What is behind Pravda article on Leon Trotsky?

Scan page 8

8 SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 1988 Only a short time ago, the name of Leon Trotsky was forbidden in the Soviet Union. He was a non-person. His photographs were absent from public view, his written texts were banned, his many revolutionary contributions were denied.

Even Trotsky's office at the historic Smolny Institute, nerve center of the 1917 Russian Revolution, was sealed closed. The famous photograph of two soldiers standing guard before the Soviet's Military Revolutionary Committee office remained for everyone to see during public tours of the Smolny, but the strategist who organized the insurrection from that room was never heard from.

For two generations, the door was closed on the Bolshevik leader of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, chief commander of the Red Army, and exiled left-oppositionist opponent of dictator Josef Stalin. But now, there have been some sounds from important Soviet officials that the squeaky hinges on that closed door may be opening.

In the past few months, several different sources inside the Soviet Union have called for a reevaluation of Trotsky's role. In late June, leading anti-Stalinist historian, Dr. Yuri Afanasyev, made the first public call for the rehabilitation of Trotsky and the publication of his writings. Dr. Afanasyev is director of the Institute for State Archivists, which has recently become a center for investigations into Stalin's record of abuses. "It is very strange," Afanasyev said, "that professors and teachers try to criticize Trotsky when they have never read a word that he wrote. The same is still true of Bukharin and Kamenev and Zinoviev." Also in June, Otto R. Lacis, an economist and editor of the Communist Party journal Kommunist, said that Trotsky "deserves a [civil] rehabilitation. He was neither a spy nor a murderer, nor did he commit any criminal offenses." But Lacis made an emphatic distinction when it came to Trotsky's political role. He said that "we must also not forget that he repeatedly came out against Lenin and against the general party line. An objective definition of his role in our history will not lead to L. Trotsky's political rehabilitation."

Then, in early September, a senior historian and general in the Red Army opened the door wider than ever before. Colonel General Dmitri Volkogonov wrote in the Communist Party's official newspaper, Pravda, that Trotsky was "not the enemy of the revolution and socialism" but rather the enemy of Stalin.

He identified Trotsky as the most popular leader of the Russian Revolution after Lenin and implied that Trotsky was killed on orders from Stalin. Yet, referring to Trotsky, Volkogonov titles his article "The Demon of the Revolution."

To bury Trotsky, not praise him These and other assessments of Trotsky appearing in the official Soviet press, though genuinely significant developments not seen in the last six decades, are still colored by contemporary bureaucratic motives.

Volkogonov's assessment is a good example. Because of his close connections with the ruling stratum, his writings provide the closest glimpse so far of the kind of "rehabilitation" the Soviet bureaucrats have in mind for Trotsky.

Volkogonov is currently writing what will be the most complete and the most critical biography of Stalin yet to appear in the Soviet Union. Trotsky is mentioned several times in the preface. But most of Volkogonov's references are new attacks against Trotsky's anti-Stalinist fight; in fact, he sometimes uses language reminiscent of the original slanders flung by Stalin.

Volkogonov writes: "In 1927, L. Trotsky published 17 volumes of his works. In creating his 'works,' this politician, full of energy but not endowed with great literary talent [!), invariably showed-off before the mirror of history, trying to justify his pretensions to leadership in the Party.... "No one else in the world wrote as much caustic, malicious, insulting, lampooning, and belittling material about Stalin as Trotsky did. In this way, he showed his true colors even more openly: He was not fighting for the truth but only for himself, Volkogonov brushes aside Trotsky's political ideas by painting his historic antiStalininst struggle as a power fight between two despots. But then he goes to some lengths to excuse Stalin.

After condemning Stalin's "unforgiveable political mistakes," Volkogonov cautions the reader to remember that Stalin was in the leadership "in which the foundations of everything on which we stand today were created." Presumably, the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union should be grateful to Stalin for this.

Volkogonov walks a tightrope trying to keep criticisms of Stalinism within strict limits. But he slips. His observation that .Stalin created the "foundations of everything on which we stand" is actually an admission that the current regime is rooted in the same bureaucratic, parasitic machine which Stalin built.

These undeniable links to the past foster deep concerns among those in top government circles. They fear that the massive repudiation of Stalin's crimes will lead to a sweeping indictment of the existing regime.

The "democratization" period called glasnost is, therefore, being carefully orchestrated by the bureaucrats. Official tolerance for alternative socialist viewpoints is still severely limited. The ruling Stalinist Communist Party wants to head off, in particular, any groups supporting program Trotsky.

As a form of preventative medicine, Volkogonov discourages any investigation of the historical record of the anti-Stalinist Left Opposition. He assures us that "Today, one can assert that if Trotsky had taken the helm of the Party, it could have expected even greater ordeals, ordeals fraught with the loss of socialist gains— especially because Trotsky did not have a clear and scientific program of building socialism in the U.S.S.R."

Other published opinions are even further removed from the truth. In their rush to kneel before perestroika reform economic policies of the ruling bureaucracy, some "researchers" have aimed salvos at Lenin. According to The New York Times (June 7, 1988), one leading Soviet journalist, V. Selyunin, left "little doubt that Lenin himself set the stage for what followed him."

A Soviet historian, N.P. Popov, was quoted as saying that the concentration of excessive power in the hands of the Communist Party started under Lenin, and that this paved the way for Stalin's creation of "the perfect totalitarian state."

Collision with Lenin, Trotsky The central leader of the Bolshevik party, V.I. Lenin, was acutely aware of the growing bureaucratization of the Soviet state machinery. proposed a bloc with Trotsky to oppose "the terrible growth of bureaucratism in our Soviet apparatus" and in the Organization Bureau of the Bolshevik Party which was controlled by Stalin. Trotsky replied with considerable understatement, "It is a pleasure to form a bloc with a good man." After Lenin's untimely death, Trotsky continued the fight to rejuvenate the Soviet form of workers' democracy. He also strove to narrow the widening social gap between workers and peasants by calling for increased emphasis on industrial production. Necessary industrial and consumer products needed to be inexpensively supplied to the peasants to spur higher agricultural yields targeted for the cities. Framing these proposals was Trotsky's defense of the Bolshevik Party's traditional stance that the "fundamental task" of the new workers' state was "the establishment of a socialist organization of society and the victory of socialism in all countries." (Lenin's "Declaration of the Toiling and Exploited People," 1917)

It was Trotsky's uncompromising opposition to Stalin's betrayal of the great principles of the Russian Revolution which makes his probable "rehabilitation" a difficult choice for the misrulers of the Soviet Union. And because the current heirs of Stalin continue to travel away from these revolutionary principles, they are on a collision course with Lenin as well.

Scan page 9

work in Northern Mexico, told the

----- pull-quotes -----

The Moscow Flat frame - up history