The Stalin school of falsification - Marxists Internet Archive

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Stalin School of Falsification - Chapter 4 Govrnment, "defensists" was the name applied to those who, whatever their position may have been on this question dur ing the reign of the Czar, were now in favor of continuing the war against Germany and defending the fatherland on the ground that it was now revolutionary and deserving of defense. The "defensists" included the leaders of the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary Parties, as well as Plekhanov and his small Yed in'tvo [Unity] group. Lenin, Trotsky and most of the other Bolsheviks, especially after the return to Russia of these two leaders, called for an end to the war, for peace with Germany- a general peace if possible and a separate peace otherwise-and were vigorously opposed to any defense of the fatherland under a capitalist government (Lvov or Kerensky) which continued to pursue imperialist aims. [BACK TO TEXT] 14. In the German Reichstag meeting in December, 1914, at which the second war credit demanded by the government was being considered, Karl Liebknecht finally broke the discipline of the social democratic fraction to which he belonged and voted against the entire Reichstag membership, including the members of his own party. Refusing to cast his vote for the credit demanded, he made a flaming attack upon the government and the war as imperialistic. He was subsequently expelled from the party fraction. Other members, who were also opposed to vot ing the war credits, nevertheless submitted to the decisions of the patriotic majority and voted with it in the plenary sessions of the Reichstag. [BACK TO TEXT] 15. Zimmerwald and Kienthal are the two Swiss towns where the most important conferences of the anti-war socialists were held during the World War. The Zimmerwald Conference, in Septem ber, 1915, was initiated by the Swiss and Italian Socialist parties, and was attended by their representatives as well as by delegates from other anti-war parties and groups, including the Bolsheviks, who organized the Zimmerwald Left out of the extreme radical section of the conference. The Zimmerwald Manifesto condemned the war as imperialistic on both sides, rejected civil peace and voting for war credits, and called for a struggle against the war and for socialism. The defeated Left wing resolution sharply denounced the social patriots and the International Bureau and called openly for civil war in place of civil peace. The Kienthal Conference, in April, 1916, was a more radical gathering, in which the influence of Lenin and the Left wing showed its growth over that of the Centrists. The International Socialist Bureau was attacked for the first time and the "utopian demands of bourgeois and socialist pacifism" rejected. Lenin continued to urge the formation of a new International. His views on "the lines of Zimmerwald-Kienthal" as a basis for unification of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, as proposed by Stalin early in 1917, at a time when Lenin was fighting for a break with the Centrists who dominated the Zimmerwald Commission, may be deduced from Lenin's letter of June 17, 1917, to Karl Radek for the Foreign Bureau of the Central Committee (Vorovsky, Ganetzky, Radek) which was then located in Stockholm: "If it is true that the miserable Grimm, who has become quite confused (we were right in never trusting this ministerial good-for-nothing), has handed over all the Zimmerwald affairs to the Left Swedes, and that the latter are going to convene a Zimmerwald Conference in a few days, then I should like-speaking for myself personally (I write this solely on my own account)- urgently to warn against getting involved in Zimmerwald. 'It would be a good thing, however, to capture the Zimmerwald International now,' said Gregory [Zinoviev] today. In my opinion, this is an arch- opportunist and harmful tactic. 'Capture' Zimmerwald? This means taking over the dead weight of the Italian Party (the Kautskyans and pacifists), the Swiss Greulich and Co., the Ameri can Socialist Party (still worse!), the various Pelusos, the Longuetists and the like. This would mean to throw all our prin ciples over-board, to forget everything that we have written and spoken against the Center, to become entangled and to make our selves ridiculous. No, if the Left Swedes take Zimmerwald into their hands and if they become http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1937-st2/sf04.htm (15 of 16) [06/06/2002 15:06:13]
Stalin School of Falsification - Chapter 4 desirous of running into error, tben we must submit to them an ultimatum: either they declare, on the first day of the Zimmerwald Conference, Zimmerwald to be dissolved and found the Third International, or we shall go. In this way or another, we must at any price bury the dirty (very "Grimmish"), Zimmerwald and found a real Third International only of Lefts, only against the Kaatskyans. Better a little fish than a big black beetle (International Press Correspondence, Vol. XII, No.51, p. 1107.) [BACK TO TEXT] 16. The Okhrana was the Czarist Secret Police, one of whose prin cipal tasks was the hounding of the revolufionary movements. [BACK TO TEXT] 17. Rykov, together with Bukharin and Tomsky, was part of the ruling machine at thc time Trotsky wrote his letter to the Bureau of Party History. Together with the Stalin faction, this trio car ried through the crushing and, finally, the expulsion of the Left Oppositionists in the party. Trotsky was the first, however, to mark off the political line of the Right wing trio from that of the Stalinist bureaucratic Center, and to foretell, years in advance, the break-up of the Right-Center bloc into its constituent parts. The quotation from Lenin against Rykov, which Trotsky refers to here, was only one part of the "ideological preparation" in Stalin's campaign to liquidate his Right wing allies in the strug gle against "Trotskyism." Early in 1929, this campaign began to take on flesh and blood and by the end of the year, Rykov had been removed as Chairman of the Council of People's Commis sars, Tomsky as head of the trade unions, and Bukharin as the head of the Comintern and editor of Pravda -- all on charges of being the channels through which the capitalist restoration, i.e., the counter-revolution, was expressing itself in the country. The trio thereupon capitulated to the Stalin machine and continued to capitulate regularly, upon command, until 1986. Then, Tomsky was driven to suicide or was killed for alleged complicity in the alleged assassination plot against Kirov and others (Zinoviev Kamenev trial); and Rykov and Bukharin were finally arrrested on similar charges. [BACK TO TEXT] Return to Index Page — Next Chapter The Leon Trotsky Archive The Marxist writers' Archives http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1937-st2/sf04.htm (16 of 16) [06/06/2002 15:06:13]
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