Trotsky's Career
The following information is section's from M. J. Olgin's "Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution in Disguise"
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You can also find this chapter on: https://www.marxists.org/archive/olgin/1935/trotskyism/02.htm
Starting on page 7
"Trotsky calls himself “the true Bolshevik-Leninist”. So did the Social-Democratic hangmen of the German revolution, Noske, Scheidemann, Severing, call themselves “true Marxists”. Trotsky loves to pose as the last of the great revolutionary figures that carries forward the tradition of Lenin. There are people, especially among the younger generation, who think of him as an “old Bolshevik”. For wasn’t he leader of the Revolution in 1917? Wasn’t he at the head of the Red Army between 1918 and 1921?"
"These are the facts:
Trotsky started his political career around the turn of the century. In 1903, when the great division between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks took definite form, Trotsky allied himself with the Mensheviks. In one way or another he fought Bolshevism until late in the summer of 1917. Time and again he agreed with this or that point of the Bolshevik program, but soon he would join the Mensheviks to fight the Bolsheviks—and Lenin. He renewed his open hostility to Bolshevism in 1923 and has been fighting it ever since."
"How did he become a revolutionary figure? He never was in the thick of the workers’ life as builder of their organizations. He never succeeded in winning to his particular side any considerable numbers of workers. He always was, and always remained, a writer and speaker only, enjoying great popularity among the petty-bourgeois intellectuals. When the revolutionary labor movement in Russia was young, a man with a sharp pen and an oratorical talent such as Trotsky could easily become noted. It is for these qualities that he became a member of the First Soviet of Workers’ Deputies organized during the Revolution in 1905. The Soviet of that time, according to Lenin, was a “broad fighting union of Socialists and revolutionary democrats—lacking definite form”. The first chairman of the Soviet, Chrustalev-Nosar, was not even a Socialist. After the latter’s arrest Trotsky became chairman. Of his role during those crucial days of the 1905 Revolution we have the testimony of a great scholar, the historian Pokrovsky:
“During the whole period of its activity, the Petersburg Soviet had at its head a very intelligent and clever Menshevik, an adept in the art of combining Menshevik substance with revolutionary phrases. The name of that Menshevik was Trotsky. He was a genuine, full-blown Menshevik who had no desire whatever for armed insurrection and was altogether averse to bringing the revolution to its completion, i.e., to the overthrow of Tsarism.” (M. N. Pokrovsky, Brief History of Russia, Vol. II, p. 320).
"After 1906 he forms a little center in Vienna, Austria, where he publishes a non-periodical paper of his own. In this paper he fights Bolshevism, although in varying degrees. In 1912 he joins an anti-Bolshevist coalition known as the August Bloc."
"The Leninist program called for work to defeat “our own” government during the war; it called for transforming—in each country—the imperialist war into civil war, i.e., a revolution against the bourgeoisie; it called for the formation of a new international organization of all really revolutionary Socialists. Trotsky is against these slogans."
"So much were his ideas at variance with those of Lenin that even after the February revolution of 1917, Lenin did not consider Trotsky a Bolshevik. In a letter to Kollontai, dated March 17, 1917, Lenin writes:
“In my opinion, our main task is to guard against getting entangled in foolish attempts at ‘unity’ with the social-patriots (or, what is still more dangerous, with the wavering ones, like . . . Trotsky and Co.) and to continue the work of our own party in a consistently internationalist spirit.” (V. I. Lenin, The Revolution of 1917, Vol. I, English edition, p. 21.)
"Trotsky, on arriving from abroad after the February revolution, joined the Social-Democratic group in Petrograd known as “interboroughites”. This group held a Centrist position and for many years fought the Bolshevik organization in Petrograd."
"During the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in November, 1917, Trotsky played an important role as a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee. But it would be absurd to say that he was the leader of the uprising."
“I am far from denying the undoubtedly important role of Comrade Trotsky in the uprising [says Stalin in his October Revolution, p. 71]. But I must state that Comrade Trotsky did not and could not have played any special role in the October uprising; that, being the president of the Petrograd Soviet, lie only carried into effect the will of the respective Party authorities, which guided every step of Comrade Trotsky.” (Article published November 26, 1924.)
"Among the five members appointed by the Central Committee of the Communist Party on October 16 to serve as a center in charge of organizing the uprising, Trotsky’s name does not appear."
"He who knows the ways of the Bolshevik Party will easily understand why Trotsky was not among the leaders appointed by the Central Committee to direct the uprising. He was a new man. He had never helped build the Bolshevik Party. He had been in disagreement with the Bolsheviks up to a very short time before. In reality he was not of the Bolshevik mold. He was a man of influence recognized in Russia, but his influence extended primarily to the petty bourgeoisie. He was something like a connecting link between the Bolshevik Party and the petty-bourgeois masses which the Party wished to lead."
"Trotsky’s disagreement with Lenin sprang up immediately after the seizure of power. It was necessary to sign the Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany in order that the proletarian revolution might have a breathing spell to consolidate itself. Trotsky, then Commissar for Foreign Affairs, refused to sign the treaty."
"The civil war came and Trotsky was given a high post. He was, so to speak, propagandist-in-chief of the Red Army. He was Military Commissar but he was not a military man. He knew nothing about the organization of an army, he had wrong ideas about revolutionary war strategy. The work of organizing the Red Army was done by the entire country, by millions of the proletariat under the leadership of the Communist Party. The actual fighting was done under the supervision of military experts controlled by the Central Committee under the watchful leadership of Lenin. Trotsky traveled up and down the front, issuing crisp orders that can be quoted as examples of military style; he went into the trenches to talk to the Red Army men; he made great public orations—but he never led the civil war."
"Before the thunder of the last battles of the civil war had died down Trotsky developed an open, violent opposition to the policy of Lenin in respect to the tasks of the trade unions. He wanted the unions to be, not organizations representing the workers in the factories and the shops, in the industries, but administrative units appended to the State and carrying out governmental functions. He organized, in opposition to Lenin, a small faction that threatened to disrupt the activities of the Communist Party at a time when unity was a question of life and death. Lenin branded this factionalism as a disruptive act. He said:
“Even if the ‘new tasks and methods’ had been pointed out by Trotsky just as highly correctly as in reality they have been pointed out incorrectly throughout, . . . by such an approach alone Trotsky would have caused injury both to himself, to the Party, to the union movement, to the education of millions of members of the labor unions, and to the Republic.” (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XXVI, Russian edition, p. 116.)
"Suffice it to recall that in the summer of 1919, at the very crucial moment of the fight against the White General Kolchak, Trotsky proposed to move part of the Red forces from the Eastern front to the South, leaving the Ural region with its factories and railways in the hands of Kolchak. The Central Committee of the Communist Party decided, against Trotsky. It ordered an advance against Kolchak to drive him out of the Ural. That was the beginning of the end of Kolchak. But that was also the end of Trotsky's playing any role on the Eastern front. Soon he ceased playing any role also on the Southern front against the White General Denikin."
"In 1923 he again resumes his opposition to the Bolshevik Party. This time it is no more a single question. It is the whole Communist Party, its structure, its activities, its entire line that irk him. At first he was alone among the outstanding leaders. In 1926 he was joined by Zinoviev and Kamenev who, in November, 1917, had distinguished themselves by being opposed to the uprising and to the seizure of power by the Bolshevik Party and were branded by Lenin as “strikebreakers”. They had ideas differing from Trotsky’s in many respects, but they accepted his leadership and the fundamentals of his opposition."
"The Party was forced to expel the clique. Some of them later recanted, as they did even before 1927, only to resume their destructive activities. Trotsky did not recant. He was ordered to leave the capital and was transferred to the city of Alma Ata in Central Asia. Later he was expelled from the country. Since then he keeps on supplying the world bourgeoisie with ammunition against the Soviet Union. His powder is wet. His cannon roar without actually hurting. But the bourgeoisie pretends to see in him a real source of genuine information. He conducts his counter-revolutionary activity on the score of having been a leader in the Revolution. In his innumerable writings he makes the unwary believe that it was he and not Lenin who led the Revolution."
"Such is, briefly, the career of the man. Was he ever a Bolshevik? Out of a period of thirty-three years he was connected with the Bolsheviks for only six years. Even during that time he had a great number of violent disagreements with them."
“. . . The fact is that the old burden of Trotskyism, concealed in the cupboard in the days of the October movement, is now once more hauled into the light of day in the hope of finding a market for it.” (Joseph Stalin, The October Revolution, pp. 89-90.)
"When Trotsky concealed his “unpleasant burden” in his cupboard he was a one-man organization. When he took it out again he believed he had a tremendous army back of him. He was mistaken. The rank-and-file membership of the Communist Party and every honest worker in the Soviet Union refused to follow the man with the unpleasant burden. Now he is trying to form such an army on a world scale. Quite unsuccessfully."
Posted Aug 16, 2018, 5:39 AM UTC · edited