Writings of Leon Trotsky [1937-38]
Contents
Preface
Chronology
Ninety years of the ‘Communist Manifesto’ (October 30, 1937)
It is high time to launch a world offensive against Stalinism
(November 2, 1937)
Once again: The USSR and its defense (November 4, 1937)
An ‘attempt’ on Stalin’s life (November 4, 1937)
America’s sixty families (November 8, 1937)
Letter on American problems (November 14, 1937)
Letter to Comrade Wasserman (November 14, 1937)
Coming trials to reveal secret plans of GPU
(November 16, 1937)
How to struggle against war (November 17, 1937)
Bertram Wolfe on the Moscow trials (November 25, 1937)
Not a workers’ and not a bourgeois state?
(November 25, 1937)
For a revolutionary publishing house (November 29, 1937)
Moscow-Amsterdam ‘unity’ (November 29, 1937)
An FBI agent’s story (December 1, 1937)
A few words on ‘Lutte ouvriere’ (December 2, 1937)
The future of the Dutch section (December 2, 1937)
A letter to the ‘New York Times’ (December 3, 1937)
Defeatism vs. defensism (December 6, 1937)
A suggestion on Burnham (December 6, 1937)
On democratic centralism (December 8, 1937)
Two defections in one week (December 9, 1937)
Telegram to the Dewey Commission (December 9, 1937)
Statement to journalists on the Dewey verdict
(December 13, 1937)
Permission to use articles (December 14, 1937)
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Writings of Leon Trotsky [1937-38]
How to conduct a political discussion (December 15, 1937)
Letter to the ‘New International’ (December 15, 1937)
Greetings to Norway (December 19, 1937)
Answers to questions of ‘Marianne’ (December 20, 1937)
Intellectuals and the party milieu (December 21, 1937)
Letter to Australians (December 23, 1937)
The Spanish lesson for the Fourth International
(December 24, 1937)
For a permanent defense committee (December 30, 1937)
On ‘Modern Monthly’ (December 31, 1937)
Letter on defeatism (January 2, 1938)
Does the Soviet government still follow the principles
adopted twenty years ago? (January 13, 1938)
Hue and cry over Kronstadt (January 15, 1938)
Sneevliet’s role (January 21, 1938)
An open letter to ‘De Nieuwe Fakkel’ (January 21, 1938)
Conclusion of a long experience (January 21, 1938)
An excellent article on defeatism (January 26, 1938)
Factory papers and a theoretical journal (January 27, 1938)
The Ludlow Amendment (February 1, 1938)
Letter to an American youth (February 4, 1938)
Optimistic over the future (February 4, 1938)
A new GPU attempt (February 15, 1938)
The possibility of foul play (February 18, 1938)
Leon Sedov—Son, friend, fighter (February 20, 1938)
After Sedov’s death (February 22, 1938)
A fresh attack on asylum (February 24, 1938)
The trial of the twenty-one (February 28, 1938)
Eight ministers (March 1, 1938)
Trial seen as reply to Dewey Commission (March 2, 1938)
To the attention of thinking people (March 3, 1938)
Behind the Moscow trials (March 3, 1938)
Four doctors knew too much (March 3, 1938)
The secret alliance with Germany (March 3, 1938)
Corrections and observations on the testimony
of the accused (March 4, 1938)
The ‘million dollars’ (March 5, 1938)
Army opposed to Stalin (March 6, 1938)
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Why so many centers? Why do they all submit to Trotsky?
(March 6, 1938)
The role of Yagoda (March 7, 1938)
Strange new developments (March 7, 1938)
Anachronisms (March 8, 1938)
Moscow’s diplomatic plans and the trials (March 8, 1938)
Stalin’s article on world revolution (March 9, 1938)
Message to New York protest meeting (March 9, 1938)
A key to the Russian trials (March 10, 1938)
The case of Professor Pletnev (March 10, 1938)
Letter to Jeanne Martin (March 10, 1938)
The defendants Zelensky and Ivanov (March 11, 1938)
Again on the Reiss case (March 12, 1938)
Hitler’s Austria coup aided by Moscow trial
(March 12, 1938)
On Hearst (March 13, 1938)
An explanation for Freda Kirchwey (March 13, 1938)
Notes in the margin of ‘Pravda’s’ accounts (March 1938)
Cain-Dzhugashvili goes the whole way (March 17, 1938)
A reply to Ambassador Bilmanis (March 17, 1938)
New defectors (March 17, 1938)
The priests of half-truth (March 19, 1938)
Discussions with Trotsky: I—The International Conference
(March 20, 1938)
Discussions with Trotsky: II—Defense organization
and attitude toward intellectuals (March 24, 1938)
Discussions with Trotsky: III—The Russian question
(March 25, 1938)
Roosevelt’s statement on Trotskyists in Russia
(March 29, 1938)
Letter to the League of Nations (March 31, 1938)
For the reorganization of the Mexican section
(April 15, 1938)
Toward a genuine British section (April 15, 1938)
Letter to James P. Cannon (April 15, 1938)
Thoughts on the French section (April 19, 1938)
More on European problems (April 20, 1938)
The Mexican oil expropriations (April 23, 1938)
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Writings of Leon Trotsky [1937-38]
Europe or San Francisco? (May 12, 1938)
For an immediate trip to Europe (May 16, 1938)
On C.L.R. James (May 17, 1938)
Learn to think (May 22, 1938)
Once more on Comrades Sneevliet and Vereecken
(May 24, 1938)
No obstacle to common vote (May 25, 1938)
‘For’ the Fourth International? No! The Fourth International!
(May 31, 1938)
Revolutionary art and the Fourth International (June 1, 1938)
Remarks on Czechoslovakia (June 2, 1938)
Mexico and British imperialism (June 5, 1938)
On the edge of a precipice (June 12, 1938)
No, it is not the same (June 18, 1938)
To the Congress of the Revolutionary Socialist Party
of Belgium (June 22, 1938)
For an open polemic with the Liberals (June 29, 1938)
Stalin and accomplices condemned (July 5, 1938)
More on the suppression of Kronstadt (July 6, 1938)
For freedom in education (July 10, 1938)
On the anniversary of Reiss’s death (July 17, 1938)
To the conference of the Young People’s Socialist League
(July 18, 1938)
The disappearance of Rudolf Klement (July 18, 1938)
Was Leon Sedov murdered? (July 19, 1938)
My conspiracy (July 19, 1938)
Financing the revolutionary movement (July 23, 1938)
The forthcoming trial of the diplomats (July 25, 1938)
A ‘letter’ from Rudolf Klement (August 1, 1938)
On the fate of Rudolf Klement (August 3, 1938)
The Sino-Japanese struggle (August 11, 1938)
The USSR and Japan (August 11, 1938)
Answers to the questions of Lloyd Tupling (August 12, 1938)
Freedom of the press and the working class
(August 21, 1938)
Further evidence of GPU guilt in Sedov death
(August 24, 1938)
Trade union congress staged by CP (August 27, 1938)
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The Congress Against War and Fascism (August 1938)
Fascism and the colonial world (August 1938)
A great achievement (August 30, 1938)
Another Stalinist ploy (September 4, 1938)
The totalitarian defeatist in the Kremlin
(September 12, 1938)
Letter to Rose Karsner (September 13, 1938)
Yes or no? (September 14, 1938)
‘Toward a decision’ (September 17, 1938)
Notes and acknowledgments
Other writings of 1937–38
Works of Leon Trotsky published by Pathfinder
Index
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Writings of Leon Trotsky [1937-38]
Preface
This volume covers the period from the end of October 1937 to
mid-September 1938, when Leon Trotsky was living at Coyoacan,
a suburb of Mexico City. It is one of a series collecting Trotsky’s
writings during his last exile (1929–40) which are not otherwise
available in books or pamphlets permanently in print.
This was a time when all the great powers were rearming and in
other ways preparing for the impending war. The Japanese militarists were forcing their way into China. German and Italian troops
joined Franco’s assault on the Spanish republic, which was sinking
slowly to its death. Hitler’s armies marched into Austria and occupied it without resistance. The British and French governments,
having accepted Hitler’s advances in Spain and Austria, seemed
unable to find a reason why they should fight over his demands for
the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, which were soon to lead to
the infamous agreement at Munich. Roosevelt had recently delivered his “quarantine the aggressors” speech at Chicago, which served
notice to all concerned that they would have to reckon with the
might of U.S. imperialism in the coming redivision of the world.
The Kremlin maintained its policy of peaceful coexistence with the
imperialist democracies, but it was preoccupied with its bloody purges
of dissidents at home, and met little success in its drive to cement an
alliance with Britain, France, and the U.S. against the Axis powers.
For Trotsky too this was a period of preparation for the war.
Specifically, it meant the preparation of the international revolutionary movement so that it would be able to meet the supreme
tests that the war and its concomitant revolutions and colonial
uprisings would bring.
Copyright © 1970 and 1976 by Pathfinder Press
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Writings of Leon Trotsky [1937-38]
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The so-called Trotskyist movement began in 1923, when Trotsky organized the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union to fight for
Leninist internationalism and proletarian democracy. It became
the International Left Opposition (ILO) in 1930, after Stalin exiled Trotsky to Turkey. In 1933, after the Stalinists capitulated to
Hitler without a struggle in Germany, the ILO decided that the
Communist International and its affiliates could no longer be reformed and that it was necessary to build a new International and
new revolutionary parties throughout the world. To express this
change in orientation, the ILO changed its name to the International Communist League (ICL). In 1936 the ICL held an international conference, but its delegates disagreed with Trotsky’s advice
that they should establish the Fourth International at that conference; instead, they postponed founding it and renamed themselves
the Movement for the Fourth International (MFI).
At the end of 1937 Trotsky was convinced that founding the
Fourth International could be put off no longer; the approaching
war required the speedy consolidation of all revolutionary forces
inside a common international party united around a common
Marxist program, even if at first it would be a small International.
This was his major political preoccupation during the period of
this volume—demarcating and challenging indecisive and wavering elements in and around the MFI, and preparing its cadres politically, ideologically, and psychologically for the coming war and
for their new responsibilities.
Trotsky’s efforts to build the Fourth International, which he
considered the most important part of his life’s work, were generally ignored or belittled by Isaac Deutscher in The Prophet Outcast (1963). The present volume, containing many previously unpublished letters about the preparation of the founding conference
of the Fourth International, and the recently published Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution (second edition, 1974),
containing the central programmatic document Trotsky wrote for
that conference and stenograms of all the discussions he had on the
subject before and after writing it, will enable readers to judge for
themselves how seriously Trotsky took the building of the Fourth
International and what he did to influence its founding conference.
Copyright © 1970 and 1976 by Pathfinder Press
Writings of Leon Trotsky [1937-38]
preface / 13
The main personal event of this period was the death of Trotsky’s
beloved son and comrade, Leon Sedov, at the hands of GPU agents
in a Paris hospital. There is hardly anything more moving in the
whole realm of political literature than Trotsky’s tribute to Sedov,
reprinted here. Another personal and political blow was the kidnaping and murder in Paris of another cherished comrade who
had been Trotsky’s secretary in Turkey and France, the young
German refugee Rudolf Klement, who was in charge of technical
preparations for the founding conference.
One of the major events of the period was the third Moscow
trial, involving Bukharin, Rykov, and nineteen other defendants,
in March 1938. Trotsky and Sedov had done more than anyone in
the world to expose the frame-up character of the first two Moscow trials (1936 and 1937). Now, before the shock of Sedov’s death
had worn off, Trotsky threw himself into the mammoth job of
reaching world public opinion with a day-by-day refutation of
the falsifications and contradictions presented in the Moscow courtroom. With the aid of his secretaries and working almost around
the clock for ten days, he wrote and sent out more than a score of
articles in three languages that were printed in some of the biggest daily papers in the world, and are reprinted here. (A vivid
account of how this was organized and carried out is in Joseph
Hansen’s introduction to Trotsky’s My Life [Pathfinder Press, 1970].)
As usual, he wrote about different things for different audiences. He made skillful use of the capitalist press to break through
the isolation and ostracism by which the Stalinists tried to gag
him, but most of his writing was addressed to radicals. His article
assessing the Communist Manifesto on its ninetieth anniversary,
his letter to the British Labour Party’s paper on the Mexican oil
expropriations and the consequent British boycott, and his statements on freedom of education, art, the press, and the right of
asylum were designed to influence labor and radical opinion. In
addition he wrote articles for the MFI, the most numerous of all,
which can be divided into two parts: those that were meant for the
members as a whole and were printed in the internal bulletins of
the various national sections (such as two polemical replies on the
class character of the Soviet Union that answered criticisms by
Copyright © 1970 and 1976 by Pathfinder Press
Writings of Leon Trotsky [1937-38]
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French and American comrades, a letter on democratic centralism,
criticism of the party press, etc.); and the letters that Trotsky sent
to leaders of the national sections or to the International Secretariat, usually on confidential matters. Some of these, it should be
noted, were sent in English, in which Trotsky’s choice of words
was not always exact, so that in the text of this volume there is
some unevenness between the English used by Trotsky and the
English of translators and editors in 1938 or since.
In the first editions of the Writings, Trotsky’s forty-three-month
stay in Mexico was covered in three volumes—designated 1937–
38 (although that volume actually began four days before 1937),
1938–39, and 1939–40. Since their publication, a vast number of
Trotsky’s articles and letters from the Mexican period have become available, many of them never published before. This has
made it necessary, in the second editions, to reorganize and expand the number of volumes for the Mexican period from three
to four, which are now designated by title as 1936–37, 1937–38
(the present volume), 1938–39, and 1939–40.
The second edition of this volume differs from the first in the
following ways:
1. Of the 129 selections in this volume, 52 are here published
for the first time in English. These include 40 that were written or
transcribed in English but never before published, and 12 that
were written or published in other languages and had to be translated into English for this volume.
2. It covers a shorter time span (October 1937–September 1938)
than the first edition (December 1936–April 1938), and therefore
does not include material from the first edition dated October 1937
and before or September 1938 and after, which has been transferred to the appropriate places in the second editions entitled 1936–
37 and 1938–39. It also does not include the article “Behind the
Kremlin Walls,” dated January 8, 1938, which has been transferred
to Political Portraits (Pathfinder, 1977).
3. The first edition was divided by theme into twelve sections,
each arranged chronologically. All the articles in the second edition are arranged chronologically.
4. Unlike the first edition, the second is annotated.
Copyright © 1970 and 1976 by Pathfinder Press
Writings of Leon Trotsky [1937-38]
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5. Some dates mistakenly used in the first edition have been
corrected here, and passages missing from certain articles in the
first edition have been restored.
Many articles in this volume were signed by pen names or
were unsigned when first published, usually for security reasons;
the use of pen names, especially in the stenograms, explains why
in some cases Trotsky speaks of himself in the third person. The
date preceding each selection indicates when it was completed; if
that is not known, the date when it was first published is given.
Translations originally made in the 1930s and 1940s have been
revised to correct obvious errors and achieve uniformity in spelling of names, punctuation, style, etc. Acknowledgments about the
articles and translations, and explanatory material about the persons and events mentioned in them, will be found in the section
entitled “Notes and Acknowledgments.” A list of Trotsky’s 1937–
38 books, pamphlets, and articles not included in this volume because they are in print and available elsewhere will be found in
the section entitled “Other Writings of 1937–38.”
For expansion of this edition and improvements in its contents,
special thanks are due to the Harvard College Library, for its permission to examine and use material in the “open” section of the
Trotsky Archives; to James P. Cannon, who opened his archives to
us before his death in 1974; and to Louis Sinclair, for the help
provided by his Leon Trotsky: A Bibliography (Hoover Institution Press, 1972).
The Editors
april 1975
Copyright © 1970 and 1976 by Pathfinder Press
Writings of Leon Trotsky [1937-38]
Chronology
1937
October 30–November 1 – Second congress of the POI, French section of the Movement for the Fourth International (MFI), held
in Paris.
November 2 – Trotsky calls for an offensive against Stalinism.
November 6 – Fascist Italy signs anti-Comintern pact.
November 25 – Trotsky writes on the class character of the Soviet
state, as contribution to discussion preceding founding convention of Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in U.S.
December 13 – Dewey Commission of Inquiry releases text of its “not
guilty” verdict on charges against Trotsky and Leon Sedov in
Moscow trials.
December 31 – Four-day convention, to form SWP as U.S. section of
MFI, opens in Chicago.
1938
January 15 – Trotsky analyzes renewed debate over Kronstadt uprising of 1921.
February 16 – Leon Sedov dies under mysterious circumstances in a
Paris hospital.
February 23 – Stalinist-dominated CTM (Mexican Confederation of
Workers) adopts a resolution condemning Trotskyism presented
by Lombardo Toledano.
March 2–13 – Twenty-one Old Bolsheviks, including Bukharin and
Rykov, become defendants in third Moscow trial, which ends in
their conviction.
Copyright © 1970 and 1976 by Pathfinder Press
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Writings of Leon Trotsky [1937-38]
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March 11 – Hitler annexes Austria.
March 20–25 – A delegation of SWP leaders meets with Trotsky to
discuss international and national problems.
April – Trotsky writes the Transitional Program, for submission to
founding conference of Fourth International, and signs contract
with Harper for biography of Stalin.
April 23 – Trotsky defends the Mexican government’s nationalization
of British- and American-owned oil industry.
May 31 – Trotsky insists on clear-cut founding of Fourth International
at coming international conference.
July – Trotsky, Andre Breton, and Diego Rivera write a manifesto on
revolutionary art.
July 13 – Rudolf Klement, one of Trotsky’s secretaries, is kidnaped by
Stalinist agents in Paris; his body is found a few days before the
FI’s founding conference.
July 19 – Trotsky protests French police cover-up in Sedov’s death.
August 30 – Trotsky assesses the significance of the coming conference of the FI.
September 3 – FI is founded at an international conference in France.
September 6–12 – Stalinist-controlled trade union congress and congress against war and fascism are held in Mexico.
Copyright © 1970 and 1976 by Pathfinder Press