Source: The Militant, Vol. VI No. 44, 23 September 1933, p. 3.
Transcription/HTML Markup: Einde O’Callaghan for the Trotsky Internet Archive.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2015. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0.
Soviet delegates, unable to muster any reasons for the justification of violence against comrades Rakovsky, Victor Serge and many others, declared at the conference of teachers which took place in Reims that a trial will soon be held in the U.S.S.R. which will show that Trotskyists have participated in sabotage and counter-revolutionary activities! This is the reserve argument with which Stalin’s office supplied the delegate for his journey. Referring to a Moscow radio announcement, bourgeois newspapers afterwards carried the information that a few dozen “Trotskyists” were actually arrested in the Ukraine and charged with sabotage and state treason: they were all brought to special trial.
It is clear beforehand to every thinking person that the Bolshevik-Leninists, called “Trotskyists”, can have even less relation to the economic sabotage of the workers’ state than the German Communists to the Reichstag fire. The Left Opposition has always faithfully supported the industrialization of the country not only theoretically but in practical work. It has considered and considers the economic successes of the Soviet state as its successes. It has fought and fights only against the false economic leadership of the uncontrolled bureaucracy.
If real sabotageurs are arrested on the Ukraine, they cannot have and have no relation to the Left Opposition; if adherents of the Left Opposition are arrested in the Ukraine they cannot have and have no relation to sabotage. The indictment of “Trotskyists” in counterrevolutionary activities can only be based on an “amalgam” that is a criminal combination of persons who have no relation to each other. Another Wrangel Officer Frame-Up
As far back as 1927 an agent of the G.P.U., formerly an officer of Wrangel, offered his “technical assistance” to a member of the Communist Youth, sympathetic to the Left Opposition, – and on the basis of this provocation the Bolshevik Leninists were accused of connections ... not with the G.P.U. But with a Wrangel officer. Now it is a question of a crime of far greater magnitude. Stalin is in urgent need of shootings of supposed Trotskyists for real crimes, or of real Trotskyists for supposed crimes to justify the repressions against irreproachable revolutionists whom he has kept now almost six years in jails and exile.
Even from the infrequent official communications on the progress of the party cleansing, one can see that the Left Opposition can not be eradicated; in different localities of the country, in full view of responsible party officials, the “Trotskyists” group together and act. The scant revelations of the Pravda show that the Left Opposition is surrounded by an atmosphere of sympathy, otherwise the local Communists and the local control commissions would have no need to drive and threaten the expulsion of “Trotskyists”. No less clear and evident are the successes of the Left Opposition on the international arena. The Stalinists know no less than we of the important gains of the Bolshevik-Leninists among the international proletarian vanguard. The bureaucracy is in great panic. It is necessary to do something and right away! But what? To enter into discussions would be a hopeless task from which only the Bolshevik-Leninists stand to gain. No, drastic measures are needed! Stalin is not stopped even by the fact that by his new amalgam he hinders greatly the world proletariat in its struggle against the amalgam of Hitler. In both cases proletarian revolutionists are involved.
It is the task of the Left Opposition to warn the advanced workers of the whole world of the crime which is being prepared. The poisoned weapon should be turned against the poisoners. At the same time we must vigilantly watch that the rightful indignation of the world proletariat at the Bonapartist methods should not turn its sympathies completely away from the Soviet state. The proletarian vanguard should take upon itself the defense of the heritage of the October revolution – against the Stalinist bureaucracy.
Last updated on: 25 October 2015