murdered) was shown to be legitimate and alas confirmed by historical experience: "If political life is suffocated throughout the then country paralysis will necessari- ly take hold of the soviets. Without general without freedom of the press, of unlimited right of as sembly, without a free battle of ideas, then life will wither and vegetate in all the public institutions, and the bureaucracy will remain the only ac- tive element." Russian Revolution, October 1918 (Maspero, Paris, 1969) [translated from French] Broué's book helps us answer a question that arises from the history of the USSR in the 1923-1940 period, which historians and young people (not to mention the workers' van- guard) ask (and will increasingly ask in that country) - how do you explain Stalin's persistent hatred, the im- placable persecution against Trotsky, his family and friends? We can leave on one side the purely psychological aspect of the phenomenon - personal rivalry, jealousy, envy, feeling of intellectual inferiority feeding a strong sense of guilt, endemic paranoia developing finally into a universal and monstrous paranoia. All that is true. But it is ab solulely insufficient to explain how an individual with such traits was able to express them in a nearly un- limited way in a big country that had emerged from a spectacular revolt- SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 17, Summer 1989
tionary expenence, which had not only liberated economic energies but also the potential moral and cultural emancipation of millions of human beings.
We get closer to a scientific, coherent explanation if We focus on the political role of the two protagonists in this drama as the repre sentatives, in an almost concentrated way, of the interests, traditions and "values' of the two antagonistic social forces - the proletariat and the bureaucracy.
Stalinist hatred was shared by a good part of the bureaucracy for a long time. Trotsky's anti-bureaucratic struggle was seen as basically correct by a good part of the workers' vanguard, to varying degrees and at different times - that is the tragedy - by nearly all the old Bolsheviks, including those who had first supported Stalin.
As the powers accumulated evolving towards 'personal power', and as Thermidor led to the bonapartism and Stalin's dictatorship, so the survival of anything or anyone who incarnated the programme or ideals of October, or even the emancipatory tradition of marxism, became unacceptable to the lackeys and spokepersons of the political counterevolution. Since it was a political and not a social counter-revolution the umbilical cord with Marx and Lenin could not be to tally cut, so the regime cloaked itself in the monstrously deformed mask of 'Marxism-Leninism'. It presented it self as the legitimate follower of a tradition that it desecrated increasingly each day. Hence it was not enough just to suppress the main person speaking out against it: all potential opponents also had to be condemned to permanent silence.
Among these opponents only Trotsky presented not only a denunciation of Stalinism but also an explanation, based on the marxist tradition, of the bureaucratic dictatorship. Inevitably this made him the main enemy of the regime since his writings undermined it from the inside, albeit only in a theoretical way. Consequently the systematic persecution, SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 17, Summer 1989
S UP PLE M ENT Trotsky with Lett Opposition leaders: as revolutionists, they posed a speclal threat to Stalin the attempt to totally wipe out Trotsky's memory and ideas, corresponds to a reflex of self-defence and self-justification of a privileged caste made up : of hundreds of thousands of individuals. Stalin was only the most effective and most unscrupulous executor of such criminal acts. Already this is a more credible explanation.
This explanation is still insufficient. It does too much "honour' to the bureaucracy in general and to Stalin in particular if we present them as obsessed with ideas, programmes, denunciations, critical analyses or even of the need for self-justification or identity. All of this played a role in the persecution of Trotsky, of trotskyism and then of the whole Bolshevik party. But there is more to it than that.
What made Trotsky and the Bolshevik-Leninists of the Opposition public enemy number one of Stalin and the bureaucracy was the unshakeable capacity and will of Lev Davidovich (Trotsky) and his comrades to translate criticism and denunciation of Stalin, stalinism and the bureaucracy into political activity oriented to the working class. These were revolutionaries, educated, hatdened by two experiences of activity in a non-revolutionary period, before 1905 and between 1907 and 1913, where they had learned, in smaller groups then the 1928 or 1932 Opposition, to look out for the least sign of revival of working class activity. They had learned how to intervene and to insert their ideas into the most limited and moderate struggles. They
had learned the art of underground organisation, patiently building up the links, even if with only two op positional workers in a workplace or three rebellious students in a university or two hundred workers involved in protest action or a small scale strike.
Stalin had gone through the same school and knew the same techniques and he was obsessed by the idea that what Trotsky and the Bolsheviks had succeeded in doing against the Tsar they would sooner or later do against him. He could find some compromises with everyone on certain conditions (look how he dealt with the successive waves of capitulationists between 1928 and 1934). He could find no compromise with propagandists and agitators with an intervention aimed at the working class and youth.
He was not wrong, at least from the long term historical point of view. One just has to consider the question - What would have been the destiny of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, what would have happened with Solidarnosc if there had been in these countries a nucleus of organised Bolshevik Leninists? Even if they had been only a thousand strong, even without a "Trotsky', they would not only have been able to represent and concretise the communist tradition of that country but also be identified with every popular protest and workers' demand over the last 10-15 years. In this way we can understand the difference the life or death of Trotsky and trotskyism in the USSR
"Since it was a
political and
not a social
counter revolution, the umbilical cord with Marx and Lenin could not be totally cut,
so the regime cloaked itself
Tin the
monstrously deformed mask
of Marxism' and Leninism""
Paqe 19
"What Stalin and the bureaucracy hated in Trotsky is what the Russian workers and youth are going to admire and imitate in the years to come: his intransigent defence of workers' politicai and material 19 interests... Photographs from the splendid photo- biography Trotsky by David King (Basil Blackwell) Page 20
represented for the long-term chances of survival of the bureaucratic dietatorship. Stalin's hatred and persecufion of Trofsky and trotskyism was therefore not only hatred and persecution of ideological enemies. It was a hatred and persecution against the only communists capable of helping the Soviet working class to undermine and overthrow the privileges and power of the bureaucracy.
What Stalin and the bureaucracy hated in Trotsky is what the Russian workers and youth are going to ad mire and imitate in the years to come: his intransigent defence of workers' political and material interests; his bureaucratic struggle, for democracy; his persistent struggle power, against injustice, for the rights of women, young people and minority nationalities against discrimination and oppression.
Broué helps us relive in a meticulous way, month by month, year by year, one of the lesser-known aspects of Trotsky's life as the inspirer and leader of the Opposition after his expulsion from the CPSU. It is one of the greatest contributions of
remarkable book. Thanks to Broué this impressive political-organisational continuity is not excessively personalised around Trotsky.
There was not just Trotsky and his son Sedov. There other outstanding activists who are brought to life again by Broué. He gives them a name and identity. They are among the purest heroes and heroines of our century. They never bored or gave into the "inevitable'. They never lost faith that this nightmare would end. They were killed to the last person. As one eyewitness said: They were felled like great oaks, with a curse for Stalin and • siogan for soviet power and th vorld revolution on their lips. We ar proud of them. In the future all the workers of the USSR will be proud of them. Thanks to them our current is the only one who can look the Soviet people in the face without a sense of guilt, without shame or complexes. These heroes saved the honour and continuity of communism.
In his final speech before his "judges' at the Third Moscow Trial, the unfortunate Bukharin said (perhaps covering up some regrets) that one had to be a Trotsky to propose and do all that. Indeed. You had to be Trotsky to tirelessly continue the fight for the emancipation of the Soviet
SUPPLEMENT and interational working class in midst of Hitler's and Stalin's terrors, when it was midnight in the century. Thanks to Broué's book thousands of contemporaries will better understand it now and understand it was not at all a lost cause.
VI
Broué's book covers a half-century of world history. It is inevitable that he could not cover everything. We can all have our ideas on what should have been developed more, on what could be left out and what could
We regret that Broué does not mention Trotsky's role as a precursor in the analysis of the black minority in the United States (2). We also regret he did not mention the fact that predicted in 1938 that if there were a new World War, all the Jews of Europe risked being physically liquidated. Broué also does not mention the first important political defeat of stalinism, the trial of the Spanish POUM, whose representatives were at first accused of collaboration with Franco — a vile lie - but were finally sentenced for having tried to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
We are sorry that after emphasising the role of comrade Badovsky in introducing Trotskyist ideas in Poland in the 1950s, he does not mention the role of our comrade Petr Uhi, the most respected figure of the Czech
continually attacked by the bureaucracy for his Trotskyism and who spent six years in a Stalinist
Ware about the way Pierre Broué dealt with the question of Trotsky's rehabilitation and the ongoing campaign on this, not just among Western journalists looking for a scoop, but among important currents of the international workers' movement.
We have never asked for USSR governments - the political representatives of the bureaucracy - to politically rehabilitate Trotsky. We concede no competence to them on
matter. The judgement Trotsky's political role and his ideas is a question of history and of the
Tand interational working people. We have never doubted their verdict. At the end of the day it will reach into the CPSU itself.
On the other hand we have demanded the penal and judicial rehabilitation of Trotsky and we must continue to do so. Trotsky and his son Leon Sedov were accused of terrible
crimes by the prosecutor and judges of the first Moscow Trial. They were found guilty in their absence in the sentence of this trial.The verdicts at the second and third trials confirmed this judgement. This is the basis on which Trotsky is judged to be an 'enemy of the people" and has had his writings banned in the USSR. cout has solemnly rescinded the verdicts of the three Moscow Trials. It has rehabilitated the old Bolsheviks who were sentenced on the basis of totally fabricated accusations. Is there to be an exception made for Leon Trotsky? What else but a Soviet tribunal can judicially rehabilitate him at this time.?
The question also exists on a more directly political level. Thousands of courageous men and women are campaigning in the USSR for the judicial rehabilitation of all the victims of the Stalinist purges, including Isn't it our elementary internationalist duty to support this struggle? Broué has probably already position on this. If he has not yet already done so let's hope he will do so
But all this scarcely alters our overall judgement on this book. It is a great, a very great book because of its objectives, the verve it conveys, the scholarship and the conclusions it comes to which we share. It is and will remain an indispensable instrument for the education of cadres and for the recruitment of sympathisers. We will have to wait a long time for a better one, perhaps after all archives in the USSR are opened, and possibly a while after that.
Footnotes:
(1) E. Germain: The discussion on the trade union question in the Bolshevik party (1920-1) in Quatrime Internationale 1955, No.1
(2) George Novack has correctly emphasised Trotsky's contribution on this to the development of marxist thought, clarifying a central aspect of the political tasks of revolutionaries in the United States (George Novack: Leon Trotsky's Contribution to Marxism in Proletarian Politics, Baroda/India, 1980, No.1/2). The same article contains a succinct and lucid presentation of the law of uneven and combined development that Trotsky first formulated, and a defence of the theory of permanent revolution which is based on this law. George Breitman developed the marxist (trotskyist) conception of the black question in the United States in more detail. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 17, Summer 1989
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