Letter to the Leadership of the German Left Opposition, December 28, 1932

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The Crisis in the German Section

To the Leadership of the German Left Opposition

Dear Comrades:

The crisis in the German section called forth by Comrade Well and his group makes the following communication necessary in order to clarify the matter.

When I met Comrade Senin in Copenhagen, he stated that Comrade Well complained that I corresponded only with his opponents and not with him. I was completely surprised by this news since the numerous interruptions of our correspondence always came from Comrade Well and occurred each time I made some critical remark or did not agree with him on one question or another. In agreement with Comrade Senin, I then addressed a letter to Comrade Well to clear up the "misunderstanding" on the question of correspondence. The purpose of my letter was to contribute to the alleviation of conflicts within the German Left Opposition, conflicts which, in my opinion, were mostly called forth by Comrade Well with insufficient cause.

I proposed in my letter to call a calm, harmonious conference of action, without having a suspicion of the differences of opinion recently formulated by Well. That a policy based on principle is the best, as Lenin said and Well quoted, is correct Besides, Lenin always supported himself on the basis of the necessity for a principled policy. But Lenin also taught us to shove aside other, secondary, differences at a critical time. From Well's letters, conversations, and many articles, in any case, I have long ago seen that he takes a vacillating position on many questions. I have often insisted that Comrade Well formulate his misgivings, replies, etc., in a precise manner. He has never done this. I have presented the questions of Thermidor and dual power in the form of a letter and a dialogue (published in our German press). Well never went into these questions. Since they have an importance which may affect the whole future, I must assume from his persistent silence that he still has not gone beyond the stage of doubt And political experience a hundred times has shown me comrades who vacillate as long as they live but still more or less "come along."

That the vacillations of Well have condensed into an explosion surprised me all the more since Comrade Senin, who takes approximately the same standpoint, assured me in Copenhagen of complete agreement, and in the course of a two-hour discussion we went through practically all the important questions. Since then, from my whole experience with Well (Landau question, French question, Mill question, Spanish question), I have become convinced that he is unfortunately much too inclined to put purely personal factors ahead of political and principled ones. I have tried to propose to him that in this most acute situation he should not disturb the activity of the German Opposition and the harmony of the coming conference through insufficiently thought-out ideas and premature actions. But since then I have found out that Well's vacillations in the past three years have taken on, obviously under the influence of the "successes" of the KPD [Communist Party of Germany], that pathological form which we must describe as the urge to capitulate. All the symptoms, "ideas,” and forms of expression repeat in stereotyped form the analogous pathological symptoms of many others from 1923 to 1932. Naturally because of this my proposal to call a unified conference became out of the question. On the contrary, the most determined struggle is needed. What Well is now putting in question is nothing else than the right to existence of the Left Opposition. He, Well, thinks everything will go well enough even without Bolshevik-Leninists, and that between Stalin and the Kremlin and Trotsky and Barnaul there exist little misunderstandings because all of them fail to understand his, Well's, ideas. Because of the same misunderstandings the GPU killed Butov, Blumkin, Silov, Rabinovich, and others.

Actually I do not believe that a fruitful "discussion" can arise on this basis since, as I have said before, Well only repeats what Zinoviev, Radek, and others formulated more thoroughly in the past at a certain stage of their retrograde development. But this mood, of course, cannot be tolerated in the ranks of the Left Opposition. Whether Comrade Well personally will learn better and make a turn, I do not know. For my part I would only welcome such a turn. But what the German Opposition needs is a leadership which is made up of workers who are firm in their convictions and which is not subject to the changing mood of eternal political nomads. That, it seems to me, the recent experience has in any case proven.

With best communist greetings,

Leon Trotsky