Leon Trotsky: Letter to the Editors of Robitnichi Visti

October 20, 1934

[Writings of Leon Trotsky, Vol 7, 1934-1935, New York 1971, p. 99 f., title: “To the Ukrainian Comrades in Canada”]

To the Editors of Robitnichi Visti

Dear Friends:

It is with great interest and warm sympathy that I follow your efforts to extend the ideas and methods of unfalsified Marxism (Leninism) among the Ukrainian proletarians in Canada.

The theory and practice of "socialism in one country" stand in particularly sharp contradiction to the interests of the Ukrainian proletariat. The principal factor holding back the development of the highly talented Ukrainian people is its national dismemberment, which has been accompanied, and is now being accompanied, by cruel national oppression in the capitalist countries. The October Revolution unquestionably gave a mighty impetus to the development of Ukrainian culture. However, while the toiling masses of the entire Soviet Union are suffering many losses in their development under the present Soviet bureaucracy, the Ukrainian workers and peasants are in addition suffering the consequences of their national dismemberment. What a magnificent achievement it would be if the Ukrainian people could be reunited in its entirety in a Soviet Ukraine! What a far-reaching development would be in store for Ukrainian culture then!

Only the European and international revolution, starting with Poland, could bring to the Ukrainian people its complete national unification and liberation.

Advanced Ukrainian workers have less reason than any other workers to be satisfied with the theory of "socialism in one country." This conservative theory does not open up before them even the perspective of national liberation, which is an elementary prerequisite of socialist society. That is why I follow with great pleasure your efforts to explain to the Ukrainian workers that their fate, as well as the fate of the entire toiling Ukrainian people, is intimately and indissolubly linked not only to the fate of the Soviet Union but also to the fate of the international proletarian revolution.

I regret very much that I am not able to write you this letter in Ukrainian. Even though I have known the Ukrainian language since my childhood and have been inspired by the lines of the great Shevchenko, learning his verses by heart, and although I am able to follow your newspaper, my own Ukrainian vocabulary is a bit too meager to permit me to express myself in writing directly in Ukrainian. But I hope that these lines will reach you in a competent Ukrainian translation.

Fraternal greetings,

L. Trotsky