Letter to the International Secretariat, October 8, 1933

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A False Understanding of the New Orientation

To the International Secretariat

Dear Comrades:

On the eve of the conference of the [French] League, I addressed a personal letter to Comrade Witte in which I tried to restrain Comrade Witte from further movements on the path he is traveling, which can bring no good to the International Opposition, to the Greek section or to Comrade Witte personally. I recalled to Comrade Witte that his splitting conspiracy in the Paris League would inevitably have an international repercussion and would reflect badly particularly on the Greek section.

If he engages in an open and sharp struggle, the two sections will inevitably defend their point of view before all the sections included. The manner of his advance will make it quite obvious to the overwhelming majority of the sections, who have carried on the struggle against Landau, Mill, Welland others, that it is a reproduction of the struggle of these people, only in a worse form. In the last analysis, it will reduce itself so that Comrade Witte, after suffering a defeat in the League and in our entire international organization, will inevitably endeavor to oppose the Greek section to our whole international organization. This attempt will inevitably lead, by the very logic of the situation, to the disintegration of the Greek section and to its transformation into a national section of Witte's. This analysis, a perspective briefly formulated in my letter, is interpreted by Witte in his answer as an attempt on my part "to eliminate" the Greek section. I do not think that Witte understands the meaning of my letter. His interpretation is meant, not for me, nor for the International Opposition generally, but for the Greek section. In other words, Witte is already completely taken up with counterposing the Greek section to the International Opposition and does not hesitate to employ disloyal insinuations.

Although Witte speaks of his Bolshevik 'orthodoxy” in his letter, I personally, on the basis of all the experience with Witte, have come to the conclusion that, although he has assimilated this or that theoretical or strategical formula of the Left Opposition, he is very alien to the methods of Bolshevism. He has manifested this particularly in a letter written to me in which, attributing to me the monstrous attempt ”to eliminate? the Greek section, he writes pathetically: "While the Left Opposition orients itself toward the left socialists, we are intolerant and hostile toward the Bolshevik organization in Greece.” In other words, Witte develops Giacomi's theme: we are making a turn to the right, and that is why we are compelled to break with the real Bolsheviks.

I do not believe it would be worth the effort to take time out to answer this assertion, if behind it were not hidden the radically false understanding of our whole new orientation. Witte probably believes that it means more conciliatory relations towards centrism, Menshevism, etc. In reality this circumstance of the left socialist organizations approaching us obliges us to be doubly-vigilant of the strictest principled tenacity and internal discipline; \t is only on this condition that our less numerous cadres can have a healthy revolutionary influence on the left-centrist parties. Thus the new orientation demands closer cohesion of our own ranks and more intransigence towards vacillations of all kinds, of Menshevik organizational methods and personal intrigues and insinuations.

The response of Comrade Witte shows that my attempt to appeal to his revolutionary responsibility was a mistake. I am correcting this by bringing this whole episode officially to the attention of the International Secretariat as the leading body directing our international organization.

G. G. [Leon Trotsky]