It was the early weeks of 1923, and the twelfth congress was drawing near. There remained little hope that Lenin could take part in it. The question of who was to make the principal political report arose. At the meeting of the Politbureau, Stalin said, “Trotsky, of course.” He was instantly supported by Kalinin, Rykov, and, obviously against his will, by Kamenev. I objected.
“The party will be ill at ease if any one of us should attempt, as it were personally, to take the place of the sick Lenin. This time let us manage without an introductory political report, and say what we have to say in connection with the separate items of the agenda. Besides,” I added, “there are differences between us on economic questions.”
“I don’t see any differences,” Stalin replied, while Kalinin added: “On almost all questions, the Politbureau adopts your proposals.” Zinoviev was on leave in the Caucasus. The question remained undecided. At any rate, I agreed to report on industry.
Stalin knew that a storm was menacing him from Lenin’s direction, and tried in every way to ingratiate himself with me. He kept repeating that the political report should be made by the most influential and popular member of the Central Committee after Lenin: i.e., Trotsky, and that the party expected it and would not understand anything else. In his feigned at tempts at friendliness, he seemed even more alien than in his frank exhibitions of enmity, the more so because his motives were so obvious.
Zinoviev soon returned from the Caucasus. At that time, very close factional conferences were continually being held behind my back. Zinoviev demanded that he be allowed to make the political report. Kamenev was asking the “old Bolsheviks,” the majority of whom had at some time left the party for ten or fifteen years: “Are we to allow Trotsky to become the one person empowered to direct the party and the state?” They began more frequently to rake up my past and my old disagreements with Lenin; it became Zinoviev’s specialty. In the meantime, Lenin’s condition took a sharp turn for the worse, so that danger no longer threatened there. The trio decided that the political report should be made by Zinoviev. I raised no objection when, after due preparation behind the scenes, the question was put before the Politbureau. Everything bore the stamp of a temporary arrangement. No disagreements were manifest, just as no independent line could be found anywhere in the policy of the trio. My theses on industry were at first accepted without discussion. But when it seemed certain that there was no prospect of Lenin’s returning to work, the trio made a sharp about-face, frightened by the too peaceful preparations for the congress. It was looking now for a chance to line itself up against me in the upper circle of the party. At the last moment before the congress, Kamenev proposed the addition of a clause about the peasantry to my resolution, which had already been approved. There would be no sense in dwelling on the subject-matter of this amendment, which had no theoretical or political importance, but was designed as an act of “provocation,” to provide the basis for accusations — so far, only behind the scenes — of my “under appreciation” of the peasantry. Three years after his break with Stalin, Kamenev, with his characteristic good-humored cynicism, told me how they had cooked up this accusation, which of course none of its authors took seriously.
To operate with abstract moral criteria in politics is notoriously hopeless. Political morals proceed from politics itself, and are one of its functions. Only a politics that serves a great historical task can insure itself morally irreproachable methods. On the contrary, the lowering of the level of political aims inevitably leads to moral decline. Figaro, as every one knows, refused to differentiate at all between politics and intrigue. And he lived before the advent of the era of parliamentarism! When the moralists of the bourgeois democracy attempt to perceive the source of bad political morals in revolutionary dictatorship as such, one can only shrug one’s shoulders compassionately. It would be very instructive to make a cinematic record of modem parliamentarism, if but for a single year. But the camera should be placed not alongside the president of the chamber of deputies at the moment when a patriotic resolution is being adopted, but in quite other places: in the offices of bankers and industrialists, in the private rooms of editorial offices, in the palaces of the princes of the church, in the salons of political ladies, in the ministries — and, with it, let the eye of the camera record also the secret correspondence of the party leaders. On the other hand, it would be perfectly right to say that very different demands should be imposed on the political morals of a revolutionary dictatorship and on those of parliamentarism. The sharpness of the weapons and methods of dictatorship demands watchful antiseptics. A dirty slipper is nothing to fear, but an unclean razor is very dangerous. The very methods of the “trio” were, in my eyes, a sign of political backsliding.
The chief difficulty that the conspirators faced was that of coming out openly against me before the masses of the people. The workers knew Zinoviev and Kamenev, and listened to them readily. But their behavior during 1917 was still too fresh in every one’s memory. They had no moral authority in the party. Stalin, beyond the narrow circle of the old Bolsheviks, was al most unknown. Some of my friends used to say to me: “They will never dare to come out against you in the open. In the minds of the people you are too inseparably bound to Lenin’s name. It is impossible to erase the October revolution, or the Red army, or the civil war.” I did not agree with this. In politics, and especially in revolutionary politics, popular names of acknowledged authority play a very important, sometimes gigantic, but yet not decisive part. In the final analysis, the fate of personal authority is determined by the deeper processes going on in the masses. During the rising tide of the revolution the slanders against the Bolshevist leaders only strengthened the Bolshevists. During the ebb tide of the revolution the slanders against the same men were able to provide the weapons of victory for the Thermidorian reaction.
The objective processes in the country and in the world arena were helping my opponents. But their task nevertheless was no easy one. The literature, press and agitators of the party were still living on the memories of the preceding days passed under the sign of Lenin and Trotsky. It was necessary to turn all this around 180 degrees, not at once, of course, but by several stages. To show the extent of the turn, one must give at least a few illustrations of the prevailing tone of the party press toward the leading figures of the revolution.
On October 14, 1922, at the time when Lenin had already returned to work after his first stroke, Radek wrote in the Pravda: “If Comrade Lenin may be called the reason of the revolution, dominating through his transmission of will, Comrade Trotsky may be characterized as the iron will bridled by reason. Trotsky’s speech sounded like a bell summoning to work. All its importance, all its meaning, as well as the meaning of our work during the last few years, appears very dearly.” And so forth. It is true that Radek’s personal exuberance became a by word; he was capable of saying one thing and just as capable of following it with another. Much more important is the fact that these lines were printed in the central organ of the party while Lenin was still alive without jarring on any one’s ears.
In 1923, with the conspiracy of the trio already a fact, Lu nacharsky was one of the first to try to raise Zinoviev’s pres tige. But how did he set about his work? “Of course,” he wrote in his character sketch of Zinoviev, “Lenin and Trotsky have be come the most popular (whether loved or hated) personalities of our epoch, perhaps of the whole world. Zinoviev somewhat re cedes before them, but then Lenin and Trotsky had for so long been regarded in our ranks as men of such great gifts, as such undisputed leaders, that no one was much surprised at their amazing growth during the revolution.”
If I quote these pompous panegyrics in somewhat doubtful taste, I do it only because I need them as elements in the general picture, or, if you like, as evidence for a court trial. It repels me to have to quote yet a third witness, Yaroslavsky, whose pane gyrics are perhaps even more insufferable than his calumnies. This man now plays a most important r6le in the party, measur ing by his insignificant stature the depth of the downfall of its leadership. Yaroslavsky rose to his present position entirely by his slandering of me. As the official corrupter of the history of the party, he represents the past as an unbroker. struggle of Trotsky against Lenin. It goes without saying that Trotsky “under-appreciated” the peasantry, “ignored” the peasantry, “did not notice” the peasantry. But in February of 1923 — that is, at a time when Yaroslavsky must already have been familiar with my relations to Lenin and my views on the peasantry, in a long article dealing with the first steps of my literary activity (the years 1900-1902) he characterized my past in the following way:
“The brilliant work of Comrade Trotsky as a writer and publi cist has earned him the world-name of ’prince of pamphieteers,’ as he was called by the English author, George Bernard Shaw. Those who have watched his activity for a quarter of a century, will find that his talent shone with particular brightness.
[MISSING PASSAGE?)
and so on and so forth. “Many readers must have seen the much-reproduced photograph of the youthful Trotsky . . . etc. Under this high forehead there was already seething even then a stormy flow of images, thoughts, and impressions which sometimes car ried Comrade Trotsky a bit away from the highroad of history, at times either forcing him to choose paths too roundabout or, on the contrary, to attempt fearlessly to break through where no path was possible. But in all these efforts to find the right way, we had before us a man profoundly devoted to the revo lution, matured for the r?le of a tribune, with a tongue as sharp and flexible as steel, that cuts down the opponent . . . ” And so forth.
“The Siberians were carried away with enthusiasm,” Yaroslavsky gushes with an excess of zeal, “after reading these brilliant articles, and waited impatiently for their appearance. Only a few knew their author, and those who knew Trotsky were the last to imagine at that time that he would be one of the recognized leaders of the most revolutionary army and the greatest revolution in the world.” The case of my ignoring the peasantry fares, if possible, even worse at the hands of Yaroslavsky. The first of my literary works was dedicated to the peasants. Here is what Yaroslavsky says about it:
“Trotsky could not stay in a Siberian village without exploring all the petty details of its life. First of all, he turns his attention to the administrative machinery of the Siberian village. In a series of articles, he gives a brilliant characterization of this machinery . . . ” And farther on: “Around himself, Trotsky saw only the village. He suffered over its needs. He was oppressed by its benighted condition, its outlawry.” Yaroslavsky demands that my articles on country life be included in the textbooks. All this in February, 1923, the same month when the version of my inattention to the country was being created for the first time. But Yaroslavsky was then in Siberia, and therefore not yet well informed about the new “Leninism.”
The last example that I want to quote concerns Stalin himself. As early as the occasion of the first anniversary of the revolution, he wrote an article which, though disguised, was directed straight at me. In explanation, one must remember that during the preparation for the October insurrection, Lenin was hiding in Finland; Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov, and Kalinin were op posed to an uprising, and no one knew anything about Stalin. As a result, the party connected the October revolution chiefly with my name. During the first anniversary of the October revolution, Stalin made an attempt to weaken this impression by setting up against me the general leadership by the Central Committee. But to make his account at all acceptable, he was obliged to write:
“The entire work of the practical organization of the uprising was carried on under the immediate direction of the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, Trotsky. One may state without hesitation that the party was indebted first and foremost to Comrade Trotsky for the garrison’s prompt going over to the Soviet and for the able organization of the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee.”
If Stalin wrote in this vein, it was because at that time even he could not write in any other way. It needed years of unbridled baiting before Stalin could venture to state in public:
“Comrade Trotsky did not and could not play any special role either in the party or in the October revolution.” When the contradiction was pointed out to him, he replied by merely redoubling his rudeness.
The “trio” could under no circumstances pit itself against me. It could pit against me only Lenin. But for this it was necessary that Lenin himself no longer be able to oppose the trio. In other words, the success of their campaign required either a Lenin who was fatally ill, or his embalmed corpse in a mausoleum. But even this was not enough. It was necessary that I too be out of the fighting ranks during the campaign. This happened in the fall of 1923.
I am not dealing here with the philosophy of history, but re counting my life against the background of the events with which it was bound up. But I cannot help noting how obligingly the accidental helps the historical law. Broadly speaking, the entire historical process is a refraction of the historical law through the accidental. In the language of biology, one might say that the historical law is realized through the natural selection of accidents. On this foundation, there develops that conscious human activity which subjects accidents to a process of artificial selection.
But at this point, I must interrupt my account to tell some thing about my friend Ivan Vasllyevich Zaytzev, from the village of Kaloshino, on the river Dubna. This locality is known as Zabolotye (Beyond the Swamps), and, as its name suggests, is rich in wild game. Here the river Dubna floods the country over wide areas. Swamps, lakes, and shallow marshes, framed by reeds............