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

WAR AND THE INTERNATIONAL 235
Bolshevism lingered on in a man like Manuilsky, it was all the
stronger in Trotsky. But he, too, preached close co~operation
with 'the very active and influential group ofLeninists', although
he was still afraid of remaining tete-a-tete with it. 1 When he
made the rapprochement with the Bolsheviks a principle of editorial
policy, Martov, after many 'ultimatums and counter-ultimatums',
at last resentfully resigned from Nashe Slouo. 2 Thus
snapped another old friendship, and thus Trotsky made another
step towards Lenin and the Third International.
However, neither Trotsky nor even Lenin had yet made up his
mind to secede at once, come what might, from the Second International.
In the spring of Ig 16 the leaders of that International,
alarmed by the response which the Zimmerwald movement had
evoked, at last convened at the Hague a session of their International
Bureau. In Nashe Slovo, Lozovsky urged the Russian
Socialists to boycott the conference or to attend it only in order
to declare demonstratively that they would not rejoin the prewar
organization. In a reply which is of considerable interest to
the historian of the Third International, Trotsky pleaded for a
more cautious attitude:' ... it is possible that we, the left, may
be in a position not to attend The Hague conference, if we have
the masses behind us. We might then go there only in order to
make a demonstration ... as Lozovsky, pre-judging the issue,
one-sidedly counsels us to do. But it is also possible that the
alignment inside the labour movement may compel us to take
up for a time the position of a left wing in their [i.e. the Second]
lnternational.' 3 He recalled that the Zimmerwald movement
had not arisen as an explicit attempt to set up a new International.
Trotsky's attitude in this matter was a shade less
definite than Lenin's. At the end of April 1916 Lenin carried
with him the second conference of the Zimmcrwald movement,
which assembled at Kienthal, in Switzerland. Trotsky did not
attend-this time the French authorities did not permit him to
cross the frontier. But in defiance of the raging censorship, he
stated in .Nashe Slovo his solidarity with the Kienthal resolutions. 4
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