Comrade Sosnovsky’s Letters, September 1929

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We are printing below four letters written by Comrade L.S. Sosnovsky from Barnaul, i.e., his place of exile during 1928. The letters are written on social, everyday, and political themes. Three of them are addressed to Comrade Trotsky. They are devoted to the troubles and events in the Siberian countryside, in the party, and in the country at large. Like all the works of Comrade Sosnovsky, an incomparable publicist and social commentator, the letters are full of the breath of life. The main quality of Sosnovsky, without which any prolific publicist would be unthinkable, is a freshness of outlook. Ready-made formulas, official charts, have no effect on Lev Semyonovich. Behind formulas and figures he looks for and finds living people, and he can always take them from two sides: personal and class. It is just this freshness of outlook and ability to see what is happening in the country which has made Comrade Sosnovsky one of the leaders of the Bolshevik-Leninist Opposition. The fourth letter is addressed to Vardin, one of the capitulators of the second wave. This very short letter is an excellent model for a political publicist. It will be included sometime in a revolutionary chrestomathy.

All four letters are more than a year old. The last of them was written on August 22, 1928. Despite the fact that they were written right on the heels of events and are based on very topical facts, Sosnovsky’s letters have not dated in the slightest. They are contemporary with the first steps of the Stalinist “left course" which officially opened on February 15, 1928. Sosnovsky with consummate mastery observes the contradictions of “the left course," which stole from the Opposition in cowardly fashion and at the same time crushed its organization. Comrade Sosnovsky’s attitude to the capitulators is indissolubly linked with this evaluation of the left course, its contradictions and perspectives. The letter to Vardin seems as if it were written yesterday since the capitulators of the third wave (Radek, Preobrazhensky, Smilga) have not added a single word to what their lamentable predecessor said and did.

The letters printed below sufficiently explain why their author was arrested while he was still at Barnaul, his place of exile, and was imprisoned in Chelyabinsk Isolator, where he is today.

The editorial board of the Biulleten sends to L.S. Sosnovsky and through him to all deported and imprisoned Bolshevik- Leninists warm greetings from the Opposition.