LEON TROTSKY

Grey River Argus, 12 September 1940, Page 9

LEON TROTSKY

A FOUNDER OF THE SOVIET HIS FOURTH INTERNATIONAL The assassination of Lyev Davydovich Bronstein, alias Leon Trotsky, who died on August 22 from pick-axe wounds received in a murderous attack the day before, rings down the curtain on one of the most stormy dramas in human history. W ne her another act, or epilogue, will follow remains to be seen. “I will not survive tms attack, Trotsky is reported to have said before losing .consciousness. ‘ Stalin has finally accomplished the task he attempted unsuccessfully befo.' e For a quarter of century, the duel between Stalin and Trotsky has been fought out, at first at close range, and for many years from far apart. The real founder, vith Lenin, of the Communist Soviet State, j Trotsky established and built up the Red Army. There is no doubt that by his energy he saved the Revolution from collapse. But, like the great majority of his fellow-Bol-sheviks, he paid the price of an inevitable law. Revolutionaries fall out; jealousy and ambition take toll. After the death of Lenin, Trotsky was removed by Stalin from his position of chairman of the Revolutionary War Council, and was finally expelled from the party in 1927. I Banishment to Siberia followed, and exile. From exile he replied with books, lectures and newspaper articles to the attacks of the Soviet leaders on him. Attacks were made on his life, and finally, in search of personal safety, he fled from Europe to Mexico. There he lived in a closelyguarded home, where at last, the long, treacherous arm of vengeance finally struck him downTHE OLD GUARD Trotsky in exile nas seen, one by one, the old “Comrades” disappear. All the old guard who were with Lenin in exile and during the great days of October, 1917, are either banished, imprisoned or dead—many at the hands of their former associates and subordinates; not a few. such as Joffe and Tomsky, at their own. Zinoviev, whose very name once turned the scales in an English general election; Kamenev, who was first president of the Soviet Executive in 1917, and Lenin’s executor; Piatakov, once Commissar for Heavy Industries and one of the conquerors of the Ukraine after 1917; Muralov, once Commissar for Agriculture and a renowned hero of the civil war—all have been shot, Rykov, Rakovsky and Bukharin suffered a similar fate, and also Karl Radek, the Polish Jew, who first made himself notorious as Bolshevik Minister in Berlin, and afterwards became.

the chief Soviet press propagandist. Even Lenin’s widow, Krupskaya,

held in odium by her husband’s successors, declared that if ne had lived he, too, would have been imprisoned. The brains of the Red Army also thousands of lesser lights were sum- • marily extinguished. , ' Trotsky, in Mexico, in his closely guarded home lived in constant fear of assassination. With the swarming into Mexico of Communist refugees from Spain, bitter with defeat, the dread of Stalin’s vengeance intensified. Only a few weeks earlier a gang of terrorists riddled +he Trotsky refuge with bullets and blasted the courtyard with an incendiary bomb. But Trotsky escaped. In reference to this attack, an interesting story appears in a recent, issue of the American news-magazine, “Time.” Early in July, Mexican police took up some loose boards in a farmhouse a few miles from the Trotsky home in the suburbs of Mexico City. Digging down, the police came to quicklime and a partly decomposed corpse, This, members of Trotsky’s bodyguard identified as the remains of a youth named Sheldon Harte. Trotsky immediately wired condolences to Harte’s father, Jesse Harte, Manhattan, president of a prosperous business corporation. It appears that the wealthy Jesse Harte sent his son to a university, where, unknown to bis family, he took up with Communism. In March last he went on a “vacation to i Mexico,” but before leaving New I York was hired to work in Mexico City as secretary and bodyguard to Trotsky. At the time of the recent attack on Trotsky’s home, Sheldon Harte was kidnapped. “According to the Mexican detectives,” says “Time” (8/7/40), “the condition of the body showed that Sheldon Harte was beaten and otherwise tortured by his kidnappers before they killed him. Mexico City Police Chief. Jose Manuel Nunez, said his operatives have evidence that the principal assailants were paid: 250 pesos each from the funds of the Mexican Communist Paity for the shooting and kidnapping. The plot was organised, according to the Mexico City police, by four members of the Mexican Communist Party, veterans who fought in Spain against Franco.” The murder of Trotsky, companion of Lenin, cannot fail to have repercussions in revolutionary circles throughout the world. The struggle between the Third and the Fourth International is likely to grow fiercer than ever. On his expulsion from the Soviet, Trotsky abandoned the Third International and established the : Fourth on what are regarded as purer Marxist lines. : All the varied disciples of the i Fourth International have a pro- i gramme in common, and oppositions 1 1 in common, but, as with all Utopians, I ' they have different conceptions of < how to attain their ends. From these I ‘

• | common hopes and diverse concep- > | tions have arisen sects led by chiefs 3 who. all believing themselves Mesl siahs, are filled with hatred and ' jealousy of each other. In almost every country of the 1 world groups rallied to “pure Lenin- ’ ism.” In France, the Communist League; in Belgium, the League of r International Communists; in Holland, the Workmen’s Socialist ReI volutionary Party; in Switzerland, 1 the Marxist Movement; in England, ‘ the Independent Labour Party; in Germany, the International Communists of Germany; in Spain, the Workers’ Marxist Union; in Denmark, the International Marxist Leninist Group; in Austria, Czechoslovakia. Roumania, Greece, Poland, Bulgaria, Italy, Sweden!, China, Australia, South Africa and in all *he States of America, there were BolshevikLeninist groups. All these groups affiliated more or less with two international groups: (1) Bureau of London, which compromises between the Stalinian doctrines and the pure Fourth International doctrines, and because of that is repudiated by the permanent revolution disciples. To it came the English, German, Spanish, Dutch and Swedish groups; (2) the Communist International League, created in 1935, at Amsterdam, and which became in 1936 the Bureau of the Fourth International, comprised almost all the groups outside those belonging to the Bureau of London. I This Bureau of the Fourth InternaI tional was under the control of Trotsky. However, (o accomplish its gigantic and dangerous work they must have a vast and numerous organisation, and they must. have leaders. And this is just what the Fourth International profoundly lacks. The question of organisation and unification is serious. In France, in spite of all attempts at unity, there were fifteen different groups. Their programme were about the same; what separated them was the rivalry '■ of persons. It is the same everywhere. The question of leadership is even more disturbing. The Fourth International had only one leader: Trotsky. And this leader is now dead. TRUMP CARDS. It has three powerful trump cards: First, the prospect of succeeding the Third International sooner or later, because, whether the U.S.S.R., under ; Stalin, returns definitely to capitalism ' or whether this regime falls in a i palice revolution, it will inevitably ; be replaced by another organ of ] world revolution, the Fourth Inter- ; national. t In this event the disciples of Trot- c sky, even at present numerous in 1 Russia, would immediately become i millions, and all the prospects, ne- i bulous to-day, of a world revolution c would at once assume importance I and shape, all the more in that. the I e Soviet State, in contrast to 1918-1920,1 s

lis now industrially 7 and politically | equipped to carry on the insurrection it would start. To-day, the star of the Third International is setting. That of the Fourth International is rising. The Fourth International will stop at nothing. But who is to succeed Trotsky and carry on his polemic against the “betrayal of the revolution?” There is no doubt that his supporters are numerous among Communist and Left Wing 'Radicals. Trotsky’s charge of betrayal is reinforced from different standpoints. The English Labour Leader, Sir Walter Citrine; the American Communist, Andrew Smith, who actually worked for three years in Russia and left it disillusioned; and such dissimilar writers as Miss E. M. Delafield and M. Andre Gide, are cases in point. The growing distinction between the worker and the new privileged classes is marked, whether implicitly or explicitly, by every observer. Enthusiastic reports now and again published about cultural parks and the advantages of communal cookery or creches are discounted by the very small proportion of such facilities to the enormous Russian population, and by the fact that only the privileged are in a position to enjoy them.

M. Andre Gide’s “Retour de 1’ U.R.S.S.” naturally aroused very great interest in view of his reputation as a writer. It was precisely as chairman of an “international conference for the defence of culture,” then sitting in London, that he paid his sudden visit to Moscow for the funeral of Gorsy. His first disillusionment came when his address, delivered in the Red Square, was censored because of an ingenuous remark it contained. Another address, delivered to the writers of Leningrad, was likewise criticised and the enthusiast for revolt began to discover that he had in fact come to the wrong place. He found that what is nowadays prized is conformity. Like the old guard of Bolshevism, he was dismayed.

The realities of to-day are strikingly different from the hopes of the old guard of fifteen years ago. They expected, with Lenin, to see rapid disappearance of the State and the growth of a free democracy expressing itself through the Soviets as appropriate Communist organs. The suppression of party divisions, the loss of freedom of criticism, and the establishment of the “general line,” to which all must adhere, represent for them so many crushing defeats for their ideal. Dictatorship of the proletariat, the essential preliminary to the arrival of Communism, did not mean to them the iron rule of one party, and still less that of one man. The honours paid to Lenin are now insignificant beside the adulation with which Stalin is constantly greeted.