Leon
Trotsky: A Word of Welcome to Osvobozhdenie
March
29, 1932
[Writing
of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 4, 1932, New York 1973, p. 74 f.]
Dear
Comrades:
The
news that you are proceeding to bring out a weekly greatly delights
me. In the conditions of the present dreadful crisis and its
unforeseeable political consequences, a very heavy responsibility
falls on the Left Opposition. The tragic experience of Germany shows
where the leadership of the Comintern has fallen to. Under the burden
of uncorrected and uncondemned past errors, that leadership is no
longer capable of taking a single correct step. The interest of
worldwide liberation is sacrificed at the altar of the compromised
prestige of the bureaucratic clique. The Bolshevik-Leninists are
called upon to show the proletarian vanguard the correct path. The
education and reeducation of Marxist cadres is possible only on the
basis of living experience on a national and international scale. The
weekly journal will give you the capacity to enlighten the advanced
workers in Bulgaria about the most important steps of the proletarian
struggle in the whole world. Fortunately in most countries with an
advanced workers' movement there is already an organization of the
Left Opposition. The closer the links are between them and the more
energetically their experience is exchanged, the quicker will the
Left Opposition free the world proletarian vanguard from the blind
and fatal leadership of the bureaucracy.
The
ideological and organizational growth of the Left Opposition is
pushing the Stalinist bureaucracy, in its struggle for
self-preservation, onto the path not only of increased cruelty of
repression, but also of ever baser deception of the workers. It is
sufficient to mention the fact that the French organ of the
International Red Aid, Defense,
contains in one of its
latest issues an article explaining in detail how Trotsky allegedly
gave advice to vote for Hindenburg at the time of the presidential
elections. How much further can they sink after that? Revolutionary
Marxism was always proud of the fact that it told the truth to the
workers. But the Stalinist bureaucracy can no longer take a step
without a lie, and those lies are getting more crude, more stupid,
and more monstrous. Only a clique which is condemned by history and
which is using up the last crumbs of its political capital can have
recourse to such measures.
The
appearance of your weekly will meet with the warm sympathy of all the
sections and groups of the International Left Opposition. You can
firmly rely on the comradely support of the Bolshevik-Leninists of
all countries.
Yours,
L.
Trotsky
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