Workers Press no. 237

BRIEF CHRONOLOGY

OF MAJOR EVENTS

IN TROTSKY'S LIFE

November 7: Born in the district of 1879 Kherson, S Ukraine. Spring: Joined and active in the Revo- 1897 lutionary Movement. to found 'Southern Russian Helped Workers' Union'. by Tsarist 1898 January: Arrested police. Reads Marxist works for the first time while in jail. (Lenin's Development of Capital- ism in Russia.) 1900 Exiled to Siebria. Reads Marx's Capital. Joins Siberian Social Demo- crats. Summer: Reads Lenin's What is to be 1902 Done? Decides to escape and link up with Iskra group led by Plekhanov, Lenin and Martov. 1902 October: Escapes from Siberian exile, arrives in London at Lenin's Finsbury home. Begins to write for Iskra under the name 'Pero'. Praised by Lenin, who proposes to Plekhanov that Trotsky be brought on to the board of Iskra. August: Supports Martov against Lenin 1903 at Second Party Congress in London. and Menshevik fac- Beginning of Bolshevik tions. Leaves Mensheviks, spends next period 1904 to 1917 trying to unite the two up attacked by Lenin for factions-repeatedly Conciliationism'. February: Returns to Russia after out- 1905 break of revolutionary struggle against the Tsar. Elected chairman of the St Peters- burg Soviet, which led the general strike in October. October: Arrested. While awaiting trial, 1905 develops further his theory of the per- revolution', later confirmed by the manent 1925-1927 in of 1917 in Russia and events China. Trotsky at the age of I1 1897. The founders Workers' sian Trotsky and A. wife Sentenced to deportation for 1907 Early: life by Tsarist court. February: Escapes. In Vienna up to 1907 outbreak of First World War.

September: Attends first Zimmerwald 1915 conference against the Drafts war: Zimmerwald Manifesto calling on workers to end war. Advocates the slogan United 1916 states of socialist Europe'. September: Expelled from France for 1916 activities. Flees to neutral anti-war Spain. Again expelled. January 13: Arrives in New York.

1917 1917 March: Revolution overthrows Tsar. detained and jailed by After being British authorities in Canada, returns to Russia. 1917 May: In Russia. Elected to Executive of Petrograd Soviet. Arrested with Bol- shevik leaders after 'July Days'.

July: Joins Bolshevik Party, is elected 1917 to its Central Committee at 6th Con- gress while in a Kerensky prison. Only Lenin and Zinoviev (132) received more (133) | votes than Trotsky (131).

1917 November 7: In charge of preparations date. Appointed for uprising on this Commissar for Foreign Affairs.

Leads Soviet team for talks with Central Powers at Brest-; Litovsk. As newly-appointed Commissar 1918 July: for War, crushes Socialist-Revolution- ary uprising. 1918-1920 Leads Red Army to victory over White Guard forces and their imperial- published in five ist backers. Military works volumes "How the Revolution Armed'.

March: Writes Manifesto of the Found- 1919 ing Congress of the Third, Communist, International. Drafts nearl all the major policy 1919-1924 statements of the International, includ- ing the manifesto of four out of its first five Serves on Praesidium of the In- Congresses. ternational until removed by Stalin faction in 1926. Late: The ailing Lenin begins fight 1922 against bureaucracy. Turns to Trotsky for support against Stalin on his chauvinist and retreat from the treatment of Georgia monopoly on foreign trade.

e founders of the South Rus- 1897. Trotsky at the age of eighte Federation, includina and A. Sokolovsky, his first 1923 Early: Concludes pact with Lenin to fight bureaucracy. Lenin calls for re- of Stalin from Party leadership in his moval | relations Testament. Lenin breaks off all Stalin. Another stroke in March, dies with January 1924. Summer: Trotsky completes Literature. 1923 delivêrs Late: Trotsky and Revolution. against the Party first full-scale blow his articles The bureaucracy in his series of first open New Course. Triggers off the attacks by Stalin's faction (Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev) against Trotsky.

discussion' be- 1924 The so-called 'literary The Lessons of Trotsky writes gins. October, attacks centrism within the Russian and German Communist Parties Stalin puts forward theory 1924 December: of 'socialism in one country' in new edition of his Problems of Leninism, which quickly becomes official Party doctrine.

May: Trotsky writes Where Is Britain 1925 Going? the struggles Anticipates which led to the May 1926 General Strike December: 14th Party Congress. For- 1925 mation of United Opposition,: which Trotsky and Zinoviev as chief figures.

July: Zinoviev expelled from Polit- 1926 bureau. October: Trotsky and Kamenev ex- 1926 pelled from Politbureau. April: Chiang Kai-shek stages coup in 1927 Shanghai. Kills thousands com- munists. Struggle over Stalin's China policy intensifies. Trotsky writes series of articles later published as Problems of the Chinese Revolution. 1927 May: Declaration of the 83 Opposition leaders. Platform of the Left Opposi- tion—-a Bolshevik programme against the Stalinist course. November 7: March of Oppositionists 1927 Leningrad for 10th in Moscow and anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

1927 November 23: Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kame- nev and other Oppositionists expelled from Party. December: 15th Party Congress: rout 1927 of Opposition; Zinoviev, Kamenev and others capitulate to Stalin.

1928 January: Trotsky exiled to Alma-Ata (Turkestan). Trotsky expelled from the 1929 January: Secret police photographs of Trotsky.

of eighteen. Prinkipo soviet Union Lives Misland, Turkey. Publication of the Bulletin of the Left Opposition begins. exposes the theoretical errors 1930 Trotsky of 'socialism in one country' and at- tacks the policies foisted on the foreign Communist Parties in a series of writings. with The Third International After beginning Lenin and The Permanent Revolution (written 1928-1929). of fascism in Germany. 1930-1933 Rise Trotsky warns against threatening dis- ultra-left aster from the 'Third Period' policies of the Comintern.

Trotsky's Germany the Key to the 1931 International Situation and other writ- ings (now published under the title 'Germany Park Publications. August 1931-1932' New 1970) call for a united front against fascism.

While in Prinkipo, writes his autobiography My Life and his epic History of the Russian Revolution. 1932 February: First Conference of the Inter- Left Opposition held in national Copenhagen. February: Hitler comes to power 1933 opposition from the 'legally' without Communist or Social Democratic Parties. All workers' organizations smashed. Trotsky calls for the building of new revolutionary parties and a new international and for a political revolution to overthrow the Stalinist bureau- cracy. July: Trotsky leaves Prinkipo for France.

1933 January-February: 17th Congress of the 1934 Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Complete adulation of Stalin begins.

of Kirov. 1934 December 1: Assassination First mass trials and executions in the Stalin purge. January: Trial of Zinoviev, Kamenev 1935 of imprison- and 17 others; sentences Trotsky exposes this frame-up in The ment. Stalinist Bureaucracy and the Assassination of Kirov. June: Forced to leave France. Sails to 1935 Norway. August: 7th (and last) Congress of 1935 Communist International: confirms the the turn towards the Popular Front. Speeches by hand-picked leaders of the Stalinised Com- 'as Stalin hailed great munist Parties. Marxist. 1936 May: Popular Front government elected in France; mass with occupa- strikes tion of factories. July: Outbreak of Spanish Civil War.

1936 August 19-24: Trial of the Sixteen— 1936 Zinoviev, Kamenev, etc. All defedants executed. Trotsky writes The Revolution Be- . trayed, the classic analysis of the degenera- tion of the first workers' state and the rise of a privileged the Stalinist bureaucracy as ruling caste. July 29-31: First International Confer- 1936 ence to prepare the Fourth Inter- national. 1937 January 23-39: Trial of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist Centre'-13 of defendants executed. June: Purge in Red Army. Tukhachev- 1937 sky and seven other generals shot on Stalin's orders. 1937 January: Arrives in last place of exile —Mexico.. 1938 February: His son Sedov assassinated while undergoing treatment in a Paris private hospital by GPU agents disguised as doctors. March 2-13: Last of the big Moscow 1938 show trials: 'the anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites'. 18 defendants execu- ted, including Bukharin. September 3: Founding Conference of 1938 the Fourth International. The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International adopted as its pro- gramme. 1939 August 23: German-Soviet Pact signed in Moscow. September 1: Germany invades Poland.

1939 1939 November 29: Soviet-Finnish War be- gins. Struggle against the Burnham- Shachtman opposition in the American Social- ist Workers' Party. 1939-1940 Trotsky's analysis of the sit- uation continued the fight for dialecti- cal materialism and for the view that the Soviet Union remains 'a degenerated workers' state'. His articles and letters make up the book entitled In Defence of Marxism.

1940 May 24: First attempt to assassinate Trotsky, led by Mexican painter Siquieros, fails. 20: Trotsky 1940 assassinated by August GPU agent Ramon Mercader.

Trotsky during his first exile to Siberia.

OVEr UU

BRIEF CHRONOLOGY

OF MAJOR EVENTS

IN TROTSKY'S LIFE

1879 November 7: Born in the district of Kherson, S Ukraine 1897 Spring: Joined and active in the Revo- Helped to found 'Southern Russian Workers' Union'. January: Arrested by Tsarist police 1898 while in jai. Marines Development of Capital Ism In Russla.) 1900 Exiled Expital. Joins Siberian Social Deno Siebria. crats. 1902 Summer: Reads Lenin's What is to be Done? Decides to escape and link up with Iskra group led by Plekhanov, Lenin and Martov. 1902 October: Escapes from Siberian exile, arrives in London at Lenin's Finsbury home. Begins to write for Iskra under the name 'Pero'. Praised by Lenin, who proposes to Plekhanov that Trotsky be brought on to the board of Iskra. 1903 August: Supports Martov against Lenin at Second Party Congress in London.

Beginning of Bolshevik and Menshevik fac- tions. 1904 Leaves Mensheviks, spends next perio Ip to 1917 trying to unite the tw factions-repeatedly attacked by Lenin for Conciliationism'. February: Returns to Russia after out- 1905 break of revolutionary struggle against the Tsar. Elected chairman of the St Peters- burg Soviet, which led the general strike in October. October: Arrested. While awaiting trial, 1905 . develops further his theory of the 'per- the manent revolution', later confirmed by events of 1917 in Russia and 1925-1927 in China. Trotsky at the age of 1l 1897. The founders of th Workers' sian Trotsky and A. wife. resear 1907 Early: Sentencea to deportation for life by Tsarist court. February: Escapes. In. Vienna up to 1907 outbreak of First World War.

September: Attends first Zimmerwald 1915 conference against the war. Drafts Zimmerwald Manifesto calling on workers to end war. Advocates the slogan 'United states 1916 of socialist Europe'. September: Expelled from France for 1916 neutral anti-war activities. Flees to Spain. Again expelled. 1917 January 13: Arrives in New York.

overthrows Tsar. 1917 March: Revolution After being detained and jailed by in Canada, returns to British authorities Russia. 1917 May: In Russia. Elected to Executive of Petrograd Soviet. Arrested with Bol- shevik leaders after 'July Days'.

July: Joins Bolshevik Party, is elected 1917 to its Central Committee at 6th Con- gress while in a Kerensky prison. Only Lenin and Zinoviev (132) received more (133) votes than Trotsky (131).

November 7: In charge of preparations 1917 date. Appointed for uprising on this Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Leads Soviet team for talks with Central Powers at Brest- Litovsk. July: As newly-appointed Commissar 1918 for War, crushes Socialist-Revolution- ary uprising. 1918-1920 Leads Red Army to victory over White Guard forces and their imperial- ist backers. Military works published in five volumes 'How the Revolution Armed'.

March: Writes Manifesto of the Found- 1919 ing Congress of the Third, Communist, International. 1919-1924 Drafts nearly all the major policy statements of the International, includ- ing the manifesto of four out of its first five Congresses. Serves on Praesidium of the In- ternational until removed by Stalin faction in 1926 1922 Late: The ailing Lenin begins fight against bureaucracy. Turns to Trotsky for support against Stalin on his chauvinist retreat from the treatment of Georgia and monopoly on foreign trade.

founders of the South Rus- 1897. Trotsky at the age of eight Including Federation, A. Sokolovsky, his first 1923 Earty: Consides pact with-bania te: *Furke fight bureaucracy. Lenin calls for re- moval of Stalin from Party leadership in his Testament. Lenin breaks off all relations with Stalin. Another stroke in March, dies January 1924. Summer: Trotsky completes Literature 1923 Late: Trotsky delivers and Revolution. his first full-scale blow against the Party his series of articles The bureaucracy in New Course. Triggers off the first open attacks by Stalin's faction (Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev) against Trotsky.

The so-called "literary discussion' be- 1924 The Lessons of Trotsky writes gins. October, attacks centrism within the Russian and German Communist Parties.

December: Stalin puts forward theory 1924 of 'socialism in one country in new edition of his Problems of Leninism, which quickly becomes official Party doctrine.

May: Trotsky writes Where Is Britain 1925 Going? the struggles Anticipates which led to the May 1926 General Strike.

14th Party Congress. For- 1925 December: mation of United Opposition, which Trotsky and Zinoviev as chief figures.

1926 July: Zinovier expelled from Polit- bureau. 1926 October: Trotsky and Kamenev ex- pelled from Politbureau. 1927 April: Chiang Kai-shek stages coup in Shanghai. Kills thousands com- munists. Struggle over Stalin's China policy intensifies. Trotsky writes series of articles later published as Problems of the Chinese Revolution. 1927 May: Declaration of the 83 Opposition leaders. Platform of the Left Oppos!- tion—a Bolshevik programme against the Stalinist course. November 7: March of Oppositionists 1927 and Leningrad for 10th in Moscow anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

1927 November 23: Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kame- nev and other Oppositionists expelled from Party. 1927 December: 15th Party Congress: rout of Opposition; Zinoviev, Kamenev and others capitulate to Stalin.

1928 January: Trotsky exiled to Alma-Ata (Turkestan). 1929 January: Trotsky expelled from the Secret police photographs of Trotsky.

age of eighteen. "Soviet Umom Lives in, Prinkipo. Island, Turkey. Publication of the Bulletin of the Left Opposition begins. Trotsky exposes the theoretical errors 1930 of 'socialism in one country' and at- tacks the policies foisted on the foreign Communist Parties in a series of writings beginning with The Third International After Lenin and The Permanent Revolution (written 1928-1929). 1930-1933 Rise of fascism in Germany. Trotsky warns against threatening dis- Period' ultra-left from the 'Third aster policies of the Comintern.

Trotsky's Germany the Key to the 1931 International Situation and other writ- ings (now published under the title 'Germany 1931-1932' New Park Publications. August 1970) call for a united front against fascism.

While in Prinkipo, writes his autobiography My Life and his epic History of the Russian Revolution. 1932. February: First Conference of the Inter- Left Opposition held in national Copenhagen. February: Hitler comes to power 1933 without opposition from the 'legally' Communist or Social Democratic Parties. All workers' organizations smashed. Trotsky calls for the building of new revolutionary parties and a new international and for a political revolution to overthrow the Stalinist bureau- cracy. July: Trotsky leaves Prinkipo for France.

1933 January-February: 17th Congress of the 1934 Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Complete adulation of Stalin begins.

December 1: Assassination of Kirov.

1934 First mass trials and executions in the Stalin purge. January: Trial of Zinoviev, Kamenev 1935 and 17 others; sentences of imprison- ment. Trotsky exposes this frame-up in The Stalinist Bureaucracy and the Assassination of Kirov. June: Forced to leave France. Sails to 1935 Norway. August: 7th (and last) Congress of 1935 the Communist International: confirms the turn towards the Popular Front. Speeches by hand-picked leaders of the Stalinised Com- as great Parties. Stalin hailed munist Marxist. .. 1936~ May: Popular Front government elected in France; mass strikes with occupa- tion of factories. July: Outbreak of Spanish Civil War.

1936 August 19-24: Trial of the Sixteen— 1936 Zinoviev, Kamenev, etc. All defedants executed. Trotsky writes The Revolution Be- . trayed, the classic analysis of the degenera- tion of the first workers' state and the rise of bureaucracy as a privileged the Stalinist ruling caste. 29-31: First International Confer- 1936 July ence to prepare the Fourth Inter- national. 1937 January 23-39: Trial of 'the anti-Soviet Trotskyist Centre'-13 of defendants executed. June: Purge in Red Army. Tukhachev- 1937 sky and seven other generals shot on Stalin's orders. January: Arrives in last place of exile 1937 —Mexico. February: His son Sedov assassinated 1938 while undergoing treatment in a Paris private hospital by GPU agents disguised as doctors. 1938 March 2-13: Last of the big Moscow show trials: 'the anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites'. 18 defendants execu- ted, including Bukharin. 1938 September 3: Founding Conference of the Fourth International. The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International adopted as its pro- gramme. August 23: German-Soviet Pact signed 1939 in Moscow. September 1: Germany invades Poland.

1939 1939 November 29: Soviet-Finnish War be- gins. Struggle against the Burnham- Shachtman opposition in the American Social- ist Workers' Party. 1939-1940 Trotsky's analysis of the sit- uation continued the fight for dialecti- cal materialism and for the view that the Soviet Union remains 'a degenerated workers' state'. His articles and letters make up the book entitled In Defence of Marxism.

May 1940 24: First attempt to assassinate Trotsky, led by Mexican painter Siquieros, fails. 20: Trotsky 1940 August assassinated by GPU agent Ramon Mercader.

Trotsky during his first exile to Siberia.

PAGE TWO

NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS IS

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ABLE IN ENGLISH.

Leon Trotsky PRICE: 7s 6d The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects

NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS

PRICE: 25s PRICE: 25 shillings (soft cover)

WHAT IS

: THE

SOVIET UNION

AND WHERE

IS IT GOING?

A comprehensive book list can be obtained on request from New Park Publications Ltd, 186a Clapham High Street, London, SW4. Trotsky (second from left) and members of the Petr WHENEVER two comrades who worked together in the year 1918, fought beneath Kazan against the Czechoslo- vaks and then in the Urals or at Samara and Tsaritsin, chance to meet again many years later one of them is bound to ask after the first few questions: 'Remember Svyazhsk?' and they will clasp each other's hand again.

What is Svyazhsk ? Today it is a legend, one of the revolutionary legends which still remain unchronicled, but which are being retold over and over again from one end to another of this Russian vast- ness. Not one of the demobilized Red Army men from among the old-timers, the founders of the Workers' and Peasants' Army, upon returning home and remin- iscing about the three years of Civil War will skip over the fabulous epic of Svyazhsk, the cross-roads whence the tide of the revolutionary offensive started roll- ing on all four sides. On the East-toward the Urals. On the South-toward the Caspian shores, the Caucasus and the borders of Persia. On the North toward Archangel and Poland. Not all together, of course; nor simultaneously.

But it was only after Svyazhsk and Kazan that the Red Army became crystal- lized into those fighting and political forms which, after undergoing change and being perfected, have become classic for the

RSFSR.'

On August 6 (1918) numerous hastily organized regiments fled from Kazan; and the best among them, the class-conscious section, clung to Svyazhsk, halted there and fight. and decided to make a stand By the time the mobs of deserters fleeing from Kazan had almost reached Nizhny Novgorod, the dam erected at Svyazhsk had already halted the Czechoslovaks; and their general who tried to take the rail- Volga by storm road bridge across the was killed during the night attack.

Thus in the very first clash between the Whites who had just taken Kazan and consequently were stronger in morale and equipment and the core of the Red Army seeking to defend the bridge-head across the Volga, the head of the Czechoslovak offensive was lopped off. They lost their most popular and gifted leader in General Blagotich. Neither the Whites, flushed by their recent victory, nor the Reds rallying round Svyazhsk had any inkling of the their initial historical importance that trial skirmishes would have.

It is extremely difficult to convey the military importance of Svyazhsk without having the necessary materials at hand, without a map, and without the testimony of those comrades who were in the ranks of the Fifth Army at that time.

already been forgotten by Much has me; faces and names flicked by as in a fog. But there is something that no one will ever forget and that is: the feeling holding of responsibility for supreme Svyazhsk. This was the bond between all of the its defenders from a member Revolutionary Military Council to the last Red rank-and-filer in desperate search for his somewhere extant, retreating regiment who suddenly turned back and faced Kazan in order to fight to the last, with worn-out rifle in hand and fantatic deter- mination in his heart. The situation was follows: understood by everyone as Another step backward would open the down to Nizhny Volga to the enemy (Novgorod) and thus the road to Moscow.

Further the beginning retreat meant of the end; the death sentence on the Republic of the Soviets. How correct this is from a strategic point of view, I know not. Perhaps the Army if rolled back even further might have gathered into a similar fist on one black dots which of the innumerable speckle the map and thenceforth carried its banners to victory. But indubitably it the standpoint of from was correct morale. And in so far as a retreat from the Volga meant a complete collapse at that time, to that extent the possibility of holding out, with one's back against the bridge, imbued us with real hope.

The ethics of the revolution formulated the complex situation succinctly as follows: To retreat is to have the Czechs in Nizhny and in Moscow. No surrender of Svyazhsk and the bridge means the reconquest of Kazan by the Red Army. The arrival of Trotsky's train IT WAS, I believe, either on the third or fourth day after the fall of Kazan that Trotsky arrived at Svyazhsk. His train?

came to a determined stop at the little station; his locomotive panted a little, was uncoupled, and departed to drink water, but did not return. The cars remained standing in a row as immobile as the dirty straw-thatched peasant huts and the Army's barracks occupied by the Fifth staff. This immobility silently underscored that there was no place to go from here, and that it was impermissible to leave.

'Already in 1918 the train represented a mobile apparatus of administration, it was equipped with its own printing plant, tele- graph, radio, electric power station, library, garage and bath. This train which steeled all and brought victory with it would wills appear in the most critical moments at the key sectors of the various fronts. During Yudenich's October offensive (1919) the train 1 Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Re- public, the original name of the USSR.-Ed.

2 This train was organized on August 7, at night and the next morning it de- 1918, parted for Svyazhsk. bers of the Petrograd Soviet on the way to exile after

WORKERS PRESS-KEEF

Нин жд Trotsky alighting from his train, which was instrumental in of the battle on the Kazan front. Trotsky and his staff trave to most of the major civil war battles.

was sent to Petrograd. Out of its personnel was formed a detachment which manned the armoured train named after Lenin, and an- other detachment which was incorporated in the Red Army in the region of Ligovo.

the For its participation in these battles train received the order of the Red Banner.

course of the Civil War the train In the fulfilled 36 missions, covering a total distance of 97,629 versts.' (Trotsky- 'How the Revo- lution Armed Itself', Vol. II, Book 1, p. 463.)

Little by little the fanatical faith that this little station would become the start- ing point for a counter-offensive against Kazan began to take on the shape of reality. Every new day that this God-forsaken, poor railway siding held out against the far stronger enemy, added to it strength and raised its mood of confidence. From somewhere in the rear, from far-off villages in the hinterland, came at first soldiers one by one, then tiny detach- ments, and finally military formations in a far better state of preservation.

I see it now before me, this Svyazhsk where not a single soldier fought 'under compulsion'. Everything that was alive there and fighting in self-defence—--all of it was bound together by the strongest ties of voluntary discipline, voluntary par- ticipation in a struggle which seemed so hopeless at the outset. Human beings sleeping on the fioors of the station house, in dirty huts filled with and broken glass - they hardly straw hoped for success and consequently feared nothing. The speculation on when and how all this 'would end' interested none.

'Tomorrow'-simply did not exist; there smoky piece of was only a brief, hot, time: Today. And one lived on that, as one lives in harvest time.

evening, night-each Morning, noon, single hour was prolonged to the utmost count; every single hour had to be lived through and used up to the last second.

It was necessary to reap each hour care- fully, finely like ripe wheat in the field is cut to the very root. Each hour seemed so rich, so utterly unlike all of previous life. No sooner did it vanish than in re- collection it seemed a miracle. And it was a miracle. Planes came and went, dropping their bombs on the station and the railway cars; machine guns with their repulsive barking and the calm syllables of artillery, drew nigh and withdrew again whilst a human being in a torn military coat, civilian hat, and boots with toes pro- truding--in short, one of the defenders of Svvaszhsk would smilingly produce a watch from his pocket and bethink him- self. 'So that's what it is now—1.30 or 4.30 o'clock. Or, it is 6.20. Therefore I am still Svyazhsk holds. Trotsky's alive. train stands on the rails. A lamp now flickers through the window of the Political De- partment. Good. The day is ended.'

Medical supplies almost com- were • knows pletely absent at Svyazhsk.

God This what the doctors used for bandages.

poverty shamed no one; nor did anyone stand in fear of it. The soldiers on their way with soup kettles to the field kitchen passed by stretchers with the wounded and the dying. Death held no terrors.

It was expected daily, always. To lie prone in the 1905 revolution.

TROTSKY ANNIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT AUGUST 1970

SVYA

enthusiastically it was the sacred of chine resenting the bas, tor old oblivious wounes pathos With rotsky the truest ostetres ren army life pages re suite all this. Newspapers arrived Revolution fore And whereve boots and overcoats came.

thev actual y boots. and keeps, there army stall was pure calm matter Order the Whites; in this lorde of the Fra of Stahsk, else issued to hundreds. would have beer Everybody, cowardly and Beer, diy from the More We relied in or une simply ine nervou: brigh face workers and Red Army rapidly with chal changingave on being freed from prison few hours he was completely own normal levels. intoxication Such was the atmosphere. I remember extraordinary recelving a lila rom Chance the of th pore phe are Commune memorable days Larissa aris the Which preced The men who did it 'My Life'. writes of her in nig called Ivan nos that was no longer human is was who was able something taken for granted. brotnernooa. rew woras nave been so abused and rendered pitiful. But brother- beatable in several not lived and know future night in tattered That the old haitely wonder.

raden ciotnes. minking all tae walle now Mezhlauk, almost 1926 from the Moscow, be the Council; kevolutionary and rattle peer perfect oniection Connections in again and simple in scheme on reconnaissance palrol in n bre thor. No nighsmapis, be sidementali- breath of the White Kazan and returned tomorrow catch nothing martial could be discen A day will dawn in which someone will become de knowine in nis last secona [nat deatn OLl Later Against the stream Drowne! day, spinning the un- THE RAINY August days thus passed one did not ' the bridee wemained in erformed in th did his our hands where far the Revolutionary Militar Council or at the same time also head of telepnone telegraon • wires Trotsky and members of the Red Army general staff.

began to not known him previously, his amazing of Russia, at which in a moment fight ana despair. the revolutior •nau 111 clutched Ted. SLy managed all of eyes of this man, on railways that were bein am, courage sino one cond aged; everything needed tor the comin courageous. was obtained. Nikitch. ma be the sto as Ivan manaea borne would and most every strongest drachment of the see il. i meane After the Tast bullet adore died one in battle y would create sima sensati the SWIm agains xnausuon ( veris of Tsarist discipline and wild hatred soviet delegation to Brest-Litovsk-Including Trotsky, then Commissar for roon siberian ai Trotsky during his sojourn in France rictims of stalin's terro

SVYAZHSK

TROTSKY ANNIVERSARY

S-KEEP LEFT

of old of anything resembling the bark old officers' commands, the barracks, for army life. Despite all this, supplies appeared be- fore our very eyes. Newspapers arrived, boots and overcoats came.

And wherever they actually hand out boots, and for will find a really solid keeps, there you army staff; there things are stable; there the army stands firmly intrenched and has no thought of fleeing. That's no joking Nre 1164 matter, boots! The Order of the Red Flag was not yet in existence in the era of Svyazhsk, else it would have been issued to hundreds. Everybody, including the cowardly and and the mediocre workers and Red Army men-everybody, without a single exception, performed un- heroic deeds ; they outdid believable, themselves, like spring streams overflow- ing their banks they joyfully flooded their own normal levels. was the atmosphere. I remember Such at that time by extraordinary receiving Moscow. from In chance a tew letters them was some talk about the exultation petty preparing Tne bourgeoisie repeat the memorable days of the Paris Commune. And in the meantime the foremost and dangerous front Republic

IUSL

hung by a thin railway thread and flamed, setting up unprecedented heroic con- an which sufficed for flagration three more years of hungry, typhus-ridden, homeless war. The men who did it mental in turning the tide

IN SVYAZHSK,

Trotsky, who was able staff travelled in this train to give the new-born Army a backbone of steel, who himself sank roots into the soil refusing to yield an inch of ground a wet army coat, with a red splotch on a shirt, with an expressionless face, a mute- what happened, who was able no maller to show this handful of defenders a calm- ness that was no longer human- -this was something taken for granted.

icier that Svyazhsk, theirs - in ness Brotherhood! Few words have been so rocky was not alone abused and rendered pitiful. But brother- Gathered there were old Party workers, the Revolutionary hood does future members come someumes, in moments of direst need and peril, so selfless, Councils of the Republic, and of so Military Military a single life- the Councils the several sacred. so unrepeatable in time. And they have not lived and know the future historian of Armies to whom nothing of life the Civil War who have never lain at will refer as the Marshals a floor lice- of the Great Revolution. Rosengoltz and night on in tattered and Kobozev, Gussev, ridden clothes, thinking all the while how Ivan Nikitch Smirnov, wonderful is the world, infinitely wonder- Mezhlauk, the other Smirnov, and many comrades whose names I no longer ful! That here the old has been other over- thrown and that life is fighting with bare recall. From among the sailors, hands for her irrefutable truth, for the ber Raskolnikov and the late Markin.

white swans of her resurrection, for some.

Rosengoltz his car thing far bigger and better than this patch very first day sprouted the office from the of star-lit sky showing through the velvet the Revolutionary Military blackness of a window with shattered extruded and rattled typewriters- for the future of all mankind.

obtained God knows where- -in short, he panes- Once in a century contact is made and began building up a strong, geometrically new blood is transfused. These beautiful perfect organizational apparatus, with pre- indefatigable words, almost inhuman in their beauty, working

CINE

Connectors and the smell of living sweat, the living capacity and simple in scheme.

breath of others sleeping beside you days whatever the OT the … come. the floor. No nightmares, no sentimentali- front, wherever the work Army or the began to sputter, Rosengoltz was immedi- but tomorrow the dawn come Tles. will and Comrade G., a Czech Bolshevik, will brought in like a queen-bee in a ately prepare an omelette for the whole 'gang', sack, placed into the disturbed bee hive and the Chief of Staff will pull on, a and would immediately proceed to build, shaggy stiffly frozen shirt washed out last organize, forming cells, buzzing over the night. telegraph wires. Despite the military over- A day will dawn in which someone will and enormous pistol in his belt, coat die, knowing in his last second that death nothing martial could be discerned in his only something figure, nor in his pale, slightly soft face. among other many His tremendous force did not lie in this things, and not the main thing at all; that Svyazhsk has not been taken field at all, but rather in his natural ability once again and that the dirty wall is still inscribed to renew, establish connections, raise the of chalk: 'Workers of the bloodstream with a piece tempo of a halting, infected World Unite. to an explosive speed. At the side of Trotskv he was like a dvnamo regular, Against the stream well-oiled, noiseless, with powerful levers spinning the un- moving dav after dav. THE RAINY August days thus passed one tearable web of organization.

I do not recall just what kind of work by The thin. pooriv eduinned lines «one did not fall back; the bridge remained in I. N. Smirnov officially performed in the staff of the Fifth Army. our hands and from the rear, from some- Whether he was where far away, reinforcements began to a member of the Revolutionary Military arrive. Council or at the same time also head of Real telephone the Political Department; but apart from and telegraph. wires began to attach themselves to autumn all titles and frameworks he embodied spider-webs flying in the winds and some He was the the ethics of the revolution.

kind enormous, cumbersome, highest moral criterion; the communist of lame conscience of Svyazhsk. anparatus began to onerate on the God- forsaken railway station--Svyazhsk, this Even the non-Party soldier among tiny, hardly discernible black dot on the masses and those communists WhO map of Russia, at which in a moment of not known him previously, his amazing flight and despair, the revolution had purity and integrity were immediately clutched. recognized. It is hardly likely that he all of Trotsky's organizational himself aware how much he was Here was genius was revealed. He managed to re- feared: how evervone feared nothing so store the supply lines, got new artillery much as to reveal cowardice and weakness and a few regiments through to Suvazhsk hefore the eves of this man, who never on railways that were being openly sabo- yelled at anyone, who simply remained taged; everything needed for the coming himself, calm, No courageous. one com- offensive was obtained. manded as much respect as Ivan I Nikitch. addition, it ought borne in Every one felt that in the worst moment to be mind that be done in this had to would work be the and

MOST

the year 1918. when demobilization was fearless. still raging, when the appearance on the With Trotsky—it was to die in battle Moscow streets of a single well-dressed after the last bullet had been fired; to die detachment of the Red Army would create After all, 3 All these legendary heroes of Svyazhsk it meant to sensation with hundreds the and of the Civil War, along against stream, against the swIm exhaustion of four years of war, against their and thousands nt ntners ot generation. were murdered by Stalin in the Moscow the spring floods of the revolution which and blood decades frame-ups purges two swept through the whole country the earlier...Fa debris of Tsarist discipline and wild hatred Trotsky during his sojourn in France.

Trotsky after escaping from his Soviet delegatio second Siberian exile. victims of Stalin'

VIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT AUGUST 1970

enthusiastically, it was the sacred pathos oblivious wounds. With Trotsky- of struggle; words and gestures recalling pages of the Great French the best Revolution. But with Comrade Smirnov (so it seemed to us at the time and so we spoke in whispers to each other as we huddled close together on the floor during those already cold autumnal nights)-Comrade Smirnov: this was pure calm when 'up against the wall'; or when being grilled by Whites; filthy hole. the or in a Yes, that is how one talked about him at Svyazhsk. Boris Danilovich Mikhailov came a little I believe, later, directly trom Moscow, or generally from the centre. He arrived in a civilian coat, with that bright, rapidly his face that changing expression on people have on being freed from prison or big cities. Within a few hours he was completely of the wild intoxication overcome Svyazhsk. Changing clothes, he went out the international character of the Symbol of 1895 Revolution Reissner, October 8898 daughter of a Polish mother and a German— East Elbian-landowner; May sne was 1985, Vilna (Poland), educated in and France; before her 22nd birth- Germany outstanding figure the day snid Was all Russian Revolution. 'My Life', writes of her in his In chapter on Svyazhsk: called who Larissa Nikitich (Smirnov)

CONSON.

Svyazhsk" herself prominent in the was a whole This in on man tase as well as in the Revolution as a whole. across the revolutionary sky like a burning With her appear- blinding many. ance of an Olympian goddess ne capture to bined a subtie and ironical courage of a warrior. After the capture by the Whites, she went into the disguised as camp to reconnoitre, enemy a peasant woman. But her appearance was arrested. took Japanese intelligence officer, advantage of an interval to slip through the and disappear. carelessly quarded After that, she engaged intelligence and sailed on war-boats work. Later, sne Her look part in battles. sketches With equal literature. the civil war would write about the Ural in.

she gusto of the workers in and the rising dustries anxious to know and to the Ruhr. She was and to take part in everything. In see few brief years, she became writer her first rank. But after coming un- scathed through fire and water this Pallas 1926 of the Revolution suddenly burned up with gurroundings of in the peaceful typhus, Moscow, before she was even 30.'

on reconnaissance patrol in the vicinity of White Kazan and returned three days the later, tired, his face wind-tanned, his body By way of crawling with ubiquitous lice.

compensation, he was all in one piece.

It was a fascinating spectacle to observe the profound inner taking place process in people who arrive at a revolutionary front: they catch fire like a straw roof lit on all four sides, and then on cooling off become transformed into a fire-proof, perfectly clear and uniform piece of cast iron. Youngest of all was Mezhlauk-Valerin hard Ivanovich. He had particularly a wife had time. His younger brother and remained behind in Kazan and, according Later it to a rumour, had been shot. that his brother actually had turned out died, while his wife suffered indescribably.

It was not customary to complain or talk about one's misfortunes at Svyazhsk. And Mezhlauk kept an honest silence, did his autu, mud in his long cavalry coat, all walked through Trotsky and members of the Red Army general staff.

Soviet delegation to Brest-Litovsk-including Trotsky, then Commissarfor For victims of Stalin's terror.

TROTSKY ANNIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT A

of him concentrated on one burning point: Kazan. Meanwhile the Whites began to sense with its strengthened that resistance, Svyazhsk was growing into something great and dangerous. skirmishes and attacks Intermittent came to an end; a regular siege, with large organized forces on all sides was started. But they had let slip the pro- pitious moment. Old Slavin, Commander of the Fifth Army, not a very gifted colonel, but one knew his business exactly and who thoroughly, fixed on a key point of de- worked out a fence, definite plan and carried through Latvian it with truly stubbornness. Svyazhsk stood firm, its feet planted in the ground like a bull, its broad forehead lowered towards Kazan, standing immov- shaking able on the spot and impatiently its horns, sharp as bayonets.

One sunny autumn morning came nar- row, agile and swift torpedo-boats from Elsewhere Trotsky ranks her with Isaac of the Civil War Babel as the greatest writer period-a remarkable tribute to a girl whom Russian foreign language, acquired in maturity. The Front', collection of her Civil War sketches, from which 'Svyazhsk' is taken, was enormously popular with the Soviet The various districts of the Communist Party -Moscow, etc.—vied Leninarad. the Urals with each other in bringing it out in scores collection of of editions. her work, 'Oktober: Ausgewaehite Schriften'. broucht out in intern publishing house as late as 1930, with an introduction by Radek written in 1926, the year she died. until Stalin's 50th birthday and the publication that date of that the falsification Army' of the Civil War began with full force Of course, her sketches have been for- bidden literature in the Soviet Union because their portraits of the Civil War leaders later murdered by Stalin are a comolete refutation of all Stalin's falsifications. More recently a biographical sketch of Larissa Reissner, along excerpt from 'The Front' with short was published 'Sputnik' (November 1968), Agency published Britain Daily Mirror Newspapers Ltd. The short description of life the Volga-Caspian fleet in mentioning the real fighters against the White counter-revolution. But Larissa Reissner was not altogether unknown to the first British Communist.

The very first issue of 'Communist Review' of May 1921 carries one of her brilliant sketches entitled 'The Heroic Sailors of the Russian Revolution'. the Baltic fleet to Svyazhsk. Their appear- ance created a sensation.

The army now felt the river side protected. A series of artillery duels began on the Volga, occur- ring three or four times daily. Covered by the fire of our batteries concealed along the shore, our flotilla now ventured far forward. These forays were crowned by such extremely audacious ones as that under- taken on the morning of September 9 by Sailor Markin, one of the founders and Red Fleet. outstanding heroes of the On tug-boat he an unwieldy, armour-plated ventured far the very piers of out to landed, Kazan, drove off the crews of batteries by machine-gun fire and enemy removed the locks from several guns.

Another time, late at night on August up to Kazan, 30, ships came flush our shelled the city, set fire to several barges loaded with munitions and food supplies, and withdrew without losing a single ship.

Among others Trotsky, together with the Commander, aboard the torpedo- was Natalia and Leon mmissar for Foreign Affairs-all later Trotsky, Alma Ata, 1928.

PLEMENT AUGUST 1970

boat 'Prochny' which had to fix its steer- ing gear while drifting alongside an enemy barge and under the muzzles of the White Guard artillery. Vatzetis, commander-in-chief of the eastern front, arrived at a moment when the offensive against Kazan was already in full swing. Most of us, myself among them, had little exact information con- cerning the outcome of the conference; only one thing quickly became a matter of general knowledge and was greeted with deep satisfaction on all sides. Our old man (that is what we called our commander among ourselves) declared himself op- posed to Vatzetis's views, who wanted to undertake an attack against Kazan from the left river bank, while our commander decided to storm Kazan on the right bank which dominates the city and not on the left bank which is flat and exposed.

The Whites advance BUT PRECISELY at a time when the entire Fifth Army was tensely poised for the attack, when its main forces at last began pushing forward under constant counter-attacks and many heavy day-long battles, three 'luminaries' of White Guard Russia got together in order to put an end to the protracted epic of Svyazhsk.

the head or a considerable force toder took a desperate raid against a railroad station adjoining Svyazhsk, in order in this way to capture Svyazhsk itself and the Volga bridge. The raid was brilliantly executed; after making a long detour, the Whites suddenly swooped down on the station Shikhrana, shot it to pieces, seized the station buildings, cut the connections of with the rest the railway line and burned a munition train stationed there.

The small defending force at Shikhrana was slaughtered to the last man. Nor is this all; they literally hunted down and extirpated every living thing in this little station. I had the opportunity to see Shikhrana a few hours after the raid. It bore the of the completely stigma irrational pogrom violence that stamped all the victories of these gentlemen, who felt never themselves the masters and future inhabitants of the soil accidentally and temporarily conquered.

In a courtyard, a cow lay bestially murdered (1 say murdered advisedly, not slaughtered); the chicken coop was filled senselessly with chickens riddled in all too human a fashion. The well, the little vegetable garden, the water tower and the houses were treated as if they had been captured human beings and, more- over, Bolsheviks and 'sheenies'. The in- testines had been ripped out of every- Animals and objects thing. inanimate sprawled everywhere, decimated, violated, ugly - dead. Alongside this horrible shambles of everything that once had been a human habitation, the indescribable, un- utterable death of a few railway em- ployees and Red Army men caught by surprise appeared quite in the nature of things. Only in Goya's illustrations of the Spanish campaign and guerrilla war can a similar harmony be found of wind-swept trees bending low beneath the weight of hanged men, of dust on roadways, of blood and stones. From the station Shikhrana, the Savin- kov detachment turned towards Svyazhsk, moving along the railroad. We sent our 'Free Russia' to armoured train meet them. So far as I am able to recall, it was armed with long-range naval guns. commander, however, did not rise to the level of his task. Being surrounded on two sides (so it appeared to him), he left his train and rushed back to the Revolu- Military Council in order 'to tionary report' In his absence 'Free Russia' was shot to pieces and burned. Its black, burning hulk beside lay derailed for a long time the roadbed very close to Svyazhsk.

After the destruction of the armoured train the road to the Volga seemed com- pletely open. The Whites stood directly beneath Svyazhsk, some one-and-a-half to two versts away from the Fifth Army's headquarters. Panic ensued. Part of the Political Department, if not all of it, rushed to the piers and aboard the steam- boats. The regiment, fighting virtually on Volga's banks but higher upstream, wavered and then fled with its com- manders and commissars. Toward morn- ing, its maddened detachments were found aboard the staff ships of the Volga war fleet. In Svyazhsk only the Fifth Army staff with its officers and the train of Trotsky remained. How Soyazhsk was saved LEV DAVIDOVICH mobilized the entire personnel of the train, all the clerks, wire- less operators, hospital workers, and the _eon Sedov during third exile, Trotsky's younger son later disappeared in tration camps.

WORKERS PRESS

Devastation on the Volga (Top) a typical civil war batt armoured train. Such trains, organized and manned b of the Red Army, played a most important part in the guard commanded by the Chief of Staff of sib the fleet, Comrade Lepetenko (by the way, figl one of the most courageous and self.

sacrificing soldiers of the revolution whose biography could very well provide this 'ex book with its most brilliant chapter-in a word, everyone able to bear a rifle.

ma The . staff offices stood deserted; there gui 'rear' any longer. Everything was was no

VIC

thrown against the Whites who had rolled Pe: almost flush to the station. From Shikh- per rana to the first houses of Svyazhsk the cep entire road was churned up by shells, an dead horses, covered with abandoned 'an weapons and empty cartridge shells. The we closer to Svyazhsk, all the greater the tra havoc. The advance of the Whites was halted the only after they had leaped over the gre gigantic charred skeleton of the armoured Za: train, still smoking and smelling of molten thi metal. The advance surges to the very tha threshold, then rolls back boiling like a the receding wave only to fling itself once file more against the hastily mobilized reserves sta of Svyazhsk. Here both sides stand facing on each other for several hours, here are hui many dead. live The Whites then decided that they had bef before them a fresh and well-organized it division of whose existence even their thi intelligence service had remained unaware.

the Exhausted from their 48-hour raid, the rad soldiers tended to over-estimate the Par strength of the enemy and did not even les: suspect that opposing them was only a its hastily thrown together handful of fighters with no one behind them except Trotsky's in and Slavin, sitting beside a map in a hac smoke-filled sleepless room of the de- cor serted headquarters in the centre of the Thi depopulated Svyazhsk where bullets were fro whistling through the streets.

anc Throughout this night, like all the dis previous ones, Lev Davidovich's train re- COr mained standing there as always without the its engine. Not a single section of the (an Fifth Army advancing on Kazan and too about to storm it was bothered that night alig or diverted from the front to cover a COr virtually defenceless Svyazhsk. The army Int and the fleet learned about the night attack only after it was all over, after the fat Whites were already in retreat firmly con- fat Th vinced that almost a whole division was confronting them. and The next day 27 deserters who had the fled to the ships in the most critical moment were tried and shot. Among W11 them were several communists. Much was wO later said about the shooting of these 27, nei especially in the hinterland, of course, pai where they did not know by how thin a mc thread hung the road of Moscow and oni our entire offensive against Kazan, under- art taken with our last means and forces.

ele To begin with, the whole army was ne agog with talk about communists having spe turned cowards; and that laws were not bei written for them; that they could desert aca with impunity, while an ordinary rank- and-filer was shot down like a dog If not for the exceptional courage of in Trotsky, the army commander and other CiS members of the Revolutionary Military Council, the prestige of the communists working in the Army would have been impaired, and lost for a long time to come. nai No fine speeches can make it sound Re plausible to any army suffering every pos- Re tor Turkey Sergei, who Odessa, Trotsky departing Stalin's concen- after his expulsion from the Soviet Union.

TROTSKY ANNIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT A

of him concentrated on one burning point: Kazan. Meanwhile the Whites began to sense that with its strengthened resistance, Svyazhsk was growing into something great and dangerous. Intermittent skirmishes and attacks came to an end; a regular siege, with large organized forces on all sides was started. But they had let slip the pro- pitious moment. Slavin, Commander of the Fifth Old Army, not a very gifted colonel, but one who knew his business exactly and thoroughly, fixed on a key point of de- fence, worked out a definite plan and carried it through with truly Latvian stubbornness. Svyazhsk stood firm, its feet planted in the ground like a bull, its broad forehead lowered towards Kazan, standing immov- able on the spot and impatiently shaking its horns, sharp as bayonets.

One sunny autumn morning came nar- row, agile and swift torpedo-boats from Elsewhere Trotsky ranks her with Isaac 895 Babel as the greatest writer of the Civil War period- girl to remarkable inite to a language, whom Russian was foreign acquired in maturity. The Front, collection of her Civil War sketches, from which 'Svyazhsk' is taken, was enormously popular with the Soviet masses The various districts of the Communist Party -Moscow, Leningrad, the Urals, etc.—vied with each other in bringing it out in scores of editions. A larger collection of her work, 'Oktober: Schriften'. Ausgewaehite was brought out in Germany by the official Com- intern publishing house as late as 1930, with an introduction by Radek written in 1926, the year she died. was not until Stalin's 50th birthday (December 21, 1929) and the publication on that date of Voroshilov's 'Stalin and the Red that the falsification of the history Army' of the Civil War began with full force.

Of course, her sketches been for- have bidden literature in the Soviet Union because their portraits of the Civil War leaders later murdered by Stalin are a complete refutation of all Stalin's falsifications. More recently a biographical sketch of Larissa Reissner.

along with short excerpt from 'The Front' was published in 'Sputnik' (November 1968), monthly digest compiled by the Novosti Press and published Britain Daily by Airror Newspapers Ltd The short description Volga-Caspian life in the fleet avoids mentioning the real fighters against the White counter-revolution. But Larissa Reissner was not altogether unknown to the first British Communist. The very first issue of Communist Review' of 926 May 1921 carries one of her brilliant sketches entitled 'The Heroic Sailors of the Russian Revolution'. the Baltic fleet to Svyazhsk. Their appear- The army now ance created a sensation. felt the river side protected.

A series of artillery duels began on the Volga, occur- ring three or four times daily. Covered by the fire of our batteries concealed along the shore, our flotilla now ventured far forward. These were crowned by such forays extremely audacious ones as that under- taken on the morning of September 9 by Sailor Markin, one of the founders and outstanding heroes of the Red Fleet.

On an unwieldy, armour-plated tug-boat he ventured far out to the very of piers landed, drove off Kazan, the crews of fire and enemy batteries by machine-gun removed the locks from several guns.

Another time, late at night on August 30, our ships came flush Kazan, up to shelled the city, set fire to several barges loaded with munitions and food supplies, and withdrew without losing a single ship.

Among others Trotsky, together with the Commander, was aboard the torpedo- Natalia and Leon Sedov duri ssarfor Foreian Affairs—all later Trotsky, Alma Ata, 1928.

PLEMENT AUGUST 1970

boat 'Prochny' which had to fix its steer- ing gear while drifting alongside an enemy barge and under the muzzles of the White Guard artillery. commander-in-chief of the Vatzetis, eastern front, arrived at a moment when the offensive against Kazan was already in full swing. Most of myself us, among them, had little exact information con- cerning the outcome of the conference; only one thing quickly became a matter of general knowledge and was greeted with deep satisfaction on all sides. Our old man (that is what we called our commander among ourselves) declared himself op- posed to Vatzetis's views, who wanted to undertake an attack against Kazan from the left river bank, while our commander decided to storm Kazan on the right bank which dominates the city and not on the left bank which is flat and exposed.

The Whites advance BUT PRECISELY at a time when the entire Fifth Army was tensely poised for the attack, when its main forces at last began pushing forward under constant counter-attacks and many heavy day-long battles, three 'luminaries' of White Guard Russia got together in order to put an end to the protracted epic of Svyazhsk.

Savinkov, Kappel, and Fortunatov at the head of a considerable force under- took a desperate raid against a railroad station adjoining Svyazhsk, in order in this way to capture Svyazhsk itself and the Volga bridge. The raid was brilliantly executed; after making a long detour, the Whites suddenly swooped down on the station Shikhrana, shot it to pieces, seized the station buildings, cut the connections with the rest of the railway line and burned a munition train stationed there.

The small defending force at Shikhrana was slaughtered to the last man. Nor is this all; they literally hunted down and extirpated every living thing in this little had the station. opportunity to see Shikhrana a few hours after the raid. It bore of the stigma the completely irrational pogrom violence that stamped all the victories of these gentlemen, who never felt themselves the masters and future inhabitants of the soil accidentally and temporarily conquered.

In a courtyard, a cow lay bestially nurdered (1 say murdered advisedly, not slaughtered); the chicken coop was filled senselessly with chickens riddled in all too human a fashion. The well, the little vegetable garden, the water tower and the houses were treated as if they had been captured human beings and, more- over, Bolsheviks and 'sheenies'.

The in- testines had been ripped out of every- Animals and inanimate objects thing. sprawled everywhere, decimated, violated, - dead. Alongside this horrible ugly - shambles of everything that once had been a human habitation, the indescribable, un- utterable death of a few railway em- ployees and Red Army men caught by surprise appeared quite in the nature of things. Only in Goya's illustrations of the Spanish campaign and guerrilla war can a similar harmony be found of wind-swept trees bending low beneath the weight of hanged men, of dust on roadways, of blood and stones. From the station Shikhrana, the Savin- kov detachment turned towards Svyazhsk, moving along the railroad. We sent our 'Free Russia' to meet armoured train them. So far as I am able to recall, it was armed with long-range naval guns. Its commander, however, did not rise to the level of his task. Being surrounded on two sides (so it appeared to him), he left his train and rushed back to the Revolu- Military Council in order 'to tionary report' In his absence 'Free Russia' was shot to pieces and burned. Its black, burning hulk lay derailed for a long time beside the roadbed very close to Svyazhsk.

After the destruction of the armoured train the road to the Volga seemed com- pletely open. The Whites stood directly beneath Svyazhsk, some one-and-a-half to two versts away from the Fifth Army's headquarters. Panic ensued. Part of the Political Department, if not all of it, rushed to the piers and aboard the steam- boats. The fighting virtually on Volga's banks higher upstream, wavered and then fled with its com- manders and commissars. Toward morn- maddened detachments ing, its were found aboard the staff ships of the Volga war fleet. In Svyazhsk only the Fifth Army staff with its officers and the train of Trotsky remained. How Soyazhsk was saved LEV DAVIDOVICH mobilized the entire personnel of the train, all the clerks, wire- less operators, hospital workers, and the Sedov during third exile, Trotsky's younger son disappeared in later tration camps.

WORKERS PRESS-KE

Devastation on the Volga (Top) a typical civil war battle : armoured train. Such trains, organized and manned by ti of the Red Army, played a most important part in the civ guard commanded by the Chief of Staff of the fleet, Comrade Lepetenko (by the way, of the one most courageous and self- sacrificing soldiers of the revolution whose biography could very well provide this book with its most brilliant chapter-in a word, everyone able to bear a rifle.

The staff offices stood deserted; there was no 'rear' any longer. Everything was thrown against the Whites who had rolled almost flush to the station. From Shikh- rana to the first houses of Svyazhsk the entire road was churned up by shells, covered with dead horses, abandoned weapons and empty cartridge shells. The closer to Svyazhsk, all the greater the havoc. The advance of the Whites was halted only after they had leaped over the gigantic charred skeleton of the armoured train, still smoking and smelling of molten metal. The advance surges to the very threshold, then rolls back boiling like a receding wave only to fling itself once more against the hastily mobilized reserves of Svyazhsk. Here both sides stand facing each other for several hours, here are many dead. The Whites then decided that they had before them a fresh and well-organized division of whose existence even their intelligence service had remained unaware.

Exhausted from their 48-hour raid, the soldiers tended to over-estimate the strength of the enemy and did not even suspect that opposing them was only a hastily thrown together handful of fighters with no one behind them except Trotsky's and Slavin, sitting beside a map in a smoke-filled sleepless room of the de- serted headquarters in the centre of the depopulated Svyazhsk where bullets were whistling through the streets: Throughout this night, like all the previous ones, Lev Davidovich's train re- mained standing there as always without its engine. Not a single section of the Fifth Army advancing on Kazan and about to storm it was bothered that night or diverted from the front to cover a virtually defenceless Svyazhsk. The army and the fleet learned about the night attack only after it was all over, after the Whites were already in retreat firmly con- vinced that almost a whole division was confronting them. The next day 27 deserters who had fled to the ships in the most critical moment were tried and shot. Among them were several communists. Much was later said about the shooting of these 27, especially in the hinterland, of course, where they did not know by how thin a thread hung the road of Moscow and our entire offensive against Kazan, under- taken with our last means and forces.

To begin with, the whole army was agog with talk about communists having turned cowards; and that laws were not written for them; that they could desert with impunity, while ordinary rank- an and-filer was shot down like a dog.

If not for the exceptional courage of Trotsky, the army commander and other of the Revolutionary members Military Council, the prestige of the communists working in the Army would have been impaired, and lost for a long time to come. No fine speeches can make it sound plausible to any army suffering every pos- Sergei, who Odessa, Trotsky departing Stalin's after expulsion concen- his from the Soviet Union.

S PRESS-KEEP LEFT

• civil war battle scene. Above, an and manned by the most conscious elements nt part in the civil war.

sible privation in the course of six weeks, fighting practically with bare hands, with- out even bandages, that cowardice is not cowardice and that for guilt there may be 'extenuating circumstances' It is said that among those shot were many good comrades, some even whose guilt was redeemed by their previous ser- vices, by years in prison and exile. Perfectly true. No one contends that they perished in order to prop those pre- up cepts of the old military code of 'setting an example' when amidst beating of drums 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' exacted. Of course, Svyazhsk is a were tragedy. But everyone who has lived the life of Red Army, who was born and the grew strong with it in the battles of Zazan, will testify that the iron spirit of this army would have never crystallized, that the fusion between the Party and the soldier masses, between the rank and le and the summits of the commanding statt would have never been realized if the eve of storming Kazan where on hundreds of soldiers were to lose their lives, the Party had failed to show clearly before the eyes of the whole army that it was prepared to offer the Revolution this great and bloody sacrifice, that for the Party, too, the severe laws of com- radely discipline are binding; that the Party, too, has the courage to apply ruth- lessly the laws of the Soviet Republic to its own members as well. Twenty-seven were shot and this filled in the breach which the famous raiders had succeeded in making in the self- confidence and unity of the Fifth Army.

This salvo which exacted punishment from communists as well as commanders and simple soldiers for cowardice and dishonour in battle forced the least class- conscious section of the soldier mass and the one most inclined toward desertion (and of course there was such a section, too) to pull themselves together, and to align themselves with those who went consciously and without any compulsion into battle. Precisely in these days was decided the fate of Kazan, and not that alone, but the fate of the White intervention. entire The Red Army found its self-confidence and became regenerated and strong during the long weeks of defence and offence.

In conditions of constant danger and with the greatest moral exertions it worked out its laws, its discipline, its new heroic statutes. For the first time panic in the face of the enemy's more modern technique became dissolved. Here one learned to make headway against any artillery; and from involuntarily, the elemental instinct of self-preservation, new methods of warfare were born, those specific battle methods which are already being studied in the highest military academies as the methods of the Civil War. Of extreme importance is the fact that in those days in Svyazhsk there was pre- cisely such a man as Trotsky.

NO MATTER what his calling his or name, it is clear that the creator of the Red Army, the future chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Trotsky's daughter Zina, driven to suicide by Stalin's p Republic, would have had to be in Svyazhsk; had to live through the entire practical experience of these weeks of battle; had to call upon all the resources of his will and organizational genius for the defence of Svyazhsk, for the defence of the army organism smashed under the fire of the Whites. Moreover, in revolutionary war there is still another force, another factor with- out which victory cannot be gained, and that is: the mighty romanticism of the Revolution which enables people straight from the barricades to cast themselves immediately in the harsh forms of the military machine, without losing the quick, light step gained in political demon- strations or the independent spirit and flexibility gained perhaps in long years of Party work under illegality.

To have conquered in 1918 one had to take all the fire of the Revolution, all of its incandescent heat, and harness them to the vulgar, repellant age-old pattern of the army. Up till now history has always solved this problem with imposing but moth- She would laden theatrical tricks. sum- mon to the stage some individual in a 'three-cornered hat and a grey field uni- form' and he or some other general on a white horse would cut the revolutionary blood and marrow into republics, banners, slogans. In military construction, as in so many other things, the Russian Revolution went its own way. Insurrection and war fused into one, the Army and the Party grew together, inseparably interwoven, and on the regimental banners were inscribed the unity of their mutual aims, all the sharpest formulae of the class struggle, In the days of Svyazhsk all this remained as yet unformed, only hanging in the air, seeking for expression. The Workers' and Peasants' Army had to find expression somehow; it had to take on its outward shape, produce its own formulae, but how? This no one clearly knew yet. At that time, of course, no precepts, no dogmatic programme were available in accordance with which this titanic organism could grow and develop.

In the Party and in the masses there lived only a foreboding, a creative pre- monition of this military revolutionary organization which was never seen before and to which each day's battle whispered some new real characteristic.

Trotsky's great merit lies in this, that he caught up in flight the least gesture of the masses which already bore upon it the of this sought-for and unique stamp organizational formula. He sifted out and then set going all the little practices whereby besieged Svyazhsk simplified, hastened or organized its work of battle. And this, not simply in the narrow technical sense. No. Every new successful combination of 'specialist and commissar'. , of him who commands and the one executing the command and bear- ing the responsibility for it-every suc- cessful combination, after it had met the test of experience and had been lucidly was immediately transformed formulated, into an order, a circular, a regulation. In this way the living revolutionary experi- was not lost, nor forgotten, nor ence deformed. The norm obligatory for all was not mediocrity but, on the contrary, the best, Lenin and Trotsky (centre) with delegates to the Tenth ( Bolshevik Party, after the storming of the Kronstadt fortre the things of genius conceived by the masses themselves in the most fiery, most creative moments of the struggle.

In little things as well as big-whether in such complex matters as the division of labour among the members of the Revolutionary Military Council or the quick, snappy, friendly gesture exchanged between a Red Commander in greeting and soldier busy and hurrying a each somewhere--it all had to be drawn from life, assimilated and returned as a norm to the masses for universal use.

And wherever things weren't moving, or there was creaking, or bungling, one had to sense what was wrong, one had to help, one had to pull, as the midwife pulls out the new-born babe during a difficult birth. One can be the most adept at articu- lating, one can give to army a a new rationally impeccable form, and plastic nonetheless render its spirit frigid, permit it to evaporate and remain incapable of keeping within this spirit alive the chicken-wire of juridical formulae. To pre- vent this, one must be a great revolution- ist; one must possess the intuition of a creator and an internal radio transmitter of vast power without which there is no cide by Stalin's persecution.

1933, Cassis. Trotsky and his wife ar

PAGE THREE

approaching the masses. In the last analysis it is precisely this revolutionary instinct which is the court of highest sanction; which exactly purges its new creative justice of all deeply hid- den counter-revolutionary back-slidings. It places its hand of violence upon the deceitful formal justice in the name of the highest, proletarian justice which does not permit its elastic laws to ossify, to become divorced from life and burden the shoulders. of Red Army soldiers with petty, aggravating, superfluous loads.

Trotsky possessed this intuitive sense.

In him the revolutionist was never elbowed aside by the soldier, the military the commander. And when a deserter, we stood in fear of him as one of us, a great rebel who could crush and slay anyone for base cowardice, for treason not to the military but the world- proletarian revolutionary cause.

It was impossible for Trotsky to have been a coward, for otherwise the con- tempt of this extraordinary army would have crushed him; and it could never have forgiven a weakling for the fraternal blood of the 27 which sprayed its first vict few days before the occupation of Kazan by our troops Lev Davidovich had to leave Svyazhsk; the news of the attempt on Lenin's life called him to Moscow. But neither Savinkov's raid on Svyazhsk, organized with great mastery by the Social-Revolutionists, nor the attempt to assassinate Lenin, undertaken by the same party almost simultaneously with Savinkov's raid, could now halt the Red Army. The final wave of the offensive engulfed Kazan. On September 9 late at night the troops were embarked on ships and by morning, around 5.30, the clumsy many-decked transports, convoyed by torpedo boats, moved toward the piers of Kazan. It was strange to sail in moonlit twilight past the half-demolished mill with a green roof, behind which a White battery had half-burned been located; past the 'Delphin', gutted and beached the on deserted shore; past all the familiar river bends, tongues of land, sandbanks and inlets over which from dawn to evening death had walked for so many weeks, clouds of smoke had rolled, and golden sheaves of artillery fire had flared.

We sailed with lights out in absolute silence over the black, cold, smoothly flowing Volga. Aft of the stern, light foam on the dull humming wake washed away by waves that remember nothing and flow unconcernedly to the Caspian Sea. And yet the place through which the giant ship was at this moment silently gliding had only yester- day been a maelstrom ripped and ploughed where a mement ago a nightbird tipped wildly exploding shells. noiselessly with its wing the water from which a slight mist curled upward into the cold air, yesterday so many white spumy fountains were rising; yesterday, words of command were restlessly sound- ing and slim torpedo boats were threading their way through smoke and flames and a rain of steel splinters, their hulls trem- bling from the compressed impatience of engines and from the recoil of their two- batteries which fired once a minute gun with a sound resembling iron hiccups.

es to the Tenth Congress of the • Kronstadt fortress. People were firing, scattering away under the hail of down-clattering shells, mopping up the blood on the decks.

And now everything is silent; the Volga flows as it has flowed a thousand years ago, as it will flow centuries from now.

We reached the piers without firing a shot. The first flickers of dawn lit up the sky. In the greyish-pink twilight, humped, black, charred phantoms began to appear.

Cranes, beams of burned buildings, shat- tered telegraph poles-all this seemed to have endured endless sorrow and seemed to have lost all capacity for feeling like a breath's kingdoin washed by the bea oes twisted, withered branches. of the northern dawn. And the deserted with their guns muzzles uplifted resemble in the twilight castdown figures, frozen in mute despair, with heads propped up by hands cold and wet with dew. Fog. People began shivering from cold and nervous tension; the air is permeated with the odour of machine oil and tarred rope. The gunner's blue collar turns with of the body viewing in the movement the unpopulated, soundless amazement shore reposing in dead silence.

This is victory. y and his wife arrive secretly in France.

LEON TROTSKY: LENIN'S

ALLY AGAINST STALINISM

PAGE FOUR

TROTSKYISM

arose as in the political tendency struggle of the Left Opposi- tion to understand and check the rise of the Soviet bureau- cracy as personified and led by Stalin. Contrary to the claims of the Stalinists, and the slanders publicists of bourgeois and of historians, the continuity Marxism, the revolutionary theoretical life-line of the in- ternational working class, was faction not preserved by the grouped Stalin at around the time of Lenin's death in 1924.

break Though masking its from Bolshevism with a loudly- adherence to proclaimed Leninism', Stalin's bureaucratic clique proceeded to undermine all the basic tenets' of Marx- in of his the last year active defended and devel- ism, as political life. oped by Lenin in his struggle These facts can no longer be to build the Russian Bolshevik kept from the membership Communist Party and the British Communist Party the International. by its Stalinist leadership.

The Stalin first propounded the journal of the theoretical reformist, nationalist theory

CPGB,

*Marxism Today', pub- could that complete socialism lished in its July issue a short be built in Russia without article, by but devastating further revolutions in the West historian Jack novelist and Lenin less than a year after on the of Lindsay, ( origins died. Stalinism. of The Communist Parties After sketching in the social the word, within this scheme had to renounce the of things, for and struggle state power Trot- convert themselves, in 'frontier sky's words, into guards for the Soviet Union'.

This reactionary line was in fact carried into the various sections of the Communist International, with disastrous results in Britain (the General of Strike), ( China (the victory Chiang Kai-shek and his mas- of the Shanghai com- sacre munists) and finally Germany, where the Nazis crushed the entire workers' movement and for began their preparations war on the Soviet Union. Side by side with these in- defeats the ternational went strangling of Soviet democracy With o the Party and hit state, oppositionists ousting and from leading positions servile their replacement by of officials careerists - often old Tsarist the regimeloyal Stalin. to Trotsky, as the main theor- etician of the Left Oppositi ot

SVERDLOV

constant analysis made a and turn in the every twist

STALIN

line of the bureaucracy, all the developing alternative

(KAMENEV

time

MILYUTIN

strengthen the policies to and state home economy at

JOFFE

SHAUMYAN

International and turn the original back towards its

(SOKOLNIKOV

SMILGA

Leninist path in the capitalist 18 world. KOLLONTAi But in all this work, Trotsky

BERZIN

20 political was building on a foundation already established Lenin. by The leading 23 members of the 'October' [ The fight for international- Central Committee Party democracy and ism, for • Names not encircled died a natural death bureaucracy, for the against and economic background to development of socialist plan- 'Lenin's fight' ning and against pro-capitalist last against Stalin, Lindsay says the follow- elements in town and country ing: of the -all these essentials "The disaster was the crip- Left Opposition's programme had been anticipated by Lenin the death of pling and then Monday, 14 September 'Trotsky's struggle against Stalinism' Monday, 21 September "Trotsky's fight against revisionism'

BEAVER HALL

GARLICK HILL

Near Mansion House tube Admission 2s Starts 8 p.m. Both lectures given by G. HEALY (SLL national secretary) Trotsky exposed Leon Sedov, Trotsky's ablest political collabora- tor. Murdered by the GPU, February 1938.

trials frame-up Commission. Lenin, and the assumption of power by Stalin. Stalin did not want to change the system of authority exercised wholly from above; he did everything to strengthen and petrify the situation of authoritative cen- tralism and bureaucracy. Every- just what one interested in happened should read "Lenin's Last Fight" by Moshe Lewin.

*This book, extremely sym- pathetic to Lenin, is largely on recently published . based

TROTSKY

NOGIN

BUKHARIN

8

MURANOV

ZINOVIEV

17

RYKOV

16

URITSKY

15

ARTEM

LOMOV

(Sergeyev) 23 14

KRESTINSKY

22

BUBNOV

21 f the 'October' [Revolution] d a natural death. Soviet material: the 'Journal' in Volume XLV of Lenin's ... the 'Memoirs of 'Works' Fotieva', one of Lenin's per- and the . sonal secretaries; articles that Lenin managed to into print in his last get months, despite the opposition • of the Politbureau' So Lindsay's are sources impeccable. They simply tell the same story that Trotsky in his work "The revealed Stalin School of Falsification' first published in English in 1937. All the documents quoted from or referred to by either or Lewin, together Lindsay with many more, are repro- duced by Trotsky in his ex- posure of Stalinist historical falsification. But until the Khrushchev 'Secret Speech' of 1956, Stalin- ists throughout the world had denied their existence, claim- ing them to be Trotskyist for- geries! Using this material, Lindsay proves that in his fight against Moscow the 1939. Trotsky, his wife. Nata the Dewey son Seva in Mexico.

WORKERS PRESS-KEI

Lenin and Trotsky• (on stairs) on the orators' dais, Theatre Square, Moscow. bureaucracy-over the issues of Stalin's nationalist treat- ment of Georgia, the defence the state monopoly foreign trade and the weaken- of the Soviet power- ing Lenin turned for assistance to of the Leon Trotsky : 'Lenin ... was at odds with Stalin on the question of the foreign trade monopoly, con- sidering that Stalin's views would lead to a disintegration of, or at least a serious blow to a socialist economy. 'On December 13 [1922] he suffered two dangerous strokes.

Two days later he wrote to Stalin saying that he had taken the necessary steps to retire and had come to an agreement with Trotsky, who would take up and defend his position.

Stalin saw that he was up against too strong an opposi- tion [ie, Lenin and Trotsky !] and on the 18th the decision taken foreign trade was on rescinded ..: Lindsay then goes on: 'Lenin wrote to Trotsky con- gratulating him on their vic- tory. Next day Stalin made a fierce personal attack on Krup- skaya for having taken down this letter [the one to Trotsky] at Lenin's dictation.' As Lindsay notes, in the middle of his struggle against Stalin, Lenin drafted his famous and long-suppressed "Testament', the second part of which bluntly denounces Stalin for his disloyalty to the and calls for his re- Party, moval from the post of Gen- eral Secretary. Finally Lindsay deals with the outcome of thé inquiry into the 'Georgian Affair' , In which Stalin was deeply In- volved with two other future members of his faction, Dzér- zhinsky and Orjonikidze: 'The Politburo did its best to keep the dossier from him; its session had endorsed the commission's conclusions and white washed Orjonikidze. Finally in February Lenin got what he wanted; he was also his own using private com- to find out what was mittee happening. 'He wrote again to Trotsky take up the asking him to defence of the Georgian CC; next day, March 6, he wrote a

• PODVOISKY

CUSSIEV

SVERDLOV•

• GOLKIN

The Petrograd Military Revolutionary Comm Trotsky at work on h ky, his wife. Natalia and grand-

: PRESS-KEEP LEFT

letter to Stalin demanding an apology for his treatment of Krupskaya; he also wrote to the Georgians stating that he was on their side against Stalin and Orjonikidze. Kamenev was told by Krupskaya [and she would have known] that Lenin meant to crush Stalin politi- cally. 'But the strain of the situa- tion was more than he could bear; on the 10th a new stroke deprived him of the power to speak. [The vital 12th Party Congress, where Lenin in- tended to denounce Stalin openly, was due to begin in the middle of April.] 'He lingered on, hopelessly trying to find out what was happening, unable to do any- thing about it, and died on January 21, 1924. A more tragic position it is hard to imagine.' Here the roles and political positions of the three main figures in this tragedy are pre- sented in a way totally in con- . the Stalinist' myths flict with e to .. of the period. Lenin is here accurately of portrayed as an enemy bureaucracy and nationalism, which was defended within the Party by Stalin. But above all, and this is the significance of Unior the article, Lindsay shows that on ar 1948 1. Trotsky was the only leading Party member to whom Lenin could turn for political solid- arity in his 'last fight'.

Lindsay concluded his bomb- shell with the telling comment, aimed, we can be reasonably sure, at his own Party leader- ship: 'This story of Lenin's last days should be known to all communists. To talk of Lenin- ism and fidelity to Lenin with- out realizing what his struggle was in those tragic days is to insult his memory! effectively demol- Lindsay ishes the lie that Stalin de- fended and continued Leninism after its founder's death.

He shows that even . while

MOLOTOV

OVSEYENKO

UNSCHLICHT•

• DJERZHINSKY•

• DYBENKO

olutionary Committee. sky at work on his biography of Stalin.

Lenin lived, Stalin and his sup- porters were uniting to under- mine the conquests of the Revolution, from its economy to the policy of national self- determination. But history did not stop with Lenin's death. Just where Lindsay ends his analysis of the problems of the Soviet the Bolshevik Union and Party, it is necessary to press ahead. What was the relationship between the rise of the Stalin- ist bureaucracy and its accept- ance of in one 'socialism country'? And in turn, what effect did the adoption of Stalin's policies in Russia have on the develop- ment of the parties of the Communist International, in- cluding, of course, the Com- munist Party of Great Britain, of which Lindsay is a member?

The answer to these ques- tions cannot be gleaned . from a study of Lenin's last writings alone, for he had only begun to get to grips with the new problem of bureaucracy within a workers' state, and no Party leader had dared to challenge Marxist axiom that the the Russian Revolution could only bring socialism to the Soviet Union once it had conquered on an international scale.

Postcard issued on the first anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, entitled 'The leaders of the Proletarian Revolution', featuring Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev,. Lunacharsky, Zinoviev and Sverdlov. - • The task of answering this • fell to Trotsky, revisionism and it is in his writings, dating from 'The New Course' (late 1923) and 'Lessons of October' (1924) through to 'The Perma- "The Class Nature of the State' (1934) and finally his classic analysis of the Soviet "The Revolution Be- Union trayed' (1937) that the key to understanding the present crisis in British, Czechoslo- vakian and world Stalinism will be found. ironically, Lindsay's For article is the most recent in a series which have attempted to answer the question addressed tó 'Marxism Today' readers by Sling, the widow of Otto executed in the Slansky 'trial' of 1952. That question was: Why did it happen?'. Lindsay, by returning to the decisive struggles of 1922-1923 within the Bolshevik Party, puts his finger on the historical source of the Stalinist infection Trotsky once described as 'the syphilis of the labour move- ment'. The continuity of the Marx- ist movement, which today is defended by the International Committee of the Fourth Inter- national, does not reside simply in books. It was the fight of Trotsky and his comrades, a fight Trot- sky knew would probably end in their physical destruction at the hands of the Stalinist bureaucracy, to first of all re-

TROTSKY ANNIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT AUGUST 1970

the Party to the pro- It is in that tradition of the turn gramme of Lenin, and when fight for Marxist continuity impossible, this proved to and revolutionary leadership found a new International.

that we honour and commem- It was in this fight for revo- Orate the sination verseon lutionary leadership and pro- assassination working within the gramme Trotsky, Lenin's comrade in class that the theory of Marx- his last fight against the future defended and devel- ism was Stalinist bureaucracy and oped against its Stalinist and founder of the Fourth Inter- social-democratic enemies.

national.

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Trotsky dead, Mexico, August 20, 1940.