Manuilsky, the Leader of the Comintern

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Nothing can be done about it: Manuilsky is at present the leader of the Comintern. His strongest side is that he does not take himself seriously. This is evidence that he is inclined to self-criticism. Whether it is because Stalin does not take the Comintern seriously, or for some other reason, it was decided that Manuilsky, who does not take himself seriously, is the right man for the job. And who else could be put there?

Were a complete collection of Manuilsky's "works" to be gathered we would have, if not an instructive, at any rate an entertaining book. Manuilsky was always somebody's shield-bearer. Moreover, he changed his "knights” many times; he stayed longest with the not unknown Alexinsky. Currently Manuilsky, serving as Yaroslavsky's shield-bearer, is one of the prosecution apprentices in matters of Trotskyist ideology. Under his own name or under pseudonyms, he has again and again proved the irreconcilability of Trotskyism with Leninism. But he has not always spoken this way. In 1918 Manuilsky issued a pamphlet in which he wrote that the "honor of liberating Bolshevism from national limitedness and transforming it into a theory of international proletarian revolution belongs to L. D. Trotsky."* At one of the plenums of the Comintern [Seventh Plenum, 1926], Trotsky quoted this citation, "famous" in its way, in the presence of Manuilsky and with full justification ridiculed both the citation and its author. This pamphlet was written by Manuilsky after the October Revolution; what is more, after its publication not a single hair fell from his head. This is true, it may be said, but it was written prior to the "trade-union discussion," and Manuilsky later changed his views. Not so. Recently we came across a quotation from an article by Manuilsky written in 1922 and therefore at the time when Lenin's illness was drawing the final balance of the relationship between Lenin and Trotsky. In the article, dedicated to the memory of Chudnovsky, Manuilsky wrote: "The Sotsial-Demokrat [Social Democrat], published in Switzerland by Comrades Lenin and Zinoviev, and the Paris Golos [Voice], which subsequent to its suppression by the French police was renamed Nashe Slovo [Our Word], edited by Comrade Trotsky, for the future historian of the Third International will be the fundamental fragments out of which the new revolutionary ideology of the international proletariat has been hammered out” (Letopis Revolyutsy [Annals of the Revolution] 1922, number 1, p. 229).

* Unfortunately, I am obliged to give this quotation from memory, but I fully guarantee the accuracy of the thought.

Today Manuilsky proves that during the war Trotsky was a pacifist and a Kautskyan, that Leninism and Trotskyism are irreconcilable entities; but in 1922 he maintained, neither more nor less, that "the new revolutionary ideology of the international proletariat," that is, the ideology of modern communism, was created by Lenin and Trotsky. Just when did Manuilsky see the light of day? Neither in 1914-16, when he worked with Trotsky on the Paris paper Nashe Slovo, nor in 1917-22, when Manuilsky together with the whole party worked under the leadership of Lenin, did he see the light. Only after illness and death took Lenin from our ranks and the epigones, spurred on by the wave of Thermidorean reaction, declared war upon the ideological heritage of Lenin under the name of "Trotskyism" did Manuilsky begin to recover his sight. Incidentally, not all at once. The triumvirate (Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev) kept him in the background for a long time, and only after it had thus brought him to partial repentance did it present him with an ultimatum: open up a campaign against Rakovsky as an introduction to a campaign against Trotsky. Manuilsky, after hesitating (Rakovsky's prestige was too high), accepted the condition and thus bought himself a place on the Central Committee of the party. This deal was no secret in the broad party circles because Manuilsky himself, with his characteristic cynicism, talked about it in talking about the people involved, revealing his great talent as a raconteur of national and other anecdotes. We repeat, this man never took himself seriously, either politically or morally. And he has now been put at the head of the Communist International! And he is now working out the road for the Spanish revolution!