The Stalin school of falsification - Marxists Internet Archive

Stalin School of Falsification -- Chapter 9
The second charge -- the farewell demonstration to Smilga at the Yaroslav railway station. You banished
Smilga to Khabarovsk. Once again I make an urgent request that you at least agree among yourselves
upon a uniform explanation for this exile. In the Commission, Shkyratov shouted: "There is work to be
done in Khabarovsk, too!" If Smilga was sent, as a matter of normal procedure, to work in Khabarovsk,
then you cannot dare claim that our collective farewell was a demonstration against the Central
Committee. However, if this is an administrative exile of a comrade, who is at the present moment
needed at responsible posts, that is, at fighting Soviet posts, then you are duping the party. You are guilty
of duplicity. Are you going to repeat again that Smilga was sent to Khabarovsk as a normal assignment
of work? And at the same time are you going to accuse us of demonstrating against the Central
Committee? Such politics are double-dealing.
But I wish to pass from these calumnies presented as charges to the fundamental political question.
On the war danger. In the declaration which we presented last July, we said: "The paramount condition
for the defense of the Soviet Union and, therefore, for the maintenance of peace is the indissoluble tie
between the ever growing and ever more powerful Red Army and the toiling masses of our country and
of the entire world. A]l economic, political and cultural measures which tend to raise the role of the
working class in the state, which strengthen the ties of the working class with the agricultural laborers
and the poor peasants, and its alliance with the middle peasants -- thereby strengthen the Red Army,
assure the inviolability of the land of the Soviets and reinforce the cause of peace."
Here is adequate proof that a year ago we called upon you to concentrate on the question of the war
danger and the internal dangers in the U.S.S.R. during war-time. These are not special questions. They
are questions of our class policy, of our entire course. When Kalinin, the formal head of the State, the
Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, delivers a speech in Tver to
the effect that we need stalwart and strong soldiers, and that only a middle peasant can make a stalwart
and strong soldier, and that the poor peasants cannot provide such soldiers be cause there are many puny
ones among them, then we have here nothing else than an open orientation towards the strong "middle
peasant," a label which serves to camouflage none other than the kulak, or a candidate for kulakdom.
Kalinin forgets our having accomplished the October Revolution in which the puny and the thin
conquered the tall and the strong. Why were they able to conquer? Because there existed and still exist
many more of them than of the others. You will say, "The honorable Mikhail Ivanovich [Kalinin] is
given to saying a lot of things!" But did you curb him? No, you did not, you curbed us instead when we
criticized his line which deprecates the poor peasant and encourages the kulak-the self-same kulak whom
Yakovlev is covering up with his statistical tricks. It is Yakovlev who should be up on trial, but instead
Yakovlev is about to pass judgment on us.
The war danger is now being exploited by you in order to hound the Opposition and to prepare for its
physical annihilation. Of all the labors of the E.C.C.I., where we discussed the question of the war
danger, the question of the British labor movement and especially the question of the Chinese
Revolution, you have issued for the information of the party only this little red pamphlet, which I hold in
my hand, and which you have issued against the Opposition. Moreover, even in this case -- how shall I
say ? -- you pilfered my speech from the minutes on the pretext that I had not yet "corrected it." This
means precisely that you are exploiting the war danger primarily against us.
We declare that we shall continue to criticize the Stalinist regime so long as you do not physically seal
our lips. Until you clamp a gag on our mouths we shall continue to criticize this Stalinist regime which
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