Leon
Trotsky: No Compromise on the Russian Question
November
11, 1934
[Writing
of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 14, New York 1979, p. 538 f.]
We
have been informed by various sources that there is a tendency among
our friends in Paris to deny the proletarian nature of the USSR, to
demand that there be complete democracy in the USSR, including the
legalization of the Mensheviks, etc. Please convey our position on
this matter to the Central Committee officially: we regard this
tendency as
treason
which must be fought implacably. One does not change one’s attitude
toward a question of such dimensions lightly; we have official
resolutions which state clearly that denying the proletarian
character of the USSR is incompatible with membership in the
Bolshevik-Leninists. We have an official pamphlet on this decisive
question. If there are comrades who have doubts about the correctness
of our official doctrine, they are obligated to present
counter-resolutions for discussion, that is, for formal revision of
the most important principles of our international politics. An
openly conducted international discussion, even the possibility of a
split, would be ten times better than the slightest equivocation.
The
Mensheviks are the representatives of bourgeois restoration and we
are for the defense of the workers’ state by every means possible.
Anyone who had proposed that we not support the British miners’
strike of 1926 or the recent large-scale strikes in the United States
with all available means on the ground that the leaders of the
strikes were for the most part scoundrels, would have been a traitor
to the British and American workers. Exactly the same thing applies
to the USSR!
I
repeat: no compromise on this question! Lay all the cards on the
table! It is necessary to eradicate the bohemian influence which is
poisoning certain elements in our organization and which drives them
to change their position on fundamental questions as the spirit moves
them. No, no compromise and no equivocation on this question!
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