isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

AN INTELLECTUAL PARTNERSHIP 99
the hitherto opposed groups. 1 His call fell on deaf ears. The
schism was beginning to acquire its own momentum. Its
'fanatics' were active in both groups. Among the Bolsheviks,
Lenin's group considered the changes that had taken place
since the congress as Menshevik usurpations, to which a new
congress would put an end. The Mensheviks, having recaptured
position:; of influence, would not risk losing them at a new
congress, kt alone sharing them, through a merger, with their
adversaries. Having with so much thunder pilloried Lenin as
the 'disorganizer', Trotsky was shocked to find 'disorganizers'
among his Menshevik friends. He began, mildly enough, to
plead with them the need of reconciliation. He had joined the
Mensheviks in order to make good the injury Lenin had inflicted
on the founding fathers of the movement and through them on
the movement itself. The injury had been made good with a
vengeance. The Bolshevik Central Committee itself was anxious
to make it good. All that was now needed to close the painful
chapter was that the ad hoc arrangements which had been
necessary in order to defeat Lenin be scrapped and that the
men of good will in both sections of the party join hands. He
did not realize that the ad hoc arrangements had come to
stay.
In controversies like this the conciliator is unwelcome. He
threatens to upset well-laid plans and to mix all the cards.
His own friends look askance at him, considering him little
better than a traitor. Thus did some Mensheviks now look upon
Trotsky: his attitude was not stable; it was indistinguishable
from that of the moderate Bolsheviks; and nobody could say
where he would stand tomorrow. Indeed, Trotsky might easily
have become one of the Bolshevik 'conciliators' had not his
hurtful attacks on Lenin and Lenin's followers estranged him
from all Bolsheviks. In their eyes he was one of the most vicious
Mensheviks. And so he was breaking with his political friends
without much chance of agreement with his adversaries.
In this situation he came under the influence of a man who
was in a sense an outsider to the party and whose role in its
affairs was that of a brilliant interloper. He was A. L. Helfand,
a Russian Jew who had made his home in Germany and had
won distinction as an economist, publicist, and author of
' N. Trotsky, Nasf;i Politicheskye .