BolshevismBourgeoisieBujarinCivil WarCommunismCommunist PartyKamenevLeninLeninismRussian RevolutionSovietStalinStalinismStrikeTrotskyURSSViolenceWorking ClassZinoviev

The Semi Monthly Organ of the Opposition Group in the Workers (Communist) Party of America It is necessary that every member of the Party should study calmly and with the greatest objectivity, first the substance of the differences of opinion, and then the development of the struggles with in the Party. Neither the one nor the other can be done unless the documents of both sides are published. He who takes somebody word for it is a hopeless idiot, who can be disposed of with a simple gesture of the hand. Lenin MILITANT VOL. II. No.
NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 1, 1929.
PRICE CENTS TROTSKY DEPORTATION in Our platform will find its way. The wor allowed to starve for three weeks. When he was seeks to crush it by the most violent means. But kers of the whole world will ask themselves transferred to the prison hospital, it was already every blow that is struck at the Opposition causes in deep alarm, For what reason, on the tenth anniversary of October, are they extoo late. In an unknown spot, among murderers the workers to pause and ask: Whose hand wielded pelling and arresting the best fighters of the and criminals, the corpse of comrade Butov was the weapon? What class benefits from these brutal attacks? They find their answer in the daily life October Revolution? Whose hand is here! secretly interred.
and struggle of the Sovet Union.
The hand of what class? The class which An even worse fate was accorded the Opposition conquered in October? Or the class which They find that the Kulak strength and arrois edging out and digging under the victory Shortly before the 11th anniversary celebration he comrade Haenrichsen, a Leningrad metal worker.
gance grows every single day with alarming rapidity.
of October. Trotsky.
While Bolshevik fighters are being sent to prison was arrested and imprisoned. When his wife came to see him a few days afterwards the prison director lowing in the Pravda: and exile, they can read daily reports like the folTHE apparently definite news that comrade informed her that her husband had committed suiof the Soviet Union by decree of the Stalin machine cide. But on the corpse she observed unmistakable The Kulak preparations for the election campaign are sin marks of maltreatment: his teeth will be a shock to the revolutionary workers in knocked were surprisingly well organized. At first they organize their out, every part of the world. No one to whom the cause own election committees, and sometimes they even try and the whole body was covered with blue marks to capture our Soviet Izbircoms (election committees. and blood clots. When the heard of her of the proletariat is a serious thing, will fail to see The Soznovo Solonetzki lebircom (in the province this fateful act one of the most hideous and real causes of the death, they forbade the autopsy bas taken away the right to vote from a poor peasant by intention to have an autopsy made to discover the of Volozhen. whose chairman is a former czarist officer, dangerous steps yet taken in the criminally disrup and the body was hastily and secretly buried.
tive course of the man against whom Lenin sharply declaring him physically sick, while they have granted the right to vote to a number of Kulaks of their own clique.
warned the Party in his last words. The banish In October 1928, Menzhinsky, the head of the ment of Trotsky outside the borders of the Soviet reported to the Political Bureau of the In certain localities the Izbircoms are being led by Union, for the creation of which he is more rechurchmen. In the Siberian village Mentcherei, a secret sponsible than any living man, will be joyfully celeKulak Izbircom was organized. Under the guise of festivals they conducted two meetings where the Initiators brated by the exploiting class of the entire world who sce in him the embodiment of the workers Letter From Trotsky Wife gathered their own poor and middle peasants, nominated their own candidates and also outlined a plan for the victory in the Russian Revolution.
campaign. The Kulak Izbircoms are well informed about Alma Ata, December 1928.
the plans of their enemies. The Kulak children do not The shameful banishment of the Sword of Octo Dear miss a single meeting, and keep their fathers informed ber follows directly on the heels of the arrest in as to what is going on in the Soviet Izbircoms. The Moscow, a few days before, of one hundred and Since the end of October we have received village Perovo, province of Vladimir. fifty Opposition supporters whose crime consisted no letters from home. We get no answers to The Kulaks influence the middle peasants with the asin the underground distribution of Leninist literour telegrams. In short: the postal blockade. sistance of the weaker members of the Soviets whom they ature which today can no longer be circulated legally.
Naturally it will not stop there. We await often help financially; thus, Raskolski, the chairman of the Nizhni Tchirisk Izbircom, is riding a horse presented something worse. At present we are all sick The arrest of these one hundred and fifty with malaria; it is Leva (Trotsky son)
to him by the Kulaks at a banquet. Pravda, January who 11, 1929.
Oppositionists, comprising some of the best is sickest; he is running a continual temperfighters for Bolshevism, comes at a very critical ature of 39 degrees (103 degrees FahrenThe workers see that while the Leninist Opposimoment in the course of the Russian revolution. heit. tion is being persecuted under the accusation that The Stalinist press reports, ranging from those Severe cold. The cold in our rooms is torthey are allies of the imperialists, the government of the hired liar Walter Duranty in the New York turing. Houses here are not built for cold the Soviet Union signs the infamous Kellogg Pact, Times to the inspired Daily Worker stories, have the newest instrument of imperialist war and war weather. The price of wood is incredible. against the Soviet Union, and praises it as a forannounced, furthermore, that the reign of persecuNatalia Ivanovna.
tion, arrest, imprisonment and exile of Oppositionward step towards peace.
ists is to be sharpened on every front.
The workers see that at the moment when 150 We are confronted here with a course that was Party that he would decline all responsibility for olutionary activities the acting Commissar for Opposition workers are arrested for counter revnot begun yesterday and will not end tomorrow.
growth of the fight against the Leninist Opposition this permission, and sent out a circular letter to all The arrests and imprisonments are the logical out permitted to tighten the screws. He was given Ereign Affairs: Liteinox, makes a report to the and Herbert Hoover as friends of the Soviet Union centers of the with instructions to prohibit who have taken no hostile steps against the Workers the official Party leadership from the proletarian all political correspondence to exiled Oppositionists Republic.
revolutionary line after the death of Lenin. On and, in the event of hunger strikes, to cut down this road of decline, The workers are beginning to realize that it is ting, arrests, insine, sta falsehood, Party split their rations by half.
and exile are only swiftmore than a coincidence that severer blows are diA letter from Moscow, dated November 17, 1928, rected against the Leninist Opposition at the moly passed stations. The apparatus has become mad in its efforts to halt the irresistible progress of the informs us that on the eleventh anniversary celebrament when the business and diplomatic representtions, atives of the Soviet Union are hard at work in Leninist program. More than a year ago, Trotsky warned. In the proletarian centers of the no less than States. They want to know if the arrest of 150 Vashington to get recognition from the United Voices are already to be heard: We will expel a 300 comrades were arrested, 118 in Leningrad, 55 in Bolsheviks is Stalin method of assurin thousand, and shoot a hundred, and have peace in the bourgeoisie that the Communist and Odessa, in Saratov, etc. etc. Oppositionists are proParty. These are the voices of pitiable, frightened, and capitalist yet also diabolic blind men. This is the voice of Ther. Guards, Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Beating nikov cceded against with far greater violence than White systems can live side by side peacefully did at the Economic in Geneva.
ed with bureaucratic hatred, are preparing the Thermidor ingrad and Kharkov they proceed with special violence.
The workers already know who it is that gets great with all their might.
satisfaction out of the work of physical annihilation Since that warning the elements of Thermidor But these measures measures of hysterical fear of the Opposition that is now being carried on. They death comrade Butov, the secretary of comrade forward march of the Opposition. Their program still with the Opposition, that he feared an attempt Trotsky, as they had persecuted to the point of kers. Despite the incredible violence practised Kamenev who had corroborated Piatakov fears.
of Zinoviev and 1924. Butov was one of the best fighters of Octo against the Opposition, despite the ideological and The brutal course that Stalin has followed up to ber. Side by side with Trotsky he went through tions of the working class in the Soviet Union have now gives no one any reason to believe that he will every stage of the revolution, the civil war and the stop at any point in his rough shod riding over the inner Party struggle. When Trotsky was exiled se preostoreh bro Idly for the Opposition program. whole tradition and teaching of Leninism and the the wastelands of Central Asia, Butov felt it his naia Obrona factory and the Bucharin Street Car duty to follow him there. He was arrested is determined to annihilate the fighters for Stalin Tashkent, en route to Alma Ata, and incarcerated Depot the resolutions of the Opposition in the Butyrki prison in Moscow. Knowing Port overwing majorities. In a series of othe Bolshevism with the basest weapons at his disposal.
and neither prison nor torture could break the iron caliber of such as Butov, the resorted to shattering in a closed Party nucleus meeting at the Burevestnik, Minor, the editor of the Daily Worker, following Parostroi, there were majorities for the Opposition. ideological campaign is being prepared. Robert for the commission of the most hideous crimes. The his mind and heart: he was accused of espionage! 29 voted for the Opposition, abstained, and 36 the lead given him by the quasi official reports of Despite its malicious absurdity, Butov could not voted against.
stand such a base accusation. When his demand to comrade Walter Duranty to the New York be brought before the investigation judge was re The bureaucrat now officially admits the growth Times, writes a semi lynching editorial entitled fused he declared a protest hunger strike. He was of the Opposition strength among the workers, and Continued on page as Sokolon nowing rehead with