Deportation from the Soviet Union

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To recapitulate: I had replied to the demand that I cease all political activity with the statement that only corrupted bureaucrats could make such a demand and only renegades could agree to it. The Stalinists themselves could hardly have expected a different answer. After that, a month passed without incident. Our connections with the outside world had been completely broken off, including the illegal ones organized by young cothinkers, who overcame the greatest difficulties and until the end of 1928 accurately supplied me in Alma-Ata with an abundance of information from Moscow and other centers. During January of this year we received only the Moscow newspapers. The more they wrote about the struggle against the right wing, the more certain we felt in expecting a blow against the left. That is Stalin’s political method.

The GPU representative from Moscow, Volynsky, remained in Alma-Ata all this time, awaiting instructions. On January 20 he appeared at our house, accompanied by a large number of armed GPU agents, who occupied all entrances and exits, and he handed me the following extract from the minutes of the GPU special conference of January 18, 1929:

“Considered: the case of citizen Trotsky, Leon Davidovich, under Article 58/10 of the Criminal Code, on the charge of counterrevolutionary activity, expressing itself in the organization of an illegal anti-Soviet party, whose activity has lately been directed toward provoking anti-Soviet actions and making preparations for armed struggle against Soviet power. Resolved: Citizen Trotsky, Leon Davidovich, to be deported fro. territory of the USSR.”

When I was asked to sign a statement acknowledging that I had been informed of this ruling, I wrote: “The GPU ruling, criminal in essence and illegal in form, has been announced to me, January 20, 1929. Trotsky."

I called the ruling criminal because it accuses me of preparations for armed struggle against Soviet power, a deliberate lie. Such a formula, needed by Stalin to justify my deportation, in and of itself tends to undermine Soviet power in the most vicious way. For if it were true that the Opposition, led by people who helped organize the October Revolution and built the Soviet republic and Red Army, was preparing to overthrow Soviet power by force of arms, that in itself would signify a disastrous situation in the country. If that were so, even the most favorably disposed counterrevolutionary agent from the bourgeois world would have to say: “There is no need to be hasty about establishing economic ties with the Soviets; better to wait and see how the armed conflict turns out.”

Fortunately, however, the GPU formula is a barefaced police lie. We are wholly guided by the conviction that Soviet rule has profound vitality and great elasticity. Our course is one of internal reform. I take this opportunity to proclaim this to the whole world and by so doing to at least partially ward off the blow to the interests of the Soviet republic dealt by the GPU formula, dictated by Stalin, which is false through and through. However great may be the internal difficulties of the Soviet republic today, the result not only of the objective circumstances but also of the impotent policy of zigzags, all those who once again look forward to an early collapse of Soviet power are making grievous miscalculations, as they were before.

Mr. Chamberlain apparently entertains no such illusions. He goes by criteria of a more practical kind. If one can believe reports insistently repeated in the press, in particular the report in the American magazine The Nation, Mr. Chamberlain has expressed himself to the effect that correct diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union would be fully possible on the day after Trotsky had, as he put it, “been placed against a wall." This lapidary formula does honor to the temperament of the Conservative minister, who when speaking of the American navy, at any rate, speaks more in the language of the vegetarian.

Although I am entrusted with no diplomatic powers, I nevertheless venture, in the interests of the cause (and partly in my own interests as well), to advise the British minister of foreign affairs not to insist on his demand too literally. Stalin has shown his readiness to meet Mr. Chamberlain’s wishes well enough by expelling me from the Soviet Union. If he did not do more, it was not because of a lack of willingness to please. It would be too foolish to make that a reason for punishing the Soviet economy and British industry. Beyond that, I might also point out that international relations are based on the principle of reciprocity. But this is a disagreeable subject and I prefer to drop it.

In my written acknowledgment that the GPU ruling had been made known to me I called it not only criminal in essence but also illegal in form. By this I meant that the GPU may offer a person the choice of leaving the country on pain of reprisals in one form or another if the person remains, but it may not actually deport someone without that person’s agreement.

When I asked how I was to be deported and to what country, I received the answer that I would be informed in European Russia by a GPU representative being sent to meet me there. The whole next day was taken up with feverish packing, almost exclusively of manuscripts and books. Our two pointers looked on with alarm at this crowd of noisy people in the usually quiet household. I should note in passing that there was not even a hint of hostility on the part of the GPU agents. Quite the contrary.

At dawn on January 22 my wife, my son, and I, with the GPU escort, set off in a bus which drove us over a road covered with smoothly packed snow to the mountain pass of Kurday. There we encountered strong winds and heavy drifting of snow. The powerful tractor that was to tow us through the pass was sunk in over its head in snowdrifts along with the seven motor vehicles it was towing. During heavy drifting in this pass, seven men and a good many horses had frozen to death. We were obliged to transfer to sledges. It took us more than seven hours to cover about twenty miles. Along the drifted road we encountered many abandoned sleighs, their shafts sticking up, many loads of material for the Turkestan-Siberia railroad now under construction, many tanks of kerosene — all deep in the snow. Men and horses had taken refuge in the nearby winter camps of the Kirghiz,

On the other side of the pass we boarded a bus again, and at Pishpek (now Frunze), a railway car. The Moscow papers we met along the way showed that public opinion was being prepared for the deportation of the leaders of the Opposition from the country.

In the region of Aktyubinsk a communication by direct wire informed us that the place of exile was to be Constantinople. I demanded a chance to see the two members of my family in Moscow. They were brought to the Ryazhsk station and placed under surveillance with us. The new GPU representative, Bulanov, tried to persuade me of the advantages of going to Constantinople. But I categorically refused. Bulanov engaged in negotiations with Moscow by direct wire. There everything had been foreseen except the possibility that I might refuse to leave the country voluntarily.

Our train is diverted from its route, slowly rolls back down the track, finally stops on an out-of-the-way side track near a dead little station, and there sinks into a coma between two stretches of thin woods. Day after day goes by. More and more empty tin cans accumulate around the train. Crows and magpies gather for the feast in larger and larger flocks. There are no rabbits about; a terrible epidemic that autumn had swept them away. So the fox had made a regular track by night, right up to our train.

The engine, with one car hitched to it, makes daily trips to a larger station to fetch the main meal. Grippe rages in our car. We reread Anatole France and Klyuchevsky’s history of Russia. The cold reaches 53 degrees below zero. Our engine keeps rolling back and forth to keep the wheels from freezing to the rails. Distant radio stations were calling back and forth, groping in the ether for news of our whereabouts. We did not hear their questions; we were playing chess. But even if we had heard them, we would not have been able to answer; brought to our location by night, we ourselves did not know where we were — only that it was somewhere in the region of Kursk.

Thus passed twelve days and nights. While there, we learned of new arrests — of several hundred people, including a hundred and fifty members of a so-called “Trotskyist center." Among the published names were those of Kavtaradze, former chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of Georgia; Mdivani, the former Soviet trade representative in Paris; Voronsky, the party’s best literary critic; and Drobnis, one of the most heroic figures of the Ukrainian revolution. All of them were central figures in the party, men who helped organize the October Revolution.

On February 8 Bulanov announced: “Despite the best efforts on Moscow’s part, the German government categorically refuses to admit you to Germany. I have been given final instructions to conduct you to Constantinople.”

“But I will not go voluntarily; and I will make a declaration to that effect at the Turkish border.”

“That will not change matters; you will be conducted into Turkey in any case."

“Then you have made a deal with the Turkish police for my forcible deportation to Turkey."

“We know nothing about that," he replied. “We only carry out orders."

After twelve days of standing still, our train was again under way. Modest as it was, the train began to grow longer as the escort increased. Throughout the trip, ever since Pishpek, we were not allowed to leave our car. Now we were going at full speed southward. The only stops were at small stations to take on water and fuel. These extreme precautions were prompted by recollections of the demonstration at the Moscow station at the time when I was deported from Moscow in January 1928; the demonstrators forcibly prevented the train from leaving for Tashkent on that occasion, and it had only been possible to deport me secretly the following day.

The newspapers received en route brought echoes of the big new campaign against “Trotskyists.” Between the lines certain hints slipped through of a struggle at the top over the question of my deportation. The Stalin faction was in a hurry. And they had reason enough: there were not only political difficulties to overcome but physical ones as well. The steamer Kalinin had been assigned to take us from Odessa, but it had been frozen in. All the efforts of the icebreakers were in vain. Moscow was standing at the telegraph wire, urging haste. The steamer Ilyich was made ready on short order. Our train arrived in Odessa on the night of February 10. Through the window I saw familiar places. I had spent seven years of my school life in this city. Our car was brought right up to the steamer. It was bitterly cold. Despite the lateness of the hour, the pier was surrounded by GPU troops and agents. Here we had to take leave of the two members of our family who had shared imprisonment with us for two weeks.

As we peered through the train window at the steamer awaiting us, we could not help remembering another boat that had once taken us to a destination not of our choosing. That was in March 1917, off Halifax, Canada, when British marines, before the eyes of a crowd of passengers, had carried me bodily off of the Norwegian steamer Christianiafjord, on which I had been traveling with the full necessary complement of documents and visas toward Christiania and Petrograd. Our family had been the same then, only twelve years younger. My eldest son had been eleven at Halifax, and he had struck one of the British marines with his little fist before I could keep him from that gesture, by which he had hoped, naively, to win my freedom and above all to restore me to a vertical position. Instead of Petrograd my chance destination had then been a concentration camp.

The Ilyich, without cargo or other passengers, shipped out at about one in the morning. For sixty miles an icebreaker made passage for us. The gale that had been raging in the area only brushed us lightly with the last strokes of its wings. On February 12 we entered the Bosporus. To the Turkish police officer, who had been warned in advance that the steamer was carrying my family and myself, I handed the declaration that I was being brought to Constantinople against my will. It had no results. The steamer proceeded on its course. After a journey of twenty-two days, having covered a distance of four thousand miles, we found ourselves in Constantinople.