The Stalin school of falsification - Marxists Internet Archive

Stalin School of Falsification - Chapter 4
with my editorial participation. To this series belong, for instance, the "Declaration of the Bolshevik
Fraction of the Soviet Congress as to the Proposed Advance on the Front" (First Congress of the
Soviets), the letter to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets from the Central Committee of the
Bolshevik party in the days of the June demonstration, and others. I have chanced upon quite a number of
Bolshevik resolutions of this period which I wrote, or participated in writing. In all my speeches at all
meetings, as is well known to all the comrades, I identified myself with the Bolsheviks.
10. One of the "Marxian historians" of the new style attempted not long ago to discover disagreements
between Lenin and me on the subject of the July days. Everyone tries to contribute his mite, hoping to
receive it back a hundred fold. You have to overcome a feeling of disgust even to refute such
falsifications. I will not cite personal reminiscences. I limit myself to documents. In my declaration to the
Provisional Government, I wrote at that time:
"1. I share the principled position of Lenin, Zinoviev and Kamenev, and I have developed it in my
journal, Vperllod, and in general in all my public speeches....
"2. My not participating in the editorship of Pravda and not entering the Bolshevik organization
are not to be explained by political differences but are due to conditions in our party history which
have now lost all significance." (Collected Works, Vol.111, Part I, pp. 165f.)
11. In connection with the July days, the Social Revolutionary-Menshevik Presidium convoked a plenary
session of the Central Executive Committee. The Bolshevik fraction of the plenum invited me at that
difficult moment to make the report on the question of the new situation and the problems of the party.
That was before my formal union with the party and notwithstanding the fact that Stalin, for example,
was then in Petrograd. The "Marxian historians" of the new style did not yet then exist, and the
assembled Bolsheviks unanimously approved the fundamental ideas of my report on the July days and
the tasks of the party. There is published testimony on this point, particularly in the memoirs of N. I.
Muralov.
12. Lenin, as is well known, did not suffer from benevolent confidence in people when it was a question
of ideological line or of political conduct in difficult circumstances, and such benevolence was
particularly foreign to him in relation to revolutionists who had stood in a preceding period outside the
ranks of the Bolshevik party. It was precisely the July days which broke down the last remnants of the
old dividing lines. In his letter to the Central Committee on the slate of Bolshevik candidates for the
Constituent Assembly, Vladimir Ilyich wrote:
"We cannot possibly permit such an immoderate number of candidates from people who have hardly
been tested and who have just recently joined the party (such as, U. Larin).
We must have special reconsideration and correction of the slate.
"It goes without saying that . .. nobody would oppose such a nomination, for example, as that of L. D.
Trotsky, for, in the first place, Trotsky immediately upon his arrival, took the position of an
internationalist; in the second place, he fought among the 'Mezhrayontsi' for fusion with the Bolsheviks;
and finally, during the onerous July days he proved himself both equal to the task and a devoted adherent
of the party of the revolutionary proletariat. Obviously that can not be said for a majority of the recent
members of the party who appear on the slate." (The First Legal Central Committee of the Bolsheviks in
1917, Leningrad Istpart, pp. 305f.)
13. The question of our attitude to the Pre-Parliament[9] was discussed in Lenin's absence. I appeared as
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