Leon Trotsky: Protest Against Deportation

February 7-8, 1929

[Leon Trotsky, The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1928-1929), New York 1981, p. 373 f.]

1. The GPU representative has reported that the German Social Democratic government has refused me a visa. That means Muller and Stalin concur in their evaluation of the Opposition.

2. The GPU representative has reported that I will be handed over to Kemal against my will. That means Stalin has arranged with Kemal, the suppressor of Communists, for reprisals against the Opposition, as against a common enemy.

3. The GPU representative has refused to discuss minimal guarantees against White Guards – whether Russian, Turkish, or other – in the event of my forced deportation to Turkey. What is behind that is that Stalin is counting directly on assistance from the White Guards, which is fundamentally no different from the assistance provided by Kemal.

4. The failure to keep the promise already made to me to deliver books I need from Moscow is a particular illustration of the general rudeness and disloyalty in matters large and small.

5. The statement by the GPU representative that a "written guarantee" was given by Kemal in regard to my belongings, "with the exception of weapons," i.e., my revolvers, means that in fact I will be disarmed at the outset in the face of the White Guards, and a deliberately lying excuse is given by attributing this to the Turkish government.

I report the above so that responsibility can be appropriately assigned and in order to lay the basis for the steps I consider it necessary to take against this utterly Thermidorian treachery.