Letter to S. A. Ashkinazi, August 30, 1928

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The Law of Zigzags Remains in Force

Dear S. A.:

Apparently only one letter of mine reached you. Needless to say, I was very pleased by your endorsement of our declaration. I hope that the final text of it reached you and also copies of the other documents sent to the congress, in particular a "postscript" dealing with the July plenum. Of course the declaration was the only collective document. The others were sent on my own personal responsibility.

It seems it was a month ago that I received from Moscow a collective telegram from a Democratic Centralist group there, unknown to me, to the effect that my attitude toward the left course removes the differences between us. On the other hand, I hear from various quarters that Vladimir Mikhailovich Smirnov and others are fiercely criticizing our "capitulationism." As long as discussion only was involved, such bad language was no great sin. But the documents are now available; a clear and definite attitude toward them must be taken.

Since the July plenum some comrades have declared: "So you see, nothing has come of it all." These comrades are right insofar as they criticize the vulgar conciliationist tendencies in our midst and the illusions about the centrists' ability to come out onto the Marxist road. Both conciliationism and gullibility have been cruelly punished. But these comrades are wrong to the extent that they think (if they do) that the July plenum has put the finishing touches on the relationship between the center and the right. No, the important disputes are still ahead, and they are bound to come to the surface. The law of zigzags to the right and to the left remains in force, but the pace of these zigzags is more likely to speed up than slow down. We must take a stand without any blinders on and keep a sharp watch for all the twists and turns in the situation. The party should know that, as before, we are ready to support every step, even an irresolute, half-hearted one, in the direction of the proletarian line, while of course maintaining our full ideological independence and critical ruthlessness in relation to all half-heartedness and flabbiness, not to mention bureaucratic-apparatus-type trickery.

At the congress our documents were read by the delegations, and with great attention, according to the reports. They are being read around the country as well. I have already received, from such cities as Moscow, Voronezh, Odessa, and Kherson, telegrams informing me of the endorsement of our documents by cothinkers. In the work of drafting these [documents], our active correspondence was of great importance. It allowed me to keep abreast of the moods and views of many dozens of comrades, not to mention that this correspondence placed a number of questions before me which I might otherwise have overlooked.

The question of our reinstatement in the party has today become inseparable from the question of the restoration of the correct line to the party itself. To think that one can make one's way back into the party and then, at a later time, wage a political struggle to restore it to health is – to put it mildly – naive. The experience with Zinoviev, Pyatakov, et al., speaks too eloquently on this point. These people are much less a presence in the party now than they were a week before their expulsion. At that time they expressed their views and a section of the party listened to what they had to say. Now they are forced to keep quiet. Not only are they unable to make criticisms; they aren't even allowed to voice praise. Zinoviev's articles are denied publication. The centrists are applying especially crude pressure on the Zinoviev group, demanding that they hold their tongues and not compromise the centrists. How is the presence of these repentant gentlemen in the party expressed? Isn't it this – that the doors of the State Bank and Centrosoyuz are opened to them? But in order to get a job in Centrosoyuz, it really wasn't necessary to first sign the Platform of the Opposition and then repudiate it. The fact of the matter is that our group is in the party now, and the Zinoviev group is outside it. The Safarovs and Vardins are allowed to be "in the party" only to the extent that they undertake to "work us over." And so these totally drained elements rush into the fray. And, it seems, the centrists haven't yet said to them: "Please don't compromise us with your excessive ardor."

I will write about the congress when it is over, or, more accurately, when the reports and necessary materials reach Alma-Ata. The general impression is dreary. Even Bukharin complained in his concluding speech that those who had spoken on the main report touched only, so to speak, on their own specific national concerns and needs, or as Gleb Uspensky once put it, "made a great fuss about their own personal problems," but the general problems of the proletarian revolution were left untouched. The impression given was that these were speeches not by the delegates of an international proletarian party but by national envoys and mediators. The systematic decapitation of all sections of the Comintern has not passed without leaving its mark. Even Bukharin's report was lacking in any unifying idea whatsoever. The whole report was made up of patches, like a beggar's pouch. A very dreary impression. But more about that later.

In the last few days I had a letter from Cherdyn. Summer there is deadly, and R. A. [Griunshtein]'s health is rather poor. She and Karl Ivanovich are strong in spirit, of course, as always. Natalya Ivanovna [Sedova] and I are also passing through a stage of malarial and all other kinds of ill-being. Apparently the approach of autumn is making itself felt. We really don't want to have to return to the totally contaminated city. Therefore we are trying to stay at our dacha as long as possible even though the malaria, it turns out, has access to these parts too.

I will end with that for now. I firmly shake your hand; and the same for your whole colony, to whom I hope you will show this letter.