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

THE PROPHET ARMED
educational association Trotsky found an cager audience for his
denunciations of the war and of the Socialists who supported it.
'With Trotsky's arrival in Zurich', recollects a well-known
Swiss writer, '!if.~ returned to the Labour movement, or at least
to one sector of it. He brought with him the belief ... that from
this war would arise revolution .... With Trotsky these were not
merely words but his innermost conviction.'' So strongly did he
sway his new audience that almost at once he was elected
delegate to a national convention of the Socialist party of
Switzerland. It gave the leaders of the party some trouble to
explain to the rank and file that it was impolitic to give voting
rights at the congress to a foreigner and a citizen of a belligerent
country.
During this stay in Zurich, which lasted only a little more than
two months, Trotsky wrote The War and the International, the
first extensive statement of anti-war policy by a Russian
Socialist. Its polemical edge was turned primarily against the
German Social Democrats, who were arguing that in fighting
Tsardom, the 'gendarme of Europe', Hohenzollern Germany
was pursuing a progressive historical mission. 'In our
struggle against Tsardom', Trotsky retorted, 'in which we
know no truce, we have not sought and arc not seeking
assistance fr8m the militarism of the Habsburgs or the
Hohcnzollerns .... We have owed a lot to the German Social
Democratic Party. We have all gone through its school and
learned from its successes and mistakes. It was for us not one of
the parties of the International uut the party.' All the keener
was the indignation with which he now repudiated the attitude
of the German Social Democrats. It was the Socialists' duty, he
insisted, to stand for peace, but not for a peace that would mean
a return to the status quo or a new balance between the imperialist
powers. The Socialists' objective must be a democratic peace,
without annexation and indemnities, and one allowing for the
self-determination of the subject nations. Only a rising of the
belligerent peoples against their rulers could achieve such a
peace. Thi.s part of his argument anticipated by more than
three years President Wilson's Fourteen Points; and Trotsky's
pamphlet, when it appeared in the United States, had a direct
influence on Wilson. Y ct, 'self-determination of the nations',
' F. Brupbachcr, 60 Jahre Kel