13.95 El. 65 WUHIil'HiU LE0I1 TROTSKY [1932] WRITlnliS OF LEon THUTSHY [1932] Writings of Leon Trotsky is a col­ lection, in twelve volumes, of pam­ phlets, articles, letters, and interviews written during Trotsky's third and final exile (1929-1940). They include many articles translated into English for the first time. They do not include the books and pamphlets from this period that are permanently in print, nor most of the unpublished material in the Trotsky Archives at Harvard University Library. WRITIOIiS OF LEon 'HOISHY [1932] PATHFINDER PRESS, INC. NEW YORK This volume is dedicated to EVELYN REED and GEORGE NOVACK Copyright CD 1973 by Pathfinder Press, Inc. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 73-81674 Manufactured in the United States of America Edited by George Breitman and Sarah Lovell First Edition, 1973 PATHFINDER PRESS, INC. 410 West Street New York, N. Y. 10014 CONTENTS Preface 9 Chronology 12 The "Uprising" of November 7, 1927 (January 2, 1932) 15 A Letter to the Politburo (January 4, 1932) 18 The Left Opposition and the Right Opposition (Published January 1932) 21 Internal Polemics and the Party Press (January 5, 1932) 24 Reply to the Jewish Group in the Communist League of France (January 15, 1932) 26 No Deal with German Government (January 23, 1932) 31 Is Stalin Weakening or the Soviets? (January 1932) 32 For Collaboration Despite Differences (February 10, 1932) 44 Answers to Questions by the New York Times (February 15, 1932) 45 From a Letter to Simon and Schuster (February 26, 1932) 51 Interview by the Associated Press (February 26, 1932) 52 Interview by the United Press (February 29, 1932) 57 On Being Deprived of Soviet Citizenship (March 1, 1932) 62 A Correction on Rakovsky (March 15, 1932) 73 A Word of Welcome to Osvobozhdenie (March 29, 1932) 74 I See War with Germany (Published April 1932) 76 The Left Social Democrats (April 12, 1932) 83 On a Political Novel (April 13, 1932) 84 Answers to Questions by the Chicago Daily News (April 23, 1932) 85 "The Foundations of Socialism" (May 1932) 87 A Reply to May Day Greetings (May 4, 1932) 91 "Blocs" and Absurdities (May 6, 1932) 92 The Labor Party Question in the United States (May 19, 1932) 94 International and National Questions (May 19, 1932) 98 Who Should Attend the International Conference? (May 22, 1932) 99 To the Communist League of Struggle (May 22, 1932) 104 To a Bulgarian Worker in the U. S. (May 24, 1932) 110 Closer to the Proletarians of the "Colored" Races! (June 13, 1932) 111 The Coming Congress Against War (June 13, 1932) 113 Why I Signed Radek's Theses on Germany (June 14, 1932) 118 The Stalin Bureaucracy in Straits (June 16, 1932) 121 A Letter to the Workers of Zurich (June 25, 1932) 127 Hands Ofr Rosa Luxemburg! (June 28, 1932) 131 An Appeal for the Biulleten (July 1932) 143 On Demyan Bedny (July 1932) 144 Declaration to the Antiwar Congress at Amsterdam (July 25, 1932) 148 Pilsudskism, Fascism, and the Character of Our Epoch (August 4, 1932) 156 Intensify the Offensive! (August 6, 1932) 166 Three Letters to Lazar Kling (February 9-August 7, 1932) 169 Perspectives of the Upturn (August 18, 1932) 173 A Conversation with Trotsky (August 25, 1932) 176 Greetings to the Polish Left Opposition (August 31, 1932) 180 Fourteen Questions on Soviet Life and Morality (September 17, 1932) 182 Peasant War in China and the Proletariat (September 22, 1932) 192 "Do Not Ask So Long" (September 22, 1932) 202 From the Archives (September 1932) 203 A Proposal to an American Editor (Published October 1932) 210 For a Strategy of Action, Not Speculation (October 3, 1932) 212 Preface to the Polish Edition of Lenin's Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder (October 6, 1932) 221 Zigzags and Eclectic Nonsense (October 7, 1932) 228 Fifteen Years! (October 13, 1932) 231 The Twelfth Plenum of the Comintern (October 13, 1932) 233 A Letter to Weisbord (October 13, 1932) 236 Mill as a Stalinist Agent (October 1932) 237 The Lesson of Mill's Treachery (October 13, 1932) 239 The Expulsion of Zinoviev and Kamenev (October 19, 1932) 244 On Field and Weisbord (October 20, 1932) 255 The Soviet Economy in Danger (October 22, 1932) 258 Leninism and Stalinism (October 1932) 285 Greetings to The Militant (November 1, 1932) 291 Perspectives of American Marxism (November 4, 1932) 293 To Friends in Frankfurt (November 5, 1932) 300 Field's Future Role (November 13, 1932) 301 Stalin Again Testifies Against Stalin (Autumn 1932) 302 A Suppressed Speech of Lenin (Autumn 1932) 306 To Greek Friends En Route to Copenhagen (November 19, 1932) 311 Press Statement at Marseilles (November 21, 1932) 312 Press Statement on Leaving Dunkirk (November 22, 1932) 313 Press Statement on Reaching Esbjerg (November 23, 1932) 314 An Interview by Social-Demokraten (November 23, 1932) 315 An Interview by Politiken (November 23, 1932) 318 Radio Message to the United States (November 27, 1932) 321 Questions for Communists (November 1932) 326 To an Unknown Comrade (November 1932) 328 Literary Projects and Political Considerations (November 1932) 329 On Students and Intellectuals (November 1932) 331 A Bolshevik-Leninist Declaration on Comrade Trotsky's Journey (November 1932) 335 Answers to Journalists' Questions (December 3, 1932) 338 An Open Letter to Vandervelde (December 5, 1932) 340 A Telegram to Herriot (December 7, 1932) 343 Press Statement at Brindisi (December 8, 1932) 344 Press Statement at Istanbul (December 11, 1932) 346 Appendix Interview on "Proletarian Literature" by Maurice Parijanine (April 1932) 347 Other Writings of 1932 356 Notes and Acknowledgments 357 Index 409 PREFACE Exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929, Leon Trotsky spent the next four and a half years in Turkey, except for a month in 1932 when he went to Copenhagen to make a speech. The present volume deals with his writings during the fourth year of his stay in Turkey, including the Copenhagen month (No­ vember-December), or, to be more precise, all of 1932 except its last half-month. It was a year of acute ferment and instability. The Soviet Union had not yet recovered from the severe economic dis­ locations resulting from the bureaucratic collectivization of agri­ culture, and its workers carried the full brunt of the sacrifices demanded by accelerated industrialization; political dissent was brutally repressed. Trotsky's analysis of these developments­ in "The Soviet Economy in Danger" and "The Expulsion of Zinoviev and Kamenev"-remains superior to that made by anyone else at that time. His own victimization in February, when the Kremlin deprived him of his Soviet citizenship, was answered in a stinging "Open Letter to the Central Executive Committee of the USSR," in which he called on the members of that body to carry out Lenin's last appeal and remove Stalin from the Soviet leadership. In the major capitalist countries, staggering under the high­ est level of unemployment in history, political shifts reflected the radicalization of the masses and the polarization of society. In May, parliamentary elections in France led to the replace­ ment of a conservative government by a liberal one; in No­ vember, a similar result was obtained when Franklin D. Roose­ velt was elected president of the United States . In Austria, on the other hand, a right-wing coalition took over in May, and in Germany three different chancellors tried to rule as the Nazis 9 10 Writings of Leon Trotsky (1932) gained strength at the ballot box and prepared for their take­ over of the German government, which came early in 1933. Trotsky's major writings of 1932 on the German crisis are collected in Th e Struggle Against Fascism in Germany (Path­ finder Press, 1971), but important aspects of his views are represented here in such essays as "I See War with Germany ," written around a year before the Nazi victory. In the Far East the Japanese militarists, who had invaded Northeast China in Septembel,". 1931, consolidated their position in Manchuria and established the puppet state of "Manchukuo"; the League of Nations, sponsor of numerous disarmament and peace conferences, did not take long to reveal its total impo­ tence. Trotsky discussed these events and their relation to world politics in his answers to journalists. In addition, he turned his attention to the Chinese Communist Party's latest activi­ ties in letters to his Chinese comrades entitled "Peasant War in China and the Proletariat" and "For a Strategy of Action, Not Speculation." During the first half of the year Trotsky was busy finish­ ing his monumental History of the Russian Revolution, but in the midst of that task, as well as after, his interests remained very broad. He wrote also about disarmament, pacifism, and the ultraleftism then being practiced by the Com intern, an­ swers to falsifications about the history of the Marxist move­ ment, on "proletarian literature," the perspectives of American Marxism, the revolutionary future of the oppressed colored races, morality and the family in the Soviet Union, problems of representation at a coming international conference of the Left Opposition, and a radio speech to the United States from Copenhagen (his first speech in English). Included here are interviews by the Associated Press, United Press, the New York Times, the Chicago Daily News, journalists and students in Denmark, a German journal, and his French translator . Let­ ters printed here went to Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, France, Germany, Greece, Poland , Switzerland, the USA, and the USSR Trotsky's major aim in 1 932 remained the building of the International Left Opposition (Bolshevik-Leninists). The reader should bear in mind throughout this volume that while Trotsky regarded the policies of the Stalinized Communist International as criminally wrong, his strategy was not to replace the Comin­ tern by the ILO but to "reform" it -to regenerate it along Leninist lines and revive it as a force capable of leading the world revolution.