Leon Trotsky: Help Is Needed At Once

March 6, 1933

[Writing of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 5, 1932-33, New York 1972, p. 121-123]

To All Friends of the October Revolution:

In the prisons and in the places of deportation of the Soviet Union there are thousands of Bolsheviks who built the party during its illegal period, who took an active part in the October Revolution, who fought during the civil war, who laid the foundations of the Soviet state. Even now, all of them remain absolutely devoted and firm soldiers of the proletarian revolution. In time of danger to the Soviet state they will constitute the surest detachment in its camp. They were subjected to persecution only for having criticized the policy of the leading faction — within the limits of internal criticism that had constituted the vital element of Bolshevik Party democracy. Among the deported Bolsheviks of the Left Opposition, the figure most widely known throughout the world is Christian Rakovsky, former member of the Central Committee of the party, president of the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukraine, Soviet ambassador to Paris and London.

A great many in the Left Opposition tried to be reinstated into the party in 1928-29 at the price of renouncing their right to criticism. There were several thousand individual capitulations of this kind, bound up to a certain extent with exaggerated hopes in the five-year plan. The experience of the past four years has resulted in the majority of the "repentant” becoming again the object of ferocious persecutions. Suffice it to say that among those arrested and deported during the last few months and above all during the last few weeks are: Zinoviev, one of the founders of the party, permanent member of the Central Committee, president of the Communist International and of the Petrograd Soviet; Kamenev, one of the closest collaborators of Lenin, permanent member of the Central Committee, assistant to Lenin in the position of president of the Council of People's Commissars, president of the Moscow Soviet; I. N. Smirnov, one of the indefatigable founders of the party during the years of czarism, member of the Central Committee, leader of the struggle against Kolchak, member of the Council of People's Commissars; Preobrazhensky, one of the oldest members of the party, one of its best-known theoreticians, member of the Central Committee, who carried out until recently important diplomatic functions abroad. One could also cite scores of names of the best-known revolutionary Bolsheviks (V. Kasparova, L. S. Sosnovsky, B. M. Eltsin, V. Kossior, N. I. Muralov, F. Dingelstedt, V. M. Smirnov, Sapronov, Grünstein, Mrachkovsky, Ufimtsev, Perevertsev, and others) who during the most difficult years constituted the core of the party, and along with them hundreds and thousands of the younger generation (V. B. Eltsin, the son; Solntsev, Magid, Yakovin, Nevelson, Stopalov, Poznansky, Sermuks, and others) who went through the years of the civil war, the years of enormous difficulties and of grandiose victories of the proletarian regime.

The state of the imprisoned and deported Oppositionists, the majority of whom have been separated from their work and their families for the past five years, is absolutely unprecedented. They represent the left wing of the Bolshevik Party and the world labor movement. That is why they were struck down during the years of political ebb in the USSR and of successful counterrevolution in the whole world. Their repression becomes more difficult as the events confirm the correctness of the criticism and warnings of the Left Opposition.

The famine of supplies in the USSR makes the existence of all strata of the population exceedingly difficult, even in the industrial and cultural centers of the country. It is not difficult to imagine the unbearable physical privations of the thousands of opponents of the ruling faction, scattered throughout prisons and in the most distant isolated points of Siberia and Central Asia. Never before have the deported suffered such privations as today. In the years of revolutionary high tide, the liberal and radical bourgeoisie gave substantial assistance to the deported and the imprisoned. In the years of world revolutionary ebb, of world crisis, and of famine in the USSR, the vanguard of the October Revolution can expect support only from its most devoted and surest friends.

This extract from a letter from Moscow which I have just received attests to the necessity and urgency of this support:

"I want to write to you especially with regard to the deportees and their difficult situation. Difficult is the least one can say about it. Their situation is frightful. The comrades are literally left to their fate — hunger and the elements. They are not given work. They are deprived of rations and sufficient warm clothing; they are never free of cold and hunger. Yesterday — a rare event — a letter came from V.: 'They want to get us through hunger. We will not capitulate. We are right. We will die of hunger, but we will not recant.'

"We make collections, but it is very risky: to help the Oppositionists with a Chervonets means to land on the list of enemies and to be deported. And money does no good. It is impossible to buy anything in the places of deportation and from here we can send practically nothing. We need Torgsin coupons, we need foreign exchange.

"Do whatever you can abroad. Undertake a campaign on behalf of the deported Oppositionists. This is a matter of the physical destruction of our comrades, sincere and devoted revolutionists. Many of them have proved their fidelity to the revolution, to Bolshevism, to the Soviet state for decades."

In appealing to you for help, I am fulfilling an elementary duty toward my friends, my companions in ideas and in arms. I hope that you will fulfill your duty toward the fighters of the October Revolution. Modest as the help of each one may be, we must make sure of it, for the need brooks no delay.

Subscriptions can be sent to the following address: Sidney Hook, Treasurer of the American Committee, 234 Lincoln Place, Brooklyn, N. Y. An accounting of the sums received and of their distribution will either be published in the press or sent periodically to all subscribers.

L. Trotsky