Leon Trotsky, The Lessons of October - Platypus

More documents

Recommendations

Info

66 The Lessons of Octoberreader will find, however, a much more simple and immediate explanationfor the above quoted phrase. It is to be accounted for by the concrete conditionsat that time. Among the Mezhrayontsi workers there still surviveda very strong distrust of the organizational policies of the Petrograd Committee.Arguments based on ”clannishness”-bolstered as is always the casein such circumstances by references to all sorts of ”injustice”-were currentamong the Mezhrayontsi. I refuted these arguments as follows: clannishness,as a heritage from the past, does exist, but if it is to diminish, theMezhrayontsi must terminate their own separate existence.My purely polemical ”proposal” to the First Soviet Congress that it constitutea government of twelve Peshekhonovs has been interpreted by somepeople by Sukhanov, I believe to indicate either that I was personally inclinedtoward Peshekhonov, or that I was advancing a special politicalline, distinct from that of Lenin. This is, of course, sheer nonsense. Whenour party demanded that the soviets, led by the Mensheviks and the SRs,should assume power, it thereby ”demanded” a ministry composed of Peshekhonovs.In the last analysis, there was no principled difference at allbetween Peshekhonov, Chernov, and Dan. They were all equally useful forfacilitating the transfer of power from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat. Itmay be that Peshekhonov was better acquainted with statistics, and madea slightly better impression as a practical man than Tseretelli or Chernov. Adozen Peshekhonovs meant a government composed of a dozen stalwartrepresentatives of petty-bourgeois democracy instead of a coalition. Whenthe Petersburg masses, led by our party, raised the slogan: ”Down with theten capitalist ministers!” they thereby demanded that the posts of theseministers be filled by Mensheviks and Narodniks. ”Messrs. bourgeoisdemocrats, kick the Cadets out! Take power into your own hands! Putin the government twelve (or as many as you have) Peshekhonovs, and wepromise you, so far as it is possible, to remove you ’peacefully’ from yourposts when the hour will strike which should be very soon!” There was nospecial political line here, it was the same line that Lenin formulated timeand again.I consider it necessary to underscore emphatically the warning voiced byComrade Lentsner, the editor of this volume. As he points out, the bulkof the speeches contained in this volume were reprinted not from stenographicnotes, even defective ones, but from accounts made by reportersof the conciliationist press, half ignorant and half malicious. A cursory inspectionof several documents of this sort caused me to reject offhand theoriginal plan of correcting and supplementing them to a certain extent. Letthem remain as they are. They, too, in their own fashion, are documents ofthe epoch, although emanating ”from the other side.”The present volume would not have appeared in print had it not been
Leon Trotsky 67for the careful and competent work of Comrade Lentsner, who is also responsiblefor compiling the note, and of his assistants, Comrades Heller,Kryzhanovsky, Rovensky, and I. Rumer.I take the opportunity to express my comradely gratitude to them. I shouldlike to take particular notice of the enormous work done in preparing thisvolume as well as my other books by my closest collaborator, M.S. Glazman.I conclude these lines with feelings of profoundest sorrow over theextremely tragic death of this splendid comrade, worker, and man.
Page 1 and 2:
The Lessons of OctoberLeon Trotsky1
Page 3 and 4:
Contents1 We Must Study the October
Page 5 and 6:
Chapter 1We Must Study the OctoberR
Page 7 and 8:
Leon Trotsky 3the toilers — in No
Page 9 and 10:
Leon Trotsky 5sistance becomes weak
Page 11 and 12:
Chapter 2’The Democratic Dictator
Page 13 and 14:
Leon Trotsky 9that the latter reall
Page 15 and 16:
Leon Trotsky 11one must measure up
Page 17 and 18:
Leon Trotsky 13most important perio
Page 19 and 20: Chapter 3The Struggle Against War a
Page 21 and 22: Leon Trotsky 17And where should a w
Page 23 and 24: Leon Trotsky 19overthrown tsarism,
Page 25 and 26: Chapter 4The April ConferenceThe sp
Page 27 and 28: Leon Trotsky 23if they were the org
Page 29 and 30: Leon Trotsky 25remained only one po
Page 31 and 32: Chapter 5The July Days; the Kornilo
Page 33 and 34: Leon Trotsky 29cannot but meet with
Page 35 and 36: Leon Trotsky 31clash on this questi
Page 37 and 38: Leon Trotsky 33schoolboy patterns b
Page 39 and 40: Chapter 6On the Eve of the OctoberR
Page 41 and 42: Leon Trotsky 37it to seek the satis
Page 43 and 44: Leon Trotsky 39simply ignored the q
Page 45 and 46: Leon Trotsky 41party in the terms:
Page 47 and 48: Leon Trotsky 43inous to the proleta
Page 49 and 50: Leon Trotsky 45mittee of our party,
Page 51 and 52: Chapter 7The October Insurrection a
Page 53 and 54: Leon Trotsky 49be victorious today)
Page 55 and 56: Leon Trotsky 51gains organizational
Page 57 and 58: Leon Trotsky 53declared, in negotia
Page 59 and 60: Leon Trotsky 55generally harmful in
Page 61: Chapter 8Again, on the Soviets and
Page 64 and 65: 60 The Lessons of Octoberfighting s
Page 66 and 67: 62 The Lessons of OctoberFebruary 1
Page 68 and 69: 64 The Lessons of October
show all

Leon Trotsky, The Lessons of October - Platypus

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?