Trotsky: Towards October 1879-1917 Tony Cliff Bookmarks, London, 1989. Transcribed by Martin Fahlgren (July 2009) Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists Internet Archive Converted to ebook format June 2020 Cover photograph: Mug shot from Russian secret police files, 1900. Marxists Internet Archive At the time of ebook conversion this title was out of print. Other works of Tony Cliff are available in hardcopy from: https://bookmarksbookshop.co.uk/ Contents Preface 1. Youth Revolutionary Agitator and Organiser In Prison and Siberia 2. Meeting Lenin Under the Spell of the Veterans 3. The 1903 Congress Trotsky and Factional Disputes The Beginning of Congress Marxism, Jacobinism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat Lenin Versus Martov on Party Rules. Trotsky Supports Martov Split on the Composition of Iskra’s Editorial Board Attitude to the Liberals 4. Vigorous Assault on Lenin Trotsky’s Report of the Siberian Delegation Trotsky’s Estrangement From the Mensheviks On Substitutionism For a Broad Mass Party Again on Bolshevism and Jacobinism 5. An Explanation of the Break Between Lenin and Trotsky Trotsky’s Experience of 1905 and Conciliationism Trotsky and the Committee-Men Rosa Luxemburg’s Opposition to Lenin’s Concept of the Party In Conclusion 6. Trotsky and Parvus: The Inception of the Theory of Permanent Revolution Up to the 9th January Parvus on the Prospects of Russian Revolution 7. The 1905 Revolution Beginning of the Revolution The October General Strike and the Emergence of the Petersburg Soviet The Tsar’s October Manifesto Pogroms Soviet Conquers Press Freedom The November General Strike The Struggle for the Eight-Hour Day Impact on the Peasantry On the Armed Insurrection The Soviet – Embryo of Workers’ Government The Soviet’s Last Gesture The End of the Soviet Precursor Mensheviks Under the Heady Influence of Trotsky In His Element 8. The Permanent Revolution Mensheviks and Bolsheviks on the Prospects of Russian Revolution Trotsky on the Peculiarities of Russian History Trotsky’s Unique Position Lenin and Trotsky’s Theory The Theory of Permanent Revolution Breaks the Hold of Kautskyian Marxism 9. Trotsky on Trial Escape From Siberia 10. Wasted Years: 1906-1914 Trotsky and the Austrian Socialist Leaders Liquidators and Ultra-Leftists The Mensheviks Move to the Right Trotsky ‘Above the Factions’ The Rise of the Bolsheviks 1912-1914 War Correspondent Conclusion: Trotsky’s Basic Error 11. The First World War Lenin’s Anti-War Policy Trotsky and ‘Revolutionary Defeatism’ Still a Conciliator The Zimmerwald Conference Trotsky Moves Towards the Bolsheviks Trotsky and the February Revolution Returning to Russia 12. May and June 1917 Trotsky Returns to the Petrograd Soviet The Mezhraiontsy Trotsky Still Hesitates About Joining the Bolsheviks Trotsky Comes to Lenin Trotsky and Kronstadt The Mass Orator Trotsky’s First Speech at the All-Russian Congress of Soviets The June Days 13. The July Days The Month of General Slander Against the Bolsheviks Kerensky’s Bonapartism Permanent Revolution or Permanent War? The Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party 14. The Kornilov Coup After the Coup 15. Towards the Insurrection Lenin Calls up the Insurrection Central Committee Resistance to Lenin’s Call The Role of the Slogan of ‘Democratic Dictatorship’ The Party Adapts to Constitutionalism Lenin Adopts the Right Strategy, Wrong Tactics 16. Trotsky Organizes the October Insurrection The Rise of the Military Revolutionary Committee Encroaching on the Provisional Government Challenging the Provisional Government Sticking to Soviet Legality Smooth Passage to Victory The Establishment of Soviet Power Acknowledgements Several people have helped in the writing of this book. Many thanks are due to Chris Bambery, Alex Callinicos, Leslie Cunningham, Lindsey German, Donny Gluckstein, Chris Harman, Gareth Jenkins and Steve Wright for their advice and suggestion. I owe a debt to Linda Aitken and Ahmed Shawki for help in locating material, and to Peter Marsden for editing and advice. Chanie Rosenberg deserves a special thanks for participating in the editing of the manuscript and for typing it. Tony Cliff 20 April 1990 Tony Cliff wrote many books. These include the classic State Capitalism in Russia (1974) and two previous political biographies: Rosa Luxemburg (1959) and Lenin (in three volumes 1975-79). He is also the co-author of The Labour Party: A Marxist History (1988). Preface IN WRITING a political biography of Leon Trotsky one has first of all to evaluate two previous biographies: Trotsky’s autobiography My Life, and Isaac Deutscher’s trilogy. [1] Both appear to the present writer to be unsatisfactory. First, Trotsky’s autobiography. Written as a document in the faction fight with Stalin, when the latter tried to describe Trotsky as an inveterate enemy of Lenin, My Life plays down the differences between Trotsky and Lenin. It undervalues Trotsky’s tremendous contributions where he differed from Lenin, notably downgrading Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. This theory was a unique contribution to Marxist thinking, no one at the time, not even Lenin, going as far as to maintain that Russia would be the first country in the world to have a socialist revolution and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. All other Marxists believed that only industrially advanced Western Europe was ripe for the socialist revolution; Russia was heading towards a bourgeois revolution that would free the country from Tsarism and the legacy of feudalism and transform it into a modern capitalist country. Trotsky’s contributions as organiser of the October insurrection and the Red Army are also played down. It is very unusual for an autobiography to underestimate the contribution of the author. The other side of this coin is the belittling of Trotsky’s mistakes in his opposition to Lenin’s ideas on the nature of the revolutionary party during the long period from 1903 to 1917. (In other writings Trotsky was emphatic in criticising his own position on the question of the party). Furthermore, the autobiography ends with Trotsky’s exile from Russia in February 1929. A very significant chapter, possibly the most significant, of Trotsky’s political activity is completely missing. On 25 March 1935 Trotsky wrote in his diary: Had I not been present in 1917 in Petersburg, the October Revolution would still have taken place – on the condition that Lenin was present and in command. If neither Lenin nor I had been present in Petersburg, there would have been no October Revolution: the leadership of the Bolshevik Party would have prevented it from occurring – of this I have not the slightest doubt! If Lenin had not been in Petersburg, I doubt whether I could have managed to conquer the resistance of the Bolshevik leaders … But I repeat, granted the presence of Lenin the October Revolution would have been victorious anyway …. Thus I cannot speak of the ‘indispensability’ of my own work, even about the period from 1917 to 1921. But now my work is ‘indispensable’ in the full sense of the word. There is no arrogance in this claim at all. The collapse of the two Internationals has posed a problem which none of the leaders of these Internationals is at all equipped to solve. The vicissitudes of my personal fate have confronted me with this problem and armed me with important experience in dealing with it. There is now no one except me to carry out the mission of arming a new generation with the revolutionary method over the heads of the leaders of the Second and Third International. [2] In the years 1923-1940, when Trotsky was out of power, his contributions to the development of proletarian revolutionary strategy and tactics were stupendous, particularly after he was exiled. From a remote Turkish island, from a hiding place in the French Alps, from a Norwegian village, and finally from a suburb of Mexico City, Trotsky’s mind never ceased to embrace the international working-class struggle. Reading his writings on China, one has the impression that the author lived and struggled in Shanghai. His writings on Germany, France, Spain, Britain leave similar impressions. And throughout he had to contend with the fact that the Trotskyist groups in all these countries were tiny, made up of young, inexperienced people, and very isolated. Trotsky’s great genius, his vivid, realistic imagination, the grand sweep of his vision, make this chapter of his life one of the richest. One of the most difficult problems was the question of the economic, political and cultural changes and struggles that faced a workers’ state in a backward country surrounded by much more advanced capitalist enemies. The experience of the Paris Commune was fleeting; now for the first time in world history a workers’ state was established over a whole country. Marxist theory arises out of practice; it generalises the past experience of humanity. While Trotsky fought consistently, relentlessly, against the degeneration of the revolution, against the rising Stalinist bureaucracy, the experience he had to rely on was very small, and it is not to be wondered at that his predictions about the future development of the Stalinist regime were not confirmed by events. No prognosis is ever confirmed in totality, especially when a very new phenomenon is dealt with. Trotsky’s devotion to the revolutionary cause stood the test of the most tragic events: Stalin’s persecution and slander surpassed anything that had ever happened in history. His first wife was sent to a Stalinist labour camp, two of his four children were murdered by Stalinist agents, one died from consumption while her husband languished in Stalin’s prison and the fourth committed suicide; of his seven grandchildren only one, as far as we know, survived in freedom. In terms of the immediate impact of his work, Trotsky’s years out of power were quite arid.