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[The New York Times, July 19, 1931.

Trotsky Reaffirms Loyalty To Soviet

In First Interview in Nearly Two Years He Denies He Was Ever Hostile to Regime.

Analyzes New Policies

Exile at His Home in Turkey -Says Stalin Is Retreating, but Not Turning to Capitalism.

Copyright, 1931, By The Associated Press.

Moda, Turkey, July 18 (AP) - For the first time in nearly two years Leon Trotsky has unlocked the Iron gates of his retreat to admit an interviewer. He received an Associated Press correspondent tn his small wooden villa at Moda, an Asiatic suburb of Istanbul and a favorite Summer resort of the Anglo-American colony.

The house, which the exile rented here after fire destroyed his residence on Prinkipo Island, is a modest, unpainted eight-room structure standing in a neglected garden. High walls and locked barbed wire gates surround it on three sides.

M. Trotsky would scarcely be recognized as the man who slipped out of the Soviet embassy’s semi-prison three years ago. He is ruddier and more agile and his face reflects humor rather than bitterness. The heaviness and sallowness are gone.

Still Shows Power.

The sporting costume he wears, a white shirt open at the neck, white trousers and blue jacket, adds to the atmosphere of vitality about him. His thin, pointed face is sunburned from hours spent fishing on the Sea of Marmara — his one recreation. His bristling hair and pointed beard are almost white. Despite recurrent attacks of malaria, he is a man of such power that the air about him tingles.

M. Trotsky shot out cordial greetings in French with some English “How are you’s” and “All right’s" thrown in. He reads English easily, but prefers not to speak it.

First stipulating that his declarations were to be published word for word or not at all, he attacked .the questions which at his request had been sent in advance.]

You have asked me a number of very complicated questions concerning the internal development of the Soviet Union. To answer these questions seriously and conscientiously it would be necessary to write several articles.

Within the space of an interview it is impossible to give an analysis of the complicated processes which form the contents of the present transitional economic system of the Soviet Union, a system which constitutes a bridge between capitalism and socialism.

You know that ordinarily I avoid interviews, especially because they too easily give rise to misunderstandings even if they are absolutely faithfully transmitted. In fact, this abstention from interviews as shown by my recent experience does not insure one against the most unbelievable misunderstandings and distortions.

In recent weeks a Reuters dispatch from Warsaw went the rounds of the world press, ascribing to me views that are the exact opposite of those I have presented and defended.

After my expulsion from the Soviet Union, the enemies of the Soviet regime, at least the most obdurate and least perspicacious, counted on hostile actions on my part against the regime they hate so much. They miscalculated, and all that remains for them is to take refuge in falsifications which rely on credulity or ill will.

I shall use the opportunity of the questions asked by you to declare again that my attitude toward the Soviet regime has not wavered even one iota since the days when I participated in its creation.

The fight which I carry on, together with my friends and my closest cothinkers within the communist ranks, has to do, not with general questions of socialism, but with the methods to be used in carrying out the tasks posed by the October Revolution.

If the people in Warsaw or Bucharest hope that the internal difficulties in the USSR will drive the tendency represented by me into the camp of the "defeatists" of the Soviet Union, they are in for a bitter disappointment, as are their more powerful inspirers.

At the moment of danger the so-called "Trotskyists" (Left Opposition) will fill the most combative positions, as they did during the October upheaval and during the years of the civil war.

You ask whether the new course proclaimed in the recent speech of Stalin signifies a turning toward the road of capitalism. No. I find no basis for such a conclusion.

We have before us a zigzag along the road from capitalism to socialism. Viewed separately and apart, it is a zigzag of retreat. But the retreat is nevertheless of a tactical nature. The strategic line can remain the same as before. The necessity for the turn, and its sharpness, were brought about by the mistakes of the Stalinist leadership in the previous period.

These mistakes, as well as the inevitability of the turn itself, were pointed out by me dozens of times during the last two years in the Biulleten Oppozitsii, published abroad (Paris-Berlin). Hence this turn was least of all a surprise to the Left Opposition. To speak of a renunciation of socialist aims in referring to this turn is to speak nonsense

The new course of Stalin may, nevertheless, not only encourage some light-minded enemies but also discourage some friends of the Soviet Union who do not think very deeply. The former feared and the latter hoped that over a few years the kulak would disappear, the peasantry would be collectivized completely, and socialism would reign.

The question of the five-year plan took on the inadmissible character of a sweepstakes competition. The Left Opposition emphatically warned against this policy, especially against the premature and precipitate transformation of the five-year plan into a four-year plan.

It goes without saying that it is necessary to do everything for the acceleration of industrialization. But if when put to proof it should be shown that the plan is realizable not in four but in five or even in six or seven years, that too would be a magnificent success. Capitalistic society developed immeasurably more slowly and with a much greater number of zigzags, turnings, and clashes.

It is undeniable that the present zigzag to the right, caused by the previous mistakes of the leadership, signifies an inevitable, temporary strengthening of bourgeois tendencies and forces. However, as long as state ownership of the land and of all the basic means of production is preserved, it does not by any means signify the revival of capitalism, as yet. Such a revival is in general inconceivable without the restoration, by force, of private property in the means of production, which would require the victory of a counterrevolution.

By this I do not mean at all to deny that there are certain political dangers connected with the new turn. The fight against these dangers requires the regeneration of the independent political activity of the masses, suppressed by the bureaucratic regime of Stalin.

It is precisely along these lines that the principal efforts of the Left Opposition are now directed. With the regeneration of the soviets, trade unions, and party, the Left Opposition will naturally and inevitably take its place in the common ranks.

You ask me about my own plans and prospects. I am working now on the second volume of The History of the Russian Revolution. If my political recess continues I want to write a book on the year 1918, which in the Russian Revolution occupied the same place as 1793 in the French Revolution. It was a year of enormous difficulties, dangers, and deprivations, of colossal exertions by the revolutionary masses, the year of the German offensive, the beginning of intervention by the Entente Powers, of domestic plots, uprisings, and terrorist attacks — the year of the creation of the Red Army and of the commencement of the civil war, whose fronts soon encircled the Moscow center in a vise.

In this book I wish, by way of comparison, to make an analysis of the Civil War between the Northern and Southern states in America. I suppose that American readers will be as surprised by the many analogies as I was myself in studying the U. S. Civil War.

It is unnecessary to say that I am following the development of events in Spain with great interest. Minister of Foreign Affairs Lerroux expressed himself to the effect that he saw no reason for refusing me a visa. However, the Provisional Government, headed by Alcalá Zamora, found it more prudent to postpone a decision on the question until the convocation of the Cortes and the formation of the new government.

I shall not fail, naturally, to renew my demand as soon as the government is formed.

[M. Trotsky closed the interview with a sudden smile and an emphatic final nod. As he rose he picked up a book, lying on the table and asked, “Have you read this? No? Take it along. It's an extra copy.”

The interviewer went off with a recent book of Stalin, published in America.

Downstairs, in the cool, quietly furnished rooms of the old Turkish villa, a tanned girl with large spectacles brushed by. It was M. Trotsky's daughter. She suffers from serious throat trouble and will probably have to be sent to Europe for an operation this Winter. That will leave M. Trotsky and his wife, herself in ill health, alone. The son Ivan, who came with them from Russia, is now in Germany and takes care of his father’s publications there.

Through the garden In which strolled a Turkish secret service man, a revolver on his hip, M. Trotsky’s Austrian secretary conducted the correspondent down steep steps to a little wharf and into the same rowboat in which the exile takes his long fishing hours of rest from writing.

Looking back as the boat pulled away, it was hard to realize that such a, quiet crumbling house in such a peaceful garden overlooking a sea of such tranquillity held the man who has played so fiery a part in world history.]