The Stalin school of falsification - Marxists Internet Archive

Stalin School of Falsification - Chapter 7
having had "guilty knowledge" of a secret faction organized by Syrtsov, Lominadze, Shatskin and Sten,
and for having failed to inform the party authorities. Once more, Zinoviev and Kamenev presented a
statement of recantation, even more humiliating than the first; they were again readmitted in 1933. From
then on, their self-debasing statements continued periodically, until January, 1935, when they admitted
"moral complicity" in the assassination of S. M. Kirov in Leningrad, for which they were sentenced,
along with a number of their real and alleged political associates, to prison sentences ranging from five to
ten years. In August, 1936, they were once more accused of complicity in the assassination of Kirov, but
this time of direct responsibility. Less than two weeks after the opening of the tragically farcical trial,
they were executed along with fourteen other defendants. [BACK TO TEXT]
34. The "literary discussion" was launched in 1924 in the Russian party on the pretext of the publication
of The Lessons of October (Eng. trans. New York, 1937), which examined the problems of revolutionary
strategy and tactics in the German Revolution of October, 1923, in the light of the instructive internal
disputes which developed in the Bolshevik Party during the year 1917 over the question of the
insurrection which finally occurred in Novem ber. Trotsky's work, an introduction to his volume 1917,
was almost universally condemned by the various Communist parties on command from Moscow, but
not one person in a hundred called upon to condemn it, ever laid eyes on it. In fact, in the American
Communist Party, the press was called upon, at one and the same time, to condemn Trotsky's work and
to refrain from publishing it! The Central Executive Committee of the party issued the following decision
to all part; editors: "You will find attached hereto an English translation of a review of comrade Trotsky's
Book 1917 entitled 'How One Should Not Write the History of October.' By decision of the Central
Execu tive Committee all party papers are instructed to reprint this Pravda review within ten days time.
It is the further instruction of the Central Executive Committee that no party paper shall reprint the book
1917 or any chapter thereof in the party press. It is the view of the Central Executive Committee of the
Workers [Communist] Party of America that the publication of Trotsky's book in this country would be a
detriment to the work of Bolshevizing the Workers Party which is the most important task before our
party. The Central Executive Committee regrets to note that the Volkazeitung [the party organ in German
at that time] has already begun publication of the book serially. It has instructed the Volkszeitun'q to
discontinue the publication and further instructs all other party papers that neither the book as a whole
nor any chapter thereof is to be reprinted in the party press. . . . Central Executive Committee, W. P. of
A., Wm. Z. Foster, Chairman, C. E. Ruthenberg, Executive Secretary." (Daily Worker, December 18,
1924.) It was therefore a "detriment to the work of Boishevizing" the American Communist movement to
make available to the membership Trotsky's essay so that they might at least know the contents of what
they were instructed to condemn as counter-revolutionary. [BACK TO TEXT]
35. On October 16, 1926, the recently formed Opposition, faced with the threat of expulsion which
would prematurely cut them off from contact with the party membership, issued a statement to the party
in which the pledge is made to cease advocating their views in the intensely sharp factional form which
the struggle had assumed by that time. The increasingly repressive and bureaucratic measures taken by
the Stalinist leadership, plus the decisive importance of the events in England and especially in China,
made it impossible to conduct the struggle against the decadent bureaucracy in the form pledged by the
statement. [BACK TO TEXT]
Return to Index Page — Next Chapter
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1937-st2/sf07.htm (7 of 8) [06/06/2002 15:06:38]