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Special pages :
Rakovsky's Declaration of Submission
| Author(s) | Leon Trotsky |
|---|---|
| Written | 10 March 1934 |
Rakovsky states that he will give up his struggle and submit to discipline. That is the only content of his declaration. In order to understand this declaration in its proper light — and naturally we condemn it — it is necessary to understand the situation in which Rakovsky was placed. In fact he had been placed in a condition of giving up his active struggle three or four years ago. He could neither communicate with his friends, nor write articles, nor receive the literature of the Left Opposition and information on the international labor movement generally. In his complete isolation he remained without any perspective whatsoever.
Rakovsky's declaration, far from being an ideological or political capitulation, is, at the same time, not only a highly regrettable but also a condemnable fact Undoubtedly this example will be extensively utilized by the Stalinist bureaucracy in order to draw many of the youth, imprisoned and isolated like Rakovsky, on the path of capitulation in the manner not of Rakovsky but of Zinoviev.
We have reiterated many times that the restoration of the Communist Party of the USSR can only be accomplished on the international arena. The case of Rakovsky confirms this in a negative but striking manner. The Bolshevik-Leninists in the USSR do not learn from Pravda of the burning facts of international life: Hitler's victory, die danger of war, nor the crushing of the Austrian proletariat They have no opportunity of orienting themselves in the true light of these events, nor of discerning die different formations in the workers' movement
In order to re-create a powerful International Communist movement in the USSR, the struggle of the Fourth International must take form and become so powerful a factor that the Stalinist bureaucracy will no longer be able to hide it from the Soviet workers, the Bolshevik-Leninists included.
We register the purely formal declaration of the old warrior, who by his whole life has demonstrated his unshakable devotion to the revolutionary cause; we register it with sadness and pass on to the order of die day, that is, to the doubly vigorous struggle for the new parties of the new International.