In Honor Of The “Old Man”- On The 71st Anniversary Of The Death Of Leon Trotsky-Father And Son By Natalia Sedova Trotsky

Click on the headline to link to a review of the early life of Leon Trotsky in his political memoir, My Life.

Markin comment:

Every year at this time we honor the memory of the great Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky, a man who not only was able theoretically to articulate the arc of the Russian Revolution of 1917 (the theory of permanent revolution) but personally led the defend of that revolution against world imperialism and its internal Russian White Guard agents. Oh yes, and also wrote a million pro-communist articles, did a little turn at literary criticism, acted in various Soviet official capacities, led the Communist International, led the opposition first in Russia and then internationally to the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution, and created a new revolutionary international (the Fourth International) to rally the demoralized international working class movement in the face of Hitlerite reaction. To speak nothing of hunting, fishing, raising rabbits, collecting cactii and chasing Frida Kahlo around Mexico (oops, on that last one). In short, as I have characterized him before, the closest that this sorry old world has come to producing a complete communist man within the borders of bourgeois society (except that last thing, that skirt-chasing thing, although maybe not). All honor to his memory. Forward to new Octobers!

Usually on this anniversary I place a selection of Trotsky’s writings on various subjects in this space. This year, having found a site that has material related to his family life, the effect of his murder on that family, and other more personal details of his life I am placing that material here in his honor. The forward to new Octobers still goes, though.
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Natalia Sedova Trotsky
Father and Son

Written:1940
First Published: 1941 (English translation)
Source: Fourth International
Online Version: Natalia Sedova Internet Archive, December 2001
Transcribed/HTML Markup: Mike Bessler

"I can therefore say that I live on this earth not in accordance with the rule but as on exception to the rule."
June 8, 1940
Trotsky

Night. Darkness. I awaken. Pale patches of light flicker and then disappear. I raise myself...The sound of shots breaks upon my ears. They are shooting here, in our room. I have always been a light sleeper, and on awakening can quickly orient myself as to what is happening. Lev Davidovich was a sound sleeper in his younger years. Insomnia beset him for the first time when attacks against the Opposition began in the USSR, when the pages of Pravda began to overflow with black slander, unimaginable, fantastic slander which overwhelmed and dumbfounded the reader. To defend and justify themselves the slanderers used lies: they had no other weapon at their disposal.

Did the reading public believe them? Yes and no. The colossal tide of raging malice swept over them, engulfed them and they became disoriented... Tired, worn-out by the heroic years of the revolution, filled with fears about the future of its conquests, they began to believe the calumny, just as people begin to place faith in miracles during periods of decline and prostration. I used to see how the hands of readers would tremble as they held up the huge pages of Pravda; their hands would drop and then would be upraised again.

Our boys also lost sleep. The younger one, in bitter perplexity, would ask me: "What is it? Why do they say these things about papa? How dare they?" The older one, Leon, became frantic and was in a constant state of excitement. With a pale face he would tell me of his impressions in the circles of the youth and of his struggle against the buffets of the torrent of filth. "Brave little tailor," (a hero of one of Andersen's fairy tales), his father would say observing him with approbation.

"The brave little tailor" took pride in his health, and was not a little upset during that period by the unexpected insomnia, but he did not give in. He remained proud of his health until the last two years of his life, when suddenly it worsened quickly. The black years of the cynical Moscow trials mowed him down. For our son Leon was, though ill absentia, one of the chief defendants. The venom of criminal slander entered like poison into his young body. His entire nervous system was affected by the murders of Zinoviev, Piatakov, Muralov, Smirnov, Kamenev, Bukharin and many others; Kamenev and Bukharin he knew from his childhood, with the others he became acquainted later on, and he knew them all as honest revolutionists, he learned from them, loved them, respected them and connected them with the revolution, with its heroism, with its Lenin and Trotsky.

Nights of sleeplessness returned and he did not have the strength to fight them off. Sleeping drugs worked poorly on him. He would doze off only towards morning. And he had to get up between seven and eight in order to begin work, which was rendered still more difficult by the surveillance of the ever-wakeful GPU whose agents, as was later revealed, occupied quarters next to his. He lived at No. 26; they at No. 28.

Father and Son During the Moscow Trials

Our arrest in Norway aroused our son to the very core of his being: he was fully aware of what it meant. Our departure for Mexico, the three weeks' journey on board the oil tanker surrounded only by enemies introduced mortal alarm into his life. When we were at Gourum--the place of our incarceration in Norway--he sent us directions written in invisible ink and in code how to organize our trip. It was not discovered by our enemies and we received it. He sent friends to us from France. But no one was permitted to see us. And none of our friends was allowed to accompany us. Those three weeks of complete uncertainty were a great trial for Leon.

His father raged like a caged tiger. Delayed newspaper accounts of the then famous and first staging of the Moscow trials, his inability to answer it and expose the liars, were the greatest torture for Lev Davidovich. To defend himself against slander, to fight it--after all, this was his native element, the organic passion of his being; he found refuge in furious labor and in the struggle against all his contemptible enemies. But here in Gourum where he was doomed to silence, he fell ill.

Our son Leon understood this: his despair knew no bounds. He applied himself to the task which his father could not fulfill. In order to ease the latter's burden he came out himself with the exposure of the vile masters of the "Moscow Trials" whom he branded for what they were and who have written into the annals of history its most shameful and most revolting pages. Leon fulfilled this task brilliantly. In our jail we read his "Red Book" with great excitement. "All very true, all very true, good boy," said his father with a friend's tenderness. We wanted so much to see him and to embrace him!

In addition to his revolutionary activity and his literary work, our son occupied himself with higher mathematics which greatly interested him. In Paris he managed to pass examinations and dreamed of some time devoting himself to systematic work. On the very eve of his death he was accepted as a collaborator by the Scientific Institute of Holland and was to begin work on the subject of the Russian Opposition He was the only one among the youth who had had an enormous experience in this field and who was exhaustively acquainted with the entire history of the Opposition from its very inception.

Our economic instability used to worry him a great deal. How he yearned for economic independence! He once wrote me about his prospective earnings. The possibilities were good but he did not yet have definite assurance. "It would be a remarkable thing" (i.e., work in the Scientific Institute), he said and then added facetiously, "I would be in a position to assist my aging parents." "Why not dream?" he asked. His father and I often recalled these words of our son with love and tenderness. Mr. Spalding--assistant supervisor of the Russian Department in Stanford University-conducted some negotiations with our son in Paris concerning a prospective work, and here is what he later wrote about Leon: "The news of Sedov's death came to me as a shock. He impressed me as an extremely able and attractive personality, his future would undoubtedly have been brilliant. We are quite unclear about the circumstances of his death: some sources of our information indicate that it was due to medical negligence, or even something more terrible. Could you find it possible to write a brief note summarizing the conversation I had with Sedov last October (1937), including the tentative agreement which I had concluded with him. I could use such a note in ease it is possible to obtain certain information from Trotsky concerning the Russian civil war and war communism."

Leon entered the revolution as a child and never left it to the end of his days. The semi-conscious loyalty of his childhood toward the revolution later matured into a conscious and firmly intrenched devotion. Once in the summer of 1917, he came from school with a bloody hand into the office of the Woodworkers Trade Union (Bolshevik) where I was then working as editor and proof-reader of its organ, "Woodworkers Echo." It was the time of hot debates which took place net only in the Tauride Palace, the Smolny, or the Circus but also in the streets, the streetcars, schools and at work. Early in the morning, as a rule, a multitude of workers milled in the officer of our union, discussing current questions, i.e., the questions involving the impending seizure of power by the proletariat For the mass of workers these questions were indissolubly bound up with the personality of L.D. They discussed his speeches--and in these discussions could be felt the unity and inflexibility of will: a burning desire to march forward, summoning for a decisive struggle with unconquerable faith in victory.

The children were permitted to have their meals together with me in the union's dining room. Lev Davidovich was at the time sitting in the jail of the Provisional Democratic Government. To the queries of comrades concerning his hand Leon replied that he had been bitten by Kerensky (the Premier's son). How come? "I gave him one in his teeth." We all understood what had happened. The same school was also attended by the children of Skobelev, the then Minister of Labor. Fights were a daily occurrence.

By a blow from ambush the GPU cut short the young and dented life of our son and friend. This price was exacted for the upward flight unprecedented in history of the October revolution. Those responsible for its decline are now bringing their despicable work to its conclusion. The Second October will come; it will conquer the whole world and it will mete out their deserts both to the heroes of its predecessor as well as to its grave-diggers.

Lev Davidovich did not pore over the filthy pages of the Communist Party's paper "Pravda". He would quickly glance over it, and toss it aside with aversion. They are shooting...Lev Davidovich is now also awake. I whisper in his ear: "They are shooting here, in our room." And pressing close to him, I push him very, very gently, and drop down together with him from the low bed on to the floor.

"They are shooting." I uttered this with the self-same feeling as in the July days of 1917 I had said, "they have come." This was in Petrograd--it was later named Leningrad --when the police of Kerensky's government came to arrest L.D. We had expected arrest at the time--it was inevitable. The attack of Stalin was likewise expected by us. It was also inevitable. Nevertheless the expected came more unexpectedly on the night of May 24, 1940 than did the arrest in 1917.

When Kerensky Arrested Lev Davidovich

Kerensky's government had at that time scored a victory, not for long, but it did nonetheless succeed in arresting the Bolshevik leaders. I recall the manner in which the crisis of the Provisional Democratic Government was resolved. A stormy session was going on in the beautiful Hall of Columns in the Tauride Palace. I was sitting in a box, very close to the speakers' platform which was filled to overflowing with all the Lieberdans (this was how Demyan Bedny had labelled the Mensheviks in one of his poems which gained wide popularity). Suddenly there came the blare of triumphant music. A military band marched into the palace to the accompaniment of deafening applause and ecstatic greetings. The Government had secretly transferred from the front, regiments loyal to it and, as the future proved, these regiments were the last loyal ones. But at the time, they were sufficient. Those in power began to feel firm ground under their feet. I saw how those who tilled the platform, the conquerors, were covertly shaking each other by the hand, how they with great difficulty tried to restrain their transports of joy--their faces glowed, they were unable to preserve even an outward appearance of calm as was dictated by the circumstances.

In a few days the arrests began. L.D. and I occupied at the time a small room in the apartment of Comrade Y. Larin. Our boys were in Terioki with some friends. L.D. had spent that entire day as, incidentally, he spent all previous ones, at meetings until late into the white Petersburg night.

At five o'clock in the morning I heard a cautious tramping of feet on the asphalt in the courtyard and when I ran to the window and opened a chink in the shutters, I saw in the early white light uniforms in gray and guns slung across the arms. It was a military detachment of the Provisional Democratic Government. Beyond any doubt, this was for us. And touching L.D. on the shoulder I said, "They have come." He jumped up and began to dress himself swiftly. The bell rang. Comrade Larin, whom I had warned, did not open the door immediately. They rang again. They asked for Lunacharsky, this was a subterfuge. Then they presented an order for Trotsky's arrest. Larin did not give in. He forced them to wait. He tried to get the responsible Lieberdans on the telephone. But there was no answer anywhere. We said goodbye. Lev Davidovich did everything to keep up my spirits. They led him away. The general political situation was very grave at the time. The struggle was out in the open, direct actions were already being employed. It was a life and death struggle. But the last look L.D. gave me before he was taken away war full of confidence and challenge. That glance said to me: "We shall see who will vanquish whom."

There were visits to jail to arrange, the sending of packages to attend to, and so forth. I had the assistance of Leon and Sergei who undertook the delivery of packages (food, and so on) and transformed it into a game: "Who'll get there first." The overfilled street cars presented them with a great difficulty, but they hitched on and always arrived in jail exactly at the appointed hour.

They were greatly aroused by their father's second arrest. But the entire situation bore the promise of swift liberation and victory. It was quite different from the time when we were taken off the ship enroute to Russia by the English and separated, in 1917 in Halifax. The boys then remained with me in the status of prisoners not in jail but in a filthy room of a Russian spy in whose house a room was assigned to us. But L.D. was taken away with the others without a word of explanation. Complete uncertainty and isolation oppressed us extremely at the time.

The Attempted Assassination

We are lying on the floor, beside the wall in a corner and away from the cross-fire which proceeded without interruption for several minutes. Afterwards we took count of the holes in the walls and the doors of our bedroom: they numbered sixty. Pressing our bodies to the wall, we waited...l raised myself a little in order to shield L.D. because it seemed to me that the shots were being directed at him, but he stopped me. "Grandfather!" We both heard the cry of our grandson who slept in the neighboring room into which the criminals had entered. His voice rang out as if part in warning of the danger threatening us and part in a plea for help. Our grandson forgot about it, forgot his outcry, and no matter how I tried to remind him of his experiences and memories, he could not recall it. But this cry chilled us to the marrow. Everything became silent ... "They have kidnapped him," said his grandfather to me quietly. On the threshold which separated our bedroom from that of our grandson, illuminated by the flare of an incendiary bomb, a silhouette flashed: the curve of a helmet, shining buttons, an elongated face flashed by me as in a dream, and then 1 lost sight of the intruder. The shooting in the room stopped. We heard the sound of gunfire at a distance in the patio.

Quietly, slowly I crossed our bedroom and walked into the bathroom where a window gave to the patio. The little house could be seen where our friends, our guard lived. There also stood an enormous eucalyptus tree, and it was from there that they were firing! Beside this eucalyptus tree, as we later learned, the enemies had placed a machine gun. By a steady stream of fire they thus strategically cut off the guards from us. Investigating magistrates later found on the premises a bomb containing one and a half kilos of dynamite. A record of this is to be found in the minutes of the court in the case of the assault by Siqueiros, who was subsequently released on March 28, 1941: for lack of material and incriminating evidence! How monstrous! "The Master of the Soviet Land," "The Father of the Peoples," etc., etc., paid out lavishly from the proletarian treasury. According to the records, there was some sort of technical defect in the bomb and it could not be used by the criminals. But the investigation brought out the fact that it had sufficient power to blast the entire house to its foundation.

The shooting in the patio also ceased. Then, all was silence. Silent... intolerably silent. "Where can I hide you safely?" I was losing my strength from the tension and the hopelessness of the situation. Any moment now, they will come to finish him. My head spun around...And suddenly there came again the same voice, the voice of our grandson, but this time it came from the patio and sounded completely different, ringing out like a staccato passage of music bravely. joyously: "Al--fred! Mar--gue--rite!" It returned us to the living. A moment before we had felt the stillness of the night after firing ceased as in a grave, as with death itself..."They are all killed."

"Alfred! Marguerite!" No, they are alive...alive! But why then does no one come? Why does no one call us? After all, the others had left. Perhaps they are afraid, afraid of coming face to face with the irreparable. I seized the handle in the door which leads from our bedroom into L.D.'s workroom. It was closed, although we never locked it as a rule. The door was riddled by bullets like a sieve. They had fired through it into the bedroom. Through the interstices I could see the room suffused with a soft golden light from the shaded lamp on the ceiling; I could see the table covered with manuscripts in complete order; the books on the shelves were not touched. everything was tranquil there; the very background of the reign of thought, of creativeness was there. It was exactly as it had been left on the eve... How strange that was: order, tranquillity, light, everything on the table intact... Only the door with its black yawning holes bespoke the crime just committed.

I began pounding on the door. Otto came running. "The door is jammed for some reason." With our joint forces we opened the door. We walked into this wonderful, and at that time undisturbed room.

Robert Sheldon Harte

Seva, Alfred, Marguerite, Otto, Charlie, Jack, Harold--they were all there. Only Bob Sheldon was not with us. He, poor boy, had been on night duty and they had kidnapped him. A few of his belongings, some clothes and parts of his equipment remained in the empty garage... These made one's heart constrict in pain; one wanted to ask them what had happened to our friend, our guard? where was he? what had they done to him? Bob's things shrouded in mystery spoke to us of his doom. Sheldon had behind him altogether 23 years. How many hopes, how much idealism, faith in the future, readiness to struggle for it had perished with this young life! Exotic Mexico enthralled him. He was fascinated by the brightly colored little birds, acquired a few of them, kept them in our garden, and tended them so touchingly. Twenty three years: they lacked in the experience of life: they had not yet been moulded to an awareness of danger, the urgency of keeping on guard, but they were so sensitive as to have acquired all this presently, in a very short time. Sheldon loved to take walks. In his free hours he took walks around the environs of Coyoacan and brought back bouquets of field flowers.

Shortly after his arrival, he received a lesson from Lev Davidovich. Our place was being rebuilt, and it was necessary to open the gates every 15-20 minutes in order to let a worker with a wheelbarrow out into the street and then let him in back again. Bob was so carried away by building a bird cage that in order not to tear himself away from his work he handed the gate-key to the worker. This did not escape the notice of L.D. The latter explained to Bob that this was very careless on his part and added, "You might prove to be the first victim of your own carelessness." This was said about a month or six weeks before Bob's tragic death.

The day of May 24 began for us early and was full of excitement. The more we probed into an analysis of the bulletriddled walls and mattresses all the more did we become imbued with the realization of the danger that had threatened us, and all the more did we feel ourselves saved. The nervous tension of the night discharged itself into a state of high excitement kept in check by efforts to remain calm. This absence of dejection later served as one of the arguments in sup port of the senseless and shameless "theory of self-assault." As I recounted the events of the GPU's night assault to friends who visited us during that day, I felt that I was relating this almost with joy. But those who listened heard me with alarm, they cast frightened glances towards the heads of the two beds, where the wall was dotted with bullet holes, and I would say to myself as if in justification: "But after all the enemies did suffer failure."

The following days strengthened more and more in us the conviction that the failure suffered by our enemies on this occasion must be remedied by them; that the inspirer of this crime would not be deterred. And our joyous feeling of salvation was dampened by the prospect of a new visitation and the need to prepare for it.

L.D.'s Work During the Last Months

At the same time, Lev Davidovich was taking part in the conduct of the investigation of the case of May 24. Its slothful pace worried L.D. exceedingly. He followed the developments patiently and tirelessly, explaining the circumstances of the case to the court and to the press, making superhuman efforts to force himself to refute the self-evident and hopeless lies or malicious equivocations, doing all this with the intense perspicacity peculiar to him, and not allowing a single detail to escape his notice. He attached the proper significance to every single thing, and wove them all into a single whole.

And he grew tired. He slept poorly, dozing off and awakening with the self-same thoughts. Sometimes heard Lev Davidovich, when alone, say from his innermost depths, "I am tired...tired." A feeling of greatest alarm would seize me: I knew what this meant. But I also knew something else: I knew of the influx of vitality, inspiration and energy he would feel if he only could return quietly to his real work. He had outlined an analytical work on the Red Army for which he had been collecting material, another on the international situation; still others on world economy, and the latest period of the war. The day-to-day occurrences and the successive crimes of Stalin made it necessary to relegate these tasks to the second plane.

His book on Stalin had been forced on him by extraneous circumstances: financial necessity and by his publishers. Lev Davidovich more than once expressed a desire to write a "popular" book, as he called it, in order to earn some money thereby and then rest up by working on subjects of interest to him. But he could not bring this about, he was incapable of writing "popular" books. For a long time he hesitated to accept the publisher's offer, but our friends insisted on it. L.D. finally agreed. He planned to finish this work in a short while. But once he undertook it, he began to surround it with a conscientiousness peculiar to him and with a spirit of meticulousness and pedantism of which he often used to complain to me. Nevertheless he proposed to have it finished completely by March-April 1940. He was not able to. First the controversy in our party --its American section-distracted him, and then the events of May 24.

One of L.D.'s secret and most cherished desires was to depict the friendship between Marx and Engels, their "romance" which, as he told me, had never been investigated in his opinion as he wanted to do it. Lev Davidovich was very much in love with Engels, his whole profoundly human personality. He was greatly enthralled by the coupling of the two great and utterly different personalities of the two friends bound together by their striving for a single goal.

His Projected Book On Lenin

It was not without sorrow that he had to renounce for the time being the continuation of his book on Lenin. His deep and burning desire was to show Lenin as he was in reality as against all those who had written about Lenin self-obstrusively and measuring him by their own yardstick. No figment of the imagination of the epigones, however brilliant, could compare with the original. Lenin must appear before history, he had every right to it, in all his genius and with all his human weaknesses. The epigones, on the other hand, had endowed Lenin with good nature, modesty, simplicity, etc.,--but what did all this mean with reference to Lenin? They depicted him "in their own image." And Vladimir Ilyich was not one to be squeezed into a common mould. Lev Davidovich would demand also of me the most minute and insignificant recollections, but those which corresponded with reality, and he was very happy when I would recount to him or jot down for him various details he had not known and in which he was able to discern the real Lenin.

In 1917, in Petrograd, in the Smolny, our apartment was in the same corridor with the apartment of Lenin and his family. They used the bathroom located on our living area. We used to meet each other often in passing. Lenin was always brimful of energy, cheerful, polite. Once he walked in and seeing the boys, placed them side by side, stepped back a little, and putting both hands in his pockets, astonished me by saying cheerily: "Say, I like this!" The costume of the children had suddenly caught his eye. In those days, textiles were unobtainable and it never entered my mind to get a special order to obtain material for some shirts. We had a velvet tablecloth, with a flowery pattern, which I had cleaned and then cut up and sewed into blouses for the children. The boys were not much pleased. "Why go and make us shirts out of a rug?" I justified myself ... but it did not do any good. To be sure, they wore them. but not without grumbling. After Vladimir Ilyich's praise, the boys quieted down.

L.D.'s Health

During our ten years in the USSR, there were no great variations in L. D.'s health. in exile, or rather in emigration, his physical condition began to ebb and flow. In exile (Alma-Ata) Lev Davidovich's life was swallowed up by correspondence--in its way this was a continuation of our life during the last period in Moscow; current political and tactical questions were ever under discussion. We received such a quantity of mail as to make it impossible sometimes to read all the letters during the day. Our son Leon Sedov used to reply to a part of them, his father answered the greater portion. During the last months (of our stay in Alma-Ata) all correspondence, as is well known, was prohibited. It passed into illegal channels and its volume was greatly reduced.

At Prinkipo (Turkey) L.D. found it very hard at first. Inactivity and isolation oppressed him. The questions arose of the means of livelihood, funds for defense, funds for the foreign oppositional groups. All this compelled him to accept a publisher's offer to write his autobiography. It was very difficult for L. D. psychologically to enter into this work. It was so sharply out of harmony with the general bent of his being. He had to force himself to "recollect." This reacted on his nerves and his health on the whole became impaired.

A revival of his moral and physical condition occurred with the establishment of ties with European co-thinkers. Visitors from abroad, discussions with them, correspondence, writing political articles for oppositional organs in Europe--all this restored L.D. to his native element. And this in turn eased for him the compulsory labor over the autobiography.

At the dinner table or during fishing trips in the Sea of Marmora, no one suspected "low tide." Conversations on political topics, jokes, perking up this or that somewhat crestfallen comrade, all these invariably testified to the equanimity of L.D.'s moods. Only our son, when he lived with us, was able to guess that this was not so. How I loved the periods of "floodtide," how happy I was during them! Freshness, youthfulness, joyfulness returned in these periods to L.D. He would then passionately dictate political letters, and suggestions to friends, he would dictate his autobiography and various articles, and go fishing in the blue waters of the sea... He seethed in a frenzy. And all this in complete isolation. Behind four walls.

Our life near Royan (France) on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean in the isolated villa "Sea-Spray" which our friends had rented for us, had a turbulent beginning. Friends and co-thinkers from different countries would arrive daily to visit L.D. We had from 15 to 20 visitors a day. L.D. would hold two or three discussions daily. Full of inspiration, vitality and seemingly inexhaustible energy, he astonished and gladdened our friends by his tirelessness and vigor. And here in France the financial aspect of our life again arose very sharply. There was a lull. I had to go to Paris for medical care. Lev Davidovich insisted on it. In his own physical condition there came the alterations of ebb and flow.

From Royan, L.D. once wrote me that despite his poor health he had carried through a discussion, and did it very successfully, with some friends who had arrived and in the presence of our son. "I watched Lyovik," he wrote. "His eyes were shining. He was radiant." After the discussion L.D. went to bed early, because of fatigue and he heard the stormy ocean flinging its spray to the windows of his room, dashing drops against the window panes. Leon came in to bid his father goodbye. He had to return that night to Paris. They exchanged a few warm remarks about the discussion that had just concluded. Our son was very excited and aroused. He approached his father's bed, and dropping his head, "like a child," as his father wrote, on his father's breast, he pressed closely and said, "Papa, I love you very much." They embraced each other and parted with tears.

The ocean continues to live with its stormy ebbs and flows. It seethes in a frenzy. The great fighter might have also lived on... Violence. The dealers of violence will meet with vengeance. Violence will wither away. Free mankind of the future will bow its head in memory of its innumerable victims.

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-Introduction to C.L.R. James' "World Revolution 1917-1936"

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
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Introduction to World Revolution 1917-1936

This Introduction for the new edition of World Revolution 1917-1936 by C.L.R. James was written by Al Richardson the editor of Revolutionary History. The new edition was published by Humanities Press in 1993.

Introduction to World Revolution

C.L.R. James’ World Revolution, here presented in a new edition, was one of the few attempts made at the time to synthesise the experience of the revolutionary movement following the First World War. In judging its significance, both in its own time and for ours, it is worth bearing in mind the circumstances that gave rise to it.

The sheer weight of the apparatus of the Soviet Union and of the Comintern had established a virtual monopoly over Marxist thought by the mid 1930s. Dissident currents, whether of ‘right’ (Bukharinist or Brandlerite) or of ‘left’ coloration (Bordigist, Korschite or Trotskyist) had been successfully marginalised and reduced to small group existence by massive propaganda, gangsterism or terror.

Early in 1934 a dozen or so members of the Communist League, the first British Trotskyist organisation, at the instigation of Denzil Harber and Stewart Kirby and with Trotsky’s support, had left the parent body to set up a faction, later called the Marxist Group, inside the Independent Labour Party, which had itself parted company with the Labour Party a couple of years earlier. By this time C.L.R. James had already arrived in Britain and had made contact with members of the Labour Party in Nelson in Lancashire, but when he came down to live in Boundary Road in north west London he was recruited into the Trotskyist movement and joined the Marxist Group working in the ILP.1

In both groups the British Trotskyists were very few in number at the time he encountered them, and whilst the main body had with difficulty been able to sustain a monthly printed paper from 1933 onwards, the entrist organisation in the ILP had only been able to issue a few duplicated pamphlets, and, to put over their viewpoint, had been obliged to sell the Militant, a journal published by their American co-thinkers.

Trotskyism was not a popular standpoint during the mid 1930s in Britain. The wider Labour movement was more defensive than ever and was still recovering painfully from the split in the Labour Party at the time of the formation of the National Government in 1931. At the same time the Communist party was itself just recuperating from its reduction to the rank of a tiny sect during the “Third Period” of the Comintern, and was enjoying a period of rapid growth. The increase in the power of Nazi Germany made the USSR seem an attractive ally, even in some establishment circles, and the adoption of the policy of the Popular Front enabled the party to make a far wider appeal than it had ever done before, setting the tone for the ideological life of the left for the next decade. The Communist Party was able to infiltrate or take over existing organisations, such as the Labour Party’s student and youth groups, and to form a number of satellite bodies catering for the different interest groups in society.

The most effective of these was the Left Book Club, which came to enjoy a circulation of 57,000 and which was founded in May 1936 in partnership with the publisher Gollancz. Many of its titles were pure Soviet propaganda at its most mendacious, and of a virulently anti-Trotskyist character into the bargain, such books as Dudley Collard’s Soviet Justice and the Trial of Radek and Others, the Webbs’ Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation, and J.R. Campbell’s Soviet Policy and Its Critics.

The Club’s major programmatic book justifying the foreign policy of the Soviet Union, World Politics, 1918-1936, written by the Communist Party’s most cynical theorist, R. Palme Dutt, appeared in 1936. Unable to match anything like these resources, the British Trotskyists felt very much on the defensive, so C.L.R. James decided to use his contacts with a rival publisher to try to mount a counter-operation. As he later described it,

“There were no books in English, only pamphlets, so after a time I said ‘Why haven’t we a book in English?’, and they said that it was about time they had one. I finally picked myself up and got hold of Frederick Warburg ... I told Warburg and he thought that there was scope for the publication of books that were Marxist but not C.P. So I went away to Brighton and wrote this book in three or four months”.2

Although oral tradition in South Wales in the 1960s still pointed to a house where allegedly James worked on the book while campaigning down there for the ILP at the time of the Abyssinian War, it was largely put together, as he says, on the south coast. The local Communist Party bookshop in Brighton served as the basis for some of his material, though for many of his earlier sources he had to rely upon French and American non-Stalinist Marxists, and particularly upon the rich collection brought back by Harry Wicks from his course at the Lenin School in Moscow, whose expertise he thanks in his preface.3

The book finally came out in early 19374 to a less than enthusiastic reception. In the press dominated by them the Communist Party refused even to allow advertisements for it5 and, where in the nature of the case they were obliged to recognise its existence, such as in Gollancz’s Left Book Club, they attacked it with great hostility.6 No less hostile was the reaction of the British colonial authorities, who forbade the export of copies to India.7 This did not prevent it from being smuggled in and exercising some influence. G Selvarajatnan, later leader of the great strike in the Madras textile mills was converted to Trotskyism upon reading it, and Leslie Goonewardene’s Rise and Fall of the Comintern published ten years afterwards in Bombay was largely based on it.8

It has continued to suffer from neglect, being the least disseminated and commented upon of all James’ full length works, and the residue of Stalinist hostility towards it remains, even in New Left circles who are otherwise inclined to idolise its author. For James’ biographer, Paul Buhl, it is “James’ least original major work”, its “dogmatic weakness” being that it makes Stalinism “the deus ex machina for the failure of world revolution”.9

Such criticisms are based upon the view that World Revolution is largely a summary of the world view of Trotsky and the movement that followed him, Buhl for example seeing only in James’ treatment of the German crisis any differences with Trotsky.10 As a matter of fact, the book is far more original than it is given credit for, and neither James nor Trotsky regarded themselves as being in agreement over the basic argument contained in it. As James himself recalled,

“When I began to attack the Trotskyist position, some people in the United States said, ‘when we read your book World Revolution we said that it won’t be long before James is attacking the Trotskyist movement’. In this book it was pointed out to me in a particular paragraph. I agreed with the interpretation. I was told, ‘James, when some of us read that quotation, we said that ultimately James will go’”.11

These doubts were also shared by Trotsky himself. Whilst calling World Revolution “a very good book”, he criticised it for “a lack of dialectical approach”, considering that James’ theory of the development of Soviet politics wanted “to begin with the degeneration complete”. Whilst James’ chapter on the German events of 1923 is entitled Stalin Kills the German Revolution, Trotsky argued to the contrary that “the German revolution had more influence on Stalin than Stalin on the German Revolution. In 1923 the whole party was in a fever over the coming revolution”. Whilst considering the incredible policy of the German Communist Party during the accession of Hitler to power ten years later, James asks himself “Why did Stalin persist in this policy? How could the Soviet bureaucracy possibly conceive that any useful purpose could be served by letting Hitler into Power?”. Trotsky on the other hand argued that in fact “Stalin hoped that the German Communist Party would win a victory, and to think that he had a ‘plan’ to allow Fascism to come to power is absurd”.12 This suggestion, that the blunders of the Comintern and the KPD during 1930-3 were part of a deliberate plan was to occasion considerable embarrassment to the British Trotskyists, for it was immediately seized upon by their Communist opponents to discredit the book.13 Trotsky thus considered that the weakness of James’ book consisted in its not allowing for the development of Soviet politics, of allowing no movement within them, and of telescoping effect and intention, a sort of historical post hoc propter hoc argument.

The reason for this difference becomes apparent when we examine the secondary sources used by James in the construction of the book, and the major models that influenced his thought world at the time. We can dismiss straight away the suggestion made in Paul Buhl’s book, that he was indebted in any way to the “proletarian science” developed in the British Communist Party.14 These were precisely the people against whom he was polemicising. His main historical models were the classical historians, and the great modern historians of the classical world, such as Grote, whose works remained upon his bookshelf up to his death. They also included the classic Marxist histories, particularly The Eighteenth Brumaire which James regarded as “an indispensable book for the student of any period of History” (p.32n.1 below), and Trotsky’s My Life and the History of the Russian Revolution. We know that at the same time he was reading the works of the great French radical historians about the revolution of 1789 as preliminary research for his own future book, Black Jacobins (cf. pp.22-5 below). He must also have been acquainted with the historical labours of FA Ridley, for whom he maintained an affection to the end of his life, since they were both being published by Secker and Warburg at about the same time.

But it is the literature of the French and American non-Stalinist and non-Trotskyist left that supplies the key to understanding the distinctive features of World Revolution in that it shares the common assumption that the degeneration of the Russian Revolution began much earlier and proceeded at a more rapid rate that Trotsky would allow. One reference shows that James was acquainted with the literature of the Que Faire15 group, and we may note that Souvarine’s book, which he often cites, supported the Kronstadt insurrection against Soviet power as early as 1921.16 We know from other indications that at this time James was already acquainted with the “State Capitalist” theories about the USSR held by the French Union Communiste group led by Henri Chazé,17 as well as being in touch with some of BJ Field’s supporters in Canada, and conversant with the material of Weisbord, Oehler, and Erwin Ackernecht.18 James was particularly open to theories of the sort dismissed at the time by Trotskyists as “ultra left”, for after a long and sterile experience with entry activity within the ILP he had come to reject the tactic of entry altogether, refused to join the group that was pursuing such a course in the Labour Party, and had entered into a dispute with the Trotskyist International Secretariat on this basis.19 After a fragile unity was forced upon the British groups in 1938 he was sent to the USA, partly to give a free run to his longstanding opponent Denzil Harber, and partly to “straighten him out”.20 The distinctive position of World Revolution thus lies in the fact that its author was already in the process of rejecting Trotskyism, and his ideas were about to evolve towards the position he assumed during the Cannon-Shachtman conflict of 1939-40, and later in his State Capitalism and World Revolution of 1950, a political stance described by Robin Blackburn as “Anarcho-Bolshevism” (whatever that means).21 During the period that James was writing this book, there was, in fact, in both the United States and France, an entire left-wing thought world of groups who vied with each other to place the degeneration of Bolshevism and Marxism as early in time as possible (Oehlerites, Stammites, Eiffelites, Marlenites, etc, in the USA and in France, Cahiers Spartacus, Que Faire and the Union Communiste). It was a natural result of the disillusion produced among the left at the time by the rise of both Stalinism and Nazism, a pessimistic feeling that there was something deeply wrong with Marxism as they had inherited it. Although World Revolution is still quite close to the more recognisably ‘Trotskyist’ approach to these questions, it shows significant influences from this spectrum of ideas, and in effect stands at the beginning of C.L.R. James’ own gradual evolution in this direction.

A proper assessment of the value of the book can only be made in the light of historical experience, both of that which took place at the time and of later developments, for this is the only valid test of any social theory. Like any other book it is by no means infallible and our increased understanding of some of these past events inevitably shows shortcomings. In spite of the views of some modern commentators22 the subsequent history of the German USPD shows that Rosa Luxemburg was not “mistaken” in arguing that the Spartakists should remain inside it.23 James’ description of the foundation of the Comintern (p.112-3) can no longer be accepted as it stands. Whilst admitting that “the delegates were dissatisfied”, and that it was formed “due primarily to Lenin”, he comes to the strange conclusion that, at the time, “Lenin had almost been betrayed against his better judgement into a weak and vacillating position”. In the light of evidence that has since emerged it now seems clear that the dramatic appearance and speech of Gruber (Steinhardt) had been arranged in order to stampede the delegates into reaching the required decision.24 James’ endorsement of the Comintern’s verdict upon Paul Levi, because the latter condemned the 1921 “March Action” as a putsch, does that revolutionary less than justice.25 James’ view that Stalin was responsible for holding back the German Communist Party no longer receives uncritical support from historians of the Comintern,26 and there is some evidence that Trotsky himself came to have doubts about fixing the blame for any national errors on Brandler for the failure of October 1923 (p.187).27 Another of the myths of vulgar Trotskyism repeated here is that it was the Troika who were responsible for sending the Chinese Communist Party into the Guomindang, that “had Lenin been sitting as Chairman such an entry would never have taken place”28, and that Trotsky had voted against it from the very first (pp.236-7, 248).29 Count Stenbock-Fermoy, (p.331) a great-nephew of Prince Kropotkin, wrote to Trotsky to deny that he had joined the working-class movement to promote revanchist ideas.30 James’ description of Nin, Maurin and Andrade as “prominent leaders of the Spanish Revolution” (p.308) would in retrospect appear over optimistic.31 His acceptance of the production figures of the first Five Year Plan (p.292) appears as naive in hindsight, while time has dealt rather harshly with his remark that “if ever the Soviet Union goes down, that is to say back to capitalism, collective ownership has demonstrated how much capitalism retards the possibility of production”. Here however he was in good company, for not merely most socialists thought this but even a conservative such as Harold Macmillan, as late as 1961, feared the dynamism of the Soviet economy.

Much more problematic remains James’ view that the leaders of the Soviet Union were, as already noted above, carrying through a conscious policy in encouraging the suicidal behaviour of the German Communist Party in 1930-3. James links the deliberate policy of undermining Social Democracy to the fact that its foreign policy orientation was favourable to the “western” powers (p.337), whereas, as is well known, traditionally it is the more right wing elements in German society who have favoured an alliance with Russia. This is the view still supported by some historians - admittedly a minority, today.32

On the other hand when we consider the knowledge available at the time, the basic thesis supported by the book stands up surprisingly well. Its opponents of the day, Dutt, Strachey and the Webbs, could not be reprinted today without courting immediate ridicule. Scarcely half a dozen of the huge output of the Left Book Club during the same period is worth the shelf space in any Socialist library, and generally they pile up in the dustier sections of second hand bookshops where they remain unsold. James’ careful handling of his documentation stands him in good stead. At one point he notes, “the writer has used an (sic) Mss translation. Many of the most important articles by Lenin, written after 1918, have to be tracked down in obscure publications or translated afresh. The present Soviet regime does not publish them, or, when it does so, truncates them” (p.132n.1). Since the revelations of Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” at the 20th Party Congress of the Soviet Union in 1956 we are much better informed about these documents.33 Yet a comparison of James’ account of Lenin’s last conflict with Stalin and any modern treatment of the same subject, such as those of Moshe Lewin or Marcel Liebman34 would not modify the picture presented by James (pp.134-140) in any substantial way. He perceptively defines Trotskyism as a creation of Stalinism (p.151), and marshals his facts carefully to establish the existence of the massive famine caused by forced collectivisation (p.303), denied by virtually the entire range of left wing thought at the time.

Even some of his short-term predictions are found to be surprisingly accurate. “The long cold vistas of Siberia opened before Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky” he notes in 1929 (p.296), and, a year before the Trial of the Twenty-One, he asks “what insurance company would risk a penny on Bukharin’s life?” (p.199) Only a month after the appearance of World Revolution the events of the first week of May 1937 in Barcelona bore out his contention that “the day is near when the Stalinists will join reactionary governments in shooting revolutionary workers. They cannot avoid it” (p.389). The first section of the introduction to the book bears the subtitle The Coming War,35 and he prophesies that Trotsky “may be murdered in Mexico” (p.407). Many of the main events that come later in the wartime and post-war periods are sketched out quite adequately, such as that “the victory of Fascism in Germany would mean inevitably war against the Soviet Union” (p.320) and that “British capitalism, may despite all its efforts, be drawn into a war against Germany side by side with the Soviet Union” (p.408). The end of the Comintern is accurately foreseen as

“Stalin may even liquidate it altogether to assure the bourgeoisie that he will leave them alone, if only they will leave him and his bureaucracy in peace. But he dare not do this while Trotsky guides the Fourth International” (p.403).

Looking beyond the end of the Second World War James notes wisely that “the last war brought the partial freedom of Ireland, a loosening of the chains of Egypt and an upheaval in India which has seriously crippled the merciless exploitation of centuries. How long could Britain’s grip on India survive another war?” (p.10) For a brief moment the veil of the future is even drawn aside for China, Korea and Indo-China: “in China and the Far East, where Britain has so much at stake, capitalism is more unstable than anywhere else in the world” (ibid.).

Finally James’ analysis of the Soviet Union bears an amazing freshness in view of the events of the last three years. Speaking of the Soviet economy, he comments, “the whole system would stand or fall by the increased productivity of labour ... if Lenin returned today, he would not waste a minute on Stalin’s propaganda, but would calculate the income and expenditure per head of population and from it grasp at once the social and political character of the regime” (p.122). Examining the presuppositions behind Lenin’s theory of imperialism, he goes on to say:

“If capitalism proved to be still progressive, then the Soviet Union was premature and would undoubtedly fail. It was simple Marxism that the new Society could not exist for any length of time unless the old had reached its limits. But the conflict was not a conflict of entities already fixed. Capitalism in decay might still be powerful enough to overthrow the first Socialist State, whence it would gain a longer lease of life” (pp.119-120).

We can only await the confirmation (or otherwise) of the grim prophecy that flows from this: “If the Soviet Union goes down, then Socialism receives a blow which will cripple it for a generation” (pp.418-19).

Thus it emerges that a book dismissed for its “dogmatic weakness”, despite being written fifty-five years ago, still has lessons to teach us today if we read it in a fresh and critical spirit, and we warmly recommend a careful study of it as we place it in the hands of a public that, we are sure, will give it a better reception than when it first appeared.

Al Richardson



Footnotes
1. C.L.R. James and British Trotskyism: An Interview, London, 1987, p.1. An amusing picture of James’ influence upon middle class opinion in the ILP at this time is to be found in Ethel Mannin, Comrade, O Comrade, ch.x, pp.133-5.

2. C.L.R. James and British Trotskyism, p.1. Among the non-Stalinist books that James was able to influence Warburg to publish at this time were, in addition to his own, his translation of Boris Souvarine’s Stalin (1939), Mary Low and Juan Brea’s Red Spanish Notebook, recently republished unfortunately without James’ original preface, Harold Isaacs’ Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution (1938) and Albert Weisbord’s Conquest of Power (1938). Warburg of course, far more than Gollancz, was open to texts which came from the general left or ILP milieu and among his list at this period were Brockway’s Workers Front and both Next Year’s War and the Papacy and Fascism by F.A. Ridley, as well as the first edition of Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, which Gollancz had rejected as being too critical of the Communist Party’s line

3. Below, p.xii; cf. Harry Wicks, 1905-1989: A Memorial, London 1989, pp.3, 8, & 14. For examples of the sort of material provided, cf. below, p.132n.1 and 179n.1.

4. It is advertised in Fight, Vol.i, no.5 for April 1937.

5. Martin Secker and Warburg, “Letter to the Editor”, 30th April 1937, in Fight, Vol.i, no.7, June 1937.

6. R.F. Andrews (Andrew Rothstein), “Leninism Trotskified” in Left News, June 1937, pp.291-8. Gollancz’s own opinion was that “a Trotskyist book falls as obviously outside the scope of the Club’s publications as does a Nazi or Fascist book” (New Leader, vol.xxi, new series no.178, 11th June, 1937).

7. George Padmore, letter to Tribune, 10th September, 1937, p.13.

8. K. Tilak, Rise and Fall of the Comintern, Spark Syndicate, Bombay, December 1947.

9. Paul Buhl C.L.R. James: The Artist as Revolutionary, London 1988, pp.51-2. Contrast with this James comment on p.159, below: “There is a tendency among Trotskyists to exaggerate the economic and social influences at work in the Trotsky-Stalin struggle in 1923”. Other examples of Buhl’s anti-Trotskyist bias need not detain us here (“A paroxysm of rage at Stalin”, “overly subjective, obsessed with details at the expense of the larger picture”, “with minor possible exceptions such as Trotskyists in Ceylon, only the activity of James himself forcefully joined anti-imperialism with Trotskyism”, etc). They have been commented upon by Charles van Gelderen in C.L.R., Socialist Outlook, April 1989.

10. op. cit., Note 9 above, p.52.

11. op. cit., Note 1 above, p.9.

12. L.D. Trotsky “On the History of the Left Opposition”, April 1939 in Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1938-39, New York, 1974, pp.260-66. cf. C.L.R. James below, pp.164-201, 335.

13. JR Campbell, in Controversy, vol.i, no.8, May 1937, p.36.

14. Buhl, op. cit., Note 9 above, pp.45-47. Here, as is evident from his preface, he has been misled by his English informants, principally Robin Blackburn of New Left Review. Even less relevant are references (p.58) to Christopher Hill, who in spite of his expressed admiration for Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution today (Sunday Times, 18 August, 1985), was busy, at the time indicated, writing a book about Lenin and the Russian Revolution which effectively censored Trotsky out of it.

15. The Que Faire group was formed in France in 1934 from ex-Stalinists and ex-Trotskyists, such as Kurt Landau, and set out to trace back the degeneration of the Russian Revolution from its earliest stages. The group finally united with Social Democracy in 1939.

16. Souvarine talks about the “Kronstadt commune” and “the legitimate character of the rebels’ claims” on pp.276 and 279 of Stalin. Trotsky described Souvarine’s theory as a “search for an independent line running directly from Marx to himself, bypassing Lenin and Bolshevism” (letter to Victor Serge, 29th April, 1936, in Writings of Leon Trotsky: A Supplement, 1934-40, New York, 1979, p.659), and Souvarine himself as the archetype of a “gangrenous sceptic”. James himself notes Souvarine’s “anarchist bias against the dictatorship of the proletariat” (below p.140n.2; cf. also p.309).

17. Description of a meeting with C.L.R. James on 10th October, 1937 by Ernie Rogers, “Letter to Jimmy Allen” in The Trotskyist Movement and the Leninist League, London, 1986, p.7.

18. Op. cit., Note 17 above; Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson Against the Stream, London, 1986, pp.256, 287.

19. Op. cit., Note 17 above: “there would have to be a struggle in the International League; efforts would have to be made to alter the line of the I(nternational) S(ecretariat). I told him that this had already been attempted and had been met with Stalinist methods; suppression, hooliganism. He (James) interjected and said that there was nothing we could say against the I.S. with which he could not agree. He knew all about them ... He asked Frost (Max Basch), a member of the EC, to provide him with the documents published by Oehler on the question, also the internal bulletin published by the Sec. on the French turn”.

20. Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson War and the International, London, 1986, p.24.

21. Robin Blackburn, C.L.R. James (Obituary), in The Independent, 2nd June, 1989. Cf. the remark made by James about Trotsky’s rejection of democratic centralism in 1903 on p.49 below: “He has since admitted that he was wrong; too generously, for the question is not so simple”. In view of Trotsky’s stated opinion about this conflict, the whole discussion that follows this comment (p.49-53) shows how far James was, already by 1937, at variance with Trotsky.

22. Chris Harman, The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918 to 1923, London, 1982, pp.19-20, 88, 95.

23. Cf. Rob Sewell, Germany: From Revolution to Counter-Revolution, London 1988, pp.33-4; Mike Jones, The Decline, Disorientation and Decomposition of a Leadership: The German Communist Party; From Revolutionary Marxism to Centrism, in Revolutionary History, Vol.ii, no.3, p.2. Cf. below, p.95.

24. Referring to Angelica Balabanoff, Impressions of Lenin, Ann Arbour, 1968, pp.69-70, Walter Kendall comes to the conclusion that “the whole affair is so dramatic as to suggest stage management” (The Revolutionary Movement in Britain, 1900-1921, London, 1969, p.226). The case is established beyond all reasonable doubt in his as yet unpublished MSS, World Revolution: The Russian Revolution and the Communist International, 1898-1935, to which I am greatly indebted.

25. “Mere condemnation of thousands of proletarians who risk their lives against the bourgeoisie has never been tolerated by Marxists”, p.169 below. Cf. Mike Jones, op. cit., Note 23 above pp.5-7.

26. Pierre Broué, The Communist International and the German Crisis of 1923, address to the AGM of Revolutionary History, 20th May, 1989 (as yet unpublished); cf. LD Trotsky, op. cit., Note 12 above, p.260.

27. Cf Mike Jones, op. cit., Note 23, pp.8-9; He refers to Jacob Walcher’s Notes on Discussions with Trotsky, 17th-20th August 1933, published in the Oeuvres, vol.ii. This text recently came to light in the SAP archives in Sweden and only became known after the publication of the Pathfinder English edition of the works of Trotsky’s last exile. It is hoped to put an English translation into general circulation in the near future. For Trotsky’s later return to his original opinion, cf. On the History of the Left Opposition, April 1939, in Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1938-39, New York, 1974, p.261.

28. On the strategy as a whole cf. Michael Cox’s verdict: “The general strategy developed by the Comintern by 1923 and 1924 was unambiguously bourgeois democratic. I can find no suggestion of any serious attempt to pose or even discuss the possibility of proletarian dictatorship, as a solution to the tasks of the anti-imperialist struggle in the colonies. That is, a well developed stages conception of the colonial revolution preceded Stalinism”, See The National and Colonial Question - The First Five Years on the Comintern, 1919-22, in Searchlight South Africa, no.4, February 1990, p.38.

29. Trotsky himself put various dates upon his support for the withdrawal of the Chinese Communists from the Guomindang. In a letter written in December 1930 he claimed that he had done so “from the very beginning, that is, from 1923” (Letter to Max Shachtman, 10th December 1930 in Leon Trotsky on China, New York 1976, p.490), but in My Life written a year earlier he says that it was “since 1925” (Penguin edition, Harmondsworth, 1975, p.552). “As a matter of fact” notes Paolo Casciola, “despite these assertions, no documents preceding the spring of 1927 are available in which Trotsky called for a withdrawal of the Chinese Communist Party from the Kuomintang” Trotsky and the Struggles of the Colonial Peoples, Centro Pietro Tresso, Foligno, 1990, pp.11-12.

30. Cahiers Leon Trotsky, no.36, Dec 1968, pp.51-3.

31. Cf. The Spanish Civil War: The View from the Left, Socialist Platform, 1992, for rather damning counter evidence.

32. Thomas Wiengartner, Stalin und der Aufstieg Hitlers, Berlin 1970, cf. the references given in A. Westoby, Communism since World War II, Brighton 1981, p.410n.28, especially Robert Black, Fascism in Germany, London, 1975, vol.ii, pp.749-55, 858-60.

33. Mostly to be found in vol.xxxiii of the 1966 English edition of Lenin’s Collected Works, along with the material in L. Fotieva’s Pages from Lenin’s Life, Moscow, 1960.

34. Moshe Lewin, Lenin’s Last Struggle, London, 1969; Marcel Liebman, Leninism under Lenin, London 1975, pp.417-25.

35. Obviously many of these forecasts derive from the common stock of analyses James had at his disposal in the Trotskyist movement. We should remind ourselves that Trotsky himself, two years before the Second World War broke out, prophesied its outbreak to within a month (Daniel Guérin, Trotsky and the Second World War part.ii, in Revolutionary History, vol.iii, no.4, p.13), and that other writers acquainted with Trotskyist ideas such as F.A. Ridley, had sketched out the main lines of the coming conflict in such books as Next Years’s War, which Secker and Warburg had published a year before James’ book appeared.