Letter to Alfonso Leonetti, May 13, 1932

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Worried About Spain

Dear Comrade Souzo:

I am so indebted to your group that I feel compelled to reply to you. To be sure, it is not for lack of goodwill that I have not written. The German events have for a long time altered my plans. My History has taken me immeasurably longer than I had planned. Now I will be involved in the American question: we have Comrade Weisbord visiting us here for some time. But I assure you I will pay my debts.

I insist on the necessity to publish a special issue of the International Bulletin devoted to the Bordigists. Your group cannot play the role it should until our international organization has dealt definitively with this question. It is absolutely unacceptable for a serious organization that has broken away from powerful organizations to tolerate in its own ranks the same errors and excesses, but on a smaller scale. It compromises us, adds to the confusion, and especially it hinders the development of your group.

You understand how worried I am about some aspects of the Spanish Opposition’s development. It is clear that some sicknesses, against which I have incessantly fought in my private correspondence, must now come out into the open. Naturally, we must keep to a minimum the incidental costs of a possible new crisis. But it appears that some of our Spanish friends have not at all followed our international experience, and have not drawn the necessary lessons from it.

In the USSR we now see the beginning of a new turn on the agrarian question, which the Left Opposition had predicted for months and months. Naturally, I shall return to that question soon.

My warmest communist greetings to you and your group.

Yours,

L. Trotsky