Letter to Nikolai Bukharin, March 4, 1926

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N. Ivanovich:

I am writing this letter in longhand (although I have gotten out of the habit), since it is embarrassing to dictate to a stenographer what I have to say.

You are of course aware that in accordance with the Uglanov line there is being conducted against me in Moscow a half-concealed struggle with all sorts of tricks and insinuations, which I refrain from characterizing here as they deserve.

By all sorts of machinations — which are generally unworthy of and degrading to our organization — I am not permitted to speak at workers’ meetings. At the same time rumors are being spread systematically through the workers’ cells that I give lectures “for the bourgeoisie” and refuse to speak to workers. Now just listen to what thrives on this soil, and this, once again, not at all accidentally. I cite verbatim from a letter of a worker-party member.

“In our cell the question has been raised, Why do you arrange to give lectures only for pay? The admission prices to these lectures are very high and the workers cannot afford them. Consequently only the bourgeoisie attends. The secretary of our cell has explained in conversations with us that you take a fee, a percentage for your own use, from these lectures. He tells us that for every one of your articles and for your by-line you also take a fee, that you have a big family and, he says, you run short of funds. Does a member of the Politburo really have to sell his byline?”

You will ask: Isn’t this silly nonsense? No, unfortunately for us, it is not nonsense. I have verified it. At first several members of this cell wanted to write a letter to the Central Control Commission (or Central Committee), but then they decided not to, saying: “They will kick us out of the factory, and we have families.”

Thus, a working class party member has developed the fear that if he tries to verify even the most infamous slander against a member of the Politburo, he may be fired from his job, although as a party member he was following party procedure. And you know, if he were to ask me, I could not in good conscience say that this would not happen. The same secretary of the same cell also said — and again not at all accidentally — “The Yids on the Politburo are kicking up a fuss.” And again no one dared report this to any quarter — for the very same openly stated reason: they will kick us out of the factory.

Another item. The author of the letter which I cited above is a Jewish worker. He, too, did not dare to write a report about such phrases as “the Yids who agitate against Leninism.” His motive was this: “If the others, the non-Jews, keep quiet, it would be awkward for me …” And this worker — who wrote me to ask whether it is true that I sell my speeches and my by-line to the bourgeoisie — now expects at any hour to be fired from his factory job. This is a fact. It is also a fact that I am not at all sure that this won’t happen — if not immediately, then a month from now. There are plenty of pretexts. And everybody in the cell knows “that’s how it was, that’s how it will be” — and they hang their heads.

In other words: members of the Communist Party are afraid to report to the party institutions about Black Hundred agitation, thinking that it is they who will be kicked out, not the Black Hundred gangster.

You will say: This is an exaggeration! I, too, would like to think so. Therefore I have a proposal to make: Let us take a trip to the cell together and check into the matter. I think that you and I — two members of the Politburo — have after all a few things in common, enough to calmly and conscientiously verify: (1) whether it is possible that in our party, in Moscow, in a workers’ cell, propaganda is being conducted with impunity which is vile and slanderous, on the one hand, and anti-Semitic, on the other; and (2) whether honest workers are afraid to question or verify or try to refute any stupidity, lest they be driven into the street with their families. Of course you can refer me to the “proper bodies.” But this would signify only closing the vicious circle.

I want to hope that you will not do this; and it is precisely that hope which prompts this letter. .

Yours,

L. Trotsky