Trotsky Read online

  As for Trotsky’s contributions to the paper, Plekhanov often complained that they were lightweight, high-flown and florid, and that they lowered the theoretical and political tone. This criticism was justified, as Trotsky often resorted to aphorism, quotation and eloquence as a substitute for depth. Although he was less outspoken on the subject than Plekhanov, Lenin took a similar view. Trotsky never learned to accept criticism coolly, but it is possible that he learned from these early lessons to moderate his style. Yet he was unable to establish good relations with Plekhanov. In 1917 Plekhanov referred, in private, to Trotsky as ‘the revolution’s lover’, a sarcastic quip to which Trotsky would reply in good measure. When Plekhanov died in June 1918, Trotsky said in a speech: ‘There can be no greater tragedy for a political leader who has spent decades saying that the Russian revolution can develop and come to victory only as a revolution of the working class, than to refuse to take part in the working-class movement at the very moment of its victory.’33

  Having brought Trotsky into the paper, Lenin soon advised him not to limit himself to journalism, but also to use his talents as an orator. Apart from the many Russian émigrés, there were Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans and Swiss who were interested in Marxism, the situation in Russia and the prospects for socialism, and Trotsky duly began giving speeches and lectures in London, Brussels, Paris and Zurich. The constant contact with well-known revolutionary figures quickly broadened the young man’s horizons, but it also strengthened his belief that his abilities were a special gift, that he was exceptional. Trotsky wanted this be recognized by others, and would indulge in theatrical gestures and extravagant turns of phrase in order to achieve an effect.

  Trotsky always knew he was going to leave his mark on history, and early on he began meticulously saving his papers. The archives contain rough drafts of speeches and articles, marginal notes on newspapers and calendars, and a large collection of newspaper cuttings in which his name was mentioned. He was right to think he would become famous: that, after all, was his aim. This does not diminish him as a revolutionary, but it does suggest that for him the revolution was a vehicle of self-expression. Ego meant more to him than to many other leaders, apart from Stalin, who wore the cloak of modesty while he was eaten up with the hunger for power and glory. Trotsky was essentially different from Stalin in that from an early age he strove for intellectual greatness. Power and glory were not his passion, as they were Stalin’s, but the inevitable attributes of intellectual superiority. Intellectual recognition was for Trotsky immeasurably more important than official posts or political status.

  The London period of Trotsky’s emigration lasted only a few months, and ended in the summer of 1903. It was marked by visits to other countries and cities. The great public interest in enigmatic Russia, the attention Trotsky attracted to himself, the opportunity to mix with the legends of the European labour movement, and the realization that Russian social democrats could hold their own, intellectually, culturally and in the boldness of their plans, were exciting discoveries. Living in Paris from 1903, he immersed himself in French life, and felt the pulse of a different parliamentary culture from that of England. At the same time, he never failed to stress the backwardness of Russia. The admiration Trotsky expressed for Western culture and the achievements of bourgeois democracy led him in due course to argue that the victory of socialism in Russia was critically dependent on the forces of revolution in the West.

  Trotsky’s correspondence with Alexandra, still languishing in Siberia with their two infant daughters, very quickly diminished. His first wife had lost her attraction, and he had not given himself time to experience the joy and pain and cares of fatherhood. His little family had, in his word, receded into the ‘irretrievable’. When his parents came to Paris in 1903, hoping to make peace with their son, and his mother tried to remind him of his duty to his wife and children, he gently asked her not to discuss the matter again. His father was secretly delighted, for he had always been convinced that Alexandra had led his son astray. As for his mother, she was happy to see all the newspaper cuttings about the son she so admired. She read the headlines about him aloud, while old David listened approvingly. When they left for home, they gave him money and also promised to take care of Alexandra and the two girls. It offended their Jewish sensibilities to leave the family of their own son penniless.

  Trotsky’s enemies, beginning with the proto-fascist groups known generally as the Black Hundreds and continuing with the anti-Semites in Russia today, have always stressed his Jewish origins, sometimes even connecting his actions with the ‘Zionist conspiracy’, ‘Jewish intrigues’, Freemasons and so on. In fact he was never a Zionist. He was a leader who happened to be a Jew, and for some that has always aroused suspicion. There were occasions when he suffered from his Jewish background. He declined Lenin’s offer of the job of Interior Commissar in the first Bolshevik government, declaring that ‘people wouldn’t understand the appointment of a Jew to that position’. He no doubt had in mind the prejudices surviving in the public mind that associated this post with the tsar’s penal system. Genrikh Yagoda would have no such qualms when Stalin offered him the job. Trotsky never forgot he was a Jew, chiefly because his enemies constantly reminded him. He was, however, never a nationalist, a Zionist, or a racist. His was unequivocally an internationalist outlook.*

  In February 1932 he wrote to one of his followers, Kling:

  You ask me what my attitude is to the Jewish language? My reply is, the same as to any language. If in my autobiography I really used the word ‘jargon’, it is only because in my childhood the Jewish language was not called ‘Yiddish’, as it is now, but ‘jargon’, at least, that’s what the Jews in Odessa called it, and nothing derogatory was intended. You say [that in my book I write] ‘I’m called an assimilationist’? I really don’t know what to make of this word. Of course, I am opposed to Zionism and any other form of self-isolation by the Jewish workers …34

  In May 1932, Jewish-American workers wrote to Trotsky on the Turkish island of Prinkipo, informing him that they had just founded a Jewish newspaper. He replied: ‘The existence of an independent Jewish publication must serve not to isolate the Jewish workers, but on the contrary must make them accessible to ideas which will unite all workers into one revolutionary family.’35

  In 1919, when he was Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Committee and War Commissar, he received a letter from Murom in Vladimir Province, from a Korean Communist called Nigay, who wrote that dark rumours were circulating in Russia to the effect that ‘the motherland has been conquered by Yid commissars. All the country’s disasters are being blamed on the Jews. They’re saying the Communist regime is being supported by Jewish brains, Latvian rifles and Russian idiots.’ To save the country from destruction and betrayal, Nigay advised Trotsky ‘to create a mighty Jewish army and to arm it to the teeth … The Jews are no worse than Tatars or Latvians, and they’ve got their own regiments.’36 In reply, Trotsky asked his assistant Butov to send Nigay some of his articles on the internationalist character of the Russian revolution.

  Trotsky was aware of anti-Semitic prejudice when he was at the peak of his power, but when his position became shaky he felt it all the more, as a letter he wrote to Bukharin on 3 March 1926 shows:

  I am writing this letter by hand (although I have lost the habit), because I’m ashamed to dictate what I have to say to my stenographer … The secretary of the cell (of whom I told you) writes [that they’re saying], ‘The Yids in the Politburo are kicking up a fuss.’ And yet again no one has reported it to anyone, and for the same standard reason: he would be kicked out of the factory. The author of the letter is a Jewish worker. He also decided not to report those who are saying ‘The Yids are agitating against Leninism.’ His reasoning: ‘If others, non-Jews, are keeping quiet, it’s awkward for me …’ In other words, members of the Communist Party are afraid to report to the Party organs about Black Hundreds-style agitation, because they’re afraid they, not the Black Hund
reds, will be sacked … You’ll say I’m exaggerating! How I wish I were. Anyway, let’s go to the cell ourselves and check it out …37

  Bukharin was at the time an ally of Stalin’s, however, and would go nowhere with Trotsky.

  In a letter written when he was in exile on Prinkipo, Trotsky replied to a question about the creation of the Jewish autonomous region in Birobidzhan: ‘The Jewish question has become a component part of the world proletarian revolution. As for Birobidzhan, its future is tied to that of the Soviet Union. The Jewish question, as a result of the whole of Jewish history, is international … The fate of the Jewish people can be determined only by the complete and final victory of the proletariat.’38 However erroneous and naive his reliance on class struggle and revolution to solve the ‘Jewish question’, this is convincing evidence of Trotsky’s deep and lasting hostility to Zionism. In all his wanderings, he remained above anti-Semitic attacks on himself.

  Among the émigrés in Paris in the early years of the century was a young, clever, attractive (and married) woman called Natalya Sedova. The daughter of rich parents, she had been expelled from her ladies’ college in Kharkov for free thinking and reading seditious literature, and was now studying the history of art at the Sorbonne. As she recalled, the autumn of 1902 was a time when the Russian colony in Paris was inundated with lectures. The Iskra group, of which she was a member, brought in Martov, then Lenin, then Trotsky, billed as a young comrade who had escaped from exile. Natalya recalled that his speech was very successful, and that the colony was delighted. She and Trotsky soon got to know each other better, and she showed him the Louvre and disclosed her past life to him. The relationship developed quickly, and she soon left her husband to live with the young revolutionary. They were to remain strongly attached for the rest of their lives, sharing his triumphs, as well as his ostracism and persecution. Her support was often acknowledged by Trotsky as his mainstay during his worst moments. He always felt grateful to Paris that he had met her there.

  The time he spent abroad, from the autumn of 1902 to early 1905, when he returned to Russia, was perhaps the happiest of his life, despite his comment that Paris was ‘like Odessa, only Odessa’s better!’ Sedova, who mocked this attitude, remarked that he was so ‘utterly absorbed in political life’ that other things ‘were a bother, something unavoidable’.39 It was also a time of self-affirmation, learning, discovery, establishing a wide circle of acquaintances and attracting admiration. The provincial revolutionary from the south of Russia was beginning to see himself almost as a hero.

  The Paradox of Trotsky

  The Russian radicals showed great persistence. The First Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was held in Minsk in March 1898 but, with only nine delegates, it was more symbolic than real. The party was proclaimed to exist, but it was no more than a name, as all but one of the delegates were arrested within two weeks. The only document of importance to survive from the meeting was the RSDLP Manifesto, written by Peter Struve, who was himself in the process of self-redefinition and would shortly emerge as the organizer of Russia’s first liberal movement, the Union of Liberation, forerunner of the Constitutional Democratic Party formed in 1905.

  Lenin and the other editors of Iskra set about convening a proper constituent, second congress of the party, and this duly met in the summer of 1903. The delegates assembled first in Brussels, but then moved to London when the attention of the Russian secret police proved too intrusive. Twenty-six Marxist organizations were represented by forty-three delegates, Trotsky holding the mandate of the Siberian social democrats. He had gained a reputation as a practised underground operator who despite his youth had already experienced prison and exile. He arrived in Brussels in the company of Lenin’s younger brother Dmitri, and at once threw himself into the work of the congress, making speeches, taking part in debates and discussing resolutions.

  The congress opened in the warehouse of the so-called House of the People in Brussels before moving to a chapel off Tottenham Court Road in the West End of London. The agenda of some two dozen items included the composition of the congress itself, the place of the Jewish Workers’ Union (known by its Yiddish name of the Bund) in the RSDLP, the party programme, the national question, demonstrations, risings, terror, the attitude to be adopted towards the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) who had formed in the previous year, election of the Central Committee, the editorial board of Iskra and so on. As it transpired, only two or three issues assumed lasting significance. At first things went smoothly, but then the issue of the Bund almost split the congress in half. The Bund had already acquired considerable influence and organizational strength over a wide area of the Pale of Jewish Settlement, and had also extended its writ to the Jewish social democratic organizations in the south of Russia, where new communities of Jewish workers and artisans were settling in growing numbers. Now, at this crucially important meeting of the party, and having experienced the heavy-handedness of Iskra’s agents in Russia, the Bund wanted to be recognized as the sole representative of Jewish workers in the party and to be left to run its own affairs. It was demanding not only equal, federal status with the bodies claiming central authority, like Iskra and the party central committee, but also supported resolutions which would recognize national cultural autonomy as a programme point and thus implicitly extend national status to the Jews, despite their lacking a territory.

  About half the congress delegates were of Jewish origin, and in effect the result of the debate would determine whether the party was to be governed by nationalist or internationalist principles. Since the non-Bundist Jewish delegates supported the Iskra line, the congress opted for internationalism. Trotsky and Martov, both Jews, were staunch defenders of the Iskra line, even though within a few days they would be at daggers drawn with Lenin. With characteristic passion Trotsky castigated what he called the narrow nationalism of the Bund, which he claimed would impede the creation of a united and strong party in multi-national Russia. His attacks on the Bund were so fierce he earned the nickname of ‘Lenin’s cudgel’. He argued that if the Bund were allowed a special place in the party, other factions would demand the same, and that to accord special conditions to all the national groupings would destroy the idea of an all-Russia party. The Bund, he argued, was moving towards separatism which, once it was established within the party, would extend to the structure of the socialist state when it came into being.

  Lenin won the day on this issue, and the congress adopted a resolution which roundly rejected the principle of federative relations between the party and the Bund as one of its constituent parts, and declared the Bund to be an autonomous component of the party.40 These terms were unacceptable to the Bund.

  Meanwhile, the delegates began discussing the party statutes, and a row blew up over the first point, which concerned the definition of membership. At first glance the two variants, proposed by Lenin and Martov respectively, appeared almost identical. Lenin proposed that a member should support the party not only with material help, but also by ‘personal participation’, whereas Martov proposed ‘personal co-operation’. This terminological distinction, as the split revealed, signified two different approaches to what a member should be. Lenin’s definition expressed a desire to create a stricdy centralized organization in which members would carry out specific demands, chief of which should be participation in revolutionary activity. Martov, on the other hand, wanted to open up the party into a broad association of sympathizers.

  The issue became the pretext for Martov and his supporters to attack Lenin for other problems that had emerged among the supporters of Iskra in their closed sessions. Lenin had proposed reducing the size of the editorial board from six to three—himself, Martov and Plekhanov—which had been seen as offensive to the other three, Pavel Axelrod, Vera Zasulich and Alexander Potresov, all highly respected figures. Lenin might have been forgiven for wanting an efficient and productive organization, considering how few articles the latter three had contribu
ted (eight, six and four, respectively), compared to his own, Martov’s and Plekhanov’s output (thirty-two, thirty-nine and twenty-four), but he succeeded only in creating a hostile atmosphere, so that when the issue of membership arose in the general assembly of the congress, the rift emerged. Trotsky declared that he could neither understand nor forgive the removal of the three editors, even though Lenin had referred to them in extremely cordial terms. Martov and Trotsky started accusing Lenin of rudeness and of usurping power.

  The two allies of yesterday, Lenin and Martov, were now denouncing each other fiercely and exposing the hidden meaning behind the two rival formulations of party membership. The two simple words, ‘participation’ and ‘co-operation’, split the delegates. At first, Plekhanov was on Lenin’s side, while Trotsky supported Martov. As Trotsky later described the event: ‘At the congress, Lenin won Plekhanov over, although only for a time. Plekhanov evidently sensed something at the congress. At least he told Axelrod, in discussing Lenin: “Of such stuff Robespierres are made.”’41

  Lenin was disappointed by Trotsky, on whom he had counted for support, and who during the earlier sessions had been an ardent advocate of a strong, centralized party. Both during and between the sessions Lenin and his brother Dmitri tried to persuade Trotsky, in the friendliest way, that he had not thought through his position. Trotsky, however, was more influenced by his personal feelings, and he felt closer to Martov and Axelrod than to Lenin. For his part, Lenin recognized—at a time when he was still capable of self-criticism—that the split had occurred at least partly as a result of his own behaviour. Shortly after the congress, he wrote to Potresov, his friend and colleague from the earliest days of his revolutionary activity in St Petersburg: ‘I ask myself why we should part and become lifelong enemies! I am going over all the events and impressions of the congress, I am aware that I often acted and behaved with appalling irritation, “crazily”, and I am prepared to admit my guilt to anyone, if something generated by the atmosphere, the reactions, the retorts, the struggle and so on, can be described as guilt.’42