Already from the end of October, the correspondence of Trotsky, his wife and son, who were in Alma-Ata, was almost completely suspended. Even telegrams about health did not reach.
On December 16, a representative of the GPU came from Moscow to Trotsky and presented him with an ultimatum: to stop directing the work of the opposition. Trotsky responded to this with the following letter to the Central Committee and the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern.
Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to the Executive Committee of the CominternToday, December 16, Volynsky, authorized by the OGPU collegium, presented me orally on behalf of this collegium with the following ultimatum:
“... The work of your like-minded people in the country,” he declared almost verbatim, “has lately been counter-revolutionary in nature; the conditions in which you are placed in Alma-Ata give you the full opportunity to direct this work; in view of this, the collegium decided to demand from you a categorical obligation to stop your activities - otherwise the board will be forced to change the conditions of your existence in the sense of completely isolating you from political life, in connection with which the question of changing your place of residence also arises.
I told the representative of the GPU that I could only give a written answer in response, if I received from him a written formulation of the GPU's ultimatum. My refusal to answer verbally was due to the confidence, based on the whole past, that my words would again be maliciously distorted in order to mislead the working people of the USSR and the whole world. However, regardless of how the GPU collegium, which does not play an independent role in this matter, but only technically fulfills the old and long-known decision of the Stalin faction, acts, I consider it necessary to bring the following to the attention of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Executive Committee of the Comintern. I was asked to renounce political activity means the demand to renounce the struggle for the interests of the international proletariat, which I have been waging without interruption for thirty-two years, that is, throughout my entire conscious life. The attempt to present this activity as "counter-revolutionary" comes from those whom I accuse trampling on the foundations of the teachings of Marx and Lenipa, in violation of the historical interests of the world revolution, in breaking with the traditions and precepts of October, in the unconscious, but all the more threatening, preparation of Thermidor.
To renounce political activity would mean ending the struggle against the present leadership of the CPSU, which is heaping more and more political difficulties on the objective difficulties of socialist construction, engendered by the opportunist inability to pursue a proletarian policy of great historical proportions; it would mean renouncing the struggle against the stifling party regime, which reflects the growing pressure of the hostile classes on the proletarian vanguard; this would mean passively putting up with the economic policy of opportunism, which, while undermining and shaking the foundations of the dictatorship of the proletariat, holding back its material and cultural growth, at the same time deals cruel blows to the alliance of workers and laboring peasants, this basis of Soviet power.
To renounce political activity would be to cover up with one's silence the unfortunate policy of the international leadership, which led in Germany in 1923 to the surrender of great revolutionary positions without a fight; tried to cover up opportunistic mistakes with adventures in Estonia and Bulgaria; at the Fifth Congress [of the Comintern] it assessed the whole world situation in reverse and gave the parties directives that only weakened and split them; the policy which, through the Anglo-Russian Committee, kept the General Council [of the British Trade Unions], the bulwark of imperialist reaction, in the most difficult months for the traitorous reformists; which in Poland, at a sharp internal turn, turned the vanguard of the proletariat into the rearguard of Piłsudski; which in China carried through to the end the historical line of Menshevism and thereby helped the bourgeoisie to crush, bleed and behead the revolutionary proletariat; which everywhere and everywhere weakens the Comintern, squandering its ideological capital.
To stop political activity would mean passively putting up with the blunting and outright falsification of the main (our weapon, the Marxist method, and those strategic lessons that we won with the help of this method in the struggle under the leadership of Lenin; this would mean passively tolerating and covering up the theory of the kulak growing into socialism; the myth of the revolutionary mission of the colonial bourgeoisie; the slogan of a "two-part worker-peasant party" for the East, breaking with the foundations class theory; finally, as the crowning achievement of these and other reactionary fantasies, the theory of socialism in separate country, the main and most criminal undermining under revolutionary internationalism.
The Leninist wing of the party has been suffering blows since 1923, that is, from the unparalleled collapse of the German revolution. The growing force of these blows keeps pace with the further defeat of the international and Soviet proletariat as a result of the opportunist leadership.
Theoretical reason and political experience testify that the period of historical return, rollback, i.e. reaction, can come not only after the bourgeois, but also after proletarian revolution. For six years we have been living in the USSR under conditions of growing reaction against October and thereby clearing the way for Thermidor. The most obvious and complete expression of this reaction within the Party is the wild persecution and organizational defeat of the left wing. In its last attempts to repulse the open Thermidorians, the Stalinist faction lives on "fragments" and "fragments" of the ideas of the opposition. She is creatively powerless. The struggle to the left deprives it of any stability. Its practical policy has no core, is false, contradictory, unreliable. Such a noisy campaign against the Right danger remains three-quarters of a show and serves primarily to cover up before the masses a genuine war of extermination against the Bolshevik-Leninists. The world bourgeoisie and world Menshevism equally illuminate this war: these judges have long recognized the "historical correctness" on the side of Stalin.
If it were not for this blind, cowardly and incompetent policy of adapting to the bureaucracy and philistinism, the position of the working masses in the twelfth year of the dictatorship would have been incomparably more favorable; military defense is immeasurably stronger and more reliable; The Comintern would have stood at a completely different height, and would not have retreated step by step before the treacherous and corrupt Social Democracy.
The incurable weakness of the apparatus reaction in the face of external power lies in the fact that it does not know what it is doing, It fulfills the order of the hostile classes. There can be no greater historical curse on the faction that has emerged from the revolution and is undermining it.
The greatest historical strength of the opposition, despite its outward weakness in currently is that it keeps its finger on the pulse of the world historical process, clearly sees the dynamics of class forces, foresees tomorrow and consciously prepares it. To give up political activity would mean to give up the preparation of tomorrow.
The threat to change the conditions of my existence and isolate me from political activity sounds as if I had not been exiled 4,000 kilometers from Moscow, 250 kilometers from the desert provinces of China, to a place where the worst malaria shares dominance with leprosy and plague . As if the faction of Stalin, of which the GPU is the direct organ, had not done everything it could to isolate me not only from political life, but from all other life. Moscow newspapers are delivered here within ten days to a month or more. Letters reach me as a rare exception, after a month, two or three months in the boxes of the GPU and the secretariat of the Central Committee. My two closest collaborators since the civil war, vols. Sermuks and Poznansky, who had decided to voluntarily accompany me to the place of exile, were immediately arrested upon arrival, imprisoned with criminal charges in the basement, and then sent to remote corners of the north. From a hopelessly ill daughter, whom you expelled from the party and removed from work, a letter came to me from a Moscow hospital for 73 days, so that my answer did not find her alive. A letter about the serious illness of the second daughter, also expelled from the party and removed from work, was delivered to me from Moscow a month ago on the 43rd day. Telegraphic inquiries about health most often do not reach their destination. Thousands of impeccable Bolshevik-Leninists are now in the same and even worse situation, whose services to the October Revolution and the international proletariat immeasurably exceed those who imprisoned or exiled them.
Preparing new, more and more severe repressions against the opposition, the narrow faction of Stalin, whom Lenin called in his “testament” rude and disloyal (unscrupulous), when these qualities have not yet developed into a hundredth part of him, is constantly trying through the GPU to throw some kind of apposition or "connection" with the enemies of the proletarian dictatorship. In a narrow circle, the current leaders say: "This is necessary for the masses." Sometimes even more cynically: "This is for fools." My closest collaborator, Georgy Vasilievich Butov, who was in charge of the secretariat of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic during all the years of the civil war, was arrested and kept in unheard of conditions, extorting from this pure and modest person and impeccable party member confirmation of deliberately false, fake, forged accusations in the spirit of Thermidorian amalgams. Butov responded with a heroic hunger strike that lasted about 50 days and brought him to death in prison in September of this year. Violence, beatings, physical and moral torture are applied to the best Bolshevik workers for their loyalty to the precepts of October. These are the general conditions which, in the words of the collegium of the GPU, "do not hinder" the opposition's political activity at present, and mine in particular.
The pitiful threat to change these conditions for me in the direction of further isolation means nothing more than the decision of the Stalin faction to replace exile with prison. This solution, as mentioned above, is not new to me. Planned as far back as 1924, it is gradually being put into practice through a series of steps in order to surreptitiously accustom the suppressed and deceived party to Stalinist methods, in which gross disloyalty has now matured to poisoned bureaucratic disgrace.
In the statement we submitted to the Sixth [Comintern] Congress, we, having cast aside the slander against us, which tarnishes only its authors, reaffirmed our unshakable readiness to fight within the Party for the ideas of Marx and Lenin by all those means of Party democracy, without which the Party suffocates, ossifies. and crumbles. We again proclaimed our unshakable readiness in word and deed to help the proletarian core of the party to level the course of policy, to improve the health of the party and the Soviet government through friendly and concerted efforts without upheavals and catastrophes. We are on this path even now. To the accusation of factional work, we replied that it could only be liquidated by the removal of the treacherously imposed Article 58 on us and the restoration of us in the Party, not as repentant imaginary sinners, but as revolutionary fighters who did not betray their banner. And, as if anticipating the ultimatum presented today, we wrote verbatim in the Statement:
“Only completely depraved bureaucracy could demand from the revolutionaries this renunciation (from political activity, that is, from serving the party and the international revolution). Only contemptible renegades could give such obligations.”
I can not change anything in these words. I again bring them to the attention of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Executive Committee of the Comintern, which bear full responsibility for the work of the GPU.
We have never been so sure of the final triumph of the ideas of Marx and Lenin that we defend, as now.
* * *For a month after the document was sent, everything remained externally unchanged, except for an even more ferocious postal blockade and increased surveillance.
On January 20, the same representative of the GPU, accompanied by numerous armed agents of the GPU, came to Trotsky's apartment and presented him with the following decision of the GPU:
Extract from the minutes of the Special Meeting at the Collegium of the OGPUThe case of citizen Trotsky Lev Davydovich under Art. 58-10 of the Criminal Code on charges of counter-revolutionary activities, expressed in the organization of an illegal anti-Soviet party, whose activities have lately been aimed at provoking anti-Soviet speeches and preparing an armed struggle against Soviet power.
Resolved:
Citizen Trotsky Lev Davidovich - to be expelled from the USSR.
Alma-Ata Verno: beginning. Alma-Ata regional department of the OGPU
Trotsky issued a receipt to the authorized GPU. "Criminal in essence and lawless in form, the decision of the OS under the collegium of the GPU of January 18, 1929 was announced to me on January 20, 1929 by L. Trotsky."
On January 22, Trotsky with his wife and son were in a car, then in a sleigh and again in a car, sent under escort to the Frunze station - 250 kilometers, - from there along railway towards Moscow. Back in Alma-Ata, Trotsky declared to the representative of the GPU that he could not be sent abroad at all against his will, and at the same time categorically demanded that the intended place of deportation be indicated. Only in the Samara region was he informed that the matter concerned Constantinople. Trotsky declared that, protesting against deportation abroad in general, he would resist deportation to Turkey by all means available to him. This was communicated by direct wire to Moscow. There, apparently, everything was foreseen, except for Trotsky's refusal to voluntarily go abroad. Moscow has started new negotiations with foreign countries. In the meantime, a special train with Trotsky and his family (two more family members were delivered from Moscow in deep secrecy - to say goodbye) was transferred to a deaf railway line in the forest and stood motionless under snowstorms for 12 days. A steam locomotive with a wagon went daily for food and lunch to the nearest major station. Finally, on February 8, Bulanov, the new representative of the GPU, announced that Moscow's attempt to obtain consent to the expulsion of Trotsky to Germany ran into a categorical refusal of the German government and that therefore the decision to expel him to Turkey remains in force . To Trotsky’s repeated statement that he would declare to the Turkish authorities at the border his refusal to proceed further, Bulanov, authorized by the GPU, replied that such a statement would not change anything, because the issue had been agreed with the Turkish government in the event that Trotsky refused to voluntarily go to Turkey.
The representative of the GPU sent to Moscow by direct wire (the Central Committee, the Executive Committee of the Comintern, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR) the following statement by Trotsky:
Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Central Executive Committee of the USSR, ECCI
The chairman of the GPU reported that the German Social-Democrats the government refused a visa. This means that Muller and Stalin agree on the political assessment of the opposition. The representative of the GPU said that I would be handed over to Kemal against my will. This means that Stalin conspired with (strangler of the Communists) Kemal about reprisals against the opposition as a common enemy. The representative of the GPU refused to talk about minimum guarantees against the White Guards, Russians, Turkish and others, even if they were forcibly deported to Turkey. Underneath this lies a direct calculation of the assistance of the White Guards to Stalin, which in principle does not differ in any way from the assistance provided in advance by Kemal.
The failure to fulfill the promise already made to me about the delivery of the necessary books from Moscow is a partial illustration of gross disloyalty in big and small.
The statement of the representative of the GPU that Kemal had given me a “safeguard certificate” for my belongings minus weapons, i.e. revolvers, is in fact the disarmament of me at the very first steps in the face of the White Guards with a deliberately false reference to the Turkish government.
I report the above for the timely consolidation of responsibility and for the justification of those steps that I deem it necessary to take against purely Thermidorian treachery.
February 7-8, 1929 L. TrotskyBut "the unity of the front" with the Turkish authorities was already fully ensured by this time, and Stalin could only continue to carry out his plan.
On February 10, a special train, consisting of several wagons filled with GPU agents, delivered Trotsky to Odessa. Here it was supposed to land on the Kalinin steamer, but it froze in the ice. Another steamer, the Ilyich, was hastily put under steam, in whose cabins a bitter cold still reigned in the first hours. Here the leadership passed to the third representative of the GPU, Fokin. Trotsky first made a verbal protest to him, then handed him the following document.
Authorized GPU gr. FokinAccording to the statement of the representative of the board of the GPU Bulanov, you have a categorical order, despite my protest, to land me, by using physical violence, in Constantinople, that is, to hand over to Kemal and his agents.
You can fulfill this order only because the GPU (i.e., Stalin) has a ready agreement with Kemal on the forced placement of a proletarian revolutionary in Turkey by the combined efforts of the GPU and the Turkish national fascist police.
If I am forced into this moment submit to this violence, which is based on unparalleled treachery on the part of former students Lenin (Stalin and Co.), at the same time I consider it necessary to warn you that the inevitable and, I hope, the near-term revival of the October Revolution, the CPSU and the Comintern on the true foundations of Bolshevism will give me sooner or later the opportunity to bring to justice as the organizers of this Thermidorian crime, as well as its performers.
Steamboat "Ilyich", when approaching Constantinople.L. Trotsky
When a Turkish police officer arrived on the ship, having been warned in advance from Odessa that the ship was carrying Trotsky and his family, Trotsky handed him the following statement addressed to Kemal:
His Excellency Mr. President of the Republic of Turkey
Your Majesty!
At the gates of Constantinople, I have the honor to inform you that I did not arrive at the Turkish border by my own choice, and that I can cross this border only by submitting to violence.
Deign, Mr. President, to accept my corresponding feelings.
The Turkish police officer, as the authorized GPU had warned in advance, pretended that this did not concern him at all. The steamer followed on to the raid, and Trotsky, after a 22-day journey, ended up in Turkey.
Takova Short story this expulsion, set out according to the documents. We shall have occasion to give more details about it.
STATEMENT
To your today's demand to leave the consulate, I answer the following:
Bulanov and Volynsky proposed to me on behalf of the GPU, i.e., the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the following conditions for settling in Constantinople:
A. GPU agents find an apartment in a separate house outside the city, i.e., in such conditions that give minimal topographical guarantees against a completely easy and unpunished assassination attempt by the White Guards or foreign fascists.
b. Sermuks and Poznansky are delivered here by the nearest steamer, that is, not later than in three weeks.
V. Until their arrival, I live - by my own choice - either in the consulate (which, in the opinion of the GPU, would be the best), or in a mansion of the type indicated above, with temporary protection from agents of the GPU. None of these conditions is fulfilled.
A. Of the 5-6 apartments shown, only one meets the security conditions to some extent. But it takes two or three weeks to bring it into a usable form, and I do not know at all whether the financial requirements of the householder will be within my power.
b. The arrival of Sermuks and Poznansky, contrary to a categorical obligation, is now denied.
V. Fokin left without fulfilling any of the obligations that, according to Bulanov, were assigned to him.
Meanwhile, Constantinople is swarming with white Russians. White newspapers circulate here in the amount of more than a thousand copies. References to "active" whites being expelled are simply ridiculous. The most active, of course, are kept secret, not to mention the fact that they can come from other places at any time and find cover with "inactive" whites. Impunity is guaranteed to them in advance.
Under these conditions, Moscow's refusal to fulfill its obligations and send Sermuks and Poznansky and your simultaneous demand to leave the consulate building, although you did not even offer any suitable apartment, means a demand that I voluntarily expose myself to the blows of the White Guards.
After you informed me of Moscow's refusal to fulfill this promise regarding Sermuks-Poznansky, I stated that in order to avoid a global scandal on "apartment" grounds, I would try to call friends from Germany or France who would help me get settled in a private apartment or they would accompany me to another country (in case of obtaining a visa).
Despite the fact that the persons I called could not even leave yet, you offer me a new demand to leave the consulate. This haste is directed entirely against the most elementary security requirements, mine and my family.
I have no desire to complicate an already difficult situation. I have no interest in staying at the consulate even one extra day. But I do not intend to compromise the most elementary requirements for the safety of my family. If you try to resolve the issue not on the basis of an agreement, but on the use of physical isolation of me and my family, as you told me today, then I will reserve complete freedom of action. Responsibility for the consequences will be entirely on the Central Committee of the CPSU.
To the representative of the GPU citizen MinskyUnder the conditions in which you are evicting the Consulate from the consulate with the use of physical violence, you are fulfilling the instructions of those Thermidorians who consciously and deliberately want to bring me and my family under the blows of the enemies of the October Revolution.
You cannot fail to understand this, for you know the situation in Constantinople too well, and consequently, not only Stalin and his faction, but also you, the executors, bear full responsibility for the consequences.
TelegramSuitcases [and] things to write out [from] Berlin [with] the assistance of Vera Moiseevna Krestinskaya. To buy some things, Russian books, writing materials [in] Moscow.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Some newspapers in Constantinople report that in a conversation with Turkish journalists I said that I was going to 1) produce in the USSR new revolution; 2) to build the fourth International.
Both of these statements are the exact opposite of what I said. My views on these two questions have been expressed in numerous speeches, articles and books.
With perfect respect,
A LETTER TO ASSOCIATES IN THE USSRDear friends! You, of course, have not escaped the fact that Pravda, Bolshevik, and the rest of the official press have now resumed in full force the campaign against "Trotskyism." Although the behind-the-scenes side of the turn is, unfortunately, unknown to us, the very fact of the resumption of the discussion, which had almost ceased for a certain time, is our greatest victory.
Six months ago, Molotov specifically recommended that the French Communists refrain from any polemics with "Trotskyism" in view of its virtual liquidation. Around that time, I wrote to the French comrades that our victory would be half assured the moment we forced the official apparatus to enter into polemics with us, because here our ideological preponderance, which had been accumulating for a long time, would inevitably come to light with full strength. And we will begin to reap the fruits of the theoretical and political work of the opposition over the past seven years. This primarily applies, of course, to the Western countries, where we have our own publications and where we can strike back. In the USSR, the apparatus can, thanks to the one-sided nature of the polemic, drag out the denouement Ideological struggle. But just tighten it up. In the past, there were so many confusions, lies, contradictions, zigzags, mistakes that the simplest general conclusions are now being imposed of themselves on broad circles of the Party and the working class. And since these elementary conclusions about the present leadership basically coincide with what the opposition was preaching, the apparatus found itself compelled to start all over again its entire study of "Trotskyism" in order to try in this way to prevent contact between the critical discontent of the party and the formulas of the opposition. But there is no doubt that this dish, when heated, will not bring salvation. In some recent articles, such as this helpless Pokrovsky73, the belated call for a elaboration of "Trotskyism" has an obviously panicky character. The significance of these symptoms cannot be sufficiently appreciated. Much has moved in the Party and is moving towards us.
We are making serious progress in the West, especially in the Romanesque countries. The official press of the French Communist Party finally refused to follow the above advice of Molotov, which Molotov, however, himself managed to refuse. This is just what we need! The French opposition takes an ever more active part in the actions of the Communist Party, registers them, criticizes them and gradually destroys the wall between itself and the Party. The opposition found support in the trade union movement, where our like-minded people published their platform and created their own center, continuing, of course, to fight for a unitary confederation of labor (CGTU). Very serious changes have also taken place in the Italian party lately. You know about the exclusion from the party of comrade. Bordiga,74 who had recently returned from exile, on charges of solidarity with Trotsky. The Italian comrades wrote to us that Bordiga, after reading our latest publications, had really declared that he had a commonality of views. At the same time, a long-prepared split occurred in the official party. Several members of the Central Committee, who carried out the most responsible work in the Party, refused to accept the theory and practice of the "third period". They were declared "right", but in reality they have nothing to do with Taska75, Brandler76 and company. Divergence on the issue of the "third period" forced them to reconsider disputes and disagreements recent years and they declare their full solidarity with the international left apposition. This is an extremely valuable extension of our ranks!
In one of my previous letters, I emphasized that the past year was a big year. preparatory work international left opposition and that now we can expect the political results of the work done. The above facts concerning the two countries show that these results have already begun to take on a tangible form. It is not without reason that the organs of the Comintern felt compelled, following the organs of the CPSU, to embark on the path of open "principled" polemics with us, which, of course, will serve us only to our advantage.
The 16th Congress, of course, will not yet reveal these obvious, indisputable, promising, but still just beginning shifts in the CPSU and the Comintern. It will continue to be a congress of the Stalinist bureaucracy. But the bureaucracy is frightened, bewildered, "thoughtful". Organizationally, Stalin will probably retain his position at the congress. Moreover, formally, this congress will, after all, sum up the whole series of Stalin's "victories" over his opponents and crown the system of "single-handedness." But despite this, or rather, because of this, one can say without the slightest hesitation: the 16th Congress will be the last congress of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Just as the 15th Congress, which crowned the victory of "hell of the Left Opposition," gave a powerful impetus to the disintegration of the right-centrist bloc, so the 16th Congress, which should crown the rout of the Rights, will give impetus to the disintegration of bureaucratic centrism. This disintegration will have to go the faster, the longer it was restrained by the system crude and disloyal apparatusism. All this not only opens up new opportunities for the opposition, but also imposes on it the greatest obligations. The path in the party lies only through the revival of the party itself, consequently, through the strengthening of the fundamentally consistent theoretical and (Political work of the opposition in the party and the working class Everything else will follow.
With strong communist greetings,
LETTER TO THE POLITBURO OF THE CC AND THE PRESIDIUM OF THE CCTop secret
To the Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, to the Presidium of the Central Control Commission
History again approached one of the great turns. In Germany, the fate of the German proletariat, the Comintern and the USSR is now being decided. The policy of the Comintern is leading the German revolution to ruin with the same inevitability with which the Chinese revolution was brought to ruin, although this time from the opposite end. All that is necessary on this score has been said by me elsewhere. There is no point in repeating here. Perhaps two or three months - at the very best - still remain in order to change the disastrous policy, the responsibility for which lies entirely with Stalin.
I am not talking about the Central Committee, since it has essentially been abolished. Soviet newspapers, including party ones, talk about "Stalin's leadership" about "Stalin's six instructions", "Stalin's instructions", about "Stalin's general line", completely ignoring the Central Committee. The party of the dictatorship has been brought to such a level of humiliation that ignorance, organic opportunism and disloyalty of one person stamp the great historical events. Hopelessly entangled in China, England, Germany, in all countries of the world, and above all in the USSR, Stalin, in the struggle to save his personal exaggerated prestige, is now supporting a policy in Germany that automatically leads to a catastrophe on an unprecedented historical scale.
In order not to create embarrassment for Stalin, the "Party" press, reduced to a slavish state, is generally silent about Germany. But he talks a lot about "Trotskyism". Entire pages are filled with "Trotskyism" again. The task is to make one believe that "Trotskyism" is a "counter-revolutionary" trend, "the vanguard of the world bourgeoisie." Under this sign, the 17th Party Conference is being convened. It is quite clear that this unchanging agitation is not pursuing any "ideological" goals, but very definite practical, or rather, personal tasks. If we briefly formulate them, then we have to say: the turkulization of policy towards representatives of the left opposition is on the agenda.
Through the official political press in the West, Stalin released revelations about the plans of the White Guard terrorist organization, while at the same time concealing these facts from the workers of the USSR. The purpose of publishing the revelations abroad is quite clear, to provide an alibi for Stalin in his joint work with General Turkul. The names of Gorky and Litvinov are added most likely for disguise.
The question of terrorist reprisals against the author of this letter was raised by Stalin long before Turkul: in 1924-25. Stalin weighed the pros and cons at a narrow meeting. The arguments in favor were clear and obvious. The main argument against was this: there are too many young self-sacrificing Trotskyists who can respond with counter-terrorist acts.
I received this information at one time from Zinoviev and Kamenev after they went over to the opposition, moreover, in such circumstances and with such details that excluded any doubts about the authenticity of the reports: Zinoviev and Kamenev, as you, I hope, have not forgotten, belonged to a common ruling "troika" with Stalin, who stood above the Central Committee: they were aware of what was "completely inaccessible to ordinary members of the Central Committee. If Stalin forced Zinoviev and Kamenev to refute their then testimony, no one would believe it.
The question in 1925 was withdrawn; as current events show, it has only been postponed.
Stalin came to the conclusion that sending Trotsky abroad was a mistake. He hoped, as is known from his then recorded statement to the Politburo, that without a "secretariat", without funds, Trotsky would become only a helpless victim of a bureaucratic slander organized on a world scale. The hardware man miscalculated. Contrary to his predictions, it turned out that ideas have own strength, without apparatus and without funds. The Comintern is a grandiose edifice, theoretically and politically completely devastated. The future of revolutionary Marxism, and hence Leninism, is now inextricably linked with the international cadres of the Left Opposition. No falsification will help. The main works of the opposition have been published, are being published or will be published in all languages. There are still few, but invincible cadres in all countries. Stalin perfectly understands what a formidable danger - for him personally, for his false "authority", for his Bonapartist power, lies in the ideological inflexibility and stubborn growth of the international left opposition.
Stalin believes that the mistake must be corrected. His plan is unfolding through three channels: firstly, the information obtained by the GPU about the terrorist attempt on Trotsky, prepared by General Turkul (in the most favorable conditions created for him by Stalin), was announced abroad, secondly, an "ideological" international campaign was opened, which should culminate in a resolution of the party conference and the Comintern: Stalin needs this resolution as a kind of political mandate for cooperation with Turkul; thirdly, with the hands of the GPU, Stalin picks up and cleans up with truly brutal fury everything suspicious, unreliable, doubtful, in order to protect himself from counterattacks.
Of course, I am not privy to the technique of the enterprise: whether Turkul will throw his handiwork to Stalin, whether Stalin will hide behind Turkul - I don’t know this, but some of the Yagods who play the role of intermediaries with the undoubted assistance of the famous “Wrangel officer."
It is needless to say that Stalin's plans and designs cannot in any way and from any direction influence the policy of the Left Opposition and mine in particular. The political fate of Stalin, the corrupter of the Party, the grave-digger of the Chinese revolution, the destroyer of the Comintern, the candidate for the grave-digger of the German revolution, is sealed. His political bankruptcy will be one of the worst in history. The question is not about Stalin, but about saving the Comintern, the proletarian dictatorship, the legacy of the October Revolution, about reviving Lenin's party. Most of the officials on whom Stalin relies in the USSR, as in all sections of the Comintern, will scatter at the first roll of thunder. The Left Opposition will remain true to the banner of Marx and Lenin to the end!
This document will be kept in a limited but sufficient number of copies, in safe hands, in several countries. Thus, you are warned!
LETTER TO ZIONDear Mr. Zion (unfortunately, I do not know your name and patronymic).
It is quite true that Mr. Beglin passed on your questions to me; however, at the same time, not only did he not connect your name with the Sveaborg uprising, but he also did not tell me that you were Russian. I assumed that it was a Scandinavian journalist, and therefore responded with ignorance. Of course, I remember your name very well in connection with the Sveaborg uprising.
I received your letter on the way, in pursuit, and I did not have the opportunity to speak with you by telephone. I will reply in a letter.
You write that it is in my "interests" to dispel an unfavorable impression of me in Sweden. If it were only about this, then, really, it was not worth dipping a pen in an inkwell. . .
The questions you posed, I confess, surprise me a little, are they really so characteristic of the definition of a person?
"What is your favorite pastime besides hunting and fishing"? Hunting and fishing for me is not an occupation, but a recreation. "Favorite hobby" - mental activity: reading, thinking and, perhaps, writing.
My favorite" Soviet writer? The events of the past 20 years have extremely narrowed the place in my mind fiction. "Favorite" writers - artists were grinding 25-30 years ago. Now I read with the greatest interest, perhaps, Babel.
It is even more difficult to say about foreign writers. Modern I know too little, and my review would be completely random.
The question about philosophers is also difficult. I take philosophy (since I am generally familiar with it) in its development. But I would be very at a loss to name the name of a philosopher who, in my eyes, would stand "above the rest."
The same, in a certain sense, applies to historical figures. I can say that Friedrich Engels, as a human figure, impresses me to the highest degree. Of course, the historical role of Marx is much higher.
What is the happiest time of my life? I am not able to answer this question at all. In all periods of life it was interspersed - both good and bad. To sum up the "balance" of individual periods, really, I do not know how and have never approached my life like that.
That's all I can say. I wish you every success.
LETTER TO THE POLITBURO OF THE CPSU(b)Secret
Politburo of the CPSU(b)
I consider it my duty to make another attempt to appeal to the sense of responsibility of those who are now leading the Soviet state. You see the situation in the country and in the Party more closely than I do. If internal development will go further along the rails on which it is moving now, a catastrophe is inevitable. There is no need to give an analysis of the actual situation in this letter. This is done in Bulletin No. 33, which comes out the other day. In a different form, but in combination with difficulties, the hostile forces will strike the Soviet government with no less force than fascism struck the German proletariat. Absolutely hopeless and disastrous is the idea of mastering the present situation with the help of repression alone. It won't work. Wrestling has its own dialectic, the critical point of which you have long since left behind. Repression will be the further, the more cause the result, opposite what they are designed for: not to frighten, but, on the contrary, to excite the enemy, generating in him the energy of despair. The closest and most immediate danger is distrust of leadership and growing hostility towards it. You know this as well as I do. But pushes you inclined plane the inertia of your own policy, and yet at the end of the inclined plane is an abyss.
What need to do? First of all, revive the party. It's a painful process, but you have to go through it. The Left Opposition - I don't doubt it for a moment - will be ready to give the Central Committee full assistance in putting the Party on the track of a normal existence without upheavals or with the least upheavals.
With regard to this proposal, one of you will say, perhaps the Left Opposition wants to come to power in this way. To this I answer: it is about something inevitably greater than the power of your faction or of the Left Opposition. It is a matter of the fate of the workers' state and the international revolution for many years to come. Of course, the opposition will be able to help the Central Committee to restore the regime of trust in the party, which is unthinkable without party democracy, only if the opposition itself is given back the possibility of normal work within the party. Only the open and honest cooperation of the factions that have arisen historically with the aim of transforming them into trends in the Party and their further dissolution in it can, under the given concrete conditions, restore confidence in the leadership and revive the Party.
There is no reason to be afraid of attempts by the Left Opposition to turn the spearhead of repression in the other direction: such a policy has already been tried and exhausted to the dregs; the task, after all, is to eliminate its consequences by common forces.
The left opposition has its own program of action, both in the USSR and in the international arena. Of course, there can be no question of abandoning this program. But as regards the means of presenting and defending this program before the Central Committee and before the Party, not to speak of the means of putting it into practice, a preliminary agreement can and must be reached with that gap in order to prevent breaks and upheavals. No matter how tense the atmosphere is, it can be defuse in several successive stages with good will on both sides. And the dimensions of the danger presuppose this good will, or rather, dictate it. The purpose of this letter is to declare the good will of the Left Opposition.
I am sending this letter in one copy, exclusively for the Politburo, in order to give it the necessary freedom in choosing the means, if, in view of the whole situation, it considers it necessary to enter into preliminary negotiations without any publicity.
Prinkipo L. Trotsky
ExplanationA month and a half ago, the above letter was sent to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. There was no answer; rather, the answer was given by a whole series of actions by the Stalinist clique: new rampant arrests in the USSR, approval of the disastrous policy of the Comintern in Germany, etc. In a different historical situation and on other social foundations, Stalin manifests the same bureaucratic blindness as some Kerensky de Rivera88 on the eve of the fall. The Stalinist clique is marching with leaps and bounds towards destruction. The whole question is whether it will be able to bring down the Soviet regime into the abyss as well? In any case, she does everything she can for this.
We are sending this document to responsible workers under the assumption, even in the belief, that among the blind, careerists, cowards there are also honest revolutionaries whose eyes cannot but be opened to the real state of affairs.
We call on these honest revolutionaries to contact us. Who wants to, he will find a way.
Paris Editorial office of the "Bulletin of the Opposition" APPSL. Sedov. Moving to Alma-Ata
Dear friend, you asked me to describe in detail our journey to Alma-Ata - if you please. I do this in the form of protocol entries - a diary. I'm missing something for obvious reasons.
After extremely tiring last days, especially for our imaginary "departure", slept for a long time. I was still dressing, it was at the beginning of the first hour, when I heard the bell, then the clatter of feet and unfamiliar voices in the corridor. "GPU" - flashed. Indeed, in the corridor stood a whole group of them, dressed in military uniform. Led by the one in charge yesterday at the station. In his hands he had a warrant (as I found out later) with approximately the following content: "It is proposed to the commandant comrade K ... to escort citizen Trotsky under escort to the city of Alma-Ata immediately." Signature: Yagoda. Turning to L.D., the commandant reports: "Your departure is scheduled today at 2:35." - "That is, how? .. And things? We did not meet ... Two hours before the train leaves, you warn - a disgrace." “We will help, we will help meet,” they repeat helplessly. L. D. refused to go voluntarily, went into the last room (bedroom), where we all followed him. In addition to us, i.e., Natalia Ivanovna, my brother and me (Anya was at work), there were I. and F.V., who happened to be with us. The room was locked... There was a voice behind the door: "Comrade Trotsky, let me tell you a few words..." - "Get Menzhinsky on the phone."
- "I'm listening." Break. "Comrade Trotsky (outside the door)! Menzhinsky is not there." "Then Yagoda." Leaves. We wait. “At the phone,” we hear, but in a voice somehow uncertain. L. D. unlocks and goes out into the corridor, where we have a telephone. There is the following dialogue: "Hello!" - "I'm listening." - "Who's talking? Comrade Yagoda?" - "No, Deribas91". Without answering further, he hangs up. Addressing the gepeurs: "Ivan Nikitich Smirnov didn't shoot Deribas at the front for cowardice, I don't want to talk to him. I asked Menzhinsky or Yagoda." The door is locked again. "There is none of them". - "They hid under the bed and are afraid to answer the phone." A few seconds of silence... "Comrade Trotsky, listen to me, why are you hiding from me?" L. D. is dumb, he blew up. He came close to the door: "Don't be impudent. You broke into my apartment and dare to say that I'm hiding from you..." They are silent. I go out into the corridor; I ask permission to call my wife or send for her.
(None of us conducts any independent negotiations, except for L. D. - this is what he demands. He already spoke about my demand to see my wife before leaving and take the glasses I need from her - they promised). They answer me: "Okay, now," but they do nothing. I take the phone. "It is forbidden!" I go out to the kitchen, and they came there, from the back door; there is a huge kid I return to our "fortress". I hear a call. A comrade, a non-party student, came to Sergei (brother) - he was ambushed. Not released. On the face of amazement and a little fear. (He was kept for two weeks in the “internal room”.) I quickly returned, they locked me up behind me ... Behind the door the same voice: “I will have to take you by force” (this, of course, was agreed in advance). We are silent. They pick something in the castle - it doesn't work. I suggest you barricade yourself with furniture. L. D. resolutely refuses. An order is heard outside the door; "Break down the doors!" Apparently, they are looking for something, they finally find it and break through the glass in the doors. In the hole you can see that they are wielding our chisel. Then a hand sticks out and, not without fear, quickly unlocks it. Enter, or rather, tumble. They are excited and so are we. "Comrade Trotsky, I must carry out the order at least by force ... Shoot at me, shoot!" he suddenly screams hysterically. In response to them: "What are you talking nonsense, no one is going to shoot at you." Settled right away. With an insolent look, several civilian gepeurs enter. Among them are familiar faces: yesterday (disgusting fat man, boor) and Barychkin. A former Mytishchi worker, once a good revolutionary (according to L. D.), now a completely decomposed drunkard and embezzler. "Civilians, take off your hats, you are not on the street." Confused. "We are communists," they answered weakly. And impudence somehow immediately subsided, they fade into the corridor. The elder orders: "Bring a coat and a hat." To L.D.: "We are soldiers - the order, you know, were military." "I have never been a soldier, I was a soldier of the October Revolution, and this is not at all the same thing." Briefly tells them how the British filmed in Canada with the same words: "order", "we are subordinates", etc. 92 I run out into the corridor, take documents and cigarettes from my room. At the telephone, F. V. calls to his apartment and manages to inform that they are taking him away. I take the second phone, I call two numbers, as for evil, both are busy. The same huge fellow, now assigned to the telephone, does not interfere with us; either from confusion, or it is not known why. Call. I pick up the phone. Beloborodov. I manage to say: "Kazansky, they are taking it now." The elder picks up the phone. "This is unfair! "- exclaims pathetically. Blockhead, I want to answer - I am silent. L. D. is dragged by the arms along the corridor; this is the moment when I lose my relative calmness. N. I. [Sedova] dresses and follows him. They squeeze him through, let her through at the door, then they slam and they don’t let us in. “I’m also going, let me in,” I say while getting dressed. It doesn’t help: “It’s impossible, it’s not ordered.” The gate shouts something to them, or rather, swears. "We drag him away from the door. I open it and jump out. Sergei pushes the gepeur into a corner. F. V. and I. follow me at that moment. Sergei follows them. The door is taken. L. D. is sitting on the steps of the stairs. I vividly remembered Canada. .. "Down with English ... that is, Stalin's arbitrariness." I run down the stairs, start ringing the apartments with N. I. Frightened faces appear in the glass doors, I shout something to them. L. D. is demolished from the stairs. Later he tells a funny detail: since there were only three carriers, it was hard for them, they puffed incredibly all the time and often stopped went to rest.
In the yard at the entrance there is a car, they literally squeeze it into it. Sergei sits down already on the move, without a hat. There are several puzzled faces in the yard. There are 9-10 of us in the car, crowded, on top of each other. Through the window we see cars in front and behind - "escort". On the way, I suggest that my brother jump out, notify his comrades and Anya. I don't realize that I. left in the confusion. On Lubyanka Square we make an attempt; hot, they look at us in both. Sergey only manages to put his legs in - they pinch him with the doors. Both of us are being held. We drive up to Kalanchevskaya Square - the location of the railway stations. We turn, but not to Kazansky, but to the same famous one - Yaroslavsky. We drive into the yard, someone jumps on the bandwagon and points the way. We landed almost at the platform. Belenky and Co. jump out of the rear car. (And this cowardly fool is here). "How are things?" - asks L. D. "Everything, everything has been delivered," Belenky answers. “You are lying, as you lied to the late Joffe then, that there was no letter for me, but you yourself stole it.”95 L. D. is led under the arms, then they begin to carry. Empty. In the distance, rare railway workers. I shout to them: "Comrade workers, look how Comrade Trotsky is being carried." One (L.D. sees) has an agitated face. They grab me by the back and, as they say, by the collar. I hear rude curses: "Shut up" ... Suddenly they let me out, I don't immediately understand what's the matter. I keep screaming. Later I find out: Sergey hit the holder (the same Barychkin) in the face. “And since,” he said, “his target is wide, he hit well.” He let me go immediately, covered his face with his hand and walked away ...
At the platform there is a separate wagon (North Dor. 5439) with a steam locomotive. The story is repeated at the door - no one is allowed in. Then they offer to go to everyone to their destination. Pitiful confusion - how confused.
In the carriage we occupy the compartment allotted to us; there, at the window, a gepeur sits down. At open doors becomes different. L. D. jokes, recalls the abduction, in general we are looking for the fun side of this "trip". About Deribas, L. D. remarks: a petty, miserable careerist. About Belenky: that Grisha turns to him and says: “Well, why did you tell him (Stalin) this?! After all, he will not forget this for you, neither for you, nor for your children, nor for your grandchildren!” Then it seemed so far away in relation to children, especially grandchildren. And, of course, no one doubted for a moment that it was necessary to say this, and the correctness, which frightened Pyatakov, was confirmed by L. D.'s words. But the words of Pyatakov are beginning to be confirmed: the son is not far from the grandson.
June 4, 1935I remember how Pyatakov accused him when, at a meeting of the P[olit] b[yuro] L. D. [Trotsky] called Stalin "the grave-digger of the party and the revolution." After the meeting, in our dining room (in the Kremlin), where our friends were waiting for the end of the meeting, P[yatakov] said to L.D.: “Who pulled you by the tongue, because he (St[alin]) will not forget this for you, nor your children or grandchildren." L. D. did not answer. There was no need.
The truth had to be told, no matter what it cost. The judges of Congress, of course, did not dare to do this.
February 21, 1956I was very moved by reading your chapter on Stalin's struggle with the opposition, Dechera. I was transported into the atmosphere of these last days of "hand-to-hand" ... I see, I see everything with the clarity of yesterday, I hear L. D.'s telephone conversation with Bukharin - his voice, passionate indignation - departure for Alma-Ata ...
Expulsion of Trotsky from the USSR
In the meantime, it became obvious to Joseph Vissarionovich that Trotsky did not intend to calm down in Alma-Ata either. “From Central Asia, I had the opportunity to maintain continuous contact with the opposition, which was growing,” Lev Davidovich himself explained. Under these conditions, Stalin, after hesitating for a year, decided to apply expulsion abroad as a lesser evil. His arguments were: isolated from the USSR, deprived of apparatus and material resources, Trotsky would be powerless to do anything ... Stalin admitted several times that my expulsion abroad was “the greatest mistake.”
On January 18, 1929, a special meeting at the OGPU collegium decided to expel Trotsky from the USSR on charges of "organizing an illegal anti-Soviet party, whose activities have lately been aimed at provoking anti-Soviet speeches and preparing an armed struggle against Soviet power." On January 20, Trotsky received this resolution and wrote on it: "Here are the scoundrels!" - adding to this receipt of the following content: "Criminal in essence and lawless in form, the decision of the OS under the collegium of the GPU of January 18, 1929 was announced to me on January 20, 1929 by L. Trotsky."
Trotsky was sure that he would not be allowed to take out the archive, but the Chekists who arrived after him had no instructions about the papers and therefore did not interfere.
In the book by Yu. Felshtinsky and G. Chernyavsky “Leo Trotsky. Oppositionist” describes the dramatic departure of Trotsky with his relatives to emigration: “At dawn on January 22, Trotsky, his wife and son Leo were seated in an escorted bus, which set off along a snowy road towards the Kurdai Pass. Through the pass itself managed to pass with great difficulty. Snowdrifts were raging, a powerful tractor, which took the bus and several passing cars in tow, got stuck in the snow itself. Several escorts died of hypothermia. Trotsky's family was loaded into a sledge. The distance of 30 kilometers was covered in more than seven hours. Behind the pass, a new transfer took place in the car, which safely drove all three to Frunze, where they were loaded onto a train. In Aktyubinsk, Trotsky received a government telegram (this was the last government telegram that ended up in his hands) informing him that his destination was the city of Constantinople in Turkey.
Trotsky and his family were not deprived of their citizenship. For the first expenses in Turkey, they were given one and a half thousand dollars.
On January 31, 1929, a joint meeting of the Politburo and the Presidium of the Central Control Commission took place, at which N. I. Bukharin, A. I. Rykov and M. P. Tomsky were officially accused of factional activities. In response, they made a statement directed against Stalin. He immediately attacked the factionalists: “This is a group of right-wing deviators, whose platform provides for a slowdown in the pace of industrialization, curtailment of collectivization and freedom of private trade. Members of this group naively believe in the saving role of the kulak. Their trouble is that they do not understand the mechanism of the class struggle and do not see that in reality the kulak is the sworn enemy of Soviet power. Stalin further recalled that even before the revolution, Lenin called Bukharin "devilishly unstable" - and now he justifies this opinion by starting secret negotiations with the Trotskyists.
On July 11, 1929, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution "On the use of the labor of criminal prisoners", which ordered that convicts be sent for a period of three years or more to forced labor camps under the control of the OGPU. The resolution was marked "not subject to publication."
The same resolution of the OGPU pointed out the need to increase the existing camps and create new ones in remote areas. Soviet Union in order to develop these places and use their natural resources. It was also planned to increase the population of the wild lands by those who, after serving their sentence, did not have the right to live in major cities or volunteered to stay.
If Trotsky, and not Stalin, had won in the USSR, then the concessions would have ended only in 1980At the beginning of the 20th century, the Anglo-Saxons had two main competitors in the world economy - Russia and Germany.
It was decided to destroy them with an internal explosion. It was necessary to prepare a revolution in these countries, to finance the necessary parties and political forces with their leaders for this.
The real real sponsors of the Russian revolution were the US bankers who created the FRS: Rothschild, Morgan, Wartburg, Schiff.
In 1917, a commission of the Red Cross arrived in Petrograd, which did not consist of doctors, but of bankers and intelligence officers headed by Raymond Robinson.
At first they liked Kerensky (who started the collapse of Russia), but then they fell in love with the Social Democrats (Bolsheviks). This love began to be regularly reinforced by huge financial injections into their activities.
Before Lenin's arrival in Russia, Trotsky was the main organizer of the revolution (this is a well-known historical fact).
Trotsky came to Petrograd to make a revolution from the USA, where he lived quite comfortably.
Together with Trotsky, a huge number of revolutionaries arrived from America (several hundred people). First of all, these include Uritsky, Volodarsky, Larin, Melnichansky, Zalkind, Ioffe, Chudnovsky, Gomberg, Yarchuk, Borovsky, Minkin-Menson, Voskov and many others. I wonder who kept them abroad if their only profession was that of a revolutionary?
Trotsky sailed to Russia with an American passport (genuine), since he was a US citizen. It is interesting that the passport was handed to him personally by US President Woodrow Wilson (the one who signed the FRS Act).
In July 1917, Trotsky and his American team join the RSDLP and become Bolsheviks. Lenin, although he could not stand Trotsky (he called him “Judas”), welcomed this massive impulse.
Moreover, Trotsky's people, having barely become Bolsheviks, literally the next day receive responsible and even leading positions in the party.
It is the people from Trotsky's American team who take the revolutionary initiative upon themselves: Antonov-Ovseenko arrests the Provisional Government, Uritsky heads the St. Petersburg Cheka, and so on. One gets the impression that before them there were no real Bolsheviks and leaders in the party, and the revolution would not have happened without them.
But why do American bankers need this team of revolutionaries, why do they generously finance the Bolshevik Party - the party, as they used to say, of the “gravediggers of the bourgeoisie”?
But this is strange and illogical only at first glance. The logic, as they say, is ironclad here. After all, the revolutionary, and, therefore, anti-state forces of the competing country are financed (remember the pace of economic development in pre-revolutionary Russia).
Funded from America and the party of revolutionaries in Germany (Germany is also America's strongest competitor). But in the USA, England and France, no money was allocated for the revolution. And without money, there will be no revolution, no matter how acute the revolutionary situation in the country is. It is through funding that constant contact is maintained with the leaders of the revolution, their work is controlled, their management is going on. revolutionary activity. But a banker is always a banker and he must definitely get back the invested money, and even with interest.
Let us consider how this was done after October 1917 in Russia. How our ardent revolutionaries settled with the American bankers.
Worked in Russia before the revolution English company"Lena Goldfields", which mined 30% of Russian gold (remember, the "Lena execution" of working mines).
From abroad, Lenin very sharply condemned the executioners-capitalists for the execution of the Lena workers, for their ruthless exploitation and miserable miserable existence.
But the story of the Lena mines is just beginning. After the October Revolution, the Soviet government transfers the concession for the development of the Lena mines to the same company that shot the workers, Lena Goldfields.
After Lenin's death in 1924, Trotsky became the leader of the party.
It is he who pushes through all the "concession cases" in the government. In addition to gold, Lena Goldfields was allowed to mine silver, copper, lead, etc. It was this company that was transferred: Revdinsky, Bisserdsky, Seversky iron and steel works, Degtyarskoye, Zyuzelskoye, Yegorshinsky coal mines, etc.
But the strangest thing in this story is that the share of Soviet power was only 7%, and the share of Lena Goldfields was 93%. Why was such a contract signed?
Why did the socialist revolution take place, if all the same London and American bankers continued to pump out Russia's resources for next to nothing?
"Lena Goldfields" behaved extremely impudently: demanded government subsidies, did not pay taxes, refused any investment in Russia.
And until 1929 there was no government for this company. It was in 1929 that she was deprived of her concession. The fact is that it was in February 1929 that Trotsky was expelled from the USSR.
Since 1930, a state-owned company began to mine gold in Siberia, and all the profits went to the state budget. But Lena Goldfields filed a lawsuit in international arbitration and the USSR was ordered to pay her 12 million 965 pounds sterling.
But what upset the overseas bankers the most was that they had lost their ties to the proletarian state. All capitalist countries immediately introduced restrictions on the import of Soviet goods.
This is only one case of Trotsky, but there is a second one.
In the 1920s, Trotsky headed the People's Commissariat of Railways. It was then that this department concluded with representatives of the capitalist world an agreement as absurd as with Lena Goldfields. This agreement is about the launch of a thousand steam locomotives at a price of 200 million gold rubles.
It is also interesting that the agreement was concluded with Sweden, which itself produced 40 steam locomotives a year. The price was too high, and the steam locomotives had to wait as long as 5 years.
Why did Trotsky sign this particular treaty?
It is also surprising that Russia paid these 200 million gold rubles in advance so that Sweden would build a factory for the production of steam locomotives.
At the beginning of 1922, an article appeared in the Soviet magazine The Economist about the "strangeness" of the locomotive deal. Its author Frolov L.N. wondered why the locomotives were ordered in Sweden; why they cost twice as much; why they do not develop the domestic steam locomotive industry (before the war, the Putilov plant produced 250 steam locomotives a year); why are our factories idle and there is unemployment in the country (1 million people)?
Lenin, of course, was in Trotsky's subject, and therefore his quick reaction to the article followed:
— magazine "Economist" to close;
- the author of the article is an accomplice of the Entente;
- such authors should be immediately expelled from the country.
All this suggests that Lenin was aware of Trotsky's affairs in paying debts for supporting the revolution. It was through the Swedish banking system that money was pumped into the revolution in Russia.
Now through it and returned back. 200 million gold rubles is a huge amount, it is 25% of the country's gold reserves.
But what to do - the money allocated by American bankers to crush Russian Empire must be returned anyway.
But Lenin for the American bankers was not common man, put at the helm of Russia to destroy the empire, he slowly restored its territory. So Lenin is worthy of respect that, contrary to the wishes of his foreign sponsors, he did not dismantle the country, but reunited it again. It was Lenin who refused to pay royal debts, did not give power to anyone, and even allocated money for a revolution in Germany.
In addition, the Bolsheviks paid for the revolution with their overseas patrons and through concessions.
The first banker of the proletarian state was Olof Aschberg (this is the one through whom the money for the revolution was transferred to Russia, and then from Russia).
Concessions were issued in great numbers and for a period of 60 years.
And if Trotsky, and not Stalin, had won in the USSR, then the concessions would have ended only in 1980 (if they had ended).
At the same time, the USSR received only 7% from each contract.
Thus, the revolution is also a profitable business. After all, all the wealth of a country destroyed by an internal explosion goes to the full disposal of the forces that sponsored this explosion.
Therefore, the internal party fight between Trotsky and Stalin was in fact a struggle for control of natural resources THE USSR.
I.C.: I will clarify about Oloff Aschberg. Aschberg established close cooperation with Trotsky, his older brother Alexander Bronstein (according to the writer Anatoly Rybakov, who was shot in 1937 in the Kursk prison) and their Parisian relative. One of joint projects- the creation in August 1922 of the first Soviet commercial bank, which went down in history under the name "Russian Commercial Bank". Olof Aschberg became its first director.
Vadim Zakharovich Rogovin - Russian historian, sociologist and publicist, main theme studies of which were the 1930s in the USSR. The book you are about to read shows the confrontation between two leaders of the Communist Party - I.V. Stalin and L.D. Trotsky. It did not end after the expulsion of Trotsky from the USSR in 1929; on the contrary, it became even more acute. Trotsky sharply opposed Stalin's policies, published exposing documents, and organized resistance to the Stalinist regime. It is not surprising that assassination attempts were made on Trotsky, the next of them in 1940 was successful. In his book, Vadim Rogovin not only provides facts and documents about this struggle and the murder itself, but also analyzes in detail the causes of the conflict between Stalin and Trotsky.
* * *
The following excerpt from the book Main enemy Stalin. How Trotsky was killed (V. Z. Rogovin, 2017) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.
Expulsion of Trotsky from the USSR
In order to completely isolate Trotsky from his like-minded people, from October 1928 the GPU suddenly interrupted all his correspondence with associates, friends, and relatives. Even a letter from a Moscow hospital from a hopelessly ill daughter, expelled from the party, Trotsky received 73 days after it was sent, and the answer no longer caught her alive.
On November 26, the Politburo, having discussed the question "On the counter-revolutionary activities of Trotsky," instructed the OGPU to convey to Trotsky an ultimatum to stop all political activity. For this purpose, Volynsky, an authorized secret political department of the OGPU, was sent to Alma-Ata, who read to Trotsky a memorandum in which it was reported that the OGPU collegium had evidence that his activities were "taking on the character of direct counter-revolution" and the organization of "the second party ". Therefore, in the event of Trotsky's refusal to lead the "so-called opposition", the OGPU "will be made necessary" to change the conditions of his detention in order to isolate him as much as possible from political life.
Trotsky responded to this ultimatum with a letter to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, which, in particular, stated: “Theoretical reason and political experience testify that the period of historical return, rollback, i.e. reaction, can come not only after the bourgeois, but also after the proletarian revolution. For six years we have been living in the USSR under the conditions of a growing reaction against October and thus clearing the way for Thermidor. The most obvious and complete expression of this reaction within the party is the wild persecution and organizational destruction of the left wing...
The threat to change the conditions of my existence and isolate me from political activity sounds like this... as if Stalin's faction, of which the GPU is the direct organ, had not done everything it could to isolate me not only from political life, but from any other life... In this In the same and even worse situation are thousands of impeccable Bolshevik-Leninists, whose merits to the October Revolution and the international proletariat immeasurably exceed the merits of those who imprisoned or exiled them ... Violence, beatings, torture, physical and moral, are applied to the best Bolshevik workers for their loyalty decrees of October. These are the general conditions which, according to the collegium of the GPU, "do not hinder" the political activity of the opposition and mine in particular.
The pitiful threat to change these conditions for me in the direction of further isolation means nothing more than the decision of the Stalin faction to replace exile with prison. This solution, as mentioned above, is not new to me. Planned in perspective as far back as 1924, it is being put into practice gradually, through a series of steps, in order to surreptitiously accustom the suppressed and deceived party to Stalinist methods, in which gross disloyalty has now matured to poisoned bureaucratic dishonor.
The reaction to this letter was the decision of the Politburo to expel Trotsky abroad. Motivating this decision, Stalin stated that it was necessary in order to debunk Trotsky in the eyes of the Soviet people and the foreign labor movement: if Trotsky comes out abroad with further denunciations of the party leadership, "then we will portray him as a traitor." This decision was made by majority vote. Only Rykov and Voroshilov voted for an even tougher measure - the imprisonment of Trotsky.
On January 7, 1929, the resolution of the Politburo was sent to the chairman of the OGPU Menzhinsky. On January 18, the decision to exile was formalized by the Special Meeting of the OGPU Collegium. Two days later, Volynsky presented Trotsky with the resolution of the OSO, which stated: “We heard: The case of citizen Trotsky, Lev Davydovich, under Art. 58/10 of the Criminal Code on charges of counter-revolutionary activities, expressed in the organization of an illegal anti-Soviet party, whose activities have recently been aimed at provoking anti-Soviet speeches and preparing an armed struggle against Soviet power. Decided: Citizen Trotsky, Lev Davydovich, to be expelled from the USSR. Thus, the expulsion of Trotsky was an act of extrajudicial reprisal on trumped-up charges, to which the accused was not given the right to respond. After Volynsky invited Trotsky to sign his acquaintance with this document, Trotsky wrote: "The decision of the GPU has been announced to me, criminal in essence and lawless in form."
In an official report on the fulfillment of his order, Volynsky reported that Trotsky told him: “There was a dilemma before the GPU - either put me in prison or send me abroad. The first, of course, is less convenient, since it will cause noise and the inevitable unrest and agitation among the workers for emancipation. Therefore, Stalin decided to send me abroad. I could, of course, refuse, because from the point of view of my internal position it would be more advantageous for me to go to prison. If I had reasoned like Stalin, who never understood what revolutionary emigration meant, I would have refused to go. For Stalin, “emigrant” is a swear word, and to go into exile for him means political death ... he is not able to understand with his limited brain that it is the same for a Leninist in which part of the working class to work.
On the basis of a directive received from Yagoda, Volynsky, immediately after the presentation of the OSO decree, announced that Trotsky and his family were under house arrest, and gave them 48 hours to pack for the journey. After that, they were loaded under escort from specially selected employees of the GPU into a wagon, the route of which was not announced to them.
In order to avoid demonstrations of protest during Trotsky's expulsion, such as the one that accompanied his exile in Alma-Ata a year earlier, the expulsion took place in an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy. However, the Zinoviev group was informed about it, from which Stalin expected approval of this action. When the Zinovievites gathered to discuss this news, Bakaev suggested that they protest against the expulsion. To this, Zinoviev declared that "there is no one to protest to," since "there is no master." The next day, Zinoviev visited Krupskaya, who informed him that she, too, had heard of the impending expulsion. "What are you going to do with him?" Zinoviev asked her, meaning that Krupskaya was on the Presidium of the Central Control Commission. "First of all, don't You, A They, - answered Krupskaya, - and secondly, even if we decided to protest, who is listening to us?
Only a few days later, Trotsky was informed that Constantinople had been assigned as the place of his deportation. During these days, the Soviet government turned to many governments with a request to receive Trotsky, but only Turkey, after long negotiations, gave a positive answer. Unaware of this, Trotsky refused to voluntarily follow to Turkey and demanded to be sent to Germany. For 12 days, the train stood at a dead stop in the Kursk region, until Bulanov, the new authorized representative of the OGPU, who replaced Volynsky, announced that the German government had categorically refused to let Trotsky into their country and that a final order had been received to deliver him to Constantinople. In official reports, Bulanov, reporting on his conversations with Trotsky on the train, mentioned his extremely harsh tone and expressions "addressed to the big master."
Along the way, the convoy increased all the time and Trotsky was forbidden to leave the train, which stopped only at small stations to get water and fuel. Meanwhile, an OGPU officer, Fokin, who was sent to Odessa to organize the secret loading of Trotsky on the ship, informed his superiors that he had done everything to prevent a possible demonstration in the city. A thorough check of the crew of the Ilyich steamer was carried out, the "unreliable" ones were written off from it and a reserve team was trained, "able to drive the steamer even with a complete failure of the rest of the crew."
Arrived in Odessa, the wagon was served directly to the pier. Despite the deep night, the pier was cordoned off by GPU troops. On February 12, “Ilyich” entered the border waters, where Trotsky handed a statement to the Turkish officer for transmission to the President of the Turkish Republic, Kemal Pasha: “Dear Sir. At the gates of Constantinople, I have the honor to inform you that I arrived at the Turkish border by no means of my own choice, and that I can cross this border only by submitting to violence.
Only a week after this, Pravda published a brief note: “L. D. Trotsky was expelled from the USSR for anti-Soviet activities by a resolution of the Special Meeting of the OGPU. With him, according to his desire, his family left. This report did not contain the accusation contained in the OSO resolution that Trotsky was preparing an armed struggle against Soviet power. In one of the first articles published in exile, Trotsky wrote: “Why did Stalin not dare to repeat in Pravda what was said in the GPU resolution? Because he knew that no one would believe him ... But why, in that case, was this obvious lie included in the decision of the GPU? Not for the USSR, but for Europe and for the whole world. Stalin could not explain the deportation and countless arrests otherwise than as an indication that the opposition was preparing an armed struggle. With this monstrous lie, he caused the greatest harm to the Soviet Republic. The entire bourgeois press said that Trotsky, Rakovsky, Smilga, Radek, I. N. Smirnov, Beloborodov, Muralov, Mrachkovsky and many others who built the Republic and defended it, were now preparing an armed struggle against Soviet power. It is clear to what extent such a thought must weaken the Soviet Republic in the eyes of the whole world!”
Leon Trotsky is an outstanding revolutionary of the 20th century, who went down in history as one of the founders of civil war, the Red Army and the Comintern. He was actually the second person in the first Soviet government and headed the People's Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs, where he proved himself to be a tough and uncompromising fighter against the enemies of the world revolution. After his death, he led the opposition movement, speaking out against politics, for which he was deprived of Soviet citizenship, expelled from the Union and killed by an NKVD agent.
Lev Davidovich Trotsky was born (real name at birth - Leiba Davidovich Bronstein) on November 7, 1879 in the Ukrainian outback near the village of Yanovka, Kherson province, in a Jewish family of wealthy landowners. His parents were illiterate people, which did not prevent them from earning capital from the harsh exploitation of the peasants. The future revolutionary grew up alone - he did not have peer friends with whom he could fool around and play, as he was surrounded only by the children of farm laborers, whom he looked down on. According to historians, this laid down in Trotsky the main character trait, in which a sense of his own superiority over other people prevailed.
In 1889, the young Trotsky was sent by his parents to study in Odessa, since even then he showed an interest in education. There he entered the quota for Jewish families at St. Paul's School, where he became best student across all disciplines. At that time, he did not even think about revolutionary activities, being carried away by drawing, poetry and literature.
But in his final years, the 17-year-old Trotsky fell into a socialist circle, which was engaged in revolutionary propaganda. Then he became interested in studying the works of Karl Marx and subsequently became a fanatical adherent of Marxism. It was during that period that a sharp mind, a penchant for leadership, and a polemical gift began to appear in him.
Immersed in revolutionary activity, Trotsky organized the "South Russian Workers' Union", which was joined by the workers of the Nikolaev shipyards. At that time, they were little interested in wages, since they received a fairly high salary, but they were worried social relations under royal rule.
Young Leon Trotsky | liveinternet.ru In 1898, Leon Trotsky was imprisoned for the first time for his revolutionary activities, where he had to spend 2 years. This was followed by his first exile to Siberia, from which he escaped a few years later. Then he managed to make a fake passport, in which Lev Davidovich randomly entered the name Trotsky, like the senior warden of the Odessa prison. It was this surname that became the future pseudonym of the revolutionary, with whom he lived for the rest of his life.
revolutionary activity
In 1902, after escaping from Siberian exile, Leon Trotsky went to London to join Lenin, with whom he established contact through the Iskra newspaper, founded by Vladimir Ilyich. The future revolutionary became one of the authors of Lenin's newspaper under the pseudonym "Pero".
Having become close to the leaders of Russian social democracy, Trotsky very quickly gained popularity and fame, speaking with agitating essays for migrants. He amazed those around him with his eloquence and oratory, which allowed him to win a serious attitude in the Bolshevik movement, despite his youth.
Books by Leon Trotsky | inosmi.ru At that time, Leon Trotsky supported Lenin's policy as much as possible, for which he was dubbed "Lenin's club." But this did not last long - literally in 1903, the revolutionary went over to the side of the Mensheviks and began to accuse Lenin of dictatorship. But he “didn’t get along” with the leaders of Menshevism either, because he wanted to try on and unite the factions of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, which caused great political disagreements. As a result, he declared himself a "non-factional" member of the social democratic society, setting out to create his own movement, which would be above the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
In 1905, Leon Trotsky returned to his homeland, to St. Petersburg, seething with revolutionary moods, and immediately burst into the thick of things. He quickly organizes the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies and delivers fiery speeches to crowds of people who were already electrified to the maximum with revolutionary energy. For his active work, the revolutionary again went to prison, as he advocated the continuation of the revolution even after the tsar's manifesto appeared, according to which the people received political rights. At the same time, he was also deprived of all civil rights and exiled to Siberia for an eternal settlement.
Leon Trotsky - the organizer of the revolution | imgur.com On the way to the "polar tundra", Leon Trotsky manages to escape from the gendarmes and get to Finland, from where he will soon move to Europe. Since 1908, the revolutionary settled in Vienna, where he began to publish the newspaper Pravda. But four years later, the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Lenin, intercepted this publication, as a result of which Lev Davidovich went to Paris, where he started publishing the newspaper Nashe Slovo.
After February Revolution in 1917 Trotsky decided to return to Russia. Directly from the Finland Station, he went to the Petrograd Soviet, where he was granted membership with an advisory vote. In just a few months of his stay in St. Petersburg, Lev Davidovich became the informal leader of the Mezhrayontsy, who advocated the creation of a single Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.
Photo by Leon Trotsky | livejournal.com In October 1917, the revolutionary created the Military Revolutionary Committee, and on October 25 (November 7, according to a new style) he carried out an armed uprising to overthrow the provisional government, which went down in history as the October Revolution. As a result of the revolution, the Bolsheviks came to power under the leadership of Lenin.
Under the new government, Leon Trotsky received the post of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and in 1918 he became People's Commissar for military and naval affairs. From that moment on, he took up the formation of the Red Army, taking harsh measures - he imprisoned and shot all violators of military discipline, deserters and all his opponents, giving no quarter to anyone, even the Bolsheviks, which went down in history under the concept of "red terror".
In addition to military affairs, he worked closely with Lenin on issues of internal and foreign policy. Thus, by the end of the Civil War, the popularity of Leon Trotsky reached its peak, but the death of the "leader of the Bolsheviks" did not allow him to carry out the planned reforms to switch from "war communism" to the New Economic Policy.
yandex.ru Trotsky was never able to become Lenin's "successor" and his place at the helm of the country was taken by Joseph Stalin, who saw Lev Davidovich as a serious opponent and hastened to "defuse" him. In May 1924, the revolutionary was subjected to real persecution by opponents under the leadership of Stalin, as a result of which he lost the post of People's Commissar for Naval Affairs and membership in the Central Committee of the Politburo. In 1926, Trotsky tried to regain his position and organized an anti-government demonstration, as a result of which he was exiled to Alma-Ata, and then to Turkey with the deprivation of Soviet citizenship.
In exile from the USSR, Leon Trotsky did not stop his struggle with Stalin - he began to publish the Bulletin of the Opposition and created an autobiography, My Life, in which he justified his activities. He also wrote a historical essay "History of the Russian Revolution", in which he proved the exhaustion tsarist Russia and the need for the October Revolution.
Books by Leon Trotsky | livejournal.com In 1935, Lev Davidovich moved to Norway, where he came under pressure from the authorities, who did not want to worsen relations with the Soviet Union. All the works were taken from the revolutionary and put under house arrest. This led to the fact that Trotsky decided to leave for Mexico, from where he "safely" followed the development of affairs in the USSR.
In 1936, Leon Trotsky finished his book The Revolution Betrayed, in which he called the Stalinist regime a counter-revolutionary coup. Two years later, the revolutionary proclaimed the creation of an alternative to "Stalinism" of the Fourth International, the heirs of which still exist today.
Personal life
The personal life of Leon Trotsky was inextricably linked with his revolutionary activities. His first wife was Alexandra Sokolovskaya, whom he met at the age of 16, when he had not even thought about his revolutionary future. According to historians, it was Trotsky's first wife, who was 6 years older than him, who became the young man's guide to Marxism.
Trotsky with his eldest daughter Zina and first wife Alexandra Sokolovskaya Sokolovskaya became Trotsky's official wife in 1898. Immediately after the wedding, the newlyweds were sent to Siberian exile, where they had two daughters - Zinaida and Nina. When the second daughter was only 4 months old, Trotsky fled Siberia, leaving his wife with two small children in her arms. In his book “My Life”, Lev Davidovich, when describing this stage of his life, indicated that his escape was carried out with the full consent of Alexandra, who helped him escape abroad without hindrance.
While in Paris, Leon Trotsky met his second wife, Natalya Sedova, who participated in the work of the Iskra newspaper under the direction of Lenin. As a result of this fateful acquaintance, the revolutionary's first marriage fell apart, but he retained friendly relations with Sokolovskaya.
Trotsky with his second wife Natalia Sedova | liveinternet.ru In the second marriage with Sedova, Leon Trotsky had two sons - Lev and Sergey. In 1937, a series of misfortunes began in the family of a revolutionary. His youngest son, Sergei, was shot for his political activity, and a year later, Trotsky's eldest son, who was also an active Trotskyite, died under suspicious circumstances during an appendicitis operation in Paris.
The daughters of Leon Trotsky also suffered a tragic fate. In 1928, his youngest daughter Nina died of consumption, and his eldest daughter Zinaida, deprived of Soviet citizenship along with her father, committed suicide in 1933, being in a state of deep depression.
Following his daughters and sons, in 1938 Trotsky also lost his first wife, Alexandra Sokolovskaya, who until her death remained his only legal wife. She was shot in Moscow as a stubborn supporter of the Left Opposition.
The second wife of Leon Trotsky, Natalya Sedova, despite the fact that she lost both sons, did not lose heart and supported her husband until the last days. She, together with Lev Davidovich, moved to Mexico in 1937 and after his death lived there for another 20 years. In 1960 she moved to Paris, which became her "eternal" city, where she met Trotsky. Sedova died in 1962, she was buried in Mexico next to her husband, with whom she shared his difficult revolutionary fate.
Murder
On August 21, 1940, at 7:25 am, Leon Trotsky died. He was killed by NKVD agent Ramon Mercader in the house of a revolutionary in the Mexican city of Cayoacán. The murder of Trotsky was the result of his correspondence struggle with Stalin, who at that time was the head of the USSR.
The operation to eliminate Trotsky began in 1938. Then Mercader on assignment Soviet authorities managed to infiltrate the environment of the revolutionary in Paris. He appeared in the life of Lev Davidovich as a Belgian citizen, Jacques Mornard.
Trotsky with Mexican comrades-in-arms | liveinternet.ru Despite the fact that Trotsky turned his house in Mexico into a real fortress, Mercader managed to get into it and carry out Stalin's order. In the two months preceding the assassination, Ramon managed to ingratiate himself with the revolutionary and his friends, which allowed him to often appear in Cayoacán.
12 days before the assassination, Mercader arrived at Trotsky's house and presented him with a written article about American Trotskyists. Lev Davidovich invited him to his office, where for the first time they managed to be alone. On that day, the revolutionary was alerted by the behavior of Ramon and his attire - in extreme heat, he appeared in a raincoat and hat, and while Trotsky was reading the article, he stood behind his chair.
Ramon Mercader - Trotsky's assassin On August 20, 1940, Mercader again came to Trotsky with an article that, as it turned out, was a pretext to allow him to retire with the revolutionary. He was again dressed in a cloak and hat, but Lev Davidovich invited him into his office without taking any precautions.
Sitting behind Trotsky's chair, carefully reading the article, Ramon decided to fulfill the order of the Soviet authorities. He took an ice pick from his raincoat pocket and struck a strong blow on the revolutionary's head with it. Lev Davidovich uttered a very loud cry, to which all the guards ran. Mercader was seized and beaten, after which he was handed over to special police agents.
gazeta.ru Trotsky was immediately taken to the hospital, where two hours later he fell into a coma. The blow to the head was so strong that it damaged the vital centers of the brain. Doctors fought desperately for the revolutionary's life, but he died 26 hours later.
Death of Leon Trotsky | liveinternet.ru For the murder of Trotsky, Ramon Mercader received 20 years in prison, which was the highest penalty under Mexican law. In 1960, the killer of the revolutionary was released and immigrated to the USSR, where he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. According to historians, the preparation and execution of the operation to kill Lev Davidovich cost the NKVD $5 million.
