A brief overview of Trotsky's liberal counter-revolution
I wrote this as a comment elsewhere and was asked to post here.
First, a short refresher on M. J. Olgin's Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution in Disguise in four parts via the PCUSA sub: 1 Trotsky's career, 2 Trotskyism defined, 3 The Social Basis of Trotskyism, 4 Socialism in One Country vs "Permanent Revolution"
So it was from the beginning that Trotsky was disguising himself with leftist rhetoric and deliberately sabotaging socialism. With Khrushchov's 1956 speech^[1] and the gradual undermining and eventual overthrow by Yeltsin^[2], you could say Trotsky's liberal counter-revolution worked. Years after the Moscow Trials definitively established the guilt of Trotsky's co-conspirators, Khrushchov and Gorbachev would officially declare their innocence.
[1] Khrushchov's secret speech to the 20th Communist Congress parroted many Trotskyist-themed Stalin condemnations some of which Khrushchov himself was guilty and all of which Stalin was innocent. It's sourced meticulously—definitely have two PDFs open while reading.
[2] Yeltsin was the liberal who would've lost decisively to the 1996 communist candidate except for a $10B IMF "loan" via the US to buy Russia's election. Proles' podcast on the undermining/overthrow of the USSR.
Also see the podcast on Stalin and with Grover Furr who wrote several of the books used for the Stalin podcast. Caveat.
Currently finding some more quotes that I think are compelling, which is just turning into rewatching FinBol's video on the Moscow Trial and the conspiratorial Trotskyist et al bloc. Might put these in a comment below when I'm done:
[Ho Chi Minh] In the past, in my eyes and those of a good number of comrades, Trotskyism seemed a matter of a struggle between tendencies within the Chinese Communist Party. That’s why we hardly paid it any attention. But a little before the outbreak of war, more exactly since the end of the year 1936 and notably during the war, the criminal propaganda of the Trotskyists opened our eyes.
The Chinese Trotskyists (like the Trotskyists of other countries) do not represent a political group, much less a political party. They are nothing but a band of evil-doers, the running dogs of Japanese fascism (and of international fascism)
[John Littlepage, an American engineer in the USSR, 1928-37] [I]n 1928 I went into a power-station at the Kochbar gold-mines. I just happened to drop my hand on one of the main bearings of a large Diesel engine as I walked by, and felt something gritty in the oil. I had the engine stopped immediately, and we removed from the oil reservoir about two pints of quartz sand, which could have been placed there only by design. On several other occasions in the new milling plants at Kochkar we found sand inside such equipment as speed-reducers, which are entirely enclosed, and can be reached only by removing the hand-hold covers.
Such petty industrial sabotage was—and still is—so common in all branches of Soviet industry that Russian engineers can do little about it
I shall never forget the situation we found at Kalata. Here, in the Northern Urals, was one of the most important copper properties in Russia, consisting of six mines, a flotation concentrator, and a smelter, with blast and reverberatory furnaces.
[I]n the spring of 1932 [...] Soon after my return to Moscow I was informed that the copper-mines at Kalata were in very bad condition; production had fallen even lower than it was before I had reorganized the mines in the previous year. This report dumbfounded me; I couldn’t understand how matters could have become so bad in this short time, when they had seemed to be going so well before I left.
I never followed the subtleties of political ideas and manouvres [...] [but] I am firmly convinced that Stalin and his associates were a long time getting round to the discovery that disgruntled Communist revolutionaries were the most dangerous enemies they had
My experience confirms the official explanation which, when it is stripped of a lot of high-flown and outlandish verbiage, comes down to the simple assertion that ‘outs’ among the Communists conspired to overthrow the ‘ins’, and resorted to underground conspiracy and industrial sabotage
[WEB DuBois, on Stalin] He early saw through the flamboyance and exhibitionism of Trotsky, who fooled the world, and especially America. The whole ill-bred and insulting attitude of Liberals in the U.S. today began with our naive acceptance of Trotsky’s magnificent lying propaganda, which he carried around the world. Against it, Stalin stood like a rock and moved neither right nor left, as he continued to advance toward a real socialism instead of the sham Trotsky offered.
[Gorbachev] My ambition was to liquidate communism [...] My ideal is the path of social democracy.
[Molotov] Take Tukhachevsky, for example. On what grounds was he rehabilitated? Did you read the records of the trial of the right-wing and Trotskyist bloc in 1938? Bukharin, Krestinsky, Rosengoltz, and other were on trial then. They stated flat out that in June 937 Tukhachevsky pressed for a coup. People who have not read the record go on to say that the testimony was given under duress from the Chekists. But I say, had we not made those sweeping arrests in the 1930s, we would have suffered even greater losses in the war.
[Carleton Beal, resigning from the US Trotksy Defense Committee] The hushed adoration of the other members of the committee for Mr. Trotsky throughout the hearings has defeated all spirit of honest investigation. […] The very first day I was told my questions were improper. The final cross-examination was put in a mold that prevented any search for the truth. I was taken to task for quizzing Trotsky about his archives. [...] The cross-examination consisted of allowing Trotsky to spout propaganda charges with eloquence and wild denunciations, with only rare efforts to make him prove his assertions. […] The commission may pass its bad check on the public if it desires, but I will not lend my name to the possibility of further childishness similar to that already committed.
[Getty, a Western historian] The evidence suggests that the […] “Great Purges”—should be redefined. It was not the result of a petrified bureaucracy’s stamping out dissent and annihilating old radical revolutionaries. In fact, it may have been just the opposite […] a radical, even hysterical, reaction to bureaucracy. The entrenched officeholders were destroyed from above and below in a chaotic wave of voluntarism and revolutionary puritanism.
[Yezhov, 4/30/1939 interrogation, referring to his mass arrests of innocents as head of the NKVD] All this was done in order to cause widespread dissatisfaction in the population with the leadership of the Party and the Soviet government and in that way to create the most favorable base for carrying out our conspiratorial plans.
[Another oppositionist, working within the Party] We endeavored to expel as many people from the party as possible. We expelled people when there were no grounds for expulsion. We had one aim in view—to increase the number of embittered people and thus increase the number of our allies.
[Stalin] It was necessary to hunt down active Trotskyites but not everyone who had been casually involved with them […] [In fact, such a crude approach could] only harm the cause of the struggle with the active Trotskyist wreckers and spies. Each case of expulsion from the party for connections with the former oppositions should be dealt with carefully
In the majority of cases the commission examined[,] from 40 to 60 percent of those thrown out of the party had been reinstated.
[Edgar Snow, journalist] The sadistic Yagoda and Yezhov, who for a time ruled a state within a state—the GPU, were chiefly responsible for these outrages. By Yagoda’s own account his hirelings faked thousands of documents and so mixed up the records that it was impossible to tell a genuine dossier from a bogus one. Curiously the public does not seem to blame Stalin for having permitted such a Frankenstein to develop, but instead gives him credit for having cleaned up the Yagoda gang and brought the secret police back under full control of the Politburo—which he did when the GPU was crushed.
[Stalin, before the discovery that Yezhov's actions were deliberate] Wholesale expulsions based on this "heartless attitude" alienated party members and therefore served the needs of the party’s enemies. According to Stalin, such embittered comrades could provide additional reserves for the Trotskyists "because the incorrect policy of some of our comrades on the question of expulsion from the party… creates these reserves… It is high time to put a stop to this outrageous practice, comrades."
Posted Aug 1, 2019, 1:21 PM UTC · edited