Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and the Left Opposition in the USSR 1918-1928

EHESS

Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and the Left Opposition in the USSR 1918-1928Author(s): Yuri FelshtinskySource: Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1990), pp. 569-578Published by: EHESSStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20170750Accessed: 03/11/2010 02:56

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ehess.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

EHESS is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Cahiers du Monde russe etsoviétique.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ehess

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20170750?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ehess

CHRONIQUE

YURI FELSHTINSKY

LENIN, TROTSKY, STALIN AND THE LEFT OPPOSITION IN THE USSR

1918-1928

The year 1928 can be considered a major line of demarcation in Soviet history for a whole series of reasons. Internally the country terminated the brief exist ence of NEP, and the forced collectivization of peasant agriculture was begun. In

foreign policy the stormy expansionistic decade of 1918-1927 ended with the

unsuccessful revolution in China and was replaced by the relatively peaceful

period of 1928-1937. In party politics the so-called "Left Opposition" was liqui dated in 1928 as a legitimate political force; its most brilliant representative was

Leon Trotsky. It cannot be said that little historiographical attention has been devoted to

Trotsky. A bibliography of his writings as well as the works about him would

occupy many hundreds of pages.1 Nevertheless, the reasons for his strikingly easy defeat in the struggle for power, and the solitude to which he was always doomed, which found expression in the absence of personal followers, cannot but

surprise the historian, as we cannot fail to be surprised by the swiftness of the fall of the originally numerous and resolute Left Opposition -the supporters of

Trotsky. In this article an attempt is made to analyze the sources of the Left Opposition

in the Bolshevik Party and the reasons for its defeat, as well as the roles played by three Bolshevik leaders, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, in the ideological struggle

within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the first years of Soviet power. The article is based largely on materials from Trotsky's Archives preserved by the

Houghton Library at Harvard University, portions of which have been published by the author in recent years.2

Leftist oppositions arose in the USSR on two separate occasions, each time at a moment critical for the Bolshevik system, when it was necessary to resolve serious internal policy issues upon which depended either the very existence of the Soviet government, or the success of the revolution in neighboring coun

tries. The classic example of this was the opposition to the Treaty of Brest

Litovsk. From the point of view of strict Communist interests, the Brest-Litovsk

Cahiers du Monde russe e? sovi?tique, XXXI (4), oc?obre-d?cembre 1990, pp. 569-578.

570 YURI FELSHTINSKY

treaty was a catastrophe. It totally destroyed any chance that might have existed for a swift revolution in Germany, and therefore signalled the end of hope for immediate revolution in the rest of Europe as well. This was so obvious to the

Bolshevik and Left Socialist Revolutionary party actives that the majority of their

party officials took a stand in opposition to Lenin's group, supporting instead either the openly leftist position of Nikolai Bukharin, who demanded the declara tion of revolutionary war against all imperialists, or the more careful and undoubt

edly more "correct" (from the point of view of Communist interests) position of

Trotsky. Lenin's position, in contrast to that of his opponents, was absolutely rationalis

tic. Above all else, he was interested in power, even if only for a single day3 in a

single town,4 and as soon as possible.5 Only then would it be possible to think about a European revolution. In such a scheme of things there was no place for either the revolutionary romanticism of the Left SRs, or the rhetoric of the Left Communists.6 More importantly, it also left no room even for a swift revolution in Germany, since in such an event the issue of power in Russia would be depriv ed of its critical significance: the center of the worldwide communist movement

would shift to Berlin, and the Soviet government of the "United States of Europe" would be headed by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, and certainly not by Lenin, with his opportunistic and "rightist" idea of a Brest-Litovsk "truce."7

The players' cards were laid out as follows: on one side was Lenin, striving to

strengthen his authority and that of his group; on the other side were the dogmatic idealists, understanding, some intuitively and some on the basis of sound reason

ing, that there would be no place for them in any isolated socialist society, and that it was therefore necessary for them to fight for immediate world revolution as the

only means of justifying their existence.8 Lenin won that game. A brilliant tacti cian in party politics, he outplayed his opponents in time for the Central Committee vote on the Brest-Litovsk treaty in March 1918 and, having made good use of the indecisiveness of Trotsky and the Left Communists, pushed the treaty

through the Party Congress, managing also to destroy the rival Left SR Party during the Congress of Soviets, on 6 July 1918.

After the destruction of the Left SRs, Lenin definitively confirmed his

power. It was only at the end of 1922 that a serious rival for Lenin appeared from within the Politburo: Stalin. He was dangerous above all because, as a

good student, he had superbly assimilated the only leadership methods by which it was possible to maintain a hold on the new type of party: he attempted to seize control of the Lenin organization through a personal "secretariat," and nearly

made an overt statement of his claim.9 Lenin opened the battle. Since the end of 1922, however, he had been not only terminally ill, but had also become some

what absent-minded and had lost considerable control of the events around him. He created a system of governing "according to Lenin" which was beyond the grasp of anyone other than himself, and proposed to the Politburo a collective

leadership, attempting to replace himself with the entire group. Not trusting any

single Politburo member enough to name an individual successor, he set forth a

"system of deputies" (sistema zamov) under which the members of the govern ment would occupy dual posts in different departments, enabling them to watch over each other. His proposal was not taken seriously in the Politburo. Lenin then drafted the document known as his "Testament," stating the total unfitness of

THE LEFT OPPOSITION IN THE USSR 571

each and every member of the Politburo for the role of head of the govern ment. He again proposed that he be replaced by a collective leadership and that Stalin be removed from power altogether, but did not state who should replace him (attesting once again to his uncharacteristic state of mind).10 The Politburo chose to ignore this document as well, and it would not be accurate to assume that its publication would have been unpleasant for Stalin alone. Lenin's most impor tant miscalculation in this affair was that he wrote a will equally detrimental to all named in it. When American communist Max Eastman referred to the existence of a Lenin "Testament" in a book he published in 1925,11 it was none other than

Trotsky who stepped forward with a refutation.12

Extremely self-confident, Trotsky had not bothered to organize a group of per sonal partisans around himself; he was so certain of his own irreplaceability that he had invested all his trust in the revolution itself.13 He was repeatedly proven correct. Even without an organized group of followers, Trotsky was widely considered before October of 1917 to be one of the most prominent of the revolu

tionaries, at a time when Lenin needed both money and an organization of follow ers to substantiate his own influence. This became particularly evident in 1917 after Lenin's arrival in Petrograd, when he sought the recognition of his

group. Trotsky, who had not compromised himself by traveling through Germany, was in essence invited to head the Petrograd Soviet. And it was

Trotsky - not Lenin, who remained underground following his most recent failure

(the unsuccessful attempted coup in July) - who organized the seizure of power by

the Petrograd Soviet, in which the Bolsheviks held a strong majority. Lenin

appeared openly in public for the first time only after the uprising was over: on

26 October, at the Second Congress of Soviets, he assumed the authority seized for him by Trotsky and took control of the new government that, in essence, should have been lead by Trotsky himself.14 Regardless of any disagreements they may have had, the post-October period is therefore distinguished by the close ness of the relationship between Lenin and Trotsky. Until the seizure of power,

Trotsky was a rival for leadership of the movement, and Lenin struggled against him any way he could. But once he was convinced that this brilliant revolutionary was interested only in the revolution as such, and not in power, Lenin came to see in him only an ally and a friend.15

In 1923, trying unsuccessfully to oust Stalin, Lenin proposed an alliance to

Trotsky; more precisely (if Lenin's illness is taken into account) -he asked

Trotsky for help. But Trotsky refused. He wanted no part of Lenin's intrigues, even when the target was Stalin, whom Trotsky had always detested and regarded as an inferior. He therefore not only refused to join Lenin in common battle, but

pointedly took up a neutral position. There was a certain amount of calculation in this decision. At the moment of Lenin's death in January of 1924, to whom if not Trotsky should the leadership of the Soviet government have belonged? And

Trotsky did not rush to assert his power by leaving the southern town of Sukhum in order to attend Lenin's funeral.16 In complete accordance with his principles, he

waited for the Politburo to extend him an invitation to leadership. But the Politburo issued no such invitation.

It was at this moment, essentially, that the Trotsky opposition, or, more preci sely, the opposition to Trotsky, was born:17 the naming of Rykov to Lenin's post as

Chairman of the Sovnarkom amplified the relative authority of the more senior


Stalin in his post as General Secretary. The opposition initially consisted of

Trotsky alone, standing against the majority of the Politburo led by Zinov'ev, Kamenev, and Stalin. Trotsky, relying only on revolutionary truisms, and not on a personnal mafia-type organization, at first did not want to admit that they were

opposing him; and having finally recognized it as fact, he could not understand

why. He was absolutely correct when he later indicated that his conflict with Stalin began before the death of Lenin. But the conflict does not in itself explain anything: Trotsky had even greater conflicts with Lenin. Trotsky then began to

formulate, totally in the spirit of Marxism, an entire theory (in which the most fre

quently repeated words were "Thermidor," and "bureaucratism") in an attempt to

explain the nature of Stalinism and the essence of his disagreement with it. He held Lenin, the system, and himself, totally blameless. Only in 1934 did he write in his diary: "Lenin created the apparatus. The apparatus created Stalin."18

Trotsky's isolation in the face of the Politburo majority's original battle against him, and the surprising solidarity they demonstrated in their persecution of him in 1924-1925, can be explained to a certain extent by psychological factors: the

resplendent Trotsky was openly detested in party circles - for his self-assuredness

bordering on arrogance, for the too-distinct brilliance of his nature. It is not acci

dental that Trotsky, gradually ostracized and excluded from the business of the

day, turned out in those years to have no sympathizers, which is attested by the

nearly total absence from his archives of documents and letters for the years 1924 1925: he had no one with whom to correspond.19

The situation changed abruptly toward the end of 1925, when Zinov'ev and Kamenev were already beginning to be pushed aside. Stalin was breaking with

them, and former enemies - Trotsky on the one hand, and Zinov'ev and Kamenev

on the other - were becoming allies.20 At this point, however, they lacked a suf ficient common platform to serve as the basis for a true opposition, and in addition could not openly admit that the issue at stake was a power struggle. To do so

would have signified defeat from the start, since the party rank and file would most certainly have supported the current party leadership, rather than its former officials. It was essential to formulate their areas of disagreement into a specific platform, around which it would then be possible to rally a significant number of discontented party actives. These areas of disagreement centered on domestic

policy in 1926: criticism of NEP from the left. It would be wrong to assert that the dispute between the Bolshevik party activ

ists and the oppositionists, who were by that time justifiably labeled "Leftists," was fabricated, or that Trotsky, Zinov'ev and Kamenev specifically joined together for the purpose of defending a left-wing (rather than right-wing) position by chance. The sincerity of Trotsky's position cannot be doubted: he had always been on the left wing of the revolutionary spectrum. But the historian attempting to explain why the "rightists" Zinov'ev and Kamenev -who had opposed the

Bolshevik uprising in October of 1917 - later turned up in the Left Opposition of

Trotsky, while Bukharin - the former leader of the Left Communists and a supporter of the revolutionary war - was head of the right wing of the party (which at that time included Stalin as well), runs into enormous difficulties.

The opposition formed in 1926 criticized the Soviet government's domestic

policies on a whole series of issues. In the main, however, the opposition came out against the private economy, i.e., against NEP, although the criticism was leveled


not against the New Economic Policy per se, but rather against the "private owner." Thus lu. G. Piatakov in a "Draft resolution on the economic question" referred to the "growing economic influence of the kulak and the establishment of a union of the middle-level peasant (seredniak) with private capitalistic ele

ments."21 Alarm on the score of the increase in "prosperous peasant households" was sounded also by E. Preobrazhenskii.22 They seemed to suggest that if NEP, which represented a compromise between capitalist and socialist forms of economic

ownership, did lead to the gradual establishment of a capitalistic market economy, then it was necessary to bring an end to NEP. If an individual peasant economy in the countryside gave rise to a prosperous peasantry, while a collective peasant economy resulted in an impoverished peasantry, then it was necessary to eliminate the individual peasant economy. And although the opposition did not openly call for this, beginning in 1928 Stalin took the demands of the oppositionists to

their logical end.

By itself, however, a platform based on domestic policy was not enough. As in 1918, a foreign policy issue was needed as its pivotal point. Originally, the

opposition attempted to unleash debate on the subject of the general strike in

England. But the documents distributed by the opposition on this issue, and

signed by prominent party members, were so badly written as to be incomprehen sible, and the affair on the whole turned out to be most unfortunate and even ridic ulous.23 The oppositionists chose not to return to this topic. They then attempted to formulate their differences with the government on issues relating to the

Komintern.2* But this rather esoteric debate was impenetrable for the average party member beyond the inner party circles; a distant and incomprehensible issue could not be transformed into material for an oppositionist platform. It is pos sible that nothing would have come of these efforts to find a foreign policy plat form issue, but then at last the revolution in China, long under preparation, began. This event was more than adequate for the opposition: the revolution in China became the pivotal issue of the conflict.

Everything followed the pattern of 1918, with Lenin's place occupied by Stalin, and Trotsky in Bukharin's position. Like the Left Communists in 1918, the Left Opposition convinced the party masses that Soviet government policy with

regard to the Chinese revolution would lead directly to the revolution's defeat.25 Like Lenin in 1918, Stalin was unwilling to take the risk, since he understood that active intervention in Chinese affairs would inevitably lead to a conflict with Japan, for which the Soviet Union was clearly unprepared. Finally, just as Lenin had done in his time, Stalin sacrificed a revolution abroad, in China in this case, for the sake of a truce analogous to that brought about by the Brest

Litovsk treaty: the Chinese revolution did suffer defeat, but time was gained, and the first serious conflict with Japan broke out only in 193826.

There is not adequate space here to analyze the real and imaginary differences between the domestic and foreign policy stands of Stalin's government and

Trotsky's opposition. It is sufficient to indicate that Stalin resolved the develop ing problem more gracefully than Lenin had a decade earlier: having only begun to expel the oppositionists from the party, Stalin succeeded in obtaining their

agreement to capitulate and cease their factional activities.27 Further events pro vide a textbook image of Stalin's tactics: his next step was to incorporate the pro gram of his capitulating opponents, in its entirety, into his own arsenal,28 thus


depriving them of their only weapons in their fight against the government. In

addition, he went even further in the realization of his new program than had the

oppositionists - he did not merely limit the Nepman's options, but abolished NEP

altogether as such; he did not stop with the imposition of restrictive measures

against the peasantry, but implemented forced collectivization. As a result, his

victory over the opposition was absolute: politically and ideologically the opposi tion was destroyed. Their physical destruction would come somewhat later. And

with Trotsky's expulsion from the USSR in January 1929, the Left Opposition disappeared from the Soviet Union forever.

Brookline, Mass. 1990.

1. English scholar Louis Sinclair spent many years compiling his bibliography of Trotsky's works:

Louis Sinclair, Trotsky: A bibliography, 2 vols (Aldershot, Great Britain: Scolar Press, 1989). For

another survey of works by and about Trotsky, see Rolf Burner, "Alte und neue Trockij-Editionen," Jahrbucher fur Geschicke Ost europas, 37, 3 (1989): 393-414. A multi-volume Trotsky collection is

currently being published in Germany. In the 1970's and early 1980's Pathfinder Press in New York came out with a collection of Trotsky's works encompassing the period 1923-1940. A twenty four volume collection of Trotsky's works edited by Pierre Brou? was published in France:

L?on Trotsky, uvres (Institut L?on Trotsky, 1978-1988). To this brief list may be added three

Trotsky biographies: J. Carmichael, Trotsky (Jerusalem, 1980); Isaac Deutschere trilogy, The prophet armed, The prophet unarmed, and The prophet outcast (Oxford University Press, 1954, 1959, 1963); and Pierre Brou?, Trotsky (Paris: Arth?me Fayard, 1988). Biographies of Trotsky are beginning to be

published in Eastern Europe. In the Soviet Union a small biographical brochure on Trotsky has been

written by the historian V. Startsev, and Hungarian historian Miklos Kun is currently working on a

Trotsky biography. 2. In recent years the following Trotsky works have been published in the original Russian, edited

by the author of this article: Portreiy (Benson, Vermont: Chalidze Publications, 1984); Stalin, 2 vols

(Benson, Vermont: Chalidze Publications, 1985); Dnevniki i pis'ma (Hermitage, 1986; 2nd enlarged edition published in 1990); Por?re?y revoliutsionerov (Benson, Vermont: Chalidze, 1988);

Kommunisiicheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, 1923-1927. Dokumenty arkhiva L. D. Trolskogo, 4 vols

(Benson, Vermont: Chalidze, 1988); P. Pomper co-editor, Troisky's notebooks, 1933-1935 (Columbia

University Press, 1986); Pres?upleniia Sialina (Liberty, 1990, in press); Pis'ma iz ssylki. 1928

(Benson, Vermont: Chalidze publications, 1990) (in preparation). 3. On the seventy-third day of Soviet power in Petrograd, Lenin solemnly declared to Arthur

Ransome, a British correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, that the fundamental goal of the

Russian revolution had already been achieved: the Bolsheviks had held out for one day longer than the

Paris Commune, and the fall of Soviet power now would not be terrible, since its most important contribution to the worldwide communist movement had already been made.

4. When Trotsky asked Lenin in 1918 what would happen if the Germans attacked and took

Moscow, Lenin answered :

"We will retreat farther, to the east, to the Urals [...] The Kuznetskii basin is rich in coal. We will

form a Ural-Kuznetskii republic, supported by coal-based industry and Kuznetsk coal, and that portion of the Moscow and Petrograd workers that we could bring with us. [...] If necessary, we will go even

farther to the east, beyond the Urals. We will go all the way to Kamchatka, but we will hold out."

Trotsky commented: "The concept of a Ural-Kuznetskii republic was organically essential to him, in order to strengthen himself and others in the conviction that nothing was yet lost and that there could

be no place for a strategy of despair." (L. Trotsky, O L?nine. Materialy dlia biografii (Moscow,

1924): 88-89). 5. In the article "Uroki Oktiabria," published as an introduction to the first part of Trotsky's book,

7977 (Moscow, 1924), and re-published in the book, Ob "Urokakh Oktiabria" (Leningrad: Rabochee


izd-vo Priboi, 1924): 220-262, Trotsky describes how as early as September 1917, while in hiding in

Finland, Lenin proposed to lead a revolution in Petrograd. In Trotsky's opinion, however, "the plan could not be carried out in the name of the Petrograd Soviet, since the organization of the Soviet, which

had not yet been bolshevized, as it should have been, was not conducive to this: the Military

Revolutionary Committee did not yet exist.*' (Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia (1923-1926), 1:

125). Trotsky was not the only one to remark on the adventuristic character of Lenin's appeal. V. Nogin stated that this was a call "to a repetition of the July [1917] events," i.e., to certain defeat

("Uroki Oktiabria," in op. cit.: 238). On the whole, the Central Committee of the party rejected Lenin's proposal (ibid: 247).

6. The former were destroyed by Lenin as a competing party on 6-7 July 1918; the latter, who were

members of his own organization (the Bolshevik Party), he did not subject to repressions; the incident

with the Left Communists was consigned to oblivion. Only one Left Communist was persecuted for a

short time: Dzerzhinskii, head of the VChK, was suspended from work, but only because his participa tion in the assassination of the German Ambassador, Count Wilhelm von Mirbach, was obvious to

Lenin. But since the murder itself, and the fact that it was committed by a Left SR, la. Blumkin, were

quite advantageous to Lenin, Dzerzhinskii was soon reinstated in his former position, and Blumkin was

accepted into the RKP(b) and returned to his work in Dzerzhinskii's agency, where he made a brilliant

career for himself in counterintelligence (until his execution in November 1929 for his ties with

Trotsky). For more detailed discussion of this affair, see lu. G. Felshtinsky, Bolsheviki i levye esery, oktiabr'1917 - iul' 1918 (Paris, 1985); and Yuri Felshtinsky, "The Bolsheviks and the Left SRs, October 1917 -

July 1918: Toward a single-party dictatorship" (Ph. D. diss., Rutgers University, 1988).

7. In this sense, the murders of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg on 15 January 1919 were quite

advantageous for Lenin. While there is no evidence to suggest that Lenin had anything to do with their

deaths, it is possible that another prominent Bolshevik leader, Karl Radek, was involved in the murders.

The initial preparations for the attempt on the lives of Liebknecht and Luxemburg were apparently made in the first half of December 1918. In 1920 Anton Fischer, the deputy military commandant of

Berlin, stated in a written deposition that his department had maintained surveillance over the two

Spartacus leaders so as "not to allow them to conduct agitational and organizational activities." On the

night of 9-10 December the soldiers of the Second Guards Regiment burst into the editorial offices of

Rote Fahne with the intention of killing Liebknecht and Luxemburg, who turned out not to be on the

premises. In the course of the investigation into this incident, roughly six witnesses stated that a reward

in the amount of 100,000 marks had been offered for the murders of Liebknecht and

Luxemburg. This prize was promised by Philipp Scheidemann - a prominent German Social

Democrat who was head of the government from February through June of 1919, and his close friend

Georg Sklarz - a businessman who had become wealthy during the war trading in arms for the German

army (Sebastian Haffher, 1918-19 Eine Deutsche Revolution Rowohlt [n.d.]: 153; Revoliutsiia v

Germanii 1918-19. Kak eto bylo v deistvitel'nosti?, translation from German (Moscow: Progress, 1983): 158,163).

The investigation begun in 1920 showed that Sklarz, a collaborator of Parvus's, planned the attempt on Liebknecht and Luxemburg, apparently in collusion with Parvus and Scheidemann, and that Sklarz

was to have paid a reward of 50,000 marks for each of the Spartacus leaders (see the Government

Archive of the FRG, R 43-1, folder 1239, The Sklarz Case). It is true that Radek's name is not mentioned

in the Sklarz materials, but it surfaces in connection with the January 1919 assassinations of

Liebknecht and Luxemburg. Karl Liebknechts brother Theodore devoted his life to the investigation of these murders.

Theodore Liebknecht, a German Social Democrat, came to the conclusion that Karl Radek was defi

nitely involved in the murders. The materials he collected in the course of his investigation perished

during a bombing raid on Germany in November of 1943 (Archives of the International Institute of

Social History in Amsterdam, Theodore Liebknecht collection, folder 10, diary notations in German by T. Liebknecht). But in 1947, Boris I. Nicolaevsky, the famous Russian emigre historian and archivist, wrote Theodore Liebknecht a letter asking about Karl Moore, a secret collaborator with the German

government among the Social Democrats. "I have every reason to suppose," wrote Nicolaevsky, "that

your brother Karl met with Radek and Karl Moore not long before his last arrest, and had a very serious argument with Karl Moore." (Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, California,

Nicolaevsky Collection (hereafter Nicolaevsky), box 489, folder 2, one-page letter from

B. Nicolaevsky to T. Liebknecht dated 15 December 1947, in German).

In response, Theodore Liebknecht told Nicolaevsky about his conclusions concerning the role of

Radek in the deaths of his brother and Rosa Luxemburg. The correspondence between Liebknecht


and Nicolaevsky on this subject is not to be found in the Nicolaevsky Collection at the Hoover

Institution Archives (their correspondence was quite extensive, but was devoted primarily to Marx); these letters are also missing from the archive of T. Liebknecht. However, there is an allusion to this

correspondence in a letter from Nicolaesvsky to a third person. "Theodore Liebknecht told me," sta

ted Nicolaevsky, "that Karl Liebknecht at their last meeting (on the eve of Karl's arrest) told him that

he had found out about Radek, who had just arrived illegally from Moscow, 'appalling things' which he

promised to recount at the time of their next meeting. That meeting never took place, and Theodore felt

that Radek had betrayed Karl." (Nicolaevsky, box 508, folder 48, one-page letter from B. I.

Nicolaevsky to R. [Georgii Iosifovich] Vrag dated 15 July 1960). In a letter to the Italian socialist A. Balabanova dated 20 April 1962 (Archive of the International

Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, A. Balabanova collection), Nicolaevsky spelled out what preci

sely Karl Liebknecht had found out about Radek:

"Especially frequently now I recall my past conversations with Theodore Liebknecht, who indicated

to me that Radek betrayed Karl [Liebknecht]. On the eve of Karl Liebknecht's arrest he met Theodore on the street and on the way said that he had received information regarding Radek's ties with military circles, and considered him a traitor. They made arrangements to meet the next day, at which time Karl

was to have recounted the details - but that night Karl Liebknecht was arrested and killed. All

through the next years Theodore gathered evidence, and told me that he was convinced of the accuracy of his brother's suspicions [...] I regret that I did not take Theodore's stories seriously enough at the

time, and did not write them down."

In 1957 Nicolaevsky wrote a letter on the same subject to the former leader of the French

Communist Party, Boris Souvarine, who had by that time abandoned Communism: ? I spoke extensively on this subject with Theodore Liebknecht (deceased), who considered both

Radek and especially Karl Moore to be agents of the Ger[man] general staff. He assured me that the

same conclusion regarding Radek had also been reached by Karl Liebknecht, who had a conversation

on this subject with Theodore at their last meeting. Karl, in Theodore's words, was completely crush

ed by information he had received then from someone - from whom Theodore did not know. ?

(International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, Archive of B. Souvarine, letter from Nicolaevsky to B. Souvarine dated 11 April 1957). And in 1962 he wrote to M.N. Pavlovskii, who was studying

Bolshevik-German collaboration in the pre-revolutionary period: ? Of course, Radek did not participate directly in the assassination [of Karl Liebknecht -

Y.F.]. The subject was something else, the fact that Radek provided them [the German secret service -

Y.F.] Liebknecht's address, and that in return they spared Radek from arrest. [...] I have to say I am

not certain that everything in Theodore Liebknecht's tales is untrue. He was an absolutely honest

man, very knowledgeable, he was totally correct regarding Karl Moore, he brought much to light in the

affair of his brother's murder, [and] had some good informants. To me it is unquestionable that Radek

was linked with very major German secret agents. (Stalin did not shoot him in 1937, undoubtedly because he figured on using his old contacts), and therefore in this matter we can still run across much

that is unexpected. ? (Nicolaevsky, box 496, folder 3, one-page letter from B. Nicolaevsky to

M.N. Pavlovskii dated 2 September 1962). Of course, these materials are not in themselves sufficient to allow Radek to be definitively considered

one of the organizers behind the assassinations of Liebknecht and Luxemburg. But they are more

than adequate to place Radek under suspicion of participating in the murders in some fashion.

8. For the Left Communists, for the supporters of Trotsky, and for the majority of the Left SRs

(distinguished from the Bolsheviks by their greater dogmatism), the issue of building Communism in a

single country did not exist: they considered it an impossibility. It is necessary to stipulate one reser

vation at this point. Ultimately, building Communism in an "isolated country" turned out to be en

tirely possible, but doing so, as we now know, necessitated the destruction of those Communist roman

tics who would agree to build it only in accordance with maximalist dogma, rather than proceeding from the actual state of affairs in Soviet Russia. In retrospect, cognizant as we are of Stalin's cam

paign to purge the old Bolsheviks in 1936-1939, it is appropriate to salute the intuition of those who

opposed "socialism in one country": they may not have known it at the time, but in defending their

views, they were fighting for their lives.

9. Stalin's intentions were shown by the so-called "Georgian affair", by his quarrel with Krupskaia, which was followed by a rift in his personal relations with the dying Lenin, and also his announcement

to members of the Politburo - Trotsky, Zinov'ev and Kamenev - that Lenin had asked him for poison

with which to commit suicide (see L. Trotskii, Portrety revoliutsionerov, op. cii.: 92-96). Trotsky later thought that Stalin wished to use this method to hasten Lenin's death.


10. For a more detailed discussion see the appendix entitled, "From the documents of 1922, "

in

Kommunis?icheskaiaoppozi?siia..., op. cit., 1: 60-74.

11. See Max Eastman, Since Lenin died (London: The Labor Publishing Company Ltd., 1925): 28

31. Eastman indicated elsewhere that he took down the quotations from the "Testament" from the words

of three prominent Bolsheviks. The question of how Lenin's "Testament" was transmitted to the West,

and Trotsky's related famous denial, also require clarification. One source indicates that during a break

between sessions of the XHIth Congress, Trotsky, while strolling the corridor, recited the text of Lenin's

"Testament" to Eastman, who was a guest at the congress (Nicolaevsky, box 591, folder 14, two-page letter from R. Abramovitch to N.V. Valentinov-Vol'skii dated January 1959). Trotsky spoke with care

so that he would not be overheard, but did not extract a pledge of silence from Eastman. At about the

same time a Menshevik who had been working on the staff of A. Sol'tz stole the text of the "Testament"

and smuggled it abroad for publication in the Menshevik publication, Sotsialisticheskii vestnik. The

Menshevik organ published the document, but its source was discovered, and, in 1924, executed (see

Nicolaevsky, box 628, folder 13, letter from B.I. Nicolaevsky to N.I. Sedova-Trotskaia dated

23 December 1950). The text of the "Testament" held by the Trotsky Archive at Harvard University is

a copy of the Sotsialisticheskii vesinik version, retyped for Trotsky by Nicolaevsky himself. There is

reason to suppose that the text of Lenin's "Testament" was also carried abroad by Kh. Rakovskii. This

follows from a letter written by Trotsky to Eastman on 21 May 1931 (Max Eastman Archive, Lilly

Library, Indiana University, USA; see also L. Trotskii Portreiy revolutsionerov, op. cit.:

123). Therefore when Max Eastman quoted from the "Testament" in his book published in English in

1925, Since Lenin died, it should not have caused any particular sensation. Nevertheless, a considerable

sensation resulted. Time magazine carried a reprint of the story of Lenin's "Testament" from

Eastman's book. And whereas the Soviet government had chosen not to react to publication of the

document in Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, Trotsky himself responded to the article in Time. Acting on the

instructions of the Politburo he issued a formal statement denying that a document called "Lenin's

Testament" existed, and accused Eastman of lying. Krupskaia came out in print with a similar state

ment. Somewhat later, Eastman received the full text of the "Testament" through Rakovskii and

Souvarine, and then, castigated by Trotsky and Krupskaia, Time published the full text of the document.

12. See L. Trotskii, Portrety revoliutsionerov, op. cit.: 123.

13. When, in forming his alliance with Trotsky in 1917, Lenin suggested to Trotsky that he bring his own people from the "mezhraiontsy" (a group of Social Democrats standing midway between the

Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks) into the Bolshevik Central Committee, Trotsky refused. He since

rely could not understand why Lenin felt he, Trotsky, should insist on this, since they had, after all, no

ideological differences at that point. 14. One of the reasons Trotsky was not asked to head the Sovnarkom (the Council of People's

Commissars) was apparently his nationality. It was generally considered inappropriate for a Jew to be

appointed a head of state. For this reason, there were no Jews on the Sovnarkom staff other than

Trotsky. After Lenin's death Rykov, a Russian, became Chairman of the Sovnarkom, rather than

Zinov'ev or Kamenev, both of whom were Jews.

15. Lenin and Trotsky had disagreements, but Lenin trusted Trotsky, and in every critical moment

relied upon him. The history of their relationship is complex, but it its obvious that Lenin's relations

with many of the leading Bolsheviks were complicated. Lenin proposed expelling Zinov'ev and

Kamenev from the party for opposing the 1917 October revolution. He proposed removing Stalin

from the post of General Secretary in 1923, and his relations with Bukharin were in fact broken off in

the months of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. Dzerzhinskii fell into disfavor with Lenin after the

events of 6-7 July, when Lenin suspected him of participating in plans to assassinate the German

Ambassador to Moscow, Count Mirbach. It also is probable that Sverdlov's loss of authority in the

last months of his life was the result of difficulties with Lenin. Trotsky was literally the only Bolshevik who did not enter into serious conflict with Lenin after October 1917. Their pre

revolutionary conflicts had been washed away by the revolution.

16. Attempts have repeatedly been made to explain Trotsky's behavior during these months -by

Trotsky himself and by historians of the Soviet Communist Party. At least one additional hypothesis can be added to those already proposed: Trotsky, always holding himself apart from the group and

considered an outsider in the Bolshevik Party, chose not to support Lenin in the hope that the escalating

power struggle between Lenin on one side, and Stalin-Zinov'ev-Kamenev on the other, would discredit

the "troika" in the eyes of the party actives, and thus strenghten his own authority. 17. The fact that Trotsky did not at this time consider opposing the Politburo is demonstrated by

the presentation of "The declaration of the forty-six" to the Politburo TsK RKP (b) on 15 October 1923


(see Kommunis?icheskaia oppozitsiia..., op.cit., 1: 83-88), criticizing the policies of the government

majority. Trotsky's signature is not among the forty-six on this document.

18. Trotsky'snoiebooks... op. cit.: 129.

19. Among the archival materials from 1924, there is only one such document: "Our disagree ments," a verbose article written in November in response to the critics of his earlier article, "Uroki

Oktiabria" (see Kommunis?icheskaia oppozi?siia..., op.cii., 1: 110-142). In reading it, one is startled

by Trotsky's sincerity in his inability to understand why this article, a forty-page apologia on behalf of

the party and Lenin, provoked the censure of the most prominent party officials - Zinov'ev, Kamenev,

E. Kviring, O.Kuusinen, G. Sokol'nikov, Stalin, and Bukharin, the editor of Pravda. He attempted to

discover the underlying reasons for their "disagreements," at a time when the issue was a straightfor ward struggle against Trotsky himself. "Our disagreements," is striking in its na?vet?. It is not sur

prising that a few months later, instead of using the army as his base and standing in opposition to the

party majority, on 15 January 1925 Trotsky voluntarily resigned his post as Chairman of the

Revolutionary Military Council, thus surrendering any real power at his command (see the letter from

Trotsky regarding his resignation in M. Eastman, Since Lenin died, op. cii.: 155-158). The Russian

text of this letter was published in the same year as a separate brochure under the title "Otstavka

Trotskogo. Zasedanie TsK 17 ianvaria 1925 g." (The resignation of Trotsky. Central Committee

meeting of 17 January 1925) (Berlin). Trotsky remained a politically naive man until the end of his

life. He thus could not comprehend that power had been transferred to the bureaucrats of the party

apparatus, and was no longer held by the revolutionaries of the October days. It is not surprising that

at the end of the 1930's, working in emigration in Mexico on a biography of Stalin, Trotsky attempted to recall the year of his expulsion from the Politburo and could not. Among the drafts of the book on

Stalin in the Trotsky archive there is the following note in pencil: "It seems that already in 1927 I was

no longer a member of the Politburo? Verify." 20. On 9 December 1925 Trotsky made a note to himself: "Alliance with Zinov'ev"

(Kommunis?icheskaia oppozi?siia... op.cii., 1: 152-157). It is therefore possible to refer to the forma

tion of the Left Opposition as dating from December 1925.

21. Seeibid.,2: \22-\32.

22. Ibid.: 121-122.

23. In July 1926 the opposition distributed, over the signatures of Zinov'ev, Kamenev, Piatakov

and Krupskaia, a "Resolution proposed to the July Plenum by the Opposition on the general strike in

England" (Trotsky's Archive, T-886, three pages of closely typed, single-spaced text). 24. See ibid, T-886, dated 19 June 1926, three pages of closely typed, single-spaced text.

25. A substantial number of the documents distributed by the oppositionists were devoted to this

subject. The articles written on this subject by Trotsky alone would fill a volume of several hundred

pages. For a list of unpublished Russian-language documents in Trotsky's Archive at Harvard dealing with the revolution in China, see Kommunis?icheskaia oppozi?siia..., op. cii., 4: 7.

26. It was only in 1937 that creation of a strong industrial base in the Urals, the Far East, Siberia, Kazakhstan and Central Asia was begun. Today that fact is usually cited as evidence of the foresight of

the Soviet leadership in fairly predicting the war with Germany and the consequent evacuation of

industry during the war years. Approaching the end of the thirties, the Soviets' primary foreign enemy was Japan. In the summer of 1937 Japan launched an attack on China, an event that represented a

serious foreign policy defeat for the Soviet government, which had been attempting to strengthen its

position in China. In July the Japanese seized Peking, in November they took Shangai, and in

December - Nanking. By October of 1938 the major industrial centers and most important railroad

lines of China were controlled by Japan. The Soviet Union, for its part, occupied Mongolia in

September of 1937. A confrontation began between the two armies that led to local conflicts on at

least two occasions: at the end of June 1938 in the region of Lake Khasan, where troops continued to

fight until 9 August, and in May 1939, along the Khalkin-Gol river in Mongolia, where the conflict was

contained only through the intervention of Germany, shortly after the signing of the Ribbentrop Molotov pact on 16 September 1939. The creation of a second industrial base in the eastern regions of the Soviet Union was thus occasioned exclusively by the desire to guarantee an economic base near

a potential military front.

27. The opposition capitulated on 10 December 1927, after a number of its active members were

arrested, and the party congress adopted a resolution on the incompatibility of oppositionist activity with party membership. For the text of the declaration, see Kommunis?icheskaia oppozi?siia...,

op. cii., 4: 275-276.

28. See ibid.: 276, a note written by N. Muralov to Trotsky, 18 December 1927.

Documents

Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and the Left Opposition in the USSR 1918-1928