Contemporary Trotskyism: Its Anti-Revolutionary Nature

On Trotskyism

The practical steps taken by Trotsky were as harmful as his "theory"

BASMANOV
His not very long period as Commissar for Foreign Affairs was distinguished by one particular act — the break- ing off of peace negotiations with the representatives of Kaiser Germany at Brest-Litovsk, an act that exposed Soviet Russia to mortal danger.

Trotsky did not confine himself to declaring that Soviet Russia would stop the war against Germany and would demobilise the Army. He sent a telegram to the Com- mander-in-Chief, N. V. Krylenko, insisting that orders be sent out immediately demobilising the Army. The personal intervention of Lenin was needed to countermand Trotsky's unauthorised instruction. 1

The people of Russia paid dearly for Trotsky's "dip- lomatic" activity. It was his fault that in the fighting that took place near Pskov, Revel and Narva thousands of Red Army men were killed resisting the German troops. Because of Trotsky's treacherous policy, the new peace terms proved a great deal heavier and more humiliating than those which, despite Lenin's directive, Trotsky had rejected.

The falsifiers praise Trotsky to the skies for his "military activity": as member and head of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic he is alleged to have done a great deal to secure the defences of the Soviet state in the years of the Civil War. Trotsky is depicted as "the organiser of the Red Army". For a long time the bourgeois press has given space to statements aimed at belittling the part played by Lenin, the Communist Party in creating the Soviet Armed Forces and organising the country's defences.

In actual fact it was Lenin, the party that were in charge of the formation of the Red Army. The Red Army was created by their efforts in those same threatening days of February 1918, when they repudiated Trotsky's treach- erous line of unilateral demobilisation of the Russian forces and surrendering Petrograd and Moscow to the Germans for the sake of keeping the world "in a state of tension".

Lenin, the party worked out the principles for building up the Red Army, which embodied the alliance of the working class and the peasantry, an alliance of the working people of all Russia's peoples. The Central Committee of the party determined the strategy of the most important operations of the Red Army and mobilised the human and material resources for it.

This huge work was organised by the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defence, set up on November 30, 1918 (in 1920 its name was changed to the Council of Labour and Defence). This body was entrusted with full powers to turn the country into a war camp and mobilise all forces and resources in order to defend the Soviet state. The Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defence, with Lenin as its chairman, worked in accordance with the political line of the Central Committee of the Party, and the most important commissions of the Council were at the same time commissions of the Central Committee.
The activity of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic and other military organisations was carried on under the strictest party control. In December 1918 the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party passed a special resolution, which emphasised that "the policy of the military department, as of all other departments and establishments, is carried out in complete conformity with general directives, issued by the party through the Central Committee, and under its immediate control". 1
"The Communist Party — Organiser of the Victory of the Great Trotsky sometimes tried to act in contravention of the party directives. Whenever this happened, a stop was put to it. At the Eighth Congress of the Russian Communist Party in 1919 there was some particularly sharp criticism of Trotsky's striving to act against the opinion of the party organisations in the Army.

In this connection, the party's Central Committee, elected at the Eighth Congress, at its very first meeting on March 25, 1919, described the congress delegates' criticism of Trotsky as a "serious warning". In a special decision signed on March 26 by those members of the Central Committee, who constituted the Politbureau, it was stated: "(5) To point out to Comrade Trotsky the need for the most thoughtful atti- tude to Communists working at the front, since the policy of the Central Committee in military matters cannot be carried out without the fullest comradely solidarity with them." 1

In spite of this the falsifiers try to create the impression that Trotsky was also "prominent" even in the period when Soviet Russia was changing over to peaceful economic reconstruction. They base their assertions, partly, on the fact that he enjoyed great influence on the biggest trade union in the country — the Central Committee of the Railwaymen's and Water Transport Workers' Union (Tsektran). Trotsky is credited with "special" services in the solution of the most important problem facing the republic — the restoration of transport dislocated by the war. With an astounding lack of scruples bourgeois historians bestow on him the title of "founder of the Soviet trade unions".

One has only to study the resolutions of Party congresses and of the Central Committee, and to go through the news- papers of that period, to realise the absurdity of these asser- tions. The work of restoring transport in 1920 was organised by the party under the personal supervision of Lenin. A tenth of the delegates to the Ninth Party Congress and thousands of the best Communists from various parts of the country were sent to restore transport and organise party political work among the transport workers. The newspapers daily published news of the progress of the transport restora- tion work side by side with military reports. It was due to the efforts of the working class, led by the Communists, that the transport situation improved.

At that time Trotsky was instituting in Tsektran dictato- rial management methods and petty tyranny, was suppress- ing democracy and carrying out a policy which he himself called "tightening the screws". It was Trotsky's factional activity that brought about the split in Tsektran, and the creation of a gulf between the leadership and the rank-and- file members of the union. The harm done by Trotsky's policy was considerable because the enormous problems that faced the transport workers demanded good teamwork.

The party firmly rejected Trotsky's "advice". It had worked out the principles of the activity of Soviet trade unions and defined their role and place in the life of the socialist state as social non-party organisations without which the broad masses could not be drawn into manage- ment of the state and production, and building the new socialist society. Noting the immense significance of trade unions as the embodiment of the dictatorship of the prole- tariat, Lenin said: "But it is not a state organisation; nor is it one designed for coercion, but for education. It is an organisation designed to draw in and to train; it is, in fact, a school: a school of administration, a school of economic management, a school of communism.'"

The fifth legend sets out to present the ideological and organisational defeat of Trotskyism in the twenties as having been due to some kind of "coincidence", and to reduce the very serious differences of opinion that had arisen regard- ing the paths of development of the Soviet state to motives of a personal nature. 2

Meanwhile the Soviet Communists showed great clarity of mind in the twenties, a time when the fate of all mankind hung in the balance, by casting aside the defeatists who advocated giving up the idea of building socialism. Who can deny the colossal influence exercised by the building of soci- alism in the USSR on the whole course of history? The peoples of the world were shown an actually existing social- ist society, and the experience of the Soviet Union became the treasured possession of the international communist movement.

And how could mankind have been saved from the threat of fascist enslavement, if the political monolith of the Soviet Union, with its highly developed socialist economy, had not existed? The transformation of the communist movement into the most influential force of modern times, the establish- ment of a world socialist system, the development of the national liberation movement, the continually growing power of attraction throughout the whole world of the ideas of scientific socialism — all these events, characteristic of our times, proved Lenin's prophecy that fundamental socialist reforms would have the very greatest influence on the whole progress of world history.

In the twenties the Trotskyites did all they could to hinder the development of these events, and to block the continuous movement of the Soviet peoples along the road to socialism. From forcing one discussion after another on the Party, from creating factions and groupings, from attempts to substitute Trotskyism for Leninism, they turned to open anti-Soviet action. Trotskyites organised anti-party demon- strations, printed slanderous pamphlets and declarations on underground presses, arranged conspiratorial meetings, and even created illegal Trotskyite centres. 1

For these same purposes Trotsky made slanderous state- ments concerning the "degeneration" of the Soviet state and "thermidor". Having always advocated "tightening the screws", the principle of appointement instead of electivity, army-type command of the working masses, and "the iron dictatorship of the party", he tried to pose as some sort of fighter for democracy. By means of this demagogic device Trotsky hoped to break up the unity of the Soviet people and the unity of the party. The logic of many years of anti-party struggle brought him into the camp of the enemies of the So- viet state, the counter-revolutionary camp.

Thus, the ideological and organisational defeat of Trotskyism was not the result of some fatal coincidence or "unfortunate moves". Having put himself in opposition to the Soviet people and the party, he was fated to suffer defeat.

The ideological and organisational defeat of Trotskyism had been prepared by a lengthy ideological struggle waged by Lenin, the party.

At the Thirteenth Conference of the Russian Communist Party, in January 1924, it had been noted that Trotskyism was "not only an attempt to revise Bolshevism, not only a direct retreat from Leninism, but also a clearly expressed petty-bourgeois deviation. There is not the slightest doubt that this opposition clearly reflects the pressure of the petty bourgeoisie against the position held by the proletarian party and its policy". 1 Thanks to the consistent exposure of Trotskyism, the working masses realised how harmful his "theoretical" arguments and his practical actions were to the Soviet state. The forging ahead of socialist construction gave the lie to the claim that socialism could not be built in the USSR. The more malevolent the actions of the Trot- skyites became, now that they had finally the ground cut from under their feet, the more obvious was the counter- revolutionary content of their opinions and speeches.

The Communists of the Soviet Union unanimously con- demned Trotskyism. Trotsky was roundly defeated at the party meetings held in 1927. Less than 0.5% of the Com munists supported Trotsky's views.

This defeat of the Trotskyites was consolidated by the decisions of the 15th Party Congress, which finally routed Trotskyism both ideologically and organisationally and expelled its most active supporters from the party. As the congress noted, the Trotskyite opposition "took the path of capitulation to the forces of the international and internal bourgeoisie and objectively became a weapon of the third column against the regime of the proletarian dictatorship".' Trotsky had slid to positions close to those of Menshevism. This was reflected in his disbelief in the revolutionary ability of the working class, in his sceptical attitude to the possibil- ity of an alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry, and in the defeatist declarations on the impossibility of socialist construction in the Soviet Union. Adherence to Trotskyism and the propagation of his views were stated to be incompatible with membership of the Communist Party.

Trotskyite infiltration into the international working-class movement was also thwarted. In March and April 1925 an enlarged plenary meeting of the Executive Committee of the Comintern emphatically stated that Trotskyism was not only a Russian, but a world phenomenon, and declared: "To realise Leninism in the Comintern, means to expose Trotsky- ism in all the parties and to liquidate it as a tendency." The plenum called on all parties to fight anti-Leninist deviations on the same high level as the Communists of Russia.

The Trotskyites tried to set up factions in several West European countries. "All the worst elements in the labour movement, the openly opportunist elements in the communist movement, all renegade groups kicked out from the ranks of the Comintern are now uniting on the Trotskyite platform of struggle against the USSR, the CPSU and the Comin- tern. . . " noted the Ninth Plenum of the Comintern Execu- tive.

In the Comintern the Trotskyites pursued the same line as in the CPSU — they aimed at undermining Leninism, liquidating the principles of Bolshevik organisation, and at dragging in opportunist views, foreign to the working class, under the banner of Marxism.

The Fifteenth Congress of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks). December 1917. Verbatim Report, Russ. ed., Vol. 1, p. 429. International Press Correspondence, Vol. 5, No. 47, June 4, 1925, p. 616. ' Ibid., Vol. 8, No. 12, March 1, 1928, p. 256.

In February 1928 the Ninth Plenum of the Comintern Executive approved the decision of the 15th Congress of the All-Russia Communist Party (Bolsheviks). ". . . Adherence to the Trotskyist Opposition and solidarity with its views, is incompatible with further membership of the Communist International. '" This resolution of the Ninth Plenum was fully approved by the Sixth Congress of the Comintern.

As a result of determined and consistent struggle, the ranks of the Communist parties were cleared of all overt adherents to Trotskyism. The task set by the fifth enlarged plenary meeting of the Executive Committee of the Comin- tern concerning the liquidation of Trotskyism as a trend within the communist movement was thus fulfilled. The ideological and organisational defeat of Trotskyism had a historic significance for the Soviet Union, for its Communist Party and for the international communist move- ment as a whole.

Pointing out the meaning of the defeat of Trotskyism, William Z. Foster, a well-known activist in the Communist Party of the USA wrote: "In this fight not only was the fate of the Revolution in Russia at stake, but also that of the world communist movement. A victory for the Trotsky forces would have been a decisive success for the world reaction." 2

The defeat of Trotskyism added ideological and organisa- tional strength to the international communist movement. The Communists' sense of responsibility for unity and soli- darity increased both in separate parties and in the commu- nist movement as a whole.

Communists applied in real life Lenin's directives on a decisive, uncompromising fight against all forms of oppor- tunism, as an essential condition of the development of the new type of party. They learnt to expose the opportunist and defeatist nature of pseudo-revolutionism, to cope with instances of petty-bourgeois instability and to defend their ranks from the influence of petty-bourgeois ideology. In 1926, the seventh enlarged plenum of the Comintern Executive noted that the fight against "ultra-Leftism", like the fight against Right-wing opportunism, was an absolute prerequisite for the successes of the communist movement. 1

The great work of enlightenment, which was carried out by the Communist parties in exposing Trotskyism, led to a higher level of theoretical knowledge among Communists, and helped them equip themselves with an understanding of the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism and learn to apply Marxist method to the practical problems of the revolu- tionary struggle.

The anti-communist campaign of the defeated Trotskyites that followed became a struggle of small groups that found themselves outside the organised working-class movement.

The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Comunist Party of Uruguay, Rodney Arismendi, described these groups as the wreckage of a sunken ship. This simile clearly defines the present state of affairs. International Press Correspondence, Vol. 7, No. 11, February 3, 1927, p. 224.