REVISIONISM IN RUSSIA: TROTSKY AGAINST THE BOLSHEVIKS
APRIL 1975; Number 2.
Re-Published by Alliance on the WWW January 2000.
REVISIONISM IN RUSSIA:
TROTSKY AGAINST THE BOLSHEVIKS:
PART ONE: TO 1914
ORIGINAL FOREWORD:
Trotsky Speaks:
"Among the Russian comrades, there was not one from whom I could learn anything--The errors which I have committed . . always referred to questions that were not fundamental or strategic. . . In all conscientiousness I cannot, in the appreciation of the political situation and of its revolutionary perspectives, accuse myself of any serious errors of judgement.
Looking back, two years after the revolution, Lenin said:
At the moment when it seized the power and created the Soviet republic, Bolshevism drew to itself all the best elements in the currents of Socialist thought that were nearest to it.
Can there be even a shadow of doubt that when he spoke so deliberately of the best representatives of the currents closest to Bolshevism, Lenin had foremost in mind what is now called 'historical Trotskyism'? . . Whom else could he have had in mind?"
(L. Trotsky: "My Life"; New York; 1970; p. 184, 185, 353).
Lenin:
"Trotsky is very fond of explaining historical events . . in pompous and sonorous phrases, in a manner flattering to Trotsky".
(V.I. Lenin: "Violation Of Unity under Cover Of Cries for Unity", in: "Selected Works", Volume 4; London; 1943; p. 194).
"What a swine this Trotsky is -- Left phrases and a bloc with the Right . . ! He ought to be exposed".
(V.I. Lenin: Letter to Alexandra Kollontai, February 17th., 1917, in: "Collected Works", Volume 35; Moscow; 1966; p. 285)._
I N T R O D U C T I O N
Revisionism is the perversion of Marxism-Leninism to suit the needs of the exploiting classes, to the elimination of which Marxism-Leninism is directed.
A study of revisionism in Russia is of particular importance to Marxist-Leninists, since it was through revisionism that the socialist society constructed there came to be replaced by an essentially capitalist society.
One of the myths of Trotskyism is that in the years before 1917 Trotsky fought side by side with Lenin from revolutionary positions, and that only after Stalin became General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party in 1922 did a political rift develop between Trotsky and his supporters on the one hand and the leadership of the Party on the other.
The facts documented in this report demonstrate that this theory could hardly be further from the truth. From 1903 to 1917, year after year, Trotsky fought Lenin on almost every political issue that arose, along with other figures whom we shall meet again in connection with the revisionist struggle to prevent the construction of socialism after the revolution and to destroy it when it had been built -- such figures -as Lev Kamenev (Trotsky's brother-in-law), Grigori Zinoviev, Yuri Piatakov, Grigori Sokolnikov, Nikolai Bukharin, Aleksei Rykov, Khristian Rakovsky, Adolf Warski, David Ryazanov, Evgenii Preobrazhensky, Solomon Lozovsky and Dmitri Manuilsky.
The first part of this report covers the period up to the outbreak of the first imperialist war in 1914; the second covers the period from 1914 to the "October Revolution" of 1917. Later reports will cover the period from 1917 onwards.
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