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

THE DOLDRUMS: 1907-1914 197
wants to devour all independent people, including Trotsky, as well
as the liquidators.I
The logic of thipgs [Martov wrote to another correspondent]
compels Trotsky to follow the Menshevik road, despite all his
reasoned pleas for some 'synthesis' between Menshevism and
Bolshevism ... he has not only found himself in 'the camp of the
liquidators', but he is compelled to take up there the most 'pugnacious'
attitude towards Lenin. His pupils, however, ... are fretful.>
In the summer of 1910 Trotsky's breach with the Central
Committee was complete. Kamenev had left Pravda, after
Trotsky had asked that the Central Committee should replace
him by another liaison officer; and the Central Committee withdrew
its subsidy. 3 By now the initiative in splitting the united
movement had passed from Martov to Lenin; and Trotsky
denounced 'the conspiracy of the [Bolshevik] emigre clique
against the Russian Social Democratic Party,' adding that
'Lenin's circle, which wants to place itself above the party, will
find itself outside it' . 4 He carried the campaign into the German
Socialist press, where he wrote that none of the emigre leaders
represented the real movement in Russia, which craved for
unity and resented their intrigues. This was then, in fact, a
common view among the underground workers: none other
than Stalin wrote in a similar vein in the Caucasus.s Trotsky's
articles, nevertheless, caused an uproar among the delegates of
the party, who assembled in Copenhagen in October 1910 for a
congress of the International. At a meeting of the Russian delegation,
Plekhanov, seconded by Lenin, demanded disciplinary
action, while Lunacharsky and Ryazanov acted as Trotsky's
counsel for the defence. The offender was let off-even his
accusers must have found it awkward to penalize him for an
opinion expressed in 'fraternal' German papers.
The feud was not without its comic incidents, of which one
at least may be related here. Both factions tried to recover the
funds which they had deposited with the German trustees; but
for some reason neither was able to establish a valid title. In the
summer of 1911 Axelrod and Trotsky went to Jena, where a
congress of the German Social Democrats was being held, in
1
Pisma Axelroda i Martova, p. 230. • Ibid., p. 233.
3 Pravda, no. 20; Lenin, Sochinmya, vol. xvi, p. 36o. 4 Pravda, no. 21.
5 Stalin, Sodiinmya, vol. ii, pp. 146-58; I. Deutscher, Stalin, pp. 104~.