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Vol. 77/No. 20      May 27, 2013

 
Interests of privileged bureaucracy
at root of Stalinism
(Books of the Month column)
 
Below is an excerpt from The Case of Leon Trotsky, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for May. The book contains the transcript of the April 10-17, 1937, hearings held by the Preliminary Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials. Held in Mexico, the commission was chaired by John Dewey, professor emeritus of philosophy at Columbia University. It investigated the charges brought against Trotsky, a central leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution, by Josef Stalin and his henchmen. Leaders of the revolution were executed on trumped-up charges including terrorism, sabotage and collaboration with fascists. Trotsky, who led the worldwide fight to continue Lenin’s internationalist course, exposed these frame-ups and explains that Stalin’s regime was the product of a political counterrevolution by a privileged social caste. Copyright © 1965. Reprinted by permission of Pathfinder Press.

BY LEON TROTSKY  
An American writer complained to me in a conversation: “It is difficult for me to believe,” he said, “that you entered into an alliance with fascism; but it is equally difficult for me to believe that Stalin carried out such horrible frame-ups.” I can only pity the author of this remark. It is, in fact, difficult to find a solution if one approaches the question exclusively from an individual psychological and not political viewpoint. I do not wish to deny by this the importance of the individual element in history. Neither Stalin nor I find ourselves in our present positions by accident. But we did not create these positions. Each of us is drawn into this drama as the representative of definite ideas and principles. In their turn, the ideas and principles do not fall from the sky, but have profound social roots. That is why one must take, not the psychological abstraction of Stalin as a “man,” but his concrete, historical personality as leader of the Soviet bureaucracy. One can understand the acts of Stalin only by starting from the conditions of existence of the new privileged stratum, greedy for power, greedy for material comforts, apprehensive for its positions, fearing the masses, and mortally hating all opposition.

The position of a privileged bureaucracy in a society which that bureaucracy itself calls Socialist is not only contradictory, but also false. …

The formulas of Marxism, expressing the interests of the masses, more and more inconvenienced the bureaucracy, in so far as they were inevitably directed against its interests. From the time that I entered into opposition to the bureaucracy, its courtier-theoreticians began to call the revolutionary essence of Marxism—“Trotskyism.” At the same time, the official conception of Leninism changed from year to year, becoming more and more adapted to the needs of the ruling caste. Books devoted to Party history, to the October Revolution, or to the theory of Leninism, were revised annually. I have adduced an example from the literary activity of Stalin himself. In 1918 he wrote that the victory of the October insurrection was “principally and above all” assured by Trotsky’s leadership. In 1924 Stalin wrote that Trotsky could not have played any special role in the October Revolution. To this tune the whole historiography was adjusted. This signifies in practice that hundreds of young scholars and thousands of journalists were systematically trained in the spirit of falsification. Whoever resisted was stifled. This applies in a still greater measure to the propagandists, functionaries, judges, not to speak of the examining magistrates of the G.P.U. [Soviet secret police]. The incessant Party purges were directed above all toward the uprooting of “Trotskyism,” and during these purges not only discontented workers were called “Trotskyites,” but also all writers who honestly presented historical facts or citations which contradicted the latest official standardization. Novelists and artists were subject to the same régime. The spiritual atmosphere of the country became completely impregnated with the poison of conventionalities, lies and direct frame-ups. …

My exile from the U.S.S.R. was officially motivated by the allegation that I had prepared an “armed insurrection.” However, the accusation launched against me was not even published in the press. Today it may seem incredible, but already in 1929 we were confronted with accusations against the Trotskyites of “sabotage,” “espionage,” “preparation of railroad wrecks,” etc., in the Soviet press. However, there was not a single trial involving these accusations. …

They do not lack money. What does it mean to the ruling clique to spend twenty or fifty millions of dollars more or less, to sustain its authority and its power? These gentlemen buy human consciences like sacks of potatoes. We shall see this in many instances.

Fortunately, not everybody can be bought. Otherwise humanity would have rotted away a long time ago. Here, in the person of the Commission, we have a precious cell of unmarketable public conscience. All those who thirst for purification of the social atmosphere will turn instinctively toward the Commission. In spite of intrigues, bribes and calumny, it will be rapidly protected by the armor of the sympathy of broad, popular masses. …

Esteemed Commissioners! The experience of my life, in which there has been no lack either of successes or of failures, has not only not destroyed my faith in the clear, bright future of mankind, but, on the contrary, has given it an indestructible temper. This faith in reason, in truth, in human solidarity, which at the age of eighteen I took with me into the workers’ quarters of the provincial Russian town of Nikolaiev—this faith I have preserved fully and completely. It has become more mature, but not less ardent.  
 
 
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