Trotsky - The Revolution Betrayed.pdf - Mehring Books

Introduction xxvii
cally substantiated and given a finished programmatic form
with the writing of The Revolution Betrayed. Herein lies the
essential significance of this work: As Lenin's Imperialism
had demonstrated in 1916 that the betrayal of Social
Democracy was the political expression of its social evolution
into an agency of international capital in the workers'
movement, Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed revealed the
social relations and material interests of which the crimes of
the Stalinist regime were the necessary expression. Like
Social Democracy, Stalinism could not be "reformed," i.e.,
made to serve the interests of the working class, because its
own interests were tied to those of imperialism and hostile
to the Soviet and international proletariat.
It was not long before Trotsky's assessment was confirmed
by events. In the aftermath of Hitler's victory, the Stalinist
regime and the Communist International lunged to the right.
The reaction of the Soviet bureaucracy to the fascist triumph
was to seek membership in the League of Nations, which
Lenin had characterized as a "thieves' kitchen." This decision
was symbolic of the transformation of the Soviet bureaucracy
into a political agency of imperialism in the international
workers' movement. From 1933 on, the essential link between
the defense of the USSR and the cause of world socialist
revolution was repudiated. Instead, with ever greater cynicism,
the Stalinist regime based the defense of the Soviet
Union upon the preservation of the imperialist world order.
Confronted with a fascist regime in Germany, whose existence
was the product of the criminal policies of the Kremlin,
the Stalinist bureaucracy sought salvation through the
promotion of Soviet-imperialist "collective security." The
Communist International was transformed into a direct
instrument of Soviet foreign policy, offering to protect
bourgeois regimes against the threat of an insurgent proletariat
in return for diplomatic agreements with the Kremlin.
This was the essential purpose of the "popular front"
policy introduced by the Communist International in 1935.
Bourgeois governments which professed friendly intentions
toward the USSR and supposedly shared its hostility to Nazi
Germany were to receive political support from the local
Communist parties. All the fundamental Marxist criteria