Leon Trotsky: Some Historical Facts

December 28, 1931

[Writing of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 3, 1930-1931, New York 1973, p. 378 f.]

I have received the December 19 Berlin Arbeiterpolitik (Workers Politics). Their article "Seydewitz and Trotsky" is very characteristic of Messrs. Brandler and Thalheimer. The whole Stalin school is contained in it. Since Seydewitz quoted from my pamphlet, that is enough reason for Brandler and Thalheimer to link my ideas with those of Seydewitz. The Stalinist policy of capitulation in China, the alliance with Chiang Kai-shek, the treacherous complicity with the British General Council, the Stalin-Bukharin prokulak policy — all of this our two heroes approved of and took part in. This is really the basis for all sorts of Seydewitzism: a little way to the left, a little way to the right, but always a good stone's throw from the Left Opposition, that is, from Marxism.

These two gentlemen assert that Trotsky, "for as long as he played a leading role in the Comintern, contributed his important part to the course whose consequences we are still faced with today." But these heroes will not find the courage to provide the particulars of their assertion because my activity in the Comintern coincided with its first four congresses. At some of these congresses I found myself in bitter conflict with Zinoviev, Bukharin, and Radek, not to mention Thalheimer, Bela Kun, etc. But at all of these congresses I marched shoulder to shoulder with Lenin. All of Brandler's wisdom is nothing more than an impression of the lessons of the Third World Congress. These gentlemen will be unable to find a single important proposal or resolution from the time of the first four congresses which I did not carry out or for which I was not directly coresponsible. The enduring historical significance of the Comintern is based on the foundations laid by the first four congresses, for which of course Lenin was primarily responsible, but where I was always ready to bear equal responsibility before the world proletariat.

But that is not all. In the fall of 1923 the German Central Committee unanimously decided to ask the Bolshevik Politburo to send a comrade from the Politburo with whom they were well acquainted — let's just call him Comrade T. — to take charge of the crucial developments that were about to occur. On grounds that are in themselves incomprehensible, the Central Committee request was denied. That was, I repeat, in the fall of 1923, when my collaboration in the leadership of the Comintern was completely a thing of the past. But Messrs. Brandler and Thalheimer must have known something of my harmful influence. How, then, do they explain their attitude at that time? Was it quite simply a matter of the pressure of great events? And what about their attitude at present? It is even more simply motivated by Stalin's desire to be able to crawl around on all fours and still call himself a revolutionary.