Diaries and letters Trotsky Lev Davidovich

[L. TROTSKY] THE HISTORY OF L. D. TROTSKY’S EXPIRY IN DOCUMENTS

Already from the end of October, the correspondence of Trotsky, his wife and son, who were in Alma-Ata, was almost completely suspended. Even telegrams about health did not reach.

On December 16, a representative of the GPU came from Moscow to Trotsky and presented him with an ultimatum: to stop directing the work of the opposition. Trotsky responded to this with the following letter to the Central Committee and the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern.

Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to the Executive Committee of the Comintern

Today, December 16, Volynsky, authorized by the OGPU collegium, presented me orally on behalf of this collegium with the following ultimatum:

“... The work of your like-minded people in the country,” he declared almost verbatim, “has lately been counter-revolutionary in nature; the conditions in which you are placed in Alma-Ata give you the full opportunity to direct this work; in view of this, the collegium decided to demand from you of a categorical obligation to stop your activities - otherwise the collegium will be forced to change the conditions of your existence in the sense of completely isolating you from political life, in connection with which the question of changing your place of residence also arises.

I told the representative of the GPU that I could only give a written answer in response, if I received from him a written formulation of the GPU's ultimatum. My refusal to answer verbally was due to the confidence, based on the whole past, that my words would again be maliciously distorted in order to mislead the working people of the USSR and the whole world. However, regardless of how the GPU collegium, which does not play an independent role in this matter, but only technically fulfills the old and long-known decision of the Stalin faction, acts, I consider it necessary to bring the following to the attention of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Executive Committee of the Comintern. The demand made to me to renounce political activity means a demand to renounce the struggle for the interests of the international proletariat, which I have been waging without interruption for thirty-two years, that is, throughout my entire conscious life. The attempt to present this activity as "counter-revolutionary" comes from those who I accuse in the face of the international proletariat of violating the foundations of the teachings of Marx and Lenipa, of violating the historical interests of the world revolution, of breaking with the traditions and precepts of October, of the unconscious, but all the more threatening preparations for Thermidor.

To renounce political activity would mean ending the struggle against the present leadership of the CPSU, which is heaping more and more political difficulties on the objective difficulties of socialist construction, engendered by the opportunist inability to pursue a proletarian policy of great historical proportions; it would mean renouncing the struggle against the stifling party regime, which reflects the growing pressure of the hostile classes on the proletarian vanguard; this would mean passively putting up with the economic policy of opportunism, which, while undermining and shaking the foundations of the dictatorship of the proletariat, holding back its material and cultural growth, at the same time deals cruel blows to the alliance of workers and laboring peasants, this basis of Soviet power.

To renounce political activity would be to cover up with one's silence the unfortunate policy of the international leadership, which led in Germany in 1923 to the surrender of great revolutionary positions without a fight; tried to cover up opportunistic mistakes with adventures in Estonia and Bulgaria; at the Fifth Congress [of the Comintern] it assessed the whole world situation in reverse and gave the parties directives that only weakened and split them; the policy which, through the Anglo-Russian Committee, kept the General Council [of the British Trade Unions], the bulwark of imperialist reaction, in the most difficult months for the traitorous reformists; which in Poland, at a sharp internal turn, turned the vanguard of the proletariat into the rearguard of Piłsudski; which in China carried through to the end the historical line of Menshevism and thereby helped the bourgeoisie to crush, bleed and behead the revolutionary proletariat; which everywhere and everywhere weakens the Comintern, squandering its ideological capital.

To stop political activity would mean passively putting up with the blunting and outright falsification of the main (our weapon, the Marxist method, and those strategic lessons that we won with the help of this method in the struggle under the leadership of Lenin; this would mean passively tolerating and covering up the theory of the kulak growing into socialism; the myth of the revolutionary mission of the colonial bourgeoisie; the slogan of a "two-part worker-peasant party" for the East, breaking with the foundations of class theory; finally, as the crowning achievement of these and other reactionary fictions, the theory of socialism in a single country, the main and most criminal undermining revolutionary internationalism .

The Leninist wing of the party has been suffering blows since 1923, that is, from the unparalleled collapse of the German revolution. The growing force of these blows keeps pace with the further defeat of the international and Soviet proletariat as a result of the opportunist leadership.

Theoretical reason and political experience testify that the period of historical return, rollback, i.e., reaction, can set in not only after the bourgeois, but also after the proletarian revolution. For six years we have been living in the USSR under conditions of growing reaction against October and thereby clearing the way for Thermidor. The most obvious and complete expression of this reaction within the Party is the wild persecution and organizational defeat of the left wing. In its last attempts to repulse the open Thermidorians, the Stalinist faction lives on "fragments" and "fragments" of the ideas of the opposition. She is creatively powerless. The struggle to the left deprives it of any stability. Its practical policy has no core, is false, contradictory, unreliable. Such a noisy campaign against the Right danger remains three-quarters of a show and serves primarily to cover up before the masses a genuine war of extermination against the Bolshevik-Leninists. The world bourgeoisie and world Menshevism equally illuminate this war: these judges have long recognized the "historical correctness" on the side of Stalin.

If it were not for this blind, cowardly and incompetent policy of adapting to the bureaucracy and philistinism, the position of the working masses in the twelfth year of the dictatorship would have been incomparably more favorable; military defense is immeasurably stronger and more reliable; The Comintern would have stood at a completely different height, and would not have retreated step by step before the treacherous and corrupt Social Democracy.

The incurable weakness of the apparatus reaction in the face of external power lies in the fact that it does not know what it is doing, It fulfills the order of the hostile classes. There can be no greater historical curse on the faction that has emerged from the revolution and is undermining it.

The greatest historical strength of the opposition, despite its outward weakness at the present moment, lies in the fact that it keeps its finger on the pulse of the world historical process, clearly sees the dynamics of class forces, foresees tomorrow and consciously prepares it. To give up political activity would mean to give up the preparation of tomorrow.

The threat to change the conditions of my existence and isolate me from political activity sounds as if I had not been exiled 4,000 kilometers from Moscow, 250 kilometers from the desert provinces of China, to a place where the worst malaria shares dominance with leprosy and plague . As if the faction of Stalin, of which the GPU is the direct organ, had not done everything it could to isolate me not only from political life, but from all other life. Moscow newspapers are delivered here within ten days to a month or more. Letters reach me as a rare exception, after a month, two or three months in the boxes of the GPU and the secretariat of the Central Committee. My two closest collaborators since the civil war, vols. Sermuks and Poznansky, who had decided to voluntarily accompany me to the place of exile, were immediately arrested upon arrival, imprisoned with criminal charges in the basement, and then sent to remote corners of the north. From a hopelessly ill daughter, whom you expelled from the party and removed from work, a letter came to me from a Moscow hospital for 73 days, so that my answer did not find her alive. A letter about the serious illness of the second daughter, also expelled from the party and removed from work, was delivered to me from Moscow a month ago on the 43rd day. Telegraphic inquiries about health most often do not reach their destination. Thousands of impeccable Bolshevik-Leninists are now in the same and even worse situation, whose services to the October Revolution and the international proletariat immeasurably exceed those who imprisoned or exiled them.

Preparing new, more and more severe repressions against the opposition, the narrow faction of Stalin, whom Lenin called in his “testament” rude and disloyal (unscrupulous), when these qualities have not yet developed into a hundredth part of him, is constantly trying through the GPU to throw some kind of apposition or "connection" with the enemies of the proletarian dictatorship. In a narrow circle, the current leaders say: "This is necessary for the masses." Sometimes even more cynically: "This is for fools." My closest collaborator, Georgy Vasilievich Butov, who was in charge of the secretariat of the Revolutionary Military Council of the republic during all the years of the civil war, was arrested and kept in unheard of conditions, extorted from this clean and humble person and an impeccable party member confirming deliberately false, fake, false accusations in the spirit of Thermidorian amalgams. Butov responded with a heroic hunger strike that lasted about 50 days and brought him to death in prison in September of this year. Violence, beatings, physical and moral torture are applied to the best Bolshevik workers for their loyalty to the precepts of October. These are the general conditions which, in the words of the collegium of the GPU, "do not hinder" the opposition's political activity at present, and mine in particular.

The pitiful threat to change these conditions for me in the direction of further isolation means nothing more than the decision of the Stalin faction to replace exile with prison. This solution, as mentioned above, is not new to me. Planned as far back as 1924, it is gradually being put into practice through a series of steps in order to surreptitiously accustom the suppressed and deceived party to Stalinist methods, in which gross disloyalty has now matured to poisoned bureaucratic disgrace.

In the statement we submitted to the Sixth [Comintern] Congress, we, having cast aside the slander against us, which tarnishes only its authors, reaffirmed our unshakable readiness to fight within the Party for the ideas of Marx and Lenin by all those means of Party democracy, without which the Party suffocates, ossifies. and crumbles. We again proclaimed our unshakable readiness in word and deed to help the proletarian core of the party to level the course of policy, to improve the health of the party and the Soviet government through friendly and concerted efforts without upheavals and catastrophes. We are on this path even now. To the accusation of factional work, we replied that it could only be liquidated by the removal of the treacherously imposed Article 58 on us and the restoration of us in the Party, not as repentant imaginary sinners, but as revolutionary fighters who did not betray their banner. And, as if anticipating the ultimatum presented today, we wrote verbatim in the Statement:

“Only completely depraved bureaucracy could demand from the revolutionaries this renunciation (from political activity, that is, from serving the party and the international revolution). Only contemptible renegades could give such obligations.”

I can not change anything in these words. I again bring them to the attention of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Executive Committee of the Comintern, which bear full responsibility for the work of the GPU.

We have never been so sure of the final triumph of the ideas of Marx and Lenin that we defend, as now.

For a month after the document was sent, everything remained externally unchanged, except for an even more ferocious postal blockade and increased surveillance.

On January 20, the same representative of the GPU, accompanied by numerous armed agents of the GPU, came to Trotsky's apartment and presented him with the following decision of the GPU:

Extract from the minutes of the Special Meeting at the Collegium of the OGPU

The case of citizen Trotsky Lev Davydovich under Art. 58-10 of the Criminal Code on charges of counter-revolutionary activities, expressed in the organization of an illegal anti-Soviet party, whose activities have lately been aimed at provoking anti-Soviet speeches and preparing an armed struggle against Soviet power.

Resolved:

Citizen Trotsky Lev Davidovich - to be expelled from the USSR.

Alma-Ata Verno: beginning. Alma-Ata regional department of the OGPU

Trotsky issued a receipt to the authorized GPU. "Criminal in essence and lawless in form, the decision of the OS under the collegium of the GPU of January 18, 1929 was announced to me on January 20, 1929 by L. Trotsky."

On January 22, Trotsky with his wife and son were in a car, then in a sleigh and again in a car, sent under escort to the Frunze station - 250 kilometers, - from there along railway towards Moscow. Back in Alma-Ata, Trotsky declared to the representative of the GPU that he could not be sent abroad at all against his will, and at the same time categorically demanded that the intended place of deportation be indicated. Only in the Samara region was he informed that the matter concerned Constantinople. Trotsky declared that, protesting against deportation abroad in general, he would resist deportation to Turkey by all means available to him. This was communicated by direct wire to Moscow. There, apparently, everything was foreseen, except for Trotsky's refusal to voluntarily go abroad. Moscow has started new negotiations with foreign countries. In the meantime, a special train with Trotsky and his family (two more family members were delivered from Moscow in deep secrecy - to say goodbye) was transferred to a deaf railway line in the forest and stood motionless under snowstorms for 12 days. A steam locomotive with a wagon went daily for food and lunch to the nearest major station. Finally, on February 8, Bulanov, the new representative of the GPU, announced that Moscow's attempt to obtain consent to the expulsion of Trotsky to Germany ran into a categorical refusal of the German government and that therefore the decision to expel him to Turkey remains in force . To Trotsky’s repeated statement that he would declare to the Turkish authorities at the border his refusal to proceed further, Bulanov, authorized by the GPU, replied that such a statement would not change anything, because the issue had been agreed with the Turkish government in the event that Trotsky refused to voluntarily go to Turkey.

The representative of the GPU sent to Moscow by direct wire (the Central Committee, the Executive Committee of the Comintern, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR) the following statement by Trotsky:

Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Central Executive Committee of the USSR, ECCI

The chairman of the GPU reported that the German Social-Democrats the government refused a visa. This means that Muller and Stalin agree on the political assessment of the opposition. The representative of the GPU said that I would be handed over to Kemal against my will. This means that Stalin conspired with (strangler of the Communists) Kemal about reprisals against the opposition as a common enemy. The representative of the GPU refused to talk about minimum guarantees against the White Guards, Russians, Turkish and others, even if they were forcibly deported to Turkey. Underneath this lies a direct calculation of the assistance of the White Guards to Stalin, which in principle does not differ in any way from the assistance provided in advance by Kemal.

The failure to fulfill the promise already made to me about the delivery of the necessary books from Moscow is a partial illustration of gross disloyalty in big and small.

The statement of the representative of the GPU that Kemal had given me a “safeguard certificate” for my belongings minus weapons, i.e. revolvers, is in fact the disarmament of me at the very first steps in the face of the White Guards with a deliberately false reference to the Turkish government.

I report the above for the timely consolidation of responsibility and for the justification of those steps that I deem it necessary to take against purely Thermidorian treachery.

But "the unity of the front" with the Turkish authorities was already fully ensured by this time, and Stalin could only continue to carry out his plan.

On February 10, a special train, consisting of several wagons filled with GPU agents, delivered Trotsky to Odessa. Here it was supposed to land on the Kalinin steamer, but it froze in the ice. Another steamer, the Ilyich, was hastily put under steam, in whose cabins a bitter cold still reigned in the first hours. Here the leadership passed to the third representative of the GPU, Fokin. Trotsky first made a verbal protest to him, then handed him the following document.

Authorized GPU gr. Fokin

According to the statement of the representative of the board of the GPU Bulanov, you have a categorical order, despite my protest, to land me, by using physical violence, in Constantinople, that is, to hand over to Kemal and his agents.

You can fulfill this order only because the GPU (i.e., Stalin) has a ready agreement with Kemal on the forced placement of a proletarian revolutionary in Turkey by the combined efforts of the GPU and the Turkish national fascist police.

If I am compelled at the present moment to submit to this violence, which is based on unparalleled treachery on the part of the former disciples of Lenin (Stalin and Co.), then I consider it necessary at the same time to warn you that the inevitable and, I hope, The Comintern on the true foundations of Bolshevism will give me, sooner or later, the opportunity to bring to justice both the organizers of this Thermidorian crime and its perpetrators.

Steamboat "Ilyich", when approaching Constantinople.

L. Trotsky

When a Turkish police officer arrived on the ship, having been warned in advance from Odessa that the ship was carrying Trotsky and his family, Trotsky handed him the following statement addressed to Kemal:

His Excellency Mr. President of the Republic of Turkey

Your Majesty!

At the gates of Constantinople, I have the honor to inform you that I did not arrive at the Turkish border by my own choice, and that I can cross this border only by submitting to violence.

Deign, Mr. President, to accept my corresponding feelings.

The Turkish police officer, as the authorized GPU had warned in advance, pretended that this did not concern him at all. The steamer followed on to the raid, and Trotsky, after a 22-day journey, ended up in Turkey.

Takova Short story this expulsion, set out according to the documents. We shall have occasion to give more details about it.

STATEMENT

To your today's demand to leave the consulate, I answer the following:

Bulanov and Volynsky proposed to me on behalf of the GPU, i.e., the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the following conditions for settling in Constantinople:

A. GPU agents find an apartment in a separate house outside the city, i.e., in such conditions that give minimal topographical guarantees against a completely easy and unpunished assassination attempt by the White Guards or foreign fascists.

b. Sermuks and Poznansky are delivered here by the nearest steamer, that is, not later than in three weeks.

V. Until their arrival, I live - by my own choice - either in the consulate (which, in the opinion of the GPU, would be the best), or in a mansion of the type indicated above, with temporary protection from agents of the GPU. None of these conditions is fulfilled.

A. Of the 5-6 apartments shown, only one meets the security conditions to some extent. But it takes two or three weeks to bring it into a usable form, and I do not know at all whether the financial requirements of the householder will be within my power.

b. The arrival of Sermuks and Poznansky, contrary to a categorical obligation, is now denied.

V. Fokin left without fulfilling any of the obligations that, according to Bulanov, were assigned to him.

Meanwhile, Constantinople is swarming with white Russians. White newspapers circulate here in the amount of more than a thousand copies. References to "active" whites being expelled are simply ridiculous. The most active, of course, are kept secret, not to mention the fact that they can come from other places at any time and find cover with "inactive" whites. Impunity is guaranteed to them in advance.

Under these conditions, Moscow's refusal to fulfill its obligations and send Sermuks and Poznansky and your simultaneous demand to leave the consulate building, although you did not even offer any suitable apartment, means a demand that I voluntarily expose myself to the blows of the White Guards.

After you informed me of Moscow's refusal to fulfill this promise regarding Sermuks-Poznansky, I stated that in order to avoid a global scandal on "apartment" grounds, I would try to call friends from Germany or France who would help me get settled in a private apartment or they would accompany me to another country (in case of obtaining a visa).

Despite the fact that the persons I called could not even leave yet, you offer me a new demand to leave the consulate. This haste is directed entirely against the most elementary security requirements, mine and my family.

I have no desire to complicate an already difficult situation. I have no interest in staying at the consulate even one extra day. But I do not intend to compromise the most elementary requirements for the safety of my family. If you try to resolve the issue not on the basis of an agreement, but on the use of physical isolation of me and my family, as you told me today, then I will reserve complete freedom actions. Responsibility for the consequences will be entirely on the Central Committee of the CPSU.

To the representative of the GPU citizen Minsky

Under the conditions in which you are evicting the Consulate from the consulate with the use of physical violence, you are fulfilling the instructions of those Thermidorians who consciously and deliberately want to bring me and my family under the blows of the enemies of the October Revolution.

You cannot fail to understand this, for you know the situation in Constantinople too well, and consequently, not only Stalin and his faction, but also you, the executors, bear full responsibility for the consequences.

Telegram

Suitcases [and] things to write out [from] Berlin [with] the assistance of Vera Moiseevna Krestinskaya. To buy some things, Russian books, writing materials [in] Moscow.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Some newspapers in Constantinople report that in a conversation with Turkish journalists I said that I was going to 1) produce in the USSR new revolution; 2) to build the fourth International.

Both of these statements are the exact opposite of what I said. My views on these two questions have been expressed in numerous speeches, articles and books.

With perfect respect,

A LETTER TO ASSOCIATES IN THE USSR

Dear friends! You, of course, have not escaped the fact that Pravda, Bolshevik, and the rest of the official press have now resumed in full force the campaign against "Trotskyism." Although the behind-the-scenes side of the turn is, unfortunately, unknown to us, the very fact of the resumption of the discussion, which had almost ceased for a certain time, is our greatest victory.

Six months ago, Molotov specifically recommended that the French Communists refrain from any polemics with "Trotskyism" in view of its virtual liquidation. Around that time, I wrote to the French comrades that our victory would be half assured the moment we forced the official apparatus to enter into polemics with us, because here our ideological preponderance, which had long been accumulating, would inevitably show itself in full force. And we will begin to reap the fruits of the theoretical and political work of the opposition over the past seven years. This primarily applies, of course, to Western countries where the las have their own publications and where we can strike back. In the USSR, the apparatus can, thanks to the one-sided nature of the polemic, drag out the denouement Ideological struggle. But just tighten it up. There were so many confusions, lies, contradictions, zigzags and mistakes in the past that the simplest general conclusions are now being imposed of themselves on broad circles of the Party and the working class. And since these elementary conclusions about the present leadership basically coincide with what the opposition was preaching, the apparatus found itself compelled to start all over again its entire study of "Trotskyism" in order to try in this way to prevent contact between the critical discontent of the party and the formulas of the opposition. But there is no doubt that this dish, when heated, will not bring salvation. In some recent articles, such as this helpless Pokrovsky73, the belated call for a elaboration of "Trotskyism" has an obviously panicky character. The significance of these symptoms cannot be sufficiently appreciated. Much has moved in the Party and is moving towards us.

We are making serious progress in the West, especially in the Romanesque countries. The official press of the French Communist Party finally refused to follow the above advice of Molotov, which Molotov, however, himself managed to refuse. This is just what we need! The French opposition takes an ever more active part in the actions of the Communist Party, registers them, criticizes them and gradually destroys the wall between itself and the Party. The opposition found support in the trade union movement, where our like-minded people published their platform and created their own center, continuing, of course, to fight for a unitary confederation of labor (CGTU). Very serious changes have also taken place in the Italian party lately. You know about the exclusion from the party of comrade. Bordiga,74 who had recently returned from exile, on charges of solidarity with Trotsky. The Italian comrades wrote to us that Bordiga, after reading our latest publications, had really declared that he had a commonality of views. At the same time, a long-prepared split occurred in the official party. Several members of the Central Committee, who carried out the most responsible work in the Party, refused to accept the theory and practice of the "third period". They were declared "right", but in reality they have nothing to do with Taska75, Brandler76 and company. Divergence on the issue of the "third period" forced them to reconsider disputes and disagreements recent years and they declare their full solidarity with the international left apposition. This is an extremely valuable extension of our ranks!

In one of my previous letters, I emphasized that the past year was a big year. preparatory work international left opposition and that now we can expect the political results of the work done. The above facts concerning the two countries show that these results have already begun to take on a tangible form. It is not without reason that the organs of the Comintern felt compelled, following the organs of the CPSU, to embark on the path of open "principled" polemics with us, which, of course, will serve us only to our advantage.

The 16th Congress, of course, will not yet reveal these obvious, indisputable, promising, but still just beginning shifts in the CPSU and the Comintern. It will continue to be a congress of the Stalinist bureaucracy. But the bureaucracy is frightened, bewildered, "thoughtful". Organizationally, Stalin will probably retain his positions at the congress. Moreover, formally, this congress will, after all, sum up the whole series of Stalin's "victories" over his opponents and crown the system of "single-handedness." But despite this, or rather, because of this, one can say without the slightest hesitation: the 16th Congress will be the last congress of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Just as the 15th Congress, which crowned the victory of "hell of the Left Opposition," gave a powerful impetus to the disintegration of the right-centrist bloc, so the 16th Congress, which should crown the rout of the Rights, will give impetus to the disintegration of bureaucratic centrism. This disintegration will have to go the faster, the longer it was restrained by the system crude and disloyal apparatusism. All this not only opens up new opportunities for the opposition, but also imposes on it the greatest obligations. The path in the party lies only through the revival of the party itself, consequently, through the strengthening of the fundamentally consistent theoretical and (Political work of the opposition in the party and the working class Everything else will follow.

With strong communist greetings,

LETTER TO THE POLITBURO OF THE CC AND THE PRESIDIUM OF THE CC

Top secret

To the Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, to the Presidium of the Central Control Commission

History again approached one of the great turns. In Germany the fate of the German proletariat, the Comintern and the USSR is now being decided. The policy of the Comintern is leading the German revolution to ruin with the same inevitability with which the Chinese revolution was brought to ruin, although this time from the opposite end. All that is necessary on this score has been said by me elsewhere. There is no point in repeating here. Perhaps two or three months - at the very best - still remain in order to change the disastrous policy, the responsibility for which lies entirely with Stalin.

I am not talking about the Central Committee, since it has essentially been abolished. Soviet newspapers, including party ones, talk about "Stalin's leadership" about "Stalin's six instructions", "Stalin's instructions", about "Stalin's general line", completely ignoring the Central Committee. The party of the dictatorship has been reduced to such a level of humiliation that ignorance, organic opportunism and disloyalty of one person stamp great historical events. Hopelessly entangled in China, England, Germany, in all countries of the world, and above all in the USSR, Stalin, in the struggle to save his personal exaggerated prestige, is now supporting a policy in Germany that automatically leads to a catastrophe on an unprecedented historical scale.

In order not to create embarrassment for Stalin, the "Party" press, reduced to a slavish state, is generally silent about Germany. But he talks a lot about "Trotskyism". Entire pages are filled with "Trotskyism" again. The task is to make one believe that "Trotskyism" is a "counter-revolutionary" trend, "the vanguard of the world bourgeoisie." Under this sign, the 17th Party Conference is being convened. It is quite clear that this unchanging agitation is not pursuing any "ideological" goals, but very definite practical, or rather, personal tasks. If we briefly formulate them, then we have to say: the turkulization of policy towards representatives of the left opposition is on the agenda.

Through the official political press in the West, Stalin released revelations about the plans of the White Guard terrorist organization, while at the same time concealing these facts from the workers of the USSR. The purpose of publishing the revelations abroad is quite clear, to provide an alibi for Stalin in his joint work with General Turkul. The names of Gorky and Litvinov are added most likely for disguise.

The question of terrorist reprisals against the author of this letter was raised by Stalin long before Turkul: in 1924-25. Stalin weighed the pros and cons at a narrow meeting. The arguments in favor were clear and obvious. The main argument against was this: there are too many young self-sacrificing Trotskyists who can respond with counter-terrorist acts.

I received this information at one time from Zinoviev and Kamenev after they went over to the opposition, moreover, in such circumstances and with such details that excluded any doubts about the authenticity of the reports: Zinoviev and Kamenev, as you, I hope, have not forgotten, belonged to a common ruling "troika" with Stalin, who stood above the Central Committee: they were aware of what was "completely inaccessible to ordinary members of the Central Committee. If Stalin forced Zinoviev and Kamenev to refute their then testimony, no one would believe it.

The question in 1925 was withdrawn; as current events show, it has only been postponed.

Stalin came to the conclusion that sending Trotsky abroad was a mistake. He hoped, as is known from his then recorded statement to the Politburo, that without a "secretariat", without funds, Trotsky would become only a helpless victim of a bureaucratic slander organized on a world scale. The hardware man miscalculated. Contrary to his predictions, it turned out that ideas have their own power, without apparatus and without means. The Comintern is a grandiose edifice, theoretically and politically completely devastated. The future of revolutionary Marxism, and hence Leninism, is now inextricably linked with the international cadres of the Left Opposition. No falsification will help. The main works of the opposition have been published, are being published or will be published in all languages. There are still few, but invincible cadres in all countries. Stalin perfectly understands what a formidable danger - for him personally, for his false "authority", for his Bonapartist power, lies in the ideological inflexibility and stubborn growth of the international left opposition.

Stalin believes that the mistake must be corrected. His plan is unfolding through three channels: firstly, the information obtained by the GPU about the terrorist attempt on Trotsky, prepared by General Turkul (in the most favorable conditions created for him by Stalin), was announced abroad, secondly, an "ideological" international campaign was opened, which should culminate in a resolution of the party conference and the Comintern: Stalin needs this resolution as a kind of political mandate for cooperation with Turkul; thirdly, with the hands of the GPU, Stalin picks up and cleans up with truly brutal fury everything suspicious, unreliable, doubtful, in order to protect himself from counterattacks.

Of course, I am not privy to the technique of the enterprise: whether Turkul will throw his handiwork to Stalin, whether Stalin will hide behind Turkul - I don’t know this, but some of the Yagods who play the role of intermediaries with the undoubted assistance of the famous “Wrangel officer."

It is needless to say that Stalin's plans and designs cannot in any way and from any direction influence the policy of the Left Opposition and mine in particular. The political fate of Stalin, the corrupter of the Party, the grave-digger of the Chinese revolution, the destroyer of the Comintern, the candidate for the grave-digger of the German revolution, is sealed. His political bankruptcy will be one of the worst in history. The question is not about Stalin, but about saving the Comintern, the proletarian dictatorship, the legacy of the October Revolution, about reviving Lenin's party. Most of the officials on whom Stalin relies in the USSR, as in all sections of the Comintern, will scatter at the first roll of thunder. The Left Opposition will remain true to the banner of Marx and Lenin to the end!

This document will be kept in a limited but sufficient number of copies, in good hands, in several countries. Thus, you are warned!

LETTER TO ZION

Dear Mr. Zion (unfortunately, I do not know your name and patronymic).

It is quite true that Mr. Beglin passed on your questions to me; however, at the same time, not only did he not connect your name with the Sveaborg uprising, but he also did not tell me that you were Russian. I assumed that it was a Scandinavian journalist, and therefore responded with ignorance. Of course, I remember your name very well in connection with the Sveaborg uprising.

I received your letter on the way, in pursuit, and I did not have the opportunity to speak with you by telephone. I will reply in a letter.

You write that it is in my "interests" to dispel an unfavorable impression of me in Sweden. If it were only about this, then, really, it was not worth dipping a pen in an inkwell. . .

The questions you posed, I confess, surprise me a little, are they really so characteristic of the definition of a person?

"What is your favorite pastime besides hunting and fishing"? Hunting and fishing for me is not an occupation, but a recreation. "Favorite occupation" - mental activity: reading, thinking and, perhaps, writing.

My favorite" Soviet writer? The events of the past 20 years have extremely narrowed the place in my mind fiction. "Favorite" writers - artists were grinding 25-30 years ago. Now I read with the greatest interest, perhaps, Babel.

It is even more difficult to say about foreign writers. Modern I know too little, and my review would be completely random.

The question about philosophers is also difficult. I take philosophy (since I am generally familiar with it) in its development. But I would be very at a loss to name the name of a philosopher who, in my eyes, would stand "above the rest."

The same, in a certain sense, applies to historical figures. I can say that Friedrich Engels, as a human figure, impresses me in the highest degree. Of course historical role Marx is much higher.

What is the happiest time of my life? I am not able to answer this question at all. In all periods of life it was interspersed - both good and bad. To sum up the "balance" of individual periods, really, I do not know how and have never approached my life like that.

That's all I can say. I wish you every success.

LETTER TO THE POLITBURO OF THE CPSU(b)

Secret

Politburo of the CPSU(b)

I consider it my duty to make another attempt to appeal to the sense of responsibility of those who are now leading the Soviet state. You see the situation in the country and in the Party more closely than I do. If internal development goes further along the rails on which it is moving now, a catastrophe is inevitable. There is no need to give an analysis of the actual situation in this letter. This is done in Bulletin No. 33, which comes out the other day. In a different form, but in combination with difficulties, the hostile forces will strike the Soviet government with no less force than fascism struck the German proletariat. Absolutely hopeless and disastrous is the idea of ​​mastering the present situation with the help of repression alone. It won't work. Wrestling has its own dialectic, the critical point of which you have long since left behind. The further the repressions will be, the more they will cause a result opposite to what they are designed for: not to frighten, but, on the contrary, to excite the enemy, generating in him the energy of despair. The closest and most immediate danger is distrust of leadership and growing hostility towards it. You know this as well as I do. But you are pushed down the inclined plane by the inertia of your own politics, and meanwhile at the end of the inclined plane there is an abyss.

What need to do? First of all, revive the party. It's a painful process, but you have to go through it. The Left Opposition - I don't doubt it for a moment - will be ready to give the Central Committee full assistance in putting the Party on the track of a normal existence without upheavals or with the least upheavals.

With regard to this proposal, one of you will say, perhaps the Left Opposition wants to come to power in this way. To this I answer: it is about something inevitably greater than the power of your faction or of the Left Opposition. It is a matter of the fate of the workers' state and the international revolution for many years to come. Of course, the opposition will be able to help the Central Committee to restore the regime of trust in the party, which is unthinkable without party democracy, only if the opposition itself is given back the possibility of normal work within the party. Only the open and honest cooperation of the factions that have arisen historically with the aim of transforming them into trends in the Party and their further dissolution in it can, under the given concrete conditions, restore confidence in the leadership and revive the Party.

There is no reason to be afraid of attempts by the Left Opposition to turn the spearhead of repression in the other direction: such a policy has already been tried and exhausted to the dregs; the task, after all, is to eliminate its consequences by common forces.

The left opposition has its own program of action, both in the USSR and in the international arena. Of course, there can be no question of abandoning this program. But as regards the means of presenting and defending this program before the Central Committee and before the Party, not to speak of the means of putting it into practice, a preliminary agreement can and must be reached with that gap in order to prevent breaks and upheavals. No matter how tense the atmosphere is, it can be defuse in several successive stages with good will on both sides. And the dimensions of the danger presuppose this good will, or rather, dictate it. The purpose of this letter is to declare the good will of the Left Opposition.

I am sending this letter in one copy, exclusively for the Politburo, in order to give it the necessary freedom in choosing the means, if, in view of the whole situation, it considers it necessary to enter into preliminary negotiations without any publicity.

Prinkipo L. Trotsky

Explanation

A month and a half ago, the above letter was sent to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. There was no answer; rather, the answer was given by a whole series of actions by the Stalinist clique: new rampant arrests in the USSR, approval of the disastrous policy of the Comintern in Germany, etc. In a different historical situation and on other social foundations, Stalin manifests the same bureaucratic blindness as some Kerensky de Rivera88 on the eve of the fall. The Stalinist clique is marching with leaps and bounds towards destruction. The whole question is whether it will be able to bring down the Soviet regime into the abyss as well? In any case, she does everything she can for this.

We are sending this document to responsible workers under the assumption, even in the belief, that among the blind, careerists, cowards there are also honest revolutionaries whose eyes cannot but be opened to the real state of affairs.

We call on these honest revolutionaries to contact us. Who wants to, he will find a way.

Paris Editorial office of the "Bulletin of the Opposition"

APPS

L. Sedov. Moving to Alma-Ata

Dear friend, you asked me to describe in detail our journey to Alma-Ata - if you please. I do this in the form of protocol entries - a diary. I'm missing something for obvious reasons.

After extremely tiring last days, especially for our imaginary "departure", slept for a long time. I was still dressing, it was at the beginning of the first hour, when I heard the bell, then the clatter of feet and unfamiliar voices in the corridor. "GPU" - flashed. Indeed, in the corridor stood a whole group of them, dressed in military uniform. Led by the one in charge yesterday at the station. In his hands he had a warrant (as I found out later) with approximately the following content: "It is proposed to the commandant comrade K ... to escort citizen Trotsky under escort to the city of Alma-Ata immediately." Signature: Yagoda. Turning to L.D., the commandant reports: "Your departure is scheduled today at 2:35." - "That is, how? .. And things? We did not meet ... Two hours before the train leaves, you warn - a disgrace." “We will help, we will help meet,” they repeat helplessly. L. D. refused to go voluntarily, went into the last room (bedroom), where we all followed him. In addition to us, i.e., Natalia Ivanovna, my brother and me (Anya was at work), there were I. and F.V., who happened to be with us. The room was locked... There was a voice behind the door: "Comrade Trotsky, let me tell you a few words..." - "Get Menzhinsky on the phone."

- "I'm listening." Break. "Comrade Trotsky (outside the door)! Menzhinsky is not there." "Then Yagoda." Leaves. We wait. “At the phone,” we hear, but in a voice somehow uncertain. L. D. unlocks and goes out into the corridor, where we have a telephone. There is the following dialogue: "Hello!" - "I'm listening." - "Who's talking? Comrade Yagoda?" - "No, Deribas91". Without answering further, he hangs up. Addressing the gepeurs: "Ivan Nikitich Smirnov didn't shoot Deribas at the front for cowardice, I don't want to talk to him. I asked Menzhinsky or Yagoda." The door is locked again. "There is none of them". - "They hid under the bed and are afraid to answer the phone." A few seconds of silence... "Comrade Trotsky, listen to me, why are you hiding from me?" L. D. is dumb, he blew up. He came close to the door: "Don't be impudent. You broke into my apartment and dare to say that I'm hiding from you..." They are silent. I go out into the corridor; I ask permission to call my wife or send for her.

From the book Departing for Eternity author Lebedev Yuri Mikhailovich

The blockade of Leningrad in the documents of the Freiburg archive If anyone has not heard of the archive of the Wehrmacht, then I can gladly tell you about it. It is located in the old German town of Freiburg in southwestern Germany. The city is surprisingly attractive and revered among the Germans. I'm talking

From the book Reconstruction true history author

26. Traces of converting a six into a five on old documents Here, for example, is the engraving "Melancholy" by the famous Albrecht Dürer, who allegedly lived in 1471-1528, fig. 67. A 4 by 4 magic square is drawn in the upper right corner. The sum of the numbers in each line is n

From book Everyday life Paris in the Middle Ages by Ru Simon

Parisian streets in regulations Very soon, the city authorities decided to bring order to the maintenance of streets, bridges and public buildings. Ordinances, royal letters and Parisian codes tried to streamline the use of public space on the streets.

From the book Who slept through the beginning of the war? author Kozinkin Oleg Yurievich

DATE JUNE 22 IN THE DOCUMENTS (how the western districts were put on alert and who bears the main responsibility for the tragedy of June 22)

From the book New Chronology and Concept ancient history Rus', England and Rome author Nosovsky Gleb Vladimirovich

The principle of fairness of "common places" in old documents Traces of true history and remnants of the original chronological tradition It is natural to assume that the chronologists of the XIV-XVII

From the book Russian rebellion forever. 500 years of the Civil War author Taratorin Dmitry

Civil in documents

From the book My Mission in Russia. Memoirs of an English diplomat. 1910–1918 author Buchanan George

Chapter 33 1917 Trotsky's proposal for a truce. — His attacks on allies. – Trotsky refuses to release British subjects from Russia Kerensky's government, like the imperial regime, fell without a fight. Both he and the emperor did not want to see the threat to them

From the book Pre-Petrine Rus'. historical portraits. author Fedorova Olga Petrovna

The Image of Ivan IV in Historical Documents, Literature and Art Much of the paradoxical behavior of Ivan IV was noted by his contemporaries. Participation in torture, executions alternated with his prayer. They say he sang in the church choir. Ivan IV had a beautiful voice and showed

From the book WAS THERE A LITHUANIA? author Ivanov Valery Gergievich

About historical documents of White Rus' Why are we so little pleased with modern archival finds on richest history Belarus? Why have so few state, legal, economic, historical documents powerful and distinctive Slavic

From the book Russian Holocaust. The origins and stages of the demographic catastrophe in Russia author Matosov Mikhail Vasilievich

6.2. TROTSKY AND THE RED ARMY. TROTSKY'S STARS In March 1917, after the 7th Party Congress, Trotsky left the post of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. A more important matter arose: the Council of People's Commissars appointed him People's Commissar for Military Affairs and Chairman of the Supreme Military Council. Had

From the book of Ugresha. History pages author Egorova Elena Nikolaevna

Ugresha in archival documents In Russian state archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA) and the Central Historical Archive of Moscow (CIAM) store many documents on the history of the Ugresh monastery. At first glance, these papers, yellowed with time, are boring and of little interest, but

From the book History of Siberia: Reader author Volozhanin K. Yu.

Deportations of the peasantry of Western Siberia In the preparation and conduct of mass deportations of the peasantry in the early 30s. for the regional political elites, which included the leaders of the OGPU on the ground, the question of orientation, and not just about

From the book "If the World Falls on Our Republic": Soviet Society and the External Threat in the 1920s-1940s. author Golubev Alexander Vladimirovich

Application. “Military alarm” of 1927 in documents 1. Information note on the moods of workers and peasants on the question of war (For the period from January 15 to February 8, 1927) (858). February 8, 1927, vol. Bukharin and Voroshilov were summoned to the 15th Gubernia Party Conference among

From the book History of political and legal doctrines. Textbook / Ed. Doctor of Law, Professor O. E. Leist. author Team of authors

§ 7. Problems of State and Law in the Documents of the "Conspiracy for Equality" The coup of 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794) put an end to the Jacobin terror. The laws were soon abolished Jacobin dictatorship, limiting the prices of goods and the size wages("maximum").

The real name of Lev Davydovich is Leiba Bronstein. Was born in 1879 year in the village of Yanovka, Kherson province, Elizavetgrad district. Studying at the Odessa Real School, and then at the Nikolaev School, Lev Davydovich was already distinguished by his willful and conflicting character.
By joining 1896 year to the populists, considered the meaning of his life the struggle for improving the economic situation of the workers and their political education, was an active creator of the South Russian Workers' Union.
Once in prison on Butyrka, he joined the ideas of Marxism. Was exiled to 4 years in the Irkutsk province, which he served with his wife, Alexandra Sokolovskaya, who bore him two daughters. Leaving his family, he fled to 1902 year abroad on someone else's passport. Since that time, he had the pseudonym Trotsky, by the last name from a fake passport.
While in London, he was engaged in revolutionary propaganda through the editorial office of the Iskra newspaper, where he was recommended by Lenin. On II Congress of the RSDLP criticized the activities of the Bolsheviks, accusing them of dividing the party and establishing a dictatorial regime. But even with the Mensheviks he parted ways 1904 year. In conclusion, he formulated ideas about the permanent revolution. The verdict doomed the politician to eternal settlement and deprivation of civil rights, but Trotsky fled abroad.
He expressed an anti-war position on the World War 1914 year, called for revolution throughout the world.
I was able to return to Russia only in May 1917 year, Lev Davydovich supported Lenin in the idea of ​​outgrowing February Revolution into the socialist. Being engaged in criticism of the Provisional Government, actively participating in the organization of an armed uprising, creating the Council for the Defense of Petrograd - he actually organized and led the October Revolution. He became People's Commissar of the first Soviet government in charge of foreign affairs, but did not achieve success in this post. As the people's commissar for military affairs, and then the chairman who headed the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, Trotsky actively worked creating the Red Army: to professionalize the army, he recruited military specialists - officers who served in the tsarist army; strengthened discipline; using punitive measures. He was not only a theorist, but also a practitioner of the "Red Terror".
A participant in the creation of the Comintern, People's Commissar for Transport, Trotsky, being an administrator, always welcomed the use of force. So he called for a strict distribution of material wealth and the creation of a labor army. Trotsky even proposed to carry out industrialization through forced labor and complete collectivization.
Participated in the struggle for power even at a time when Lenin was ill. After the death of the leader, he actively condemned the policy pursued by I.V. Stalin. In his opinion, the leadership of the party betrayed the October ideals, abandoning the revolution throughout the world.
The actions of the politician were called anti-party, having a "petty-bourgeois bias." He was first removed from the Politburo, then expelled from communist party THE USSR. IN 1928 year he was exiled to Alma-Ata, and already in 1929 Trotsky was exiled from the USSR along with his family.
He lived abroad in several countries: Turkey, France, Norway, Mexico, as the governments of many states refused to accept him. Before august 1940 years Lev Davydovich was actively involved in political activities. He wrote many works, including his main work on the history of the Russian revolution. In his writings, Trotsky criticized the Stalinist regime, calling it a bureaucratic degeneration of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and called for the overthrow of the Stalinist regime.
Having gathered his supporters, he created in 1938 year IV International.
I.V. Stalin, considering that the expulsion of Trotsky from the USSR was an insufficient measure, ordered to liquidate him. IN 1940 a year after the second attempt, Trotsky was mortally wounded by Ramon Mercader, a communist from Spain.
What did the head of state fear when he ordered Trotsky to be expelled from the USSR? Why was the doctrine of a politician - Trotskyism - dangerous for the USSR?
Trotskyists consider themselves true Marxists-Leninists. In their opinion, the leader of the movement played all the leading roles in the organization of the October Revolution and the creation of the Red Army. This can be perceived as true by those social strata of society both in the USSR and throughout the world that are politically immature.
These same sectors of society support the Trotskyists as "left" revolutionaries calling for "immediate" change. Trotskyists, in turn, use revolutionary impatience.
Expulsion from the USSR was a necessary measure to get rid of a person who was contradictory in his actions: fighting against tsarist despotism, Trotsky called for adapting to the autocracy; actively participating in the October uprising, he tried to slow down its progress.
Trotskyism as a trend is dangerous because of its secrecy and disguise of opportunism. The ideas of Trotskyism are distinguished by their consistency in their anti-Leninist and anti-Bolshevik activities, attracting those who are dissatisfied with the policies of the Communist Party. And this was the main reason for the expulsion of Trotsky from the USSR.

In order to completely isolate Trotsky from his like-minded people, since October 1928, the GPU suddenly interrupted all his correspondence with associates, friends, relatives. Even a letter from a Moscow hospital from a hopelessly ill daughter, expelled from the party, Trotsky received 73 days after it was sent , and the answer did not find her alive.

On November 26, the Politburo, having discussed the issue "On Trotsky's counter-revolutionary activities", instructed the OGPU to convey to Trotsky an ultimatum to stop all political activity. For this purpose, Volynsky, an authorized secret political department of the OGPU, was sent to Alma-Ata, who read Trotsky a memorandum in which it was reported, that the collegium of the OGPU has evidence that its activities "are increasingly taking on the character of direct counter-revolution" and the organization of a "second party." Therefore, in the event of Trotsky's refusal to lead the "so-called opposition" the OGPU "will be made necessary" to change the conditions of his detention in order to isolate him from political life as much as possible.

Trotsky responded to this ultimatum with a letter to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, which, in particular, stated: “Theoretical reason and political experience show that the period of historical return, rollback, i.e., reaction can come not only after bourgeois, but also after the proletarian revolution. For six years we have been living in the USSR in conditions of growing reaction against October, and thereby clearing the way for Thermidor. The most obvious and complete expression of this reaction within the party is the wild persecution and organizational defeat of the left wing...

The threat to change the conditions of my existence and isolate me from political activity sounds like this ... as if the faction of Stalin, of which the GPU is the direct organ, did not do everything they could to isolate me not only from political life, but from any other life. .. In the same and even worse situation are thousands of impeccable Bolshevik-Leninists, whose services to the October Revolution and the international proletariat immeasurably exceed the merits of those who imprisoned or exiled them ... Violence, beatings, torture, physical and moral, are applied to the best Bolshevik workers for their loyalty to the precepts of October. These are the general conditions which, in the words of the collegium of the GPU, "do not hinder" the political activity of the opposition and mine in particular.

The pitiful threat to change these conditions for me in the direction of further isolation means nothing more than the decision of the Stalin faction to replace exile with prison. This solution, as mentioned above, is not new to me. Planned in perspective as far back as 1924, it is being put into practice gradually, through a series of steps, in order to surreptitiously accustom the suppressed and deceived party to Stalinist methods, in which gross disloyalty has now matured to poisoned bureaucratic dishonor.

The reaction to this letter was the decision of the Politburo to expel Trotsky abroad. Motivating this decision, Stalin stated that it was necessary in order to debunk Trotsky in the eyes of Soviet people and the labor movement abroad: if Trotsky comes out abroad with further revelations of the party leadership, "then we will portray him as a traitor." This decision was made by majority vote. Only Rykov and Voroshilov voted for an even tougher measure - the imprisonment of Trotsky.

On January 7, 1929, the resolution of the Politburo was sent to the chairman of the OGPU Menzhinsky. On January 18, the decision to exile was formalized by the Special Meeting of the OGPU Collegium. Two days later, Volynsky presented Trotsky with a resolution of the OSO, which stated: “We heard: The case of citizen Trotsky, Lev Davydovich, under Article 58/10 of the Criminal Code on charges of counter-revolutionary activity, expressed in the organization of an illegal anti-Soviet party, whose activities have recently been directed to provoke anti-Soviet speeches and to prepare for an armed struggle against the Soviet regime. Decided: Citizen Trotsky, Lev Davydovich, to be expelled from the USSR." Thus, the expulsion of Trotsky was an act of extrajudicial reprisal on trumped-up charges, to which the accused was not given the right to answer. After Volynsky suggested that Trotsky sign his acquaintance with this document, Trotsky wrote: "The decision of the GPU has been announced to me, criminal in essence and lawless in form."

In an official report on the fulfillment of his instructions, Volynsky reported that Trotsky had told him: “There was a dilemma before the GPU - either put me in prison or send me abroad. The first, of course, is less convenient, as it will cause noise and inevitable unrest and agitation among the workers for release. Therefore, Stalin decided to send me abroad. I could, of course, refuse, because from the point of view of my internal situation it would be more profitable for me to go to prison. If I reasoned like Stalin, who never understood what it meant revolutionary emigration, I would refuse to go. For Stalin, "emigrant" is a swear word, and going into emigration means political death for him ... he is not able to understand with his limited brain that it is the same for a Leninist in which part of the working class to work ".

On the basis of a directive received from Yagoda, Volynsky, immediately after the presentation of the OSO decree, announced that Trotsky and his family were under house arrest, and gave them 48 hours to pack for the journey. After that, they were loaded under escort from specially selected employees of the GPU into a wagon, the route of which was not announced to them.

In order to avoid demonstrations of protest during Trotsky's expulsion, such as the one that accompanied his exile in Alma-Ata a year earlier, the expulsion took place in an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy. However, the Zinoviev group was informed about it, from which Stalin expected approval of this action. When the Zinovievites gathered to discuss this news, Bakaev suggested that they protest against the expulsion. To this, Zinoviev declared that "there is no one to protest to," since "there is no master." The next day, Zinoviev visited Krupskaya, who informed him that she, too, had heard of the impending expulsion. “What are you going to do with him?” Zinoviev asked her, meaning that Krupskaya was a member of the Presidium of the Central Control Commission. "First of all, don't You, A They, & nbsp - Krupskaya answered, & nbsp - and secondly, even if we decided to protest, who is listening to us?

Only a few days later, Trotsky was informed that Constantinople had been assigned as the place of his deportation. During these days, the Soviet government turned to many governments with a request to receive Trotsky, but only Turkey, after long negotiations, gave a positive answer. Unaware of this, Trotsky refused to voluntarily follow to Turkey and demanded to be sent to Germany. For 12 days, the train stood at a dead stop in the Kursk region, until Bulanov, the new authorized representative of the OGPU, who replaced Volynsky, announced that the German government had categorically refused to let Trotsky into their country and that a final order had been received to deliver him to Constantinople. In official reports, Bulanov, reporting on his conversations with Trotsky on the train, mentioned his extremely harsh tone and expressions "addressed to the big boss."

Along the way, the convoy increased all the time and Trotsky was forbidden to leave the train, which stopped only at small stations to get water and fuel. Meanwhile, the OGPU officer Fokin, who was sent to Odessa to organize the secret loading of Trotsky on the ship, informed his superiors that he had done everything to prevent a possible demonstration in the city. A thorough check of the crew of the Ilyich steamer was carried out, the "unreliable" ones were written off from it and a reserve team was trained, "able to drive the steamer even with a complete failure of the rest of the crew."

Arrived in Odessa, the wagon was served directly to the pier. Despite the deep night, the pier was cordoned off by GPU troops. On February 12, "Ilyich" entered the border waters, where Trotsky handed a statement to the Turkish officer for transmission to the President of the Turkish Republic, Kemal Pasha: "Dear sir. At the gates of Constantinople, I have the honor to inform you that I arrived at the Turkish border by no means of my choice and that I can cross this border only by submitting to violence.

Only a week after this, Pravda published a brief note: "L. D. Trotsky was expelled from the USSR for anti-Soviet activities by a resolution of the Special Meeting at the OGPU. His family left with him, according to his desire." This report did not contain the accusation contained in the OSO resolution that Trotsky was preparing an armed struggle against Soviet power. In one of the first articles published in exile, Trotsky wrote: “Why didn’t Stalin dare to repeat in Pravda what was said in the GPU’s resolution? Because he knew that no one would believe him ... But why, then, in this case "Stalin could not explain the deportation and countless arrests in any other way than by indicating that the opposition was preparing an armed struggle. With this monstrous lie, he caused the greatest harm to the Soviet Republic. All the bourgeois press said that Trotsky, Rakovsky, Smilga, Radek, I. N. Smirnov, Beloborodov, Muralov, Mrachkovsky and many others who built the Republic and defended it, are now preparing an armed struggle against Soviet power.It is clear to what extent such a thought must weaken the Soviet Republic in the eyes of the whole world!" .

Trotsky warned that after his expulsion one should expect more provocations from Stalin towards the opposition. “The naked declaration of the opposition as a “counter-revolutionary party” is not enough: no one takes it seriously. The more oppositionists are expelled and exiled, the more they become inside the party. At the November plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) (1928), Stalin also recognized this. one thing: to try to draw a bloody line between the official party and the opposition. associate the opposition with assassination attempts, the preparation of an armed uprising etc ... Hence Stalin's plan: to bring the accusation of "preparing for armed struggle" as a prerequisite for a new period of repression ...This kind of thing -only this kind -Stalin thinks it through to the end ... The powerless policy of maneuvering and wagging, increased economic difficulties , the growing distrust of the party in the leadership led Stalin to the need to stun the party with a large-scale staging. Need a hit, need a shock, need a catastrophe"

background

With the end of the Civil War, a fierce struggle for power flared up within the CPSU(b). One of the main Bolshevik leaders in 1917-1921, Trotsky L.D. is gradually inferior to his political competitors. A feature of these processes was that they were often accompanied by heated ideological discussions; Since Lenin's final retirement in 1923, the Zinoviev-Kamenev-Stalin "troika" has been widely critical of Trotsky, accusing him of trying to "replace Leninism with Trotskyism," which they call "a petty-bourgeois current hostile to Leninism."

As a result of the "literary discussion" in the autumn of 1924, Trotsky was defeated. In January 1925, after a long struggle, he lost the key posts of the People's Commissariat of Defense and the Pre-revolutionary Military Council. However, having "destroyed" Trotsky, the ruling "troika" itself immediately splits. At the XIV Congress of the CPSU (b) in December 1925, Stalin manages to win over the majority of the delegates to his side; at the beginning of 1926, Zinoviev and Kamenev themselves lose their key posts.

An attempt by former enemies, Trotsky and Zinoviev-Kamenev, to unite ends in failure; in October, Stalin, with the support of Bukharin, removes Trotsky from the Politburo of the Central Committee. The “United Opposition” conducts a broad criticism of the doctrine of “building socialism in one country” developed by Stalin in opposition to the “world revolution”, demands “super-industrialization” in the USSR, “turn the fire to the right - against the Nepman, kulak and bureaucrat”. In turn, Bukharin accuses the opposition of intending to "rob the countryside" and of planting "internal colonialism." The future leaders of the "right opposition" Bukharin - Rykov - Tomsky in 1926 make even more "bloodthirsty" statements against Trotsky than Stalin; Thus, in November 1927, Tomsky spoke to the “Left Opposition” as follows:

The opposition is spreading rumors very widely about repressions, about expected prisons, about Solovki, etc. We will say to nervous people: If you still don’t calm down when we took you out of the party, then now we say: shut up, we’re just politely We ask you to sit down, because it is uncomfortable for you to stand. If you try to go out to the factories now, we will say "please sit down" ( Thunderous applause), for, comrades, in the situation of the dictatorship of the proletariat there can be two or four parties, but only on one condition: one party will be in power, and all the rest in prison. ( Applause).

By the autumn of 1927, Trotsky was finally defeated in the struggle for power. On November 12, 1927, at the same time as Zinoviev, he was expelled from the party. Their further destinies, however, differed. If Zinoviev chose to publicly repent of his "mistakes", Trotsky flatly refused to repent of anything. On November 14, 1927, Trotsky was evicted from his service apartment in the Kremlin, and stayed with his supporter A. G. Beloborodov.

Delivery to Alma-Ata

Leon Trotsky, his wife Natalya and son Lev in exile in Alma-Ata, 1928

On January 18, 1928, Trotsky was taken by force to the Yaroslavsky railway station in Moscow, and exiled to Alma-Ata, and the GPU officers had to carry Trotsky in their arms, since he refused to go. In addition, according to the memoirs of Trotsky's eldest son, Lev Sedov, Trotsky and his family barricaded themselves in one of the rooms, and the GPU had to break down the doors. According to the memoirs of Trotsky himself, he was carried out in the arms of three people, “it was hard for them, they were incredibly puffing all the time and often stopped to rest.” During the delivery of Trotsky to the Yaroslavl station, both of his sons were present; the eldest, Lev, shouted to the railroad workers to no avail: “Comrade workers, look how Comrade Trotsky is being carried,” and the youngest, Sergei, hit the GPU officer Barychkin, who was holding his father, in the face.

According to the memoirs of Lev Sedov, immediately after the train was sent, Trotsky came to the convoy, and declared that he “had nothing against them, as simple performers,” and “the demonstration was purely political in nature”:

Link

A number of researchers note that Trotsky's exile in Alma-Ata was an exceptionally mild measure for Stalin. Even the former secretary of Stalin Bazhanov B. G. in his memoirs expresses extreme surprise why Stalin only sent Trotsky to Alma-Ata, and then abroad: “Stalin has at his disposal any number of ways to poison Trotsky (well, not directly, it would be signed, but with the help of viruses, cultures of microbes, radioactive substances), and then bury him with pomp on Red Square and make speeches. Instead, he sent him abroad.” Trotsky himself explains this contradiction as follows:

In 1928 ... not only about execution, but also about arrest, it was still impossible to talk: the generation with which I went through October revolution And civil war was still alive. The Politburo felt under siege from all sides. From Central Asia I was able to keep in touch with the growing opposition. Under these conditions, Stalin, after hesitating for a year, decided to apply expulsion abroad as a lesser evil. His arguments were: isolated from the USSR, deprived of apparatus and material resources, Trotsky would be powerless to do anything ... Stalin admitted several times that my expulsion abroad was "the greatest mistake."

Historian Dmitry Volkogonov notes that “Stalin in 1928 could not only shoot Trotsky, but even judge. He was not ready to present him with serious accusations, he was afraid of him. The conditions for 1937-1938 were not yet ripe. While the old party guard remembered well what this unusual exile did for the revolution.

Other few stubborn supporters of Trotsky were also exiled to remote regions of the USSR. Sosnovsky L.S. also in 1928 was exiled to Barnaul, Rakovsky H.G. to Kustanai, Muralov N.I. to the city of Tara in the Omsk region. However, the lion's share of the defeated oppositionists (G. E. Zinoviev, L. B. Kamenev, I. T. Smilga, G. I. Safarov, K. B. Radek, A. G. Beloborodov, V. K. Putna, Ya. E. Rudzutak, V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, S. A. Sarkisov) recognized in 1928-1930. the correctness of the "general line of the party". Both those and others were repressed in 1936-1941. shot in droves.

Trotsky continuously "bombs" the GPU, the Central Executive Committee and the Central Control Commission with complaints about the lack of housing, the loss of suitcases along the way, and even that "the GPU is preventing you from going hunting." Already on January 31, 1928, in a telegram to the chairman of the OGPU Menzhinsky and the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Kalinin, he demanded to provide him with housing.

Trotsky reports that Moscow newspapers were delivered ten days late, and letters could be delayed up to three months. Nevertheless, the conditions of exile, compared to what Stalin subsequently introduced in the 1930s, were rather mild, the exile was even able to take out his personal archive, which includes a number of documents on the history of the USSR that are most valuable for historians, including documents secret. Trotsky was not limited in any way to correspondence, which allowed him to develop a stormy activity, constantly communicating with a few of his supporters who did not renounce (Preobrazhensky, Rakovsky, Muralov, Sosnovsky, Smirnov, Kasparova, etc.). From his exile, Trotsky even managed to organize the printing and distribution of "Bolshevik-Leninist" opposition leaflets. Trotsky's most active assistance in this activity was provided by his eldest son, Lev Sedov, whom he called "our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Police and Minister of Communications". In 1928, for illegal communication with Moscow, Mikhail Bodrov was sent from the capital, who secretly, under a false name, carried mail for Trotsky to the nearest railway station, 200 miles away.

In August 1928, a message appeared about Trotsky's alleged illness with malaria, and his associates organized the release of an illegal leaflet on this occasion, demanding his return to Moscow from "malarial Alma-Ata."

From his exile, Trotsky observes Stalin's gradual defeat of his yesterday's allies in 1928-1929 and ardent opponents Trotsky, "right deviators" Bukharin - Rykov - Tomsky. According to the researcher V. Z. Rogozin, the sharp turn of the Stalinist majority towards industrialization and collectivization was due to the “grain procurement crisis” of 1927, during which the peasants, dissatisfied with the understated, in their opinion, purchase prices for bread, massively refused to hand it over to the state ( see also Grain procurement in the USSR). On January 15, 1928, Stalin personally leaves for Siberia to agitate the peasants to hand over their bread. N. Krotov claims that in the Omsk village one of the peasants told him: “And you, katso, dance a lezginka for us - maybe we’ll give you some bread.” One way or another, Stalin returned from Siberia extremely embittered, and the party takes a course towards “super-industrialization” and collectivization, previously condemned by Bukharin, with the support of Stalin himself, as “Trotskyist”. To justify the turn to the left, Stalin developed the doctrine of "the sharpening of the class struggle as we move towards socialism." In Pravda, controlled by Bukharin, an article by the "Rights" is published condemning Stalin for trying to "follow the Trotskyist path", Bukharin is trying to form a bloc with the already defeated Kamenev, is negotiating with Yagoda and Trilisser.

At the same time, the defeat of the “rightists” was no longer difficult for Stalin; if the Red Army and even a significant part of the OGPU officers once stood behind Trotsky, and Zinoviev was the chairman of the Comintern and the head of the influential Leningrad party organization, there was practically nothing behind the Bukharinites.

Expulsion from the USSR

Trotsky's violent activity, which continued in the meantime even in exile, aroused more and more irritation of Stalin. As the historian Dmitry Volkogonov points out, Trotsky “…received hundreds of letters every month…In Alma-Ata, a whole Trotskyist headquarters formed around him.” In October 1928, his correspondence with outside world was completely suspended, on December 16, the representative of the OGPU Volynsky presented Trotsky with an "ultimatum" demanding that he stop political activity. Trotsky responded to such a proposal with a lengthy letter to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, in which he flatly refused to stop "the struggle for the interests of the international proletariat", and accused Stalin's supporters of "carrying out suggestions of class forces hostile to the proletariat." Judging by the correspondence with like-minded people preserved in the archives of Trotsky, which was conducted from exile in 1928, he assessed the prospects of his own “admission of mistakes to the party” skeptically, judging by what happened to the “disarmed” oppositionists: “Zinoviev is not published”, “centrists "Demand from the former oppositionists, according to Trotsky, not even to support the "general line of the party", but to "keep silent".

On January 18, 1929, an extrajudicial body - a Special Meeting at the OGPU Collegium - decides to send Trotsky out of the USSR on charges of Art. 58.10 of the Criminal Code "expressed in the organization of an illegal anti-Soviet party, whose activities have lately been aimed at provoking anti-Soviet speeches and preparing an armed struggle against Soviet power." On a copy of the resolution of the Special Conference handed to him by Volynsky on January 20, Trotsky writes: "Here are scoundrels!" At the same time, Trotsky writes to Volynsky a receipt in receipt of a copy of the decision in the following spirit: “The criminal in essence and lawless in form decision of the OS under the collegium of the GPU of January 18, 1929 was announced to me on January 20, 1929 by L. Trotsky.”

“Trotsky’s popularity in the party and his personal authority until 1929 were such that expulsion from the USSR was the most extreme measure allowed against him,” points out Iosif Berger, S. Zhalmagambetova, 139, p. 17 cm, Alma-Ata Zhazushi: O-vo "Shapagat" 1992

In 1922, Vladimir Lenin's health deteriorated so much that a fierce struggle for power broke out between the party leaders. A "troika" consisting of Kamenev, Zinoviev and Stalin was formed to jointly fight with Trotsky as one of the likely successors. From the moment of Lenin's final retirement in 1923, the "troika" began to criticize Trotsky widely, accusing him of trying to "replace Leninism with Trotskyism." Gradually, Trotsky began to lose his positions. In January 1925, he was removed from the post of chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council and People's Commissar of Defense, although he remained in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. But already in October 1926, Stalin, with the support of Bukharin, removed Trotsky from the Politburo.

By the autumn of 1927, Trotsky was finally defeated in the struggle for power. On November 12, he was expelled from the party, and on November 14 he was evicted from his official apartment in the Kremlin (he stayed with his supporter Beloborodov).

On January 18, 1928, Trotsky was taken by force to the Yaroslavsky railway station in Moscow and deported to Alma-Ata, and the GPU officers had to carry Trotsky in their arms, since he refused to go. In addition, according to the memoirs of Trotsky's eldest son, Lev Sedov, Trotsky and his family barricaded themselves in one of the rooms, and the GPU had to break down the doors. According to the memoirs of Trotsky himself, he was carried out in the arms of three people. During the delivery of Trotsky to the Yaroslavl station, both of his sons were present; the eldest, Lev, shouted to the railroad workers to no avail: “Comrade workers, look how Comrade Trotsky is being carried!”, and the younger, Sergei, hit the GPU officer holding his father in the face.

2 Arrival in Alma-Ata. Hotel "Jetysu"

Leon Trotsky arrived in Alma-Ata with his wife Natalia and eldest son Leo on the night of January 25, 1928, after a difficult journey by car from Frunze (now Bishkek) through the Kurdai Pass. For the first time, Trotsky, his wife and son were accommodated in the Dzhetysu Hotel on Gogol Street. They were given two rooms. The neighboring rooms were occupied by a convoy and local agents of the GPU.

The living conditions in which the Trotskys found themselves did not suit them. On January 31, 1928, Trotsky wrote in a telegram to the chairman of the OGPU Menzhinsky and the chairman of the Central Executive Committee Kalinin: “We settled the GPU in a hotel in conditions close to those of a prison. We eat restaurant food that is fatal to health. We are not able to remove the linen of the book from the luggage due to the lack of space. Paying for a restaurant hotel is completely beyond our means. Sufficient apartment kitchen is needed” (author's punctuation retained).

3 Moving to a house on Krasina street

After Trotsky's insistent demands, he was offered to move to the premises of the agency of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (NKID) at 75 Krasina Street.

On February 27, 1928, Trotsky wrote in a letter to like-minded people about his relocation to an apartment after a three-week stay in a hotel: “I had to buy furniture, restore a ruined stove, and generally engage in construction.” Trotsky himself called his apartment an "apartment", but in fact it was a whole house, which had four rooms. As an exception, the apartment had electricity.

Trotsky's activities in exile were varied. The main work centered around the evaluation of the post-war decade (international economy, international politics, international revolutionary movement). In Alma-Ata, Trotsky began to work on his memoirs. From the Institute of Marx and Engels, Trotsky received several tasks: editing part of the volumes of K. Marx and F. Engels in Russian and translating into Russian part of K. Marx's pamphlet "Mr. Vogt".

Trotsky also did not refuse political activity in exile. He conducted an active correspondence, and wrote letters not only to specific like-minded people, but also the so-called circular letters, which were intended for many people at the same time.

Trotsky hired a secretary to work in Alma-Ata. Leo's son also helped a lot. It fell to him to establish relations with the outside world, he managed the correspondence. He also selected the materials Trotsky needed for his work: he rummaged through the book deposits of the library, obtained old newspapers, and made extracts. He conducted all negotiations with the local authorities, was engaged in the organization of hunting. Trotsky himself subsequently described the activities of his son as follows: “Sometimes special couriers also came to us from Moscow. Meeting them was not easy. We were settled in a house surrounded on all sides by the institutions of the GPU and the apartments of its agents. External relations lay entirely on Leo. He would leave the apartment on a deep rainy or snowy night, or, having deceived the vigilance of spies, hid from the library during the day, met with a liaison agent in a public bath, or in dense thickets, under the city, or in the eastern market, where the Kirghiz crowded, with horses, donkeys and goods. Each time he returned excited and happy, with a belligerent twinkle in his eye and precious prey under his linen. So, during the year he remained elusive for enemies. In April-October, about 1,000 political letters and documents and about 700 telegrams were received; During the same time, we sent about 550 telegrams and at least 800 political letters, including a number of major works, such as “Criticism of the Comintern Program”, etc. Without my son, I would not have completed even half of this work.

4 Dacha

In Alma-Ata, Trotsky's illnesses worsened (intestinal problems, gout), he and his wife suffered from malaria, for which he blamed the local climate. They lived in the middle part of the city, where there was an average malaria rate. In the summer it was almost impossible to live there because of the heat and dust. Almost free from malaria were considered the foothills of the mountains - the counters, there were so-called dachas - summer wooden barracks. The Trotsky family decided to move there with the onset of warm days.

The Trotskys planned to leave at the beginning of May, but because of the rains and the lack of equipment in the premises, they had to postpone the move. First they found a dacha in the Kamenskoye Gorge. This caused the OGPU to worry that the exile would be more difficult to control. Then the head of the OGPU of Kazakhstan, Kashirin, ordered to allocate and repair a state dacha in the state farm of the OGPU for Trotsky. The dacha consisted of two rooms, a kitchen and a veranda. She came to Trotsky's taste. And on June 5 they moved to the foothills.

The summer spent at the dacha was described by Trotsky's wife: “Together with the owner and his family, they monitored the ripening of the fruits and took an active part in collecting them. The garden has gone through several changes. It was covered with white flowers. Then the trees stood heavy, with low-hanging branches on props. Then the fruits lay in colorful carpets under the trees, on straw mats, and the trees, freed from the burden, again raised their branches. And there was a smell in the garden of a ripe apple, a ripe pear, bees and wasps buzzed. We made jam. In June-July, in an apple orchard, in a house covered with reed wattle, hot work, tirelessly pounded typewriter- an unusual phenomenon in these places. Lev Davidovich dictated criticism of the program of the Comintern, corrected it and again gave it to correspondence.

5 Expulsion from the USSR

Trotsky's continued activity in exile irritated Stalin more and more. In October 1928, his correspondence with the outside world was completely suspended, and on December 16, the representative of the OGPU, Volynsky, presented Trotsky with an "ultimatum" demanding that he stop political activity. Trotsky responded to such a proposal with a long letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) and the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, in which he flatly refused to stop "the struggle for the interests of the international proletariat."

On January 18, 1929, an extrajudicial body - a special meeting at the OGPU board - decided to expel Trotsky from the USSR on charges of Art. 58.10 of the Criminal Code "expressed in the organization of an illegal anti-Soviet party, whose activities have lately been aimed at provoking anti-Soviet speeches and preparing an armed struggle against Soviet power." On a copy of the decision of the Special Conference, handed to Trotsky on January 20, he wrote: "Here are scoundrels!" Trotsky wrote to Volynsky a receipt in receipt of a copy of the decision in the following spirit: "The criminal in essence and lawless in form decision of the OS under the GPU collegium of January 18, 1929 was announced to me on January 20, 1929 by L. Trotsky."

In February of the same year, Trotsky and his family were secretly brought to Odessa and sent outside the USSR on the Ilyich steamer. By agreement with Turkey, he was invited to settle on the island of Prinkipo in the Sea of ​​Marmara. Here he spent more than four years, mainly engaged in literary activities. In 1933, Trotsky was allowed to move to France. In 1935 he moved to Norway. However, at the end of 1936, at the request of the Soviet authorities, he was expelled from this country. Since all European countries refused him political asylum, Trotsky went to Mexico. He settled on the outskirts of Mexico City in Coyocan, which became his last refuge. On August 20, 1940, Trotsky was wounded by the NKVD agent Ramon Mercader, and died a day later.