist class -- the rock-bottom of capitalism -- small private property, the small producer." (My emphasis —- G.S.)
There was no disagreement between Lenin and Trotsky on the need for an alliance between the workers and peasants. In fact, defense of this alliance was one of the main points in the program of the Left Opposition; and one of the heaviest charges laid against Stalin by the Left Opposition was that his policies endangered this alliance.
[M] (p. 7) On the theory of building socialism in one country: this of course was the fundamental difference in the Trotsky-Stalin dispute, since it involved attitudes toward the world socialist revolution. Ever since that dispute began; the supporters of Stalin's views have tried to assert that Lenin advocated building socialism in one country. Stalin himself was the first to try to bend Lenin's 1915 article "On the Slogan of the United States of Europe" to this purpose.
The appropriate passage in that article is as follows:
"Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism.
Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and’ organizing their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world -- the capitalist world -- attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, stirring uprisings in those countries against the capitalists and in case of need using even armed force against the exploiting classes and their states. The political form of a society wherein the proletariat is victorious in overthrowing the bourgeoisie will be a democratic republic, which will more and more concentrate the forces of. the proletariat of a given nation or nations in the struggle against states that have not yet gone over to socialism." [Collected Works, Vol. 21, Pp: 42-343. y
First, Lenin means by "victory" a victory "in overthrowing the bourgeoisie" -not the victorious construction ofa socialist economy, starting from an economically backward base. Second, Lenin also had in mind workers' seizure of power in an advanced capitalist country -- so he did not need to refute the’ idea that the international struggle should be put off until after a backward country has "overtaken and surpassed" the most advanced capitalist country. Certainly his description of the international struggle that would follow a workers' seizure of power in a single country has far more in common with the theory of permanent revolution that Trotsky elaborated, and with the state of affairs that actually arose in the world, than the utopian scheme of peaceful economic competition that the Stalins, Khrushchevs, and now the Kosygins keep trying to promote.
Lenin's "Military Program of the Proletarian Revolution" (1916), which Mikeshin
also refers to, carries this theme even further.
"The victory of socialism in one country," says Lenin, "does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars....Socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or prebourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state's victorious proletariat. In such cases a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage ‘defensive wars.' What he had in mind was defense of the victorious proletariat against the bourgeoisie of other countries.
"Only after we have overthrown, finally vanquished and expropriated the boureoisie of the whole world, and not merely of one country, will wars be impossible.’ tenin, Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 80.)
CN] (p. 8) The quotations cited in Mikeshin's notes 22, 23, and 24, are all from Trotsky's polemic against Kautsky, written in the same spirit as Lenin' s The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky. (The English wording of these quotations is from Terrorism and Communism, Ann Arbor Paperback edition, 1961, pp. 141, 149, and 110, in that order. This was not the only case in which the two leaders of the Russian Revolution polemicized against the same foe. Lenin's polemic against the Left Wing Communists in 1920, the very work from which Mikeshin quoted in his footnote 7 above, was complemented by Trotsky's speeches and articles around the second congress of the Third International. )
The following paragraph from Terrorism and Communism, where Trotsky is discussing the Soviets, the trade unions, and the party, should clarify somewhat his alleged position on the "dictatorship of the party":
"We have more than once been accused of having substituted for the dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship of our party. Yet it can be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the Soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the party. It is thanks to the clarity of its theoretical vision and its strong revolutionary organization that the party has afforded to the Soviets the possibility of becoming transformed from shapeless parliaments of labor into the apparatus of the supremacy of labor. In the 'substitution' of the power of the party for the power of the working class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental interests of the working class. It is quite natural that, in the period in which history brings up those interests, in all their magnitude, on to the order of the day, the Communists have become the recognized representatives of the working class as a whole." (p. 109)
As for the quotations from Trotsky on "repression" and the use of force by the Soviet state, these are from section 8 of the book, in which Trotsky's famous pro-
posals for militarization of the unions, and the labor force in general, are laid out. Although this section includes a general (and valuable) discussion of the historical forms of the coercion of labor, the tone and proposals must be understood in the context of the economic crisis in the young Soviet republic toward the end of the Civil War. Trotsky's proposals carried over into the trade-union discussion within the CPSU, which Mikeshin refers to. Lenin opposed Trotsky's views; but the Kronstadt events cut across the whole discussion. Out of this emerged the New Economic Policy. This was aimed at a more general solution of the crisis in place of Trotsky's militarization proposals.
For Mikeshin to base his charge that Trotsky was an autocrat and oligarch on that episode in the midst of a critical, turbulent, and rapidly changing situation is the purest charlatanry. The same charges were leveled at Lenin and have been repeated ad nauseum by the bourgeois ideologists and Sovietologists ever since.
Mikeshin, of course, has only a simple aim in mind. He badly needs a smokescreen to cover up the horrors of Stalin's forced collectivization of the peasantry, the forced labor camps and the monstrous purges that decimated several generations of the Soviet vanguard. Stalin's crimes took place under cover of the "most democratic constitution in the world." A decade after the revelations at the twentieth congress, Mikeshin is still occupied with the chore of maintaining the image of Stalin as a patron of democracy! The method practiced by this "historian" is the hoary one of accusing the victim of the crimes committed against him. By reversing the roles of Stalin and Trotsky in. this way, Mikeshin echoes one of the themes of the most vulgar imperialist propaganda; namely, if Trotsky had won, he would have been just as bad as Stalin -- "it's inherent in the Communist system, you see, to produce dictators."
CO] Cp. 9) In regard to the charge that Trotsky championed "revolutionary" war, Mikeshin is aware that he is on soft ground -- especially after referring to writings in which Lenin discusses "defensive wars" aimed at "overthrowing, finally vanquishing and expropriating the bourgeoisie of the whole world." That is why he touches the subject lightly and then runs.
At the hearings conducted by the John Dewey Commission, in its investigations that led to the famous verdict in 1937 that the charges leveled against Trotsky and his son Leon Sedov in the Moscow trials were nothing but frame-ups, Trotsky took up this particular charge. Here is what he said:
"The second fantastic theory which is put into circulation by the friends of the G.P.U. declares that in view of my general position I am presumably politically interested in expediting war. The usual line of argument is as follows: Trotsky is for the international revolution. It is well known that war often produces revolution. Ergo, Trotsky must be interested in expediting war.
"People who believe this, or who ascribe such ideas to me, have a very feeble conception of revolution, war, and their interdependence.
"War has in fact often expedited revolution. But precisely for this reason it has often led to abortive results. War sharpens social contradictions and mass discontent. But that is insufficient for the triumph of the proletarian revolution. Without a revolutionary party rooted in the masses, the revolutionary situation leads to the most cruel defeats. The task is not to 'expedite' war -- for this, unfortunately, the imperialists of all countries are working, not unsuccessfully. The task is to utilize the time which the imperialists still leave to the working masses for the building of a revolutionary party and revolutionary trade unions."
Trotsky then lists a number of revolutionary Situations in the short period from 1917 to 1937 which were not caused by war, and with which he was nonetheless -- as the record shows -- greatly concerned.
Long before he appeared before the Dewey Commission in Mexico, Trotsky had, of course, dealt with this question. It came up in the theses which he wrote for the Third International at its first four congresses from 1919 to 1922 and which were approved by those authoritative bodies. Mikeshin knows this perfectly well, for the book which he quotes from, Piat let kominterna, contains those very documents written by Trotsky.
The specific passage which Mikeshin seeks to utilize as raw material for his own "historic" aims is taken from that book, occurring in Trotsky's "Report on the Fourth World Congress," which he delivered at the invitation of the Communist fraction of the tenth All-Union Congress of Soviets, December 28, 1922.
Trotsky is summing up the experience of the Comintern in its first five years. This experience has shown, says Trotsky, that three things are necessary prerequisites for a successful revolution. First, conditions of production must exist that make a transition to socialism both desirable and progressive economically and socially -such conditions were, in fact, expressed in the dead end of economic crisis and world war that modern capitalism had led to. Second, a social class is required that is capable of carrying out such a transformation. The European working class fulfilled that role. Third, the subjective factor -- the will and the organization -- must be present within the class, both sufficiently developed to enable it to carry out the socialist revolution. Now, in summing up the European situation since World War I, Trotsky says the following -- and, buried in this passage, we find the quotations that Mikeshin tore out in his work of smearing Trotsky:
"Two of the three necessary premises are extant. [1] Long before the war the relative advantages of socialism, and since 1913 and all the more so after the war, the absolute necessity of socialism have been established. Failing socialism, Europe is decaying and disintegrating economically. This is a fact. [2] The working class in Europe no longer continues to grow. Its destiny, its class destiny, corresponds and runs parallel to the development of economy. To the extent that European economy, with inevitable fluctuations, suffers stagnation and even disintegration, to that extent the working class, as a class fails to grow socially, ceases to increase numerically but suffers from unemployment, from the terrible swellings of the reserve army of labor, etc., etc. [Thus the first two prerequisites are clearly present. Now for the third -and here is where Mikeshin's quotation comes in, which I have italicized for purposes of identification and to show better what this "historian" left out. -- G.S.] The war roused the worki class to its feet in the revolutionary sense. Was the working class, because of its social weight, capable of carrying out the revolution before the war? What did it lack? It lacked the consciousness of its own strength. Its strength grew in Europe automatically, almost imperceptibly, with the growth of industry. The war shook up the working class. Because of this terrible and bloody upheaval, the entire working class in Europe was imbued with revolutionary moods on the very next day . after the war ended. Consequently, one of the subjective factors, the desire to change this world, was at hand. What was lacking? The party was lacking, the party capable of leading the working class to victory."
It needs but little of the context of something written by Trotsky to show why "historians" like Mikeshin are so delicate of touch in lifting something out.
LP] (p. 10) In preparation for the expulsion of the Left Opposition from the party, the Stalin apparatus in June 1927 brought the Opposition leaders ~- Trotsky and Zinoviev -- before the Presidium of the Central Control Commission, headed by Stalin's right-hand man, Ordjonokidze. (The texts of two speeches by Trotsky at those hearings, with accompanying interchanges, may be found in the collection entitled The Stalin School of Falsification, Pioneer, 2d.ed., 1962, pp. 125-159. Also in that volume is Trotsky's speech "The War Danger -- Defense Policy and the Opposition," given before the joint plenary session of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission, August 1, 1927 -~ a session likewise called to consider expulsion of the Opposition leaders. It was not until the fifteenth congress of the CPSU at the end of the year, after several months of physical violence and administrative measures against tthe Opposition, that these expulsions were finally pushed through. )
The apparatus tried to whip up a lynch spirit over Trotsky's so-called Clemenceau thesis. The thesis, they charged, really called for an uprising inside the Soviet Union in the event of an invasion.
Trotsky's actual position was expressed at the joint plenary session as follows:
"The Stalinist Center will [in the event of war] inevitably melt away. Under these conditions the Opposition will be needed by the party more than ever before, in order to aid the party in rectifying the line, and at the same time preventing the party cadres, its basic capital, from being dismembered. Because the overwhelming majority of the genuinely Bolshevik proletarian cadres ~- with a correct policy, with a clear line, and under the compulsion of objective conditions -- will be able to reconstitute the policies, and steer a firm revolutionary course, not out of fear, but from conviction. It is this, and this alone, that we are striving to achieve. The lie of conditional defense, the lie of the two parties, and the most despicable lie of an uprising -- these lies we fling back into the faces of the calumniators." (pp. 173-174)
Further, he clarified his stand even more:
"Do we, the Opposition, cast any doubts on the defense of the socialist fatherland? Not in the slightest degree. It is our hope not only to participate in the
defense, but to be able to teach others a few things. Do we cast doubts on Stalin's ability to sketch a correct line for the defense of the socialist fatherland? We do so and, indeed, to the highest possible degree." (p. 175)
Also, “If we take for granted a priori and forevermore that the given leadership is the only conceivable and born leadership, then every criticism of the incorrect leadership will =ppear as a denial of the defense of the socialist fatherland, and a art re yen uprising. But such a position is a pure and simple denial of the party." p- 175
In a document dated September 24, 1927, Trotsky explained his thesis in a similar way: "The Clemenceau example, the example from the political experience of a class inimical to us, was used by me to illustrate a solitary and a very simple idea: the ruling class, in the guise of its leading vanguard, must preserve its capacity to reform its ranks under the most difficult conditions -- without internal convulsions, without the catastrophic splitting of forces" (from "The 'Clemenceau Thesis' and the Party Regime,' in The New International, July 1934, page 25).
Before the Dewey Commission in 1937 Trotsky replied to the persistent Stalinist distortion of the "Clemenceau thesis" as expressed by Prosecutor Vyshinsky in the purge trials record. Trotsky quoted Vyshinsky's accusation:
"'We must remember that ten years ago Trotsky justified his defeatist position in regard to the U.S.S.R. by referring to the famous Clemenceau thesis. Trotsky then. wrote: "We must restore the tactics of Clemenceau, who, as is well known [!!], rose against the French Government at a time when the Germans were 80 kms. from Paris.'... [Here Trotsky made a parenthetical remark: "In the English edition these words are placed in quotation marks, which might lead the members of the Commission to mistake them for a quotation. In reality, the sentence is invented out of whole cloth by the Prosecutor. Vyshinsky's judicial 'citations' have the same authenticity as Stalin's literary 'citations'; in this school there is uniformity of style."]
"'Tt was not an accident,'" the Vyshinsky quote went on, "'that Trotsky and his accomplices advanced the Clemenceau thesis. They reverted to this thesis once again, but this time advancing it not as a theoretical proposition, but as practical preparation, real preparation, in alliance with foreign intelligence services, for the defeat of the U.S.S.R. in war.'"
"Tt is hard to believe," Trotsky commented, "that the text of this speech was printed in foreign languages, including the French. One would imagine that the French were not unastonished to learn that Clemenceau, during the war, ‘rose against the French Government.' The French never suspected that Clemenceau was a defeatist and an ally of 'foreign intelligence services.' On the contrary, they call him the 'father of victory.' Exactly what is meant by the gibberish of the Prosecutor?
"The fact is that the Stalinist bureaucracy, to justify violence against the Soviets and the party, has, since 1926, appealed to the war danger -- classic subterfuge of Bonapartism! In opposing this, I always expressed myself in the sense that freedom of criticism is indispensable for us not only in time of peace but also in time of war. I referred to the fact that even in bourgeois countries, France in particular, the ruling class did not dare, despite all its fear of the masses, completely to suppress criticism during the war. In this connection I adduced the example of Clemenceau, who, despite the proximity of the war front to Paris -- or rather, precisely because of it -~- denounced in his paper the worthlessness of the military policy of the French Government. In the end, Clemenceau, as is well known, convinced Parliament, took over the leadership of the Government, and assured victory. Where is the 'uprising' here? Where is the 'defeatism'? Where is the connection with foreign intelligence services? I repeat: The reference to Clemenceau was made by me at a time when I judged it still possible to accomplish by peaceful means the transformation of the governmental system of the U.S.5.R. Today I can no longer invoke Clemenceau, because the Bonapartism of Stalin has barred the road to legal reform. But even today I stand completely for the defense of the U.S.S5S.R. -- that is to say, for the defense of its social bases, both against foreign imperialism and domestic Bonapartism." (Stalin's Frame- System, pp. 117-118.)
Trotsky's grave warnings were confirmed by the events around the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Not only Khrushchev in his secret speech but many Soviet military and political leaders writing in the Soviet press in the past ten years sound like voices confirming how correct Trotsky was in expressing the "highest possible degree" of doubt about "Stalin's ability to sketch a correct line for the defense of the socialist fatherland."
A worthy task for Soviet historians, in contrast to exercises in mud~slinging such as this effort by Mikeshin, would be to investigate the contributions of victims of Stalin's purges, especially Red Army men, who came out of the Labor camps to direct the stubborn defense at places like Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad, finally turning the defense against the German imperialist invasion into an offensive that rolled Hitler's legions all the way back to Berlin. Along with this work they might also engage in a historical estimate of how costly it was to the Soviet Union in its hour of greatest peril to have an irremovable figure like Stalin at the helm.
[Q] (p. 10) Arkadii Maslow was co-leader with Ruth Fischer of the left wing in the German Communist party, which took the leadership of that party in 1924. But because he sided with Zinoviev, Stalin eventually had him expelled from the Comintern. Maslow, briefly flirted with the international Opposition; it was during this period, perhaps, that he published the above-mentioned letter of Trotsky's.
Aragon's book is hardly to be taken as an authoritative historical source; written very much in the spirit of the Khrushchevites, and incorporating the fresh revelations of the twenty-second congress, it nevertheless distorts events and, of course, the significance of the pre-1934 tendency struggles within the CPSU. The letter Aragon refers to was used by the Stalin regime as the pretext for Trotsky's expulsion from the USSR -- Aragon unquestioningly accepts Stalin's political judgment in this matter.
The civil war referred to in the letter was not a call for Oppositionists to prepare war against Stalin and company, an implication Aragon intentionally leaves open. Trotsky was discussing the danger of a Bonapartist uprising within the army, representing a restorationist current and reflecting the mood of the kulaks and neo- NEP bourgeoisie then flourishing. In the event of such a development, Trotsky said, the Opposition should be ready to fight in-civil war for defense of the workers regime and in a bloc with the Stalin apparatus. Deutscher's discussion of this letter is pertinent (see The Prophet Unarmed, pp. 458-459 ff.).
([R] (p. 10) Trotsky's statement was in essence a generalization. If in ten years, he reasoned, the Comintern could be transformed from the world party of revolution into the sponsor of popular fronts and facilitator of the victory of fascism, if such was the rapid evolution of parties in the stormy period of capitalism's death agony, then the small cadres of the Fourth International theoretically could, and should, attract millions to their side within such a short time span.
The paragraph in which Trotsky's optimistic statement appears is worth quoting:
"Ten years were necessary for the Kremlin clique in order to strangle the Bolshevik party and to transform the first Workers:' State into a sinister caricature. Ten years were necessary for the Third International in order to stamp into the mire their own program and to transform themselves into a stinking cadaver. Ten years! Only ten years! Permit me to finish with a prediction: During the next ten years the program of the Fourth International will become the guide to millions and these revolutionary millions will know how to storm heaven and earth." (Speech "On the Founding of the Fourth International," played by electrical transcription on October 28, 1938, to a New York mass meeting celebrating the founding of the world-wide organization and the tenth anniversary of the Trotskyist movement in the United States. )
The basic resolution of the Reunification Congress to which Mikeshin refers is available as a pamphlet entitled "Dynamics of World Revolution Poday" (Workers Vanguard Publishing Co., 81 Queen St. West, Toronto, 1964). Far from a "bitter admission" in a tone of defeat and despair, the concluding section of the resolution, that on the Fourth International, provides a historical and dialectical evaluation analyzing both the strong and weak sides of the evolution of the world party and their relation to the general international struggle for socialism.
The pamphlet demonstrates that programmatically, in the field of ideas, the Trotskyist positions have been and are being confirmed with increasing sharpness in the world today. The great difficulties involved in building an international party are considered in comparison with the achievements of the previous internationals -- not least being the third, "shamefully dissolved as a wartime gift from the Kremlin to Roosevelt, the political chief of Allied imperialism" (p. 327). The main (though, of course, not the only) block to the organizational growth of Trotskyism has been the Stalinist remnants. But "polycentrism" among the Stalinist regimes and parties, although it has reached the point, in the case of the Sino-Soviet dispute, of dangerous and destructively hostile measures on the state level, is steadily removing this block. It is peculiarly inappropriate for Mikeshin to point disdainfully to splits and disputes within the Trotskyist movement or among former Trotskyists in the light of the rapid splintering and differentiation in recent years among the formerly monolithic Communist
parties. On this the "Dynamics of World Revolution" says:
"The break-up of the Stalinist monolith has been accompanied by an increasing necessity for discussion among the Communist parties, and an increasing need to deal with real issues in a reasoned way instead of in Stalin's way of substituting false issues and replacing reason by epithets, slander and frame-ups. It is instructive for instance to see that one of the major points under world-wide debate today is the necessity of extending the proletarian revolution as the only realistic way to end the threat of imperialist war. Clearly the disputants are nearing what up to now has been considered exclusively the realm of Trotskyist discourse. The victory of the Soviet Union in the war, the victory of the Yugoslav and Chinese Revolutions and most recently the Cuban Revolution, as well as the destruction of the Stalin cult, cannot help but strengthen Trotskyism. As I.F.Stone, the acute American radical journalist, observed after a trip to Cuba, the revolutionists there are ‘unconscious' Trotskyists. With the coming of full consciousness among these and related currents, Trotskyism will become a powerful current" (pp. 38-39).
[S] (p. 11) Mikeshin ended his quotation from Deutscher with a judicious eye for what followed. While the collective farms have not collapsed, they are not altogether models of socialist economy -- which is something Deutscher went on to point out.
"Yet Stalin's rural policy throughout the nineteen-thirties, with its whimsical combination of massive terror and petty concessions, was dictated precisely by the fear of a collapse: only with iron bands could he hold together the collective farm. The decline and subsequent stagnation in farm output were all too real, and became the great theme st official policy twenty-five and thirty years later." (The Prophet Outcast, p. 97. ;
The dismal heritage left by Stalin in the field of agriculture remains a matter of concern to the Soviet Union to this very day.
[T] (Cp. 11) These quotations, which serve Mikeshin's purpose so admirably, are from a small group headed by one J.Posadas. The group split from the Fourth International in 1962 but has created some confusion by claiming that they are the Fourth International. The old Cuban Stalinist leader Blas Roca has frequently quoted absurdities uttered by Posadas in order to facilitate his occasional smears of the Fourth International.
As can be judged merely from the few citations in previous notes, the slogan calling for a "preventive war" by the Soviet Union is in absolute opposition to Trotsky's views. The slogan is also in absolute opposition to everything the Fourth International stands for. Mikeshin, who is obviously very well read and quite up to date on developments in the world Trotskyist movement, of course knows all this perfectly well. Here, in support of his case, he is simply bringing out a new "proof," up to traditional standards of the school he belongs to; and at the same time he is doing his bit to increase and spread the confusion created by Posadas.
{[U] (p. 12) For some obscure reason, Mikeshin fails to name the leading body of the Fourth International ~- which is the United Secretariat. By way of compensation, the Posadas group gets double mention, since it utilizes the stolen names of "International Secretariat" and "Latin American Bureau" virtually interchangeably. Mention is also given to Gerry Healy's "International Committee."
As a “historian," Mikeshin fails lamentably, although probably not unintentionally, in discussing the reunification of the world Trotskyist movement in 1963 after a split of some ten years.
On the basis of a clearly stated revolutionary Marxist program, the majority of the groups adhering to the International Secretariat participated with those adhering to the International Committee in a joint congress. An International Executive Committee was elected by the delegates, and it in turn elected the "United Secretariat," which today represents the overwhelming majority of the world Trotskyist movement.
The British group around the magazine Labour Review, the group headed by Gerry Healy, refused to join with the majority of the International Committee in participating in the Reunification Congress, choosing instead to maintain the name of "International Committee." An insular, ultraleft, sectarian formation, the Healy group remains bitterly hostile to the united world Trotskyist movement and engages in tactics like those of the Posadas group, such as mimicking publications of the Fourth International, at least in name, the better to add to the confusion.
Mikeshin and his stripe are much interested in furthering splits in the Trotsky-
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ist movement and doing what they can to disrupt it. Throughout the years they have repeatedly sent agents into the Trotskyist movement to carry out this kind of work. The assignments of these agents, in Stalin's time, included assassinations, the most prominent one being the assassination of Trotsky himself.
This background lends piquancy to Mikeshin's fulminations about the "“infiltration" of "Trotskyists" into Communist parties. What is really involved is the penetration of Trotskyist ideas. The concern of the Soviet bureaucracy and the bureaucracies of satellite Communist parties about this is perfectly understandable. Not even murder has been able to stop Trotskyist ideas from "infiltrating" into the minds of workers who join the Communist movement because they think it represents revolutionary Marxism. The Trotskyists, of course, are proud of whatever successes they may have registered in helping along this perfectly natural process. How the program of Trotskyism finally succeeded in winning despite the enormous financial and technical means employed by the Stalinist bureaucracy to "definitively" crush it again and again will make a glorious chapter in the true history of the Soviet Union that will eventually be written after the restoration of proletarian democracy in the state founded by Lenin and Trotsky.
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