Trotskyists in Stalin's Gulag: A dark chapter in Soviet history

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1928: Left Oppositionists demonstrating in Siberia on the anniversary of the revolution. One banner says: "Long Live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat."

The principal leaders of the Left Opposition in 1927: Left to right: front row, Leonid Serebriakov, Karl Radek, Trotsky, Mihail Boguslavsky, and Evgenli Preobrazhensky; standing, Christian Rakovsky, Yakov Drobnis, Alexander TODAY Now that Trotsky's name is heard openly in the Soviet Union, there is renewed interest in the fate of his followers in the Left Opposition. Survivors of Stalin's prisons are emerging to tell part of the story of the Gulag, that vast system of prisons and labor camps, stretching from the Arctic to the Pacific.

On March 5, 1989, the 36th anniversary of Stalin's death, Moscow citizens rallied in Gorky Park to demand that a monument be erected to memorialize the millions who died in Siberia from hunger, cold, or the executioner's bullet.

Unable to answer the Left Opposition's political arguments with logic, Stalin determined to deal with his opponents as the Czars had dealt with theirs. "Send them to the Arctic wastes of Siberia!" Stalin knew the way there. He had been there himself. So had many of the Trotskyists who were once more to face the hunger and cold of the Russian penal system.

What were the thoughts of these veterans of the Czar's prisons as they found themselves once more on the road to Siberia? Reports from survivors tell us they had one overriding concern-to continue the struggle against Stalin by any means necessary. This meant to use the exile system as a political university and organizing center.

The political center of the Left Opposition had to be located outside of Russia. Germany, which was convulsed by the struggle against Hitler, was the logical venue. Trotsky wanted to settle there, but he was denied permission.

Trotsky's son, Leon Sedov, was able to enter Germany as a student in 1931. He pursued his studies, but his main task was organizing the international center of the Left Opposition. Soon from Berlin came issues of the Bulletin of the Opposition which, like Lenin's Iskra before, had to be smuggled into Russia and the Siberian prison camps.

Hunger strikes

The remnants of the Siberian exile system were still run by Czarist holdovers under the old rules. Although termed "isolators," these camps scarcely isolated Trotskyist inmates from political life and thought.

A Croatian revolutionist, Ciliga, described the isolator of Verkhneodra in 1930. "It became the only free university in Russia," he said. Trotskyists were able to receive the Opposition Bulletin, write articles themselves, and circulate them in other camps through the waves of political prisoners passing through.

Within limits, the political prisoners could bargain with the camp authorities. They were tightly organized and could exert collective pressure. Their ultimate weapon was the hunger strike. In 1929, 1930, and 1931, Trotskyists staged successful strikes. But this situation was to change dramatically.

TAVA In 1933, German Stalinists and Social Democrats let Hitler take power virtually without a fight. Stalin turned to pacts with capitalist states to shore up his regime. All talk of "permanent revolution" had to be silenced, its advocates eliminated, and all opposition cowed.

The Moscow trials of 1937, where old Bolsheviks were forced to confess to monstrous crimes against the revolution, was the public stage on which the remnants of the Bolshevik leadership was destroyed. The Siberian exile system was regenerated to crush every citizen who raised a dissenting voice.

Rebellion in Vorkuta

Now titled Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (GULAG), the system became a vast processing plant geared to break down the body and spirit through overwork, malnutrition, and exposure. The Gulag was vast enough to accommodate millions of prisoners toiling on projects from building railroads to sewing work gloves. Work quotas and food rations could be so finely tuned that life expectancy was gauged in months.

Four hundred Trotskyists confronted the Gulag in 1937. They were in Vorkuta, a series of labor camps stretching along the route of a railroad being built in the Siberian Arctic.

Goaded by inhuman conditions, the Trotskyists and others confronted the authorities. They presented the following demands: 1) Separation from criminal elements; 2) Reuniting families in different camps; 3) work according to specialities; 4) permission to receive books and periodicals from outside; 5) improvements in food and living conditions.

To enforce their demands, the 400 went on a hunger strike. This time the authorities would not yield. They exerted counter pressure. They cut off the heat in 40-belowzero weather. They resorted to forced feeding. For three months, the prisoners held out— even as individuals began to die.

Then, suddenly, the authorities gave in. They granted every demand. They even fed the emaciated Trotskyists special rations to restore their strength. But, actually, they were only being fattened up for slaughter.

We have eyewitness accounts of what happened next. Maria Joffe, a Left Oppositionist and veteran of eight years in the Gulag, was in one of the Vorkuta camps. In her memoirs, "The Long Night," published in 1977, she graphically relates the fate of the Vorkuta Trotskyists.

She and her fellow prisoners had followed the progress of the strike, and rejoiced in their apparent victory. Then terrible rumors began to ripple through the camp. Joffe writes: "A duty overseer came into our large tent and unfolded an order paper ... my eyes saw every one clambering down, walking along passageways, rising from benches. Every one was standing up, standing stiffly, as if paralyzed.

''The following have been shot...' The first lines contained the names of all those who had been leading the hunger strike. And then names, names, and more names.' A camp doctor gave details of the executions which he witnessed. In an abandoned brickyard nearby there was a huge pit. All the hunger strikers and all the Trotskyists, even those who had opposed the strike, were marched to the the pit. As the condemned men and women reached the edge of the pit, their lifeless bodies tumbled in, riddled by machine gun bullets.

In a last gesture of revolutionary elan, the line of prisoners approaching the pit broke into the revolutionary song, "Whirlwinds of danger."

The convict hierarchy Open, collective challenge to the prison regime was henceforth impossible while Stalin lived. But throughout the vast reaches of the Gulag, men and women individually resisted the relentless pressure grinding them down. To succumb meant to betray one's comrades or to die.

Maria Joffe vividly describes the torment and terrors the women political prisoners endured. The position of the Trotskyists was at the very bottom of the convict hierarchy, she writes.

Common criminals were told that the Trotskyists were the vilest scum. "We call upon you Soviet citizens to help fight these counterrevolutionaries," they were exhorted. Then the criminals were given license to rob and brutalize all political prisoners.

What the authorities wanted from the surviving Trotskyists and others were confessions and names of accomplices. The Beloborodov, and Lev Sosnovsky.

most dreaded figure in the camps was the interrogator. He held the power of life-or mutilation and death.

"Names, names, names"

Maria Joffe describes her reaction to her first interrogation. As her name was called out, she thought, "Why me ... why first? ... terror, abject, absolute terror strangled all thoughts and feelings, swelled, expanded and then poured through every opening, every twist and turn of my being. I felt numbed and deafened with fear from head to foot."

But when she confronted Kashketin, the dread interrogator, she saw, "A very ordinary, non-descript man, sent to do an ordinary, unremarkable, routine job; to destroy human beings." With this insight, Maria recovered. Despite three rubber clubs on the table, she felt the inner strength to resist.

After endless interrogation interspersed with threats of the "brickyard" where executions were carried out, a paper was put before her. She read: "Joined the party to carry out subversive activities ... conspiracy ... plot to organize killing ... a group containing the SOCIALIST ACTI Maria Joffe was the second wife of Adolf Joffe, a Bolshevik and close friend of Leon Trotsky. As a political act in protest at the expulsion of Trotsky from the Party, Adolf Joffe shot himself.

Maria Joffe was arrested in 1929 for supporting the Left Opposition. Her only son was taken from her, never to be seen again.

After 28 years in the Gulag, she was freed and partially rehabilitated by Khrushchev.

Nadezhda Joffe, a participant in the Walnut Publishers tour of the United States this month, is the daughter of Adolf Joffe by his first marriage. This makes Maria Joffe her stepmother, although she is only three years older.

Nadezhda was also imprisoned by Stalin for many years, but the two prisoners never meL following ... names, names, names." She would read no further. She refused to sign.

The Long Night The penalty was the punishment cell. Maria gives a glimpse of this hellish form of coercion when she was thrust into a tiny cell. "An enormous latrine bucket ... with strings of wood lice all over it, all over the walls, ... the floor covered with human excrement with white maggots crawling out of it ... no air ... only unbearable stench, stifling my throat... I thought I was dying."

For seven days and nights she stood in that filth. Leaning against the door, her nose to gaps where she could breathe outside air, she was allowed no sleep, jerked awake every time a guard peered through the peephole. "Back! Do you hear? To the back of the cell. Back!"

Joffe endured week returned to the company of her fellow prisoners. They cheered. "We knew they would not get anything out of you."

Joffe reports: "I went over in my mind the day-nights of 'my cell'—and a warm feeling of satisfaction kindled inside me. I had managed to climb the first difficult and slippery slope. I must continue to work on those tasks that life had set me."

Her task was to remain true to the goal of revolutionary socialism, under the most difficult conditions possible. Maria Joffe endured 28 years of the long night, and survived unbowed.

Reading her memoirs, we who have never been tested as she and other Gulag victims were can only be inspired. Our task is to rid the Soviet Union and the world of Gulags and the exploiters who make use of them.

For further reading: "One Long Night" by Maria Joffe, 248 pages, New Park Publications. Distributed by Labor Publications Inc, 540 West 29th St., New York, N.Y. 10001.

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