Leon Trotsky: Where Is the Leninbund Going?

A Reply to the Leninbund Leadership

September 19, 1929

[Writings of Leon Trotsky. Vol 1, 1929, New York 1975, p. 304-317]

Dear Comrades,

On June 13 and August 24 I addressed letters to you devoted to purely principled problems. In your September 5 response, unfortunately, the principled questions did not receive the proper treatment. At the same time, your letter raises a number of other questions, partly organizational, partly personal, with respect to different aspects of relations between the Russian Opposition and the German. Of course, you are free to raise anew any question of the past. I, for my part, am prepared to answer any question you pose. But I must say, all the same, that your attempt to complicate principled political questions that have enormous importance for the future with organizational and personal questions concerning the past make me fear that such a method could sooner lead to unnecessary exacerbation of relations and to further isolation of the Leninbund leadership from the international Left Opposition than to creation of a common ideological base.

I will try, however, to respond to all your conceptions not only in order to remove the clear factual misunderstandings but in order, by analyzing them, to show the error of the method being applied by the Leninbund leadership when examining disputed questions, as well as principled and private ones.

1. You accuse the Russian Opposition of having supported the Opposition organization in Wedding. The way you see it, the Russian Opposition committed a particular mistake when it did not recognize the Leninbund as the only Opposition organization in Germany. To this I must say the following:

a. The Leninbund leadership explained at the time that our October 16, 1926, declaration was a mistake. We, in fact, believed and we still believe that the declaration was a correct step which allowed us subsequently to increase our forces in the party several times over.

b. The Leninbund leadership did not see the principled disagreements between us and the Democratic Centralists. I will note in passing that during that period Radek had the very same point of view, demanding that we merge with the Decemists, and so did Preobrazhensky and Smilga. But we believed that deep differences separated us from them. Now you excuse without a word the fact that in the past the Leninbund leadership supported not only the Zinoviev-Kamenev faction against the Opposition in 1923 but also the Democratic Centralism group against the United Opposition as a whole. And, at the present time, you disagree with the Russian Left Opposition on the most important questions and are getting closer to the Decemists. On what basis can you demand that the Russian Opposition, hardly a day after the Leninbund’s existence, should have recognized it as the sole representative of the German Opposition?

c. But to me, more important than all these circumstances is the following consideration. The Russian Opposition does not believe that it is called upon to determine — without factual verification and without' extended experience in political collaboration and ideological struggle — which of the given national groupings is the “real” Opposition. The Wedding Opposition seemed to us to be poorly organized and politically indecisive. But we thought that we should give it time. The Leninbund leadership, headed by Maslow, Ruth Fischer, and the others, could not a priori inspire one hundred percent confidence, nor for that matter even seventy- five percent. What was needed here was testing in practice. This was natural if we sought to maintain and develop friendly relations with both organizations, providing time for the course of events and comradely discussion to generate the necessary foundations for unanimity and produce the necessary regroupment.

Of course, Russian Oppositionists who have ended up abroad (not by their own choosing but by Stalin's) can make and have made one gross mistake or another. I am ready to admit this without dispute. It is necessary also to add here how extremely isolated Moscow is from foreign countries. But, in general, relations between the Russian Opposition and the foreign Opposition organizations are dictated by the principled conceptions mentioned above, which still remain in force even to a significant extent today.

2. In connection with what has been said, let me pose the question of how the Leninbund itself relates to the struggling foreign Opposition groupings.

Concerning the Soviet republic, this was said above: the Leninbund’s official line passes between the Bolshevik-Leninists and the Decemists. But how about the Opposition in France where groupings, unfortunately, are very numerous? The Leninbund leadership simply has no position. From time to time it prints articles of the French comrades, selecting chiefly those aimed against the point of view of the Russian Opposition. For the Leninbund leadership it is as if the French Opposition’s internal problems do not exist. And what about Austria? Approximately the same thing. I do not demand at all that the Leninbund this very moment officially “recognize” some Opposition groups and reject others. The time for this has not yet come. But one can and ought to demand that the Leninbund leadership genuinely feel part of the international whole and approach the problems of the foreign Opposition from the standpoint of its internal needs and tasks.

3. You state in your letter that in your publications there was not one statement “after 1929” to the effect that the Russian Opposition “does not go far enough” (a reproach that the Decemists made against us hundreds of times). You stipulated 1929, obviously, because on December 21, 1928, in Die Fahne des Kommunismus (number 51) you accused me of being too slow in my assessment of the tempo of deterioration of Soviet power, and at the same time proclaimed that the “optimistic conceptions” in my article “At a New Stage” had already been outstripped by events (überholt). In this article, it was precisely Thermidor that was under discussion. Your position notwithstanding, subsequent developments proved the capacity of the proletariat as a whole and of the proletarian nucleus of the party in particular to force the centrist apparatus toward a prolonged left zigzag. My article took into account the very possibility of this improvement while your polemic against me did not foresee it, turned out to be mistaken, and therefore was actually “outstripped by events” a long time ago.

True, you can say that this was written ten days before 1929. But have you really repudiated in 1929 what you wrote in 1928? Even as regards 1929, your statement is totally mistaken. In Volkswille of February 16 there is, under the heading “Workers’ Correspondence,” a short article especially devoted to counterposing the line of Urbahns to the line of Trotsky (and under the heading “As Trotsky Goes, So Goes the Russian Opposition”). Finally, in Volkswille of May 18, 1929, it says that Trotsky’s formulas concerning the situation in the Soviet republic (the Thermidor question again) “do not go far enough.” How could you yourself forget what you wrote not so very long ago? If I had more time, I could find other such quotations, or, still worse, disguised or half-disguised allusions. Of course, no one can dispute your right to have differences with the Russian Opposition in general or with Trotsky in particular. But this should be done clearly, precisely, and openly, without resorting to tricks and evasiveness. Don’t forget that we are talking about fundamental questions of the Opposition’s policy.

4. Comrades, is it appropriate to play that game you do in your letter on the theme of whether I did or did not read Volkswille? Yes, on June 5 I wrote you that I was not yet well enough acquainted with Volkswille. This was just at the time when I was becoming acquainted with your publication — not haphazardly, but more substantially, on various questions. On June 13 and August 24 I had, in my letters, already formulated a general evaluation of your line. Is it possible that you think a month is not enough for this, or for that matter only one week? From my present letter you can, in any case, be sure that I have a sounder knowledge of what you wrote in your newspaper in 1929 than the editors themselves.

5. Your attacks on Comrade Frankel were totally uncalled for and represent an attempt to inflict upon Frankel sentiments that in fact you should have aimed at me. Indeed, this would have been franker and better. I never do my writing on the basis of what “the secretaries” tell me, as you describe. I take responsibility for what I write. As regards Comrade Frankel, he independently subjected Volkswille to criticism in connection with May 1. He did this in a personal letter, very calm and comradely in tone. Urbahns attacked him in a totally uncomradely tone. On the basis of this one example it is possible without difficulty to imagine what kind of methods Comrade Urbahns is applying with respect to internal criticism in general.

6. You write that you are prepared to very willingly accept my help in the matter of working out, correcting, and making more precise the Leninbund’s position. This matter, of course, involves not only me. I spoke about the need to establish more correct relations with the Russian and international Opposition as a whole. But in all candor it must be said that my personal experience categorically disproves your very amicable-sounding words. There are so many examples that my only difficulty lies in making a selection.

a. While still in Alma-Ata I wrote (in a very cautious and friendly tone) an article against some of Comrade Urbahns’s statements which could not be interpreted in any other way than as an offer to form a bloc with Brandler. Members of the Leninbund did not find out anything about this article at the time. Several months ago, when I was already in Constantinople, Brandler printed my article. Only afterward did it appear in Volkswille. It goes without saying this could have been explained as accidental. But unfortunately the whole series of accidents that have taken place recently show that what is going on is not accidental but systematic.

b. At the time we made it, the Leninbund leadership interpreted our demand for a secret ballot in the party in the spirit of general democratic freedoms. In a short letter, without any sort of polemicizing whatever, I explained the real meaning of our demand. My letter appeared in other Opposition publications but Volkswille did not print it. Only as a result of a long polemical correspondence did my letter appear in the pages of Volkswille, many weeks after it was received by the editors.

c. The Leninbund leadership conducted the campaign in connection with my exile in the spirit of sensational news. Comrades in various countries expressed a fully justified bewilderment over this agitational character. No principled conclusions were made from the entire Volkswille campaign. I wrote an article especially for Volkswille (or for Die Fahne des Kommunismus) in which I tried, without being in the least polemical, to introduce what needed to be added to the Leninbund’s campaign. My article (“A Lesson in Democracy I Did Not Receive”) was printed in almost all the Opposition publications in Europe and America — except in the publications of the Leninbund, for which it was intended since it was precisely Germany that the article was about. To my inquiry about this the editors replied that this question was no longer “topical” in Germany. I could not understand this. From the point of view of sensational politics this explanation could perhaps hold true; but from the point of view of principled propaganda which should be the most important part of all the Leninbund’s work, Comrade Urbahns’s answer seemed most improbable.

But there is one case that surpasses all the others and is in and of itself sufficient to characterize the methodology of the Leninbund editorial staff. On June 12, I sent Comrade Urbahns an open letter called “Once More on Brandler and Thalheimer.” In this article I for the first time said openly for publication that I was far from agreeing with the Leninbund leadership. I believe that as an active collaborator of the Leninbund’s publications I had the right or rather the duty — with respect to the Russian and the international Opposition — to make note of my differences with the Leninbund leadership. How did the latter respond? To put it purely and simply, it distorted my article. It published that part of the article which was aimed against Brandler but left out the paragraphs that were devoted to criticizing the Leninbund. The editors left out of my article the following paragraph:

“I am not in the least taking up the defense of the policy of Maslow and the others. In 1923 Maslow’s verbal radicalism stemmed from the same passivity as in Brandler’s case. Not understanding the ABC’s of the problem, Maslow tried to ridicule my demand that a date for the uprising be set. At the Fifth Congress he still believed that the revolution was gaining momentum. In other words, on the most fundamental questions he made the same mistakes as Brandler, serving them up with an ultraleftist sauce. But Maslow tried to learn until he fell into the swamp of capitulationism. Other former ultralefts did learn a few things. I am by no means taking responsibility for the Volkswille line as a whole. In it now there are many regurgitations from the past, i.e., a combination of opportunist and ultraleft tendencies. But nevertheless these comrades have learned a great deal and many of them have shown that they are capable of learning more. On the other hand, Brandler and Thalheimer have taken a gigantic step backward, raising their revolutionary blindness into a platform.”

Why did you discard these lines? Perhaps to save space? Or to more clearly show how willingly you accept criticism? If the editors proceed in such a way with my articles, it is not difficult to imagine how they handle critical articles from members of your own organization.

You entitled the article “From Comrade Trotsky’s Letter” in order to, in that seemingly innocent way, conceal the inadmissible operation you had carried out, which I would rather not call by its proper name. You had, dear comrades, the formal right not to print my article at all. You had both the formal and the political right to speak out against the article in the most categorical of polemics. But you had no right — either political or formal — to distort my attitude toward Opposition groupings in the eyes of the German workers.

d. You reprinted at the time my criticism of the Comintern program. But even here you selected for your own purposes things that were neutral, circumventing the most crucial problems. Thus you did not quote from the second chapter what was said about the Fifth Congress and about the whole ultraleft zigzag of 1924-25 that caused the Comintern disasters of incalculable proportions. If you did not agree with my criticism, you should have openly spoken out against it. But you simply avoided one of the most important problems in the development of the Comintern concerning your own past (and not simply the past). With such practices it is impossible to educate revolutionary cadres in the spirit of Marxism.

Likewise, you did not quote what I said in the third chapter about permanent revolution as applied to China. I argued there that the theory of permanent revolution — if you leave aside the polemical episodes of the remote past that no longer have significance — fully concurs with the very essence of Leninism. You have also avoided this question, fundamental for the entire East and that means one of the most important for the International.

One never knows what you agree with and what you disagree with.

e. At the present time Die Fahne des Kommunismus for many weeks allots a full third of its meager space to articles by Radek, Smilga, and Preobrazhensky aimed against the Russian Opposition and against me in particular. These articles were sent abroad for informational purposes. If Comrade Urbahns were capable of the most elementary sense of solidarity with the Russian Opposition, he would first of all send me these articles (especially since they were intended for me). This would have made it possible for me to provide a timely response to the new arguments of the capitulators. Comrade Urbahns has acted otherwise. He prints the articles of the capitulators aimed against the Russian Opposition, provoking general perplexity among the readers who are not committed to Comrade Urbahns’s special teams and combinations. Why, in fact, are these articles, the place for which is the organs of Thalheimer and Brandler, being printed from week to week in the Leninbund’s organs? The sole conceivable political explanation is the following: the editors are trying with the hands of Radek and Company to undermine the leadership of the Russian Opposition, without in the process bearing direct responsibility.

f. This, however, does not exhaust the matter. I will not dwell on the bartering of essential points. But I cannot overlook the Trotsky Aid question. Since the time of my arrival in Constantinople, the problem of this organization has become a subject of concern to me. I wrote Comrade Urbahns a number of letters in which I explained to him that if I experienced material need, then, of course, I would see absolutely nothing wrong with such voluntary collections among the workers on the condition, it goes without saying, of full public knowledge of the collections and strict accountability. But because I required no help, the collected money should either have been returned to those people who had contributed or by common agreement and absolutely openly have been used toward other ends. I offered to send the collected resources to aid arrested and exiled Russian Oppositionists and their families. My letter to this effect was later made public in a number of publications, including Volkswille. Comrade Urbahns answered one of my reminders with a letter in which there could be seen a note of outright indignation. Here is what he wrote to me on May 2: “What kind of factual charges or suspicions about Trotsky Aid and its collections were brought to your notice? Where do these charges and suspicions come from? I think it is absolutely necessary that these questions be clarified. … I share your opinion that the confidence of the workers, which has often been betrayed, makes it impermissible for any questions whatever to remain unclear … ."

These words reassured me. But, alas, only for a short time. No account of the collected and distributed funds was ever published, despite all the subsequent requests. It goes without saying there could be no question of personal abuses. But how does one refute the assertion that the money was spent to meet the Leninbund’s needs?

7. One could argue that the question of a fund, however important it is in and of itself, does not have a direct relationship to the differences being considered. But such an argument would be superficial. Our concern this time is not only the Leninbund’s principled line, to which I devoted my first letter, but also the organizational methods of the Leninbund leadership. It is not difficult to show that the one is closely linked with the other. The precepts of Marxism assume first and foremost a correct attitude toward the masses and toward the class. Hence emerges the demand for revolutionary loyalty. We know no ethical norms that stand above society and above classes. But we know very well the requirements for revolutionary morality that flow from the needs of the struggle of the proletariat. The greatest bane of Stalinism is that it is buying its successes at the expense of the internal bonds of the proletarian vanguard and by so doing is preparing catastrophes in which something more than the Stalinist bureaucracy can perish.

But political disloyalty is not a feature of the Stalinist apparatus alone. A sectarian attitude toward the masses also contains the desire to outwit the class and outwit history with the aid of adroit routes and machinations that are always linked with violation of the requirements of revolutionary loyalty. Political leaders who are preparing for a prolonged struggle for the conquest of the proletarian vanguard would never allow themselves such negligence on a question so acutely affecting the confidence of the masses.

For me, the incident with the fund, like for example the incident with the distortion of my article, represent to an equal degree a manifestation of the wrong attitude toward the worker, the reader, and the masses.

I repeat: Stalin does not have a monopoly on disloyalty. Zinoviev, who in his own way established a whole school, worked right alongside him. Maslow and Fischer were undoubtedly the most outstanding representatives of this school. Its characteristic feature is moral cynicism, not stopping short of falsification, misrepresentation of quotations, and slander as methods of struggle for influence over the masses. The bureaucracy of the Comintern has been profoundly corrupted by such methods. The Opposition must carry on an irreconcilable struggle against them — above all in our own midst.

By this I do not at all wish to say that the people who have gone through Zinoviev’s school are thereby forever condemned. Of course this is not so. One can pass over from a sectarian and adventuristic (or semi-sectarian and semi-adventuristic) track to a Marxist and proletarian track. The matter is ultimately decided by correctness of line, correctness of perspectives, and correctness of revolutionary methods. Abstract moral propaganda, isolated from politics, is simply absurd — not to say stupid. But one can and must demand that the methods and procedures be in keeping with the ends. And this we do demand.

8. The question of the fund has not only the principled importance indicated above but also practical importance. Never in the entire history of revolutionary struggle (if one does not count China) have revolutionaries been placed in such grave conditions as those in which the Oppositionists in the Soviet republic find themselves. The extent of their day-to-day isolation and their material need defies description. Nothing like this happened or could have happened under czarism. This is also one reason, and by no means the least important, for the capitulationist epidemic.

One of the necessary means for struggling against the Stalinist bureaucracy right now is material support for the persecuted Oppositionists. This is the direct responsibility of the international Opposition. In the meantime, the Trotsky Aid episode totally closed this route to us. We no longer have the opportunity to appeal to the workers, whose confidence in this matter has already been abused. Can there be any thought of tolerating such a situation any longer?

9. Your letter portrays the matter as if you wanted my cooperation but I refused to give it. It has already been shown above that the contrary is true. The circumstances that directly gave rise to your recent answer, in particular, serve as clear evidence of this. On the questions it takes up I have written you more than once. On June 13 I insisted on the soonest possible meeting. You responded with agreement. But at the same time — as in a number of other cases — your promise did not at all mean that you actually intended to undertake steps for its fulfillment. You plainly and simply remained silent. You did not respond to the questions in my letter. Almost three months passed and only after I sent around a copy of my August 24 letter to you to other groups in the international Opposition did you answer with the letter that I am analyzing here.

10. To your principled polemic on Thermidor and the nature of the Soviet state, which you have turned over to the press, I am responding with a pamphlet that should be published in the immediate future in several languages. The problems are not such that can be reconciled with reservations. The entire international Opposition must examine, discuss, think out, and debate these questions with all the necessary latitude. Every Opposition cell, having at hand all the necessary documents and material, must directly take part in this discussion. Such is the elementary requirement which you, I hope, will not have any principled disagreement with and which (and this is more important) you will not oppose in practice.

11. I will make here only a few additional remarks on programmatic questions.

My pamphlet was written before I received your last letter and before the appearance of the recent theoretical article in Die Fahne des Kommunismus. Both the article and the letter serve more than anything else as evidence that the tone I took in the pamphlet was too “conciliatory.” After taking a half-step backward, the editors took up a theoretical “extension” of the question and an open distortion of the Marxist theory of the state, which Lenin had defended from distortion. You would make it seem as though the Russian state under Kerensky was not a bourgeois state, but bourgeois-imperialist, and that the Soviet republic under Stalin is not a proletarian and not a bourgeois state. All of this is appalling from beginning to end, and I ask myself in alarm: Where is this line going to take you if you persist with it in the future?

12. In proposing to the Russian Opposition a program of democratic freedoms toward the end of converting the Russian Opposition into an independent political party, you add:“This demand has nothing in common with the demand for a second revolution.” These striking words that you repeat twice attest that you do not want to make ends meet. If you consider the Soviet Communist Party hopeless, if you renounce winning over its proletarian nucleus (and to win them over means to win the party), if you set up in opposition to the Soviet CP a second party under calls for democracy, this means opening a struggle for power not only apart from the party but against it. What other way can one fight for power than through a second revolution? Or do you think that there can be an independent party that is not fighting for power in the state? What does all this mean? What purpose does it have? It has none, comrades. You did not think the problem all the way through. This is precisely why you have such a passion for reservations and equivocations.

13. Your letter unexpectedly states as if in passing that you consider the analogy with Thermidor to be “unfortunate.” I admit that it is difficult for me to even understand such an ignorant attitude toward foreign ideas and toward our own. The Russian Opposition has been using the Thermidor analogy for as long as five years. The Bukharin school argued the “inadmissibility” of this analogy. We in reply explained that to reject historical analogies would mean to reject the use of historical experience in general. In a number of documents we defined with absolute clarity and precision what the real content of the analogy was for us. The idea of a Soviet Thermidor has come to be used internationally. You yourself have used it dozens of times, although incorrectly. Now, when you have driven yourself into an ideological blind alley, you unexpectedly state that the analogy itself is “unfortunate.” Can one go further down the road of muddleheadedness?

I should add still further that Radek, who spoke and wrote hundreds of times about Thermidor in 1926-27, in 1928 unexpectedly felt doubts about this analogy. I responded to him in a special document where I explained once more the Marxist meaning of the analogy with Thermidor. You have this document. You have even promised to publish it; you made a statement to this effect in Volkswille. You sent me the issue of Volkswille containing this announcement, having underlined it with a blue pencil. Nevertheless, although you have my document against Radek, it has not appeared. However, Radek’s very extensive document against me has appeared.

On the essence of the question of Thermidor, i.e., whether the analogy with Thermidor is fortunate or unfortunate, I prefer to speak about this in the press.

14. In conclusion, I would like to direct your attention to a state of affairs that has decisive significance.

In your publications you write about the USSR, the Communist International, and the German Communist Party as if all this was totally foreign to your concerns. You start from the fact that the Soviet republic has been irretrievably destroyed, that the Comintern and with it the German Communist Party have perished, that all the other Opposition organizations are not going far enough, and that you alone must build everything up anew. You do not always express this; sometimes, especially under the influence of criticism, you specify the opposite. But such precisely is the basis of your attitude. It is a sectarian basis. It can destroy the Leninbund.

No one can say beforehand what kind of organizational forms the subsequent development of the Comintern and its different parties will take, what kind of splits, blocs, etc. there will be, i.e., by what kind of concrete routes the proletarian nuclei of the Communist parties will free themselves from the centrist bureaucracy and establish for themselves the correct line, a healthy regime, and the proper leadership. But one thing is clear: for the Leninbund to turn its back on the Communist Party is even more dangerous than for the Communist Party to turn its back on the trade unions. To think that you can simply push aside the Communist Party, counterposing yourself to it as an alternative, and so forth — this, for the foreseeable future, is the purest utopianism. In the first place, it is necessary to make efforts so that the proletarian nucleus of the party, in particular the young workers who as a result of Thälmann's criminal and adventuristic calls went out into the street on May 1, built barricades, and faced death — it is necessary that these proletarian elements trust you, want to listen to you, and understand what you want. And for this, it is necessary that they in fact be convinced that you are not foreign to them. Your entire tone must be different. The struggle against centrism and adventurism must not be softened one iota. There must be complete irreconcilability. But with respect to the party masses and the millions of workers who follow the party, it is quite another matter. It is necessary to find the right course.

When the police crushed Die Rote Fahne, it was necessary without concealing disagreements to speak out in its defense with unbounded energy, not stopping for fear of the closing of Volkswille, but consciously confronting this danger. Instead, the editors of Volkswille printed a statement in the spirit that, because Die Rote Fahne was closed by the police, Volkswille, thank god, was now the only communist newspaper. I cannot call this conduct anything other than scandalous. It is evidence of the wrong attitude toward the party and complete absence of revolutionary feeling.

15. Your call to defend the USSR has absolutely the same character. You do not realize the international significance of the problem. Your calls are forced and labored. They are calculated not to raise the workers to defense of the USSR but to keep from overly offending the “sympathizing” Korschists.

16. In Belgium or America where the official Communist Party is very weak, and the Opposition relatively strong, the Opposition organizations can function with a policy totally independent of the official party, i.e., they can appeal to the masses over the party’s head insofar as this is in general practicable. In Germany, it is quite another matter, and to a significant degree in France as well. In these countries there is quite another relationship of forces. The Opposition numbers in the hundreds or thousands, the official parties number in the hundreds of thousands. It is necessary to form our policy with this in mind.

You think that the Russian Opposition needs “democratic” slogans in order to more quickly convert itself into a party. But I think, on the contrary, that you need to take off this overly weighty armor of a party and return to the status of a faction. Volkswille in its present form has no future. It is three-fourths full of material for a daily newspaper which, however, it does not replace. What you need above all is a good, seriously produced weekly that is capable of effectively educating a Marxist revolutionary cadre. The problem of a daily newspaper can arise only at the next stage.

Some conclusions:

1. Do I regard the conduct of the Leninbund leadership as a split? No. But I see in this conduct the danger of a split. It seems to me, moreover, that some comrades in the Leninbund leadership are consciously carrying out a course toward a split.

2. I not only do not intend to help them, but, on the contrary, I believe it is necessary by all means available to avert a split which would deal a serious blow to the international Opposition, and for the Leninbund would mean the perspective of a national and sectarian degeneration.

3. In what ways can this danger be opposed? By a public and extensive debate and honest discussion. Without haste. Without seeking to outwit one another.

4. It is necessary to openly recognize that even within the Leninbund leadership there is a minority that on disputed questions has the same point of view as the Russian Opposition and not of Comrade Urbahns and his cothinkers. This minority must have the opportunity to speak its views on the questions under dispute in the pages of Die Fahne des Kommunismus.

5. In the discussion of the problems, the international Opposition must take part. The Leninbund publications must honestly bring the international Opposition’s voice to the attention of its organization.

Only discussion, equipped with such minimal guarantees of party democracy, can avert the danger of a split in the Leninbund or of the Leninbund splitting with the most important groupings in the international Opposition.

I, for my part, am ready by every available means to promote the peaceful and amicable overcoming of the differences.

My present letter is pursuing precisely this aim and none other.

L. Trotsky