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Special pages :
No Compromise on the Russian Question
| Author(s) | Leon Trotsky |
|---|---|
| Written | 11 November 1934 |
We have been informed by various sources that there is a tendency among our friends in Paris to deny the proletarian nature of the USSR, to demand that there be complete democracy in the USSR, including the legalization of the Mensheviks, etc. Please convey our position on this matter to the Central Committee officially: we regard this tendency as treason which must be fought implacably. One does not change one’s attitude toward a question of such dimensions lightly; we have official resolutions which state clearly that denying the proletarian character of the USSR is incompatible with membership in the Bolshevik-Leninists. We have an official pamphlet on this decisive question. If there are comrades who have doubts about the correctness of our official doctrine, they are obligated to present counter-resolutions for discussion, that is, for formal revision of the most important principles of our international politics. An openly conducted international discussion, even the possibility of a split, would be ten times better than the slightest equivocation.
The Mensheviks are the representatives of bourgeois restoration and we are for the defense of the workers’ state by every means possible. Anyone who had proposed that we not support the British miners’ strike of 1926 or the recent large-scale strikes in the United States with all available means on the ground that the leaders of the strikes were for the most part scoundrels, would have been a traitor to the British and American workers. Exactly the same thing applies to the USSR!
I repeat: no compromise on this question! Lay all the cards on the table! It is necessary to eradicate the bohemian influence which is poisoning certain elements in our organization and which drives them to change their position on fundamental questions as the spirit moves them. No, no compromise and no equivocation on this question!