Revue publiée avec le concours du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Cahiers
du
MONDE RUSSE
et
SOVIÉTIQUE
Volume XXXI (4)
Octobre-Décembre 1990
CHRONIQUE
YURI FELSHTINSKY
LENIN, TROTSKY, STALIN
AND THE LEFT OPPOSITION IN THE USSR
1918-1928
The year 1928 can be considered a major line of demarcation in Soviet history
for a whole series of reasons. Internally the country terminated the brief exist ence of NEP, and the forced collectivization of peasant agriculture was begun. In
foreign policy the stormy expansionistic decade of 1918-1927 ended with the
unsuccessful revolution in China and was replaced by the relatively peaceful
period of 1928-1937. In party politics the so-called "Left Opposition" was liquidated in 1928 as a legitimate political force; its most brilliant representative was
Leon Trotsky.
It cannot be said that little historiographical attention has been devoted to
Trotsky. A bibliography of his writings as well as the works about him would
occupy many hundreds of pages. 1 Nevertheless, the reasons for his strikingly
easy defeat in the struggle for power, and the solitude to which he was always
doomed, which found expression in the absence of personal followers, cannot but
surprise the historian, as we cannot fail to be surprised by the swiftness of the fall
of the originally numerous and resolute Left Opposition - the supporters of
Trotsky.
In this article an attempt is made to analyze the sources of the Left Opposition
in the Bolshevik Party and the reasons for its defeat, as well as the roles played by
three Bolshevik leaders, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, in the ideological struggle
within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the first years of Soviet power.
The article is based largely on materials from Trotsky's Archives preserved by the
Houghton Library at Harvard University, portions of which have been published
by the author in recent years.2
Leftist oppositions arose in the USSR on two separate occasions, each time at
a moment critical for the Bolshevik system, when it was necessary to resolve
serious internal policy issues upon which depended either the very existence of the
Soviet government, or the success of the revolution in neighboring coun tries. The classic example of this was the opposition to the Treaty of Brest Litovsk. From the point of view of strict Communist interests, the Brest-Litovsk
PO
YURI FELSHTINSKY
treaty was a catastrophe. It totally destroyed any chance that might have existed
for a swift revolution in Germany, and therefore signalled the end of hope for
immediate revolution in the rest of Europe as well. This was so obvious to the
Bolshevik and Left Socialist Revolutionary party actives that the majority of their
party officials took a stand in opposition to Lenin's group, supporting instead
cither the openly leftist position of Nikolai Bukharin, who demanded the declaration of revolutionary war against all imperialists, or the more careful and undoubtedly more "correct" (from the point of view of Communist interests) position of
Trotsky.
Lenin's position, in contrast to that of his opponents, was absolutely rationalistic. Above all else, he was interested in power, even if only for a single day 3 in a
single town,4 and as soon as possible. 5 Only then would it be possible to think
about a European revolution. In such a scheme of things there was no place for
either the revolutionary romanticism of the Left SRs, or the rhetoric of the Left
Communists.6 More importantly, it also left no room even for a swift revolution
in Germany, since in such an event the issue of power in Russia would be deprived of its critical significance: the center of the worldwide communist movement
would shift to Berlin, and the Soviet government of the "United States of Europe"
would be headed by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, and certainly not by
Lenin, with his opportunistic and "rightist" idea of a Brest-Litovsk "truce."7
The players' cards were laid out as follows: on one side was Lenin, striving to
strengthen his authority and that of his group; on the other side were the dogmatic
idealists, understanding, some intuitively and some on the basis of sound reasoning, that there would be no place for them in any isolated socialist society, and that
it was therefore necessary for them to fight for immediate world revolution as the
only means of justifying their existence. 8 Lenin won that game. A brilliant tactician in party politics, he outplayed his opponents in time for the Central
Committee vote on the Brest-Litovsk treaty in March 1918 and, having made good
use of the indecisiveness of Trotsky and the Left Communists, pushed the treaty
through the Party Congress, managing also to destroy the rival Left SR Party
during the Congress of Soviets, on 6 July 1918.
After the destruction of the Left SRs, Lenin definitively confirmed his
power. It was only at the end of 1922 that a serious rival for Lenin appeared
from within the Politburo: Stalin. He was dangerous above all because, as a
good student, he had superbly assimilated the only leadership methods by which it
was possible to maintain a hold on the new type of party: he attempted to seize
control of the Lenin organization through a personal "secretariat," and nearly
made an overt statement of his claim. 9 Lenin opened the battle. Since the end
of 1922, however, he had been not only terminally ill, but had also become somewhat absent-minded and had lost considerable control of the events around
him. He created a system of governing "according to Lenin" which was beyond
the grasp of anyone other than himself, and proposed to the Politburo a collective
leadership, attempting to replace himself with the entire group. Not trusting any
single Politburo member enough to name an individual successor, he set forth a
"system of deputies" (sistema zamov) under which the members of the government would occupy dual posts in different departments, enabling them to watch
over each other. His proposal was not taken seriously in the Politburo Lenin
then dialled the document known as his "Testament," stating the total unfitness of
THE LEFT OPPOSITION IN THE USSR
571
each and every member of the Politburo for the role of head of the govern ment. He again proposed that he be replaced by a collective leadership and that
Stalin be removed from power altogether, but did not state who should replace
him (attesting once again to his uncharacteristic state of mind). 10 The Politburo
chose to ignore this document as well, and it would not be accurate to assume that
its publication would have been unpleasant for Stalin alone. Lenin's most important miscalculation in this affair was that he wrote a will equally detrimental to all
named in it. When American communist Max Eastman referred to the existence
of a Lenin "Testament" in a book he published in 1925, 11 it was none other than
Trotsky who stepped forward with a refutation.12
Extremely self-confident, Trotsky had not bothered to organize a group of personal partisans around himself; he was so certain of his own irreplaceability that
he had invested all his trust in the revolution itself.13 He was repeatedly proven
correct. Even without an organized group of followers, Trotsky was widely
considered before October of 1917 to be one of the most prominent of the revolutionaries, at a time when Lenin needed both money and an organization of followers to substantiate his own influence. This became particularly evident in 1917
after Lenin's arrival in Petrograd, when he sought the recognition of his
group. Trotsky, who had not compromised himself by traveling through
Germany, was in essence invited to head the Petrograd Soviet. And it was
Trotsky - not Lenin, who remained underground following his most recent failure
(the unsuccessful attempted coup in July) - who organized the seizure of power by
the Petrograd Soviet, in which the Bolsheviks held a strong majority. Lenin
appeared openly in public for the first time only after the uprising was over: on
26 October, at the Second Congress of Soviets, he assumed the authority seized
for him by Trotsky and took control of the new government that, in essence,
should have been lead by Trotsky himself. 14 Regardless of any disagreements
they may have had, the post-October period is therefore distinguished by the closeness of the relationship between Lenin and Trotsky. Until the seizure of power,
Trotsky was a rival for leadership of the movement, and Lenin struggled against
him any way he could. But once he was convinced that this brilliant revolutionary
was interested only in the revolution as such, and not in power, Lenin came to see
in him only an ally and a friend.15
In 1923, trying unsuccessfully to oust Stalin, Lenin proposed an alliance to
Trotsky; more precisely (if Lenin's illness is taken into account) - he asked
Trotsky for help. But Trotsky refused. He wanted no part of Lenin's intrigues,
even when the target was Stalin, whom Trotsky had always detested and regarded
as an inferior. He therefore not only refused to join Lenin in common battle, but
pointedly took up a neutral position. There was a certain amount of calculation
in this decision. At the moment of Lenin's death in January of 1924, to whom if
not Trotsky should the leadership of the Soviet government have belonged? And
Trotsky did not rush to assert his power by leaving the southern town of Sukhum
in order to attend Lenin's funeral.16 In complete accordance with his principles, he
waited for the Politburo to extend him an invitation to leadership. But the
Politburo issued no such invitation.
It was at this moment, essentially, that the Trotsky opposition, or, more precisely, the opposition to Trotsky, was born:17 the naming of Rykov to Lenin's post as
Chairman of the Sovnarkom amplified the relative authority of the more senior
572
YURI FELSHTINSKY
Stalin in his post as General Secretary. The opposition initially consisted of
Trotsky alone, standing against the majority of the Politburo led by Zinov'ev,
Kamenev, and Stalin. Trotsky, relying only on revolutionary truisms, and not on
a personnal mafia-type organization, at first did not want to admit that they were
opposing him; and having finally recognized it as fact, he could not understand
why. He was absolutely correct when he later indicated that his conflict with
Stalin began before the death of Lenin. But the conflict does not in itself explain
anything: Trotsky had even greater conflicts with Lenin. Trotsky then began to
formulate, totally in the spirit of Marxism, an entire theory (in which the most frequently repeated words were "Thermidor," and "bureaucratism") in an attempt to
explain the nature of Stalinism and the essence of his disagreement with it. He
held Lenin, the system, and himself, totally blameless. Only in 1934 did he write
in his diary: "Lenin created the apparatus. The apparatus created Stalin." 18
Trotsky's isolation in the face of the Politburo majority's original battle against
him, and the surprising solidarity they demonstrated in their persecution of him
in 1924-1925, can be explained to a certain extent by psychological factors: the
resplendent Trotsky was openly detested in party circles - for his self-assuredness
bordering on arrogance, for the too-distinct brilliance of his nature. It is not accidental that Trotsky, gradually ostracized and excluded from the business of the
day, turned out in those years to have no sympathizers, which is attested by the
nearly total absence from his archives of documents and letters for the years 19241925: he had no one with whom to correspond.19
The situation changed abruptly toward the end of 1925, when Zinov'ev and
Kamenev were already beginning to be pushed aside. Stalin was breaking with
them, and former enemies — Trotsky on the one hand, and Zinov'ev and Kamenev
on the other - were becoming allies.20 At this point, however, they lacked a sufficient common platform to serve as the basis for a true opposition, and in addition
could not openly admit that the issue at stake was a power struggle. To do so
would have signified defeat from the start, since the party rank and file would
most certainly have supported the current party leadership, rather than its former
officials. It was essential to formulate their areas of disagreement into a specific
platform, around which it would then be possible to rally a significant number of
discontented party actives. These areas of disagreement centered on domestic
policy in 1926: criticism of NEP from the left.
It would be wrong to assert that the dispute between the Bolshevik party activists and the oppositionists, who were by that time justifiably labeled "Leftists,"
was fabricated, or that Trotsky, Zinov'ev and Kamenev specifically joined together
for the purpose of defending a left-wing (rather than right-wing) position by
chance. The sincerity of Trotsky's position cannot be doubted: he had always
been on the left wing of the revolutionary spectrum. But the historian attempting
to explain why the "rightists" Zinov'ev and Kamenev —who had opposed the
Bolshevik uprising in October of 1917 -later turned up in the Left Opposition of
Trotsky, while Bukharin - the former leader of the Left Communists and a supporter
of the revolutionary war - was head of the right wing of the party (which at that
time included Stalin as well), runs into enormous difficulties.
The opposition formed in 1926 criticized the Soviet government's domestic
policies on a whole series of issues. In the main, however, the opposition came
out against the private economy, i.e., against NEP, although the criticism was leveled
THE LEFT OPPOSITION IN THE USSR
573
not against the New Economic Policy per se, but rather against the "private
owner." Thus Iu. G. Piatakov in a "Draft resolution on the economic question"
referred to the "growing economic influence of the kulak and the establishment of
a union of the middle-level peasant (seredniak) with private capitalistic elements."21 Alarm on the score of the increase in "prosperous peasant households"
was sounded also by E. Preobrazhenskii.22 They seemed to suggest that if NEP,
which represented a compromise between capitalist and socialist forms of economic
ownership, did lead to the gradual establishment of a capitalistic market economy,
then it was necessary to bring an end to NEP. If an individual peasant economy
in the countryside gave rise to a prosperous peasantry, while a collective peasant
economy resulted in an impoverished peasantry, then it was necessary to eliminate
the individual peasant economy. And although the opposition did not openly
call for this, beginning in 1928 Stalin took the demands of the oppositionists to
their logical end.
By itself, however, a platform based on domestic policy was not enough. As
in 1918, a foreign policy issue was needed as its pivotal point. Originally, the
opposition attempted to unleash debate on the subject of the general strike in
England. But the documents distributed by the opposition on this issue, and
signed by prominent party members, were so badly written as to be incomprehensible, and the affair on the whole turned out to be most unfortunate and even ridiculous.23 The oppositionists chose not to return to this topic. They then attempted
to formulate their differences with the government on issues relating to the
Komintern.24 But this rather esoteric debate was impenetrable for the average
party member beyond the inner party circles; a distant and incomprehensible issue
could not be transformed into material for an oppositionist platform. It is possible that nothing would have come of these efforts to find a foreign policy platform issue, but then at last the revolution in China, long under preparation,
began. This event was more than adequate for the opposition: the revolution in
China became the pivotal issue of the conflict.
Everything followed the pattern of 1918, with Lenin's place occupied by
Stalin, and Trotsky in Bukharin's position. Like the Left Communists in 1918, the
Left Opposition convinced the party masses that Soviet government policy with
regard to the Chinese revolution would lead directly to the revolution's
defeat.25 Like Lenin in 1918, Stalin was unwilling to take the risk, since he
understood that active intervention in Chinese affairs would inevitably lead to a
conflict with Japan, for which the Soviet Union was clearly unprepared. Finally,
just as Lenin had done in his time, Stalin sacrificed a revolution abroad, in China
in this case, for the sake of a truce analogous to that brought about by the BrestLitovsk treaty: the Chinese revolution did suffer defeat, but time was gained, and
the first serious conflict with Japan broke out only in 193826.
There is not adequate space here to analyze the real and imaginary differences
between the domestic and foreign policy stands of Stalin's government and
Trotsky's opposition. It is sufficient to indicate that Stalin resolved the develop ing problem more gracefully than Lenin had a decade earlier: having only begun
to expel the oppositionists from the party, Stalin succeeded in obtaining their
agreement to capitulate and cease their factional activities. 27 Further events provide a textbook image of Stalin's tactics: his next step was to incorporate the program of his capitulating opponents, in its entirety, into his own arsenal, 28 thus
YURI FELSHTINSKY
574
depriving them of their only weapons in their fight against the government. In
addition, he went even further in the realization of his new program than had the
oppositionists - he did not merely limit the Nepman's options, but abolished NEP
altogether as such; he did not stop with the imposition of restrictive measures
against the peasantry, but implemented forced collectivization. As a result, his
victory over the opposition was absolute: politically and ideologically the opposition was destroyed. Their physical destruction would come somewhat later. And
with Trotsky's expulsion from the USSR in January 1929, the Left Opposition
disappeared from the Soviet Union forever.
Brookline, Mass. 1990.
1. English scholar Louis Sinclair spent many years compiling his bibliography of Trotsky's works:
Louis Sinclair, Trotsky: A bibliography, 2 vols (Aldershot, Great Britain: Scolar Press, 1989). For
another survey of works by and about Trotsky, see Rolf Binner, "Alte und neue Trockij-Editionen,"
Jahrbucherfur Geschichte Ost europas, 37, 3 (1989): 393-414. A multi-volume Trotsky collection is
currently being published in Germany. In the 1970's and early 1980's Pathfinder Press in New York
came out with a collection of Trotsky's works encompassing the period 1923-1940. A twentyfour volume collection of Trotsky's works edited by Pierre Broué was published in France:
Leon Trotsky, Œuvres (Institut Léon Trotsky, 1978-1988). To this brief list may be added three
Trotsky biographies: J. Carmichael, Trotsky (Jerusalem, 1980); Isaac Deutscher's trilogy, The prophet
armed, The prophet unarmed, and The prophet outcast (Oxford University Press, 1954, 1959, 1963);
and Pierre Broué, Trotsky (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 1988). Biographies of Trotsky are beginning to be
published in Eastern Europe. In the Soviet Union a small biographical brochure on Trotsky has been
written by the historian V. Startsev, and Hungarian historian Miklos Kun is currently working on a
Trotsky biography.
2. In recent years the following Trotsky works have been published in the original Russian, edited
by the author of this article: Portrety (Benson, Vermont: Chalidze Publications, 1984); Stalin, 2 vols
(Benson, Vermont: Chalidze Publications, 1985); Dnevniki i pis'ma (Hermitage, 1986; 2nd enlarged
edition published in 1990); Portrety revoliutsionerov (Benson, Vermont: Chalidze, 1988);
Kommunislicheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, 1923-1927. Dokumenty arkhiva L. D. Trolskogo, 4 vols
THE LEFT OPPOSITION IN THE USSR
575
izd-vo Priboi, 1924): 220-262, Trotsky describes how as early as September 1917, while in hiding in
Finland, Lenin proposed to lead a revolution in Petrograd. In Trotsky's opinion, however, "the plan
could not be carried out in the name of the Petrograd Soviet, since the organization of the Soviet, which
had not yet been bolshevized, as it should have been, was not conducive to this: the Military Revolutionary Committee did not yet exist." (Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia (1923-1926), 1:
125). Trotsky was not the only one to remark on the adventuristic character of Lenin's appeal.
V. Nogin stated that this was a call "to a repetition of the July [1917] events," i.e., to certain defeat
("Uroki Oktiabria," in op. cit.: 238). On the whole, the Central Committee of the party rejected
Lenin's proposal (ibid: 247).
6. The former were destroyed by Lenin as a competing party on 6-7 July 1918; the latter, who were
members of his own organization (the Bolshevik Party), he did not subject to repressions; the incident
with the Left Communists was consigned to oblivion. Only one Left Communist was persecuted for a
short time: Dzerzhinskii, head of the VChK, was suspended from work, but only because his participa
tion in the assassination of the German Ambassador, Count Wilhelm von Mirbach, was obvious to
Lenin. But since the murder itself, and the fact that it was committed by a Left SR, la. Blumkin, were
quite advantageous to Lenin, Dzerzhinskii was soon reinstated in his former position, and Blumkin was
accepted into the RKP(b) and returned to his work in Dzerzhinskii's agency, where he made a brilliant
career for himself in counterintelligence (until his execution in November 1929 for his ties with
Trotsky). For more detailed discussion of this affair, see Iu. G. Fclshtinsky, Bolsheviki i levye esery,
oktiabr'1917 - iul" 1918 (Paris, 1985); and Yuri Felshtinsky, "The Bolsheviks and the Left SRs,
October 1917 - July 1918: Toward a single-party dictatorship" (Ph. D. diss., Rutgers University, 1988).
7. In this sense, the murders of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg on 15 January 1919 were quite
advantageous for Lenin. While there is no evidence to suggest that Lenin had anything to do with their
deaths, it is possible that another prominent Bolshevik leader, Karl Radek, was involved in the murders.
The initial preparations for the attempt on the lives of Liebknecht and Luxemburg were apparently
made in the first half of December 1918. hi 1920 Anton Fischer, the deputy military commandant of
Berlin, slated in a written deposition that his department had maintained surveillance over the two
Spartacus leaders so as "not to allow them to conduct agitational and organizational activities." On the
night of 9-10 December the soldiers of the Second Guards Regiment burst into the editorial offices of
Rote Fahne with the intention of killing Liebknecht and Luxemburg, who turned out not to be on the
premises. In the course of the investigation into this incident, roughly six witnesses stated that a reward
in the amount of 100,000 marks had been offered for the murders of Liebknecht and
Luxemburg. This prize was promised by Philipp Scheidemann — a prominent German Social
Democrat who was head of the government from February through June of 1919, and his close friend
Georg Sklarz - a businessman who had become wealthy during the war trading in arms for the German
army (Sebastian Haffner, 1918-19 Eine Deutsche Revolution Rowohlt [n.d.]: 153; Revoliutsiia v
Germanii 1918-19. Как eto bylo v deistvitel'nosti?', translation from German (Moscow: Progress,
1983): 158,163).
The investigation begun in 1920 showed that Sklarz, a collaborator of Parvus's, planned the attempt
on Liebknecht and Luxemburg, apparently in collusion with Parvus and Scheidemann, and that Sklarz
was to have paid a reward of 50,000 marks for each of the Spartacus leaders (see the Government
Archive of the FRG, R 43-1, folder 1239, The Sklarz Case). It is true that Radek's name is not mentioned
in the Sklarz materials, but it surfaces in connection with the January 1919 assassinations of
Liebknecht and Luxemburg. Karl Liebknecht's brother Theodore devoted his life to the investigation
of these murders.
Theodore Liebknecht, a German Social Democrat, came to the conclusion that Karl Radek was definitely involved in the murders. The materials he collected in the course of his investigation perished
during a bombing raid on Germany in November of 1943 (Archives of the International Institute of
Social History in Amsterdam, Theodore Liebknecht collection, folder 10, diary notations in German by
T. Liebknecht). But in 1947, Boris I. Nicolaevsky, the famous Russian emigre historian and archivist,
wrote Theodore Liebknecht a letter asking about Karl Moore, a secret collaborator with the German
government among the Social Democrats. "I have every reason to suppose," wrote Nicolaevsky, "that
your brother Karl met with Radek and Karl Moore not long before his last arrest, and had a very
serious argument with Karl Moore." (Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, California,
Nicolaevsky Collection (hereafter Nicolaevsky), box 489, folder 2, one-page letter from
B. Nicolaevsky lo T. Liebknecht dated 15 December 1947, in German).
In response, Theodore Liebknecht told Nicolaevsky about his conclusions concerning the role of
Radec in the deaths of his brother and Rosa Luxemburg. The correspondence between Liebknecht
576
YURI FELSHTINSKY
and Nikolaevsky on this subject is not to be found in the Nicolaevsky Collection at the Hoover
Institution Archives (their correspondence was quite extensive, but was devoted primarily to Marx);
these letters arc also missing from the archive of T. Liebknecht. However, there is an allusion to this
correspondence in a letter from Nicolaesvsky to a third person. "Theodore Liebknecht told me," stated Nicolaevsky, "that Karl Liebknecht at their last meeting (on the eve of Karl's arrest) told him that
he had found out about Radek, who had just arrived illegally from Moscow, 'appalling things' which he
promised to recount at the time of their next meeting. That meeting never took place, and Theodore felt
that Radek had betrayed Karl." (Nicolaevsky, box 508, folder 48, one-page letter from B. I.
Nicolaevsky to R. [Georgii Iosifovich] Vrag dated 15 July 1960).
In a letter to the Italian socialist A. Balabanova dated 20 April 1962 (Archive of the International
Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, A. Balabanova collection), Nicolaevsky spelled out what precisely Karl Liebknecht had found out about Radek:
"Especially frequently now I recall my past conversations with Theodore Liebknecht, who indicated
to me that Radek betrayed Karl [Liebknecht]. On the eve of Karl Liebknecht's arrest he met Theodore
on the street and on the way said that he had received information regarding Radek's ties with military
circles, and considered him a traitor. They made arrangements to meet the next day, at which time Karl
was to have recounted the details - but that night Karl Liebknecht was arrested and killed. All
through the next years Theodore gathered evidence, and told me that he was convinced of the accuracy
of his brother's suspicions [...] I regret that I did not take Theodore's stories seriously enough at the
time, and did not write them down."
In 1957 Nicolaevsky wrote a letter on the same subject to the former leader of the French
Communist Party, Boris Souvarine, who had by that time abandoned Communism:
« I spoke extensively on this subject with Theodore Liebknecht (deceased), who considered both
Radck and especially Karl Moore to be agents of the Ger[man] general staff. He assured me that the
same conclusion regarding Radek had also been reached by Karl Liebknecht, who had a conversation
on this subject with Theodore at their last meeting. Karl, in Theodore's words, was completely crushed
by information he had received then from someone — from whom Theodore did not know. »
(International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, Archive of B. Souvarine, letter from Nicolaevsky
to B. Souvarine dated 11 April 1957). And in 1962 he wrote to M.N. Pavlovskii, who was studying
Bolshevik-German collaboration in the pre-revoluuonary period:
« Of course, Radek did not participate directly in the assassination [of Karl Liebknecht Y.F.]. The subject was something else, the fact that Radek provided them [the German secret service
- Y.F.] Liebknecht's address, and that in return they spared Radek from arrest. [...] I have to say I am
not certain that everything in Theodore Liebknecht's tales is untrue. He was an absolutely honest
man, very knowledgeable, he was totally correct regarding Karl Moore, he brought much to light in the
affair of his brother's murder, [and] had some good informants. To me it is unquestionable that Radek
was linked with very major German secret agents. (Stalin did not shoot him in 1937, undoubtedly
because he figured on using his old contacts), and therefore in this matter we can still run across much
that is unexpected.» (Nicolaevsky, box 496, folder 3, one-page letter from B. Nicolaevsky to
M.N. Pavlovskii dated 2 September 1962).
Of course, these materials are not in themselves sufficient to allow Radek to be definitively considered
one of the organizers behind the assassinations of Liebknecht and Luxemburg. But they are more
than adequate to place Radek under suspicion of participating in the murders in some fashion.
8. For the Left Communists, for the supporters of Trotsky, and for the majority of the Left SRs
(distinguished from the Bolsheviks by their greater dogmatism), the issue of building Communism in a
single country did not exist: they considered it an impossibility. It is necessary to stipulate one reser
vation at this point. Ultimately, building Communism in an "isolated country" turned out to be en
tirely possible, but doing so, as we now know, necessitated the destruction of those Communist roman
tics who would agree to build it only in accordance with maximalist dogma, rather than proceeding
from the actual stale of affairs in Soviet Russia. In retrospect, cognizant as we are of Stalins cam
paign to purge the old Bolsheviks in 1936-1939, it is appropriate to salute the intuition of those who
op|X)scd "socialism in one country": they may not have known it at the time, but in defending their
views, they were fighting for their lives.
9. Stalin's intentions were shown by the so-called "Georgian affair", by his quarrel with Krupskaia,
which was followed by a rift in his personal relations with the dying Lenin, and also his announcement
to members of the Politburo Trotsky, Zinov'cv and Kamcncv that 1-cnin had asked him for poison
with which to commit suicide (see L/ TroLskii, Portrety revoliutsionerov, op.cit : 92-96) Trotsky
later thought that Stalin wished to use this method to hasten Lenin's death.
THE LEFT OPPOSITION IN THE USSR
577
10. For a more detailed discussion see the appendix entitled, "From the documents of 1922, " m
Kommunistickeskaia oppozitsiia..., op. cit., 1: 60-74.
11. See Max Eastman, Since Lenin died (London: The Labor Publishing Company Ltd., 1925): 2831. Eastman indicated elsewhere that he took down the quotations from the "Testament" from the words
of three prominent Bolsheviks. The question of how Lenin's "Testament" was transmitted to the West,
and Trotsky's related famous denial, also require clarification. One source indicates that during a break
between sessions of the ХШт Congress, Trotsky, while strolling the corridor, recited the text of Lenin's
"Testament" to Eastman, who was a guest at the congress (Nicolaevsky, box 591, folder 14, two-page
letter from R. Abramovitch to N.V. Valentinov-Volskii dated January 1959). Trotsky spoke with care
so that he would not be overheard, but did not extract a pledge of silence from Eastman. At about the
same time a Menshevik who had been working on the staff of A. Sol'tz stole the text of the "Testament"
and smuggled it abroad for publication in the Menshevik publication, Sotsialisticheskii vestnik. The
Menshevik organ published the document, but its source was discovered, and, in 1924, executed (see
Nicolaevsky, box 628, folder 13, letter from B.I. Nicolaevsky to N.I. Sedova-Trotskaia dated
23 December 1950). The text of the "Testament" held by the Trotsky Archive at Harvard University is
a copy of the Sotsialisticheskii vestnik version, retyped for Trotsky by Nicolaevsky himself. There is
reason to suppose that the text of Lenin's "Testament" was also carried abroad by Kh. Rakovskii. This
follows from a letter written by Trotsky to Eastman on 21 May 1931 (Max Eastman Archive, Lilly
Library, Indiana University, USA; see also L. Trotskii Portrety revolutsionerov, op. cit.:
123). Therefore when Max Eastman quoted from the "Testament" in his book published in English in
1925, Since Lenin died, it should not have caused any particular sensation. Nevertheless, a considerable
sensation resulted. Time magazine carried a reprint of the story of Lenin's "Testamenl" from
Eastman's book. And whereas the Soviet government had chosen not to react to publication of the
document in Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, Trotsky himself responded to the article in Time. Acting on the
instructions of the Politburo he issued a formal statement denying that a document called "Lenin's
Testament" existed, and accused Eastman of lying. Krupskaia came out in print with a similar state
ment. Somewhat later, Eastman received the full text of the "Testament" through Rakovskii and
Souvarine, and then, castigated by Trotsky and Krupskaia, Time published the full text of the document.
12. See L. Trotskii, Portrety revoliutsionerov, op. cil: 123.
13. When, in forming his alliance with Trotsky in 1917, Lenin suggested to Trotsky that he bring
his own people from the "mezhraiontsy" (a group of Social Democrats standing midway between the
Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks) into the Bolshevik Central Committee, Trotsky refused. He since
rely could not understand why Lenin felt he, Trotsky, should insist on this, since they had, after all, no
ideological differences at that point.
14. One of the reasons Trotsky was not asked to head the Sovnarkom (the Council of People's
Commissars) was apparently his nationality. It was generally considered inappropriate for a Jew to be
appointed a head of state. For this reason, there were no Jews on the Sovnarkom staff other than
Trotsky. After Lenin's death Rykov, a Russian, became Chairman of the Sovnarkom, rather than
Zinov'ev or Kamenev, both of whom were Jews.
15. Lenin and Trotsky had disagreements, but Lenin trusted Trotsky, and in every critical moment
relied upon him. The history of their relationship is complex, but it its obvious that Lenin's relations
with many of the leading Bolsheviks were complicated. Lenin proposed expelling Zinov'ev and
Kamenev from the party for opposing the 1917 October revolution. He proposed removing Stalin
from the post of General Secretary in 1923, and his relations with Bukharin were in fact broken off in
the months of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. Dzerzhinskii fell into disfavor with Lenin after the
events of 6-7 July, when Lenin suspected him of participating in plans to assassinate the German
Ambassador to Moscow, Count Mirbach. It also is probable that Sverdlov's loss of authority in the
last months of his life was the result of difficulties with Lenin. Trotsky was literally the only
Bolshevik who did not enter into serious conflict with Lenin after October 1917. Their prerevolutionary conflicts had been washed away by the revolution.
16. Attempts have repeatedly been made to explain Trotsky's behavior during these months -by
Trotsky himself and by historians of the Soviet Communist Party. At least one additional hypothesis
can be added to those already proposed: Trotsky, always holding himself apart from the group and
considered an outsider in the Bolshevik Party, chose not to support Lenin in the hope that the escalating
power struggle between Lenin on one side, and Stalin-Zinov'ev-Kamenev on the other, would discredit
the "troika" in the eyes of ihc party actives, and thus strenghten his own authority.
17. The fact that Trotsky did not at this lime consider opposing the Politburo is demonstrated by
the presentation of "The declaration of the forty-six" to the Politburo TsK RKP (b) on 15 October
1923
578
YURI FELSHTINSKY
(see Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia..., op.cit., 1: 83-88), criticizing the policies of the government
majority. Trotsky's signature is not among the forty-six on this document.
18. Trotsky's notebooks... op. cit.: 129.
19. Among the archival materials from 1924, there is only one such document: "Our disagree
ments," a verbose article written in November in response to the critics of his earlier article, "Uroki
Oktiabria" (see Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia..., op.cit., 1: 110-142). In reading it, one is startled
by Trotsky's sincerity in his inability to understand why this article, a forty-page apologia on behalf of
the party and Lenin, provoked the censure of the most prominent party officials - Zinov'ev, Kamenev,
E. Kviring, O.Kuusinen, G. Sokol'nikov, Stalin, and Bukharin, the editor of Pravda. He attempted to
discover the underlying reasons for their "disagreements," at a time when the issue was a straightfor
ward struggle against Trotsky himself. "Our disagreements," is striking in its naïveté. It is not sur
prising that a few months later, instead of using the army as his base and standing in opposition to the
party majority, on 15 January 1925 Trotsky voluntarily resigned his post as Chairman of the
Revolutionary Military Council, thus surrendering any real power at his command (see the letter from
Trotsky regarding his resignation in M. Eastman, Since Lenin died, op. cit.: 155-158). The Russian
text of this letter was published in the same year as a separate brochure under the title "Otstavka
Trolskogo. Zasedanic TsK 17 ianvaria 1925 g." (The resignation of Trotsky. Central Committee
meeting of 17 January 1925) (Berlin). Trotsky remained a politically naive man until the end of his
life. He thus could not comprehend that power had been transferred to the bureaucrats of the party
apparatus, and was no longer held by the revolutionaries of the October days. It is not surprising that
at the end of the 1930's, working in emigration in Mexico on a biography of Stalin, Trotsky attempted
to recall the year of his expulsion from the Politburo and could not. Among the drafts of the book on
Stalin in the Trotsky archive there is the following note in pencil: "It seems that already in 1927 I was
no longer a member of the Politburo? Verify."
20. On 9 December 1925 Trotsky made a note to himself: "Alliance with Zinov'ev"
(Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia... op.cit., 1: 152-157). It is therefore possible to refer to the forma
tion of the Left Opposition as dating from December 1925.
21. See ibid., 2: 122-132.
22. Ibid.: 121-122.
23. In July 1926 the opposition distributed, over the signatures of Zinov'ev, Kamenev, Piatakov
and Krupskaia, a "Resolution proposed to the July Plenum by the Opposition on the general strike in
England" (Trotsky's Archive, T-886, three pages of closely typed, single-spaced text).
24. See ibid., T-886, dated 19 June 1926, three pages of closely typed, single-spaced text.
25. A substantial number of the documents distributed by the oppositionists were devoted to this
subject. The articles written on this subject by Trotsky alone would fill a volume of several hundred
pages. For a list of unpublished Russian-language documents in Trotsky's Archive at Harvard dealing
with the revolution in China, see Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia...,op. cit., 4:7.
26. It was only in 1937 that creation of a strong industrial base in the Urals, the Far East, Siberia,
Kazakhstan and Central Asia was begun. Today that fact is usually cited as evidence of the foresight of
the Soviet leadership in fairly predicting the war with Germany and the c onsequent evacuation of
industry during the war years. Approaching the end of the thirties, the Soviets' primary foreign enemy
was Japan. In the summer of 1937 Japan launched an attack on China, an event that represented a
serious foreign policy defeat for the Soviet government, which had been attempting to strengthen its
position in China. In July the Japanese seized Peking, in November they took Shangai, and in
December - Nanking. By October of 1938 the major industrial centers and most important railroad
lines of China were controlled by Japan. The Soviet Union, for its part, occupied Mongolia in
September of 1937. A confrontation began between the two armies that led to local conflicts on at
least two occasions: at the end of June 1938 in the region of Lake Khasan, where troops continued to
fight until 9 August, and in May 1939, along the Khalkin-Gol river in Mongolia, where the conflict was
contained only through the intervention of Germany, shortly after the signing of the Ribbentrop Molotov pact on 16 September 1939. The creation of a second industrial base in the eastern regions
of the Soviet Union was thus occasioned exclusively by the desire to guarantee an economic base near
a potential military front.
27. The opposition capitulated on 10 December 1927, after a number of its active members were
arrested, and the party congress adopted a resolution on the incompatibility of oppositionist activity
with party membership.
For the text of the declaration, see Kommunistichcskaia oppozitsiia...,
op. cil. 4: 275-276.
28. Sec ibid : 276, a note written by N. Muralov to Trot.sky. 18 December 1927.