The Slander Drive of the Second International

Moscow, September 4. N. Krupskaya, in an article entitled: ‘Why the Second International takes Trotzky under its protection’, writes, inter alia:

The Trotzkyists and Zinovievists did not concern themselves with the fate of the masses. All they cared about was how they could seize power, even if it should be with the aid of the German State Secret Police and of the most savage enemies of the dictatorship of the proletariat, anxious to restore the bourgeois state of society and the capitalist exploitation of the toiling masses in the land of the Soviets.

It is not by accident that Trotzky, who never grasped the essential character of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and never understood the part played by the masses in the building up of Socialism, Trotzky, who believed that Socialism could be built up on orders from above, should have turned to the path of organising terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov, and other members of the Political Bureau who are helping the masses to build up Socialism.

It was not due to chance that the unscrupulous bloc around Kamenev and Zinoviev went together with Trotzky, step by step, down to the abyss of bottomless treachery towards the cause of Lenin, the cause of the toiling masses, the cause of Socialism.

Trotzky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and their whole band of murderers, worked hand in hand with German fascism, and formed an alliance with the German State Secret Police. Hence the unanimity of the whole country in the demand: These mad dogs must be shot! They wanted to sow confusion in the masses. They wanted to shoot Comrade Stalin, the heart and brain of the revolution. They failed. The miserable band of scoundrels have been shot. The masses are gathering more closely than ever around the C.C.; their allegiance to Stalin is stronger than before.

Nor is it accidental that the Second International behaves as if it had gone mad, hastens to shield the Trotzky-Zinoviev murder band, and endeavours to break up the People’s Front. De Brouckere, Citrine, and their companions, condone every villainy committed by the foes of the working class of the Soviet Union, against its Party and leaders. In the anti-Soviet howl raised by the bourgeois world, the voice of the Second International is the loudest. The Third International was born in the struggle with the Second International. With the aid of the renegades, Kautsky and his companions, the Second International carried on a savage slander drive against the dictatorship of the proletariat, against the Soviet power. The Second International endeavours to extenuate and defeat the capitalist order and to throw sand in the eyes of the toiling masses. Therefore it now backs up the German State Secret Police agent, Trotzky. But the attempt has been a failure. Our Soviet land has become a powerful land, and raises ever higher the banner of Communism. With firm footsteps it advances steadily on the path indicated by Marx, Engels and Lenin. Neither the Trotzkyists, nor the adherents of Zinoviev, nor the Second International, will succeed in hiding this fact and in throwing sand in the eyes of the masses. The strained situation on the international front and the threatening war danger will increase the watchfulness of the workers and increase and strengthen the People’s Front of the toiling masses of the whole world.

‘International Press Correspondence’, 12th September 1936, Volume 16, No. 42, p. 1162