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Special pages :
What About Rakovsky?
| Author(s) | Leon Trotsky |
|---|---|
| Written | 23 March 1933 |
Stalin is still silent. No news from Christian Rakovsky. The embassies keep still. In spite of numerous news items that have appeared in the press, the wreckers of the German revolution refuse to let go of their secret If they have assassinated Rakovsky, they do not dare to say so! If he is still alive, they are afraid to admit it! This alone gives the measure of their panic, their fear of the action of the Bolshevik-Leninists.
Let us speak frankly. By what right do the Stalinists complain that the Hitler embassy refuses to give out word of the fate of Thälmann, when they refuse to say what has happened to Christian Rakovsky? Yes, in the name of what revolutionary conception?
Let us develop our campaign. The centrists will have to answer for their past Raise the question of Rakovsky at every meeting!
Victor Serge has just been arrested in Leningrad. Once again the Stalinist police are acting under cover. It has been impossible for us up to now to obtain definite information of his fate or the reasons for his arrest Back in 1928, Victor Serge was arrested shortly after his expulsion from the party as an Oppositionist He was released after two months, under the pressure of the campaign which was carried on at the time. Again we must rise up, demand an accounting, help our comrades who are struggling in the vanguard against those who are preparing the ruin of the October Revolution.
Ryazanov has just died in deportation at Saratov, where the vengeance of Stalin had exiled him. This Bolshevik, this Marxist scientist, underwent the fate of all intransigent Communists who struggle against the Stalinist bureaucracy. He died at his post as a faithful disciple of Marx and Engels in the service of whose ideas he had spent his life. Stalin did everything to shorten his life, for his purpose remains the same: to destroy the Bolsheviks physically. After trying to defile Ryazanov by implicating him in the "Menshevik trial," Stalin chased him out of the Marx-Engels Institute, which he had entirely organized and created, and banished him under police surveillance. And Ryazanov died in deportation, while Messrs. Ramzin and Co., free, have again become engineers at Magnitogorsk.
Vladimir Smirnov, former leader of the old group of "Decemists," who was close to the Opposition in the years 1926-27, has also just died in exile.
And how many other revolutionary workers, how many of ours, are falling today, when more than ever their firmness and their experience are indispensable to the revolution?
A tenacious and persevering campaign in support of our imprisoned and deported comrades is needed. We are at present considering the formation of a relief committee, about which we shall say more later.