Interview by Alice Hughes

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1. Hitler won a big victory over the German proletariat. Both leading workers’ parties, the Social Democrats and the Communists, suffered destruction. But the proletariat of Germany, as before, remains the main factor in the economy and for progress. Hitler can neither defeat the workers nor annihilate them. Fascism does not eliminate social contradictions. By clamping down on them, it allows them to accumulate and thus prepares an explosion. While in words National Socialism undertakes the task of dissolving all classes, parties, and groups, in practice it is educating the popular masses in the spirit of ruthless civil war. Fascist reaction can prolong itself for several years, but the revenge of the working class is inescapable.

2. Today Hitler cannot make war: Germany is disarmed, and the Nazis are armed only for civil war. Hitler can arm Germany only with the aid of Italy and England. He hopes to earn his right to their aid by stepping forth in the capacity of a guardian of Europe against Bolshevism. In this sense Hitler’s entire policy is oriented against the Soviet Union. Can one consider the danger of war imminent? That depends on the amount and on the timing of the aid which Hitler succeeds in enlisting from London.

3. In July 1914 the key to the situation was in the hands of England. If her government had categorically emphasized its neutrality or, on the other hand, had warned in advance that it would intervene on the side of France and Russia, the war would have been postponed, if not avoided. But during critical days the government of Great Britain preferred to say neither yes nor no, and thus pushed both sides toward war.

The key to the European situation is also held now, for the most part, in the hands of the London cabinet. Its refusal to assume the “firm” and decisive position of a potential combatant expresses this time too the urge to say neither yes nor no, and, in this way, to preserve in its hands the key to a future war.

4. It seems completely clear to me that the meaning of the policy of the United States for the immediate future of Europe flows from these general conditions. The more open and categorical a position Washington takes, the more greatly restricted is the margin for London’s ambiguous maneuvers and their disastrous consequences. The immediate restoration of normal relations between the United States and the Soviet Union would mean, in addition, that the scales would be heavily tilted toward peace.

5. Questions about the Soviet economy are so complicated that one could respond to them for the rest of the interview. A critique of the economic policy of Stalin’s faction is given in a series of works of the Left Opposition, in part, in the outstanding articles by my friend C.G. Rakovsky, the former president of the Soviet of People’s Commissars of the Ukraine, later Soviet ambassador to London and Paris. Irrespective of the fact that Rakovsky’s articles were written by him in exile, where he still remains, and were disseminated in single handwritten copies, they have more than once shown influence on official policy.

The fundamental errors of the ruling faction (they are very grave) flow from the fact that it is attempting, by means of the bureaucratic apparatus, to replace the initiative, creativity and critical thinking of the working masses. Collectivization is the only means of rescue for the peasants, for agriculture, for the country. But in the area of collectivization, as in all other areas, only the conscious creativity of the masses themselves — and not bureaucratic orders — can give firm conquests. The disagreements between the Opposition and the ruling faction are very sharp and have exceptional practical importance, but they concern those foundations which were laid by the October Revolution and the Soviet regime.

To turn Russia from a soviet regime backwards toward capitalism could happen only by way of a vast and bloody counterrevolution, which, in turn, could not be accomplished without a military intervention — to be sure, on the condition that the intervention would prove to be victorious. An intervention would mean a terrible blow for the economy and culture not only of the Soviet Union, but of all of Europe, even the whole world. This also explains the striving of the Soviet government to avoid war in the West, as in the East. If, however, Hitler takes the opportunity to carry out a trial intervention, then — personally I do not doubt this for a minute — it would end in the ruin of National Socialism.