The Stalin school of falsification - Marxists Internet Archive

Stalin School of Falsification -- Chapter 9
insurrection and the Provisional Government, contained the central portion -- consult the protocols -- that
was written by me, and I am proud of it. Have any of my critics perhaps something similar to list among
their assets?
In 1905, a whole number of proclamations issued in Baku in the underground Bolshevik printshop were
written by me: the one to the peasants on the occasion of January 9; another on the Czarist agrarian laws,
and so on. In 1905, in November, Novaya Zhizn, under the editorship of Lenin, solidarized itself with my
articles in Nachalo[57] on the nature of our revolution. And I was expounding in them the so-called
theory of the permanent revolution.
ORDJONIKIDZE: Nevertheless you happened to be with Nachalo and not Novaya Zhizn. Isn't that so?
TROTSKY: But you have apparently forgotten that at that time the Bolshevik C.E.C. headed by Lenin
unanimously adopted a resolution in favor of unity between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Within a
few weeks, Nachalo was merged with Novaya Zhizn, and the latter wrote in warm praise of my articles
on more than one occasion. This was the period of the tendency toward unification. Ynuhide the fact that
I worked hand in hand with the Bolsheviks in the 1905 Soviet. You hide the fact that in 1906 Lenin
published in Novaya Volna my pamphlet "Our Tactics" which defined our attitude toward the peasantry
in the revolution. You hide the fact that at the London Congress in 1907, Lenin referred favor ably to my
attitude towards the bourgeoisie and the peasantry.[58] I maintain that my differences with Bolshevism
were never greater than those of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht upon those questions on which
they also differed from Bolshevism. Let anyone dare assert that they were Mensheviks!
I was not a Bolshevik at that time. But I was never guilty of such monstrous blunders as the preservation
of the Anglo-Russian Committee, or the subordination of the Chinese Communist Party to the
Kuomintang.
KRYVOY: What about the Vienna platform?
TROTSKY: Are you referring to the bloc[59] in August 1912?
KAYVOV: Yes.
TROTSKY: That was the fruit of conciliationism. I had not yet lost hope at the time of the possibility of
uniting the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. But let not Ordjonikidze, Yaroslavsky and the others forget
that they themselves participated in 1917-not in 1912, mind you, but in 1917-in joint organizations with
the Mensheviks. The Vienna Conference was one of the attempts at conciliationism. It was not at all my
intention to make a bloc with the Mensheviks against the Bolsheviks. I still had hopes of reconciling the
Bolsheviks with the Mensheviks, and sought to unite them. In this as in all other instances, Lenin refused
to have anything to do with such an artificial unification. As a result of conciliationist policies, I found
myself formally in a bloc with the Mensheviks. But the struggle between us flared up instantly, almost on
the very next day; and the outbreak of the war found us irreconcilable opponents. Incidentally, Stalin,
throughout this period, was himself rather a vulgar conciliationist and, moreover, during the most acute
moments. In 1911, Stalin wrote concerning the struggle between Lenin and Martov that it was "a tempest
in a teapot." This was written by a member of the Bolshevik party. In March 1917, Stalin was in favor of
unity with Tseretelli. In 1926, Stalin was in favor of a bloc with Purcell, Chiang Kai-shek and Wang
Ching-wei. My mistakes are trifling indeed when compared with these mistakes. My activity from 1914
to 1917, i.e., during the war, is being distorted ruthlessly, after the easy manner of that simon-pure social
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1937-st2/sf09.htm (14 of 21) [06/06/2002 15:07:02]