The Stalin school of falsification - Marxists Internet Archive

Stalin School of Falsification -- Chapter 9
democrat Kuusinen, and especially by those gentlemen who were either patriots or followers of Kautsky
at the time. Let me remind you that at the beginning of the war I wrote a pamphlet entitled IVar and the
International concerning which Zinoviev-who was not and could not have been favorably disposed
toward me-wrote that it posed the question correctly on all fundamental issues.
SHKLOVSKY: That was in 1914!
TROTSKY: Very true, that was in 1914. This pamphlet became a weapon in the hands of extreme Left
wingers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. I was a revolutionary internationalist, even though I was
not a Bolshevik. In France, I collaborated with a group of comrades, socialists and syndicalists, who later
joined the Communist International, and who were among its founders. I was deported from France asa
revolutionary internationalist. I was deported from Spain as a revolutionary internationalist. In New
York, I worked on the editorial board of Novy Mir, together with Volodarsky and Bukharin. In February
and March 1917, I wrote articles in Novy Mir which were written in the same spirit as Lenin's Geneva
articles, at a time when Stalin came out in Pravda as a semi-Menshevik and semi defensist. In a Canadian
concentration camp at Amherst, I organized the German sailors who were followers of Liebknecht, and
who later fought on the side of the Spartacists.
ORDJONSKSDZE: You have four minutes left, comrade Trotsky.
TROTSKY: I have not yet touched on the answer to the fundamental question that you posed in
reference to the "decline" of our revolution.
ORDJONIKIDZE: Why did you dwell so long on your biography?
TROTSKY: I think that an accused man has a right to speak of his biography, and it is not within the
province of a chairman to restrict him on such occasions. At any rate, I was not the one who first brought
up the question of my biography. Nothing was further from my mind. There are enough questions as it is.
But it is precisely the Stalinist faction that has substituted the question of my biography for all political
questions. And I reply to fictions with irrefutable facts. I appeal to the Presidium to grant me 15 minutes
in order to reply on the question of the destiny of our revolution.
ORDJONSKIDRE: You will speak the remaining four minutes, and then we shall take up the question of
extending your time. Trotsky Ordjonikidze upbraided me for drawing an analogy with the Great French
Revolution. One must not talk, you see, of prisons, guillotines and the perspectives of decline, etc. It is a
superstition that harm can come from words. Harm can come from facts, from actions, from false policy.
I must say, however, that the question itself was not raised on my initiative at all. I made reference to
Soltz's words. They motivated me to pose the question of the different stages of the revolution, its waves
of rise and fall, either temporary or final.
Temporary or final -- herein is the crux of the question, comrade Ordjonikidze. Before dwelling on this
question, I must state that in all the nuclei preparations are being made at the present time to draw further
and further conclusions --preparations for precisely that line which you, comrade Ordjonikidze, so lightly
and bureaucratically dismiss, namely, the path of expulsions and repressions. Yes, I repeat, you do so
lightly and bureaucratically, shutting your eyes to what is taking place in the party and above the party.
In all nuclei, the reporters, especially rehearsed beforehand, pose the question of the Opposition in such a
manner as makes some worker rise -- most often on instructions -- and say: "Why are you bothering with
them? Is it not high time to shoot them?" Then the reporter, with a hypocritically mild mien, objects,
"Comrades, there is no need to be hasty." This has already become a routine in the party. The question is
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