To Friendly, Sympathetic, Vacillating, Skeptical, and Antagonistic Readers

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The life of our Biulleten is linked inseparably with the processes unfolding in the USSR. The Biulleten gets into the land of the Soviets in modest numbers. But the entire history of revolutionary struggle is proof that ideas, if they correspond to the objective trend of development, find their way through the narrowest openings. In the Soviet press, published in millions of copies, we come across at every step — distorted and refracted — reflections of the criticisms, advice, and warnings which have appeared in the columns of our Biulleten. The truly incredible fact that Pravda basely reprinted from a lying, indecent, reactionary Polish newspaper a forgery alleged to be an article by Trotsky becomes the most convincing illustration that the ideas of the Opposition, corroborated at every step by the objective trend of development, increasingly alarm the ruling Stalinist group and oblige it to use any means in order to compromise the Biulleten and the editorial board. In vain!

In the past year we have learned from different sources that a great impression was created by the fact that the much-talked-about Stalin letter on "Dizzy with Success" turned out to be only a belated bureaucratic rehash of the timely warnings of the Biulleten Oppozitsii.

It is true that after that in the troubled circles of the party and especially of the apparatus a temporary period of noticeable calm set in. Moderation of administration excesses in the sphere of collectivization promised to improve the mutual relations with the peasantry. At the same time, industry continued to show record figures — at least to the extent that the facts of the arrears, gaps, and holdups had for a certain time been ignored or played down and concealed. These conditions aroused a flow of sympathy toward the Biulleten.

Yes, you were right, said to us the half-friends, the semi-vacillators, the very ones who were neither cold nor hot, like the angel of the Laodicean Church — but the necessary corrections are already included in the official policy, the five-year plan is going ahead at full speed, and consequently there is no place for an opposition.

Certainly, added others, the question of the party regime still remains. Here the Biulleten is absolutely correct: the regime is unbearable. But let us get firmly established on a sounder economic basis, then a sounder superstructure will develop!

It has long been known that philistine subservience is much inclined to don the colors of Marxist objectivity.

But the vacillations of half-friends did not inspire us. The direction of our policy is determined neither by isolated episodes in the economic process nor by the particular ebb and flow of successes and failures, nor by the bureaucratic zigzags of the present leadership, but only by Marxist analyses of all the circumstances and resources of a transitional society in capitalist encirclement, and by consistent Bolshevik evaluation of the theory and practice of bureaucratic centrism. Our policy is a long-term policy. We serve the cause of the October Revolution and the international proletariat under special conditions — not only banishment of individuals and imprisonment of friends and cothinkers (we experienced these in the past more than once) but even internationally organized persecution into which the gigantic forces and resources of the Stalinist apparatus have been poured. We serve the cause of the October Revolution under unprecedented, difficult historical conditions; but we are as confident today in the correctness of our ideas and in their power to conquer as we were on October 25, 1917.

Our policy is a long-term policy. This gives us the possibility to reveal, behind the conjunctural changes, behind particular shifts and regroupments, behind bureaucratic turmoil, the fundamental motive forces, to foresee the approaching dangers in time and to raise a warning voice.

Stalin's June speech produced, from all accounts, an enormous impression in the party and especially in the apparatus. Nine-tenths, if not more, turn out to be not only the agents of Stalinist policy but also its victims. With the stifling of the party, the apparatchiks are themselves deprived of the possibility of knowing the truth. They interpret as completed what are disconnected fragments and nothing remains for them but to accept on trust the brief formulas and generalizations emanating from above. Stalin's speech burst on them not like thunder from a clear sky but like the boom of an unexpected earthquake At first, they thought in all lucidity that the bureaucratic acts of violence to the economy and the additional bureaucratic acts of violence to the party not only did not guarantee future automatic successes but threatened to blow up also what had been achieved.

From the bits of facts and thoughts which Stalin could not help but give in his June speech even the most conservative and least sensitive of the apparatchiks felt how great the dangers approaching were and — they greedily looked again in the pages of the Biulleten for answers to the disquieting questions.

The working masses in the USSR, including the party workers, experience for themselves in daily life the contradictions, miscalculations, and flounderings of the leadership. The masses are capable of enormous sacrifices if they assimilate the objective conditions and if they understand the place hardship takes in the general struggle for lofty goals. But woe to the leadership which flatters the masses with false perspectives, which sows illusions in order to strike more harshly afterwards at the consciousness of the masses with compulsory, self-revealing, and weak admissions. Stalinism has become a double danger: devoid of a Marxist understanding of the economic processes, it continually leads the economy now into a "right" now into a "left" impasse, and at the same time, by not allowing the party to educate its members and raise their consciousness, makes it susceptible to suggestions of panic and prepares the way for a grave crisis of confidence.

Under these conditions, the voice of the Left Opposition must ring out louder than ever before Our programmatic and strategic positions have been tested in the course of the last eight years by events of gigantic historical significance Today in Spain, the Stalinist bureaucracy is forced at every step to have recourse to parasitical borrowings from the Left Opposition in order to find a way out from centrism, which has no way out. In Germany, where one of the most important knots in the struggle of world historical forces is being tied, the Stalinist presidium of the Comintern, that organizer of great defeats, at every step pushes the proletarian vanguard off course, helping the German social democracy, the most crime-stained section of the Second International.

The great world events of today are inseparably linked with those taking place in the USSR — not only on account of the general indissoluble interdependence of world economy and world politics but also on account of the fact that the errors in Spain, Germany, and the USSR come from the one organizational center and feed on one and the same ideological, unprincipled, shortsighted "coarse and disloyal" Stalinism.

Our Biulleten is needed today for the cause of the October Revolution and world communism more than ever before We think we have the right to expect not only from our Mends but also from readers in all the categories listed above even from antagonistic readers (certainly not from class enemies), closer attention and more positive ideological help.

In recent times, people have written to us from different places, both from the USSR and from abroad, that for many sympathizers fear of exposure holds up active forms of help. Agents specializing in the struggle against the Biulleten spread rumors that we print "all" the news that comes to us, regardless of the danger in which we involve the comrades by this presentation. There is no need to say how false and ludicrous are these allegations. Nobody has yet suffered on account of carelessness or rashness on the part of the editorial board of the Biulleten or its business office Our friends and correspondents can rely completely on our experience and on our prudence. It is necessary only to tell oneself that the Biulleten must not only exist but it must appear more often than before, in a greater number of copies, and reach more readers in the Soviet Union. Whoever wishes to be taken for a genuine, that is, to be relied on as a confirmed revolutionist will take the road to us. We, on our side, are doing everything to organize connections correctly and reliably.

We need information. From the letters sent to us we use only what can be published without danger to our correspondents and, it goes without saying, without harm to the cause we serve. We need correspondents. We need the criticisms of friendly antagonists and semi-antagonists

We need personal organizational connections. We need subscribers. We need addresses in the USSR Finally, we need money — for money is still the "sinews" not only of war but also of political struggle.

We call for help; we await the response!