Trotsky and counter-revolution
Trotsky and counter-revolution
It was clear in 1936 to anyone who was carefully analyzing the class struggle on the international scale that Trotsky had degenerated to the point where he was a pawn of all sorts of anti-Communist forces. Full of himself, he assigned himself a planetary and historic rôle, more and more grandiose as the clique around him became insignificant. All his energy focused on one thing: the destruction of the Bolshevik Party, thereby allowing Trotsky and the Trotskyists to seize power. In fact, knowing in detail the Bolshevik Party and its history, Trotsky became one of the world's specialists in the anti-Bolshevik struggle.
To show his idea, we present here some of the public declarations that Trotsky made before the re-opening of the Kirov affair in June 1936. They throw new light on Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov and all those who plotted with Trotsky.
`Destroy the communist movement'
Trotsky declared in 1934 that Stalin and the Communist Parties were responsible for Hitler's rise to power; to overthrow Hitler, the Communist Parties had to be destroyed `mercilessly'!
`Hitler's victory ... (arose) ... by the despicable and criminal policy of the Cominterm. ``No Stalin --- no victory for Hitler.'' '
Leon Trotsky, Are There No Limits to the Fall? A Summary of the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (18 January 1934). Writings of Leon Trotsky (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973), vol. 6, p. 210.
`(T)he Stalinist Cominterm, as well as the Stalinist diplomacy, assisted Hitler into the saddle from either side.'
Ibid. , p. 215.
`(T)he Cominterm bureaucracy, together with social-democracy, is doing everything it possibly can to transform Europe, in fact the entire world, into a fascist concentration camp.'
Leon Trotsky, Que signifie la capitulation de Rakovsky? (31 March 1934). La lutte, pp. 59--60.
`(T)he Cominterm provided one of the most important conditions for the victory of fascism. ... to overthrow Hitler it is necessary to finish with the Cominterm.'
Trotsky, Are There No Limits to the Fall?, p. 212.
`Workers, learn to despise this bureaucratic rabble!'
Ibid. , p. 216.
`(The workers must) drive the theory and practice of bureaucratic adventurism out of the ranks of the workers' movement!'
Ibid. , p. 217.
So, early in 1934, Hitler in power less than a year, Trotsky claimed that to overthrow fascism, the international Communist movement had to be destroyed! Perfect example of the `anti-fascist unity' of which Trotskyists speak so demagogically. Recall that during the same period, Trotsky claimed that the German Communist Party had refused `the policies of the united front with the Social Democracy'
Ibid. , p. 211.
and that, consequently, it was responsible, by its `outrageous sectarism', for Hitler's coming to power. In fact, it was the German Social-Democratic Party that, because of its policy of unconditional defence of the German capitalist régime, refused any anti-fascist and anti-capitalist unity. And Trotsky proposed to `mercilessly extirpate' the only force that had truly fought against Nazism!
Still in 1934, to incite the more backward masses against the Bolshevik Party, Trotsky put forward his famous thesis that the Soviet Union resembled, in numerous ways, a fascist state.
`(I)n the last period the Soviet bureaucracy has familiarized itself with many traits of victorious fascism, first of all by getting rid of the control of the party and establishing the cult of the leader.'
Trotsky, On the Eve of the Seventeenth Congress (20 January 1934). Writings, vol. 6, pp. 223-224.
Capitalist restoration is impossible
In the beginning of 1935, Trotsky's position was the following: the restoration of capitalism in the USSR is impossible; the economic and political base of the Soviet régime is safe, but the summit, i.e. the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, is the most corrupt, the most anti-democratic and the most reactionary part of society.
Hence, Trotsky took under his wing all the anti-Communist forces that were struggling `against the most corrupt part' of the Bolshevik Party. Within the Party, Trotsky systematically defended opportunists, careerists and defeatists whose actions undermined the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Here is what Trotsky wrote at the end of 1934, just after Kirov's assassination, just after Zinoviev and Kamenev were excluded from the Party and sentenced to internal exile.
`(H)ow could it come to pass that at a time like this, after all the economic successes, after the ``abolition'' --- according to official assurances --- of classes in the USSR and the ``construction'' of the socialist society, how could it come to pass that Old Bolsheviks ... could have posed for their task the restoration of capitalism
`Only utter imbeciles would be capable of thinking that capitalist relations, that is to say, the private ownership of the means of production, including the land, can be reestablished in the USSR by peaceful methods and lead to the régime of bourgeois democracy. As a matter of fact, even if it were possible in general, capitalism could not be regenerated in Russia except as the result of a savage counterrevolutionary coup d'etat that would cost ten times as many victims as the October Revolution and the civil war.'
Trotsky, The Stalinist Bureaucracy and the Kirov Assassination: A Reply to Friends in America (28 December 1934). Writings, vol. 7, p. 116.
This passage leads one to think. Trotsky led a relentless struggle from 1922 to 1927 within the leadership of the Party, claiming that it was impossible to build socialism in one country, the Soviet Union. But, this unscrupulous individual declared in 1934 that socialism was so solidly established in the Soviet Union that overthrowing it would claim tens of millions of lives!
Then, Trotsky claimed to defend the `Old Bolsheviks'. But the `Old Bolsheviks' Zinoviev and Kamenev were diametrically opposed to the `Old Bolsheviks' Stalin, Kirov, Molotov, Kaganovich and Zhdanov. The latter showed that in the bitter class struggle taking place in the Soviet Union, the opportunist positions of Zinoviev and Kamenev opened up the way for the old exploiting classes and for the new bureaucrats.
Trotsky used the age-old bourgeois argument: `he is an old revolutionary, how could he have changed sides?' Khrushchev would take up this slogan in his Secret Report.
Nikita S. Khrushchev. The Crimes of the Stalin Era: Special Report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Secret Report). The New Leader (New York), 1957, p. S32.
However, Kautsky, once hailed as the spiritual child of Marx and Engels, became, after the death of the founders of scientific socialism, the main Marxist renegade. Martov was one of the Marxist pioneers in Russia and participated in the creation of the first revolutionary organizations; nevertheless, he became a Menshevik leader and fought against socialist revolution right from October 1917. And what about the `Old Bolsheviks' Khrushchev and Mikoyan, who effectively set the Soviet Union on the path of capitalist restoration.
Trotsky claimed that counter-revolution was impossible without a bloodbath that would cost tens of million lives. He pretended that capitalism could not be retored `from inside', by the internal political degeneration of the Party, by enemy infiltration, by bureaucratization, by the social-democratization of the Party. However, Lenin insisted on this possibility.
Politically, Kamenev and Zinoviev were precursors of Khrushchev. Nevertheless, to ridicule the vigilance against opportunists such as Kamenev, Trotsky used an argument that would be taken up, almost word for word, by Khrushchev in his `Secret Report':
`(The) ``liquidation'' (of the former ruling classes) concurrently with the economic successes of the new society must necessarily lead to the mitigation and the withering away of the dictatorship'.
Trotsky, The Stalinist Bureaucracy and the Kirov Assassination, p. 117.
Just as a clandestine organization succeeded in killing the number two of the socialist régime, Trotsky declared that the dictatorship of the proletariat should logically begin to disappear. At the same time that he was pointing a dagger at the heart of the Bolsheviks who were defending the Soviet régime, Trotsky was calling for leniency toward the plotters.
In the same essay, Trotsky painted the terrorists in a favorable light. Trotsky declared that Kirov's assassination was `a new fact that must be considered of great symptomatic importance'. He explained:
`(A) terrorist act prepared beforehand and committed by order of a definite organization is ... inconceivable unless there exists a political atmosphere favorable to it. The hostility to the leaders in power must have been widespread and must have assumed the sharpest forms for a terrorist group to crystallize out within the ranks of the party youth ....
`If ... discontent is spreading within the masses of the people ... which isolated the bureaucracy as a whole; if the youth itself feels that it is spurned, oppressed and deprived of the chance for independent development, the atmosphere for terroristic groupings is created.'
Ibid. , pp. 121--122.
Trotsky, while keeping a public distance from individual terrorism, said all he could in favor of Kirov's assassination! You see, the plot and the assassination were proof of a `general atmosphere of hostility that isolated the entire bureaucracy'. Kirov's assassination proved that `the youth feels oppressed and deprived of the chance for independent development' --- this last remark was a direct encouragement for
the reactionary youth, who did in fact feel `oppressed' and `deprived of the chance for independent development'.
In support of terror and insurrection
Trotsky finished by calling for individual terrorism and armed insurrection to destroy the `Stalinist' power. Hence, as early as 1935, Trotsky acted as an open counter-revolutionary, as an irreconcilable anti-Communist. Here is a portion of a 1935 text, which he wrote one and a half years before the Great Purge of 1937.
`Stalin ... is the living incarnation of a bureaucratic Thermidor. In his hands, the terror has been and still remains an instrument designed to crush the Party, the unions and the Soviets, and to establish a personal dictatorship that only lacks the imperial crown ....
`The insane atrocities provoked by the bureaucratic collectivization methods, or the cowardly reprisals against the best elements of the proletarian vanguard, have inevitably provoked exasperation, hatred and a spirit of vengeance. This atmosphere generates a readiness among the youth to commit individual acts of terror ....
`Only the successes of the world proletariat can revive the Soviet proletariat's belief in itself. The essential condition of the revolution's victory is the unification of the international revolutionary vanguard under the flag of the Fourth International. The struggle for this banner must be conducted in the Soviet Union, with prudence but without compromise .... The proletariat that made three revolutions will lift up its head one more time. The bureaucratic absurdity will try to resist? The proletariat will find a big enough broom. And we will help it.'
Leon Trotsky, Pour sa propre sauvegarde, la bureaucratie entretient la terreur (26 September 1935). L'appareil policier du stalinisme (Paris: Union générale d'éditions, 1976), pp. 85--87.
Hence, Trotsky discretely encouraged `individual terror' and openly called for `a fourth revolution'.
In this text, Trotsky claimed that Stalin `crushed' the Bolshevik Party, the unions and the Soviets. Such an `atrocious' counter-revolution, declared Trotsky, would necessarily provoke hatred among the youth, a spirit of vengeance and terrorism. This was a thinly veiled call for the assassination of Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders. Trotsky declared that the activity of his acolytes in the Soviet Union had to follow the strictest rules of a conspiracy; it was clear that he would not directly call for individual terror. But he made it clear that such individual terror would `inevitably' be provoked by the Stalinist crimes. For conspiratorial language, difficult to be clearer.
If there were any doubt among his followers that they had to follow the armed path, Trotsky added: in Russia, we led an armed revolution in 1905, another one in February 1917 and a third one in October 1917. We are now preparing a fourth revolution against the `Stalinists'. If they should dare resist, we will treat them as we treated the Tsarists and the bourgeois in 1905 and 1917. By calling for an armed revolution in the Soviet Union, Trotsky became the spokesperson for all the defeated reactionary classes, from the kulaks, who had suffered such `senseless atrocities' at the hands of the `bureaucrats' during the collectivization, to the Tsarists, including the bourgeois and the White officers! To drag some workers into his anti-Communist enterprise, Trotsky promised them `the success of the world proletariat' that would `give back the confidence to the Soviet proletariat'.
After reading these texts, it is clear that any Soviet Communist who learned of clandestine links between Trotsky and existing members of the Party would have to immediately denounce those members to the state security. All those who maintained clandestine relations with Trotsky were part of a counter-revolutionary plot aiming to destroy the very foundations of Soviet power, notwithstanding the `leftist' arguments they used to justify their anti-Communist subversion.
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