A Letter to the Politburo, March 15, 1933

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

Secret

To the Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik)

I consider it my duty to make one more attempt to appeal to the sense of responsibility of those who are presently in command of the Soviet state. The situation in the country and the party is no less obvious to you than to me. If the domestic developments continue along their present track, disaster is inevitable. There is no need in this letter to give an analysis of the actual situation. This was done in Number 33 of the Biulleten, which is just coming out It is absolutely futile and disastrous to hope to control the present situation by means of repression alone. It will not work. In a struggle there is a certain dialectic, and you have long since passed the critical point in this one. Repression will only produce results opposite to those intended, and the further it goes, the more that will be the case. Rather than frighten the foe, it will arouse him to resist more than ever, with the strength of desperation. The most pressing and dangerous problem is mistrust of the leadership and the growing hatred for it You are no less well informed about this than I am. But you are being propelled down a gradual slope by the inertia of your own politics. Nevertheless, where the slope ends, there is the abyss.

What must be done? Above all, revive the party. This is a painful process but it must be passed through. The Left Opposition — of this I have no doubt — will be willing to offer the Central Committee full cooperation in returning the party to the track of normal existence without upheavals or with the minimum of upheaval.

In regard to this proposal there may be some among you who say: The Left Opposition wants to get back into power through this device. To this I reply: There is a far, far greater issue at stake than that of power for your faction or for the Left Opposition. The fate of the workers' state and of the international revolution for many years to come is involved. Of course, the Opposition can help the Central Committee restore an atmosphere of trust within the party — a condition inconceivable in the absence of party democracy — but it can only help if the opportunity for normal work within the party is restored to it Only the open and honest collaboration of the two historically rooted factions with the aim of transforming them into tendencies within the party, and ultimately of having them dissolve into the party, can reestablish confidence in the leadership and revive the party in the present concrete circumstances.

There are no grounds for any fear of attempts on the part of the Opposition to turn the knife-edge of repression back against those who have wielded it; such a policy has already been tried and found wanting. The real task is to eliminate the consequences of that policy through joint efforts.

The Left Opposition has its own program of action, both for the USSR and for the international area. Naturally there can be no question of renouncing this program. But as for how it could be presented to, and defended before, the Central Committee and the party, not to mention how it could be realized in practice, a preliminary agreement can and should be reached with the aim of preventing disturbances and a rupture. No matter how tense the atmosphere, its explosiveness can be removed through several successive stages provided there is goodwill on both sides. And the extent of the danger calls for such goodwill or, more precisely, dictates its necessity. The purpose of this letter is to make known the existence of goodwill on the part of the Left Opposition.

I am sending only one copy of this letter, without any duplicates, exclusively for the attention of the Politburo, in order to allow the necessary freedom in the choice of methods if, in view of the existing situation, it is considered necessary to enter into preliminary talks without any publicity.

L. Trotsky

Explanation

A month and a half ago the above letter was sent to the Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party(B). No reply followed, or rather, the reply was given in a whole series of actions on the part of the Stalin clique: a new orgy of arrests in the USSR, approval of the ruinous policies of the Comintern in Germany, etc. Under different historical conditions and on a different social base, Stalin demonstrates the same bureaucratic blindness shown at one time by Kerensky and by Primo de Rivera on the eve of each one's downfall. The Stalin clique is marching toward its own destruction with seven-league boots. The one question is whether it will drag the Soviet regime into the abyss along with it.

We are sending this document to responsible (party and government) personnel on the assumption — in fact, with full assurance — that among the shortsighted, the cowardly, and the careerist elements, honest revolutionaries are to be found as well — those whose eyes cannot remain closed to the real state of affairs.

We urge such honest revolutionaries to link up with us. Where there's a will, there's a way.

Editorial Staff, Biulleten Oppozitsii

Paris, May 10, 1933