Nadezhda Joffe recalls years of struggle in defense of Left Opposition

Scan page 6

Nadezhda Joffe: "Trotsky fought for his ideas until the last day of his life. And that's how we should remember him." 6 SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1989 The following remarks are the translated version of Nadezhda Joffe's speech at Harvard University's Boylston auditorium on Oct. 20, 1989. The translator who assisted throughout Nadezhda Joffe's Boston visit was George Saunders, noted editor and translator of "Samizdat" (Pathfinder Press) and translator of many works of Trotsky.

Thank you very much. That is the only phrase I know in English. I'm very glad to be able to speak before this audience tonight and I'm very grateful to my American friends who made this appearance possible.

For decades, the only thing that was ever said about Trotsky in our country was that he was an "enemy." For years, people in our country were arrested only because they or their friends or relatives had been acquaintances of Trotsky.

In the political trials of the late 1930s, at which Trotsky was not present but where he was in fact the main defendant, he was accused as a spy, a saboteur, and an agent of the Gestapo. And only in the last few years have they at last begun to write about Trotsky. Thus far they have not written very much, and what they have written has been distorted and inadequate.

Probably the main aim of our organization, Memorial, at this time is to strive toward the rehabilitation of all those who were repressed under Stalin-somewhat before and somewhat after, but primarily during the Stalin era. Their true role in the history of the country should be re-established and brought to light.

"Trotsky as I knew him"

And now I'd like to say a few words simply about Trotsky, as a human being, as I knew him. My father [Adolph Joffe] was over the course of many years Trotsky's closest cothinker politically and his closest friend. My first memories of Trotsky are from my very earliest childhood. I knew Trotsky for many years; I knew his children; I knew his family; I was at his home very, very often.

Even now, when they are beginning to write some of the truth about him as a revolutionary, they continue to not tell the truth about him as a human being, to distort what he was really like as a human being.

They say he was haughty and arrogant, and that he had a lust for power. That is not true. He was neither power-hungry, nor arrogant or haughty. He simply did not disclose all of himself the first time he met anyone. There was a certain restraint about the man.

He was also very demanding in all work, and that did not always please everyone. But he was just as demanding of himself as he was of those who worked with him. The closer someone was to Trotsky, the more Trotsky demanded of that person.

He had many political co-thinkers, but I think that he really had only two close friends: Adolph Joffe and Christian Rakovsky. But he was a devoted and loyal friend.

"My father's political protest"

My father fell extremely ill in 1923 when he was the ambassador to Japan. The infection that attacked him in Japan went into remission, but it was in 1927 that it came back and was intensified, and that was the cause of his death later. So this illness in 1923, you can see, was quite a serious one.

In the Soviet Union they did not have any methods for treating this illness, and it was necessary to go to Germany to obtain treatment. This was in 1927. But the Central Committee would not give permission in 1927 for him to go to Germany.

Only after the death of my father did my family and I find out how intensely Trotsky jor, powerful demonstration of the Left Opposition. Thousands and thousands followed the coffin on its way to the cemetery. There was a mass rally at the cemetery, where Trotsky spoke. That was Trotsky's last public speech in Moscow. He was deported from the city two months later.

al'We rushed to his apartment"

The day on which Trotsky was removed from his apartment, I was there at Trotsky's apartment. When some of my friends and I learned that the GPU was coming to take him away, we rushed to his apartment, but we missed him. He had just been taken away.

His daughter Nina was there, and she described what had happened. Trotsky refused to leave the apartment, and so they carried him down the stairs into the GPU automobile. His eldest son, Leon Sedov, and his wife went with him. The younger son, Sergei, followed them to the railroad station and then came back to the apartment and told everyone what had happened. That is the way Trotsky was sent off to internal exile.

Trotsky was not only one of the outstanding figures in the Russian Revolution, he was undoubtedly the most tragic figure. He experienced the deaths of all four of his children, directly or indirectly at Stalin's hand. He had two daughters by his first wife, and two sons by his second.

His daughter Nina died of all the stress of his exile. She died of a very severe case of tuberculosis, which was quite rare at the time. Stalin allowed Trotsky's eldest daughter Zina to leave the Soviet Union, and took away her Soviet citizenship so that she could not return. She was only allowed to take one of her two children. Zina committed suicide in Germany at the time Hitler came to power, leaving behind Sieva, her youngest child.

"In the barracks with Alexandra"

In Polyma, the labor camp in the far east of the Soviet Union, I was in the same barracks with Alexandra Sokolovskaya, Trotsky's first wife. She read to me the letter she received from Trotsky in 1933 or 1934 at the time of Zina's death.

Trotsky's oldest son, Leon Sedov, was my close friend in my youth. We were approximately the same age. Leon Sedov accompanied his father into exile when he was deported from the Soviet Union, leaving behind a wife and young son whom he dearly loved. He preferred to be the loyal assistant and helper of his father. In 1938 Leon Sedov was killed in Paris. After Leon Sedov died, Trotsky wrote an obituary in his honor which he entitled, "Leon Sedov-Son, Friend, Fighter."

The younger son, Sergei, remained in the Soviet Union. He was a scientist and engineer, and never took interest in politics. Nevertheless, he was arrested in 1935, and they shot him together with many other Trotskyists in 1937 or 1938.

Trotsky lost not only all of his children, he lost all of his co-thinkers who remained in the Soviet Union. He had to watch as they were humiliated, destroyed, and murdered. Nevertheless, he never gave in. He continued to fight against Stalin and to fight for his own ideals until the last day of his life. And that's how we should remember him.

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

cleor the nom