The Stalin school of falsification - Marxists Internet Archive

Stalin School of Falsification - Chapter 7
Zinoviev:
"Could you please tell me whether the so-called literary discussion against 'Trotskyism' would have taken
place, if I had not published The Lessons of October.?"
Without the slightest hesitation, Zinoviev replied: "Yes, indeed. The Lessons of October served only as a
pretext. Failing that, a different motive would have been found, and the discussion would have assumed
somewhat different forms, nothing more."
(2) In the declaration of July 1926, signed by Zinoviev and Kamenev, the following statement occurs:
"There can no longer be any doubt now that the main nucleus of the 1923 Opposition correctly warned
against the dangers of the departure from the proletarian line and against the alarming growth of the
apparatus regime. Nevertheless, scores and hundreds of the leaders of the 1928 Opposition, among them
many old worker-Bolsheviks, tempered in the struggle and immune to careerism and toadyism, remain to
this day removed from party work, despite their proven constancy and submission to discipline."
(3) At the joint Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of July 14 to July
23, 1926, Zinoviev said:
"I have made many mistakes. But I consider two mistakes as my most important ones. My first mistake
of 1917 is known to all of you. . . . The second mistake I consider more dangerous because the first one
was made under Lenin. The mistake of 1917 was corrected by Lenin and made good by us within a few
days with the help of Lenin, but my mistake of 1923 consisted in...."
ORDJONIKIDZE (interrupting): "Then why did you dupe the entire party?"
ZINOVIEV: "We say, there can no longer be any doubt now that the main nucleus of the 1923 Opposition,
as the development of the present ruling faction has shown, correctly warned against the dangers of the
departure from the proletarian line, and against the alarming growth of the apparatus regime. . . . Yes, in
the question of suppression by the bureaucratized apparatus, Trotsky proved to be right as against us."
(Minutes, 4th Issue, p. 33.)
In this manner, Zinoviev admitted his mistake of 1923 (in waging a struggle against "Trotskyism" and
even characterized it as much more dangerous than that of 1917— when he opposed the October
insurrection!).
(4) This admission on the part of Zinoviev aroused considerable astonishment among many second-rank
leaders of the Leningrad Opposition who were not initiated into the conspiracy and who honestly
believed in the legend of "Trotskyism."
Zinoviev told me repeatedly: "In Leningrad we hammered it into the minds of the comrades more deeply
than anywhere else and it is, therefore, most difficult to re-educate them."
I recall quite accurately the words that Lashevich shouted at two members of the Leningrad Group who
came to Moscow to clarify themselves on the question of Trotskyism:
"Why do you keep standing the matter on its head! We invented 'Trotskyism' together with you in the
struggle against Trotsky. Why won't you understand this? You are only helping Stalin! etc."
Zinoviev in his turn said:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1937-st2/sf07.htm (2 of 8) [06/06/2002 15:06:38]