Answers to Journalists' Questions

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Am I satisfied with the result of my trip? Completely. Wasn't I expecting to spend a longer time in Denmark? Yes. I had hoped that after my talk I would be able to stay a few weeks in order to secure medical treatment for my wife and me. However, the refusal of the Danish government was not unexpected. I am very far from illusions about democracy, consequently also from disillusion.

The opportunity for me to visit Denmark came about not in any way through principles of democracy (right of asylum, freedom of assembly, etc.), but by a play of political interests. The left circles of the students and the working-class youth expressed the wish to arrange my lecture in Copenhagen. The Social Democratic government found it all the more inconvenient to refuse because at present there is an undoubted shift to the left in the working class. As agreed, I kept my lecture strictly historical and scientific in character. But the government evidently found that eight days were more than enough to meet the interest in the ideas which I stand for.

My informed friends told me that the main opposition to my being granted the opportunity to stay and get medical care (apart from the court circles, the fascists, the leading circles of the Social Democracy, etc.) came from agents of the Soviet government I am unfortunately not in a position to be able to refute this report. I should like only to emphasize that it is not a case here of the interests of the Soviet state or of the Russian people, but of the special interests of Stalin's faction. On November 27, Tass informed the world by radio that a secret "conference of Trotskyists" of the Western European countries had met at Copenhagen. It is difficult to call this report anything but a false denunciation. It is a denunciation, because it is a call for police repressions against my political co-thinkers It is a false denunciation, because no conference was called in Copenhagen at all.

The Danish authorities are very well aware of what really took place. My friends in various countries of Europe were extremely worried by the campaign in the European reactionary press. They saw this campaign in connection with the recent disclosures in the left press about the terrorist act being prepared against me by the organization of General Turkul. Some two dozen of my co-thinkers arrived from the six countries nearest Denmark. After the completely peaceful outcome of my talk, they all went home, apart from one or two who decided to accompany me back.

How is one to explain Tass's unheard-of radio report, or the behavior of certain Soviet agents on the question of my visa? Above all by the internal situation in the USSR. The rumors about the forthcoming "collapse of Soviet power" assiduously spread — for the umpteenth time — by a certain section of the press are completely ridiculous and fantastic. But it is utterly indisputable that Stalin's personal position has been shaken once and for all. The errors of his policy are now clear to all. In the party the tendency to reestablish a collective and more competent leadership is very strong. Hence the new wave of repressions against the so-called "Trotskyists." My friend Rakovsky, former chairman of people's commissars of the Ukraine, subsequently Soviet ambassador in London and Paris, has had his three years' banishment extended for another three. All this is officially motivated by the Left Opposition's ("Trotskyists'") supposed carrying out of "counterrevolutionary" activity against the Soviet republic. My talk in Copenhagen, my radio speech to America, my interview for the sound film, enabled me to formulate our real attitude to the Soviet republic, which has not changed from 1917. Hence the exceptional efforts of the group now ruling in Moscow to expel me from Western Europe The fact that the Stalin faction has found numerous allies and accomplices on this path is fully in accordance with the nature of things.

If I am not coming away from Copenhagen with any new ideas of the nature of bourgeois democracy, I am nevertheless taking back the best of memories of the friendliness and hospitality of the Danish people. I could adduce some absolutely exceptional examples in this field, which are perhaps impossible in any other country in Europe. …

You ask about the condition of my life in Turkey? There are not a few false conceptions circulating on this score I did not of course come to Turkey voluntarily. But it is not true that the Turkish government is subjecting me to any restrictions. My wife and I chose Prinkipo Island for climatic considerations. We have more than once met with attention and cooperation from the Turkish government.