Speech at the Joint CC Plenum

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The Fear of Our Platform

Trotsky: My motion to consider separately the question of the Wrangel officer and the military conspiracy has been voted down.

Skvortsov-Stepanov: Again! Shame!

Trotsky: I raised the fundamental question why, how, and by whom the party was deceived when it was told that Communists of the Opposition participated in a counterrevolutionary organization. In order to show once more what you mean by a discussion, you decreed that my short speech on the purported Wrangel officer should be expunged from the record — that is, hidden from the party. Bukharin has presented us here with the philosophy of a Thermidorian amalgam on the basis of these documents of the GPU, which have nothing whatever to do either with the print shop or with the Opposition.

Skrypnik: And now, Shcherbakov. Not bad!

Trotsky: What we need is not Bukharin’s cheap philosophy…

Unshlicht: But Trotsky’s philosophy!

Trotsky: … but facts. There are no facts.

Skrypnik: And Shcherbakov?

Trotsky: Therefore the insertion of this whole question into the discussion about the Opposition was a trick. Rudeness and disloyalty have grown to the dimensions of criminal betrayal. All the documents read by Menzhinsky speak unequivocally against the present political course — it is only necessary to illumine them with a Marxian analysis. But I have no time for that. I can only raise the fundamental question: How and why the present ruling faction [Interruptions.] … found it necessary to deceive the party, passing off an agent of the GPU for a Wrangel officer and disclosing these fragments of an unfinished investigation, in order to alarm the party with a false communication about the participation of Oppositionists in a counterrevolutionary organization. Where does this come from? Where does it lead? Only that question has political meaning. The rest is of second- and even tenth-rate importance.

Chubar: Of first-rate importance is the duplicating machine.

Trotsky: First, however, two words on so-called “Trotskyism.” Every opportunist is hying to cover his nakedness with that word. The falsification factory is working night and day on three shifts to manufacture “Trotskyism.” I wrote a letter on this theme not long ago to the Bureau of PartyHistory, containing about fifty quotations and documents convicting the present ruling theoretical and historical school of fabrications, distortions, hiding of facts and documents, perversions of Lenin — all for the purpose of the so-called struggle against “Trotskyism.” I demanded that my letter be sent to members of the joint plenum. This was not done, although the letter consists almost entirely of documents and citations. I will send it to the Discussion Bulletin of Pravda. I think they too will hide it from the party, for the facts and documents I cite are too deadly to the Stalin school.

In our July declaration of last year, we predicted with complete accuracy all the stages through which the destruction of the Leninist leadership of the party would go, and its temporary replacement by a Stalinist leadership.

Skrypnik: In other words, you made plans for your leadership?

Trotsky: I say temporary replacement, because the more “victories” the present ruling group wins, the weaker it will be. We can now supplement our July prediction of last year with the following conclusion: the present organizational victory of Stalin precedes his political shipwreck. It is absolutely unavoidable, …

Chubar: That’s straight from Sotsialistichesky Vestnik.

Trotsky:… and — given the Stalin regime — will begin at once. The basic task of the Opposition will be to see that the consequences of the ruinous policies of the present leadership bring as little loss as possible to the party and its links with the masses.

You want to expel us from the Central Committee. We recognize that this step is in full accord with the present policy at the present stage of its development, or, rather, of its degeneration. This ruling faction, which is expelling from the party hundreds and thousands of its best members, its unwavering worker-Bolsheviks — this bureaucratic clique which dares to expel such Bolsheviks as Mrachkovsky, Serebryakov, Preobrazhensky, Sharov, Sarkis, and Vujović, comrades who could alone create a party Secretariat infinitely more authoritative, abler, infinitely more Leninist … [Uproar in the hall.]

Voroshilov: That’s the Secretariat, your party.

Petrovsky: A Menshevik speech!

Trotsky: … than our present Secretariat [Uproar.] — this Stalin-Bukharin clique, which has locked up in the inner prison of the GPU devoted and admirable men like Nechaev, Shtikhgold, Vasilev, Shmidt, Fishelev, and many other — this group of officials, holding its place on top of the party by violence, by strangulation of the party’s thought, by disorganization of the proletarian vanguard not only in the USSR but throughout the world — this thoroughly opportunistic faction, at whose tail are marching in recent years the Jiǎng Jièshís, the Féng Yùxiángs, the Wāng Jīngwèis, the Purcells, Hicks, Ben Tilletts, Kuusinens, Šmerals [Uproar.], Peppers, Heinz Neumanns, Rafeses, Martynovs, Kondratievs, and Ustryalovs …

Petrovsky: A disgusting speech, a Menshevik speech — it’s truly horrible!

Skrypnik: What infamies you are speaking, Trotsky!

Voroshilov: That is the amalgam.

Trotsky: — this faction cannot endure our presence in the Central Committee even one month before the party congress. We understand this.

Rudeness and disloyalty go hand in hand with cowardice. You have hidden our Platform — or, rather, you have tried to hide it. [Uproar.]

Babushkin: It’s you that should be hidden.

Skrypnik: What good does it do to listen to him? It’s just one long insult to the CC!

Goloshchekin: He’s having a good time!

Trotsky: [His words are lost in the uproar and among the shouts of protest.] What does fear of a platform mean? Everybody knows: fear of a platform is fear of the masses.

We announced to you on September 8 that in spite of all decrees to the contrary, we would bring our Platform to the attention of the party. We have undertaken this, and we will carry the work through to the end. Comrades Mrachkovsky, Fishelev, and all the others who printed and distributed our Platform, have acted and are acting in full solidarity with us. As Oppositional members of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission, we take full responsibility, both political and organizational, for their acts. [Uproar.]

Lomov: And Shcherbakov, is he also in solidarity with you?

Trotsky: The rudeness and disloyalty of which Lenin wrote are no longer mere personal characteristics. They have become the character of the ruling faction, both of its political policy and of its organizational regime. It is no longer a question of external manners. The fundamental character of our present leadership is its belief in the omnipotence of methods of violence — even in dealing with its own party. [Uproar.]

Babushkin: He reads Sotsialistichesky Vestnik. A petty bourgeois in the proletarian state!

Skrypnik: Another article from Sotsialistichesky Vestnik!

Trotsky: [Exclamations: Menshevik!] From the October Revolution our party inherited a mighty apparatus of compulsion, without which the dictatorship of the proletariat is unthinkable. The focal point of this dictatorship is the Central Committee of our party. [Uproar.] In Lenin’s time — with a Leninist Central Committee — the organizational apparatus of the party was subordinate to a revolutionary class policy on an international scale. It is true that Stalin inspired Lenin with apprehension from the very day of his election as general secretary. “This cook will serve only spicy dishes” — thus Lenin spoke to his close comrades at the time of the Eleventh Congress. [Uproar. Exclamations: Menshevik! That’s enough!] But with Lenin’s leadership, with a Leninist staff in the Politburo, the General Secretariat played a completely subordinate role. [Uproar.] The situation began to change from the hour that Lenin fell sick. The selection of personnel through the Secretariat, the grouping of Stalinists in official positions, became an independent operation entirely unrelated to our political policy. That is why Lenin, weighing the prospect of his departure, gave the party his last counsel: Remove Stalin, who may carry the party to a split and to ruin. [Uproar.]

Skvortsov-Stepanov: An old slander!

Talberg: What a gossip; what a scandal-monger! [Exclamations: Shame!] And you have a correct political line, I suppose?

Skrypnik: Until his fall! What nerve!

Petrovsky: [Exclamations: It’s a lie!] You are a contemptible Menshevik!

Kalinin: Petty-bourgeois radical!

Trotsky: [His words are drowned out by the noise and shouting. A voice: Martov/] The party did not know about this counsel in time. A selected apparatus concealed his letter. We can all now see the full consequences. [Uproar.] The ruling faction thinks that with the help of violence it can accomplish everything.

A voice: It’s from Sotsialistichesky Vestnik.

Trotsky: That is a profound error. Violence can play an enormous revolutionary role, but only under one condition — that it is subordinated to a true class policy. [Uproar.} The violence of the Bolsheviks against the bourgeoisie, against the Mensheviks, against the Social Revolutionaries, employed under definite historical conditions, gave gigantic results. The violence of Kerensky and Tsereteli against the Bolsheviks only hastened the defeat of the compromisers’ regime. By banishing, and arresting, and depriving of employment, the ruling faction is employing both knife and bribe against its own party. [Uproar.}

Kris: Get down! What nerve! Menshevik! Traitor! We don’t have to listen to this! What a slander against the Central Committee!

Trotsky: The worker-member is afraid to say what he thinks in his own cell. He is afraid to vote according to his conscience. A dictatorship of the apparatus [Uproar.] is terrorizing our party, which is supposed to be the highest expression of the proletarian dictatorship. In terrorizing the party, the ruling faction …

Kris: Get down! Liar!

Lomov: Very cunning, but empty of substance. [Uproar.]

Trotsky: … is diminishing its ability to hold in fear the enemies of the proletariat.

But an organizational regime does not live an independent life. In the party regime, the whole political line of the party leadership finds its expression. This political line has swerved of late years — its class core and momentum have swerved from left to right, from the proletarian to the petty bourgeois, from the worker to the specialist, from the rank-and-file party member to the functionary, from the farmhand and the poor peasant to the kulak, from the Shanghai worker to Jiǎng Jièshí, from the Chinese peasant to the bourgeois generals, from the English proletarian to Purcell, Hicks, and the General Council, etc. In that lies the essence of Stalinism.

Voroshilov: They say it better in Rul, old man.

Trotsky: At first glance it seems as if the Stalin course were completely victorious. The Stalin faction seems to deal its blows to the left (in Moscow and Leningrad) and to the right (in the Northern Caucasus). But in reality the whole policy of this centrist faction is itself going forward under the blows of two whips — one from the right and one from the left. [Uproar.] This bureaucratic centrist faction, lacking all class basis, staggers between two class lines, … [A voice: Liar! Get down!} … systematically sliding away from the proletarian to the petty-bourgeois course. It does not slide away in a direct line, but in sharp zigzags.

Skrypnik: Menshevik! [Uproar.]

Trotsky:… We have had plenty of these zigzags in the past. Especially sharp and memorable was the broadening of electoral rights under pressure from the kulak (a blow of the whip from the right) [Uproar.} and then the annulment of these instructions under pressure from the Opposition (a blow from the left). [Uproar.} We have had plenty of these zigzags in the sphere of labor legislation, wage policy, tax policy, policy toward the private capitalist, etc., etc. But the general course has been steadily shifting to the right. The recent manifesto is an unquestionable zigzag to the left. But we are not going to shut our eyes for one minute to the fact that this is only a zigzag …

Yaroslavsky: And a funeral mass for the peace of Trotsky’s soul!

A voice: A funeral dirge!

Trotsky: … which does not in the least change the general course of the policy, and that it will, as a matter of fact — and in the very near future — hasten the drift of the ruling center toward the right.

A voice: Scoundrel! Menshevik! [Uproar.]

Trotsky: Today’s shouting about “forced pressure" on the kulak — that same kulak to whom yesterday they were shouting “Enrich yourselves!” — cannot change the general line. Anniversary celebration surprises, such as a seven-hour workday, cannot change it either. [Shouts, whistling.] The political line of the present leadership is not defined by these individual adventuristic gestures …

Chubar: There could be no greater adventurism than yours.

Skrypnik: Menshevik! Get out of the party!

Trotsky: … but by the social support which this leadership has gathered around itself in its struggle against the Opposition. Through the Stalin apparatus, through the Stalinist regime, the forces that are pressing down on the proletarian vanguard … [The noise grows louder, until Trotsky's words are barely audible.] … are the bureaucrat, including the workers’ bureaucrat, … [Louder shouting and whistling.]… the industrial manager, the small proprietor, the new private capitalist, the privileged intelligentsia of the town and countryside …

Voroshilov: Zinoviev, listen to this disgrace!

Skrypnik: The CC podium is not the place for these abominations!

Skvortsov-Stepanov: It’s Dan, making the rounds!

Trotsky: — all these elements who are beginning to point out the kulak to the worker and say, “Remember, this is not 1918!”

It is not the left gesture that is decisive, but the fundamental political course. The selection of your supporters is decisive. The personnel is decisive. Where your social support comes from is decisive. You cannot strangle the workers’ cells and at the same time attack the kulak. The two things are incompatible. [Uproar, renewed whistling. Voices: Gravedigger of the revolution! Shame! Get down, scum! Down with the renegade!]

Trotsky: Your left anniversary zigzag, as soon as it begins to be carried out, will run into violent opposition in the ranks of your own majority. Today, “Enrich yourselves!” and tomorrow, “Down with the kulak!” …

Voroshilov: That’s enough! Shame!

[Renewed whistling. Tumultuous noise. Nothing can be heard. The chairman rings for order. Voices cry: “Get down from the podium!” The chairman adjourns the meeting. Comrade Trotsky continues reading, but not a single word can be understood. The members of the plenum leave their places and begin to disperse.]

Trotsky: That is easy for Bukharin. He chooses with his pen, and is ready. He has nothing to lose. But the kulak, the manager, the powerful bureaucrat, the specialist — they see it differently. These people have no taste for sudden jumps at anniversaries. They will have their say.

Comrade Tomsky, who is caught in a worse situation than anybody else, rose in opposition to the present anniversary zigzag. Tomsky has a foreboding of what the workers will ask in the trade unions. He will be the one who has to answer. Tomorrow the workers are going to demand from Tomsky that he at least really stop the drift to the right, seeing that the manifesto announces a course to the left. This will make a struggle within the ruling bloc inevitable. In the right wing of our party there is a small proprietors’ tendency and a trade unionist tendency. They work together for a time, as has often happened in the history of the workers’ movement. But this anniversary zigzag to the left is driving a wedge between the small proprietors and the trade unionists. The professional bureaucrat, balancing between them, will lose his support.

This anniversary zigzag is, on the one hand, a most undeniable and solemn recognition of the correctness of the Opposition’s views on all the fundamental problems of our life, both in the city and in the countryside. On the other hand, it is a political self-disavowal on the part of the ruling faction, a confession of its own bankruptcy. It is a confession in words from those impotent to show anything in deeds. This anniversary zigzag will not retard but hasten the political bankruptcy of the present course.

The party regime flows inevitably from the whole policy of the leadership. Behind the backs of the apparatus extremists stands the reawakening domestic bourgeoisie. Behind its back, the world bourgeoisie. All these forces press down on the proletarian vanguard, preventing it from lifting its head or opening its mouth. The more the policy of the Central Committee departs from the proletarian class line, the more necessary it becomes to force that policy upon the proletarian vanguard by methods of compulsion from above. That is the root cause of the present intolerable regime in the party.

When Martynov, Šmeral, Rafes, and Pepper play the lead in the Chinese revolution, and Mrachkovsky, Serebryakov, Preobrazhensky, Sharov, and Sarkis are expelled from the party for printing and distributing a Bolshevik platform for the coming congress, these facts are not of a mere inner-party character. By no means. These facts are the expression of a changing relative influence of classes.

The domestic bourgeoisie brings its pressure to bear, of course, less impudently than the world bourgeoisie against the dictatorship of the proletariat and its proletarian vanguard. But these two pressures are closely united and are simultaneously brought to bear. Those elements of the working class and our party who first felt this advancing danger and first spoke of it — that is, the most revolutionary, most steadfast, most farsighted, most uncompromising representatives of the working class struggle — those elements now constitute the ranks of the Opposition. These ranks are growing both within our party and throughout the International.

Facts and events of enormous weight are confirming the position we took. Your repressions are strengthening our ranks, gathering to us the best of the party’s “older generation,” tempering the youth, and grouping around the Opposition the genuine Bolsheviks among the new generation. The Oppositionists you have expelled from the party are the best members of the party. Those who are expelling and arresting them — although still unconscious of it and uncomprehending — are the instruments through which other classes are pressing back the proletariat. In trying to tramp our Platform into the mud, the ruling faction is fulfilling the social command of Ustryalov — of the reviving petty and middle bourgeoisie. In contrast to the politicians of the dying, old, emigrant bourgeoisie, Ustryalov, the clever, far-seeing politician of the new bourgeoisie, does not aspire to counterrevolution or to any disturbance. He does not want to “jump over stages.” The present stage for Ustryalov is the Stalin course. Ustryalov is openly placing his bets on Stalin. Ustryalov is demanding that Stalin put the Opposition out of the way. In expelling and arresting the Oppositionists, in advancing against us this perfectly Thermidorian accusation in regard to a Wrangel officer and a military conspiracy, Stalin is executing the social orders of Ustryalov.

The immediate task that Stalin has set for himself is to split the party, to cut off the Opposition, to accustom the party to the method of physical destruction. Fascist gangs of whistlers, physical violence, throwing of books and stones, the prison bars — here for a moment file Stalin regime has paused in its course. But the road is predestined. Why should the Yaroslavskys, Shverniks, Goloshchekins, and others argue with the Opposition about government statistics, when they can let fly a heavy volume of those statistics at the head of an Oppositionist? Stalinism finds in this act its most unrestrained expression, going to the point of open gutter violence. And we repeat: These fascist methods are nothing but a blind and unconscious fulfillment of the social commands of other classes. The goal: to cut off the Opposition and physically destroy it.

Voices are already to be heard: “We will expel a thousand, and shoot a hundred, and have peace in the party.” These are the voices of pitiable, frightened, and also rabid blind men. This is the voice of Thermidor. The worst elements, perverted with power, blinded with bureaucratic hatred, are preparing for the Thermidor with all their might. For this, they need two parties. But their violence will break to pieces against a correct political course. In devotion to that course the revolutionary courage of the Opposition ranks is standing firm. Stalin will not create two parties. We openly say to the party: The dictatorship of the proletariat is in danger! And we firmly believe that the party, its proletarian nucleus, will hear, will understand, will meet this danger. The party is already deeply stirred. Tomorrow it will be stirred to the bottom.

Behind the few thousand members in the actual ranks of the Opposition come a second and a third layer of those who are loyal to the Opposition, and behind them a still broader layer of worker-members who have already begun to listen attentively to our voice and are moving to our side. This process cannot be turned back. The non-party workers have not believed your lies and slanders against us. Their legitimate dissatisfaction at the growth of bureaucratism and repression was clearly expressed by the working class of Leningrad in its demonstration of October 17. The proletariat is for Soviet power, unwaveringly, but it wants a different policy. All these processes are irresistible. The apparatus is powerless against them. The more brutal your repressions become, the stronger will be the authority of the Opposition in the eyes of the rank-and-file party member and the working class in general. For every hundred Oppositionists expelled from the party, a thousand new Oppositionists will spring up within the party. The expelled Oppositionist feels himself a party member and remains one. You can tear the party card by violence out of the hands of the real Bolshevik-Leninist. You can deprive him for a time of his party rights. But he will never renounce his duties to the party. When Yanson asked Comrade Mrachkovsky, at the session of the Central Control Commission, what he would do when he was expelled from the party, Comrade Mrachkovsky answered, “I will pick up the pieces and carry on,”

Every Oppositionist will say the same thing. No matter where he is expelled from, the Executive Committee of the Comintern, the Central Committee of the party, or the party. Every one of us is saying with Mrachkovsky, “ I will pick up the pieces and carry on.”

We stand at the helm of Bolshevism. You will not tear it away from us. We are going to hold it true. You will not cut us off from the party. You will not cut us off from the working class. We are familiar with repressions. We are accustomed to blows. We will not surrender the October Revolution to the politics of Stalin — the entire essence of which is contained in these few words: Repression of the proletarian nucleus, fraternization with the compromisers of all countries, capitulation before the world bourgeoisie.

You expel us from the Central Committee one month before the party congress, which you have already converted into a narrow meeting of the Stalin faction! The Fifteenth Congress will appear to be the supreme triumph of your bureaucratic mechanics. In reality it will be the sign of your complete political shipwreck. The victories of the Stalin faction are the victories of alien class forces over the proletarian vanguard. The defeats of the party led by Stalin are defeats of the proletarian dictatorship. The party already feels this. We will help it to understand. The Platform of the Opposition is before the party. After the Fifteenth Congress the Opposition will become immeasurably stronger within the party than it is now. The calendar of the working class and the calendar of the party do not agree with Stalin’s bureaucratic calendar. The proletariat thinks slowly, but surely. Our Platform will hasten this process. What is decisive in the last analysis is the political line, and not the bureaucrat’s fist.

The Opposition is unconquerable. Expel us today from the Central Committee, as yesterday you expelled Serebryakov and Preobrazhensky from the party, as you arrested Fishelev and others. Our Platform will find its way. The workers of the whole world are already asking themselves in deep alarm: “For what reason, on the tenth anniversary of October, are they expelling and arresting the best fighters of the October Revolution? Whose hand is here? The hand of what class? The class that conquered in October? Or the class that is edging out and undermining the victory of October?"

Even the most backward workers of all countries, aroused by your repressions, will take our Platform in their hands, in order to test the truth of your vile slander about the Wrangel officer and the military conspiracy. Your persecutions, expulsions, arrests, will make our Platform the most popular and the most cherished document of the international workers’ movement. Expel us. You will not stop the victory of the Opposition — the victory of the revolutionary unity of our party and the Communist International!