When the opposition was criticized and abused and arrested to the accompaniment of high-flown references to the usual dogmas, many wavered, had doubts or lost their heads. Very few were capable of overstepping the postulates that pushed the recently acquired liberty into the shade. The opposition was a subconscious effort to find the way back to that liberty. Dogmatic thinking, however, had already closed the path to heterodoxy. The Trotskyite-Zinovievite opposition, as it was called—although in effect it comprised the active elements of the Party’s left wing—faced the choice of either gradual extinction or humiliating surrender. The overwhelming majority chose the latter.
Soon after their feeble protest to the Central Committee over the treatment of Trotsky, Radek and Smilga wrote to the Central Control Commission to announce their ‘agreement with the general line of the Party and our break with the opposition … We have nothing in common with Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution … We remove our signatures from the factional documents and request our reinstatement in the Party.’92
Radek’s behaviour was typical of the majority of Trotsky’s supporters. Whether it was Muralov or Preobrazhensky, Pyatakov or Serebryakov, each in his own way left the ranks of the opposition or was simply made to remain silent. Preobrazhensky, a leading Marxist scholar with whom Trotsky had been extremely frank in their discussions, accepted many of his propositions about the wrong-headedness of Stalin’s policies, yet deep down he could not share Trotsky’s radicalism, and by the end of 1928 the rift between them was complete. Pyatakov, whom Lenin described as a man ‘with an administrative way of thinking’, lacked the sophistication to detect political nuances and was among the first to abandon Trotsky. Antonov-Ovseenko, whose commitment to socialist ideals was boundless, saw the future not in Trotsky but in the further development of the revolution. Muralov, who had been close to Trotsky in the civil war and felt a close personal tie, frequently agreed that ‘things are not right in the Party’. Trotsky thought very highly of Serebryakov, regarding him as an able and interesting man, and he trusted him. In April 1926 he wrote to him:
The conversation you and I had with a few other comrades on Stalin’s proposal and about agreement with him, has quite suddenly taken a fantastic turn. Two days after your departure rumours began circulating in the Party organization to the effect that, before [your] departure for Manchuria, [you] organized a faction with [me], Pyatakov and Radek, with Pyatakov serving as the link.93
This ‘top secret’ letter was an attempt to explain Stalin’s motives and aims in unleashing such insinuations.
Such letters illustrate the fact that there were not only wide differences of thinking, but that there was a real political struggle going on, in which the issues were often overlooked in favour of personalities, ambition, and the egotistical claims of individual leaders. Stalin was not one to observe the ‘rules’ of Party comradeship or elementary ethics in this struggle. Nor for that matter was Trotsky. But Stalin had the huge apparatus, the GPU and the Party cadres at his disposal. Trotsky could not win. Despite the fact that he had many Party intellectuals on his side, it was Stalin who had the ability to raise the Party masses against the bogey of Trotskyism, invented by him and aided by Trotsky’s own mistakes and omissions.
Before his deportation Trotsky had tried to rally his few supporters. According to N. Gavrilov, Trotsky went to Leningrad and held semi-legal meetings at the apartment of his first wife, Alexandra Sokolovskaya, and once or twice at the home of the Raskins, who were also sympathizers. Trotsky stressed the importance of consolidating his support, otherwise ‘the Party will degenerate. Democracy in the Party is in danger. A Thermidore is possible.’ Despite a new suit, the clipped beard and short greying hair, he looked tired. Zinoviev was simultaneously organizing opposition meetings at the apartment of his old supporter Alexeev, most of them attended by forty or fifty people. Mass expulsions from the Party were, however, already well under way. The ranks of the opposition were thinning rapidly. Gavrilov himself had been expelled at the end of 1926.94
Each member of the opposition had something different to say. Contrary to what was said of them, none of them wanted to restore capitalism. Above all, they possessed the capacity for independent thought, the courage to take responsible political decisions, a readiness to doubt what seemed indubitable. To be sure, they inevitably included uncommitted people, but the weakness of the opposition lay mainly in the absence of clear and appealing alternatives which it could present to the Party. Rightly remarking that ‘the Party is probably entering the most responsible period of its history with a heavy burden of mistakes committed by its leading organs,’ Trotsky and his supporters also had only the vaguest of ideas of what must be done. They knew what must not be done. They knew it was necessary to combat ‘secretarial psychology’, ‘bureaucratic placemanship’ and ‘false politics’, but their criticism did not amount to a concrete alternative programme. In any case, it was not understood by most Communists.
Yet one cannot say that Trotsky had no programme. He did, but it was conveyed to the Party rank and file in an exaggerated and incomplete form. His enemies depicted him as an opponent of socialism in the USSR, as someone wanting to restore capitalism, regardless of the fact that he wanted the restructuring of society in the interests of world revolution. Like society, the Party had many layers. Trotsky usually addressed himself only to the top layer, but even the small cohort of Bolsheviks who did follow him quickly melted away under the pressure of the repressive Stalinist apparatus.
The Defeat of 1927
1927 was the year in which a line was drawn under Trotsky’s political ambitions, and also when the rapid process of the totalitarianization of the Party and the society came sharply into focus. In that year Trotsky became the leader of the ‘united left’ opposition, whose programme had already been discussed at a Central Committee plenum in July 1926. The programme consisted of two documents, the ‘Declaration of 13’, and the ‘Platform of 83’, both of which in effect repeated the ideas contained in Trotsky’s letter to the Central Committee and Central Control Commission of 8 October 1923, and in the ‘Statement of the 46’ of 15 October 1923. It is easy enough now to see that Trotsky’s protest against coercion by the state and Party bureaucracy was far-sighted, but at the time his warning voice was easily stifled. According to the left opposition, the source of the country’s problems lay in the Party’s policy of building socialism in one country. As devotees of world revolution, Trotsky and his supporters viewed the localization of the tasks of revolution as heading towards isolationism, and hence the limitation of democracy and reinforcement of the totalitarian tendencies which were inevitable in the solitary ‘socialist fortress’, surrounded as it was on all sides. The main idea voiced in the opposition’s discussions was that to make one country or one group of countries into a military camp would render democracy, or people’s power, redundant. A ‘fortress’, ‘citadel’, and finally a ‘camp’, needs a leader, a Caesar, a dictator. Trotsky understood this fact better than anyone, and he believed that to set out to build socialism in one country, without linking it to the world revolutionary process, was profoundly wrong. It would also lead to huge problems in the country, he claimed.
In opposing the bureaucracy, however, Trotsky resorted to leftist formulas, and this immediately devalued his revolt against Stalin. The ‘Platform of 83’ emphasized that ‘the incorrect policy is accelerating the growth of the kulak, the Nepman [traders and businessmen who were profiting from the New economic Policy] and the bureaucrat, all of them hostile to the dictatorship of the proletariat.’95 These arguments, while in many respects justified, were a one-sided interpretation of the Party’s policy, and they conflicted with the apparent desire of millions of people to continue along the present path. Impatience and a belief in the possibility of entering the promised land with one gigantic leap had already become an integral part of public awareness. The ‘united left’ opposition, with its global radical ideas and slogans, could find no way to attack
the growing dictatorship of one man.
After his removal from the Politburo in October 1926—formally on a proposal by the Leningrad Party organization‘Trotsky concentrated his efforts on the written and oral defence of the opposition’s ideas. According to Natalya Sedova, Trotsky’s expulsion from the Politburo was best explained by Victor Serge. Shortly before it occurred, Serge reported, Trotsky had clashed with Stalin at a Politburo session when the latter declared that the opposition must recant at the forthcoming Fifteenth Party Conference. Trotsky angrily objected, arguing that such rulings were impermissible within the Party. The quarrel climaxed when Trotsky flung at Stalin: ‘The First Secretary is applying for the job of gravedigger of the Party!’ Stalin flared, then turned white, his eyes darkening. Choking on his words, he swept the rest of the members with an ominous look, turned away and hurried from the room, slamming the door behind him. Muralov, Pyatakov and Smirnov were waiting at Trotsky’s apartment, and when he returned they clamoured to know why he had uttered those words. Stalin would now be his mortal enemy and would never forgive nor forget the insult. Trotsky, although pale, remained calm. He waved his hand as if to say, what’s done is done. They all knew the rift was now final.96 Stalin would now do everything in his power to remove Trotsky from the Politburo.
Until 1985 membership of the Politburo could be compared to belonging to an imperial family, although in terms of real power it was something incomparably higher. Outwardly, however, Trotsky appeared to have accepted the change in his status calmly. He threw himself into writing, meeting his supporters and trying to get his views known through the press. The newspapers and journals, however, blithely rejected everything he submitted. He protested to the Politburo on 16 May:
On 12 May the Politburo ordered that my articles not be published. It seems two articles were at issue, one, ‘The Chinese Revolution and Comrade Stalin’s Theses’, which I sent to Bolshevik, and ‘The True Path’, which I sent to Pravda. After this, somewhat unexpectedly, Comrade Stalin’s theses appeared, representing the hardening and exacerbation of the most erroneous aspects at the heart of an erroneous policy … Everything can be stifled temporarily: criticism, doubt, questions and indignant protest. But these are the methods Lenin called rude and disloyal …97
Sensing that his chances of influencing the Party leadership were sharply reduced, Trotsky continued to display considerable courage. He wrote bitterly, in a personal letter to Krupskaya on 17 May 1927:
Stalin and Bukharin are betraying Bolshevism at its very core, its proletarian revolutionary internationalism … The defeat of the German revolution in 1923, the defeats in Bulgaria and Estonia, the defeat of the general strike in England, and the Chinese revolution in April, have all seriously weakened international Communism … The decline in the international revolutionary mood of our proletariat is a fact that is strengthened by the Party regime and the false political education, such as socialism in one country, and so on. No wonder the left, revolutionary, Leninist wing of the Party has to swim against the tide in such circumstances. Stalin has now decided to turn the ‘war of attrition’ against the opposition of the last half-year into a ‘war of destruction’ … We shall swim against the tide …98
And several thousand, seeing the courage of their leader, swam with him.
Trotsky faced constant accusation and public attack, but invariably he fought back. For instance, in June 1927 at an extended sitting of the Central Control Commission chaired by Ordzhonikidze, he spoke for an hour and a half despite constant interruption by the chairman. Bitterly, Trotsky flung at Ordzhonikidze:
I say that you are set on a course for the bureaucrat, for the functionary, but not for the masses. You’ve got too much faith in the organization. The organization operates as a vast internal mutual support structure, mutual protection. That’s why it’s even impossible to reduce salaries. Independence from the masses is creating a system of mutual concealment. And all this is considered the chief basis of the regime. Our Party now stakes everything on the secretary, not the rank and file member. That’s what the Party regime amounts to …99
One of the issues on which Trotsky chose to attack Stalin was the Chinese revolution, over which the General Secretary frequently wavered, while Trotsky stuck to a hard left position. He had retained a strong impression of the three-hour meeting he had had on 27 November 1923 with Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Nationalist movement, the Kuomintang, during which many important issues were made clear to him. He wrote a large number of articles on China, many of them in 1927, and also produced a book called Problems of the Chinese Revolution. But the pieces he published on China beginning in 1926 were all targeted on ‘Stalin’s mistakes’, and were thus rather unbalanced in their analysis. In a long article of April 1927, entitled ‘The Chinese Revolution and Comrade Stalin’s Theses’ and aimed at exposing the Party’s mistaken policy in the East, Trotsky remarked that in China ‘the revolutionary tempo has been lost’ and the peasantry not politicized. In true left-wing manner, he asserted that ‘whoever follows a peaceful policy in an agrarian revolution will perish. Whoever procrastinates, hesitates, waits and misses the moment will perish.’100 The manuscript of this article is covered with notes and underlinings, indicating how strongly Trotsky wanted to expose Stalin’s political weakness, but his arguments were plainly debatable.
An article, 114 pages in length, entitled ‘A New Phase in the Chinese Revolution’ and intended for the Executive Committee of Comintern (ECCI), set out to prove the ‘chain of errors’ Stalin had made in international issues. ‘The opportunistic Stalin-Bukharin line,’ Trotsky wrote, ‘after helplessly meandering this way and that, describes a sharp zigzag; the struggle with imperialism is vanishing and its place is being taken by the struggle with feudalism.’101
In focusing on events in China, Trotsky was not only exposing the flaws in Stalin’s foreign policy, but repeating his earlier assertion that the East was still one of the most important revolutionary factors. He hoped that in addressing the Chinese question he would reinforce the opposition and weaken Stalin’s faction. But the dénouement was approaching. Stalin and his new entourage were banking on the constant discrediting of Trotsky and his supporters, their gradual isolation from the mass of the Party and the creation of a ‘capitulationist’ and ‘faint-hearted’ image. By emphasizing world revolution as his chief goal, Trotsky appeared to be denying the possibility of building the socialist society in the USSR. Stalin succeeded in creating this image in the public mind partly with Trotsky’s help. The statements, protests and enquiries that the latter addressed to the Central Committee and Politburo contained wholesale criticism of all spheres of Soviet life, as well as of Party and state policies.
Some of these documents were written by Trotsky’s supporters, yet they still bore his imprint. A 100-page report on ‘The Present Stage of the Revolution and Our Tasks’, although signed by a group of oppositionists, was edited by Trotsky, and the origin of its central idea was unambiguous: ‘The new theory of the victory of socialism in one country will lead to the betrayal of the international revolution for the sake of the security of the USSR … That means repudiating the Leninist formula of the entry of the capitalist countries into the era of wars and revolutions, and is a liquidationist [i.e. anti-Bolshevik] position in relation to the world revolution.’102
The oppositionists faced a grilling at Party plenums, meetings and assemblies of all kinds. Their leftist positions on the need to ‘squeeze’ the kulaks, to force industrialization, to initiate world revolution, on the impossibility of building socialism in one country—only made their situation worse. Most Party members did not accept the warning about the bureaucratization of society. For the ordinary worker or peasant, a bureaucrat was simply a procrastinator, a bribe-taker and sluggard. Party members did not realize that state bureaucracy meant the end of democracy. The level of discussion and political struggle was extremely low, even in the highest echelons of the Party. At the August 1927 Central Committee plenum, fo
r instance, during a speech by Kamenev, who was trying to show that diversity of thought was natural, he was interrupted by Goloshchekin with: ‘Who wrote that for you to read?’ ‘You’re simply an idiot,’ Kamenev retorted. ‘Must you use such expressions?’ Shkiryatov interjected. ‘According to you everyone else is a fool, and only you are clever.’ ‘You’ll only hear such things from a stupid man who has acquired the language of the fascists,’ Goloshchekin added. ‘It was you, Comrades, who sent me to Mussolini,’ Kamenev replied.103 He had just been appointed Soviet ambassador to Italy, diplomatic relations having been established in 1924.
The two sides were irreconcilable. The opposition was doomed, and its leader was saved from prison only by his fame. Yet Trotsky did not surrender. Stalin with the assistance of the Party organization continued to blacken Trotsky’s image as a hero of the revolution and civil war. During a joint plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission in October 1927, Stalin spoke disparagingly of Trotsky’s role at the fronts, even hinting at cowardice. Trotsky at once wrote an indignant letter to L. Serebryakov: ‘Stalin claimed that during the time he was working with you on the Southern front, I showed up only once, stealthily in my car with my wife for half an hour. He also said something to the effect that it was winter, and snowing, that Trotsky turned up and left at once because he was prohibited from going to the Southern front.’ Trotsky went on to say that he had never been forbidden by anyone from going to the southern front, he’d never been at the front with his wife, and that as the train diary would show, he had spent weeks and months at the southern front. He requested confirmation that Stalin’s utterances were rubbish.104
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