What Is the Immediate Aim of Exiling Trotsky?

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The decision of the Special Council at the GPU to exile Trotsky accuses him of organizing “a counterrevolutionary party,” whose activity has “lately” been directed toward “making preparations for armed struggle against Soviet power.” The word “lately” is intended to indicate some radical change in the Opposition’s policy and at the same time to serve as a justification for more drastic political repression against the Opposition.

Stalin has long been trying to bring “armed insurrection” into the matter. The principled position of the Opposition for radical reform of the party and the revolution was a considerable hindrance to Stalin’s policy. In its struggle against the Stalinist regime, the Opposition more than once predicted that the bureaucratic usurpers would be increasingly compelled, with a view to self-justification, to cite the danger of armed uprising by the Opposition.

The clearest and most cynical disclosure of this perspective was made by Stalin himself at the August plenum of the Central Committee in 1927, when he said to the Opposition, “Do you really not understand that these cadres can be removed only by civil war?” This very apparatus (the “cadres”) openly raised itself above the party, and any struggle for a change in the policy or composition of the apparatus was equated to civil war. The political position of Stalin reduces itself to essentially the same thing; the GPU translates it into the language of repression.

The exile of Trotsky and the possible exile of the better-known Oppositionists has as its immediate aim not only to isolate politically the leadership from the masses of worker Oppositionists, but also to prepare the conditions for new, fiercer repression of the growing Oppositionist ranks. At the Fifteenth Congress the Stalinists proclaimed the complete “liquidation” of the Opposition an accomplished fact, and promised just as complete “monolithism” of the party. But in the past year the Opposition has grown considerably and has become an important political factor in the life of the working masses.

Inevitably, in the course of 1928, the Stalinists had to strengthen the repressive measures which, however, revealed each day their bankruptcy in the struggle for a correct political line. The bare proclamation of the Opposition as a “counterrevolutionary party” is insufficient; no one will take it seriously. The more Oppositionists they expel and exile, the more of them there will be inside the party. At the November (1928) plenum of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party even Stalin recognized this. There remains only one thing for Stalin: to try to draw a line of blood between the official party and the Opposition. He absolutely must connect the Opposition with terrorist crimes, preparation of armed insurrection, etc. But precisely that road is blocked' by the leadership of the Opposition. As has been shown by the shameful incident of the “Wrangel officer” whom Stalin tried to plant on the Opposition in the autumn of 1927, it was sufficient for a member of the Opposition to make a statement for Stalin’s trick to rebound on his own head.

But the main thing, the physical liquidation of the old revolutionaries, known to the whole world, would have presented political difficulties in itself.

Hence Stalin’s plan: to introduce an accusation of “making preparations for armed struggle” as a precondition for a new wave of repression; on this pretext to hastily exile the Opposition and thereby free his own hands for criminal work against the young and rank-and-file Oppositionists whose names are not yet known to the masses, especially abroad. This is the kind of matter — the only kind — that Stalin thinks through to the end.

That is why after the exile of the leaders of the Opposition we must expect with certainty an attempt by the Stalin clique in one way or another to provoke one or another so-called oppositional group to an adventure, and in case of failure — to fabricate and plant on the Opposition a “terrorist act” or a “military plot.” One such attempt was already made in recent weeks, constructed according to all the rules of Bonapartist provocation. When circumstances permit, we shall publish this unsuccessful attempt at provocation in all its details. For the moment, it is sufficient to say that it is certainly not the last. There will be another. In this field Stalin will follow his plans to the end. And nothing else is left for him.

Such is the situation at this time. The impotent policy of turns and somersaults, the growing economic difficulties, the growth of distrust in the party for the leadership, have made it necessary for Stalin to stifle the party with a large-scale show. He needs a blow, a shake-up, a catastrophe.

To say all this aloud already means hindering the Stalinist plan to some extent. The defense of the Communist Party Opposition from Stalin’s frauds and “amalgams” is the defense of the October Revolution and the Comintern from the destructive methods of Stalinism. This is now the first duty of every genuine communist and revolutionary.

The path of the Bonapartist usurpers must be blocked. Their methods must be unmasked, their next steps must be prevented. A campaign of disclosure must be opened before the international working masses. The struggle of the Opposition here coincides with the struggle for the October Revolution.