zurück zu fremdsprachige Bücher A reply to Youtube-Trotskyite
Preface: Not long ago, I had some little discussions with a Trotskyite, who has uploaded some videos on Youtube, which are prizing Trotsky as a holy saint and Stalin and all Stalinist as evil. Denouncing me and another comrade as a Stalinist (the term ‘Stalinist’ is nothing than an unscientific paradigm from bourgeois counterrevolutionary propaganda – using this unscientific term by a so called true Leninist shows his real face) this little boy produced a special video called ‘A reply to the Youtube Stalinists’ (you can watch the video here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=icbfJGZipeY ) to show some ‘facts’ which ‘prove’ the evilness of Stalinism. But the reality is the opposite. Trotskyism has nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism and it is not just a revisionist tendency like Maoism or Titoism, where alliances in some questions are possible, like antifascist struggles. It is pure counterrevolutionary; they stand objectively on the side of the class enemy. In history Trotskyites sabotaged socialism in the Soviet Union, appealed to overthrow the bureaucratic Stalinist Regime together with fascist, and so on. But also today, the modern Trotskyism shows his counterrevolutionary face. For example many Trotskyite organisations like “S”AV and “Links”ruck in Germany appeal to overthrow the Cuban Castro regime, so they go hand in hand with the Batista-fascist and Miamian Mafia. The Troskyite of the 4 th Inernational, in Germany till the 80ies it was the GIM (Gruppe Internationaler Marxisten), never were able to establish an own organisation. Like parasites they exhaust other parties and organisations. During the 60ies ist was the Social Democratic Party of Germany. During the 80ies they entered the Stalinist KPD/ML and united with them to VSP. Today there exist just some small parts of KPD/ML. The VSP has no meaning in workers movement today, so they destroyed a part of wokres movement in Germany! In the middle of the 90’s Linksruck started a huge campaign to enter in the SPD to build a new workers party in Frankfort (the SPD is the Social Democratic Party of Germany). Today Linksruck and SAV – both Trotskyite organisations hate each other – fight in Berlin for entering in the WASG (WASG is a left-wing social democratic party which has split from the SPD some years ago). This and the other x-Trotskyite organisations in Germany (aside of SAV and Linksruck there are many other Trotskyite organisations like PSG, Gruppe Arbeitermacht, RSB, GIS, IBT and so on) are the main reason for splitting and disorientating the workers movement. In my reply I will prove that Trotskyism is counterrevolutionary and a real Marxist-Leninist fights against those phoney-leftists. This is no personally reply to that Trotskyite who made the video. It is more a general writing which deals with many anticommunist prejudgements and should be a help for Marxist-Leninists against those propaganda. Many parts of the text are copied from works of Ludo Martesn, Bill Bland or other ‘Stalinist’. 1. The relationship between Trotsky and Lenin and Lenin’s “testament” 2. Trotsky’s and Stalin’s role during the October Revolution and the Civil War 3. From "February Revolution" to October Revolution 4. Trotsky, Stalin and the Red Army - Civil War in the USSR 7.Collectivization and the `Ukrainian Holocaust 11. THE FIGHT AGAINST BUREAUCRACY IN THE SOVIET UNION. 12. Trotsky's rôle on the eve of the Second World War Excursion 1: The Deformed Worker’s State Excursion 3: BUREAUCRATIC STATE COLLECTIVISM 1. The relationship between Trotsky and Lenin and Lenin’s “testament”
THE CHARGE: That in 1922 Lenin Advised the Russian Communist Party to Remove Stalin from the Top Post of General Secretary. "In December 1922 in a letter to the Party Congress Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin -- Ed.) wrote . . a political document of tremendous importance,known in the Party history as Lenin’s Testament . Vladimir Ilyich said: "I propose that the comrades consider the method by which Stalin would be removed from this position (of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union). " N.S. Khrushchev: Secret Speech to 20th CongressCPSU, in: Russian Institute, Columbia Univ (Ed.):'The Anti-Stalin Campaign and International Communism: A Selection of Documents'; New York; 1956; p. 6, 7. INTRODUCTION Khrushchev's charge -- as above -- is inaccurate in only one detail. Lenin did not write the document known as 'Lenin's Testament', it was in factdictated by Lenin to one of his secretaries, Lidya Fotieva. However its authenticity has never been challenged. The passage concerned in Lenin's letter reads: "Stalin is too rude , and this defect becomes intolerable in a Secretary General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post". V.I. Lenin: Letter to the Congress, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 36; Moscow: 1966; p. 596. However, there are some puzzling features about Lenin's action in dictating this and some other passages in the letter. LENIN'S ASSESSMENT OF STALIN One puzzling feature about the document known as 'Lenin's Testament' is thatthroughout Lenin's political life until late 1922, his assessment of Stalin was extremely high. For example, as long ago as February 1913 Lenin was describing Stalin, in a letter to the writer Maksim Gorky, as ‘a marvellous Georgian’: "We have a marvellous Georgian who has sat down to write a big article for ‘Prosveshcheniye’, for which he has collected all the Austrian and other materials". V.I. Lenin: Letter to Maksim Gorky, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 35; Moscow; 1966; p. 84. A little later, in December 1913 Lenin was characterising Stalin as the Party's leading Marxist analyst of the national question: "The situation and the fundamentals of a national programme for Social-Democracy have recently been dealt with in Marxist theoretical literature (the most prominent place being taken by Stalin's article)". V.I. Lenin: 'The National Programme of the RSDLP', in: 'Coll Works', Vol 19; Moscow; 1963; p.539.. And as late as March 1922, at the 11th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, Lenin was defending Stalin against criticism from Yevgeny Preobrazhensky over the fact that Stalin held the posts of both People's Commissar of Nationalities and People's Commissar of State Control: "The ' Turkestan, Caucasian and other questions . . are all political questions! They have to be settled. These are questions that have engaged the attention of European states for hundreds of years. . We are settling them; and we need a man to whom the representatives of any of these nations can go and discuss their difficulties in all detail. Where can we find such a man? I don't think Comrade Preobrazhensky could suggest any better candidate than Comrade Stalin... The same thing applies to the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection. This is a vast business; but to be able to handle investigations we must have at the head of it a man who enjoys high prestige, otherwise we shall become submerged in and overwhelmed by petty intrigue". V.I. Lenin: 'The National Programme of the RSDLP', in: 'Coll Works', Vol 19; Moscow; 1963; p.539. Indeed, it was on Lenin's proposal that in April 1922, after the Congress, the Central Committee elected Stalin to the highest post in the Party - that of General Secretary: "On Lenin's motion, the Plenum of the Central Committee, on April 3 1922, elected Stalin . . . General Secretary of the Central Committee". G. F. Aleksandrov et al (Eds.): 'Joseph Stalin: A Short Biography'; Moscow; 1947; p. 74-75. "After the congress, the Central Committee, on Lenin's proposal, elected Stalin . . as General Secretary of the Central Committee".Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute: 'Lenin'; London; 1943; p. 183 "A new Central Committee.. voted to establish the post of General Secretary to run the Secretariat and named Stalin to this office. It is highly probable that Lenin initiated this decision". R. H. McNeal: 'Stalin: Man and Ruler' (hereafter listed as 'R. H.McNeal:1988'); Basingstoke;1988; p. 67. "It is.. fanciful for some Soviet historians, official and unofficial, to suggest that Stalin was not Lenin's personal choice for the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee to which he was elevated in April 1922". A. B. Ulam: 'Stalin: The Man and his Era'; London; 1989; p. 205. "The obvious and indeed the only man with the knowledge, efficiency and authority for this key post (of General Secretary - Ed.) was Stalin. There can be no doubt that Lenin supported the nomination, which he probably initiated".I. Grey: 'Stalin: Man of History'; London; 1979; p. 159. Clearly, something occurred in late 1922 to cause Lenin radically to alter the opinion of Stalin he had held until that date. LENIN'S ASSESSMENT OF TROTSKY There is a similar puzzling feature about references to Trotsky in the document known as 'Lenin's Testament'. In it Lenin says: "Comrade Trotsky . . is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present CC".V.I. Lenin: Letter to the Congress, in: 'Collected Works;, Volume 36; Moscow; 1966; p. 595. It is, indeed, an important feature of Trotskyist mythology that during the period of Lenin's leadership of the Russian Communist Party Trotsky's relations with Lenin and the Party were relations or 'mutual confidence', and that Trotsky's conflict with the Party only began following Stalin's accession to the Party leadership. This picture, however, is quite false. In brief the following major policy disagreements and violent differences between Lenin and Trotsky are traced by dates : In 1903: At the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic labour Party in July-August. 1903, Trotsky's sympathetic biographer, Isaac Deutscher, records that "Trotsky was one of Lenin's most vocal opponents. He charged Lenin with the attempt to build up a closed organisation of conspiracy not a party of the working class.. . . Lenin . . mildly and persuasively appealed to Trotsky. All was in vain. Trotsky was stiffening in hostility". Deutscher: 'Prophet Armed: Trotsky: 1879-1921' (hereafter : 'I. Deutscher:1989 (1)'; Oxford; 1989; p.80-81. Shortly after the Congress, Trotsky wrote the 'Report of the Siberian Delegation' (of which he was a member). In this report he charged that Lenin 'resembles Maximilian Robespierre', although only as ‘a vulgar farce resembles historic tragedy’". L.D. Trotsky: 'Vtoroi Syezd RSDRP (Otchet Sibirskoi Delegatsy)'; Geneva; 1903; p. 33. Deutscher comments: "Once he had made up his mind against Lenin, he did not mince his words. He attacked with all his intensity of feeling and with all the sweep to his invective". L.D. Trotsky: 'Vtoroi Syezd RSDRP (Otchet Sibirskoi Delegatsy)'; Geneva; 1903; p. 33.. In 1904: In August 1904 Trotsky published his pamphlet 'Our Political Tasks', in which he strongly attacked as 'Jacobinism' Lenin's concept that a disciplined party was essential to lead the working people to carry through a socialist revolution and supported the idea of a 'workers' party' modelled on the lines of the social-democratic parties of Western Europe: "Lenin's methods lead to this: the party organisation at first substitutes itself for the party as a whole; then the Central Committee substitutes itself for the organisation; and finally a single 'dictator' substitutes himself for the Central Committee. .... Is it so difficult to see that any serious group . . when it is confronted by the dilemma whether it should, from a sense of discipline, silently efface itself, or, regardless of discipline struggle for survival - will undoubtedly choose the latter course . and say: perish that 'discipline' which suppresses the vital interests of the movement. This evil-minded and morally repugnant suspicion of Lenin, this shallow caricature of the tragic intolerance of Jacobinism. . must be liquidated at the present time at all costs, otherwise the party is threatened by complete political, moral and theoretical decay". L. D. Trotsky: 'Nos Taches Politiques'; Paris; 1970; p. 192. Trotsky's biographer Deutscher comments on this book: "Hardly any Menshevik* writer attacked Lenin with so much personal venom. 'Hideous', 'dissolute', 'demagogical', 'slovenly attorney', 'malicious and morally repulsive', these were the epithets which Trotsky threw at the man who had so recently held out to him the hand of fellowship, who had brought him to Western Europe, who had promoted him" .I. Deutscher: 1989 (1): p. 93. However, Lenin was equally scathing about Trotsky. In October 1904 Lenin wrote: "A new pamphlet by Trotsky came out recently. . . The pamphlet is a pack of brazen lies". V. I. Lenin: Letter to Yelena Stasova and Others, in: 'Collected Works'; Volume 43; Moscow; 1969; p. 129. In 1909: By August 1909 Lenin was writing: "Trotsky behaves like a despicable careerist and factionalist. He pays lip-service to the Party and behaves worse than any other of the factionalists". V. I. Lenin: Letter to Grigory Zinoviev, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 34; Moscow; 1966; p. 399-400. In 1910: In March-June 1910 Lenin was writing: "Trotsky expressed the full spirit of the worst kind of conciliation, 'conciliation' in inverted commas . . . which actually renders the most faithful service to the liquidators** and Otzovists**. . This position of . . Trotsky is wrong". V. I. Lenin: 'Notes of a Publicist', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 16; Moscow; 1963; p. 211, 251. In December 1910, Lenin was no kinder to Trotsky, whose resolution said Lenin : "Expresses the very aim of the 'Golos'** group - to destroy the central bodies . . . and with them the Party as an organisation". V.I. Lenin: 'The State Volume 17; Moscow; 1968; of Affairs in the Party', in: 'Collected Works', p. 23. "Trotsky's call for ‘friendly’ collaboration by the Party with the 'Gobs' and 'Vpered' is disgusting hypocricisy and phrase-mongering. Trotsky groups all the enemies of Marxism. .. Trotsky unites all to whom ideological decay is dear, all who are not concerned with the defence of Marxism. struggle against the splitting tactics and the unprincipled adventurism of Trotsky!" V. I. Lenin: ‘To Russian Collegium of the CC of RSDLP, in: 'Works', Vol 17; Mos; 1963; p. 20, 21, 22 . And at the end of 1910 Lenin was speaking of : "The resonant but empty phrases of which our Trotsky is a master...Trotsky distorts Bolshevism, because he has never been able to form any definite views on the role of the proletariat in the Russian bourgeois revolution. That Trotsky's venture is an attempt to create a faction is obvious to all. Trotsky . . .represents only his own personal vacillations and nothing more. In 1903 he was a Menshevik; he abandoned Menshevism in 1904, returned to the Mensheviks in 1905 and merely flaunted ultra-revolutionary phrases. One day Trotsky plagiarises from the ideological stock-in-trade of one faction; the next day he plagiarises that of another, and therefore declares himself to be standing above both factions. I am obliged to declare that Trotsky represents only his own faction and enjoys a certain amount of confidence exclusively among the Otzovists and the liquidators." V.I.Lenin: 'Historical Meaning of Inner-Party Struggle in Russia', in: 'Works', Vol 16; p. 375, 380, 389, 391. In 1911: In January 1911 Lenin was referring to Trotsky as : "Judas Trotsky".V. I . Lenin: 'Judas Trotsky's Blush of Shame', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 17; Moscow; 1968; p. 45. In September 1911 Lenin declared: In October 1911: "Trotsky expressed conciliationism ** more consistently than anyone else. He was probably the only one who attempted to give the trend a theoretical foundation. Ever since the spring of 1910 Trotsky has been deceiving the workers in a most unprincipled and shameless manner by assuring them that the obstacles to unity were principally (if not wholly) of an organisational nature. and in December 1911: "It is impossible to argue with Trotsky on the merits of the issue because Trotsky holds no views whatever. . In his case the thing to do is to expose him as a diplomat of the smallest calibre".V. I. Lenin: 'Trotsky's Diplomacy and a Certain Party Platform', in:'Works', Vol 17; 1968; p. 362. In 1912: The Prague conference in January 1912 proclaimed the Bolsheviks alone to be the Party. In his paper 'Pravda'** : Lenin wrote in July 1912 to the editor of the paper: "I advise you to reply to Trotsky through the post: 'To Trotsky'. ( Vienna): We shall not reply to disruptive and slanderous letters. Trotsky's dirty campaign against 'Pravda' is one mass of lies and slander". V.I. Lenin: Letter to the Editor of 'Pravda', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 35; Moscow; 1966; p. 41. In August 1912 Trotsky's group got together with the Mensheviks, Jewish Bund** and others to form an anti-Bolshevik coalition known as the 'August Bloc'. Trotsky's biographer Deutscher comments: "Trotsky was that bloc's chief mouthpiece, indefatigable at castigating Lenin's 'disruptive work". I. Deutscher: 1989 (1); p. 200. In November 1912 Lenin was writing: "Look at the platform of the liquidators. Its liquidationist essence is artfully concealed by Trotsky's revolutionary phrases". V.I. Lenin: 'The Platform of the Reformists and the Platform of Revolutionary Social-Democrats', in:'Works', Vol 18, Moscow; 1968; p. 380. In 1914: Between February and May 1914 Lenin wrote: "Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any important question of Marxism.. At the present moment he is in the company of the Bundists and the liquidators". V.I. Lenin: 'The Right of Nations to Self-Determination', in: ‘Works’, Vol 20; Moscow; 1964; p. 447-48. In May, 1914: "Trotsky is fond of high-sounding and empty phrases. We were right in calling Trotsky a representative of the 'worst remnants of factionalism'. Trotsky. . possesses no ideological and political definiteness. Under cover of 'non-factionalism' Trotsky is championing the interest of a group abroad which particularly lacks definite principles and has no basis in the working-class movement in Russia. There is much glitter and sound in Trotsky's phrases, but they are meaningless. Joking is the only way of retorting mildly to Trotsky's insufferable phrase-mongering. Trotsky is very fond of using with the learned air of the expert pompous and high-sounding phrases, to explain historical phenomena in a way that is flattering to Trotsky. . Trotsky is trying to disrupt the movement and cause a split.. Trotsky avoids facts and concrete references .. because they relentlessly refute all his angry outcries and pompous phrases. At the end of 1903 Trotsky was an ardent Menshevik. . . In 1904's he deserted the Mensheviks and occupied a vacillating position, now proclaiming his absurdly Left 'permanent revolution' theory. In the period of disintegration. . he again went to the right, and in August 1912 he entered into a bloc with the liquidators. He has now deserted them again, although in substance he reiterates their shoddy ideas".V.I. Lenin: 'Disruption of Unity under Cover of Outcries for Unity', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 20; Moscow; 1964; p. 329, 331, 332, 333-334, 345, 346-7. In 1915: In July 1915 Lenin was declaring: "Trotsky... as always entirely disagrees with the social-chauvinists** in principle, but agrees as always, entirely disagrees with the social-in principle, but agrees with them ". V.I. Lenin: 'The State of Affairs in Russian Social-Democracy', in: 'Works', Vol 21; Moscow ; 1964; p. 284. In the same month he was referring to "high-flown phraseology with which Trotsky always justifies opportunism. The phrase-banding Trotsky has completely lost his bearings on a simple issue". V. T. Lenin: 'The Defeat of One's Own Government in the Imperialist War', In.'Works', Vol 15; Moscow ; 1964; p. 275 And Lenin was denouncing Trotsky's support for "the 'neither-victory-nor-defeat' slogan. "Whoever is in favour of the slogan of 'neither victory nor defeat' is consciously or unconsciously a chauvinist; he is an enemy to proletarian policy… a partisan of the existing governments, of the present ruling classes. Those who stand for the 'neither-victory-nor-defeat' slogan are in fact on the side of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists, for they do not believe in the possibility of international revolutionary action by the working class against their own governments". V.I. Lenin: 'The Defeat of One's Own Government in the Imperialist War', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 21; Moscow; 1964; p. 278, 279, 280. Between July and August 1915 we find Lenin saying that : "Phrase-lovers . . like Trotsky defend - in opposition to us - the peace slogan". V.I. Lenin: 'The "Peace" Slogan Appraised', Volume 21; ‘Works’; Moscow; 1964; p. 288. and Lenin was asserting that : "In Russia, Trotsky. . . defends unity with the opportunist and chauvinist 'Nashe Zarya'** group". V.I. Lenin: 'Socialism and War', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 29; Moscow; 1964; p. 312. In November 1915 Lenin was saying: "Trotsky . . is repeating his 'original' 1905 theory and refuses to give some thought to the reason why, in the course of ten years, life has been by-passing this splendid theory. From the Bolsheviks Trotsky's original theory has borrowed their call for a decisive proletarian revolutionary struggle and the conquest of political power by the proletariat, while from the Mensheviks it has borrowed 'repudiation of the peasantry's role. .Trotsky is, in fact, helping the liberal-labour politicians in Russia who by 'repudiation' of the role of the peasantry understand a refusal to raise up the peasants".V.I. Lenin: 'On the Two Lines in the Revolution', in ''Works', Vol21; Moscow; 1964; p. 419, 420. In 1916: In March 1916 Lenin wrote to Henriette Roland-Holst*: "What are our differences with Trotsky? . In brief - he is a Kautskyite. V.I. Lenin: Letter to Henriette Roland-Holst, in: 'Collected 'Works', Volume 43; Moscow 1969;p. 515-16. and in the same month was declaring: "Trotsky . . is body and soul for self-determination, but in his case it is an empty phrase".V.I. Lenin: 'The Peace Programme', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 22; Moscow; 1964; p. 167. In June 1916 Lenin declared: "No matter what the subjective 'good' intentions of Trotsky and Martov may be, their evasiveness objectively supports Russian social-imperialism".V.I. Lenin: 'Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up in:'Works', Volume 22; Moscow; 1964; p. 360 In 1917: In February 1917 Lenin was writing respectively to Aleksandra Kollontai and Inessa Armand: "What a swine this Trotsky is - Left phrases and a bloc with the Right . !!. He ought to be exposed". V.I.Lenin: ‘Letter to Aleksandra Kollontai, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 35; Moscow; 1966; p. 285. "Trotsky arrived, and this scoundrel at once ganged up with the Right wing of 'Novy Mir'**. . . That's Trotsky for you!! Always true to himself ‘ twists, swindles, poses as a Left, helps the Right". V.I Lenin: Letter to Inessa Armand, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 35; Moscow; 1966; p. 288. In April 1917 Lenin reported to the Petrograd City Conference of the RSDLP: "Trotskyism: 'No Tsar but a workers' government'. This is wrong". V.I. Lenin: Concluding Remarks, Debate on the Present Situation, Petrograd City Conference of RSDLP, in: 'Collected Works' Volume 24; Moscow; 1966; p. 150. In May 1917 the Bolsheviks met the 'Inter-Borough Organisation', of which Trotsky was a member, to consider the possibility of a merger. At the meeting Trotsky declared: "I cannot call myself a Bolshevik. We cannot be asked to recognise Bolshevism. The old factional name is undesirable" L.D. Trotsky: Speech at the Mezhraiontsji Conference, in: Institute of Marxism-Leninism: 'Against Trotskyism: Struggle of Lenin & CPSU against Trotskyism: Collection of Documents'; Mos; 1972; p. l22.. On 15 December 1917, the new revolutionary government of Soviet Russia signed an armistice with Germany, and on 22 December negotiations for a peace treaty began at Brest-Litovsk. The plan of Trotsky, who led the Russia Soviet delegation, was as follows: "We interrupt the war and do not sign the peace - we demobilise the army". I. Deutscher: 1989 (1); p. 175. Lenin was strongly opposed to Trotsky's plan: "Lenin opposed . . . my plan discreetly and calmly". L.D. Trotsky: 'Lenin'; New York; 1925; p. 135. And so : "Trotsky made a private arrangement with Lenin. . . What would happen, Lenin anxiously asked, if they (the (;Germans - Ed.) chose to resume hostilities? Lenin was rightly convinced that this was bound to happen. Trotsky treated this danger lightly. but he agreed to sign the peace if Lenin's fears proved justified". I.Deutscher: 1989 (1); p. 375. On 9 February Trotsky announced to the peace conference that "While Russia was desisting from signing a formal Peace Treaty, it declared the state of war ended with Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria simultaneously, giving orders for the complete demobilisation of Russian forces on all fronts". I.Deutscher: 1989 (1); p. 375. Trotsky's delegation then walked out of the peace conference and returned to Petrograd. On l5 February 1918, as Lenin had foreseen, Germany resumed military operations against Soviet Russia. On 18 February 1918, the Central Committee instructed its delegation to sign a peace treaty immediately. On 23 February 1918 the German government presented new peace terms, significantly harsher than the earlier ones. The Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was formally signed on 23 March 1918. Lenin commented at the 7th Congress of the RCP in March 1918: "'That I predicted, has come to pass: instead of the Brest peace we have a much more humiliating peace, and the blame for this rests upon those who refused to accept the former peace". V.I. Lenin: Political Report of the Central Committee, Extraordinary 7th Congress of the RCP, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 27; Moscow; 1965; p.102. As the Foreword to 'Against Trotskyism", issued by the Soviet revisionists in power in 1972, correctly expresses it: "On the question of the Brest Peace Treaty, Trotsky maintained an anti-Leninist stand, criminally exposing the newly emerged Soviet Republic to mortal danger. As head of the Soviet delegation to the peace talks, he ignored the instructions of the Party Central Committee and the Soviet Government. At a crucial moment of the talks he declared that the Soviet Republic was unilaterally withdrawing from the war, announced that the Russian Army was being demobilised, and left Brest-Litovsk. The German Army mounted an offensive and occupied considerable territory. As a result, much harsher peace terms were put forward by the German Government". V.I. Lenin: Political Report of the Central Committee, Extraordinary 7th Congress of the RCP, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 27; Moscow; 1965; p.102. And 'The 'Great Soviet Encyclopedia', issued by the Soviet revisionists 1974, comments similarly: "No less adventuristic and demagogic was the position of L. D.Trotsky (People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR at the time) who proposed to declare the war terminated and to demobilise the army but not to sign the treaty. . As Trotsky, the head of the Soviet delegation was leaving for Brest, it was agreed between him and Lenin, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, that the negotiations were to be prolonged by all possible means until the presentation of an ultimatum, after which the peace treaty should be signed immediately. On January 28 Trotsky presented the adventuristic declaration that Soviet Russia would terminate the war and demobilise its army but not sign the peace. Trotsky refused further negotiations, and the Soviet delegation left Brest-Litovsk". Great Soviet Encyclopedia', Volume 4; New York; 1974; p. 66, 67. In 1920: In December 1920 Lenin wrote: "I have had to enumerate my 'differences' with Comrade Trotsky because, with such a broad theme as 'The Role and Tasks of the Trade Unions’, he has, I am quite sure, made a number of mistakes bearing on the very essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat". V.I. Lenin: 'The Trade Unions, the Present Situation and Trotsky's Mistakes', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 32; Moscow; 1965; p. 22. In 1921: In January 1921 Lenin severely criticised Trotsky for dereliction of Party duty and factionalism: "The Central Committee sets up a trade union commission and elects Comrade Trotsky to it. Trotsky refuses to work on the commission, magnifying by this stepalone his original mistake, which subsequently leads to factionalism, becomes magnified and later leads to factionalism"'. V.I. Lenin: 'The Party Crisis', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 32; Moscow; 1965; p. 45. and in the same month, Lenin criticised him for his proposal to 'militarise' the trade unions: "Comrade Trotsky's theses have landed him in a mess. That part of them which is correct is not new, and what is more, turns against him. That which is new is all wrong. .Comrade Trotsky's political mistakes distract our party’s attention from economic tasks. .All his theses, his entire pamphlet, are so wrong". V.I. Lenin: 'Once Again on the Trade Unions, the Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin=, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 32; Moscow; 1965; p. 74, 85, 90. Even as Late As In 1922: There were serious differences between Lenin and Trotsky. Trotsky's biographer Deutscher describes a further rift between Lenin and Trotsky in 1922 over Trotsky's refusal to accept the post of Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars: "In April 1922 an incident occurred which did much to cloud relations between Lenin and Trotsky. On 11 April . . . categorically and somewhat haughtily Trotsky declined to fill this office. The refusal and the manner in which it was made annoyed Lenin. Throughout the summer of 1922 . . the dissension between Lenin and Trotsky persisted. On 11 September . . Trotsky once again refused the post. . On 14 September the Politburo met and Stalin put before it a resolution which was highly damaging to Trotsky; it censured him in effect for dereliction of duty".. The circumstances of the case indicated that Lenin must have prompted Stalin to frame this resolution or that Stalin at least had his consent for it". I.Deutscher: 'The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky: 1921-1929 (hereafter listed as: 'I. Deutscher: 1989 (2)); Oxford; 1989; p. 35, 65-66. Clearly, something occurred in late 1922 to cause Lenin radically to alter the opinion of Trotsky he had held until that date. THE 'GEORGIAN DEVIATION' In July 1921 Stalin, speaking to the Tiflis Organisation of the Communist Party of Georgia, referred to the rise of nationalism in Transcaucasia: "Nationalism Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijanian - has shockingly increased in the Transcaucasian republics during the past few years and is an obstacle to joint effort. Evidently, the three years of existence of nationalist governments in Georgia (Mensheviks), in Azerbaijan (Mussavatists**) and in Armenia (Dashnaks**) have left their mark". J.V. Stalin: 'ImmediateTasks of Communism in Georgia & Transcaucasia', 'Works', Vol 5; 1953; p. 97 For this reason. Lenin proposed that Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia should, as a temporary measure, be united in a Federation. On 28 November 1921 Lenin wrote to Stalin stating that : "A federation of the Transcaucasian republics is absolutely correct in principle, and should be implemented without fail". V.I. Lenin: Memo to J. V. Stalin, 28 November 1921, in: 'Works', Vol 33; Moscow; 1973; p. 127. "This unification (in the Transcaucasian Federation - Ed.) was proposed by Lenin".Great Soviet Encyclopedia', Volume 9; New York; 1975; p. 495. On 29 November 1921: "That proposal . . . was adopted by the Political Bureau unanimously". J.V. Stalin: Reply to Discussion on CC’s Organizational Report, 12th Congress RCP,Vol 5; 1953; p.234. And it was confirmed by three subsequent decisions of the Central Committee: "The Central Committee has on three occasions affirmed the necessity of preserving the Transcaucasian Federation". J.V. Stalin: ibid.; p. 257. As a result : "The Transcaucasian Federation - the Federative Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of Transcaucasia - was founded on March 12, 1922.. . . In December 1922, the Federative Union was transformed into the Transcaucasian Federative Soviet Republic. The Transcaucasian Federation existed until 1936. In conformity with the Constitution of the USSR adopted in 1936, the Armenian, Azerbaijanian and Georgian Soviet Socialist Republics entered the USSR as Union Republics". Note to: J. V. Stalin: 'Works', Volume 5; Moscow; 1953; p. 421. Stalin reminded the 12th Congress of the RCP in April 1923 why the formation of the Transcaucasian Federation had been considered essential: "In a place like Transcaucasia . . it is impossible to dispense with a special organ of national peace. As you know, Transcaucasia is a country where there were Tatar-Armenian massacres while still under the tsar, and war under the Mussavatists, Dashnaks and Mensheviks. To put a stop to that strife an organ of national peace was needed, i.e., a supreme authority. . . And so . . . a federation of republics, and a year after that.. a Union of Republics was formed". Stalin:Reply to Discussion on CC's Organizational Report, 12th Congress of RCP, WorksVol 5; p. 232 "From very early times Transcaucasia has been an arena of massacre and strife and, under the Mensheviks and Dashnaks, it was an arena of war. That is why the Central Committee has on three occasions affirmed the necessity of preserving the Transcaucasian Federation as an organ of national peace. . The point is that the bonds of the Transcaucasian Federation deprive Georgia of that somewhat privileged position which she could assume by virtue of her geographical position. . Georgia has her own port -Batum - through which goods must flow from the West; Georgia has a railway junction like Tiflis, which the Armenians cannot avoid, nor can Azerbaijan avoid it. . If Georgia were a separate republic, if she were not part of the Transcaucasian Federation, she could present something in the nature of a little ultimatum both to Armenia, which cannot do without Tiflis, and to Azerbaijan, which cannot do without Batum. There is yet another reason. Tiflis is the capital of Georgia, but the Georgians there are not more than 30% of the population, the Armenians not less than 35%, and then come all the other nationalities. . If Georgia were a separate republic, the population could be reshifted somewhat.. . Was not a well-known decree adopted in Georgia to reshift the population so as to reduce the number of Armenians in Tiflis from year to year, making them fewer than the Georgians, and thus convert Tiflis into a real Georgian capital?". J.V. Stalin: Report on National Factors in Party and State Affairs, 12th Congress 'of RCP, in: 'Works', Volume 5; Moscow; 1953; p. 256, 257, 258-59. However, both before and after its formation, the existence of the Transcaucasian Federation was opposed by a group of Georgian nationalists within the Communist Party of Georgia, headed by Polikarp ('Budu') Mdivani and Filipp Makharadze* and known as the 'Georgian deviators': "The struggle which the group of Georgian Communists headed by Mdivani is waging against the Central Committee's directive concerning federation dates back to that time (the end of 1921 - Ed.)". J.V. Stalin: Reply to the Discussion on the Central Committee's Organisational Report, 12th Congress of RCP, in:'Works', Volume 5; Moscow; 1953; p. 234. "The national-deviationist opposition in the ranks of the Communist Party of Georgia arose and took shape in 1921. During the entire period of 1921-24 the Georgian national-deviationists carried on a fierce struggle against the Leninist and Stalinist national policy of our Party". L.P.Beria:'On the History of Bolshevik Organisations in Transcaucasia'; London; 1939; p. 167. later, many of the 'Georgian deviators' joined the Trotskyist opposition: "In 1924 a considerable number of the national-deyiationists joined what was then the Trotskyite anti-Party opposition". L. P. Beria: ibid.; p. 167. Stalin pointed out to the 12th Congress that fear of Great Russian chauvinism was obviously not the cause of the 'Georgian deviation', since the 'Georgian deviators’ supported the entry of Georgia into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as an independent state: "There has been and still is a group of Georgian Communists who do not object to Georgia uniting with the Union of Republics, but who do object to this union being effected through the Transcaucasian Federation. These statements indicate that on the national question the attitude towards the Russians is of secondary importance in Georgia, for these comrades, the deviators (that is what they are called), have no objection to Georgia joining the Union directly; that is, they do not fear Great-Russian chauvinism, believing that its roots have been cut in one way or another or at any rate, that it is not of decisive importance". J. V. Stalin: Report on National Factors in Party and State Affairs, 12th Congress of RCP, in: 'Works', Volume S; Moscow; 1953; p. 257. He assessed the cause of the 'Georgian deviation’ as the desire of the Georgian nationalists not to lose the geographical advantages which an independent Georgia would possess, advantages of which they wished to take advantage: "It is these geographical advantages that the Georgian deviators do not lose.. that are causing our deviators to oppose federation. They want to leave the federation, and this will create legal opportunities for independently performing certain operations which will result in the advantageous position enjoyed by the Georgians being fully utilised against Azerbaijan and Armenia. And all this would create a privileged position for the Georgians in Transcaucasia. Therein lies the whole danger. The Georgian deviators . . . are pushing us on to the path of granting them certain privileges at the expense of the Armenian and Azerbaijanian Republics. But that is a path we cannot take, for it means certain death to . . Soviet power in the Caucasus". J. V. Stalin: Report on National Factors in Party and State Affairs, 12th Congress of RCP, in: 'Works', Volume 5; Moscow; 1953; p. 258, 261. The 'Georgian deviators', while dominating the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, formed only a small minority within the Communist Party of Georgia as a whole: "The Mdivani group has no influence in its own Georgian Communist Party. . The Party has held two congresses: the first congress was held at the beginning of 1922, and the second was held at the beginning of 1923. At both congresses the Mdivani group, and its idea of rejecting federation, was emphatically opposed by its own Party. At the first congress, I think, out of a total of 122 votes he obtained somewhere about 18; and at the second congress, out of a total of 144 votes he obtained about 20". J. V. Stalin: Reply to the Discussion on the Central Committee's Organisational Report, 12th Congress of PCP, in: 'Works', Volume 5; Moscow; 1953; p. 234-35. Nevertheless, even after the Transcaucasian Federation had been formed against the objections of the 'Georgian deviators', the latter did all they could to sabotage the functioning of the federation: "Mdivani and his supporters, constituting a majority on the Georgian Communist Party Central Committee, virtually slowed down the economic and political union of the Transcaucasian Republics and were intent, in essence, on keeping Georgia isolated". Note to: V. I. Lenin: 'Collected Works', Volume 45; Moscow; 1970; p. 750. "The Mdivani group, now joined by Makharadze and his followers, protested the infringement on Georgian sovereignty and did everything in its power to prevent implementation of the federal union's directives". P. G. Suny: >The Making of the Georgian Nation=; London; 1989; p. 215. "The Georgians sabotaged as best they could the measures taken to bring about the economic integration of the three republics. They installed military guards on the frontiers of the Georgian republic, demanded residence permits, etc." M. Lewin: 'Lenin's Last Struggle'; London; 1969; p. 45. At the 12th Congress of the RCP in April 1923 Grigory ('Sergo') Ordzhonikidze*, First Secretary of the Transcaucasian Territorial Party Committe':, 'accused the 'deviationists', Mdivani and Makharadze, of a series of improper activities - refusing to take down customs barriers, selling a Soviet ship to foreigners, negotiating with the Ottoman Bank, and closing the frontiers of Georgia to hungry refugees from the North Caucasus and the Volga region... More important, he condemned the Georgian government's failure to implement a radical land reform and eliminate once and for all the noble landlords". R. G. Suny: op. cit.; p. 218. The policy of maintaining the Transcaucasian Federation was continued as preparations were made to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. On 6 October 1922 the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party decided: "To have Transcaucasia enter the union as one unit". R. G. Suny: op. cit.; p. 216. However: "the Georgian leadership in Tiflis insisted on Georgia's separate entry.. . From Tiflis the Georgian leaders wired Moscow in protest and heatedly criticised the authoritarianism of the Transcaucasian Territory Party Committee".R. G. Suny: op. cit.; p. 216. "The Georgians. . protested to Moscow, demanding the disbandment of the projected federation. To this request Stalin replied on October 16 in the name of the Central Committee, stating that it was unanimously rejected". R. Pipes: 'The Formation of the Soviet Union'; Cambridge (USA); 1964; p.274 A group of the 'Georgian deviators', headed by Kate Tsintsadze and Sergey Kavtaradze then telegraphed a protest, making a strong attack on Ordzhonikidze, directly to Lenin, who rebuked them sharply and defended Ordzhonikidze in a telegram of reply dated 21 October 1922: "I am surprised at the indecent tone of the direct wire message sent by Tsintsadze and others. . . I was sure that all the diffferences had been ironed out by the CC Plenum resolutions with my indirect participation and with the direct participation of Midivani. That is why I resolutely condemn the abuse against Ordzhonikidze and insist that your conflict should be referred in a decent and loyal tone for settlement by the RCP CC Secretariat". V. I. Lenin: Telegram to K.M.Tsintsadze and S. I.Kavtarddze, 21 October 1922, in: 'Collected Works', On receiving Lenin's rebuke, the bloc of 'Georgian deviators', who formed nine of the eleven members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, resigned in protest: "Faced with Lenin's fury and isolated from the central leaders, the Georgian Central Committee took an unprecedented step: on October 22 they resigned en masse. Ordzhonikidze quickly appointed a new Central Committee of people who agreed with the positions taken up in Moscow, but the Mdivani-Makharadze stepped up their protests". R. C. Suny: op. cit.; p. 216. On 25 November the Politburo of the Central Committee decided to send a commission to Georgia, headed by People's Commissar for Internal Affairs Feliks Dzerzhinsky : "To examine urgently the statements by members of the Central Committee of the Georgian Communist Party who had resigned, and to work out measures to establish tranquility in the Georgian Communist Party". Note to: V. I. Lenin: 'Collected Works', Volume 45; Moscow; l97O; p. 656-57. Dzerzhinsky reported the findings of his commission to Lenin on 12 December 1922, including the fact that : "The commission had decided to recall to Moscow the leaders of the former Georgian Central Committee, who were held responsible for everything". M.Lewin, op. cit.; p. 68. Then, at the very end of December 1922, Lenin, who had initiated the concept of the Transcaucasian Federation, who had denounced the 'Georgian deviators’, and defended Ordzhonikidze against their attacks, suddenly reversed his position on these questions. In the document known as 'Lenin's Testament' he dictated to his secretary Maria Volodicheva on 30 December 1922, he implied that the charges of 'Georgian nationalism' levelled against the 'Georgian deviators’ were 'imaginary' (and the product of 'Great Russian chauvinism on the part of Dzerzhinsky': "Comrade Dzerzhinsky, who went to the Caucasus to investigate the 'crime' of those ‘nationalist-socialists', distinguished himself there by his truly Russian frame of mind (it is common knowledge that people of other nationalities who have become Russified overdo this Russian frame of mind)". V.I. Lenin: 'The Question of "Nationalities, or "Autonomisation"', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 36; Moscow; 1966; p. 606. However, Lenin placed the main blame for this 'erroneous policy of Great Russian chauvinism’ on Stalin. He declared that it was necessary: "To defend the non-Pussian from the onslaught of that really Russian man, the Great Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal and a tyrant... I think that Stalin’s . . spite against the notorious 'nationalist-socialism' played a fatal role here. In politics spite generally plays the basest of roles". V.I. Lenin: 'The Question of Nationalities, or "Autonomisation", in: 'Collected Works 1, Vol 36; Moscow; 1966; p 606. On the following day, 31 December 1922, Lenin dictated a postcript on the same lines, referring to Stalin as : "The Georgian who. . casually flings about accusations of 'nationalist-socialist', whereas he himself is a real and true nationalist-socialist’ and even a vulgar Great-Russian bully)...The political responsibility for all this truly Great-Russian nationalist campaign must, of course, be laid on Stalin and Dzerzhinsky". V.I. Lenin: 'The Question of Nationalities, or 'Autononisation"', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 36; Moscow; 1966; p. 606 By March 1923 Lenin was dictating a letter to Trotsky asking him to defend the case of the 'Georgian deviators' in the Central Committee: "It is my earnest request that you should undertake the defence of the Georgian case in the Party CC. The case is now under 'persecution' by Stalin and Dzerzhinsky, and I cannot rely on their impartiality. Quite the contrary, I would feel at ease if you agreed to undertake this defence".V.I. Lenin: Letter to L. D. Trotsky, 5 March 1923, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 45; Moscow; 1970; p. 607 Trotsky declined to intervene in the affair: ".On the plea of ill health". Note to: V. I. Lenin: 'Collected Works;', Volume 45; Moscow; 1970; p. 757. On the following day, Lenin dictated a letter to the leading 'Georgian deviators', giving them his whole-hearted support to their case and offering to assist it with notes and a speech: "I am following your case with all my heart. I am indignant over Ordzhonikidze's rudeness and the connivance of Stalin and Dzerzhinsky. I am preparing for you notes and a speech". V.I. Lenin: Letter to P. G. Mdivani, F. Y. Makharadze and Others, 6 March 1923, in: 'Collected Works', Volume 45; Moscow; 1970; p. 608. In conclusion it may be added that Trotsky's efforts in 1923 to persuade the Central Committee to adopt the line of the 'Georgian deviators' and abolish the Transcaucasian Federation were heavily defeated: "Trotsky's motion in the Politburo on March 26 to recall Ordzhomikidze, decentralise the Transcaucasian Federation and recognise that the minority in the Communist Party of Georgia had not been 'deviationists', failed by six to one". R.G.Suny: op. cit.; p. 218. Clearly, something occurred in late 1922 to cause Lenin radically to alter the opinion on Transcaucasia he had held until that date. And this was the same time at which something occurred to cause him radically to alter the opinions he had held of Stalin and Trotsky until that date.
LENIN'S ILLNESS Lenin fell seriously ill in 1921 : "Lenin fell seriously ill towards the end of 1921 and was forced to rest for several weeks". M.Lewin: op. cit.; p. 33. On 23 April 1922 Lenin underwent surgery to remove one of the bullets fired at him in an assassination attempt by the Socialist Revolutionary Fanya Kaplan on 30 August 1918. Note to: V. I. Lenin: 'Collected Works', Volume 33; Moscow; 1966; p. 527. Then, on 26 May 1922, "Catastrophe struck: his right hand and leg became paralysed and his speech was impaired, sometimes completely so. . his convalescence was slow and tedious. . . He never fully regained his health. The return to public life was not to last long". M.Lewin: op. cit.; p. 33, 34. and on 16 December, Lenin suffered : "Two dangerous strokes". M.Lewin: ibid.; p. xxii. and furthermore : "On December 23 he . . . suffered another attack of his illness... He realised next morning that once again a part of his body, his right hand and leg, was paralysed". M. Lewin: op. cit.; p. 73. On 10 March 1923: "A new stroke paralyses half of Lenin's body and deprives him of his capacity to speak. Lenin's political activity is finished". M. Lewin: op. cit.; p. xxiv. Lenin died on 21 January 1924. The doctors who performed the autopsy on Lenin on 22 January found that "The basic disease of the deceased was disseminated vascular arteriosclerosis based on premature wearing out of the vessels. The narrowing of the lumen of the cerebral arteries and the disturbances of the cerebral blood supply brought about focal softening of the brain tissue which can account for all symptoms of the disease (paralysis, disturbance of speech)". R.Payne: Report on the Pathological-Anatomical Examination of the Body of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, in: 'The Life and Death of Lenin'; London; 1967; p. 632. The controversial document known as 'Lenin's Testament' was dictated between 23 and 31 December 1922, with a supplement dated 4 January 1923, after Lenin had already suffered four severe strokes which had adversely affected his brain function. Thus Lenin's radical changes of opinion on Stalin, on Trotsky and on Transcaucasia are partly explicable by psycho-pathological factors.
Trotsky knew his brief hour of glory in 1919, during the Civil War. However, without question, in 1921--1923, it was Stalin who was the second in the Party, after Lenin. Since the Eighth Congress in 1919, Stalin had been a member of the Politburo, beside Lenin, Kamenev, Trotsky and Krestinsky. This membership did not change until 1921. Stalin was also member of the Organizational Bureau, also composed of five members of the Central Committee. (Ian Grey, Stalin – Man of History p. 151. ) On April 23, 1922, on Lenin's suggestion, Stalin was also appointed to head the secretariat, as General Secretary. Grey, p. 159. Stalin was the only person who was a member of the Central Committee, the Political Bureau, the Organizational Bureau and the Secretariat of the Bolshevik Party. At the Twelfth Congress in April 1923, he presented the main report. Lenin had suffered his first stroke in May 1922. On December 16, 1922, he suffered another major attack. His doctors knew that he would not recover. On December 24, the doctors told Stalin, Kamenev and Bukharin, the representatives of the Political Bureau, that any political controversy could provoke a new attack, this time fatal. They decided that Lenin `has the right to dictate every day for five or ten minutes .... He is forbidden [political] visitors. Friends and those around him may not inform him about political affairs'. Ibid. , p. 171. The Politburo made Stalin responsible for the relations with Lenin and the doctors. It was a thankless task since Lenin could only feel frustrated because of his paralysis and his distance from political affairs. His irritation would necessarily turn against the man who was responsible for interacting with him. Ian Grey writes: `The journal of Lenin's secretaries, from November 21, 1922 to March 6, 1923, contained the day-by-day details of his work, visitors, and health, and after December 13 it recorded his smallest actions. Lenin, his right arm and leg paralyzed, was then confined to bed in his small apartment in the Kremlin, cut off from government business and, in fact, from the outside world. The doctors insisted that he should not be disturbed .... `Unable to relinquish the habits of power, Lenin struggled to obtain the papers he wanted, relying on his wife, Krupskaya, his sister, Maria Ilyichna, and three or four secretaries.' Ibid. , p. 172. Used to leading the essential aspects of the life of Party and State, Lenin desperately tried to intervene in debates in which he could no longer physically master all the elements. His doctors refused to allow him any political work, which bothered him intensely. Feeling that his end was near, Lenin sought to resolve questions that he thought of paramount importance, but that he no longer fully understood. The Politburo refused to allow him any stressful political work, but his wife did her best to get hold of the documents that he sought. Any doctor having seen similar situations would say that difficult psychological and personal conflicts were inevitable. Towards the end of December 1922, Krupskaya wrote a letter that Lenin had dictated to her. Having done that, she was reprimanded by telephone by Stalin. She complained to Lenin and to Kamenev. `I know better than all the doctors what can and what can not be said to Ilyich, for I know what disturbs him and what doesn't and in any case I know this better than Stalin'. Ibid. , p. 173. About this period, Trotsky wrote: `In the middle of December, 1922, Lenin's health again took a turn for the worse .... Stalin at once tried to capitalize on this situation, hiding from Lenin much of the information which was concentrating in the Party Secretariat.... Krupskaya did whatever she could to shield the sick man from hostile jolts by the Secretariat.' Trotsky, Stalin, p. 374. These are the unforgivable words of an intriguer. The doctors had refused to allow Lenin receipt of reports, and here is Trotsky, accusing Stalin for having made `hostile maneuvers' against Lenin and for having `hidden information'! What enemies of Communism call `Lenin's will' was dictated in these circumstances during the period of December 23--25, 1922. These notes are followed by a post-scriptum dated January 5, 1923. Bourgeois authors have much focused on Lenin's so-called `will', which supposedly called for the elimination of Stalin in favor of Trotsky. Henri Bernard, Professor Emeritus at the Belgian Royal Military School, writes: `Trotsky should normally have succeeded Lenin .... (Lenin) thought of him as successor. He thought Stalin was too brutal'. Henri Bernard, Le communisme et l'aveuglement occidental (Soumagne, Belgium: Éditions André Grisard, 1982), p. 48. The U.S. Trotskyist Max Eastman published this `will' in 1925, along with laudatory remarks about Trotsky. At the time, Trotsky had to publish a correction in the Bolshevik newspaper, where he wrote: `Eastman says that the Central Committee `concealed' from the Party ... the so-called `will,' ... there can be no other name for this than slander against the Central Committee of our Party .... Vladimir Ilyich did not leave any `will,' and the very character of the Party itself, precluded the possibility of such a `will.' What is usually referred to as a `will' in the émigré and foreign bourgeois and Menshevik press (in a manner garbled beyond recognition) is one of Vladimir Ilyich's letters containing advice on organisational matters. The Thirteenth Congress of the Party paid the closest attention to that letter.... All talk about concealing or violating a `will' is a malicious invention.' Quoted in Stalin, The Trotskyist Opposition Before and Now. Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954), pp. 179--180. Stalin's emphasis. A few years later, the same Trotsky, in his autobiography, would clamor indignantly about `Lenin's ``Will'', which Stalin concealed from the party'. Trotsky, My Life, p. 469. Let us examine the three pages of notes dictated by Lenin between December 23, 1922 and January 5, 1923. Lenin called for `increasing the number of C.C. members (to 50 to 100), I think it must be done in order to raise the prestige of the Central Committee, to do a thorough job of improving our administrative machinery and to prevent conflicts between small sections of the C.C. from acquiring excessive importance for the future of the Party. It seems to me that our Party has every right to demand from the working class 50 to 100 C.C. members'. These would be `measures against a split'. `I think that from this standpoint the prime factors in the question of stability are such members of the C.C. as Stalin and Trotsky. I think relations between them make the greater part of the danger of a split'. Lenin, Letter to the Congress. Works, vol. 36, pp. 593--594. So much for the `theoretical' part. This text is remarkably incomprehensible, clearly dictated by a sick and diminished man. How could 50 to 100 workers added to the Central Committee `raise its prestige'? Or reduce the danger of split? Saying nothing about Stalin's and Trotsky's political concepts and visions of the Party, Lenin claimed that the personal relationships between these two leaders threatened unity. Then Lenin `judged' the five main leaders of the Party. We cite them here: `Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands; and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution. Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand, as his struggle against the C.C. on the question of the People's Commissariat for Communications has already proved, is distinguished not only by exceptional abilities. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present C.C., but he has diplayed excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work. `These two qualities of the two outstanding leaders of the present C.C. can inadvertently lead to a split .... `I shall just recall that the October episode with Zinoviev and Kamenev was, of course, no accident, but neither can the blame for it be laid upon them personally, any more than non-Bolshevism can upon Trotsky .... `Bukharin is not only a most valuable and major theorist of the Party; he is also rightly considered the favourite of the whole Party, but his theoretical views can be classified as fully Marxist only with great reserve, for there is something scholastic about him (he has never made a study of dialectics, and, I think, never fully understood it).' Ibid. , pp. 594--595. Note that the first leader to be named by Lenin was Stalin, who, in Trotsky's words, `always seemed a man destined to play second and third fiddle'. Trotsky, My Life, p. 506. `Unquestionably, his object in making the will was to facilitate the work of direction for me'. Ibid. , pp. 479--480. Of course, there is nothing of the kind in Lenin's rough notes. Grey states quite correctly: `Stalin emerged in the best light. He had done nothing to besmirch his party record. The only query was whether he could show good judgment in wielding the vast powers in his hands.' Grey, op. cit. , p. 176. With respect to Trotsky, Lenin noted four major problems: he was seriously wrong on several occasions, as was shown in his struggle against the Central Committee in the `militarization of the unions' affair; he had an exaggerated opinion of himself; his approach to problems was bureaucratic; and his non-Bolshevism was not accidental. About Zinoviev and Kamenev, the only thing that Lenin noted was that their treason during the October insurrection was not accidental. Bukharin was a great theoretician, whose ideas were not completely Marxist but, rather, scholastic and non-dialectic! Lenin dictated his notes in order to avoid a split in the Party leadership. But the statements that he made about the five main leaders seem better suited to undermining their prestige and setting them against each other. When he dictated these lines, `Lenin was not feeling well', wrote his secretary Fotieva, and `the doctors opposed discussions between Lenin and his secretary and stenographer'. Fotieva, Souvenirs sur Lénine ( Moscow: Éditions Moscou, n.d.), pp. 152--153. Then, ten days later, Lenin dictated an `addition', which appears to refer to a rebuke that Stalin had made twelve days earlier to Krupskaya. `Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealings among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc. This circumstance may appear to be a negligible detail. But I think that from the standpoint of safeguards against a split and from the standpoint of what I wrote above about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky it is not a detail, or it is a detail which can assume decisive importance.' Lenin, Letter to the Congress, p. 596. Gravely ill, half paralyzed, Lenin was more and more dependent on his wife. A few overly harsh words from Stalin to Krupskaya led Lenin to ask for the resignation of the General Secretary. But who was to replace him? A man who had all of Stalin's capacities and `one more trait': to be more tolerant, polite and attentive! It is clear from the text the Lenin was certainly not referring to Trotsky! Then to whom? To no one. Stalin's `rudeness' was `entirely supportable in relations among us Communists', but was not `in the office of the General Secretary'. But the General Secretary's main role at the time dealt with questions of the Party's internal organization! In February 1923, `Lenin's state worsened, he suffered from violent headaches. The doctor categorically refused to allow newspaper reading, visits and political information. Vladimir Ilyich asked for the record of the Tenth Congress of the Soviets. It was not given to him, which made him very sad'. Fotieva, op. cit. , pp. 173--174. Apparently, Krupskaya tried to obtain the documents that Lenin asked for. Dimitrievsky reported another altercation between Krupskaya and Stalin. `When Krupskaya ... telephoned him ... once more for some information, Stalin ... upbraided her in the most outrageous language. Krupskaya, all in tears, immediately ran to complain to Lenin. Lenin's nerves, already strained to the breaking point by the intrigues, could not hold out any longer.' Trotsky, Stalin, p. 374. On March 5, Lenin dictated a new note: `Respected Comrade Stalin. You had the rudeness to summon my wife to the telephone and reprimand her.... I do not intend to forget so easily what was done against me, and I need not stress that I consider what is done against my wife is done against me also. I ask therefore that you weigh carefully whether you are agreeable to retract what you said and to apologize or whether you prefer to sever relations between us. Lenin.' Grey, op. cit. , p. 179. It is distressing to read this private letter from a man who had reached his physical limits. Krupskaya herself asked the secretary not to forward the note to Stalin. Ibid. . These are in fact the last lines that Lenin was able to dictate: the next day, his illness worsened significantly and he was no longer able to work. Fotieva, op. cit. , p. 175. That Trotsky was capable of manipulating the words of a sick man, almost completely paralyzed, shows the utter moral depravity of this individual. Sure enough, like a good forgerer, Trotsky presented this text as the final proof that Lenin had designated him as successor! He wrote: `That note, the last surviving Lenin document, is at the same time the final summation of his relations with Stalin.' Trostky, Stalin, p. 375. Years later, in 1927, the united opposition of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev tried once again to use this `will' against the Party leadership. In a public declaration, Stalin said: `The oppositionists shouted here ... that the Central Committee of the Party ``concealed'' Lenin's ``will.'' We have discussed this question several times at the plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission.... ( A voice: ``Scores of times.'') It has been proved and proved again that nobody has concealed anything, that Lenin's ``will'' was addressed to the Thirteenth Party Congress, that this ``will'' was read out at the congress ( voices: ``That's right!''), that the congress unanimously decided not to publish it because, among other things, Lenin himself did not want it to be published and did not ask that it should be published.' Stalin, The Trotskyist Opposition Before and Now, p. 178. `It is said in that ``will'' Comrade Lenin suggested to the congress that in view of Stalin's ``rudeness'' it should consider the question of putting another comrade in Stalin's place as General Secretary. That is quite true. Yes, comrades, I am rude to those who grossly and perfidiously wreck and split the Party. I have never concealed this and do not conceal it now.... At the very first meeting of the plenum of the Central Committee after the Thirteenth Congress I asked the plenum of the Central Committee to release me from my duties as General Secretary. The congress discussed this question. It was discussed by each delegation separately, and all the delegations unanimously, including Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev, obliged Stalin to remain at his post .... `A year later I again put in a request to the plenum to release me, but I was obliged to remain at my post.' Ibid. , pp. 180--181. But Trotsky's intrigues around this `will' were not the worst that he had to offer. At the end of his life, Trotsky went to the trouble to accuse Stalin of having killed Lenin! And to make this unspeakable accusation, Trotsky used his `thoughts and suspicions' as sole argument! In his book, Stalin, Trotsky wrote: `What was Stalin's actual role at the time of Lenin's illness? Did not the disciple do something to expedite his master's death?' Trotsky, Stalin, p. 372. `(O)nly Lenin's death could clear the way for Stalin.' Ibid. , p. 376. `I am firmly convinced that Stalin could not have waited passively when his fate hung by a thread.' Ibid. , p. 381. Of course, Trotsky gave no proof whatsoever in support of his charge, but he did write that the idea came to him when `toward the end of February, 1923, at a meeting of the Politburo ..., Stalin informed us ... that Lenin had suddenly called him in and had asked him for poison. Lenin ... considered his situation hopeless, foresaw the approach of a new stroke, did not trust his physicians ..., he suffered unendurably.' Ibid. , p. 376. At the time, listening to Stalin, Trotsky almost unmasked Lenin's future assassin! He wrote: `I recall how extraordinary, enigmatic and out of tune with the circumstances Stalin's face seemed to me .... a sickly smile was transfixed on his face, as on a mask.' Ibid. Let's follow Inspector Clousot-Trotsky in his investigation. Listen to this: `(H)ow and why did Lenin, who at the time was extremely suspicious of Stalin, turn to him with such a request Lenin saw in Stalin the only man who would grant his tragic request, since he was directly interested in doing so .... (he) guessed ... how Stalin really felt about him.' Ibid. , p. 377. Just try to write, with this kind of argument, a book accusing Prince Albert of Belgium of having poisoned his brother King Beaudoin: `he was directly interested in doing so'. You would be sentenced to prison. But Trotsky allowed himself such unspeakable slanders against the main Communist leader, and the bourgeoisie hails him for his `unblemished struggle against Stalin'. Bernard, op. cit. , p. 53. Here is the high point of Trotsky's criminal enquiry: `I imagine the course of affairs somewhat like this. Lenin asked for poison at the end of February, 1923.... Toward winter Lenin began to improve slowly ...; his faculty of speech began to come back to him.... `Stalin was after power .... His goal was near, but the danger emanating from Lenin was even nearer. At this time Stalin must have made up his mind that it was imperative to act without delay.... Whether Stalin sent the poison to Lenin with the hint that the physicians had left no hope for his recovery or whether he resorted to more direct means I do not know.' Ibid. p. 381. Even Trotsky's lies were poorly formulated: if there was no hope, why did Stalin need to `assassinate' Lenin? From March 6, 1923 until his death, Lenin was almost completely paralyzed and deprived of speech. His wife, his sister and his secretaries were at his bedside. Lenin could not have taken poison without them knowing it. The medical records from that time explain quite clearly that Lenin's death was inevitable. The manner in which Trotsky constructed `Stalin, the assassin', as well as the manner in which he fraudulously used the so-called `will', completely discredit all his agitation against Stalin. 2. Trotsky’s and Stalin’s role during the October Revolution and the Civil War
Stalin’s activities in 1900 - 1917 In 1897, at the age of eighteen, Dzhugashvili joined the first Socialist organization in Georgia, led by Zhordania, Chkheidze and Tseretelli, who would later become famous Mensheviks. The next year, Stalin led a study circle for workers. At the time, Stalin was already reading Plekhanov's works, as well as Lenin's first writings. In 1899, he was expelled from the Seminary. Here began his career of professional revolutionary. Grey, op. cit. , pp. 22--24. Right from the start, Stalin showed great intelligence and a remarkable memory; by his own efforts, he acquired great political knowledge by reading widely. To denigrate Stalin's work, almost all bourgeois authors repeat Trotsky's slanders: `(Stalin's) political horizon is restricted, his theoretical equipment primitive .... His mind is stubbornly empirical, and devoid of creative imagination'. Leon Trotsky, My Life (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), p. 506. On May 1, 1900, Stalin spoke in front of an illegal gathering of 500 workers in the mountains above Tiflis. Under the portraits of Marx and Engels, they listened to speeches in Georgian, Russian and Armenian. During the three months that followed, strikes broke out in the factories and on the railroads of Tiflis; Stalin was one of the main instigators. Early in 1901, Stalin distributed the first issue of the clandestine newspaper Iskra, published by Lenin in Leipzig. On May 1, 1901, two thousand workers organized, for the first time, an open demonstration in Tiflis; the police intervened violently. Lenin wrote in Iskra that `the event ... is of historical importance for the entire Caucasus'. Grey, op. cit. , pp. 29--31. During the same year, Stalin, Ketskhoveli and Krassin led the radical wing of social-democracy in Georgia. They acquired a printing press, reprinted Iskra and published the first clandestine Georgian newspaper, Brdzola (Struggle). In the first issue, they defended the supra-national unity of the Party and attacked the `moderates', who called for an independent Georgian party that would be associated with the Russian party. Ibid. , p. 32. In November 1901, Stalin was elected to the first Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party and sent to Batum, a city half of whose population was Turkish. In February 1902, he had already organized eleven clandestine circles in the main factories of the city. On February 27, six thousand workers in the petroleum refinery marched through the city. The army opened fire, killing 15 and arresting 500. Ibid. , pp. 34--35. One month later, Stalin was himself arrested, imprisoned until April 1903, then condemned to three years in Siberia. He escaped and was back in Tiflis in February 1904. Ibid. , p. 38. During his stay in Siberia, Stalin wrote to a friend in Leipzig, asking him for copies of the Letter to a Comrade on our Organizational Tasks and expressing his support for Lenin's positions. After the Congress of August 1903, the Social-Democratic Party was divided between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks; the Georgian delegates were among the latter. Stalin, who had read What is to be done?, supported the Bolsheviks without hesitation. `It was a decision demanding conviction and courage. Lenin and the Bolsheviks had little support in Transcaucasia', wrote Grey. Ibid. , pp. 41--45. In 1905, the leader of the Georgian Mensheviks, Zhordania, published a criticism of the Bolshevik theses that Stalin defended, thereby underscoring the importance of Stalin in the Georgian revolutionary movement. During the same year, in `Armed Uprising and Our Tactics', Stalin defended, against the Mensheviks, the necessity of armed struggle to overthrow Tsarism. Ibid. , p. 51. Stalin was 26 years old when he first met Lenin at the Bolshevik Congress in Finland in December 1905. Ibid. , p. 53. Between 1905 and 1908, the Caucasus was the site of intense revolutionary activity; the police counted 1,150 `terrorist acts'. Stalin played an important role. In 1907--1908, Stalin led, together with Ordzhonikidze and Voroshilov, the secretary of the oil workers' union, a major legal struggle among the 50,000 workers in the oil industry in Baku. They attained the right to elect worker representatives, who could meet in a conference to discuss the collective agreement regarding salaries and working conditions. Lenin hailed this struggle, which took place at a time when most of the revolutionary cells in Russia had ceased their activities. Ibid. , pp. 59, 64. In March 1908, Stalin was arrested a second time and condemned to two years of exile. But in June 1909, he escaped and returned to Baku, where he found the party in crisis, the newspaper no longer being published. Three weeks after his return, Stalin had started up publication again; in an article he argued that `it would be strange to think that organs published abroad, remote from Russian reality, could unify the work of the party'. Stalin insisted on maintaining the clandestine Party, asking for the creation of a coordinating committee within Russia and the publication of a national newspaper, also within Russia, to inform, encourage and re-establish the Party's direction. Feeling that the workers' movement was about to re-emerge, he repeated these proposals early in 1910. Ibid. , pp. 65--69. But while helping prepare a general strike of the oil industry, he was arrested for a third time in March 1910, sent to Siberia, and banished for five years. In February 1912, he escaped again and came back to Baku. Ibid. , p. 70. Stalin learned that at the Prague Conference, the Bolsheviks had created their independent party and that a Russian bureau, of which he was a member, had been created. On April 22, 1912, at St. Petersburg, Stalin published the first edition of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda. On the same day, he was arrested a fourth time, together with the editorial secretary, Molotov. They were denounced by Malinovsky, an agent provocateur elected to the Central Committee! Shernomazov, who replaced Molotov as secretary, was also a police agent. Banished for three years to Siberia, Stalin once again escaped and took up the leadership of Pravda. Convinced of the necessity of a break with the Mensheviks, he differed with Lenin about tactics. The Bolshevik line had to be defended, without directly attacking the Mensheviks, since the workers sought unity. Under his leadership, Pravda developed a record circulation of 80,000 copies. Ibid. , pp. 71--73. At the end of 1912, Lenin called Stalin and other leaders to Cracow to advocate his line of an immediate break with the Mensheviks, then sent Stalin to Vienna so that he could write Marxism and the National Question. Stalin attacked `cultural-national autonomy' within the Party, denouncing it as the road to separatism and to subordination of socialism to nationalism. He defended the unity of different nationalities within one centralized Party. Upon his return to St. Petersburg, Malinovsky had him arrested a fifth time. This time, he was sent to the most remote regions of Siberia, where he spent five years. Ibid. , pp. 75--79. It was only after the February 1917 Revolution that Stalin was able to return to St. Petersburg, where he was elected to the Presidium of the Russian Bureau, taking up once again the leadership of Pravda. In April 1917, at the Party Conference, he received the third largest number of votes for the Central Committee. During the month of July, when Pravda was closed by the Provisional Government and several Bolshevik leaders were arrested, Lenin had to hide in Finland; Stalin led the Party. In August, at the Sixth Congress, he read the report in the name of the Central Committee; the political line was unanimously adopted by 267 delegates, with four abstentions. Stalin declared: `the possibility is not excluded that Russia will be the country that blazes the trail to socialism .... It is necessary to give up the outgrown idea that Europe alone can show us the way'. Ibid. , pp. 88--96. At the time of the October 25 insurrection, Stalin was part of a military revolutionary `center', consisting of five members of the Central Committee. Kamenev and Zinoviev publicly opposed the seizing of power by the Bolshevik Party; Rykov, Nogin, Lunacharsky and Miliutin supported them. But it was Stalin who rejected Lenin's proposal to expel Kamenev and Zinoviev from the Party. After the revolution, these `Right Bolsheviks' insisted on a coalition government with the Mensheviks and the Social-Revolutionaries. Once again threatened with expulsion, they toed the line. Ibid. , pp. 97--98. Stalin became the first People's Commissar for Nationality Affairs. Quickly grasping that the international bourgeoisie was supporting the local bourgeoisies among national minorities, Stalin wrote: `the right of self-determination (was the right) not of the bourgeoisie but of the toiling masses of a given nation. The principle of self-determination ought to be used as a means in the struggle for socialism, and it ought to be subordinated to the principles of socialism'. Ibid. , pp. 103--104. Between 1901 and 1917, right from the beginning of the Bolshevik Party until the October Revolution, Stalin was a major supporter of Lenin's line. No other Bolshevik leader could claim as constant or diverse activity as Stalin. He had followed Lenin right from the beginning, at the time when Lenin only had a small number of adherents among the socialist intellectuals. Unlike most of the other Bolshevik leaders, Stalin was constantly in contact with Russian reality and with activists within Russia. He knew these militants, having met them in open and clandestine struggles, in prisons and in Siberia. Stalin was very competent, having led armed struggle in the Caucasus as well as clandestine struggles; he had led union struggles and edited legal and illegal newspapers; he had led the legal and parliamentary struggle and knew the national minorities as well as the Russian people. Trotsky did his best to systematically denigrate the revolutionary past of Stalin, and almost all bourgeois authors repeat these slanders. Trotsky declared: `Stalin ... is the outstanding mediocrity in the party'. Trotsky, My Life, p. 512. Trotsky was trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes, talking about `the party', because he had never belonged to the Bolshevik Party that Lenin, Zinoviev, Stalin, Sverdlov and others forged between 1901 and 1917. Trotsky joined the Party in July 1917. Trotsky also wrote: `in routine work it was more convenient for Lenin to depend on Stalin, Zinoviev or Kamenev .... I was not suited for executing commissions.... Lenin needed practical, obedient assistants. I was unsuited to the rôle'. Ibid. , p. 477. These sentences say nothing about Stalin, but everything about Trotsky: he pinned onto Lenin his own aristocratic and Bonapartist concept of a party: a leader surrounded by docile assistants who deal with current affairs! Trotsky’s role in 1900 – 1917 Trotsky arrived in London in October 1902 and Lenin found him lodgings. He began to contribute to "Iskra" in November 1902 and soon became known as a brilliant writer and orator. From time to time he visited Prance, Switzerland and Belgium, and it was on a visit to Paris that he met his second "wife" (he was never formally divorced from Aleksandra Sokolovskaya), a Russian revolutionary of noble birth, Natalya Sedova, who was studying the history of art at the Sorbonne. The sharpest controversy at the second congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Party in 1903 arose around the first clause of the rules, defining what was meant by the term "member of the party". In accordance with the principles he had been putting forward for some time in "Iskra", Lenin proposed the following wording for Clause 1: "A member of the R.S.D.L.P. is one who recognises its programme and supports the Party materially as well as by personal participation in one of the organisations of the Party". Yuli Martov moved to substitute for the words underlined: "Working under the control and guidance of one of the organisations of the Party". Lenin's case against Martov’s formulation was that: 1) It would in practice be impossible to maintain effective "control and guidance" over Party members who did not personally participate in one of the organisations of the Party; 2) It reflected the outlook, not of the working class, which is not shy of organisation and discipline, but of the petty bourgeois intelligentsia, who tend to be individualistic and shy of organisation and discipline; 3) It would widen Party membership to include supporters of the Party, and so would abolish the essential dividing line between the working class and its organised, disciplined vanguard; it would, therefore, have the effect of dissolving the vanguard in the working class as a whole and so would serve the interests of the class enemies of the working class. Trotsky sided with Martov, whose formulation was adopted by 28 votes to 22 with 1 abstention. Later, the withdrawal of seven opponents of Lenin from the congress altered the balance of forces in favour of Lenin and his supporters, Lenin then proposed that the editorial board of "Iskra" (which consisted of six members) should be replaced by one of three members. Trotsky countered this manoeuvre with a motion confirming the old editorial board in office, but this was defeated by a majority of 2 votes; thereupon the anti-Leninists abstained from further voting. In the elections which followed three anti-Leninists (Axelrod, Potresov and Vera Zasulich) were dropped from the board, leaving Lenin, Plekhanov and Martov. Furthermore, three supporters of Lenin were elected to form the Central Committee. Thus, at its Second Congress the Party showed itself to be divided into two factions. From that time those Party members who supported Lenin's political line were known as Bolsheviks (from 'bolshinstvo", majority) while those who opposed Lenin’s political line were known as Mensheviks (from "menshinstvo" minority) . The Bolshevik trend was a Marxist trend, representing the interests of the working class within the labour movement; TheMenshevik trend was a revisionist trend representing the interests of the capitalist class within the labour movement. Later Trotsky admitted his error in having opposed Lenin at the 2nd. Congress on the question of Party organisation. Speaking of Lenin’s attitude at the Congress, Trotsky says in his autobiography: "His behaviour seemed unpardonable to me, both horrible and outrageous. And yet, politically, it was right and necessary, from the point of view of organisation. His immediate reaction to the congress, however, was to write "Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. (Report of the Siberian Delegation" which was published in Geneva in1903. In this he defended his, and his delegation’s opposition to Lenin and his supporters at the congress: "Behind Lenin stood the new compact majority of the ‘hard’ ‘Iskra’ men, opposed to the ‘soft’ ‘Iskra’ men. We, the delegates of the Siberian Union, joined the ‘soft’ones, and . . we do not think that we have thereby blotted our revolutionary record". At the Congress, declared Trotsky, Lenin had: "..With the energy and talent peculiar to him, assumed the role of the party’s disorganiser". and, like a new Robespierre, was trying to: "..transform the modest Council of the Party into an omnipotent Committee of Public Safety", so preparing the ground for the: "Thermidorians of Socialist opportunism". He added in a postscript that Lenin resembled Robespierre, however, only as "a vulgar farce resembles historic tragedy"... (L.Trotsky: ibid.; p.33). After the Congress, the Mensheviks -- including Trotsky boycotted "Iskra" and refused to contribute to it. In September 1903 they held a factional conference in Geneva to decide on future action. A shadow "central committee" was set up, consisting of Pavel Axelrod, Pedor Dan, Yuli Martov, Aleksandr Potresov and Trotsky, to direct the struggle against the Bolsheviks. In Trotsky's view the immediate aim of the campaign should be to force the Bolsheviks to restore the ousted Mensheviks to their former positions of influence, both in the Central Committee and the editorial board. A resolution, drafted by Martov and Trotsky, was adopted by the conference: "We consider it our moral and political duty to conduct . . the struggle by all means, without placing ourselves outside the Party and without bringing discredit upon the party and the idea of its central institutions, to bring about a change in the composition of the leading bodies, which will secure to the Party the possibility of working freely towards its own enlightenment". Soon after the Second Congress of the Party, Plekhanov gave way to the attacks of the Mensheviks. In violation of the decisions taken at the Party congress, he claimed and exercised the right as joint editor to coopt to the editorial board of "Iskra" the Menshevik former editors. Lenin strongly objected to this step, and resigned from the board. The new editorial board transformed "Iskra" into a Menshevik organ, which waged unremitting struggle against Lenin and his supporters and against the Bolshevik Central Committee of the Party. Thus, from its 52nd. issue "Iskra" became known in the Party as the "new" "Iskra", in contrast to the "old" Leninist "Iskra". It continued publication until October l905. Trotsky became a prominent contributor to the "new Iskra" and issued a pamphlet setting forth the Menshevik political line. Lenin commented: "A new pamphlet by Trotsky came out recently, under the editorship of ‘Iskra’, as was announced. This makes it the ‘Credo’, as it were, of the new ‘Iskra’. The pamphlet is a pack of brazen lies, a distortion of the facts. . . The Second Congress was, in his words, a reactionary attenpt to consolidate sectarian methods of organisation, etc." Between February and May l904, Lenin was engaged on writing the book "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back". In this he expounded at length the principles of party organisation he had put forward at the Second Congress and analysed the character of the Menshevik opposition. In August l904 Trotsky’s reply to Lenin’s book was published in Geneva under the title "Our Political Tasks" . It was dedicated to "My dear teacher Pavel B.Axelrod". In "Our Political Tasks" - Trotsky developed his attack upon "Maximillien Lenin"; whom he described as: ".an adroit statistician and a slovenly attorney" (L. Trotsky: ‘ashi Politicheskie Zadachi’(Our Political Tasks) Geneva; l904; p. 95), with a " . . hideous, dissolute and demagogical . " (L.Trotsky : ibid. ; p. 75), style, whose "Evil-minded and morally repulsive suspiciousness, a shallow caricature of tragic Jacobinist intolerance, must be liquidated now at all costs, otherwise the Party is threatened with moral and theoretical decay"; He developed his attack upon Lenin’s principles of Party organisation, claiming that they would lead to the establishment, not of the dictatorship of the working class but of a dictatorship over the working class (a dictatorship that would eventually be one of a single individual), which the working class would find intolerable: "Lenin’s methods lead to this: the Party organisation at first substitutes itself for the Party as a whole; then the Central Committee substitutes itself for the organisation; and finally a single ‘dictator’ substitutes himself for the Central Committee…. A proletariat capable of exercising its dictatorship over society will not tolerate any dictatorship over itself". and declaring that Lenin’s organisational principles would, in any case, be unworkable since any serious faction would defy Party discipline: "Is it so difficult to see that any group of serious size and importance, if faced with the alternative of silently destroying itself or of fighting for its survival regardless of all discipline, would undoubtedly choose the latter course?" Meanwhile, readers of the "new" "Iskra" in Russia had been complaining strongly about Trotsky’s virulent attacks on Lenin in the columns of the paper, and in April l904, on the demand of Plekhanov, he was forced to resign from it. In May 1905 Trotsky went to Finland. When he returned to St. Petersburg in October, a general strike had broken out in the city. Meanwhile Lenin, after making arrangements for the publication in St. Petersburg of a legal Bolshevik newspaper "Novaya Zizn" (New Life), had left-Geneva in October for Russia. Held up in Stockholm, he wrote from there: "Comrade Radin (i.e., Knunyantz -- -Ed.) is wrong in raising the question in No. 5 of the ‘Novaya Zhizn', …the Soviet of Workers? Deputies or the Party? I think that it is wrong to put the question in this way, and that the decision must certainly be: both the Soviet of Deputies and the Party . . . Later, after his arrival in St. Petersburg, Lenin made a clear analysis of the Soviet. It could not be an organ of government until the power of the central tsarist state had been smashed, at least locally; in the existing circumstances its role must be to conduct this revolutionary struggle to smash the central state machine . "The Soviet of Workers’ Deputies is not a parliament of labour and not an organ of proletarian self-government. It is not an organ of government at all, but a fighting organisation for the achievement of definite aims. . . "The Soviets of Workers' Deputies, etc., were in fact the embryo of a provisional government; power would inevitably have passed to them had the uprising been victorious". (V. I.Lenin; "The Dissolution of the Duma and the Tasks of the Proletariat", in: Ibid.; p. 383). Although the St. Petersburg Bolsheviks corrected their attitude to the Soviet within a few days, their hesitancy in supporting it contributed in considerable measure to the fact that the majority of the deputies were from the outset Mensheviks or supporters of the Mensheviks. On October 30 th, the Soviet elected its Executive; this consisted of three Mensheviks, three Bolsheviks, and three Socialist-Revolutionaries. After a few days under the chairmanship of the Menshevik S. Zborovski, the Soviet elected as its chairman the lawyer Georgi Nosar (better known under his pseudonym "Khrustalev"); who was then independent of any party but later joined the Mensheviks. Trotsky, who had allied himself with the St. Petersburg Mensheviks on his arrival in the city, was elected to the Soviet and soon came to play a leading role in its activities - which following the Menshevik political line of damping down the revolutionary enthusiasm and activity of the workers. "Trotsky urged the Soviet to call off the general strike". and it duly came to an end on November 3rd. "Trotsky.. . proposed to call an end to the second general strike". on the pretext that : "The government had just announced that the sailors of Kronstadt (who had participated in the first general strike -- Ed.) would be tried by ordinary military courts, not courts martial. The Soviet could withdraw not with victory indeed, but with honour". In his speech to the Soviet urging the calling-off of the second general strike, Trotsky’s biographer declares that: "While he tried to dam up the raging element of revolt, he stood before the Soviet like defiance itself, passionate and sombre". and: "Events work for us and we have no need to force the pace. We must drag out the period of preparation for decisive action as much as we can, perhaps for a month or two, until we can come out as an army as cohesive and organised as possible. . . Having succeeded in inducing the Soviet to call off the second general strike, "A few days later he had again to impress upon the Soviet its own weakness and urge it to stop enforcing the eight-hour day. . . The Soviet was divided, a minority demanding a general strike; but Trotsky prevailed". Saying: In addition to his activities in the Soviet, Trotsky had contrived to gain control, jointly with Parvus (who had followed him to St. Pctersburg and had become a deputy in the Soviet) of a daily newspaper, "Russkaya Gazeta" (The Russian Newspaper), and later in the year, alongside it, he founded with Parvus and Yuli Martov a second daily "Nachalo" (The Beginning),which became the organ of Menshevisim from October to December 1905. By the beginning of December, the government felt strong enough to take the offensive again. Press censorship was reimposed, and on December 5th. Khrustalev, the Chairman of the Soviet, was arrested together with a few other leading members. Trotsky replied to this by proposing that: "The Soviet of Workers’ Deputies temporarily elect a new chairman and continue to prepare for an armed uprising." The Soviet accepted the proposal and elected a three-man Presidium, headed by Trotsky. But the preparations for the "armed uprising" of Trotsky’s were virtually non-existent. "The preparations for the rising which Trotsky had mentioned had so far been less than rudimentary: two delegates had been sent to establish contact with the provincial Soviets. The sinews of insurrection were lacking". Trotsky’s last gesture in the 1905 Revolution was then to put forward a "Financial Manifesto" written by Parvus. This called upon the people to withhold payment of taxes, declaring: "There is only one way to overthrow the government --to deny it . . its revenue". On December 16th., Trotsky presided over a meeting of the Executive of the St. Petersburg Soviet, when a detachment of soldiers and police burst in to the meeting room and the members of the executive were arrested. A number of charge were brought against them, the principle charge being that of plotting insurrection: "The St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, being the Soviet of the most important industrial and revolutionary centre of Russia, the capital of the tsarist empire, ought to have played a decisive role in the Revolution of 1905. However, it did not perform this task, owing to its bad, Menshevik leadership. As we know Lenin had not yet arrived in St. Petersburg; he was still abroad. The Mensheviks took advantage of Lenin’s absence to make their way into the St.Petersburg Soviet and to seize hold of its leadership. It was not surprising under such circumstances that the Mensheviks Khrustalev, Trotsky, Parvus and others managed to turn the St. Petersburg Soviet against the policy of an uprising. Instead of bringing the soldiers into close contact with the Soviet and linking them up with the common struggle, they demanded that the soldiers be withdrawn from St. Petersburg. The Soviet, instead of arming the workers and preparing them for an uprising, just marked time and was against preparations for an uprising". The Fifth Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party was held in London in May/June 1907. It was attended by 336 delegates, representing a membership of some 150,000. In the resolutions the congress large1y adopted the Bolshevik line. A Bolshevik resolution condemning the Menshevik proposal to transform the Party into a broad "Labour Party" of the British type was carried by l65 votes to 94; another Bolshevik resolution declaring that the Cadets were now a counter-revolutionary party which must be mercilessly exposed, and that it was essential to coordinate the Party’s own activity with that of the parties expressing the outlook of the peasantry (i.e., the Trudoviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries) was carried by l59 votes to 104. However, a Bolshevik motion of censure on the Menshevik Central Committee elected at the Fourth Congress in 1906 was lost. This resolution was opposed not only by the Mensheviks, but by a centrist group headed by Trotsky: "If, after all, the Bolshevik resolution, which noted the mistakes of the Central Committee was not carried, it was because the consideration "not to cause a split" strongly influenced the comrades". "Trotsky… spoke on behalf of the ‘Centre’, and expressed the views of the Bund. He fulminated against us for introducing our ‘unacceptable’ resolution. He threatened an outright split. . . That is a position based not on principle, but on the Centre’s lack of principle". Trotsky endeavored to justify his concilationist position by suggesting that there were no fundamental differences between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, saying: "Here comes Martov . . and threatens to raise between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks a Marxist wall . . .’Comrade Martov, you are going to build your wall with paper only with -your polemical literature you have nothing else to build it with". In view of the decline of the revolutionary tide, the question of ‘armed insurrection’ was dropped from the agenda of the congress. However, a sharp controversy arose at the congress on the question of "expropriations", i.e., the illegal acquisition of funds for the Party. Lenin's views on this question had been expressed in an article published in "Proletary", in October 1906: "Armed struggle pursues two different aims; which must be strictly distinguished; in the first place this struggle aims at assassinating individuals, chiefs and subordinates, in the army and police: in the second place, it aims at the confiscation of monetary funds both from the government and from private persons. The confiscated funds go partly into the treasury of the Party, partly for the special purpose of arming and preparing for an uprising, and partly for the maintenance of persons engaged in the struggle we are describing. . . The Fourth Congress of the Party in 1906 had adopted a Menshevik resolution banning Party members, from taking part in "expropriations", and at the- Fifth Congress an attack was launched upon the Bolsheviks for allegedly continuing to take part in (or at least advise others on the organisation of "expropriations". A Menshevik motion was adopted at the Fifth Congress banning the participation of Party members in all armed actions and acts of "expropriation" and- ordering the disbandment of the fighting squads connected with the, Party. Trotsky, according to his biographer, sharply supported the Menshevik attacks on this issue: "The records of the Congress say nothing about the course of this controversy, (i.e. on "expropriations" --Ed.); only fragmentary reminiscences, written many years after, are available. But there is no doubt that Trotsky was, with Martov, among those who sharply arraigned the Bolsheviks". Shortly after the Congress, Lenin wrote to Maxim Gorky that : "At the London Congress, too, he (i.e., Trotsky --Ed.) acted the ‘poseur’". While Stalin, writing of Trotsky’s activities at the congress, declared "Trotsky proved to be ‘pretty but useless’". After the congress Trotsky carried his attacks on the Bolsheviks on the question of "expropriations’ into the columns of "Vorwaerts" (Forward), the organ of the German Social-Democratic Party. He describes how Lenin reacted to this news: "I told Lenin of my latest article in "Vorwaerts" about the Russian Social-Democracy. . . The most prickly question in the article was that of so-called ‘expropriations’. .. The London congress, by a majority of votes composed of Mensheviks, Poles and some Bolsheviks banned ‘expropriations’. When the delegates shouted from their seats: "What does Lenin say? We want to hear Lenin", the latter only chuckled, with a somewhat cryptic expression. After the London congress, ‘expropriations’ continued. . . That was the point on which I had centred my attack in the "Vorwaerts". In the summer of 1907, following the Fifth Congress of the RSDLP, Trotsky had moved to Berlin. Here he became intimate with the right wing-leaders of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany. As his biographer, Isaac Deutscher, expresses it: "Curiously enough, Trotsky’s closest ties were not with the radical wing of German socialism, led by Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebnicht and Franz Mehring, the future founders of the Communist Party, but with the men . . who maintained the appearances of Marxist orthodoxy, but were in fact leading the party to its surrender to the imperialist ambitions of the Hohenzollern empire". Trotsky contributed frequently to the SPG’s daily "Vorwarts" (Forward) and to its monthly ‘Neue Zeit’ (New Life), on which his influence was strong. "Boycottist tendency runs through the whole history of Bolshevism -- the boycott of the trade unions, of the State Duma, of the local government bodies, etc." as a To which Lenin replied: - "As regards the boycott of the trade unions and the local government bodies, what Trotsky says is positively untrue.. It is equally untrue to say that boycottism runs through the whole history of Bolshevism; Bolshevism as a tendency took definite shape in the spring and summer of l905, before the question of the boycott first came up. In August 1906 in the official organ of the faction, Bolshevism declared that the historical causes which called forth the necessity of the boycott had passed. Trotsky distorts Bolshevism". Trotsky further declared that both the Bolshevik and the actions, and the Party itself were "falling to pieces". To this Lenin replied: "Failing to understand the historical-economic significance of this split in the epoch of the counter-revolution, of this falling away of non-Social-Democratic elements from the Social-Democratic Labour Party, Trotsky tells the German readers that both factions are ‘falling to pieces,’ that the Party is ‘falling to pieces’, that the Party is becoming ‘disintegrated’. The German government refused to allow Trotsky to stay in Berlin, and he moved shortly to Vienna. However he maintained his influence in the press of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany, the leaders of which continued to regard him as "the authority", on the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. "It is time to stop being naive about the Germans, Trotsky is now in full command there.. . It’s Trotsky and Co. who are writing, and the Germans believe them. Altogether, Trotsky is boss in ‘Vorwarts’". Trotsky remained in Vienna for seven years, and there he became intimate with the right-wing leaders of the Austrian Social-Democratic Party - Victor Adler, Rudolf Hilferding, Otto Bauer an& Karl Renner. He became Vienna correspondent of the daily newspaper "Kievskaya Mysl" (Kievan Thought), and contributed to a number of other papers. In October 1908, Trotsky began to edit a small run-down paper called "Pravda" (Truth), started in l905, by the pro-Menshevik Ukrainian Social-Democratic League ("Spilika") At the end of 1908, the group abandoned the paper, and it became Trotsky’s own journal. Published in Vienna from November 1909, it continued to appear until December 1913. As Lenin commented in October 1911: "’Pravda" represents a tiny group, which has not given an independent and consistent answer to any-important fundamental question of the revolution and counter-revolution". (V. I. Lenin: "The New Faction of Concilators or the Virtuous" in: "Selected Works", Volume 4; London; l943; p. 106). Under Trotsky the Viennese -"Pravda" became the principal organ of conciliationism, as Lenin repeatedly pointed out, describing Trotsky as a "spineless conciliator"; "During the period of the counter-revolution of 1908-11 . . Trotsky provides us with an abundance of instances of unprincipled ‘unity’ scheming".. Trotsky himself admits: "My inner party stand was a concilationist one. . The great historical significance of Lenin's policy was still unclear to me at that time, his policy of irreconcilable ideological demarcation and, when necessary split, for the purpose of welding and tempering the core of the truly revolutionary party. In fact, Trotsky elaborated in this period a "theory" of conciliationism, based on the erroneous concept that factions expressed, not the interests of different classes, but "the influence of the intelligentsia" upon the working class: "Trotsky expressed conciliationism more consistently than anyone else. He was probably the only one who attempted to give this tendency a theoretical foundation. This is the foundation: factions and factionalism-expressed the struggle of the intelligentsia ‘for influence over the irmiature proletariat’. . . . Trotsky attempted to give substance to his "non-factional" pose by articles in which he attacked as "anti-revolutionary" both the Bolsheviks and the Menshoviks. In 1909, for example, he wrote in Rosa Luxemburg’s Polish paper "Przeglad Socjal-Demokratyczny" (Social-Democratic Review): "While the Mensheviks, proceeding from the abstraction that ‘our revolution is bourgeois’, arrive at the idea of adapting the whole tactic of the proletariat to the conduct of the liberal bourgeoisie, right up to the capture of state power, the Bolsheviks, proceeding from the same bare abstraction: ‘democratic, not socialist dictatorship’, arrive at the idea of the bourgeois-democratic self-limitation of the proletariat with power in its hands. The difference between them on this question is certainly quite important: while the anti-revolutionary sides of Menshevism are already expressed in full force today, the anti-revolutionary features of Bolshevism threaten to become a great danger only in the event of the victory of the revolution." However, Lenin pointed out that, under the guise of "non-factionalism", Trotsky was, in fact, forming his own faction: "That Trotsky’s venture is an attempt to create a faction is obvious to all now". "We were right in referring to Trotsky as the representative of the ‘worst remnants of factionalism’. . Trotsky’s faction, declared Lenin, vacillated in theory from one of the major factions to the other: "Trotsky completely lacks a definite ideology and policy, for having the patent, for ‘non-factionalism’, only means . . having a patent granting complete freedom to flit from one faction to another". "Trotsky, on the other hand; represents only his own personal vacillations and nothing more. In l903 he was a Menshevik; he abandoned Menshevism in l904, returned to the Mensheviks in l905 and merely flaunted ultra-revolutionary phrases; in 1906 he left them again; at the end of 1906 he advocated elect-oral agreements with the Cadets (i.e., was virtually once more with the Mensheviks) ; and in the spring of 1907, at the London Congress, he said that he differed from Rosa Luxemburg on ‘individual shades of ideas rather than on political tendencies’. Trotsky one day plagiarises the ideological stock-in-trade of one faction; next day he plagiarises that of another, and therefore declares himself to be standing above both factions." His "political line" asserted Lenin, is mere high flown demagogy, characterised by revolutionary phrases, designed to deceive the workers: "The Trotskys decieve the workers. Whoever supports Trotsky’s puny group supports a policy of lying and deceiving the workers. . . by ‘revolutionary’ phrase-mongering". "Empty exclamations, high-flown words. . and impressively important assurances -- that is Trotsky’s total stock-in-trade". "Trotsky is fond of sonorous and empty phrases. . . . Trotsky’s phrases are full of glitter and noise, but they lack content. . . . Trotsky is very fond of explaining historical events in pompous and sonorous phrases, in a manner flattering to Trotsky". This demagogy, asserted Lenin, is used to attempt to conceal the fact that in practice Trotsky’s faction supports, and has the confiidence of the liquidator Mensheviks and the otzovists: "People like Trotsky, with his inflated phrases about the RSDLP and his toadying to the liquidators, ‘who have nothing in common’ with the RSDLP, today represents ‘the prevalent disease’. At this time of confusion, disintegration and wavering it is easy for Trotsky to become the ‘hero of the hour’ and gather all the shabby elements around himself. Actually they preach surrender to the liquidators who are building a Stolypin Labour Party". "Trotsky and the ‘Trotskyites and conciliators’ like him are more pernicious than any liquidators; the convinced liquidators state their views bluntly, and it is easy for the workers to detect where they are wrong, whereas the Trotskys deceive the workers, cover up the evil. . . Whoever supports Trotsky’s puny group supports a policy. . of shielding the liquidators. Full freedom of action for Potresov and Co. in Russia, and the sheltering of their deeds by ‘revolutionary’ phrase-mongering abroad - -- there you have the essence of the policy of ‘Trotskyism’". "Trotsky’s particular task is to conceal liquidationism by throwing dust in the eyes of the workers. It is impossible to argue with Trotsky on the merits of the issue, because Trotsky holds no views whatever. We can and should argue with confirmed liquidators and otzovists; but it is no use arguing with a man whose game is to hide the errors of both trends; in his case the thing is to expose him as a diplomat of the smallest calibre". "Trotsky follows in the wake of the Mensheviks and camouflages himself with particularly sonorous phrases. . . The Menshevik leader Yuli Martov endorsed Lenin’s estimate of Trotsky in a letter dated May 1912: "The logic of things compels Trotsky to follow the Menshevik road, despite all his reasoned pleas for some ‘synthesis’ between Menshevism and Bolshevism. . -. He has not only found himself in the camp of the ‘liquidators’, but he is compelled to take up there the most ‘pugnacious’ attitude towards Lenin". In January 1910, against the opposition of Lenin who considered the circumstances inopportune, a meeting of the Central Commiittee of the RSDLP was held in Paris, attended by representatives of the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks, the "Party Mensheviks", the Social-Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, the Social-Democratic Party of the Latvian Region, the "Vperyod" group, the Viennese group, and the "Bund'. Lenin's opposition to the holding of the Central Committee at this time was due to his awareness that a number of Bolsheviks -- including Alexel Rykov, Solomon Lozovsky, Lev Kamenev, and Grigori Sokolnikov, had adopted a concilationist position. Despite this, the Leninists were able to secure the unanimous adoption of a resolution which condemned both otzovism and liquidationism, although without specifically naming them. " The historical situation of the Social-Democratic movement in the period of the bourgeois counter-revolution inevitably gives rise, as a manifestation of the bourgeois influence over the proletariat, on the one hand to the renunciation of the illegal Social-Democratic Party, this debasement of its role and importance, the attempts to curtail the programme and tactical tasks and slogans of consistent Social-Democracy, etc.; on the other hand, it gives rise to the renunciation of the Duma work of Social-Democracy and of the utilisation of the legal possibilities, the failure to understand the importance of either, the inability to adapt the consistent Social-Democratic tactics to the peculiar historical conditions of the present moment, etc. An integral part of the Social-Democratic tactics under such conditions is the overcoming of both deviations by broadening and deepening the Social-Democratic work in all spheres of the class struggle of the proletariat and by explaining the danger of such deviations". (Resolution of Plenum of Central Committee of the RSDLP, January 1910, cited by V. I. Lenin: "Controversial Questions", in: "Selected Works", Volume 4; London; 1943; p. 129). Lenin’s draft resolution used the phrase "fight on two fronts", but this was altered by the meeting, on Trotsky's motion, to the phrase "overcoming . . by broadening and deepening": "The draft of this resolution was submitted to the Central Committee by myself, and the clause in question was altered by the plenum itself . . on the motion of Trotsky, against whom I fought without success. . . . The words ‘overcoming by means of broadening and deepening’ were inserted on Trostsky’s motion. . . " Nothing at the plenum aroused more furious – and often comical -- indignation than the idea of a 'struggle on two fronts’. . . . Trotsky's motion to substituite 'overcoming by means of broadening and deepening' for the struggle on two fronts’ meet with the hearty support of the Mensheviks and the ‘Vperyod’-ists. . . . In reality this phrase expresses a vague desire, a pious innocent wish that there should be less internal strife among the Social-Democrats! . . it is a sigh of the so-called conciliators." (V. I. Lenin: "Notes of a Publicist', in: ibid.; p. 45, 47) Despite it’s dilution by the concilationists, Lenin considered this resolution as "especially important": "This decision is especially important because it was carried unanimously: all the Bolsheviks, without exception, all the so-called 'Vperyod'-ists, and finally (this is most important of all) all the Mensheviks and the present liquidators without exception, and also all the 'national' (i.e., Jewish, Polish and Lettish) Marxists endorsed this decision". (V. I. Lenin: "Controversial Questions ", in: ibid.; p. 128-9). However, the conciliationists managed to secure the adoption of a number of other resolutions at the Central Committee meeting: 1) to dissolve all factional groups; So far as the last point was concerned, the Bolsheviks transferred their funds to three trustees - the leaders of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany, Karl Kautsky, Franz Mehring and Clara Zetkin -- until it could be shown that the other factions had carried out the decisions adopted at the Central Committee meeting. "Both the ideological merit of the plenum and its conciliationist error become clear. Its merit lies in its rejection of the ideas of liquidationism and otzovism; its mistake lies in indiscriminately concluding an agreement with persons and groups whose deeds do not correspond to their promises ( 'they signed the resolution')". "The conciliators recognised all and sundry tendencies on 'their mere promise to purge themselves, instead of recognising only those tendencies which are purging themselves (and only in so far as they do purge themselves) of their "ulcers". The 'Vperyod'-ists, the 'Golos' ites and Trotsky all ‘signed’ the resolution against otzovism and liquidationism -- that is, they promised to 'purge themselves' -- and that was the end of it! The conciliators 'believed' the promise and entangled the Party with non-Party grouplets, ‘ulcerous’ as they themselves admitted." The Bolsheviks dissolved their factional organisation and wound up their factional Paper ‘Proletary' (The Proletarian), in accordance with the decisions of the January 1910 meeting of the Central Committee. The Mensheviks, however, declined to dissolve their factional organisation, their factional paper "Golos Sotsial-Demokrata' (The Voice of the Social-Democrat) or to break with liquidationism. In fact, they began to publish in St. Petersburg a new legal monthly magazine called "Nasha Zarya" (Our Dawn) (which continued to appear until 1914) and continued to publish in Moscow their legal journal "Vozrozhdeniye" (Regeneration). And in August 1910 the Mensheviks began to issue in Moscow the magazine "Zhizn"(Life) (which, appeared until September 1910), while in January 1911 they began to issue in St. Petersburg the legal magazine "Dyelo Zhizni" (Life’s Cause) In all these publications, as well as in "Golos Sotsial-Deniokrata"; which continued to appear regularly, the Mensheviks continued to put forward openly liquidationist views: "A party in the form of a complete and organised hierarchy of institutions does not exist" "There is nothing to wind up and -- we on our part would add -- the dream of re-establishing this hierarchy in its old underground form is simply a harmful reactionary utopia". " The tactics which are to be observed in the activities of the so-called 'liquidators' are the 'tactics' which put the open labour movement in the centre, strive to extend it in every possible direction, and seek within this open labour movement and there only the elements for the revival of the party". "In the new historical period of Russian life that has set in, the working class must organise itself not 'for revolution’, not 'in expectation of a revolution’, but simply for the determined and systematic defence of its special interests in all spheres of life; for the gathering and training of its forces for this many-sided and comlex activity; for the training and accumulation in this way of socialist consciousness in general; for acquiring the ability to find one’s bearings -- to stand up for oneself". "Great political tasks make inevitable a relentless war against anti- liquidationism. ., . Anti-liquidationism is a constant brake, constant disruption." In various articles from June 1910 onwards, Lenin drew attention to the fact that the liquidator Menshviks had failed to carry out the decisions of the January 1910 Central Committee meeting: "During that year (1910), the 'Golos'-ites, the 'Vperyod'-ists, and Trotsky, all in fact, estranged themselves from the Party and moved precisely in the direction of liquidationism and otzovism-ultimatumism". "Since that very plenum of 1910, the above-mentioned principal publications of the liquidators. . have turned decidedly and along the whole line towards liquidationism, not only by 'belittling' (in spite of the decisions of the plenum) 'the importance of the illegal Party'; but directly renouncing the Party, calling it a ‘corpse’, declaring the Party to be already dissolved, describing the restoration of an illegal Party as a 'reactionary Utopia', heaping calumny and abuse on the illegal Party in the pages of the legal magazines". "All the liquidationist newspapers and magazines….. after the most definite and even-unanimous decisions have been adopted by the Party, reiterate thoughts and arguments that contain obvious liquidationism. . . . The 'Vperyod'-ists, on the other hand, continued to support toleration of otzovism within the Party: "'Vperyod', No. 3 (May 1911) . . openly states that otzovism is a 'completely legitimate tendency within our Party' (p. 78)". In September 1910, Trotsky expelled Lev Kamenev, the officica representative of the Central Committee of the Party, from the editorial board of ‘ravda' denouncing: "The conspiracy of the emigre clique (i.e., the Bolsheviks -- Ed.) against the Russian Social-Democratic Labour party"; and adding threateningly: "Lenin’s circle, which wants to place itself above the Party, will find itself outside it'. Lenin declared that Trotsky's expulsion of the CC representative from the editorial board of "Pravda" confirmed the already expressed view of the Bolsheviks that, under the guise of "non-factionalism", Trotsky was, in fact, endeavouring to form a faction: "That Trotsky's venture is an attempt to create a faction is obvious to all now, after obvious to all now, after Trotsky has removed the representative of the Central Committee from ‘Pravda’". The fact that Trotsky’s professed desire for unity of the factions concealed his support in practice for the Menshevik liquidators and otzovists is shown by his failure to condemn these factions for their repudiation of the conciliationist decisions to which all actions had agreed at the January 1910 meeting Central Committee. As Trotsky’s sympathetic biographer Isaac Deutscher expresses it: "This was the occasion on which Trotsky, the champion of unity, should have spared the offenders against unity no censure. Yet in 'Pravda’ he 'suspended judgement’ and only mildly hinted at his disapproval of the Mensheviks' conduct.. . . Trotsky took his stand against the disciplinarians. Having done so, he involved himself in glaring inconsistencies. He, the fighter for unity, connived in the name of freedom of dissent at the new breach in the Party brought about by the Mensheviks. He, who glorified the underground with zeal worthy of a Bolshevik; joined hands with those who longed to rid themselves of the underground as a dangerous embarrassment. Finally, the sworn enemy of bourgeois liberalism allied himself with those who stood for an alliance with liberalism against those who were fanatically opposed to such an alliance. . . . Lenin expressed, himself more forthrightly on Trotsky's attitude in an article entitled "Judas Trotsky's Blush of Shame": "At the Plenary Meeting Judas Trotsky made a big show of fighting liquidationism and otzovism. He vowed and swore that he was true to the Party. He was given a subsidy. . . The liquidator Menshevik members of the Central Committee, now based in Russia by the decision of the January 1910 meeting of the Central Committee and so compelled to function illegally, refused to attend the CC on the grounds that all illegal organisations were "objectionable" and "harmful". The conciliationist members of the Central Committee refused to agree to meetings of the Central Committee without the liquidator Mensheviks, on the grounds that such meetings would be "unrepresentative". "And what about the work in Russia? Not a single meeting of the Central Committee was held during the whole year! Why? Because the members of the Central Committee in Russia (conciliators who well deserved the kisses of 'Golos Likvidatorov') kept on 'inviting' the liquidators for a year and a quarter but never got them to 'accept the invitation’". The result was that for a considerable period after the January 1910 meeting of the Central Committee, all practical Party work was carried out by the Bolsheviks and the Party Mensheviks", the latter led by Georgi Plekhanov. "All Party work .. during the whole of that year (i.e., 1910 -- Ed.) was done by the Bolsheviks and the Plekhanovists. . . In June 1911, on the initiative of Lenin, a meeting of Central Committee members living- abroad was held in Paris, attended by representatives of the Bolsheviks, the "Party Mensheviks" the Social-Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, and the Social-Democratic Party of the Latvian Region. The meeting set up an Organising Commission Abroad, charged with the calling of an All-Russian Conference. This, in turn, set up a Technical Comminion Abroad, to deal with technical questions such as publishing, transport, etc. From its inception the Organising Commission Abroad had a majority of conciliationist members and, to avoid bringing about a break with the liquidator Mensheviks, it did not proceed with the work of calling a conference. In November 1911 therefore, the Bolshevik members withdrew from it. In July 1911 the Bolshevik member of the Central Committee in Paris sent Grigori Ordzhonikidze to Russia to work there for the calling of a Party Conference. As a result of Ordzhonikidze’s activity, a meeting of representatives of local Party organisations set up in November 1911 a 'Russian Organising Commission" charged with making all arrangements for convening of a Party Conference. This commission, composed of Bolsheviks and "Party Mensheviks", made arrangements for the convening of the Sixth Party Conference in Prague in January 1912. "By November l4, the Russian Organisation Committee was formed. In reality, it was created by the Bolsheviks and by the Party Mensheviks in Russia. 'The alliance of the two strong factions' (strong in their ideological solidarity and in their work of purging 'ulcers') became a fact". In December 1911 the Bolsheviks began publication in St. Petersburg of a legal monthly magazine "Prosveshceniye" (Enlightenment) to succeed "Mysl", suppressed by the Tsarist government. This in turn was suppressed by the tsarist government in June l914, but a double number appeared in the autumn of 1917. In the same month, December 1911, a meeting of Bolshevik groups abroad took place in Paris, with the aim of unifying the Bolshevik groups abroad for the forthcoming Party conference. It was attended by 11 voting delegates, under the leadership of Lenin. To remedy the intolerable situation created by Menshevik domination of the Central Committee, which refused either to be active or to convoke a congress, a conference of the Party was convened in January 1912 on the initiative of the Bolsheviks - the Sixth Conference of the- RSDLP. More than twenty organisations of the Party were represented at the conference, including those of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Ekaterinoslav, Nicolayev, Saratov, Kazan, Vilna, Dvinsk, Tiflis and Baku. The Mensheviks refused to attend – except for a small group of "Party Mensheviks". The conference elected a Bolshevik Central Committee, headed by Lenin, and this in turn set up a new Russian Bureau of the Central Committee, headed by Stalin, to direct the practical work of the Party within Russia. A resolution drafted by Lenin and adopted by the conference reviewed the anti-Party activities of the liquidator Mensheviks, who were grouped around the magazines "Nasha Zarya" (Cur Dawn) and "Dyelo Zhizni" (Life’s Cause), and declared them to be now "outside the Party": "The Conference declares that the group represented by 'Nasha Zarya' and ‘Dyelo Zhizni’ has by its behaviour, definitely placed itself outside the Party'. The Bolsheviks regarded the Sixth Party Conference as of great significance since, by the expulsion of the liquidator Mensheviks, it created for the first time a truly united Party based on Leninist principles: "The conference was of the utmost importance in the history of our Party, for it drew a boundary line between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks and amalgamated the Bolshevik organisations all over the country into a united Bolshevik Party". The liquidator Mensheviks and the group around Trotsky's "Pravda" (Truth) refused to recognise the Sixth Party Conference as "legitimate": "Neither the liquidators nor the numerous groups living abroad (those of . . Trotsky and others). . recognised our January 1912 conference". Trotsky, in particular, denounced the Conference virulently in the pages of "Pravda" (e.g., "Pravda" No. 24, 1912) and anonymously in the pages of "Vorwarts". His anger was intensified when, on May 5th., 1912, the Bolsheviks began publication in St. Petersburg of a daily newspaper under the name of "Pravda", edited by Stalin; Trotsky thundered against the "theft" of "his" paper's name by the: "The circle whose interests are in conflict with vital needs of the Party, the circle which lives and thrives only through chaos and confusion". and demanded that the Bolshevik paper change its name, concluding threateningly: "We wait quietly for an answer before we undertake further steps'. Lenin wrote to the editorial board of the Bolshevik "Pravda": "I advise you to reply to Trotsky through the post: and Stalin commented drily that Trotsky was merely: ". . .a vociferous champion with fake muscles". From the autumn of 1910 Trotsky began preparations to try to unite all the anti-Bolshevik elements associated with the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party into a single bloc which, by calling a conference in the name of the Party, might usurp the name and machinery of the Party. "Trotsky groups all the enemies of Marxism. Trotsky unites all to whom ideological decay is dear; . . . all philistines who do not understand the reasons for the struggle and who do not wish to learn, think and discover the ideological roots of the divergence of views". In November 1910 Trotsky secured the passage through the Vienna Club of the Russian Social-Democratic Party of a resolution setting up a fund for the purpose of convening such a conference. Lenin commented: "On the 26 th November, 1910, Trotsky carried through a resolution in the so called Vienna Party Club (a circle of Trotskyites, exiles who are pawns in the hands of Trotsky) . . . . Trotsky’s attacks on the bloc of Bolsheviks and Plekhanov’s group are not new; what is new is the outcome of his resolution; the Vienna Club (read 'Trotsky') has organised a 'general Party fund for the purpose of preparing and convening a conference of the RSDLP'. "Trotsky's resolution.. . expresses the very aim of the 'Golos' group -- to destroy the central bodies so detested by the liquidators, and with them, the Party as an organisation. It is not enough to lay bare the anti-Party activities of 'Golos' and Trotsky; they must be fought". In March 1912 Trotsky attempted to take advantage of the expulsion of the liquidator Mensheviks from the Party by calling a preliminary conference in Paris, attended by delegates of the various organisations (some purely fictitious) the leaderships of which were opposed to the Bolsheviks: the Social-Democratic Party of the Latvian Region, the "Caucasian Regional Committee" of the RSDLP, the Bund, the Menshevik group around the newspaper "Golos Sotsial-Demokrata" (The Voice of the Social-Democrat), the "Vperyod" (Forward) Group, and the group around Trotsky’s Viennese "Pravda". "The conference declared that the conference (i.e., the Sixth Party Conference of the RSDLP -- Ed) is an open attempt of a group of pcrsons, who have quite deliberately led the Party to a split, to usurp the Party's flag, and it expresses its profound regret that several Party organisations and comrades have fallen victims to this deception and have thereby facilitated the splitting and usurpatory policy of Lenin's sect. The conference expresses its conviction that all the Party organisations in Russia and abroad will protest against the coup d’etat that has been brought about, will refuse to recognise the central bodies elected at that conference, and will by every means help to restore the unity of the Party by the convocation of a genuine all-Party conference". The conference set up an "Organisation Committee" with the official aim of convening a "legitimate Party Conference". "The basis of this bloc is bloc is obvious: the liquidators enjoy full freedom to pursue their line . . 'as before’, while Trotsky, operating abroad, screens them with In August 1912 the anti-Bolshevik conference, to prepare which the "Organisation Committee" had been set up in March, took place in Vienna under the leadership of Trotsky, Martov and Dan. 1) liquidator Mensheviks grouped around the paper -"Golos Sotsial-Demokrata"; The "Vperyod" group withdrew from the conference on its first day, and a "Bolshevik" who attended from Moscow was subsequently exposed as a police agent. The conference adopted a resolution calling for the adaptation of the Party organisation to the "new forms and methods of the open Labour Movement'. It adopted a new programme virtually in line with that of the liberal capitalists in order to make it acceptable to the tsarist government and enable the new party which was planned to emerge from the conference to function legally. It also adopted a resolution on "national-cultural autonomy" in violation of the national programme of the RSDLP (to be discussed in the next section). The "Organisation Committee" continued in existence. Seventeen years later Trotsky commented critically on his role in initiating the formation of the "August Bloc"; "In 1912, when the political curve in Russia took an unmistakable upward turn, I made an attempt to call a union conference of representatives of all the Social-Democratic factions. . . Lenin, however, came out with all his force against union. The entire course of events that followed proved conclusively that Lenin was right. The conference met in Vienna in August 1912, without the Bolsheviks, and I found myself formally in a 'bloc’ with the Mensheviks and a few disparate groups of Bolshevik dissenters. This ‘bloc’ had no common political basis." In "April 1913 Trotsky wrote a letter to Nikolai Chkheidze, Chairman of the Duma Menshevik fraction, in which he said: "And what a senseless obsession is the wretched squabbling systematically provoked by the master squabbler, Lenin . . , that professional exploiter of the backwardness of the Russian, working class movement. . . The whole edifice of Leninism at the present time is built up on lies and falsifications and bears within it the poisoned seed of its own disintegration". Sixteen years later Trotsky did not challenge the authenticity of the letter: "My letter to Chkheidze against Lenin was published during this period (i.e., l924- Ed.). This episode, dating back to April 1913, grew out of the fact that the 'official Bolshevik newspaper then published in St. Petersburg had appropriated the title of my Viennese publication, 'The Pravda -- a Labour Paper'. This led to one of those sharp conflicts so frequent in the lives of the foreign exiles. In a letter written to Chkheidze, I gave vent to my indignation at the Bolshevik centre and at Lenin. Two or three weeks later, I would undoubtedly have subjected my letter to a strict censor's revision; a year or two later still, it would have seemed a curiosity in my own eyes. But that letter was to have a peculiar destiny. It was intercepted on its way by the Police Department. It rested in the police archives until the October revolution, when it went to the Institute of History of the Communist Party". but described its use by the leadership of the, CPSU in the campaign to expose the role of Trotsky as "One of the 'greatest frauds in the world’s history": "In 1924, the epigones disinterred the letter from archives and flung it at the party. . The people read Trotsky's hostile remarks about Lenin and were stunned. . . The use "that the epigones made of my letter to Chkheidze is one of the greatest frauds in the world's history. The forged documents of the French reactionaries in Dreyfus case are as nothing compared to the political forgery perpetrated by Stalin and his associates". In October 1913 another conference of the Central Committee of the Party with leading Party workers, attended by 22 persons, was held at Poropino (Polarid) -- a conference referred to in Party literature as the"Summer" Conference of 1913. One of the principal resolutions adopted by the Conference dealt with the position of the Party's Duma fraction. Since the seven Menshevik deputies had a majority in the fraction over the six Bolshevik deputies, the latter were constantly being pressed, in the name of "democracy", to adopt the rightist viewpoints of the majority. The conference protested at the conduct of the seven Menshevik deputies and decided that the bloc of six Bolshevik deputies, who were following the political line of the Party's Central Committee, should have equal rights with the bloc of Mensheviks. The seven Menshevik deputies refused to accept this resolution, and the Bolshevik "six" formed an independent "Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Fraction". Another important resolution dealt with the national question, and clarified the meaning of "the self-determination of nations", as the right of an oppressed nation to secede and form an independent state: "As regards the right of the nations oppressed by the tsarist monarchy to self-determination, i.e., the right to secede and form independent states, the Social-Democratic Party must unquestionably champion this right". The delegation of the Social Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania at the "Summer Conference" refrained from voting on the question of the right of nations to self-determination, "Declaring themselves opposed to any such right in general"'. The Polish delegation to the Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in 1903 had similarly opposed recognition of this right in the Programme Commission of the congress, but, receiving no support, did not raise their objections in the full congress but withdrew from it. The Polish Party based their attitude on the ideas put forward by Rosa Luxemburg in her article "The National Question and Autonomy"; published in "Przeglad Socjal-Demokratyczny" (Social-Democratic Review) in 1908-09). Although the Polish Party rejoined the RSDLP in 1906, its leaders continued to opposethe principle of the right of nations to self-determination, and in March 1914, Trotsky used this opposition to attack the Bolsheviks: "The Polish Marxists consider that 'the right to national self-determination’ is entirely devoid of political content and should be deleted from the programme". Lenin replied to these attacks in his article "On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination": "Unless we in our agitation advance and carry out the slogan of the right to secession we shall play into the hands, not only of the bourgeoisie, but also of the feudal landlords and of the absolutism of the oppressing nation. . . In her anxiety not to 'assist' nationalistic bourgeoisie of Poland, Rosa Luxemburg by her denial of the right to secession in the programme of the Russian Marxists, is in fact assisting the Great Russian Black Hundreds". And Lenin commented again on Trotsky's role in such controversies: "Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any serious question relating to Marxism; he always manages to creep into the chinks of this or that difference of opinion, and desert one sided for the other". With the collapse of the "August Bloc", in February 1914, Trotsky withdrew from the editorial board of the Menshevik paper "Luch" (The Torch) and, together with some of his Viennese supporters, began to publish a legal journal called "Borba" (The Struggle), which continued to come out until July 1914. In this paper, as Lenin noted, he put forward liquidationist ideas in a disguised form. "In his magazine Trotsky has tried to say as little as possible about the essence of his views, but "Pravda" (No . 37) has already pointed out that Trotsky has not uttered a word either on the question of illegal work, or on the slogan of the struggle for an open party, etc. . The appearance of "Borba" stimulated Lenin to write one of his fullest analyses of the disruptive role of Trotsky and his supporters, the article "Violation of Unity under Cover of' Cries for Unity", written in May l914: "Trotsky calls his new magazine ‘non-factional’. He puts this word in the forefront in his advertisements, he stresses it in every way in the editorials of ‘Borba’. . . Trotsky's 'workers' magazine' is Trotsky's magazine for the workers, for it bears no trace either of workers' initiative or of contact with the workers' organisations.. . . . By this label of 'non-factionalism' the worst representatives of the worst remnants of factionalism mislead the young generation of workers. . . . It is impossible to describe as chaos a struggle against a tendency which has been recognised by the entire Party as a tendency, and has been condemned since 1908. . . . To treat the history of one’s own party as 'chaos' means that one is suffering from unpardonable empty-headedness. . . . . During the whole of those two years (i.e., 1912 and 1913-- Ed.) not one, not a single one of those five factions abroad made the slightest impression on any of the manifestations of the mass labour movement in Russia. . . . Although Trotsky professes to be non-factional, he is known to all who are in the slightest degree acquainted with the labour movement in Russia as the representative of 'Trotsky's faction’. . . This is a remnant of factionalism for it is impossible to discover in it anything serious in the way of contacts with the mass labour movement of' Russia. Finally, it is the worst kind of factionalism, for there is nothing ideologically and politically definite about it. . . . Under the flag of 'non-factionalism' Trotsky is upholding one of the factions abroad which is particularly devoid of ideas and has no basis in the labour movement in Russia. . . . If our attitude towards liquidationism is refuted in practice by the experience of the movement, this experience should be analysed, and this again Trotsky fails to do. He admits: ‘advanced workers become the active agents of ‘schism' (read -- active agents of the 'Pravda'-ist line, tactics, system, organisation). Why is this regrettable development taking place that. . . .the advanced workers, and numerous workers at that, are supporting; 'Pravda'? Trotsky answers --- owing to the state of ‘utter political perplexity' of these advanced workers. This explanation is no doubt extremely flattering to Trotsky, to all the five factions abroad, and to the liquidators. Trotsky is very fond of explaining historical events 'with the learned mien of an expert’ in pompous and sonorous phrases, in a manner flattering to Trotsky. If 'numerous advanced workers’ become ‘active agents' of the political and Party line, which does not harmonise with the line of Trotsky, then Trotsky settles the question unceremoniously, directly and immediately: these advanced workers are ‘in a state of utter political perplexity, and he, Trotsky, is obviously in a ‘state’ of political firmness, clarity and correctness regarding the line! And this very same Trotsky, beating his chest, thunders against factionalism, against narrow circles, and against the intelligentsia foisting their will on the workers! . . . . Trotsky is trying to disrupt the movement and cause a split. . . . In August 1912 the conference of the 'uniters' met. Discord set in at once. In his magazine Trotsky has tried to say as little as possible about the essence of his views. Trotsky has not uttered a word either on the question of illegal work, or on the slogan of the struggle for an open party, etc. Incidentally, that is why we say in this case, in which a segregated organisation wants to set itself up without having an ideological-political complexion, that it is the worst sort of factionalism . . . Trotsky has avoided expounding his views directly. Such types are characteristic as fragments of the historical factions of yesterday, when the mass labour movement of Russia was still dormant and every grouplet was 'free’ to represent itself as . . a 'great power’ talking of uniting with others. The young generation of workers must know very well with whom it has to deal". On the outbreak of war, Trotsky was forced to leave Vienna and for two months he settled in Zurich, where he wrote "The War and the International', which was published in November in "Golos" (The Voice), a Menshevik paper published in Paris. In this work Trotsky put forward the view that "the main obstacle to economic development' was the existence the national state": "The old national state .. has outlived itself, and is now an intolerable hindrance to economic development. . . . Thus, declared Trotsky, the aim of the working class should be the creation of a 'republican United States of Europe": "The task of the proletariat is to create a far more powerful fatherland, with far greater power of resistance - the republican United States of Europe". Lenin at first (in one document only) accepted the slogan of a "United States of Europe": "The immediate political slogan of the Social-Democrats of Europe must be the formation of a republican United States of Europe". By August 1915, however, the Bolsheviks, on Lenin's initiative had decisively rejected this slogan, firstly, because it could, under capitalist society, only be reactionary: "From the point of view of the economic conditions of imperialism, . . the United States of Europe is either impossible or reactionary under capitalism. A United States of Europe under capitalism is equivalent to an agreement to divide up the colonies. Under capitalism, however, . . no other principle of division . . . . is possible except force. . . Division cannot take place except 'in proportion to strength', And strength changes in the course of economic development. and secondly because if regarded as a socialist slogan, it suggests that_the victory of socialism was possible only on an all European scale: "Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible, first in a few or even in one single capitalist country". Lenin concludes: "It is for those reasons and after repeated debates that the editors of the central organ have come to the conclusion that the United States of Europe slogan is incorrect'". That Trotsky did, in fact, link the Slogan of "a United States of Europe" with the concept, inherent in his "theory of permanent revolution", that proletarian revolution could only be successful an an international scale, is shown by his reply to Lenin's article: "The only more or less concrete historical argument advanced against the slogan of a United States of Europe was formulated in the Swiss 'Sotsial-Demokrat' in the following sentence: (L. Trotsky: Article in "Nashe Slovo" (Our Word), No. 87; April 12th., 1916, cited in: J. V. Stalin: "The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists", in: 'Works", Volume 6; Moscow; 1953; p. 390-1). In the autumn of 1916 Lenin reiterated his opposition to Trotsky's slogan of a United States of Europe: "As early as 1902, he (i.e., the British econornist John Hobson -- Ed.) had an excellent insight into the meaning and significance of a 'United States of Europe'' (be it said for the benefit of Trotsky the Kautskyian!) and of all that is now being glossed over by the hypocritical Kautskians of various countries, namely, that the opportunists (social-chauvinists) are working hand in hand with the imperialist bourgeoisie precisely towards creating an imperialist Europe on the backs of Asia and Africa". Trotsky, however, continued -- even after the Russian October Revolution of 1917 -- to hold that the construction of socialism in Europe was possible only on an all-European basis. In the postscript to a collection of articles published in 1922 under the title of "A Peace Programme", he wrote: "The assertion reiterated several times in the 'Peace Programme' that a proletarian revolution cannot culminate victoriously within national bounds may perhaps seem to some readers to have been refuted by the nearly five years' experience of our Soviet Republic. But such a conclusion would be unwarranted. . . We have not arrived, or even begun to arrive, at tho creation of a socialist society. . . Real progress of a socialist economy in Russia will become possible only after the victory of the proletariat in the major European countries." (L. Trotsky: Postscript to 'A Peace Programme , cited by: J. V. Stalin: "The Social-Democratic Deviation in our Party; in: "Works", Volume 8; Moscow; l954; p. 271-2). The "Peace" Slogan-The First of Trotsky's Two Slogans The policy put forward by Trotsky in the pages of "Nashe Slovo" in relation to the imperialist war may be summarised in two slogans:
"Phrase-mongers like Trotsky (See No. 105 of the 'Nashe Slovo') defend, in opposition to us, the peace slogan". 'Revolutionary struggle against the war ' . . is an example of the high-flown phraseology with which Trotsky always justifies opportunism". Lenin opposed the "peace" slogan throughout the war: "The peace slogan is in my judgment incorrect at the present moment. This is a philistine's, a preacher's, slogan. The proletarian slogan must be civil war". "Propaganda of peace at the present time, if not accompanied by a call for revolutionary mass action, is only capable of spreading illusions, of demoralising the proletariat by imbuing it with belief in the humanitarianism of the bourgeoisie, and of making it a plaything in the hands of the secret diplomacy of the belligerent countries. In particular, the ilea that a so-called democratic peace is possible without a series of revolutions is profoundly mistaken." "To accept the peace slogan per Se, and to repeat it, would be encouraging the 'pompous air of powerless (what is worse hypocritical) phrasemongers'; that would mean deceiving the people with the illusion that the present governments, the present ruling 'classes, are capable before they are . . eliminated by a number of revolutions of granting a peace even half way satisfactory to democracy and the working class. Nothing is more harmful than such a deception." In September 1915 Trotsky carried forward his opposition to the Leninist policy towards the war at the International Socialist Conference at Zimmerwald ( Switzerland). The Bolshevik resolution was rejected by a majority of the delegates, including Trotsky. As he expresses it himself: "Lenin was on the extreme left at the Conference. In many questions he was in a minority of one, even within the Zimmerwald left wing, to which I did not formally belong." In these circumstances, the Bolsheviks agreed to sign a compromise manifesto drafted by Trotsky: "The revolutionary wing, led by Lenin, and the pacifist wing, which comprised the majority of the delegates, agreed with difficulty on a conmon manifesto of which I had prpared the draft". The central point of this manifesto was "the struggle for peace": "It is necessary to take up this struggle for peace, for a peace without annexations or war indemnities. . . . Lenin commented on this manifests after the conference: "Passing to 'the struggle for peace' . .here also we find inconsistency, timidity, failure to say everything that ought to be said. . . It does not name directly, openly and clearly the revolutionary methods of struggle". "Neither Victory nor Defeat"- Trotsky's Second Slogan Secondly, in opposition to Lenin's declaration that a revolutionary struggle against "one's own imperialists in wartime was facilitated by, and facilitated, the military defeat of "one's own" imperialists in the war, Trotsky put forward the slogan of "Neither victory nor defeat!": "'Bukvoyed (i.e., Ryazonov -- Ed.) and Trotsky defend the slogan 'Neither victery nor defeat!" In an Open Letter addressed to the Bolsheviks in "Nashe Slovo" in the summer of l9l5, Trotsky denounced Lenin's policy of "revolutionary defeatism" as: "An uncalled-for and unjustifiable concession to the political methodology of social-patriotism which substitutes for the revolutionary struggle against the war and the conditions that cause it, what, under present conditions, is an extremely arbitrary orientation towards the lesser evil". Lenin replied to Trotsky's Open Letter in August l9l5, in his article "Defeat of One's Government in the Imperialist War": "This is an example of the high-flown phraseology with which Trotsky always justifies opportunism. Revolution in wartime is civil war; and the transformation of war between governments into civil war is, on the one hand, facilitated by military reverses ('defeats') of governments; on the other hand, it is impossible really to strive for such a transformation without thereby facilitating defeat. The very reason the chauvinists. . .repudiate the 'slogan' of defeat is that this slogan alone implies a consistent appeal for revolutionary action against one's own government in wartime. Without such action, millions of the r-r-revolutionary phrases like war against 'war and the conditions, and so forth' are not worth a penny. . . . To repudiate the 'defeat' slogan means reducing one's revolutionary actions to an empty phrase or to mere hypocrisy. .. . The slogan "Neither victory nor defeat" . . is nothing but a paraphrase of the 'defence of the fatherland' slogan. . . . . On closer examination, this slogan will be found to mean 'civil peace', renunciation of the class struggle by the oppressed classes in all belligerent 'countries, since class struggle is impossible without . . facilitating the defeat of one's own country. Those who accept the slogan 'Neither victory nor defeat', can only hypocritically be in favour of the class struggle, of 'breaking civil peace'; those in practice, renounce an independent proletarian policy because they subordinate the proletariat of all belligerent countries to the absolutely bourgeois task of safeguarding imperialist governments against defeat. . Those who are in favour of the slogan 'Neither victory nor defeat' are consciously or unconsciusly chauvinists, at best they are conciliatory petty bourgeois; at all events they are enemies of proletarian policy, partisans of the present governments, of the present ruling classes. . . . Those who stand for the slogan 'Neither victory nor defeat' are in fact on the side of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists, for they 'do not believe' in the possibility of international revolutionary action of the working class against its own governments, and they do not wish to help the development of such action which, though no easy task, it is true, is the only task worthy of a proletarian, the only socialist task'." In April 1915 Rosa Luxemburg, in prison, wrote, under the pseudonym "Junius", a pamphlet entitled 'The Crisis of German Social Democracy. ' It was published a year later, in April 1916. Rosa Luxemburg, like Trotsky opposed Lenin's policy of "revolutionary defeatism": "What shall be the practical attitude of social democracy in the present war? Shall it declare: since this is an imperialist war, since we do not enjoy in our country any socialist self-determination, its existence or non-existence is of no consequence to us, and we will surrender it to the enemy? Passive fatalism can never be the role of a revolutionary party like social democracy. . . . and like Trotsky, she put forward the slogan of "Neither victory nor defeat": "Here lies the great fault of German social democracy..... . . It was their duty . to proclaim to the people of Germany that in this war victory and defeat would be equally fatal". suggesting that the defence of the country "against defeat" should be carried on under the slogan she had consistently opposed as a leader of the Social-Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, the Slogan of "national self-determination": "Instead of covering this imperialist war with a lying mantle of national self-defence, social democracy should have demanded the right of national self-determination seriously". Lenin replied to Rosa Luxemburg's pamphlet in his article "The Pamphlet by Junius", published in August 1916: "We find the same error in Junius' arguments about which is better, victory or defeat? His conclusion is that both are equally bad. . . This is the point of view not of the revolutionary proletariat, but of the pacifist petty bourgeois.. . . Another fallacious argument advanced by Junius is in connection with the question of defence of the fatherland. He proposes to 'oppose' the imperialist war with a national programme". True, Rosa Luxemburg, unlike the open social-chauvinists, supported the concept of class struggle apainst one's own government during the war, not, however, in relation to the slogan of "turn the imperialist war into civil war", but as 'the best defence against a foreign enemy": "The centuries have proven that not the state of siege, but relentless class struggle . . is the best protection and the best defence against a foreign enemy". Lenin commented: "In saying that class struggle is the best means of defence against invasian, Junius applied Marxian dialectics only half way, taking one step on the right road and immediately deviating from it. . . Civil war against the bourgeoisie is also a form of class struggle, and only this form of class struggle would have saved Europe (the whole of Europe, not only one country) from the peril of invasion. Junius came very close to the correct solution of the problem and to the correct slogan: civil war against the bourgeoisi for socialism; but, as if afraid to speak the whole truth, he turned back to the phantasy of a 'national war' in 1914, 1915 and 1916. . .. Junius has not completely rid himself of the 'environment' of the German Social-Democrats, even the Lefts, who are afraid to follow revolutionary slogans to their logical conclusion." Lenin stood' firmly for the organisational separation of revolutionary internationalism from both open and concealed (ie. Centrist) social-chauvinism: "To keep united with opportunism at the present time means precisely to subjugate the working class to ‘its’ bourgeoisie, to make an alliance with it for the oppression of other nations and for the struggle for the privileges of a great nation; at the same time it means splitting the revolutionary proletariat of all countries". "We must declare the idea of unity with the Organisation Committee an illusion detrimental to the workers' cause". "We shall not be for unity with Chkheidze's fraction (as desired both by Trotsky, by the 0rgansation Committee, and by Plekhanov and Co.; . for this would mean to cover up and defend the 'Nashe Dyelo". In contrast to Lenin, Trotsky stood consistently for the unity of what he termed the "internationalist" groups, a category which included the concealed social-chauvinists of the Centre (the Organisation Committee, the Menshevik Duma fraction and the group around Trotsky). At the beginning of 1915, "Nashe Slovo" addressed an appeal to the Bolshevik Central Committee and to the Menshevik Organisation Committee proposing a conference of all the groups which took a "negative attitude' towards socialchauvinism. In its reply, dated March 1915, the Organisation Committee said: 'To the conference must be invited the foreign representatives of all those party centres and groups which were . . present at the Brussels Conference of the International Socialist Bureau before the war'. Lenin commented: "Thus, the Organisation Committee declines on principle to confer with the internationalists, since it wishes to confer also with the social-patriots (it is known that Plekhanov's and Alexinsky's policies were represented at Brussels). Nevertheless, Trotsky continued his efforts to bring about organisational unity between the Bolsheviks end the concealed social-chauvinists of the Centre. In June 1915 Trotsky wrote an Open Letter to the editors of the Bolshevik magazine "Kommunist": , published in No. 105 of "Nashe Slovo" in which he said: "I am proud of the conduct of our Duma members (the Chkheidze group); I regard them as the most important agency of internationalist education of the proletariat in Russia, and for that very reason I deem it the task of every revolutionary Social-Democrat to extend to them every support and to raise their authority in the International". Lenin commented on Trotsky's unprincipled conciliationism in various articles: "The elements that are grouped around the 'Nashe Slovo' are vacillating between platonic sympathy for internationalism and a tendency for unity at any price with the "Nasha Zarya" and the Organisation Committee". "'Nashe Slovo' . . raises a revolt against social-nationalism while standing on its knees before it, since it fails to unmask the most dangerous defenders of the bourgeois current (like Kautsky); it does not declare war against opportunism but, on the contrary, passes it over in silence; it does not undertake, and does not point out, any real steps towards liberating socialism from its shameful patriotic captivity. By saying that neither unity nor a split with those who joined the bourgeoisie is imperative, the 'Nashe Slovo' practically surrenders to the opportunists". "Trotsky always, entirely disagrees with the social-chauvinists in principle, but agrees with them in everything in practice." 'We shall not be for unity with Chkheidze's fraction (As desired . .by Trotsky . .) for this would mean to cover up and defend the 'Nashe Dyelo'... "In Russia Trotsky . . fights for unity with the opportunist and chauvinist group "Nashe Zarya'". "Martov and Trotsky in Russia are causing the greatest harm to the labour movement by their insistence upon a fictitious unity, thus hindering, the now ripened imminent unification of the opposition in all countries and the creation of the Third International". "What are our differences with Trotsky?. . In brief -- he is a Kautskyite, that is, he stands for unity with the Kautskyites in the International and with Chkheidze's parliamentary group in Russia. We are absolutely against such unity". "What a swine this Trotsky is -- Left phrases and a bloc with the Right. . . He ought to be exposed". In January 1917 Trotsky landed in New York, and joined the staff of a Russian magazine published there under the editorship of Nikolai Bukharin and Aleksandra Kollontai, -"Novy Nir" (New World) . Typically, he formed a bloc with the right-wing members of the staff against the Left: "Trotsky arrived, and this scoundrel at once ganged up with the Right wing of 'Novy Mir’ against the Left Zimmerwaldists!! That's it!! That's Trotsky for you!! Always true to himself - twists, swindles, poses as a Left, helps the Right, so long as he can." In "Navy Mir", Trotsky continued to put forward his theory of "permanent revolution", arguing that if the German working class failed to rise along with the Russian working class, the workers’ government of a revolutionary Russia must wage war against the German ruling class: "If the conservative social-patriotic organisation should prevent the German working class from rising against its ruling classes in the coming epoch, then of course the Russian working class would defend its revolution with arms in its hands. The revolutionary workers' government would wage war against the Hohenzollerns, summoning the brother proletariat of Germany to rise against the common enemy." 3. From "February Revolution" to October RevolutionFrom the first days of 1917 strikes spread throughout the main cities of tsarist Russia. By March 10 th; these had developed in Petrograd into a political general strike, with the demonstrating workers carrying Bolshevik slogans: "'Down with the tsar.!", "Down with the war.!" and "Bread.!" The practical work of the Bolshevik Party in Russia at this time was directed by the Bureau of the Central Committee, headed by Vyacheslav Molotov. On March 11th. the Bureau issued a manifesto calling for an armed uprising against tsarism and the formation of a Provisional-Government. On March 12 th; an elected Soviet of Workers' Deputies came into being in Petrograd as an action comnittee to carry out the uprising and in the following days Soviets were established in Moscow and other cities. On March 13 th, the Petrograd Soviet revived its "Izvestia" ("News"). When the tsar ordered troops to suppress the rising by force, the soldiers -- mostly peasant in uniform -- refused to obey the orders of their officers and joined the revolutionary workers, thus bringing into being a revolutionary alliance of workers and peasants. The workers and soldiers now began to disarm the police and to arm themselves with their weapons. On March 14 th, the Petrograd Soviet was expanded into a "Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers’ Deputies". On March 15th. the tsar, Nicholas II, abdicated. The revolution of March 1917 (known as the "February Revolution" under the old-style calendar) had been accomplished by the workers and peasants. Its character was that of a bourgeois-democratic revolution directed against the tsarist autocracy. As soon as the capitalist class realised that the bourgeois-democratic revolution was unavoidable, they proceeded to manoeuvre in an effort to minimise its’ scope -- and above all to prevent its development into a socialist revolution. On March 12th., the day after the tsar had dissolved the Fourth State Duma, its liberal capitalist members set up an "Executive Committee of the Imperial Duma", headed by the President of the Duma, the monarchist landlord Mikhail Rodzyanko. On March 15th. this Executive Committee set up a "Provisional-Government", headed by Prince Georgi Lvov as Prime Minister and including among its Ministers Pavel Miliukov (leader of the Constitutional Democrats) as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aleksendr Guchkov (leader of the Octobrists) as Minister of War, and Aleksandr Karensky (a prominent Socialist-Revolutionary) as Minister of Justice. The capitalist class endeavoured for a few days to save the monarchy, by persuading the tsar to abdicate in favour of his brother Mikhail. But this proved untenable in view of popular feeling against the monarchy, and Mikhail abdicated on the following day, March 16th. The capitalists, then turned their efforts to attempting to turn Russia into a capitalist parliamentary republic. On March 17th. the new government issued a manifesto "To the Citizens"; setting out its programme: "1. Complete and immediate amnesty for all political and religious offences, including terrorist acts, military revolts, agrarian insurrections, etc. 2.Freedom of speech, press, assembly, union, strikes, and the extension of all political liberties to persons in the military service within the limits required by considerations of technical military necessity. 3. Abolition of all feudal estate and national restrictions. 4. Immediate preparation for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly on the basis of universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage. This Constituent Assembly shall determine the form of State and the constitution of the country. 5. Formation of a people's militia with elected officers subordinated to the organs of local self-government and taking the place of the police. 6. Elections to the local organs of self-government on the basis of universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage. 7. The troops who participated in the revolutionary movement are not to be disarmed and are to remain in Petrograd. 8. While maintaining a rigid military discipline in the service, all obstacles are to be eliminated preventing soldiers from exercising the public rights enjoyed by other citizens". Lenin commented: 'In its first proclamation to the people (March 17), the government uttered not a word about the main and basic question of the present moment, peace. It keeps secret the predatory treaties made by tsarism with England, France, Italy, Japan, etc. It wishes to conceal from the people the truth about its war programme, and the fact that it is for war, for victory over Germany. . . . The new government cannot give the people bread. And no amount of freedom will satisfy masses suffering hunger. . . . The entire Manifesto of the new government . . .inspires me with the greatest distrust, for it consists only of promises, and does not carry into life any of the most essential measures that could and should be fully realised right now" Although there was a large spontaneous element in the "February Revolution", the Bolsheviks, played a leading role in the uprising itself. Despite this, in the majority of cases a majority of the members of the Soviets and of their Executive Committees were Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries; the Bolsheviks were, in the period following the "February Revolution" in a small minority in most of the Soviets, including those of Petrograd and Moscow. A number of factors were responsible for this position: the industrial working class had been diluted during the war by large numbers of peasants from the villages, while Bolshevik leaders such as Lenin and Stalin were in exile. As a result of this, on March 18th. the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet issued a proclamation calling upon the workers to support the capitalist Provisional Government. Lenin commented: "The proclamation issued by the Soviet of Workers' Deputies ... is a most remarkable document. It proves that the Petrograd proletariat, at the time it issued its proclamation, at any rate, was under the preponderant influence of the petty-bourgeois politicians. At the same time the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet set up a ‘Contact Commission', headed by Aleksandr Skobolev, the official aim of which was to maintain contact with, and "control", the Provisional Government. Lenin summed up the political situation resulting from the February Revolution in the following words: "The first stage of the revolution . . , owing to the insufficient class consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, led to the assumption of power by the bourgeoisie." The victory of the "February Revolution" created a new political situation in Russia which called for a new political line on the part of the Russian Socia1-Democratic Labour Party. As Stalin expressed it in November 1924: "This was the greatest turning point in the history of Russia and an unprecedented turning point in the history Of our Party. The old, pre-revolutionary platform Of direct overthrow of the government was clear and definite, but it was no longer suitable for the new conditions of struggle . . Under the now conditions of the struggle, the Party hod to adopt a new orientation. The Party (its majority) groped its way towards this new orientation". At the time of the "February Revolution" the Bureau of the Control Committee of the RSDLP, centred in Petrograd, was led by Vyacheslav Molotov. On March 18th., 1917 the Bureau issued, in the name of the Central Committee, a manifesto to "All Citizens of Russia", calling for the formation of a Provisional Revolutionary Government. "Citizens! The fortresses of Russian tsarism have.. fallen. . . . It is the task of the working class and the revolutionary army to create a Provisional Revolutionary Government which is to head the new republican order now in the process of birth. The Provisional Revolutionary Government must take it upon itself to create temporary laws defending all the rights and liberties of the people, to confiscate the lands of the monasteries and the landowners, the crown lands and the appanages, to introduce the 8-hour working day and to convoke a Constituent Assembly on the basis a universal, direct and equal suffrage, with no discrimination as to sex, nationality or religion, and with the secret ballot. The manifesto was published in the first issue of "Pravda", which reappeared on the same day. Among the Bolsheviks liberated from exile in Siberia by the "February Revolution" were Josef Stalin and Lev Kamenev, both of whom returned to Petrograd. Kamenev joined the editorial board of "Pravda" on March 23rd., Stalin two days later on March 28 th.: Kamenev immediately upheld a chauvinist line on the war, contending like the Menshevik leaders that with the victory of the "February Revolution" the working class should adopt a position of "revolutionary defencism": He wrote in "Pravda" of March 28th.: "The soldiers, the peasants and the workers of Russia who went to war obeying the pull of the now overthrown Tsar. . have freed themselves; the Tsar's banners have been replaced by the red banners of the revolution!. . . Stalin rejected this policy of chauvinist "revolutionary defenciism". He wrote in "Pravda" on the following day, March 29 th : "The present war is an imperialist war. Its principal aim is the seizure (annexation) of foreign, chiefly agrarian, territories by capitalistically developed states.. . . The majority of the Bureau, headed by Stalin and Molotov, correctly saw the Provisional Government as an organ of the capitalist class, and the Soviets as the embryo of a Provisional Government. A resolution of the Bureau published in "Pravda" on April 8 th declared: "The Provisional Government set up by the moderate bourgeois classes of society and associated in interests with Anglo-French capital is incapable of solving the problems raised by the revolution. Its resistance to the further extension and deepening of the revolution is being paralysed only by the growth of the revolutionary forces themselves and by their organisation. Their rallying centre must be the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers' Deputies in the cities and the Soviets of Peasants’ and Agricultural Workers' Deputies in the countryside as the embryo of a revolutionary government, prepared in the further process of development, at a definite moment of the revolution, to establish the full power of the proletariat in alliance with the revolutionary democracy". However, in "groping" towards a correct political line in the new situation, the majority of the Bureau made a tactical error. Instead of putting forward the clear slogan of "All power to the Soviets!', they adopted a policy of "putting pressure on the Provisional Government" to perform actions which, as an organ of the capital class, it was incapable of doing: "The solution is to bring pressure on the Provisional Government to make it declare its consent to start peace negotiations irnmediately. On which Lenin commented forthrightly the day after his return to Russia: "The "Pravda" demands that the government renounce annexations. To demand that a government of capitalists renounce annexations is balderdash". This incorrect tactical line corresponded closely with the tactical line of Kamenev, who said: "Our slogan is -- pressure on the Provisional Government with the aim of forcing it openly, before world democracy, and immediately to come forth with an attempt to induce all the belligerent countries forthwith to start negotiations concerning the means of stopping the World War". Stalin himself analysed this mistaken tactical policy in November 1924: "The Party (its majority) groped its way towards this new orientation. It adopted the policy of pressure on the Provisional Government through the Soviets on the question of peace and did not venture to step forward at once from the old slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry to the new slogan of power to the Soviets. The aim of this halfway policy was to enable the Soviets to discern the actual imperialist nature of the Provisional Government on the basis of the concrete questions of peace and in this way to wrest the Soviets from the Provisional Government. But this was a profoundly mistaken position, for it gave rise to pacifist illusions, brought grist to the mill of defencism, and hindered the revolutionary education of the masses. At that time I shared this mistaken position with the Party comrades and fully abandoned it only in the middle of April, when I associated myself with Lenin's theses". As soon as the "February Revolution" broke out, Lenin began attempts to return to Russia. The governments of the Allied powers refused him permission to travel through their countries but eventually, as a result of negotiations between Fritz Platten, Secretary of the Swiss Socialist Party, and the German government, 32 Russian political emigres (19 of which were Bolsheviks, among them Lenin) were permitted to travel through Germany in a sealed railway carriage accorded extra-territorial rights. The German government, of course, calculated that the return of these revolutionaries to Russia would be detrimental to the Russian war effort. Lenin arrived in Petrograd on the evening- of April 16 th; and was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd of workers and soldiers. On the following day he reported to the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet on the circumstances of his journey through Germany. Later on April 17th., Lenin spoke at a meeting of the Bolshevik delegates to the First Congress of Soviets, presenting his theses on the new situation in Russia following the "February Revolution" -- the "April Theses". To sum up, Lenin held that, politically, the "February Revolution" was a bourgeois-democratic revolution which transferred power from the tsarist autocracy to the dual power of the democratic dictatorship of the working class and peasantry (in the shape of the Soviets) and of the capitalist class (in the shape of the Provisional Government). Politically, therefore, the 'February Revolution" represented the completion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution: "Before the March revolution of 1917, state power in Russia was in the hands of one old class, namely, the feudal noble landlord class, headed by Nicholas Romanov. Economically and socially, however, particularly in so far as the agrarian revolution (the transfer of the land to the working peasantry) is concerned, the “February Revolution” did not complete the bourgeois-democratic revolution, Economically and socially, the bourgeois-democratic revolution was not completed until the “October Revolution", the political content of which was proletarian-socialist. “Is the agrarian revolution, which is a phase of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, completed? On the contrary, is it not a fact that it has not yet been?” “The bourgeois-democratic content of the revolution means purging the social relations (systems and institutions) of the country of mediavalism, serfdom, feudalism. . . . Lenin thus maintained that the Bolshevik strategy and tactics relating to the first, bourgeois-democratic stage of the revolutionary process in Russia had been confirmed by the "February Revolution”, but in a “more multicoloured” Way than could have been anticipated: “The Bolsheviks’ slogans and ideas have been generally confirmed by history; but as to the concrete situation, things have turned out to be different, more original, more unique, more multicoloured than could have been anticipated by any one”. After the "October Revolution” the question naturally arose among Trotsky’s disciples as to how it had come about that the socialist revolution in Russia had been brought about in accordance with a political line advanced by Lenin, who had consistently opposed Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution". Trotsky's answer was simple, if completely mythical: in May 1917 the Bolshevik Party, on Lenin's initiative, had “rearmed itself” ideologically by accepting Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution"; thus history had "confirmed" the correctness of Trotsky's theory of “permanent revolution”: "Bolshevism under the leadership of Lenin (though not without internal struggle) accomplished its ideological rearmanent on this most important question in the spring of 1917, that is, before the seizure of power". "Precisely in the period between January 9 and the October strike (in 1905 -- Ed.) the author formed those opinions, which later received the name: 'theory of the permanent revolution’ . . . . . "I by no means consider that in my disagreements with the Bolsheviks I was wrong on all points.. . . In fact, of course, Lenin took pains to dissociate himself from Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution” after his return to Russia in April 1917: "Trotskyism: 'No Tsar but a workers' government’. This, surely is wrong". "Had we said: 'No Tsar, but a Dictatorship of the Proletariat' -- it would have meant a leap over the petty bourgeoisie.” Lenin did not put forward in April 1917 the strategy of direct advance to the dictatorship of the working class (in alliance with the poor peasantry) as a corrected strategy for the realisation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. On the contrary, the bourgeois-democratic revolution, as the first stage of the revolutionary process in Russia, had already been realised, politically, in the “February Revolution”. The strategy of direct advance to the dictatorship of the working class (in alliance with the poor peasantry) was put forward as a new strategy for the new situation following the "February Revolution", a new strategy for the second stage of the revolutionary process. As Lenin expressed it in his “April Theses”: "The present situation in Russia. . .represents a transition from the first stage of the revolution to its second stage which is to place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest strata of the peasantry”. Trotsky's myth -- that Lenin put forward in April 1917 a "corrected” strategy for the realisation of the bourgeois--democratic revolution similar to that embodied in Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution” -- is based on a denial of the fact that the 'February Revolution" constituted, politically, a bourgeois-democratic revolution. 'The insurrection triumphed. But to whom did it hand over the power snatched from the monarchy? We come here to the central problem of the February revolution. Why and how did the power turn up in the hands of the liberal bourgeoisie?" But in his "The Permanent Revolution”, Trotsky deliberately confuses the political bourgeois-democratic revolution of March with the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary economic and social changes that followed the revolution of November in order to present the latter as a "bourgeois-democratic revolution" which resulted in the dictatorship of the proletariat: 'The bourgeois-democratic revolution was realised during the first period after October. . But, as we know, it was not realised in the form of a democratic dictator-ship (i.e., of the working class and peasantry –but in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.. . . . In November 1926 Stalin was justifiably sarcastic about Trotsky's claim that in May 1917 the Party had "rearmed itself" with Trotsky's theory of 'permanent revolution": 'Trotsky cannot but know that Lenin fought against the theory of permanent revolution to the end of his life. But that does not worry Trotsky. Within the Party the principal opposition to Lenin's "April Theses" was led by Trotsky's brother-in-law Lev Kamenev. "In yesterday's issue of the 'Pravda' Comrade Lenin published his 'theses'. They represent the personal opinion of Comrade Lenin. . . The policy of the “Pravda” was clearly formulated in the resolutions prepared by the Bureau of the Central Committee. . . . Lenin replied: "There are two major errors in this. An opposition group in the Moscow City Committee, headed Aleksei Rykov and Viktor Nogin, opposed the basis of Lenin's theses on the grounds that Russia was too industrially undeveloped for socialist construction: Lenin replied: “Comrade Rykov says that Socialism must first come from other countries with greater industria1 development. But this is not so. It is hard to tell who will begin and who will end. This is not Marxism, but a parody on Marxism”. Another group of members of the Party – including I. P. Goldenberg, V. Bazarov, B. V. Avilov and Y N. Steklov, -- left the Bolshevik Party altogether in protest against Lenin's theses and founded the paper "Novaya Zhizn" (New Life), which supported the unification of Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and “Novaya Zhizn"-ists into a single party based on the openly Menshevik view that the Socialist revolution "Must be preceded by a more or less prolonged period of capitalism." At the Petrograd City Conference of the Party, held from April 27th; to May 5th; 1917, a resolution in support of the political line laid down in Lenin's "April Theses" was carried. On May 1st., 1917 (April 18th ; under the old sty1e calendar) Foreign Minister Pavel Miliukov sent a note to the Allied Governments emphasising the determination of the Provisional Government to carry the war to a victorious conclusion and to remain loyal to the tsarist government's treaties with the Allies. 'The declarations of the Provisional Government naturally cannot offer the slightest cause to assume that the accomplished upheaval will result in a weakening of Russia’s role in the common struggle of the Allies. Quite the contrary. The effort of the whole people to carry the World War through to a decisive victory has only been strengthened. . Naturally, the Provisional Government. . . in protecting the rights of our fatherland, will hold faithfully to the obligations which we have assumed towards our allies. . The government is now, as before, firmly convinced, that the present war will be victoriously concluded in complete accord with the Allies”. The publication of the note within Russia gave rise to mass demonstrations in Petrograd over the next four days, in which armed soldiers took a prominent part -- attempting at times to occupy public buildings. Among the demonstrators the slogans “Down with Miliukov" and “Down with Guchkov” were raised everywhere. The Central Committee of the Party was concerned that this spontaneous movement might develop along insurrectionary lines which, in the existing situation, could only harm the revolutionary movement; on May 4th., therefore, it adopted a resolution drafted by Lenin calling upon all Party members to exert every effort to keep the demonstrations peaceful: "Party agitators and speakers must refute the despicable lies that we threaten with civil war. . . At the present moment, when the capitalists and their government cannot and dare not use violence against the masses . . any thought of civil war is naive, senseless, monstrous. . . . These demonstrations proved sufficient to force the resignation of Guchkov as Minister of War May 13th; and of Miliukov as Minister of Foreign Affairs on May 15th. On May 14th the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet voted in favour of a coalition Provisional Government, in which the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary parties would be formally represented. The First Coalition Provisional Government came into being on May l8th with Prince Georgi Lvov continuing as Prime Minister. Aleksandr Tereshchenko replaced Miliukov as Minister of Foreign Affairs; Aleksandr Kerensky and Viktor Chernov (of the Socialist Revolutionaries) became Minister of War and Minister of Agriculture respectively; Aleksandr Skobelev and Iraklii Tseretelli (of the Mensheviks) became Minister of Labour and Minister of Posts and Telegraphs respectively. In the following month Lenin commented on the formal entry of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries into the Provisional Government: 'The entrance of Tseretelli, Chernov and Co. into the cabinet has changed to an insignificant degree only the form of the compact between the Petrograd Soviet and the government of the capitalists. .. The Seventh Conference of the Russian Social-Democrotic Labour Party (the “April Conference”) was held in Petrograd from May 7th. to 12th., 1917, attended by 133 voting delegates representing 80,000 Party members. The Report on the Political Situation was given by Lenin, and the opposition to Lenin’s political line was led by Lev Kamenev and Aleksei Rykov. Kamenev directed his main attack against the slogan 'Down with the Provisional Government!'", implying that this was a Leninist slogan whereas it had been put forward during the 'April Days" by the Petrograd Committee of the Party in violation of the line of the Central Committee. In place of this (for the moment) incorrect slogan, Kamenev urged that the Party should put forward the completely unrealistic demand for control of the Provisional Government by the Soviets". Lenin replied: “We say that the slogan 'Down with the Provisional Government' is an adventurer's slogan. That is why we have advocated peaceful demonstrations. . . The Petrograd Committee, however, turned a trifle to the Left. In a case of this sort, such a step was a grave crime. Rykov opposed Lenin's political line on the grounds that Russia was too industrially undeveloped to move towards a socialist revolution. Lenin replied: "Comrade Rykov. . . . says that Socialism must come first from other countries with greater industrial development. But this is not so. It is hard to tell who will begin and who will end. This is not Marxism, but a parody on Marxism.' By a majority the congress approved a series of resolutions endorsing the Leninist line. The Leninist political line on the national question in particular, that the Party must advocate the right of oppressed nations to self-determination to the point of secession -- was presented in the Report on the National Question given by Stalin. This slogan was opposed by Felix Dzherzhinsky and Yuri Piatakov, the latter demanding: "The only effective method of solving it (i.e., the national question -- Ed.) is the method of a socialist revolution under the slogan 'Down with boundaries.’ for only thus can one do away with imperialism --this new factor leading to a sharpening of national oppression. . Lenin replied: 'Ever since 1903, when our Party adopted its programme, we have been encountering the desperate opposition of the Poles. . . And the position of the Polish Social-Democracy is as strange and monstrous an error now as it was then. These people wish to reduce the stand of our Party to that of the chauvinists.. . . . . The conference discussed the question of the Party’s participation in the Third (and last) "Zimmerwald Conference", due to be held in Stockholm ( Sweden) in May 1917 (but later postponed until September). In his "April Theses" Lenin had already demanded a break with the “Zimmerwald International", proposing that the Party should remain within it only for purposes of information. At the conference, however, this policy was opposed by a considerable body of delegates headed by Grigori Zinoviev, who proposed: "Our party remains in the Zimmerwald bloc with the aim of defending the tactics of the Zimmerwald Left Wing there. . . . Zinoviev’s resolution was carried by the conference against the opposition of Lenin, who described Zinoviev’s tactics as: “..arch-opportunist and pernicious". The conference also discussed the question of the Party's participation in an "international socialist conference" to discuss "peace terms", also scheduled for Stockholm in May. On May 6th, the Danish Social-Democrat Frederik Bergjberg had personally addressed the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet on the “Stockholm Conference". The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had accepted the invitation to participate in the conference; the Bolsheviks had rejected the invitation. The question was placed on the agenda of the conference at the request of Viktor Nogin, who proposed that a Bolshevik delegation should attend the “Stockholm Conference”. Lenin replied: "I cannot agree with Comrade Nogin . . Back of this whole comedy of a would-be Socialist congress there are actually the political maneuvers of German imperialism. The German capitalists use the German social-chauvinists for the purpose of inviting the social-chauvinists of all countries to the conference. because they want to fool the working masses. . . . . The conference adopted a resolution along these lines. The conference adopted a series of resolutions in accordance with Lenin's political line: "On the War”, The Conference elected a new Central Committee, consisting of Lenin, Stalin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Nilyutin, Nogin, Sverdlov, Smilga and Fedorov, and instructed it to bring up to date the programme of the Party adopted in 1903. When news of the “February Revolution” reached America, Trotsky made inmediate arrangements to return to Russia. Sailing from New York in a Norwegian ship at the end of March, he was taken off the ship at Halifax ( Canada) by British naval police and confined for a month in an internment camp for German prisoners of war at Amherst. At the end of April he was released from internment, and resumed his journey. Landing in Norway, he crossed Scandinavia to reach Petrograd on May 17th., 1917. He went almost immediately to the Smolny Institute, a former private school for girls which was now the head-quarters of the Petrograd Soviet. In view of his leading role in the Soviet of 1905, he was made an associate member of the Executive of the Soviet, without the right to vote. He joined a group called the “Inter-Regional Organisation" (Mezhrayontsi), which had been founded in 1913 and to the publications of which he had contributed from abroad. The Inter-Regional Organisation was a centrist group, which prided itself on being neither Bolshevik nor Menshevik, and its influence was confined to a few working-class districts of Petrograd. In the early summer of 1917 its leading members included Anatoly Lunacharsky, David Riazanov, Dmitri Manuilsky, Mikhail Pokrovsky, Adolphe Joffe and Lev Karahkhan. Now Trotsky took a leading role in the organisation, and in founding its organ 'Vperyod' (Forward). “Whoever lived through the year 1917 as a member of the central kernel of the Bolsheviks knows that there was never a hint of any disagreement between Lenin and me from the very first day. . . . According to Lenin, however, Trotsky himself was precisely one of the 'elements which tried to impede fusion'. On May 23rd., a meeting took place between representatives of the Bolsheviks (including Lenin) and representatives of the Inter-Regional Organisation (including Trotsky) to explore the possibility of fusion. As Trotsky’s biographer puts it: "At the meeting of 23 May he (i.e., Lenin -- Ed.) asked Trotsky and Trotsky's friends to join the Bolshevik party immediately. He offered them positions on the leading bodies and on the editorial staff of 'Pravda'. He put no conditions to them. He did not ask Trotsky to renounce anything of his past; he did not even mention past controversies. . . . Lenin’s own notes of the meeting say: "Trotsky (who took the floor out of turn immediately after me) . . . . The meeting, therefore, broke up without reaching any agreement. Not until August, three months before the October Revolution, did the Inter-Regional Organisaion join the Bolshevik Party, while Trotsky was in prison! On July 18th., 1917 the newspaper "'Zhivoye Slovo" (Living Word) published a statement from Grigori Alexnsky asserting that he had documentary evidence that Lenin was "a spy in the pay of German imperialism". On the same day military cadets wrecked the printing plant and editorial offices of "Pravda", preventing the publication of Lenin’s reply to the slander. On July 19th. government troops occupied the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Party, and the government issued an order for the arrest of Lenin, Zinoviev and Kameonev. A movement demanding that Lenin surrender to the arrest order was led by Trotsky. As Trotsky's sympathetic biographer Isaac Deutscher expresses it: "Lenin . . made up his mind that he would not allow himself to be imprisoned but would go into hiding. . . . . To this demand Lenin replied: "Comrades yielding to the 'Soviet atmosphere' are, often inclined towards appearing before the courts. The Bolshevik viewpoint on the question of the attitude to be adopted towards the warrant of arrest issued for the Bolshevik leaders was put at the Sixth Congress of the Party in August by Stalin: "There is no guarantee that if they do appear they will not be subjected to brutal violence. If the court were democratically organised and if a guarantee were given that violence would not be committed it would be a different matter." Feeling that his political reputation was suffering because no warrant had been issued for his own arrest, Trotsky wrote an Open Letter to the Provisional Government pleading that he too should be made liable to arrest: "On 23 July, four days after Lenin had gone into hiding, Trotsky therefore addressed the following Open Letter to the Provisional Government: 'Citizen Ministers -- (I. Deutscher: ibid.; p. 276-77). The Provisional Government obliged Trotsky by arresting him on August 5 th, and incarcerating him in the Kresty prison 3 from which he was released on bail on September 17th. The Sixth Congress of the RSDLP took place secretly in Petrograd from August 8 th - 16 th, 1917, attended by 157 voting delegates representing 40,000 members. In Lenin's absence, both the Report of the Central Committee and the Report on the Political Situation were given by Stalin. In the latter, Stalin said: "Some comrades say that since capitalism is poorly developed in our country, it would be utopian to raise the question of a socialist revolution.. . It would be rank pedantry to demand that Russia should 'wait' with socialist changes until Europe 'begins'. That country "begins" which has the greater opportunities. . . . Nikolai Bukharin put forward in the discussion on the Report on the Political Situation a theory of the further development of the revolution based on Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution". Bukharin held that the revolution in its further development, would consist of two phases, the first phase being essentially a peasant revolution, the second phase that of a revolution of the working class in which the peasant would not be the ally of the working class, in which the only ally of the Russian working class would be the working classes of Western Europe, that is: "The first phase, with the participation of thc peasantry anxious to obtain land; the second phase, after the satiated peasantry has fallen away, the phase of the proletarian revolution, when the Russian proletariat will be supported only by proletarian elements and by the proletariat of Western Europe'". Stalin opposed Bukharin's theory as 'not properly thought out' and "fundamentally wrong": 'What is the prospect Bukharin held out? His analysis is fundamentally wrong. In his opinion, in the first stage we are moving towards a peasant revolution. But it is bound to concur, to coincide with a workers' revolution. It cannot be that the working class, which constitutes the vanguard of the revolution, wil1 not at the same time fight for its own demands. I therefore consider that Bukharin's scheme has not been properly thought out. Evgenii Preobrazhensky moved an amendment to the congress resolution on the political situation, an amendment also based on an aspect of Trotsky’s theory of "permanent revolution". He proposed that the seizure of power should be undertaken: "For the purpose of directing it towards peace and, in the event of a proletarian revolution in the West, towards socialism". Stalin strongly opposed this amendment: "I am against such an amendment. The possibility is not excluded that Russia will be the country that will lay the road to socialism. . . We must discard the antiquated idea that only Europe can show us the way". Preobrazhensky’s amendment was rejected, and the resolution adopted by the congress declared: "The correct slogan at the present time can be only complete liquidation of the dictatorship of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie. Only the revolutionary proletariat, provided it is supported by the poorest peasantry, is strong enough to carry out this task. . . . The congress approved a resolution on the economic situation, the main points of which were the confiscation of the landed estates, the nationalisation of the land, the nationalisation of the banks and large-scale industrial enterprises, and workers' control over production and distribution. It also approved resolutions on the trade union movement and on youth leagues, setting out the aim that the Party should win the leading influence in all these bodies. It also endorsed Lenin's decision not to appear for trial: "Considering that the present methods of persecution by the police and secret service and the activities of the public prosecutor are re-establishing the practices of the Shcheglovitov regime, . . and feeling that under such conditions there is absolutely no guarantee either of the impartiality of the court procedure, or even of the elementary safety of those summoned before the court". The congress also adopted new Party Rules, based on the principles of democratic centralism, and admitted the Mezhrayontsi (the Inter-Regional Organisation) into the Party. In this way Trotsky, as a member of the Inter-Regional Organisation, became a member of the Bolshevik Party while himself in prison, less than three months before the "October Revolution". Finally, the congress issued a Manifesto to all the workers, soldiers and peasants of Russia, which ended: "Firmly, courageously and calmly, without giving in to provocations, gather strength and form fighting columns! Under the banner of the Party, proletarians and soldiers! Under our banner, oppressed of the villages! "Long live the alliance of the workers and Down with the counter-revolution and its 'Moscow Conference' !" "Long live the workers' world revolution!" "Long live Socialism!" "Long Live the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks)!"" As has been said, the 7 th Conference of the Party in May had resolved that the Party should not participate in the "international socialist conference in Stockholm (scheduled originally for May but postponed till the autumn) but should expose it as a manoeuvre of the German social-chauvinists. "Now when our revolution has retreated to the second line of trenches, it is fitting to support this conference. Now, when the Stockholm Conference has become the banner of the struggle of the proletariat against imperialism, . . we naturally must support it". Lenin denounced Kamenev's statement with indignation: "What right had Comrade Kamenev to forget that there is a decision of the Central Committee of the Party against participating at Stockholm? If this decision has not been abrogated by a congress or by a new decision of the Central Committee, it is law for the Party. . . . The following month, Lenin returned to his attack upon the Stockholm Conference: "The Stockholm Conference . . failed. Its failure was caused by the fact that the Anglo-French imperialists at present are unwilling to conduct peace negotiations, while the German imperialists are willing.. . . In fact, the "Stockholm Conference" never took place, owing to the refusal of the British and French Governments to allow their social-chauvinists to attend. On September 3 rd , the Latvian capital Riga was surrendered to the German armies. A powerful campaign was then launched in all the media controlled by the counter-revolutionary capitalist class blaming the fall of Riga on the demoralisation of the soldiers brought about by Bolshevik propaganda and agitation. The Bolsheviks replied that this was not the reason for the fall of Riga, but that the city had been deliberately surrendered to the German armies in order to provide a pretext for a counter-revolutionary conspiracy: "After the Moscow Conference came the surrender of Riga and the demand for repressive measures. . .. On September 5 th negotiations took place at army headquarters at the front between Commander-in-Chief General Lavr Kornilov and Boris Savinkoy, Deputy Minister of War in the Provisional Government, at which, on Kerensky's instructions, Savinkov requested Kornilov to despatch army units to Petrograd: "On the instructions of the Prime Minister, I requested you (Kornilov) to send the Cavalry Corps to ensure the establishment of martial law in Petrograd and the suppression of any attempt at revolt". On September 7th. General Kornilov ordered an army corps, some Cossack detachments and the so-called 'savage Division' to move on Petrograd. The orders given to the commander of this force, General Krymov, were to occupy the city, disarm the units of the Petrograd garrison which joined the Bolshevik movement, disarm the population of Petrograd and disperse the Soviets. "Occupy the city, disarm the units of the Petrograd garrison which joined the Bolshevik movement, disarm the population of Petrograd and disperse the Soviets.. . . . The aim of the military coup was to set up a dictatorial government headed by Kornilov, with the participation of Aleksandr Kerensky (as Vice-Chairman), Boris Savinkov, Generel Mikhail Alekseev, and Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak. (Ibid.; p. 370) As Stalin commented later: " A compact was concluded (i.e., between the Provisional Government and General Kornilov -- Ed.) to organise a conspiracy against the Bolsheviks, that is, against the working class, against the revolutionary army and the peasantry. It was a compact for conspiracy against the revolution! "The Kerensky Government not only knew of this diabolical plan, but itself took part in elaborating it and, together with Kornilov, was preparing to carry it out. . . On September 8 th, "demand" was sent to Kerensky in the name of Kornilov demanding that the former hand over dictatorial powers to the General. On the same day the "Cadet" Ministers resigned from the Provisional Government. On the following day Kerensky -- compelled for political reasons to keep his participation in the plot secret --issued an "appeal" to the population for "resistance" to Kornilov, and appointed Savinkov as Governor-General of Petrograd under a state of siege. On September 10th , on the initiative of the Bolsheviks a broad Committee for Struggle against Counter-Revolution was set up in the capital. Detachments of armed workers ("Red Guards") were formed for the defence of the city, and agitators (mostly Bolshevik soldiers) were sent to meet the advancing troops. The work of these agitators, in the existing circumstances, proved so successful that by September 12th, virtually all the rank-and-file soldiers had deserted Kornilov. The political line put forward by Lenin in connection with the Kornilov "revolt" was to organise active struggle against the main enemy, the Kornilov forces, while on a campaign of exposure of the Kerensky government: "We will fight, we are fighting against Kornilov, even as Kerensky’s troops do, but we do not support Kerensky. On the contrary, we expose his weakness. There is the difference. . . . On September l4th, General Krymov committed suicide, and, on the initiative of Kerensky, a five-man government called a "Directory" was set up as a new Provisional Government. As Stalin commented: "A Directory was the political form the Kornilov-Kerensky 'collective dictatorship' was to have been clothed in. The Kornilov revolt, together with the completely successful struggle led by the Bolsheviks against it, gave a great stimulus to the development of the socialist revolutionary forces. "The Kornilov revolt was an attempt on the very life of the revolution. That is unquestionable. But in attempting to kill the revolution and stirring all the forces of society into motion, it thereby, on the one hand, gave a spur to the revolution, stimulated it to greater activity and organisation, and, on the other hand, revealed the true nature of the classes and parties, tore the mask from their faces and gave us a glimpse of their true countenances. As a result of the collapse of the Kornilov "revolt", the Provisional Government found itself for the moment virtually without any state machinery of force at its disposal. In those circumstances Lenin declared on September 4 th , that for a short time -- perhaps only for a few days-- the revolution could advance peacefully by the formation (under the revived slogan of "All Power to the Soviets") of a Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary Soviet Government. "There has now arrived such a sharp and original turn in the Russian revolution that we, as a party, can offer a voluntary compromise -- true, not to the bourgeoisie, our direct and main class enemy, but to our nearest adversaries, the 'ruling' petty-bourgeois democratic parties, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. . . . . . "Perhaps those few days during which a peaceful development was still possible, have already passed. Yes, to all appearances they have already passed.". With the defeat of the Kornilov "revolt", the political situation changed rapidly, as has been said. The incident had exposed completely the counter-revolutionary character of the Provisional Government and of the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders. The masses of workers and peasants swung overwhelmingly behind the Bolsheviks. A section of the Mensheviks (the so-called "Internationalists") and a section of the Socialist-Revolutionaries (the so-called 'Left-Socialist-Revolutionaries") departed the open counter-revolutionary leaders and forged a practical bloc with the Bolsheviks. The incident also brought a great revival to the Soviets, and their bolshevisation. On September l3th the Petrograd Soviet adopted a revolutionary resolution moved by the Moscow Soviet followed suit on September 18th. In these circumstances, the Party revived the slogan of "All Power to the Soviets!" "'All Power to the Soviets!' - such is the slogan of the new movement". On September 22 nd, the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionary Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet, headed by Nicholas Chkheidze, resigned, and on September 24 th, Trotsky was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet: In his presidential address to the Petrograd Soviet on September 24 th, Trotsky said: "We shall conduct the work of the Petrograd Soviet in a spirit of lawfulness and of full freedom for all parties. The hand of the Presidium will never lend itself to the suppression of a minority". (L. Trotsky: Presidential Address to Petrograd Soviet, September 24 th , 1917, cited in: I. Deutscher: "The Prophet Armed: Trotsky: 1879-1921"; London; 1970; p. 287). Thus, in the name of "protecting the rights of the minorities" under 'proportional representation', on the initiative of Trotsky the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, now in a minority in the Soviet, were voted back on to the Presidium, "Despite Lenin’s objections, all parties were represented in the new Presidium of the Soviet in proportion to their strength." Lenin denounced with indignation: "such glaring errors of the Bolsheviks as giving seats to the Mensheviks in the Presidium of the Soviets, etc." At the end of September Lenin wrote to the Central Committee, the Petrograd Committee and the Moscow Committee of the Party demanding the immediate preparation of a revolutionary insurrection: "Having obtained a majority in the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers' Deputies of both capitals, the Bolsheviks can and must take power into their hands. . . . A day or so later Lenin followed the above letter with a further letter to the Central Committee: "We have back of us the majority of a class that is the vanguard of the revolution, the vanguard of the people, and is capable of drawing the masses along. Already by the last day of the "Democratic Conference", October 5 th , Lenin had become convinced that, in view of the development of the revolution, it had been a mistake for the Bolsheviks to participate in this "hideous fraud": "The more one reflects on the meaning of the so-called Democratic Conference, . . the more firmly convinced one becomes that our Party has committed a mistake by participating in it. . . . On this basis, Lenin proceeded to fight for a policy of boycotting the new fraud, the Pre-parliament: "This pre-parliament . . is in substance a Bonapartist fraud. . . . However, before Lenin’s letter had been received, on October 3 rd the Central Committee of the Party had convened a meeting of the Central Committee extended to include members of the Petrograd Committee and the Bolshevik delegates to the Democratic Conference. Stalin and Trotsky reported in favour of boycotting the Pre-parliament, while Lev Kamenev and Viktor Nogin reported in favour of participation, and were supported by David Riazanov and Aleksei Rykov. The conference adopted a resolution in favour of participation by 77 votes to 50. On October 6 th , Lenin demanded a reversal of this decision: "Trotsky was for the boycott. Bravo, Comrade Trotsky! The Central Committee of the Party did, in fact, convene a Party Congress for October 30th., 1917. In his theses intended for this congress, Lenin wrote: "The participation of our Party in the 'preparliament' . . is an obvious error and a deviation from the proletarian-revolutionary road. . . . However, the convocation of the congress proved unnecessary, and was cancelled by the Central Committee. On October 18 th , the Central Committee adopted a resolution to boycott the pre-parliament, against only one dissentient vote. The dissentient, Lev Kamenev, asked that a statement by him be attached to the minutes of the meeting: "I think that your decision to withdraw from the very first session of the 'Soviet of the Russian Republic' predetermines the tactics of the Party during the next period in a direction which I personally consider quite dangerous for the Party". On the opening day of the Pre-parliament, October 20th., Trotsky read a declaration on behalf of the Bolsheviks: "We, the fraction of Social-Democrats-Bolsheviks, declare: with this government of traitors to the people and with this council of counter-revolutionary connivance we have-nothing in common. We do not wish to cover up, directly or indirectly, not even for a single day, that work which is being carried out behind the official screen and which is fatal to the people. . . In withdrawing from the Provisional Council we appeal to the vigilance and courage of the workers, soldiers and peasants of all Russia. The Bolsheviks then walked out of the Pre-parliament. Two days after the Bolsheviks walked out of the Pre-parliament, there took place, on October 23 rd, the famous session of the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Party at which the decision to launch the insurrection was taken. Twelve of the twenty-one members of the CC were present, including Lenin disguised in wig and spectacles. The minutes of the meeting recorded the main points only of Lenin's statement: "Lenin states that since the beginning of September a certain indifference towards the question has been noted. He says that this is inadmissible, if we earnestly raise the slogan of seizure of power by the Soviets. It is, therefore, high time to turn attention to the technical side of the question. Much time has obviously been lost. Lenin then moved a resolution which ended: "Recognising thus that an armed uprising is inevitable and the time perfectly ripe, the Central Committee proposes to all the organisations of the Party to act accordingly and to discuss and decide from this point of view all the practical questions". The resolution was carried by ten votes to two – the dissentients being Grigori Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev. On October 24 th, Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev sent a joint memorandum to the principal organisations of the Party attacking the Central Committee’s decision of the previous day to launch an insurrection: "The Congress of Soviets has been called for November 2. . . It must become the centre of the consolidation around the Soviets of all proletarian and demi-proletarian organisations. . . As yet there is no firm organisational connection between these organisations and the Soviets. . . But such a connection is in any case a preliminary condition for the actual carrying out of the slogan "All power to the Soviets?. . . . A few days later the statement was distributed in leaflet form in Petrograd. Trotsky’s opposition to Lenin's call to insurrection was more subtle than that of Kamenev and Zinoviev. Whereas the latter openly opposed Lenin’s demands for immediate preparations for insurrection, Trotsky supported these demands in words. He insisted however, in the name of "Soviet constitutionalism" that the actual call to insurrection should be issued not by the Petrograd Soviet, and certainly not by the Party, but by the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. As Trotsky's sympathetic biographer Isaac Deutscher expresses it: "Trotsky was approaching the problem from his new point of vantage as President of the Petrograd Soviet. He agreed with Lenin on the chances and the urgency of insurrection. But he disagreed with him over method, especially over the idea that the party should stage the insurrection in its own name and on its own responsibility. He took less seriously than Lenin the threat of an immediate counter-revolution. Unlike Lenin, he was confident that the pressure of the Bolshevik majority in the Soviets would not allow the old Central Executive to delay much longer the All-Russian Congress. . . . . . Lenin's objections to Trotsky's line on this question were twofold: Firstly: it would mean dangerous delay in calling the insurrection; Secondly: since the calling of the Second Congress of Soviets was constitutionally in the hands of the Central Executive Committee (C.E.C) - elected at the First Congress of Soviets in June and dominated by Mensheviks and SocialistRevolutionaries -- it would mean permitting counterrevolutionaries, and not the revolutionary vanguard Party, to "fix the date of the insurrection", or even to postpone it indefinitely. In this connection, it must be remembered that the First Congress of Soviets had instructed the C.E.C. to summon a new congress "within three months", i.e. not later than September. The C.E.C however, justifiably fearing that the Bolsheviks would have a majority at the congress, violated this instruction. Only under the extreme pressure of the Bolsheviks at the time of the Democratic Conference did the C.E.C. reluctantly agree to convoke the congress for November 2 nd . On October 31 st, however, it postponed the congress to November 7 th. Lenin saw Trotsky's line as either -- and he left the question open – "absolute idiocy" or "complete betrayal", and he attacked it continuously up to the moment of the insurrection itself: "The general political situation causes me great anxiety . . The government has an army, and is preparing itself systematically. On October 12th: 'Yes, the leaders of the Central Executive Committee are pursuing tactics whose sole logic is the defence of the bourgeoisie and the landowners. And there is not the slightest doubt that the Bolsheviks, were they to allow themselves to be caught in the trap of constitutional illusions, of ‘faith’ in the Congress of Soviets. . . . of waiting' for the Congress of Soviets, etc. -- that such Bolsheviks would prove miserable traitors to the proletarian cause. . . . Only when Lenin took the extreme step of resigning from the Central Committee in order to fight for his line in the lower organs of the Party (on October l2th) did a majority accept Lenin's line on this question: "I am compelled to tender my resignation from the Central Committee which I hereby do, leaving myself the freedom of propaganda in the lower ranks of the Party and at the Party Congress. Although Lenin withdrew his resignation when the Central Committee voted for a boycott of the Pre-parliament, Trotsky continued to fight for his line and Lenin continued to fight against it: "Events indicate our task so clearly to us that hesitation actually becomes a crime.. . . To ‘wait’ under such conditions is a crime. On October 21st: "We must not wait for the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which the Central Executive Committee may postpone till November; we must not tarry.. . . On November 6th.; (i.e, on the eve of the insurrection): "The situation is extremely critical. It is as clear as can be that delaying the uprising now really means death. Trotsky later felt it expedient to deny the charge that he had sought to accommodate the insurrection to the Second Congress of Soviets: "We should search in vain among the minutes or among any memoirs whatever, for any indication of a proposal of Trotsky to 'accommodate the insurrection necessarily to the Second Congress of Soviets'. Elsewhere in the same work, however, Trotsky makes his own position at the time quite clear. "I declare in the name of the Soviet that no armed actions have been settled upon by us.. . . . and comments: "The Soviet was sufficiently powerful to announce openly its programme of state revolution and even set the date". Trotsky also reports his speech at an emergency session of the Petrograd Soviet on November 6th., 1917 (the day before the insurrection began): "An armed conflict today or tomorrow is not included in our plan -- on the threshold of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. We think that the Congress will carry out our slogan with greater power and authority'" Stalin later referred to: To which Trotsky replied: "Where, and when, and from which side, did the Soviet publish abroad the date of the insurrection?" and answers himself: "It was not the insurrection, but the opening of the Congress of Soviets, which was publicly and in advance set for the 7th. . . 'It flowed from the logic of things’, we wrote subsequently, ‘that we appointed the insurrection for November 7th.' .. . . Thus Trotsky, here was admitting the justice of Lenin's comment: "To 'call' the Congress of Soviets for November 2, in order to decide upon the seizure of power -- is there any difference between this and a foolishly "appointed" uprising?" According to Trotsky, Lenin’s original plan for the insurrection (to which he adhered up to November 6th.) was that it should be called "'in the name of the Party", and endorsed by the Congress of Soviets when this met: "presupposed that the preparation and completion of the revolution were to be carried out through party channels and in the name of the party, and afterwards the seal of sanction was to be placed on the victory by the Congress of Soviets." "In the first weeks he (i.e. Lenin -- Ed.) was decidedly in favour of the independent initiative of the Party". And Trotsky complains, for example, of the resolution drafted by Lenin which was also approved by the Central Committee at its meeting on October 23 rd : "The task of insurrection he presented directly as the task of the party. The difficult task of bringing its preparation into accord with the Soviets is as yet not touched upon. The All-Russian Congress of Soviets does not get a word". Trotsky "kindly" attributes Lenin’s "wrong estimates" to his absence from Petrograd": "Lenin, who was not in Petrograd, could not appraise the full significance of this fact (i.e., the invalidation by the Petrograd Soviet of Kerensky's order transferring two-thirds of the garrison to the front --Ed.) . . . . "Lenin's isolation . . deprived him of the possibility of making timely estimates of episodic factors and temporary changes.. . . In fact, Lenin's basic plan was that the insurrection should be planned, timed and led by the Party, through either the Petrograd or the Moscow Soviet -- both of which were now led by the Party -- but not through the Second Congess of Soviets, the calling of which was dependent upon the Central Executive Committee led by Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. As Stalin comments: "According to Trotsky, it appears that Lenin's view was that the Party should take power in October ‘independently’ of and behind the back of the Soviet'. Trotsky's myth goes on to say that the Central Committee "rejected Lenin's plan for the insurrection" and "adopted Trotsky's plan that the insurrection should be called by the Second Congress of Soviets. Only on the evening of November 6 th , according to Trotsky was Lenin convinced of the "incorrectness" of his "conspiratorial plan"; "The Central Committee did not adopt this (i.e., Lenin's -- Ed.) proposal the insurrection was led into Soviet channels". "When he (i.e., Lenin -- Ed ) arrived in Smolny (i.e., on the evening November 6 th , the day before the insurrection -- Ed.) . . I understood that only at that moment had he finally become reconciled to the fact that we had refused the seizure of power by way of a conspirative plan". As Stalin points out, however, the Central Committee of the Party did not adapt Trotsky’s plan that the insurrection should be called by the Second Congress Of Soviets. In fact, the insurrection had been carried through before the Congress met. "Lenin proposed that power be taken before November 7 th, for two reasons. Secondly, because the mistake made by the Petrograd Soviet in openly fixing and announcing the day of the uprising (November 7) could not be rectified in any other way than by actually launching the uprising before the legal date set for it. The fact of the matter is that Lenin regarded insurrection as an art, and he could not help knowing that the enemy, informed about the date of the uprising (owing to the carelessness of the Petrograd Soviet) would certainly try to prepare for that day. Consequently, it was necessary to forestall the enemy, i.e., without fail to launch the uprising before the legal date. This is the chief explanation for the passion with which Lenin in his letters scourged those who made a fetish of the date -- November 7. Events show that Lenin was absolutely right. It is well known that the uprising was launched prior to the All Russian Congress of Soviets. It is well known that power was actually taken before the opening of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, and it was taken not by the Congress of Soviets, but by the Petrograd Soviet, by the Revolutionary Military Committee. The Congress of Soviets merely took over power from the Petrograd Soviet. That is why Trotsky's lengthy arguments about the importance of Soviet legality are quite beside the point". On October 29th., 1917 an extended session of the Central Committee of the RSDLP was held, in which participated representatives of the Petrograd Committee, the Petrograd Regional Committee, the Military Organisation, the Bolshevik Fraction of the Petrograd Soviet, trade unions and factory committees. Lenin reported on the Central Committee meeting of October 23 rd, and read the resolution on insurrection adapted by that meeting. In the discussion on the present situation, the resolution was strongly opposed by Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev. "This resolution . . shows how not to carry out an uprising: during this week nothing has been done.. . . Zinoviev said: "The Constituent Assembly will take place in an atmosphere that is revolutionary to the highest degree. Meanwhile, we shall strengthen our forces. The possibility is not eliminated that we, together with the Left S-Rs, shall be in the majority there. ….We have no right to risk, to stake everything on one card.. . . . Stalin spoke strongly in favour of confirmation of the Central Committee resolution of October 23rd., and this was finally done by 19 votes against 2 -- the dissentients again being Kamenev and Zinoviev. The Central Committee then continued in session alone, and set up a Military Centre of the Central Committee consisting of Stalin, Sverdlov, Bubnov, Dzerzhinsky and Uritsky. After the meeting had concluded, Kamenev sent a letter to the Central Committee tendering his resignation from it: "Not being able to support the point of view expressed in the latest decisions of the CC which define the character of its work, and considering that this position is leading the party of the proletariat to defeat, I ask the CC to recognise that I am no longer a member of the CC". (L. Kamenev: Letter to CC, RSDLP, October 29th., 1917, cited in: V. I. Lenin: Ibid. ; p. 260). From October 24-26 th , 1917 the Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies of the Northern Region took place in Petrograd. Since the overwhelming majority of the delegates were Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets -- still dominated by Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries -- declared the congress unofficial, and the small Menshevik fraction declared themselves present "for purposes of information only". The congress declared itself in favour of the immediate transfer of power to the Soviets, the immediate transfer of land to the peasants, an immediate offer of peace and the convening of the Constituent Assembly at the appointed time. On October 29 -30 th Lenin - wrote a long, "Letter to Comrades" in which he refuted point by point the arguments of Kamenev and Zinoviev against the immediate launching of an insurrection. On October 31st, Kamenev, on behalf of Zinoviev and himself, published a statement in the newspaper "Novaya Zhizn" (New Life) in which he declared that they felt themselves obliged: "To declare themselves against any attempt to take the initiative of an armed uprising which would be doomed to defeat and which would have the most dangerous effect on the party, the proletariat, the fate of the revolution. To stake everything on the card of an uprising within the next few days would be tantamount to making a step of desperation"; Lenin thundered immediately at the treachery of the "strikebreakers of the Revolution": "On the eve of the critical day . . two 'outstanding Bolsheviks' attack an unpublished decision of the Party centre in the non-Party press, in a paper which as far as this given problem is concerned goes hand in hand with the bourgeoisie against the workers’ party. . . . On the following day he wrote to the Central Committee of the Party: "A self-respecting Party cannot tolerate strike-breaking and strike-breakers in its midst. This is obvious. The more we think about Zinoviev's and Kamenev's appearance in the non-Party press, the more obvious it becomes that their action has all the elements of strike-breaking in it. The Central Committee Meeting of November 2nd. At its meeting on November 2nd., the Central Committee accepted Kamenev’s resignation from the CC. It adopted a resolution to the effect: "that no member of the CC shall have the right to speak against the adopted decisions of the CC", and a more specific resolution imposing: "Upon Kamenev and Zinoviev the obligation not to make any statements against the decisions of the CC and the line of work laid out by it". On November 5 th , the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet appointed commissars for all the military detachments under its command. On the same day the Peter and Paul fortress, the last important obstacle to insurrection, declared for the Petrograd Soviet. In the early morning of November 6 th, the Provisional Government attempted to launch a counter-offensive against the revolutionary forces by issuing orders for the arrest of the members of the Revolutionary Military Committee and for the suppression of the central organ of the Bolsheviks, "Rabochy Put" (Workers Path). By 10 a.m. detachments of Red Guards had placed a guard on the printing plant and editorial offices of the newspaper, and at 11 a.m. the paper came out with a call for the immediate overthrow of the Provisional Government. In the late evening of November 6 th , Lenin arrived at the Smolny which, as the headquarters both of the Petrograd Soviet and of the Bolshevik Party, had become the directing centre of the insurrection. Throughout the night, revolutionary soldiers and workers came to the Smolny and were armed with weapons supplied by the army units from the city's arsenals. From dawn on November 7th revolutionary troops and Red Guards occupied the Petrograd railway stations, post offices, telegraph offices, telephone exchanges, government offices and the state bank The Pre-Parliament was dispersed. The cruiser "Aurora", controlled by revolutionary sailors, trained its guns on the Winter Palace, the only territory remaining to the Provisional Government. During the day the Revolutionary Military Committee issued a manifesto: " To the Citizens of Russia" drafted by Lenin: "The Provisional Government has been overthrown. The power of state has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers' Deputies, the Revolutionary Military Committee, which stands at the head of the Petrograd Proletariat and garrison. In one respect the manifesto was slightly premature, for it was not until the evening of November 7th. that revolutionary workers, soldiers and sailors took the Winter Palace by storm and arrested those members of the Provisional Government who had not fled (Kerensky had escaped earlier in the day by car, accompanied by a U.S. Embassy car flying the Stars and Stripes). At 11 p.m. on November 7 th the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets opened in the Smolny. As Stalin points out: The Role of Trotsky in the October Revolution As Stalin points out, Trotsky, as President of the Petrograd Soviet and of its Revolutionary Military Committee, played an important role in thc"October Revolution": "I amfar from denying Trotsky's undoubtedly important role in the uprising.. . . . In his myth about the "October Revolution", however, Trotsky was concerned to understimate the leading role of the Party in the revolution, to underestimate the role of Lenin (whose tactics for the insurrection were, he alleges, incorrect), and to overestimate the role of the Military Revolutionary Committee Of the Petrograd Soviet and of himself as Chairman of that Committee. Thus, Trotsky quotes with obvious approval one of the earlier editions of Lenin's "Collected Works", in which the editors say in a note on Trotsky: "After the Petrograd Soviet went Bolshevik he was elected its President and in that capacity organised and led the insurrection of November 7 th". The amendment of this estimation is, alleges Trotsky, due to the fact that: "The bureaucratic revision of history of the party and the revolution is taking place under Stalin's direct supervision". Stalin certainly denied the "special role" of Trotsky in the "October Revolution" claimed by Trotsky and his supporters: "The Trotskyites are vigorously spreading rumours that Trotsky inspired and was the sole leader of the October uprising. . Trotsky himself, by consistently avoiding mention of the Party, the Central Committee and the Petrograd Committee of the Party, by saying nothing about the leading role of these organisations in the uprising and vigorously pushing himself forward as the central figure in the October uprising, voluntarily or involuntarily helps to spread the rumours about the special role he is supposed to have played in the uprising. .. Trotsky, in his rep1y, confirms Stalin's charge that he is concerned to underestimate the leading role of the Party in the insurrection. He admits that "the practical centre" of the Central Committee was set up : "at Lenin’s suggestion", But he denies that it or any other party organ guided the insurrection. The insurrection, he declares, was guided by the Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, with Trotsky as its chairman, alone: "The Military Revolutionary Committee from the moment of its birth had the direct leadership not only of the garrison, but of the Red Guard. . .. No place remained for any other directing centre. . .. . The Character of the "October Revolution" Lenin characterised the "October Revolution" as a proletarian-socialist revolution in its main, political content -- since by it the working class in alliance with, and leading, the peasantry seized political poor from the capitalist class. But he characterised it as a bourgeois-democratic revolution in its’ economic content -- since it completed the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary tasks which the "February Revolution" did not carry out. "The immediate and direct aim of the revolution in Russia was a bourgeois-democratic aim, namely to destroy the relics of medievalism and abolish them completely.. . . . "The October Revolution overthrew the bourgeoisie and transferred power to the proletariat but did not immediately lead to: For the autumn of 1913, however, the continuing revolution developed uninterruptedly into a proletarian-socialist revolution in its economic content. "Until the organisation of the Committees of Poor Peasants, i.e., down to the summer and even the autumn of 1918, our revolution was to a large extent a bourgeois revolution . . . But from the moment the Committees of Poor Peasants began to be organised, our revolution became a proletarian revolution. . It was only when the October revolution in the countryside began and was accomplished in the summer of 1913 that we found our real proletarian base; it was only then that our revolution became a proletarian revolution in fact, and not merely by virtue of proclamations, promises and declarations." "In November 1917 we seized power together with the peasantry as a whole. This was a bourgeois revolution in as much as the class war in the rural districts had not yet developed." 4. TROTSKY, STALIN AND THE RED ARMY - CIVIL WAR IN THE USSRA common perception amongst progressives is that Trotsky “saved” the revolution, indeed “made” the revolution, during the Civil War following the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks. Largely because Trotsky “made” the new Red Army. This is certainly the view of those like Trotsky himself. Trotsky presents himself as being guarded from Stalin’s ruthless attacks, by Lenin. According to Trotsky for example: “Stalin stayed in Tsarityn for a few months ..Lenin watched the conflict develop with alarm. … He knew Stalin better than I did, and obviously suspected that the stubbornness of Tsartisyn was being secretly staged by Stalin”; At the same time according to Trotsky, Lenin really was just very distant from the details of the Civil War and could not have known what was needed – were it not for the all-informed Trotsky: “Lenin was too much absorbed .. to make trips to the front. I stayed at the fronts most of the time… After half an hour talk with me, our mutual understandings and complete solidarity were restored… a few days later.. Lenin was making a speech… “When Comrade Trotsky informed me that in our military department the offices are numbered in tens of thousands, I gained a proper understanding of what constitutes the secret sue of our enemy.. of how to build communism out of the bricks that the capitalists had gathered to use against us”; Naturally his followers such as Erich Wollenberg and more recently, Tony Cliff echo Trotsky, writing for example that: “ Trotsky’s building of the Red Army is rightly considered a gigantic achievement. By combining contradictory elements he produced a mighty army out of a void…in the train Trotsky demonstrated how the sword and the pen could act together in complete harmony…“ However, these Heroic Myths are simply not consistent with the facts. “13. The division of the southern front into a south-eastern and a southern one consolidates organizationally the fundamental strategic mistake. At present between the commander in chief and the two southern groups there no longer stands one person responsible for the southern front…
“Trotsky’s note to the Central Committee holds interest for two reasons. First it shows how little familiarity Trotsky had with the operational plans of the Red Army, which he nominally headed. Written less than two months before the Red Army would decisively defeat General Denikin (and save Tula) it reveals that Trotsky either was unaware of the actual preparing for the Soviet counter-offensive or misunderstood them. Second Lenin’s cavalier dismissal of this advice indicates that he did not hold Trotsky’s military abilities in high esteem”; Both Lenin’s Collected Works for this period, and the papers known as the “Trotsky Papers 1917-1922”, [“The Trotsky Papers 1917-1922”; Ed J.M.Meijer; 1971; The Hague] show a further wealth of detail that Lenin was very well aware of events in the Civil war. It is evident that he was frequently directing Trotsky in numerous ways; or asking for very specific details that are only consistent with a deep understanding of the situation.
When the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Bolshevik party overthrew the Provisional Government in Petrograd on the 8th November 1917, they set up the Council of Peoples Commissars (Sovnarkom). Recognising its debt to the soldiers and sailors, they struck a Committee on Army and Naval Affairs. The seizure of power could never have taken place without the army and navy militants who: “Prepared by the Bolsheviks, carried out fighting orders with precision and fought side by side with Red Guards. The navy did not lag behind the army. Since Kronstadt was a stronghold of the Bolshevik Party, and has long since refused to recognise the authority of the Provisional Government. The cruiser Aurora trained its guns on the Winter Palace, and on October 25th their thunder ushered in a new era, the year of the Great Socialist Revolution”; Already on the 8th October, the Second Congress of Soviets had adopted the Decree on Peace: “The congress called on the belligerent countries to conclude an immediate armistice for a period of not less than three months to permit negotiations for peace.” On the 10 November Lenin signed an order to demobilize the Imperial Army – until then still at war with Germany in the First World War. The army was 12 million strong, and Mikhail Kedrov oversaw the demobilization as deputy Army Commissar. By mid December Sovnarkom’s Appeal for Peace had not received any answer from the remaining warring nations. It was also clear the counter-revolutionaries were organising military forces. The Congress of Demobilization was still taking place, when Army Commissar Nikolai Podvoiskii , the first Narkomvoen (i.e. Commissar for Military & Naval Affairs – until March 13th 1918 when at his own request he stepped down from this post – Footnote no.3; Ibid; Meijer; p. 7) discussed with the Bolsheviks party Military Organisation the formation of a new army. Initially Kedrov argued for an army based purely on industrial workers and peasants who had “proven loyalty” to the Bolshevik Party. But finally a proposal was agreed to that the army would be made up of “the labouring classes, workers and peasants with a firm proletarian core”; Cited von Hagen, Mark: “Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship. The Red Army & The Soviet socialist state 1917-1930”; Ithaca 1990; p.9. But by January 1918, mass desertions from the army were rife, and soldiers committees were unilaterally dissolving units. Soldiers seized arms and went home. Luckily, since 1917, the soviets had been organising Red Guards and militias. It was these that had seized State Power for the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Bolsheviks, when they overthrew the Provisional Government. It was also these Red Guards that defended Petrograd on November 10th 1917, from the counter-revolution led by General Petr Krasnov and former minister-president Alexsandr Kerensky. Engels had advocated a militia-like army, while the Paris Commune of 1870 had actually put this into practice. These examples inspired militia leaders like Valentin Trifonov who advocated that the Red Guards become formally, a peoples’ militia, as the backbone of the army. On January 15th, Sovnarkom struck the All-Russian Collegium to Organise a Worker-Peasant Red Army, which declared in the “Declaration of the Rights of the Laboring and Exploited”, the arming of all labourers and the formation of a socialist red army of workers and peasants. Guided by the movement from below, the army was envisaged as being a volunteer army from below: “Like everything in our revolution, the formation of a socialist army cannot await instructions from above. It must be formed from below, by the people themselves; therefore all organisations – factory and volost’ committees, local party organisations, trade unions, local soviets, and all Red Guard staff – immediately must set themselves to the task of organising the Socialist Army”;
The first test of the new state defence forces came in Estonia, in 1918 at Narva – when the German army battled with the Red Guards. In the absence of central professional leadership, and the refusal of the Red Guards to accept any orders unless given by elected commanders, the rout was inevitable. Immediately after this, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was finally signed, and the Red Army was under pressure to adopt professional standards. Brest-Litovsk and the Left Opposition The objective situation of the fledgling socialist state was precarious. It was necessary to ensure that the unilaterally declared Peace proclaimed by the USSR, was accepted by the foreign warring armies: “But the position of the Soviet Government could not be deemed fully secure as long as Russia was in a state of war with Germany and Austria. In order finally to consolidate the Soviet power, the war had to be ended. … The Soviet Government called upon "all the belligerent peoples and their governments to start immediate negotiations for a just, democratic peace." But the "allies" -- Great Britain and France -- refused to accept the proposal of the Soviet Government. .. The Soviet Government, in compliance with the will of the Soviets, decided to start negotiations with Germany and Austria. The negotiations began on December 3 in Brest-Litovsk. On December 5 an armistice was signed. … It became clear in the course of the negotiations that the German imperialists were out to seize huge portions of the territory of the former tsarist empire, and to turn Poland, the Ukraine and the Baltic countries into dependencies of Germany. To continue the war under such conditions would have meant staking the very existence of the new-born Soviet Republic. The working class and the peasantry were confronted with the necessity of accepting onerous terms of peace, of retreating before the most dangerous marauder of the time -- German imperialism -- in order to secure a respite in which to strengthen the Soviet power and to create a new army, the Red Army, which would be able to defend the country from enemy attack.“ Lenin’s proposal to sign an armistice with Germany and Austria, provoked a storm of antagonism of Ultra-Leftists in alliance with Russian ultra-nationalists. The opposition united under the name of the “Left Communists”, and was led by Trotsky: “All the counter-revolutionaries, from the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries to the most arrant Whiteguards, conducted a frenzied campaign against the conclusion of peace. Their policy was clear: they wanted to wreck the peace negotiations, provoke a German offensive and thus imperil the still weak Soviet power and endanger the gains of the workers and peasants. Their allies in this sinister scheme were Trotsky and his accomplice Bukharin, the latter, together with Radek and Pyatakov, heading a group which was hostile to the Party but camouflaged itself under the name of "Left Communists." Trotsky and the group of "Left Communists" began a fierce struggle within the Party against Lenin, demanding the continuation of the war. These people were clearly playing into the hands of the German imperialists and the counter-revolutionaries within the country, for they were working to expose the young Soviet Republic, which had not yet any army, to the blows of German imperialism.“ Trotsky, in disobeying the Central Committee’s instructions, provoked a crisis by refusing to sign the treaty, while the German imperialists used this provocation as an excuse to storm deeper into USSR territory: “On February 10, 1918, the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk were broken off. Although Lenin and Stalin, in the name of the Central Committee of the Party, had insisted that peace be signed, Trotsky, who was chairman of the Soviet delegation at Brest-Litovsk, treacherously violated the direct instructions of the Bolshevik Party. He announced that the Soviet Republic refused to conclude peace on the terms proposed by Germany. At the same time he informed the Germans that the Soviet Republic would not fight and would continue to demobilize the army….The German government broke the armistice and assumed the offensive. The remnants of our old army crumbled and scattered before the onslaught of the German troops. The Germans advanced swiftly, seizing enormous territory and threatening Petrograd. German imperialism invaded the Soviet land with the object of overthrowing the Soviet power and converting our country into its colony. The ruins of the old tsarist army could not withstand the armed hosts of German imperialism, and steadily retreated under their blows.” Fortunately the rally of the Red Army at Narva, was able to “check” the advance. This then became known as the “birthday of the Red Army”: “The Soviet Government issued the call -- "The Socialist fatherland is in danger!" And in response the working class energetically began to form regiments of the Red Army. The young detachments of the new army -- the army of the revolutionary people -- heroically resisted the German marauders who were armed to the teeth. At Narva and Pskov the German invaders met with a resolute repulse. Their advance on Petrograd was checked. February 23 -- the day the forces of German imperialism were repulsed -- is regarded as the birthday of the Red Army.” As a consequence of the actions of the USSR delegate to the talks, Trotsky, the USSR was in an even more serious situation than before: “On February 18, 1918, the Central Committee of the Party had approved Lenin's proposal to send a telegram to the German government offering to conclude an immediate peace. But in order to secure more advantageous terms, the Germans continued to advance, and only on February 22 did the German government express its willingness to sign peace. The terms were now far more onerous than those originally proposed. Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov had to wage a stubborn fight on the Central Committee against Trotsky, Bukharin and the other Trotskyites before they secured a decision in favour of the conclusion of peace. Bukharin and Trotsky, Lenin declared, "actually helped the German imperialists and hindered the growth and development of the revolution in Germany." (Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. XXII, p. 307.) On February 23, the Central Committee decided to accept the terms of the German Command and to sign the peace treaty. The treachery of Trotsky and Bukharin cost the Soviet Republic dearly. Latvia, Estonia, not to mention Poland, passed into German hands; the Ukraine was severed from the Soviet Republic and converted into a vassal of the German state. The Soviet Republic undertook to pay an indemnity to the Germans.” Because of the controversy with the Left Opposition, Lenin insisted that the decision to sign a Peace Accord be brought back for the approval or otherwise of the Seventh Party Congress: “In order that the Party might pronounce its final decision on the question of peace the Seventh Party Congress was summoned. The congress opened on March 6, 1918. This was the first congress held after our Party had taken power. It was attended by 46 delegates with vote and 58 delegates with voice but no vote, representing 145,000 Party members…. reporting at this congress on the Brest-Litovsk Peace, Lenin said that ". . . the severe crisis which our Party is now experiencing, owing to the formation of a Left opposition within it, is one of the gravest crises the Russian revolution has experienced." (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VII, pp. 293-94.). The resolution submitted by Lenin on the subject of the Brest-Litovsk Peace was adopted by 30 votes against 12, with 4 abstentions…. . On the day following the adoption of this resolution, Lenin wrote an article entitled "A Distressful Peace," in which he said: "Intolerably severe are the terms of peace. Nevertheless, history will claim its own. . . . Let us set to work to organize, organize and organize. Despite all trials, the future is ours." (Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. XXII, p. 288.)” “Short History of the CPSUB“; Ibid; p.218. Obviously, the treaty was a retreat. But was it needed, and what was the result of signing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty? “The Peace of Brest-Litovsk gave the Party a respite in which to consolidate the Soviet power and to organize the economic life of the country. The peace made it possible to take advantage of the conflicts within the imperialist camp (the war of Austria and Germany with the Entente, which was still in progress) to disintegrate the forces of the enemy, to organize a Soviet economic system and to create a Red Army. The peace made it possible for the proletariat to retain the support of the peasantry and to accumulate strength for the defeat of the Whiteguard generals in the Civil War.”
First Steps to a Professional Red Army
In the wake of this enforced “respite”, Sovnarkom began to reorganize the army. “The Narva defeat marked the first retreat from the principles of the commune in matters of defense.”
Given the dearth of trained communist commanders, Trotsky moved to ensure that Sovnarkom would approve the recruitment of former Tsarist officers. Undoubtedly this was correct. What was incorrect was the lack of supervision and the favouring of these element over the political cadre. Inevitably, this was going to cause conflict with the soldiers committees. Trotsky had to appeal to the All Russian Central Executive Committee (VtsIK), who stated that all commanders in the Red Army would be only appointed by higher-ranking commanders. But even this compromise was still resisted, and elected commanders were still in position up to 1919. In a compromise known as “dual command” (dvoenachalie), each commander had to have a political equivalent – the commissar, and each order had to be signed by both. It was now that the All-Russian Bureau of Military Commissars (Vsebiurvoenkom) identified the soldiers committees as an obstacle in ensuring authority in the army, and moves were taken to disband them. General Forces Ranged against the Bolsheviks Internally and Externally The encirclement of the USSR by the capitalist states, facilitated the foreign incursions into the USSR, which directly and indirectly aided the counter-revolutionary white forces. “By the summer of 1919, without declaration of war, the armed forces of fourteen states had invaded the territory of Soviet Russia. The countries involved were: Great Britain , Serbia, France, China, Japan, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, USA, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Turkey. Fighting side by side with the anti-Soviet invaders were the counter-revolutionary White armies led by former Czarist generals striving to restore the feudal aristocracy which the Russian people had overthrown”;
“Overthrown by the October Socialist Revolution, the Russian landlords and capitalist began to conspire with the capitalists of other countries for the organisation of military intervention against the Land of the Soviet…. The Soviet Government proclaimed the Socialist fatherland in danger and called upon the people to rise in its defence. The Bolshevik Party rallied the workers and peasants for a patriotic war against the foreign invaders and the bourgeois and landlord Whiteguards”.
“The revolt of the Czechoslovaks, .. was timed to coincide with the revolts engineered by White Guards and Socialist-Revolutionaries in 23 cities on the Volga, a revolt of the Left SR in Moscow, and a landing of the British troops in Murmansk”;
Three Fronts faced the Bolsheviks, and at the same time there were three major periods of the Civil War: “The war was fought across three main fronts - the eastern, the southern and the northwestern. It can also be roughly split into three periods. The first period lasted from the Revolution until the Armistice. The conflict began with dissenting Russian groups, the main force was the newly formed Volunteer Army in the Don region which was joined later by the Czecho-Slovak Legion in Siberia. In the east there were also two anti-Bolshevik administrations, Komuch in Samara and the nationalist Siberian government centred in Omsk. Most of the fighting in this first period was sporadic, involving only small groups amid a fluid and rapidly shifting strategic scene. The main antagonists were the Czecho-Slovaks, known simply as the Czech Legion, and the pro-Bolshevik Latvians. All of these military threats, forced further steps towards a professional army, and on April 22 1918, VtsIK decreed an obligatory military training for all workers and peasants. “The party proclaimed the country an armed camp and placed its economic cultural and political life on a war footing. The Soviet Government announced that “the socialist fatherland is in danger”, and called upon the people to rise in its defence. Lenin issued the slogan , “All for the front!” – and hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants volunteered for service in the Red Army and left for the front.” Von Hagen confirms these figures, citing some 500,000 new recruits and over 700,000 citizens trained by The Universal Military Training Demonstration (Vsevobuch) (ibid p. 36). Vsevobuch was led by L.E.Mar’iasin. It retained the model of a volunteer militia rather than a regular army. But as the Civil War erupted in the East – foreign troops had landed in Vladivostok and in the North – the anti-Bolshevik risings stirred VtsIK into conscription. This was a difficult task however, in a war weary peasantry, and even proletariat. As food crises developed in the countryside, mutinies were more frequent. As this crisis developed, VtsIK realised that the political commissar was the vital element, to solving of the army morale crisis. The first All-Russian Congress of Commissars in June, emphasised this saying it: “declared the commissar to be the direct representative of Soviet power and as such, an inviolable person. Any insult or other act of violence against a commissar while he was executing his official responsibility was equivalent to “the most serious crime against the Soviet regime”. The commissars demanded control over all comrades’ courts and the “cultural enlightenment life” of the army”; Led by Nikolaii Podvoiskii, the Vesbiurvoenkom and Vsevobuch were instrumental in exerting this new authority of the commisars. The Fifth Congress of Soviets took place in July 1918 – amidst the Moscow uprising led by the Left Social Revolutionaries. Fortunately this revolt was soon suppressed. Consistent with the themes of labour discipline put for the by Lenin in his article, “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government”, the Congress moved to reaffirm the new principles of the Red Army: <!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> “Obligatory service, centralized demonstration and an end to local autonomy and arbitrary makeshift structures, the recruitment of military specialists; the death penalty for traitors, and the creation of a cohort of Red Commanders eventually to replace the (tsarist) military specialists, and the prominent status of commissars”; It was during this period that what became known as “war Communism came into effect. This was the introduction of the grain monopoly and several other industries. The term emphasises the linkage between the political actions of the Bolsheviks and the war conditions embraced by the White counter-revolutionaries: “The Soviet Government introduced War Communism. It took under its control the middle-sized and small industries, in addition to large-scale industry, so as to accumulate goods for the supply of the army and the agricultural population. It introduced a state monopoly of the grain trade, prohibited private trading in grain and established the surplus-appropriation system, under which all surplus produce in the hands of the peasants was to be registered and acquired by the state at fixed prices, so as to accumulate stores of grain for the provisioning of the army and the workers. Lastly, it introduced universal labour service for all classes. By making physical labour compulsory for the bourgeoisie and thus releasing workers for other duties of greater importance to the front, the Party was giving practical effect to the principle". These directly military steps at the congress were largely favoured by Trotsky. However the seeds of later conflicts lay in his tendency to favour the former Tsarist officers, rather than the commissar. Trotsky’s leadership of the army was still facing much opposition. Trotsky as War Commissar
The major opposition to Trotsky’s leadership revolved around his espousal of the ex-Tsarist military specialists, and his attacks on the commissars for their questioning of these specialists’ authority. His credibility was not helped by the treachery of ex-Tsarist General Mikhail Murav’ev: “In July the commander of the Western Front Murav’ev, raised a mutiny against Soviet power under the banner of solidarity with the recent Left SR uprising in Moscow. Murav’ev had already been arrested once for abusing his authority; Trotsky had arranged not only his release but his promotion to command of the Eastern Front. Murav’ev was killed resisting his second arrest… Iokaim Vatsetis the hero of the Latvian infantry division that had just put down the Left SR uprising in Moscow [of July 6-7 1918 –ed], rushed off to Simbirsk to replace Murav’ev and reorganize the Eastern Front. Vatsetis arrived at HQ to find bureaucratic chaos… Vatsetis accused the Supreme Military Council – namely, Trotsky and Chief of Staff Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich – of reducing Soviet Russia to a state of “utter defenselessness”. Trotsky’s response to his decline in credibility did not endear him to the commissars. Trotsky accused the commissars of eroding a military discipline. He attracted more criticism when he ordered the shooting of Commissar Panteleev in 1918: “Trotsky’s authority declined markedly in the wake of the Murav’ev incident. He sought to deflect criticism from himself and the military specialists by blaming the commissars for the army’s poor performance; but he won the lasting enmity of the commissars after he ordered the court-martial and shooting of one of their number. Commissar Panteleev, for desertion. Though he had warned all commissars a few weeks earlier that they would be the first persons shot if their units retreated without authorisation, still the first execution sent shock waves through the ranks. Trotsky quickly developed a reputation as a commander who placed military expediency over political reliability and who listened too much to the military specialists who surrounded him in increasing numbers.” Von Hagen; Ibid; p. 37. In fact, although Trotsky prided himself on setting discipline, it was only after Vatsetis arrived in the Eastern Front that several field tribunals were set up, that tried cases of sabotage and treason (von Hagen Ibid; p. 37). Even then, the Cheka special investigations forces [All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combat of Counter-Revolution and Sabotage], and the introduction of the death penalty were needed to defeat the White forces: “The treachery of some military specialists and the frequently poor morale and fighting ability of the conscripts prevented the Red Army from halting the White advance during the summer months. The introduction of the death penalty and the field tribunals and the special detachments of the Cheka began to turn the tide.” Even as late as August 15 th, Trotsky was finding it necessary to reassure Lenin that: “I consider it necessary to confirm once again that our troops are good ones and fighting with a will… as regards our organisation we have effected a great improvement… (but) the command apparatus is weak. Hence mishaps, and on occasion, panic retreats for no reason etc”; In spite of this reassurance, Lenin was sending messages the next day insisting that Skljanski (Trotsky’s second in command) attack “malpractice and criminal acts” in the army (Meijer Ibid; p. 83); and on the 18 th August that Lenin was: “astonished and alarmed at the slowing down of the operation against Kazan’. What is particularly bad is the report of our having the fullest possible opportunity of destroying the enemy with your artillery”; Repetitively, the charge was brought against Trotsky by numerous commissars and Red Commanders, that he favoured in a blind manner the old Tsarist ex-generals. After an article in Pravda on this by a amber of the Central Executive Committee A.Kamenskij, Trotsky was even more defensive. Kamenskij was a Trotskyite, and thus no ‘hay’ can be made of any putative ‘Stalinist’ attempt to undermine him here. (See Letter to the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party by Trotsky of December 25 th 1918; in Miejer Ibid; p. 205-209; & footnote no.1). It was in a desperate climate, with losses on many fronts, that the Central Committee began the call up of large numbers of Communist Party members, and only now in September: “For the first time the Red troops halted the White advance. The Central Committee credited the September victories to the energetic organising efforts undertaken by the Party members sent to the front as commissars, commanders and rank and file Red Army men”: Even by September, the situation remained tense. the Soviet Government decreed martial law for the whole country. And although the Eastern fronts were succeeding, almost immediately the South erupted under the White armies of General Anton Denikin. Now, 1,134,356 men were called up in the largest recruitment of the entire Civil War, between October and December 1918. Stalin’s Mission to Southern Front at Tsaritsyn Before Stalin was sent South, he had already drawn attention to the inaction in the East, and especially the attempt of the Germans to capture Certovo Station, controlling supply lines to Rostov. On the Sovnarkom’s initiative, Stalin was put in charge of the capture of Certkovo (Meijer J.M. Editor & Annotator, “The Trotsky Papers 1917-1922”; Hague 1964; p. 43). Given the evidence of serious deficiencies of the Eastern command under Trotsky, the Southern Front was created by the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic with its’ own revolutionary military council: “which included one military specialist, the former general Pavel Sytin, and three commissars J.V.Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov and Sergei Minin. Almost at once conflicts erupted between the military specialists and the commissars”;
The context of this contentious mission (both then and now) is important to grasp. Tsaritsyn (later named Stalingrad) was a gateway to two granaries for the USSR state, the Ukraine and Siberia: “The workers in Moscow and Petrograd were receiving a bare two ounces of bread a day. The republic was cut off from the granaries of the Ukraine and Siberia. The Southwest , the Volga region, and the North Caucasus , was the only area from which grain could still be obtained, and the road to them lay by way of the Volga, through Tsaritsyn. Only by procuring grain could the revolution be saved. … Stalin left for the South invested by the CC with extraordinary power to direct the mobilisation of food supplies in the South.. On June 6, 1918, Stalin arrived in Tsaritsyn…. The capture of Tsaritisyn would have cut off the republic from its last sources of grain supply and from the oil of Baku, and would have enabled the Whites to link the counter-revolutionaries in the Don region with Kolchak and the Czechoslovak counter-revolution for a general advance on Moscow”; However the aim of the White General Krasnov to cut off Moscow from the rear was not fulfilled: “Although the country was in a difficult position, and the young Red Army was not yet consolidated, the measures of defence adopted soon yielded their first fruits. General Krasnov was forced back from Tsaritsyn, whose capture he had regarded as certain, and driven beyond the River Don. General Denikin's operations were localized within a small area in the North Caucasus, while General Kornilov was killed in action against the Red Army. The Czechoslovaks and the Whiteguard-Socialist-Revolutionary bands were ousted from Kazan, Simbirsk and Samara and driven to the Urals. A revolt in Yaroslavl headed by the Whiteguard Savinkov and organized by Lockhart, chief of the British Mission in Moscow, was suppressed, and Lockhart himself arrested. The Socialist-Revolutionaries, who had assassinated Comrades Uritsky and Volodarsky and had made a villainous attempt on the life of Lenin, were subjected to a Red terror in retaliation for their White terror against the Bolsheviks, and were completely routed in every important city in Central Russia.” In a separate web appendix, we publish the full correspondence of Stalin with Lenin on the situation in Tsaritsyn [See http://www.allianceML.com/STALIN-TXT/JVSCIVILWAR.html ]; but here we will only cite the extent to which Stalin’s involvement in Tsaristyn was driven by the matter of disruption and plain disorder, hampering supplies back to the rear: “Arrived in Tsaristyn on the 6 th. Despite the confusion in every sphere of economic life, order can be established. Stalin complained of Trotsky’s management directly to Lenin: “Comrade Lenin, Just a few words. By dint of correcting the imbalance towards "military experts”, Stalin turned the situation: “One favourable factor on the Tsaritsyn-Gashun Front is the complete elimination of the muddle due to the detachment principle, and the timely removal of the so-called experts (staunch supporters either of the Cossacks or of the British & French) have made it possible to win the sympathy of the military units and establish iron discipline in them”; By September 6 th the offensive for Tsaritsyn was successful (Stalin 'Works'; Volume 7 Telegram to Council of Peoples Commissars; Volume 4; p. 131.
“The sole line of communication of the these troops with Great-Russia, and that a circuitous one, across the Caspian Sea to Astrachan’ cannot even be regarded as satisfactory”; Stalin had found it necessary to stay in Tsaritsyn for some time, until by September 1918 the Front was secure. By this time, Stalin had been interviewed by Iszvestia on September 21 1918, and said: “First of all Comrade Stalin said, two gratifying facts should be noted: One is the promotion to administrative posts in the rear area of working men with an ability not only for agitating in favour of a Soviet power, but also for the building the state on a new, communist basis; the second is the appearance of a new corps of commanders consisting of officers promoted from the ranks who have had practical experience in the imperialist war, and who enjoy the full confidence of the Red Army men….” There is little doubt that Trotsky’s management of that Front had been clearly exposed. Trotsky’s’ charges were that after Stalin’s arrival, Trotsky’s commands from the centre (Trotsky “My Life”; Ibid p. 442). On Trotsky’s promptings, the Orgburo and the RSVR supported Sytin and removed Stalin. However by the time of his recall, Stalin had both secured Tsaritsyn and formed the nucleus of the Tenth army under Voroshilov. Alexandrov points out that he achieved this by: “Ruthlessly breaking down the resistance of the counter-revolutionary military experts appointed and supported by Trotsky, and taking swift and vigorous measures to reorganize the scattered detachments”; Sytin was left in charge, until in October was removed from the command of the Southern Front (Meijer Ibid; p. 48). In the month of October, Stalin’s speeches on the Southern Front were given prominence in both Iszvestia and Pravda. These are reprinted on the Alliance web-pages However there were further repercussions. Upon Stalin’s return to Moscow, he met with Lenin and Sverdlow, and reported further victories in the Tsaristyn area. Stalin pointed out to them that he had persuaded Vosroshilov and Minin to stay on, subject strictly to the central command. Further, in a letter from either Lenin or Sverdlov – it is stated: “(Stalin) would like very much to work on the Southern Front; he expresses great apprehension that people whose knowledge of this Front is poor may commit errors, of which he cite numerous examples. … He is not putting any stipulation about the removal of Sytin and Mechonosin… In informing you Lev Davydyc, … I ask you to think them over and let me have a reply, as to whether you agree to talk matters over with Stalin personally, and secondly, whether you consider it possible under specific circumstances to put aside former differences and range to work together with as Stalin so much desires”; Trotsky had no choice but to accede to Lenin’s obvious pressure to meet Stalin. However, Stalin did not return to the Southern Front. Instead his next military mission was his appointment to the Defense Council on November 30 th, and then a special mission to investigate military failures in Perm’. In the meantime, Voroshilov wrote urgently to Lenin complaining of the inability to obtain small arms and shells (See Telegram to Trotsky from Lenin 24 October 1918) to which Trotsky cavalierly replied that the “Crisis” was due to the “incredible, completely rabid expenditure of ammunition” at Tsartisyn (See Telegram Trotsky to Lenin 25 October 1918; Meijer Ibid; p. 163). Typically of Trotsky, after he ridicules legitimate grievances, he then “discovers” the problem for himself, as instanced in a lengthy analysis of the problem [Memorandum to Lenin; copied to Krasin and Serpuchov; November 29, 1918; In Meijer Ibid; p. 187-191; p. 193]. The systemic problem of which Vosroshilov was complaining, was due to the small scale of the factories responsible, and the hostility of their former owners. It is clear that the military commisars, and the Red Commanders had become ever more frustrated with the military leadership. This comes across loudly from the note of A.Egorov (Chairman of the Higher Credentials Commision of the Peoples Commissariat for Military Affairs), as early as 20 th August 1918 to Lenin and Trotsky, where he chastises the command in rather simple and blunt terms, as though in a nursery school, as follows: “Practical military art and so the theory of it, bases itself wholly on the experience of the past… the necessity and the feasibility of a single command for directing warfare, in a word that the military leader must be given full power has been demonstrated by long experience.. Only a single uniform purpose can direct operations… the military axioms indicated above .. fail to find application in the military operations of the armies of the Republic.. A survey of all the operations in progress on the various fronts indicates that they contain no definite, uniform conception or purpose”; The Food Shortage Morale fell drastically. Even many party members, as well as regular soldiers, now deserted, and Trotsky ordered summary executions of these soldiers and the arrest of all rural soviet chairmen in whose jurisdiction deserters were found (von Hagen; Ibid p. 46).
But as the Sixth Congress of Soviets in November 1918, turned more determinedly back to the peasant masses, these problems reversed. For many of the problems, had their roots in food shortages and privation in both the countryside and correspondingly the army. Illustrating the extent of this crisis are Lenin’s “Theses On The Current Situation”, of 26 May 1918. Again the seriousness of Stalin’s intervention at Tsaritsyn in June, is highlighted by an appreciation of the situation. <!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> The Theses start by announcing the transformation of the Commissariat of War into the Commisariat for War and Food. The theses go on to outline a clear policy of a general martial law, and a stiffened army discipline, and call-ups to the army, and good relations with the peasantry: “1) The Commissariat for War to be converted into a Commissariat for War and Food - i.e., 9/10 of the work of the Commissariat for War to be concentrated on re-organising the army for the war for grain and on waging this war - for three months: June-August. Continued Professional Development of the Army – Partisans or Guerillas After Lenin’s Theses of May, clearer signs of ensuring the solidarity of the peasants appeared. Rural soviets were being urged now to mend relations with the poor and middle peasants. Army units composed only of poor peasants were now formed. Steadily the ‘militarization’ – or professionalisation of the army proceeded. The conflicts between commissars and military specialists were numerous in 1918, as in 1918 75% of the Red Army commanders were from the old army. Another layer of authority was the Cheka, which again blurred clear lines of authority. Further divisions at rank-and-file level also now erupted as the party recruits, who insisted on reporting to their own communist party cells in the local party and armies. The commissars were being cramped on two sides now – from the Military specialists at one end, and form the other end separate Party organisations. At the same time elements of the party members were ‘lording’ it over the other recruits. The old Red Guard militias had slowly evolved into another voluntarist model, of the rural partisans or guerrillas. These also maintained elections of commanders and anti-authoritarian principles, and represented in a sense the peasant based self-defence units as central authority had broken down in many parts. At first, while these partisans were fighting against the German and Austrian occupying forces, or against the Whites of hetman Petlurya in Ukraine, several commanders and some commissars (including Voroshilov, Stalin, and Budyenni) had initially supported them. But as these partisans resisted attempts to integrate into the Red army, and proved unreliable in joint actions, and moreover appointed SR and anarchist political advisers, matters changed. A strong anarchist, rural petit-bourgeois element with some forces led by Nestor Makhno, proved further illustrations of the need for discipline. “The partisans were very similar to the Red Guards. In this sense the rural partisan forces were inspired by the larger revolutionary repudiation of super ordinate authority which had brought the Bolsheviks to power in 1917; indeed, at first several Red commanders and some commissars including such influential ones as Voroshilov, Stalin & Budennyi defined the partisans as truly revolutionary fighting forces. As long as the partisans were waging their struggle against the German & Austrian occupation forces in 1918 or against the hetman’s regime in the Ukraine, especially when the red Army was still organising its first units, the Soviet Government welcomed their aid, even if it already looked on their practices with some misgivings. By late 1918 and early 1919, the attitude of the center had changed decisively…. The partisans were resisting all attempts to integrate them into the Red Army’s forces.” Disaster at Perm – and Stalin’s Mission to Perm Trotsky does not contest that Stalin and the head of the Cheka – Felix Djersinksi - were ordered to the Front to investigate shortcomings of the army. Ass Lenin put it: “The news from Perm’ area is extremely alarming. Perm’ is in danger…… Perm is in a dangerous position. I consider it essential that reinforcements be dispatched….” By the December 31 1918, Lenin was writing as follows: “A number of Party reports have come in form the Perm’ area about the catastrophic state of the army and about drunkenness. I am forwarding them to you. You are asked to go there. I had thought of sending Stalin; I am afraid that Smilga will be lenient with Lasevic who, it is said, is also drinking and is not fit state to restore order. Telegraph your opinion”; Trotsky had no option but to accede to Stalin’s mission, while trying to defend Lasevic with another promotion: “I entirely share your apprehension as to the excessive softness of the comrade who has left. I agree to the journey of Stalin with full authority from the Party and the Military Revolutionary Council of the Republic, for the purpose of restoring order, purging the commissar personnel and severely punishing offenders. I recommend that Lasevic be appointed Member of the Military Revolutionary Council on the Northern Front..”
From this time on, increasingly there are concerns being raised by Lenin, at Trotsky's management: “I am very disturbed as to whether you have not got absorbed in the Ukraine to the detriment of the over-all strategic task on which Vecetis insists and which consists in launching a rapid, determined, and general offensive against Krasnov. I am afraid that we are behindhand with this and that the latest success of Krasnsov’s forces are Caricyn (Tsaritsyn) will result again in our putting off our offensive and letting the moment slip by”: Although Trotsky defended his Ukraine actions, and blamed “Stalin’s protection of the Tsaritsyn trend the most dangerous sort of ulcer, worse than any act of perfidy or treachery on the part of the military specialists” [January 11 th 1919 Telegram to Lenin: In Meijer Ibid; p. 251), Lenin cannot have been overly impressed with this. For because by January 31 1919, Felix Dzerzhinsky (Head of the Cheka) & Stalin had provided a very detailed exposure of the fall of Perm’ [Stalin’s Works Volume 4; Report to Lenin; Ibid; pp194-199; & Report to Comrade Lenin by the Commission of the party CC and the Council of Defence on the reasons for the fall of Perm in December 1918: p 202-232. In brief the main findings were that: “Disaster was inevitable… apparent by end of November, when the enemy.. surrounded the Third Army… and launched a fierce attack on Khusva. .. The morale and efficiency of the army were deplorable owing to the weariness of the units, .. the there were no reserves whatever. The rear was totally insecure ( a series of demolitions of the railway track in the rear of the army). The food supply of the army was haphazard and uncertain (at the most difficult moment, when a furious assault was launched against the 29 th division, its units were in action for five days literally without bread or other food). Following this clear instance of Stalin’s military analytical superiority, Lenin again proposes to resort to Stalin’s help over this period in a number of different fronts. There had been a long series of problems related to food shortages to the army, and sabotage of the rail links ensuring food distribution, at each crisis point Lenin got rapidly involved: “ 29.1.1920; To Military Council of the 5 th Army – Smirnov: Pjakes reports that there is manifest sabotage on the part of the railway workers. The Omsk railway works , which employ 3,000 workers, have produced no locomotives and four railway wagons in the space of a month: there are suspicions of sabotage by the Izevsk workers; I am surprised that you are putting up with this and do not punish sabotage with shooting; also the delay over the transfer here of locomotives is manifest sabotage; please take the most resolute measures. And shortly thereafter Lenin upbraids Trotsky as follows: “ 1.2.1920; In response to emergency crisises, Lenin again turned to … Stalin: “3-4 February 1920; In reply to this, Stalin [then in Kursk] tried to argue that: “my profound conviction is that my journey would not bring about any change in the situation; that it is not journeys by individuals that are needed but the transfer of cavalry reserves, the Southwest being without them”; Lenin agreed provided: “ that the next weeks, you concentrate all your attention and energy on serving the Caucasus Front, subordinating to it the interests of the South Western Front”; Although this has been variously presented by Trotsky as insubordination or even ‘laziness’, it is likely that Stalin was at least unwilling to simply pull Trotsky’s chestnuts out of the fire, and then end up being again side-lined. However the situation in the army was soon to change. There were later Stalin missions to Petrograd, and to the Crimea, which are dealt with in Part Two of this article. The Eight Party Congress – The Military Opposition
Many, including Trotsky and Old Bolsheviks like Mikhail Frunze (a commander on the Eastern Front) had complained of the unruliness of the partisan elements. But this was only one aspect of things going wrong, and Trotsky was under scrutiny. Matters came to a head at the Eight Party Congress of 18 March 1919. It was at this meeting that the lessons of recent defeats would be drawn. As the Short History of the CPSU(B) puts it, the 8 th Congress was a “turning point” in the party, on the question of the peasantry: “The Eighth Congress marked a turning point in the policy of the Party towards the middle peasants. Lenin's report and the decisions of the congress laid down a new line of the Party on this question. The congress demanded that the Party organizations and all Communists should draw a strict distinction and division between the middle peasant and the kulak, and should strive to win the former over to the side of the working class by paying close attention to his needs. The backwardness of the middle peasants had to be overcome by persuasion and not by compulsion and coercion….. The Eighth Party Congress took place in a climate when it was clear that there had been some serious defeats under Trotsky’s Command. The failed defence of the city of Perm was a case in point: “At the end of December the city of Perm fell to Kolchak’s armies and threatened the Boshevik stronghold of Vlatka. .. the response to the military defeat.. the string of failures had emboldened Trotsky’s critics to attack him directly. “ The meeting brought to a head all the varying tensions about discipline and of leadership, and was the end of the Paris Commune model for organisation: “The defeat of the Military opposition at the Eight Party Congress was the definitive defeat of the commune model in the Soviet Republic until the end of the Civil War.” At the 8 th Party Congress on 18 March 1919, some 403 delegates attended, of whom 40 represented the 31000 party members in the Red Army. Trotsky was ill, but Grigorii Sokol’nikov presented the Theses of the Commissariat – largely drafted by Trotsky. These largely declared the need to eliminate vestiges of volunteer army organising and to tighten discipline. However, his defence on behalf of the military specialists was not well received. At the Congress, the so-called Military opposition took shape. Vladimir Smirnov presented their theses: “The Military opposition contended that the commissars deserved more than a narrow control function, because they already had more combat experience than many military specialists”; The peasant question was closely tied to the building of the Red Army. That serious discontented was being voiced by the Military Opposition was clear: “The problems connected with the building up of the Red Army held a special place in the deliberations of the congress, where the so-called "Military Opposition" appeared in the field. This "Military Opposition" comprised quite a number of former members of the now shattered group of "Left Communists"; but it also included some Party workers who had never participated in any opposition, but were dissatisfied with the way Trotsky was conducting the affairs of the army. The majority of the delegates from the army were distinctly hostile to Trotsky; they resented his veneration for the military experts of the old tsarist army, some of whom were betraying us outright in the Civil War, and his arrogant and hostile attitude towards the old Bolshevik cadres in the army. Instances of Trotsky's "practices" were cited at the congress. For example, he had attempted to shoot a number of prominent army Communists serving at the front, just because they had incurred his displeasure. This was directly playing into the hands of the enemy. It was only the intervention of the Central Committee and the protests of military men that saved the lives of these comrades. But while fighting Trotsky's distortions of the military policy of the Party, the "Military Opposition" held incorrect views on a number of points concerning the building up of the army. Lenin and Stalin vigorously came out against the "Military Opposition," because the latter defended the survivals of the guerrilla spirit and resisted the creation of a regular Red Army, the utilization of the military experts of the old army and the establishment of that iron discipline without which no army can be a real army". The Congress Military policies decided, were essentially two-fold: Firstly correcting the work of Trotsky and calling for professional change – this was a rebuke of Trotsky;
The Central Committee struck a special committee of three Central Committee members (Stalin, Grigori Zinoviev and the military commissar of the Petrograd labour Commune Boris Pozern) and two members of the Military Opposition (Emel’ian Iaroslovaskii and G.I. Safarov). As far as Stalin’s participation at both the Congress, and the special meeting is concerned, on March 21, 1919 – Stalin had vigorously opposed the continued vestiges of ‘volunteerism’, that were reflected in Smirnov’s espousal of a volunteer army: “All the questions touched upon here boil down to one: is Russia to have, or not to have, a strictly disciplined regular army? It cannot be denied by even the most vigorous admirer of Trotsky, that Trotsky had been rebuked. For, in his papers is found an extract of the Minutes of the Meeting of the CC of the RCP held on 25 th March 1919, where Trotsky is instructed to meet on a monthly basis with party workers: “Comrade Zinoviev announced that the Military Section of the Congress had succeeded in attaining unanimity, thanks to our having made a concession of a kind, and adopted resolutions which it was decided not to make public at the Congress, namely: <!--[if !supportLists]--> Typically of Trotsky, a rather long-winded reply that attempts to exculpate himself form any criticism followed, with imputations of psychological disease to Voroshilov, in March (undated) [In Meijer Ibid; p. 325-335]. 5. Socialism in one country5.1. The Early Views of Marx and Engels On "Socialism In One Country" Marx and Engels had one primary theoretical purpose in the years leading from 1845-1848 - this was to clarify their analysis of class society. As a part way to achieving this, they wrote the famous work, "The German Ideology". "Frederick Engels, with whom I maintained a constant exchange of ideas by correspondence since the publication of his brilliant essay on the critique of economic categories (printed in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher, arrived by another road (compare his ‘Lage der arbeitenden Klasse’, in England ) at the same result as I, and when in the spring of 1845 he too came to live in Brussels, we decided to set forth together our conception as opposed to the ideological one of German philosophy, in fact to settle accounts with our former philosophical conscience. The intention was carried out in the form of a critique of post-Hegelian philosophy. The manuscript [The German Ideology], two large octavo volumes, had long ago reached the publishers in Westphalia when we were informed that owing to changed circumstances it could not be printed. We abandoned the manuscript to the gnawing criticism of the mice all the more willingly since we had achieved our main purpose -- self-clarification." In that joint work, Marx and Engels explicitly advocated the necessity of an international communist movement - "Empirically communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples "all at once" and "simultaneously which pre-supposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with them". "5. Development of the Productive Forces as a Material Premise of Communism]. SUMMARY: There can be no doubt that early on, before their full maturity, both Marx and Engels thought that the revolution had to be virtually simultaneous in several countries around the world. 5.2. In What Sense is the "Revolution Permanent"? "The domination and speedy increase of capital is further to be counteracted partly by restricting the right of inheritance and partly by transferring as much employment as possible to the state. As far as the workers are concerned, it is above all certain that they are to remain wage-workers as before; the democratic petty bourgeois only desire better wages and a more secure existence for the workers and hope to achieve this through partial employment by the state and through charity measures; in short, they hope to bribe the workers by more or less concealed alms and to sap their revolutionary vigour by making their position tolerable for the moment. The demands of the petty-bourgeois democracy here summarised are not put forward by all of their factions and only very few of their members consider these demands in their aggregate as a definite aim. The further individual people or factions among them go, the more of these demands will they make their own, and those few who see their own programme in what has been outlined above would believe that thereby they have put forward the utmost that can be demanded from the revolution. But these demands can in no wise suffice for the party of the proletariat. While the democratic petty bourgeois wish to bring the revolution to a conclusion as quickly as possible, and with the achievement, at most, of the above demands, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent, until all more or less possessing classes are forced out of their position of dominance, the proletariat has conquered state power, and the association of proletarians, not only in one country but in all the dominant countries of the world, has advanced so far that competition among the proletarians in these countries has ceased and that at least the decisive productive forces are concentrated in the hands of the proletarians. For us the issue cannot be the alteration of private property but only its abolition, not the smoothing over of class antagonisms but the abolition of classes, not the improvement of existing society but the foundation of a new one. That, during the further development of the revolution, the petty-bourgeois democrats will for a moment obtain predominating influence in Germany is not open to doubt. The question is, therefore, what is to be the attitude of the proletariat and in particular of the League towards them: In the highlighted section, it is perfectly clear that Marx and Engels still adhere to their "early" viewpoint expressed before in both the German Ideology" and the "Principles of Communism" - that an international revolution is required for an ultimate successful end. "Far from desiring to transform the whole of society for the revolutionary proletarians, the democratic petty bourgeois strive for a change in social conditions by means of which the existing society will be made as tolerable and comfortable as possible for them. Hence they demand above all a diminution of state expenditure by curtailing the bureaucracy and shifting the bulk of the taxes on to the big landowners and bourgeois. Further, they demand the abolition of the pressure of big capital on small, through public credit institutions and laws against usury, by which means it will be possible for them and the peasants to obtain advances, on favourable conditions from the state instead of from the capitalists; they also demand the establishment of bourgeois property relations in the countryside by the complete abolition of feudalism. To accomplish all this they need a democratic form of government, either constitutional or republican, that will give them and their allies, the peasants, a majority; also a democratic communal structure that will give them direct control over communal property and a number of functions now performed by the bureaucrats." Nonetheless, even a temporary bourgeois democratic structure, will benefit the workers, and assists them to move on to the next stage. The formula that encapsulates the advice of Marx and Engels was: "The relation of the revolutionary workers' party to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it marches together with them against the faction which it aims at overthrowing, it opposes them in everything whereby they seek to consolidate their position in their own interests." Marx and Engels end this article, by exhorting the workers to remain on guard and NOT to cease their struggle independent of the "democratic petty bourgeois": "If the German workers are not able to attain power and achieve their own class interests without completely going through a lengthy revolutionary development, they at least know for a certainty this time that the first act of this approaching revolutionary drama will coincide with the direct victory of their own class in France and will be very much accelerated by it. Summary : Already in this text, the emphasis has entirely shifted, from a "simultaneous" revolution in several countries to one of a dogged persistence with the revolutionary agenda, in order to spread it world-wide. 5.3. The Later Positions of Marx and Engels on Socialism In One Country It is difficult for even the most ardent Trotskyite to deny, that Marx and Engels took a more sophisticated and clear-sighted view later in their careers on many issues, than they had taken earlier on. "Before sending these lines to press, I have once again ferreted out and looked over the old manuscript of 1845-46. The section dealing with Feuerbach is not completed. The finished portion consists of an exposition of the materialist conception of history which proves only how incomplete our knowledge of economic history still was at the time." One case in point appears to be the matter of Socialism in One Country. "Now it is historically impossible for a great people to discuss this or that internal question in any way seriously so long as national independence is lacking. Prior to 1859 there was no question of socialism in Italy; even the republicans were few in number, although they constituted the most vigorous element. Not until 1861 did the republicans begin to expand, subsequently yielding their best elements to the socialists. Similarly in Germany. Lassalle was on the point of giving up the cause for lost when he was lucky enough to be shot. It was not until 1866, the year that actually decided Little Germany's Greater Prussian unity, that both the Lassallean and the so-called Eisenach parties acquired any significance, and it was not until 1870, when the Bonapartist urge to interfere had been eliminated for good, that the cause gathered momentum. If we still had the old Federal Diet, where would our party be now? Similarly in Hungary. It wasn't until 1860 that it was drawn into the modern movement - sharp practice above, socialism below. In yet another letter to Kautsky, also in 1882, Engels broaches the question of the colonial revolution in relation to English colonial policy. Engels disclaims precise description of how events will unfold, however he projects colonial revolutions where the "natives" are ruled. Of these countries he estimates that a revolution might begin in India - decidedly different to his anticipations of an earlier 1847: "You ask me what the English workers think of colonial policy. Well, exactly what they think of any policy - the same as what the middle classes think. There is, after all, no labour party here, only conservatives and liberal radicals, and the workers cheerfully go snacks in England's monopoly of the world market and colonies. As I see it, the actual colonies, i.e. the countries occupied by European settlers, such as Canada, the Cape, Australia, will all become independent; on the other hand, countries that are merely ruled and are inhabited by natives, such as India, Algeria and the Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish possessions, will have to be temporarily taken over by the proletariat and guided as rapidly as possible towards independence. How this process will develop is difficult to say. India may, indeed very probably will, start a revolution and, since a proletariat that is effecting its own emancipation cannot wage a colonial war, it would have to be given its head, which would obviously entail a great deal of destruction, but after all that sort of thing is inseparable from any revolution. The same thing could also happen elsewhere, say in Algeria or Egypt, and would certainly suit us best. We shall have enough on our hands at home. Once Europe has been reorganised, and North America, the resulting power will be so colossal and the example set will be such that the semi-civilised countries will follow suit quite of their own accord; their economic needs alone will see to that. What social and political phases those countries will then have to traverse before they likewise acquire a socialist organisation is something about which I do not believe we can profitably speculate at present. Only one thing is certain, namely that a victorious proletariat cannot forcibly confer any boon whatever on another country without undermining its own victory in the process. Which does not, of course, in any way preclude defensive wars of various kinds." It cannot be over-looked that the army and military specialist of the Marxist-Leninist movement – General Engels – advises against the export of revolution": Only one thing is certain, namely that a victorious proletariat cannot forcibly confer any boon whatever on another country without undermining its own victory in the process. And then there are the numerous works where both Marx and Engels examine Russia. These illustrate their changed view in more detail. 5.4. Marx and Engels on the Russian Prospects for Revolution It is apparent that Marx and Engels were extremely well informed about the position of the Russian movement and of Russian society in general. A bourgeois canard is still about that Marx and Engels "Got it wrong because they did not foresee that the proletarian revolution would begin FIRST in a backward country like Russia, and not in a fully developed capitalist country, like Britain or Germany." "Apart from Germany and Austria the country on which we should focus our attention remains Russia., The government there, just as in this country is the chief ally of the movement. But a much better one than our Bismarck, Stieber and Tessendorf. The Russian court party, which is now firmly in the saddle, tries to take back all its concessions made during the years of the "new era" that was ushered in 1861, and with genuinely Russian methods at that. So now again, only "sons of the upper classes" are to be allowed to study, and in order to carry this policy out all others are made to fail in the graduation examinations. In 1873 alone this was the fate that awaited 24,000 young people whose entire careers were blocked, as they were expressly forbidden to become even elementary school-teachers. And yet people are surprised at the spread of "nihilism" in Russia. … It almost looks like the next dance is going to start in Russia. And if this happens while the inevitable war between the German-Prussian Empire and Russia is in progress- which is very likely - repercussions in Germany are also inevitable." After the folding of the First International (See Alliance issue -----------), there was a question as to when it would be right to form the Second International. In discussing this timing, Engels argued that the proletarian powder should be kept dry, until the battle began. He believed that this battle would begin in Russia, and that this would give the signal for the International’s "official" re-birth. This would be an action orientated, and not merely theoretical manifestation: "We think that the time for … a new formally reorganised International would only call forth new persecution in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy and Spain… On the other hand the International actually continues to exist. There is a connection between the revolutionary workers in all countries, as far as that is feasible. Every socialist journal is an international center…. When the time for rallying of forces arrives it will therefore be a matter of but a moment and require no lengthy preparation… The names of the champions of the people in any country are well known in all the others and a manifesto signed and endorsed by all of them would create an immense impression… for that very reason such a demonstration must kept for the moment when it can have a decisive effect, i.e.; when events in Europe make it necessary. Otherwise the effect in the future will be spoiled and the whole thing will be only a shot in the air. Such events are however maturing in Russia where the vanguard of the battle will engage in battle. This and its inevitable impact on Germany is what one must in our opinion wait for., and then will also come the time for a grand demonstration and the establishment of an official, formal International which however can no longer be a propaganda society but only a society for action". But perhaps the best illustration that Engels thought the revolution would start in Russia, comes from correspondence with Vera Zasulich. Engels clearly displays an exuberant optimism in the Russian revolution. Now it may be true that he was some 20 years too early! But, after all, he had clearly identified the motive forces of the "Old Mole" in Russia. He even made clear that so serious was the situation in Russia, that in a "certain" sense this might be a relatively unique situation – one where some degree of Blanquist theory, might be relevant. "I am proud to know that there is a party among the youth of Russia which frankly and without equivocation accepts the great economic and historical theories of Marx and has definitely broken with all the anarchist and also the few existing Slavophil tendencies of its predecessors…. What I know or believe I know about the situation in Russia makes me think that the Russians are fast approaching their 1789. The revolution must break out any day. In these circumstances the country is like a charged mine which only needs a single match to be applied to it. Especially since March 13 (Editor- the assassination of Tsar Alexander 3 rd) This is one of the exceptional cases where it is possible for handful of people to make a revolution, i.e., by giving a small impetus to cause a whole system (to use a metaphor of Plekhanov’s) which is in more than labile equilibrium, to come crashing down, and by an action insignificant of itself to release explosive forces that afterwards becomes uncontrollable. Well, if ever Blanquism – the fantastic idea of overturning an entire society by the action of a small group of conspirators – had a certain raison d’être, that is certainly so now in St.Petersburg. Once the spark has been put to the powder… the people who laid the spark to the mine will be swept along by the explosion …. Suppose these people imagine they can seize power, what harm does it do? .. To me the important thing is the impulse in Russia should be given, that the revolution should break out. Whether this or that faction gives the signal, whether it happens under this flag or that is a matter of complete indifference to me. If it were a palace conspiracy it would be swept away tomorrow. In a country where the situation is so strained, where the revolutionary elements have accumulated to such a degree, where the economic conditions of the people become daily more impossible, where every stage of social development is represented, from the primitive commune to the modern large scale industry and high finance, where all these contradictions are arbitrarily held in check by an unexampled despotism, a despotism which is becoming more and more unbearable to the a youth in whom the dignity and intelligence of such a nation are united-when 1789 has once been launched in such a country, 1793 will not be far away." Written London April 23 1885; Lenin, naturally, made a particular study of the views of Marx and Engels upon Russia. He clearly saw the same inter-relation between Russian revolution and European revolution that Marx and Engels had. Here are some notes in his famous encyclopaedic "Notebooks on Imperialism" – and are drawn from two articles of Engels. A Postscript to the Engels article "On Social Relations In Russia" (1894) - ends with this: "It - the revolution in Russia – will not only rescue the great mass of the nation, the peasants, from the isolation of their villages, which constitute their ‘ mir’, their world, and lead them to the big stage, where they will get to know the outside world and thereby themselves, their own position and the means of salvation from their present state of want, but it will also give a new impetus and new, better conditions of struggle for the workers’ movement of the West, and hasten the victory of the modern industrial proletariat, with out which present day Russia cannot find her way, whether through the village commune or through capitalism, to a socialist transformation of society." "VI. The internal situation of Russia is "almost desperate"… "This European China" (21)… the ruin of the peasants after 1861… "This path of (of economic & social revolution = capitalism-in Russia) "is for the time being predominantly a destructive path" (21). Impoverishment of the soil, deforestation etc; in Russia. Russia’s credit falling. "It is not France that needs Russia, but rather Russia that needs France… If she had a little sense France could obtain from France whatever she liked. Instead, France crawls on her belly before the Tsar. . Russia lives by exporting rye-mainly to Germany. "As soon as Germany begins to eat white bread instead of black, the present official Tsarist and big-bourgeois Russia will at once be bankrupt". And it was necessary for Lenin in other places, to point out in contrast to those who argued in 1905, that the Bolsheviks should not harbor "Jacobin" prospects for the 1905 revolution, that Russia was "too backward" for the proletarian revolution"; that Marx and Engels had argued against such a step as the first proletarian revolution, etc; etc; ....: "Take Marx’s letter of September 27 1877. He is quite enthusiastic about the Eastern crisis: "Or take Marx’s letter of November 5 th 1880. He was delighted with the success of Capital in Russia, and took the parts of the members of the Narodnaya Volya organization against the newly arisen General Redistribution Group. Marx correctly perceived the anarchistic elements in their views. Not knowing the future evolution of the General-Redistribution Narodniks into Social-Democrats, Marx attacked them with all his trenchant sarcasm: "These gentlemen are against all political-revolutionary action. Russia is to make a somersault into the anarchist-communist-atheist millenium! Meanwhile, they are preparing for this leap with the most tedious doctrinarism, whose so-called "principes cournat la rue depuis le feu Bakounine". We can gather from this how Marx would have appreciated the significance for Russia of 1905 and the succeeding years of Social-Democracy’s "political-revolutionary" action". "There is a letter by Engels dated April 6 th 1887: "On the other hand it seems as if a crisis is impending in Russia. The recent attentates rather upset the apple cart. "The army is full of discontented conspiring officers (Lenin adds: Engels at that time was impressed by the revolutionary struggle of the Narodnaya Volya organization; he set his hopes on the officers and did not yet see the revolutionary spirit of the Russian soldiers and sailors, which was manifested so magnificently eighteen years later..) I do not think things will last another year; and once it (the revolution breaks out in Russia, then hurrah!" A letter of April 23 1887: "in Germany there is persecution after persecution of socialist. It looks as if Bismarck wants to have everything ready so that the moment the revolution breaks out in Russia, which is now only a question of months, Germany could immediately follow her example." Lenin V.I: "Preface to The Russian Translation of Letters By Johanne Becker, Joseph Dietzgen, Frederick Engels, Marl Marx and others to Friedrich Sorge and Others"; (April 1907); In Collected Works"; Volume 12; Moscow; 1962; p.377. http://www.marx2mao.org//Lenin/PRTL07.html "Yes, Marx and Engels made many and frequent mistakes in determining the proximity of revolution in their hopes in the victory of revolution (e.g. in 1848 in Germany), in their faith in the imminence of a German "republic" (to die for the republic" wrote Engels of that period recalling his sentiments as a participant in the military campaign for a Reich constitution in 1848-9)….. But such errors – the errors of the giant of revolutionary thought, who sought to raise, and did raise, the proletariat of the whole world above the level of petty commonplace and trivial tasks - are a thousand times more noble and magnificent and historically more valuable and true than the trite wisdom of official liberalism, which lauds, shouts, appeals and holds forth about the vanity of revolutionary vanities, the futility of the revolutionary struggle and the charms of the counter-revolutionary "constitutional" fantasies." Lenin V.I: "Preface to The Russian Translation of Letters By Johanne Becker, Joseph Dietzgen, Frederick Engels, Marl Marx and others to Friedrich Sorge and Others"; (April 1907); In Collected Works"; Volume 12; Moscow; 1962; p.377-378. http://www.marx2mao.org//Lenin/PRTL07.html Summary : There is therefore no justification for the view that Marx and Engels got it wrong by not foreseeing the Russian revolution. Moreover, their views in this regard buttress the fact that they had moved well beyond their early understanding of an absolute necessity of a "simultaneous" world revolution. 5.5. The Distortion of Marx and Engels by Trotsky: The Theory of the "Permanent Revolution"; and Lenin and Stalin's Critique of it. In November and December 1904, Trotsky Wrote a brochure on the necessity for the working class to play the-leading role in the capitalist revolution in Russia which, the following year, he entitled “Before the 9th. January” . This being the date, under the old Russian calendar, in 1905 when the first Russian revolution began with the shooting down by the. tsar's troops of an unarmed workers’ demonstration. "In Russia only the workers can accomplish a revolutionary insurrection. . . The revolutionary provisional government will be a government of workers' democracy." In April 1905 Lenin commented on Parvus's theory that the capitalist revolution in Russia could result in a government of the working class, as it had been put forward in the brochure written by: “the windbag Trotsky". Lenin declared about the theory, that: "This cannot be . . . This cannot be, because, only a revolutionary dictatorship relying on the overwhelming majority of the people can be at all durable. . . The Russian proletariat, however, at present constitutes a minority of the population in Russia. It can become the great overwhelming majority only if it combines with the mass of semi-proletarians, semi-small proprietors, i.e. with the mass of the petty-bourgeois urban and rural poor. And such a composition of the social basis of the possible and desirable revolutionary-democratic dictatorship will of course... find its reflection in the composition of. the revolutionary government. With such a composition of the participation or even the predominance of the most diversified representatives of revolutionary democracy in such a government will be inevitable". In 1905, Leon Trotsky had been one of the leaders of the St.Petersburg Soviet. He was then held in prison on charges of plotting insurrection. "While the democratic petty bourgeois wish to bring the revolution to a conclusion as quickly as possible and with the achievement at most of the above demands it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent, until all more or' less possessing classes have been displaced from domination until the proletariat has conquered state power. . . Their (i.e., --the-German workers' ---Ed.) battle-cry must be: the permanent revolution". Lenin broadly accepted this concept of the permanant revolution, although after Trotsky's publication, Marxists preferred to use the term "un-interrupted revolution" or "continuous revolution" in order to avoid confusion with Trotsky's perversion of the term in connection with his anti-Leninist theory of the capitalist revolution. In September 1905, Lenin wrote: "From the democratic revolution we shall at once., according to the degree of our strength, the strength of the class conscious and organised proletariat, begin to pass over to the-socialist revolution. We stand for continuous revolution". Trotsky's theory of the capitalist revolution, as put forward in "Results and Prospects" was as follows: 1) The working class will be the active force in the capitalist revolution with the peasantry as supporters: "The struggle for the emancipation of Russia from the incubus of absolutism which is stifling it has become converted into a single combat between absolutism and the industrial proletariat, a single combat in which the peasants may render considerable support but cannot play a leading role.. .. . 2. Because the peasantry in the capitalist revolution is destined to play only an auxiliary role of supporters rather than allies of the working class, the democratic- revolution will place in power -- not an alliance of the' working class and peasantry, "the democratic dictatorship of the working class and peasantry- - but the working class, establishing the dictatorship of the working class, a revolutionary Workers' government: "The idea of a proletarian and peasant dictatorship' is unrealisable. . .. 3. Once in power the working class will be compelled to proceed with the construction of a socialist Society: "The proletariat, once having taken power, will fight for it to the very end. Collectivism will become not only the inevitable way forward from the position in which the party in power will find itself, but will also be a means of preserving this position with the support of the., proletariat…….. 4. But the, construction of socialism will inevitably bring the working class into hostile collision with the peasantry and urban petty bourgeoisie: "Every passing day will deepen the policy of the proletariat in power,, and more and more define its class' character. Side by side with that, the revolutionary ties betwee n the proletariat and the nation will be broken. . . . 5. Thus, the working class in power now isolated from and opposed by the masses of the peasantry and urban petty bourgeoisie will inevitably be overthrown by the forces of reaction -- unless the working classes of Western Europe establish proletarian dictatorships which render direct state aid to the working-class of Russia: "Left to it’s own resources.., the working class of Russia : will inevitably be crushed by the counter-- revolution the moment the peasantry turns its back on it. It will have no alternative but to link the fate of its political rule and, hence, the fate of the whole Russian revolution, with the fate of the socialist revolution in Europe." "Without the direct State support of the European proletariat the working class of Russia cannot remain in power and convert its 6. The Russian working class government will, therefore, be forced to use its state power actively to initiate socialist revolutions in Western Europe and beyond: "This immediately gives the events now unfolding an international character... . The political emancipation of Russia led by the working transfer to it colossal power and resources, and. .. will make it the initiator of the liquidation of world capitalism. . . Trotsky continued to put forward his theory of "permanent revolution" throughout his life. In his book "The Permanent Revolution", published in Berlin in Russian in 1930, he says: "I came out against the formula 'democratic dictatorship of the Proletariat and the peasantry'.. . . As we have seen, Lenin analysed the revolutionary process in tsarist Russia as essentially one of two successive stages -- "In order that the proletariat of the Eastern countries may open the road to victory, the pedantic reactionary theory of Stalin . . . on 'stages' and 'steps' must be eliminated at the very outset, must be cast aside, broken up and swept away with a broom. With regard to . . . . the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks Lenin was, of course, strongly opposed to what he called: "Trotsky's “absurdly 'Left' theory of 'permanent revolution'" . Analysing Trotsky's "Results and Prospects" in 1907 Lenin pointed out: "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". At the end of 1910, we find Lenin saying: "Trotsky distorts Bolshevism, because he has never been able to form any definite views on the role of the proletariat in the Russian bourgeois revolution". And in November 1915, Lenin says: "Trotsky repeats his ‘original’ theory of In November and December 1924 Stalin made a more comprehensive theoretical analysis of Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution": "Trotskyism is :the theory of 'permanent' (uninterrupted) revolution. But what is 'permanent revolution in its Trotskyist interpretation? It is "What is the dictatorship of tbe proletariat according to Trotsky? To show the extent to which he held on to his old anti-Leninist ideas, Trotsky published in 1922 a new edition of his book, The Year 1905, adding a preface in which he argued the correctness of his political line. After five years of socialist power, he stated: `It was precisely during the interval between January 9 and the October strike of 1905 that the views on the character of the revolutionary development of Russia which came to be known as the theory of `permanent revolution' crystallized in the author's mind .... precisely in order to ensure its victory, the proletarian vanguard would be forced in the very early stages of its rule to make deep inroads not only into feudal property but into bourgeois property as well. In this it would come into hostile collision not only with all the bourgeois groupings which supported the proletariat during the first stages of its revolutionary struggle, but also with the broad masses of the peasantry with whose assistance it came into power. The contradictions in the position of a workers' government in a backward country with an overwhelmingly peasant population could be solved only on an international scale, in the arena of world proletarian revolution.' Quoted in Stalin, The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists. Leninism: Selected Writings (New York: International Publishers, 1942), p. 15. Stalin's emphasis. For those who think that this contradicted the fact that the dictatorship of the proletariat had been maintained for five years, Trotsky responded in a 1922 `Postscript' to his pamphlet A Program of Peace: `The fact that the workers' state has maintained itself against the entire world in a single and, moreover, backward country testifies to the colossal power of the proletariat which in other more advanced, more civilised countries, will truly be able to achieve miracles. But having defended ourselves as a state in the political and military sense, we have not arrived at, nor even approached socialist society .... Trade negotiations with bourgeois states, concessions, the Geneva Conference and so on are far too graphic evidence of the impossibility of isolated socialist construction within a national state-framework .... the genuine rise of socialist economy in Russia will become possible only after the victory of the proletariat in the most important countries of Europe.' Trotsky, Postscript 1922, What is A Peace Programme? (Columbo, Ceylon: Lanka Samasamaja, 1956), pp. 20-21. Also partially quoted in Stalin, The October Revolution, p. 21. Here is the obvious meaning: the Soviet workers are not capable of accomplishing miracles by building socialism; but the day that Belgians, Dutch, Luxemburgers and other Germans rise up, then the world will see real marvels. Trotsky put all of his hope in the proletariat of the `more advanced and more civilized' countries. But he paid no particular attention to the fact that in 1922, only the Russian proletariat proved to be truly revolutionary, to the end, while the revolutionary wave that existed in 1918 in Western Europe was already, for the most part, history. From 1902, and continually, Trotsky fought the line that Lenin had drawn for the democratic revolution and the socialist revolution in Russia. By reaffirming, just before Lenin died, that the dictatorship of the proletariat had to come into open contradiction with the peasant masses and that, consequently, there was no salvation for Soviet socialism outside of the victorious revolution in the `more civilized' countries, Trotsky was trying to substitute his own program for Lenin's. Behind the leftist verbiage of `world revolution', Trotsky took up the fundamental idea of the Mensheviks: it was impossible to build socialism i |