The Real Situation in Russia (Routledge Revivals)

Leon Trotsky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317744702
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Russische Geschichte

The Real Situation in Russia, first published in 1928, contains three of Trotsky's harshest rebuttals of Stalin's takeover of the Russian Revolution following the death of Lenin. The first part contains a defence of the 'Opposition Platform' against the Stalinist denunciation; the second details Trotsky's view of the precise nature of the Stalinist program, as well as its disastrous consequences for Russia; and the third demonstrates the unashamed falsification of the history by Stalin with regard to the beginning of the Revolution.

Including a sympathetic, but nonetheless astute, introduction to Trotsky's argument by the translator, The Real Situation in Russia will prove to be of value to all students of twentieth-century Marxism, and in particular to those interested in the Russian Revolution – not only its origins and early development, but also, perhaps, the reasons for its ultimate failure.

PART I The Fear of Our Platform

Trotsky’s Speech on the Proposal to Expel Him from the Central Committee, Oct. 23, 1927.

My motion to consider independently the question of the officer of Wrangel and the military plot was voted down. I raised, essentially, the question why, how, and by whom the party was deceived when it was told that Communists allied with the Opposition participated in a counter-revolutionary organization. In order to show once more what you mean by a discussion, you decreed that my short speech on the imitation-officer of Wrangel should be expunged from the record—that is, hidden from the party. Bukharin has presented us here with the philosophy of a Thermidorian amalgam on the basis of these documents of the G.P.U., which have no relation whatever either to the printing-press or the Opposition. What we want is not Bukharin’s cheap philosophies, but facts. There are no facts. Therefore the insertion of this whole question into the discussion about the Opposition was a trick. Rudeness and disloyalty have grown to the size of criminal betrayal. All the documents read by Menzhinsky¹ speak unequivocally against the present political course—it is only necessary to illumine them with a Marxian analysis. But I have not time for that. I can only raise the fundamental question: How and why the present ruling faction found it necessary to deceive the party, giving out an agent of the G.P.U. for an officer of Wrangel, and snatching up these fragments of an unfinished investigation, in order to alarm the party with a false communication as to the participation of Oppositionists in a counter-revolutionary organization. Whence does this come? Whither does it lead? Only that question has political meaning. The rest is of second-and tenth-rate importance.

1 The head of the G.P.U. (State Police).—Tr.

First, however, two words as to the so-called “Trotskyism.” Every opportunist is trying to cover his shame with that word. The falsification factory is working night and day under two shifts to manufacture “Trotskyism.” I wrote a letter on this theme not long ago to the Bureau of Party History, containing about fifty quotations and documents convicting the now ruling theoretical and historical school of fabrications, distortions, hiding of facts and documents, perversions of Lenin—all for the purpose of the so-called struggle against “Trotskyism.” I demanded that my letter be sent to the members of the united plenum. This was not done, although the letter consists almost entirely of documents and citations. I will send it to the “Discussion Leaflet” of Pravda. I think they will hide this also from the party, for the facts and documents I adduce are too deadly to the Stalin school.

In our July declaration of last year we predicted with complete accuracy all the stages through which the destruction of the Leninist leadership of the party would go, and its temporary replacement by a Stalinist leadership. I say temporary replacement, because the more “victories” the present ruling group wins, the weaker it will be. Our July prediction of last year we can now supplement with the following conclusion: the present organizational victory of Stalin precedes his political shipwreck. It is absolutely unavoidable, and—in correlation with the Stalin régime—will begin at once. The basic task of the Opposition will be to see that the consequences of the ruinous policies of the present leadership bring as little loss as possible to the party and its connections with the mass.

You want to expel us from the Central Committee. We agree that this step is in full accord with the present policy at the present stage of its development, or, rather, of its degeneration. This ruling faction which is expelling from the party hundreds and thousands of its best members, its unwavering worker-Bolsheviks—this bureaucratic clique which dares to expel such Bolsheviks as Mrachkovsky, Serebriakov, Preobrazhensky, Sharov, and Sarkis, comrades who could alone create a party Secretariat infinitely more ‘ authoritative, more able, infinitely more Leninist, than our present Secretariat—this Stalin-Bukharin clique who have locked up in the inner prison of the G.P.U. devoted and admirable men like Nechaev, Shtikhold, Vasiliev, Schmidt, Fishelev, and many others—this group of officials, holding its place on top of the party by violence, by strangulation of the party’s thought, by disorganization of the proletarian vanguard not only in Russia but throughout the world—this through-and-through opportunistic faction at whose tail are marching these late years Chang Kai-shek, Feng Yu-hsîang, Wan Tin-wei, Purcell, Hicks, Ben Tillett, the Kusinens, the Shmerals, the Peppers, the Heinz-Neumans, the Rafieses, the Martinovs, the Kondratievs and Ustrialovs—this faction cannot endure our presence in the Central Committee even one month before the party congress. We understand this.

Rudeness and disloyalty go hand in hand with cowardice. You have hidden our platform—rather, you have tried to hide it. What does fear of a platform mean? Everybody knows: fear of a platform is fear of the mass.

We announced to you on the eighth of September that in spite of all decrees to the contrary, we would bring our platform to the attention of the party. We have undertaken this, and we will carry the work through to the end. Comrades Mrachkovsky, Fishelev, and all the others who printed and distributed our platform, have acted and are acting in full solidarity with us. As oppositional members of the Central Committee and the Central Control Committee, we take full responsibility, both political and organizational, for their acts.

The rudeness and disloyalty of which Lenin wrote are no longer mere personal characteristics. They have become the character of the ruling faction, both of its political policy and its organizational regime. It is no longer a question of external manners. The fundamental character of our present leadership is its belief in the omnipotence of methods of violence—even in dealing with its own party. From the October Revolution our party inherited a mighty apparatus of compulsion, without which the dictatorship of the proletariat is unthinkable. The focal point of this dictatorship was the Central Committee of our party. In Lenin’s time—with a Leninist Central Committee—the organizational apparatus of the party was subordinate to a revolutionary class-policy of international scope. It is true that Stalin inspired Lenin with dread from the very day of his election as General Secretary. “This cook will serve us a peppery dish”—so Lenin spoke to his close comrades at the time of the Tenth Congress. But with Lenin’s leadership, with a Leninist staff in the Politburo, the General Secretariat played a completely subordinate rôle. The situation began to change from the hour that Lenin fell sick. The selection of people through the Secretariat, the grouping of Stalinists in official positions, became an independent operation entirely unrelated to our political policy. That is why Lenin, weighing the prospect of his departure, gave the party his last counsel: Remove Stalin, who may carry the party to a split and to ruin.

The party did not know about this counsel in time. A selected officialdom concealed his letter. We now see the consequences in their full stature. The ruling faction thinks that with the help of violence it can accomplish everything. That is a profound mistake. Violence can play an enormous revolutionary rôle, but only under one condition—that it is subordinated to a true class-policy. The violence of the Bolsheviks against the bourgeoisie, against the Mensheviks, against the Social Revolutionaries, employed under definite historical conditions, gave gigantic results. The violences of Kerensky and Tzeretelli against the Bolsheviks only hastened the defeat of the compromisers’ régime. Banishing, and arresting, and depriving of employment, the ruling faction is employing both knife and bribe against its own party. The worker-member is afraid to say what he thinks in his own local. He is afraid to vote according to his conscience. A dictatorship of the officialdom is terrorizing our party, which is supposed to be the highest expression of the proletarian dictatorship. In terrorizing the party, you are diminishing its ability to hold in fear the enemies of the proletariat.

But an organizational régime does not live an independent life. In the party régime, the whole political course of the party finds its expression. This political course has swerved of late years—its class core and momentum have swerved from left to right, from the proletarian to the petty bourgeois, from the worker to the specialist, from the rank-and-file party member to the functionary, from the farm hand and the poor peasant to the Kulak, from the Shanghai worker to Chiang Kai-shek, from the Chinese peasant to the bourgeois generals, from the English proletarian to Purcell, Hicks, and the General Council—ad infinitum. In that lies the essence of Stalinism.

At first glance it seems as if the Stalin course were completely victorious. The Stalin faction seems to deal its blows to the left (in Moscow and Leningrad) and to the right (in the Northern Caucasus). As a matter of fact the whole policy of this Centrist faction is itself going forward under the blows of two whips—one from the right and one from the left. This bureaucratic Centrist faction, lacking all class basis, staggers between two class lines, systematically sliding away from the proletarian to the petty-bourgeois course. It does not slide away in a direct line, but in sharp zig-zags. We have had plenty of these zig-zags in the past. Especially sharp and memorable was the broadening of elective rights under pressure from the Kulak (a blow of the whip from the right) and then the annulment of these instructions under pressure from the Opposition (a whip from the left). We have had plenty of these zig-zags in the sphere of workers’ legislation, wage policy, tax policy, policy toward the private capitalist, etc., etc. But the general course has been steadily shifting to the right. The recent manifesto is an unquestionable zig-zag to the left. But we are not going to shut our eyes for one minute to the fact that this zig-zag does not in the least change the general course of the policy, and that it will, as a matter of fact—and that in the very near future—hasten the drift of the ruling center towards the right.

Today’s shouting about a “forced attack” on the Kulak—that same Kulak to whom yesterday they were shouting, “Get rich !”—cannot change the general line. Anniversary jubilee surprises, in the way of a seven-hour working day, cannot change it either. The political line of the present leadership is not defined by these individual adventuristic gestures, but by the social support which this leadership has gathered around itself in its struggle against the Opposition. Through the Stalin apparatus, through the Stalinist régime, the forces that are pressing down on the proletarian vanguard are the bureaucrat, the labor faker, the administrator, the industrial manager, the new private capitalist, the privileged intelligentsia of the town and country—all these elements who are beginning to point out the Kulak to the working man, and say, “Remember, this isn’t 1918, my boy!”

It is not the left gesture that decides, but the fundamental political course. The selection of your colleagues decides. The governing staff decides. The social support. You cannot strangle the working man’s local, and at the same time attack the Kulak. The two things are incompatible. Your left anniversary zig-zag, as soon as it goes to be carried out, will run into ruthless opposition in the ranks of your own majority. Today, “Get rich!” and tomorrow, “Away with the Kulak!” That is easy for Bukharin. He picks with his pen, and is ready. He has nothing to lose. But the Kulak, the manager, the powerful bureaucrat, the specialist—they see it differently. These people have no taste for sudden jumps at anniversaries. They will say their word.

Comrade Tomsky, who is tied up in a worse situation than anybody else, rose in opposition to the present jubilee zig-zag. Tomsky has a foreboding of what the workers will ask in the trade-unions. He will be the one to answer. Tomorrow the workers are going to demand from Tomsky that he at least really stop the drift to the right, seeing that the manifesto announces a course to the left. This is the cause of the inevitable struggle within the ruling bloc. In our right wing there is an industrial manager’s tendency and a trade-unionist tendency. They work together for a time as has often happened in the history of the workers’ movement. But this anniversary zig-zag to the left is driving a wedge between the managers and the trade-unionists. The professional bureaucrat, balancing between them, will lose his support.

This jubilee zig-zag is, upon the one hand, a most indubitable and solemn recognition of the rightness of the Opposition’s views upon all the fundamental problems of our life, both in the city and the country. On the other hand, it is a political disavowal of themselves on the part of the ruling faction, a confession of their own bankruptcy. It is a confession in words from those impotent to show anything in deeds. This jubilee zig-zag will not retard, but hasten, the political bankruptcy of the present course.

The régime of party repression flows inevitably from the whole policy of the leadership. Behind the backs of the extreme bureaucrats stand the awakening interior bourgeoisie. Behind their backs, the world bourgeoisie. All these forces press down on the proletarian vanguard, preventing it from lifting its head or opening its mouth. The more the policy of the Central Committee departs from the proletarian class channel, the more it becomes necessary to force that policy upon the proletarian vanguard by methods of compulsion from above. That is the root cause of the present intolerable régime in the party.

When Martinovs, Schmerals, Rafieses, and Peppers play the lead in the Chinese revolution, and Mrachkovsky, Serebriakov, Preobrazhensky, Sharov, and Sarkis are expelled from the party for printing and distributing a Bolshevik platform for the coming congress, these facts are not of a mere inner-party character. By no means. These facts are the expression of a changing relative influence of classes in our politics. The interior bourgeoisie brings its pressure, of course, less impudently than the world bourgeoisie against the dictatorship of the proletariat and its proletarian vanguard. But these two pressures are closely united and are simultaneously brought to bear. Those elements of the working class and our party who first felt this advancing danger and first spoke of it—that is, the more revolutionary, more stoical, more far-sighted, more uncompromising representatives of the working-class struggle—those elements now constitute the ranks of the Opposition. These ranks are growing both within our party and throughout the International. Facts and events of enormous moment are confirming the position we took. Your repressions are strengthening our ranks, gathering to us the best “old men” of the party, tempering the young, and grouping around the Opposition the genuine Bolsheviks among them. The Oppositionists you have excluded from the party are the best members of the party. Those who are expelling and arresting them—although still unconscious of it and uncomprehending—are the instruments through which other classes are pressing back the proletariat. In trying to tramp our platform into the mud, the ruling faction is fulfilling the social command of Ustrialov² —of the reviving petty and middle bourgeoise. In contrast to the politicians of the dying, old, emigrant bourgeoise, Ustrialov, the clever far-seeing politician of the new bourgeoisie, does not aspire to counter-revolution or to any disturbance. He does not want to “jump over the steps.” The present step for Ustrialov is the Stalin course. Ustrialov is openly staking his game on Stalin. Ustrialov is demanding of Stalin that he put the Opposition out of the way. In expelling and arresting the Oppositionists, in advancing against us this perfectly Thermidorian accusation in regard to an officer of Wrangel and a military plot, Stalin is fulfilling the social orders of Ustrialov.

2 Ustrialov is a jurist, formerly a minister in Kolchak’s government, now living at Harbin. He is one of the Smienomekhovtzi, those who “changed their sign-posts” after the civil war, and came over as belated sympathizers, or at least tolerators, to the Soviet régime. He is the ablest of a considerable group of Russian thinkers and writers who greeted the New Economic Policy as a step toward the gradual restoration of capitalism. He advocated the elimination of Trotsky as a step in the same direction.—Tr.

The immediate task that Stalin has set for himself is to split the party, to cut off the Opposition, to accustom the party to the method of physical destruction. Fascist gangs of whistlers,³ fist work, throwing of books and stones, the prison bars—here for a moment the Stalin régime has paused in its course. But the road is predestined. Why should the Yaroslavskies, Shverniks, Goloshchokins, and others argue with the Opposition about government statistics, when they can let fly a heavy volume of these statistics at the head of an Oppositionist. Stalinism finds in this act its most unrestrained expression, going to the point of open Hooliganism. And we repeat: These Fascist methods are nothing but a blind and unconscious fulfillment of the social commands of other classes. The goal: to cut off the Opposition and physically destroy it. Voices are already to be heard: “We will expel a thousand, and shoot a hundred, and have peace in the party.” These are the voices of pitiable, frightened, and yet also diabolic blind men. This is the voice of Thermidor. The worst elements, perverted with power, blinded with bureaucratic hatred, are preparing the Thermidor with all their might. They need, for this, two parties. But their violence will break to pieces against a true political course. In devotion to that course the revolutionary courage of the Opposition ranks is standing firm. Stalin will not create two parties. We openly say to the party: The dictatorship of the proletariat is in danger. And we firmly believe that the party, its proletarian nucleus, will hear, will understand, will meet this danger. The party is already deeply stirred. Tomorrow it will be stirred to the bottom.

3 “The bureaucrats of the Russian party have formed all over the country gangs of whistlers. Every time a party worker belonging to the Opposition is to take the floor, they post around the hall a veritable framework of men armed with police whistles. With the first words of the Opposition speaker, the whistles begin. The charivari lasts until the Opposition speaker yields the floor to another.”—From the French Communist paper, Contre le Courant.

Behind the few thousand men in the actual ranks of the Opposition, comes a second and a third layer of those who are loyal to the Opposition, and behind them a still broader layer of worker members who have already begun to listen attentively to our voice and are moving to our side. This process cannot be turned back. The non-party workers have not believed your lies and slanders against us. Their legitimate dissatisfaction at the growth of bureaucratism and suppression was expressed by the working-class of Leningrad in its unmistakable demonstration of October 17.⁴ The proletariat is for the Soviet power, unwaveringly, but it wants a different policy. All these...