The Stalin school of falsification - Marxists Internet Archive

Stalin School of Falsification -- Chapter 10
Moscow offers counsel to the Chinese liberals: "Issue a law for the organization of a minjinum of
workers' detachments." This, in March 1927! Why the counsel to the tops-Arm yourselves to the
minimum? and why not a slogan to the rank and file -- Arm yourselves to the maximum? Why the mini
mum and not the maximum? In order not to "scare away" the bourgeoisie, so as not to "provoke" a civil
war. But the civil war came inevitably, and proved far more cruel, catching the workers unarmed and
drowning them in blood.
Moscow came out against the building of Soviets in the "army's rear" -- as if the revolution is the rump of
an army in order not to disorganize the rear of the very same generals who two days later crushed the
workers and peasants in their rear.
Did we reinforce the bourgeoisie and the landlords by compelling the communists to submit to the
Kuomintang and by covering the Kuomintang with the authority of the Comintern? Yes, we did.
Did we weaken the peasantry by retarding the development of the agrarian revolution and of the Soviets?
Yes, we did.
Did we weaken the workers with the slogan of "minimum arming"-nay, not the slogan but the polite
counsel to the bourgeois tops: "Minimum arming," and "No need for Soviets"? Yes, we did. Is it to be
wondered at that we suffered a defeat, having done everything that could have made victory difficult?
Voroshilov gave the most correct, conscientious and candid explanation for this entire policy. "The
peasant revolution," he says, "might have interfered with the Northern Expedition of the generals." You
put a brake on the revolution for the sake of a military expedition. That is exactly how Chiang Kai-shek
viewed the matter. The development of the revolution might, you see, make an expedition difficult for a
"national" general. But, after all, the revolution itself is indeed an actual and a real expedition of the
oppressed against the oppressors. To help the expedition of the generals, you put a brake on the
revolution and disorganized it. Thereby the expedition of the generals was turned into a spearhead not
only against the workers and the peasants but also -- precisely because of that -- against the national
revolution.
Had we duly secured the complete independence of the Communist party, assisted it to arm itself with its
press and with correct tactics; had we given it the slogans "Maximum arming of the workers!" "Extend
the peasant war in the villages!" the Communist party would have grown, not from day to day, but from
hour to hour, and its cadres would have been tempered in the fires of revolutionary struggle. The slogan
of Soviets should have been raised from the very first days of the mass movement. Everywhere,
wherever the slightest possibility existed, steps for the actual realization of Soviets should have been
taken. Soldiers should have been drawn into the Soviets. The agrarian revolution would have
disorganized the pseudo-revolutionary armies but it would have likewise transmitted the infection to the
counter-revolutionary armies of the enemy. Only on this foundation could it have been possible to forge
gradually a real revolutionary, i.e., workers' and peasants' army.
Comrades! We have heard here a speech made not by Voroshilov, the People's Commissar for Army and
Navy, but by Voroshilov, a member of the Political Bureau. This speech, I say, is in itself a catastrophe.
It is equivalent to a lost battle.
[Shouts from the Opposition benches: "Correct!"]
TROTSKY: Last May, during the Plenum of the E.C.C.I., when after finally assigning Chiang Kai-shek
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