The Stalin school of falsification - Marxists Internet Archive

Stalin School of Falsification - Chapter 4
Among the membership of the "Mezhrayontsi" organization there were elements which tried to impede
the fusion, advancing this or that condition, etc. (Yurenev and, in part, Manuilsky). Between the
Petersburg Committee of the party and the "Mezhrayontsi" organization there had piled up, as always in
such circumstances, old grudges, lack of confidence, etc. That and that alone caused the delay in our
fusion until July.
8. Comrade Raskolnikov has covered no little paper in recent times with attempts to contrast my line in
the year 1917 with Lenin's. It is too wearisome a task to adduce such examples, especially since his
writing does not differ in the least from all the other falsifications of the same kind.
It might prove more fruitful, therefore, to quote some words which this same Raskolnikoy wrote about
that period somewhat earlier:
"The echoes of past disagreements during the pre-war period had completely disappeared. No differences
existed between the tactical line of Lenin and Trotsky. The fusion, already observable during the war,
was completely and definitely achieved from the moment of Leon Davidovich's [Trotsky's] return to
Russia. From his first public speech all of us old Leninists felt that he was ours." ("In Kerensky's Jail,"
Proletarskaya Revolutsia, No. 10 [22], 1923, pp. 150f.)
Those words were written not in order to prove something or to refute something but just to tell what
was. Later on Raskolnikov showed that he also knows how to tell what was not. In republishing his
articles issued by the organs of the Istpart, Raskolnikov meticulously removed from them what was, in
order to replace it with what was not.
Maybe it is not worth while to dwell upon comrade Raskolnikov but this example is rather striking.
In his review of the third volume of my Collected Works in Krasnaya Nov., No.7-8, 1924, pp. 395-401,
Raskolnikov asks:
"And what was the position of Trotsky himself in 1917 ?" and answers:
"Comrade Trotsky still considered himself a member of the same general party with the Mensheviks,
Tseretelli and Skobelev."
And further:
"Comrade Trotsky had not yet clarified his attitude towards Bolshevism and Menshevism. At that time
comrade Trotsky still occupied a vacillating, indefinite, straddling position."
You might ask how these really impudent assertions can be reconciled with the words of this same
Raskolnikov quoted above: "The echoes of past disagreements during the pre war period had completely
disappeared."
If Trotsky had not defined his attitude towards Bolshevism and Menshevism, how did it happen that "all
of us old Leninists felt that he was ours"?
But that is not all. In the article of the same Raskolnikoy entitled "July Days," Proletarskaya Revolutsia,
No.5 (17), 1928, pp. 71f, we read:
"Leon Davidovich was not formally at that time a member of our party but as a matter of fact he worked
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