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Special pages :
Rebuke to a Capitulator
| Author(s) | Leon Trotsky |
|---|---|
| Written | 1 October 1929 |
We print below extracts from an open letter by Comrade F.N. Dingelstedt about some capitulations. Comrade Dingelstedt is an old member of the Bolshevik Party (he was a member of the Petrograd party in the period of the February revolution). From 1923, he was one of the leaders of the Opposition in Leningrad. On instructions from the Soviet he assumed the duties of director of the Forestry Institute. At the end of 1927, Comrade Dingelstedt was arrested and, after a six-month term in prison, was sent to Siberia, to the town of Kansk from where, presumably, the letter we are printing was sent.
The letter is addressed to Kharin, evidently a representative of those among the capitulators who merit no other name than careerists and double-dealers.
Kharin lived in Paris during 1928, working in the trade delegation, and carrying on Oppositional activity. On May 27 of this year he was still writing to Constantinople: “Yesterday I received from you Biulleten number 1. … I am ready to carry out any task if it is necessary.” In the same letter he asked to be given connections, addresses for correspondence, and so on. Not long before this, Kharin suggested going back to Russia to reestablish connections or, as he himself expressed it, in order “to set up — indispensable for us — exchange of material with Russia.” Not one of these letters contained even a shadow of ideological hesitation or doubt. On the contrary, the author adopted a most “irreconcilable” attitude. This did not prevent Kharin from handing over — at almost the same time he wrote the above-mentioned letter — all the material and letters he had (including even the original first issue of our Biulleten) to the authorities. As is completely obvious now, his last letters were dictated with this provocative aim: to get material from the Opposition, hand it over to where it was required, and thus make a little political capital.
Here is no ideologically confused person, empty or backward. No! Here is a miserable self-seeker, changing his standpoint within twenty-four hours for aims which have nothing in common with ideology.