Leon Trotsky: Interview by the New York World Telegram

June 13, 1933

[Writing of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 5, 1932-33, New York 1972, p. 272 f.]

You have asked my opinion of the economic conference. I have not the slightest illusion about its results. If the innumerable conferences of recent years teach anything it is that real contradictions cannot be eliminated by the general formulas which inevitably make the essence of all such conferences. Actions are necessary.

One of these necessary actions should be settlement of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, insofar as your new administration launches out on this path, it will take an extremely important step from the standpoint of international politics as well as from the standpoint of economics.

The four-power pact settles nothing. The real plan of Hitler is to find a point of support in Italy and England for war against the Soviet Union. Whoever does not see it is blind.

Establishment of normal relations between Washington and Moscow would deliver a much more decisive blow at Hitler's bellicose plans than all the European conferences put together.

No less important significance may be attached to the collaboration between the United States and the Soviet Union with respect to the Far East The present conduct of Japan in no wise expresses its strength. On the contrary, the adventurist measures of Tokyo are strongly reminiscent of the conduct of the czarist bureaucracy in the first years of the present century.

But it is precisely these grisly operations of irresponsible military camarillas that may inexorably engender tremendous world convulsions.

Liaison between Washington and Moscow would not be without its effect on Tokyo and with a corresponding policy it might arrest in time the automatic development of Japanese military adventurism.

From an economic standpoint establishment of normal relations between the Soviets and America would yield positive results. The extensive economic plan of the Soviet Union cannot in the coming period base itself on fascist Germany, with which Russia's relationships will inevitably become extremely unstable.

All the greater significance is thus acquired by economic collaboration of the two republics, European-Asiatic and American, whose combined population runs to nearly 300 million.

Collaboration could have a planned character regulated from above and reckoned on a basis of a number of years to come.

The presence in Moscow of a United States representative would give Washington the possibility of convincing itself that despite the acute transitory difficulties of trade, the Soviet Union is perhaps the surest investment for capital.

I would be very happy if you would communicate these simple observations to the American public.