*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Adolph Joffe

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Adolph Joffe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolph_Joffe

Russian Left Opposition, SOVIET UNION, stalinism, the russian revolution

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader and early Soviet diplomat Adoph Joffe. He, later, was a central figure in the Russian Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky that tried to save the gains of the Bolshevik revolution. His suicide was a political act and a spur to Trotsky's later greater opposition to Stalin's rule. His suicide note, the political parts, is must reading and posted below.


Adolph Joffe, suicide letter sent to Leon Trotsky (16th November, 1927)

I have never doubted the rightness of the road you pointed out, and as you know, I have gone with you for more than twenty years, since the days of 'permanent revolution'. But I have always believed that you lacked Lenin unbending will, his unwillingness to yield, his readiness even to remain alone on the path that he thought right in the anticipation of a future majority, of a future recognition by everyone of the rightness of his path.

Politically, you were always right, beginning with 1905, and I told you repeatedly that with my own ears I had heard Lenin admit that even in 1905, you, and not he, were right. One does not lie before his death, and now I repeat this again to you. But you have often abandoned your rightness for the sake of an overvalued agreement or compromise. This is a mistake. I repeat: politically you have always been right, and now more right than ever. Some day the party will realize it, and history will not fail to accord recognition. Then don't lose your courage if someone leaves you know, or if not as many come to you, and not as soon, as we all would like.

You are right, but the guarantee of the victory of your rightness lies in nothing but the extreme unwillingness to yield, the strictest straightforwardness, the absolute rejection of all compromise; in this very thing lay the secret of Lenin's victories. Many a time I have wanted to tell you this, but only now have I brought myself to do so, as a last farewell.