The Semi Monthly Organ of the Opposition Group in the 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 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, APRIL 1, 1929.
357 PRICE CENTS TROTSKY REPLY TO STALIN 19 mies to To the Central Committee of the Communist formed the vanguard of the proletariat into a rear awarded the historical right to Stalin.
Party of the Soviet Union!
guard of Pilsudski; which in China carried out To the Executive Committee of the Communist In and thereby helped the bourgeoisie to demolish, geoisie had not been followed, the situation of If this blind, cowardly, incompetent policy of to the end the historical line of Menshevism adaptation to the bureaucracy and the petty bourternational!
Today, December 16th, the representative of the iat; which weakened the Comintern everywhere tatorship would be far more favorable; the milie Council of the Volinsky, transmitted the tary defense far firmer and more trustworthy; following ultimatum to me orally: To cease political activity would mean to sub The work of your own colleagues in the coun.
mit passively to the blunting and the direct falsi tion and would not have to retreat step by step try. he declared almost literally. has lately as fication of our most important weapon: the Marx before the traitorous and bribed social democracy.
sumed an open counter revolutionary character. ist method, and the strategical lessons we acquired The incurable weakness of this apparatus regive you full possibilities to direct this work. On action in the Party, despite all its apparent powe this ground the Council of the has de: lies in the fact that it does not know what ef, cided to demand of you the categorical promise Comrade Trotsky to the it is doing. It carrying out the command of to discontinue this work, or else the Council will the enemy classes. There can be no greater his.
be obliged to change your conditions of existence American Opposition torical curse for a faction that arose out of the in the sense of a complete isolation from political life. In connection with this the question of chang.
Revolution and is now undermining it.
We are able to announce that the Coming your place of residence is also raised. declared to the representative of the munist Opposition in the United States has The great historical strength of the Opposition, that would only give him a written answer to finally succeeded in getting into direct conthat despite its momentary weakness, lies in the fact it feels the pulse of world historical prowritten formulation. My refusal to give an oral nection with comrade Trotsky, who is reply to the was called forth by expernow living in exile in Pera, the foreign quarter cesses, that it clearly perceives the dynamics of iences of previous times; my words would be maliof Constantinople! We have just received class forces, that it foresees the future and pre pares for it consciously. Te renounce political ciously distorted in order mislead the working a letter written by comrade Trotsky to the masses of the and the whole world.
United States stating that he has largely overactivity would be to renounce the preparations for come his malarial affliction, is in fairly good the coming day.
Nevertheless, irrespective of the further steps health and has not the slightest intention of to be undertaken by the which after all dying despite the ardent wishes of the ene.
The threat to change my conditions of existence plays no independent role in this mater but only and isolate old decisio of Bolshevism. In me from political activity carries out techn of the a very early issue we sounds as though am narrow Stalin faction which have known for some expect to present to our readers a message not separated by time, consider it necessary to submit the followfrom comrade Trotsky to the American Com2500 miles from Moscow and by 150 miles ing to the Central Committee of the Communist munists. We are further assured of regular from the nearest railroad and by approxi.
Party of the Soviet Union and the Executive Com contributions from comrade Trotsky to the mately the same distance from the border of the mittee of the Comintern: Militant and we intend to publish a new desolate Western provinces of China, where the To demand that renounce my political activity article by him in every issue of our paper.
fiercest malaria shares its dominion with leprosy is to demand that abjure the struggle for the inLong life to comrade Trotsky, the living and pestilence. As though the Stalin faction, leader of world Bolshevism!
whose direct organ is the had not done terests of the international proletariat, a struggle everything in its power to isolate me not only from have been conducting without interruption for political life, but from any other form of life as thirty two years, that is, during my whole con in struggle under the leadership of Lenin and well. The Moscow newspapers arrive here only scious life. The attempt to represent this activi with the aid of this method.
after a delay of ten days to a month, sometimes ty of mine as counter revolutionary emanates It would mean to be reconciled passively by more. Letters get to me only in exceptional cases, from those whom accuse before the internation bearing the responsibility for them to the theory after they have lain around for two or three months al proletariat of trampling under foot the basic of the Kulak growing into Socialism, to the myth in the drawers of the and the Secretariat teachings of Marx and Lenin, of injuring the his. about the revolutionary mission of the colonial of the Central Committee.
torical interests of the world revolution, of break bourgeoisie, to the slogan of the combined wor Two of my closest co workers since the civil war, comrades Sermouks and Posnansky, who ac.
October, of the unconscious and therefore the which breaks with the foundations of class theory, companied me voluntarily to my place of exile, more dangerous preparation for the Thermidor. and finally to that which is the crowning point of To renounce political activity would mean to give up the struggle against the blindness of the theory of socialism in a single comany others, the thrown into a cellar with common criminals, and the present leadership which heaps upon the objective est crime against revolutionary internationalism. North. letter from my hopelessly sick daughdifficulties of socialist construction ever greater The Leninist wing of the Party has endured ter, whom you expelled from the Party and kept political difficulties that arise out of the opportun blows since 1923, that is, since the unprecedented from all work, took seventy three days to get to ist incapacity to conduct a proletarian policy on defeat of the German revolution. The force of me from the hospital, so that my answer found a large historical scale.
these blows has increased with every successive de her no longer alive. Another letter on the serious It would mean the renunciation of the struggle feat of the international and the Russian proletariat illness of my second daughter, whom you also ex against the stifling regime in the Party which as a result of the opportunist leadership reflects the growing pressure of the enemy classes Theoretical understanding and political experpelled from the Party and drove from all work, received a month ago from Moscow, forty three upon the proletarian vanguard.
ience teach us that a period of retreat, of retrodays after it was mailed. Telegraphic inquiries It would mean to be passively reconciled to the gression, that is, of reaction, can take place not about health hardly ever reach their destination: economic policy of opportunism, a policy which only after bourgeois revolutions, but also in a similar or far worse position are thousands of undermines and destroys the foundations of the after proletarian revolutions.
the best Bolshevik Leninists, whose services to the proletarian dictatorship, which hampers the ma we terial and cultural growth of this dictatorship and of have lived in the under conditions October revolution and to the international prole.
at the same time deals heavy blows at the alliance it the clearing of the road for the Thermidor. The those who exiled or imprisoned them.
of growing reaction against the October, and with tariat are infinitely greater than the services of of the workers and the working peasants, the basis most open and consummate expression of this re In preparing still more cruel repressions against of the Soviet power.
action within the Party persecution the Opposition, the narrow faction of Stalin, whom The renunciation of political activity would and the organized smashing of the Left wing.
mean to cover with silence the disastrous policy In its last attempts to resist the open Thermi and disloyal. at a time when these characteristics of the International leadership which, in Germany, dorians, the Stalin faction had to borrow the rub had not yet reached a one hundredth part of their 1923, led to the surrender of great revolutionary bish and the remnants of the ideas of the Op: present development. is attempting with the positions without a struggle; a policy which attempted to cover up its opportunistic mistakes against the Left deprives it of all firmness. Its position some kind of connection with the ene.
which falsely estimated the international situation with the adventures in Esthonia and Bulgaria; practical policy is unbalanced, false, contradictory mies of the dictatorship. Among themselves the and unworthy of confidence.
present leaders say: We have to do this for the at the Fifth Congress and gave the Parties direct ives which only weakened and split them, a policy undertaken with such clamor, remains three quar The campaign against the Right Danger, masses. And very often even more cynically. That is for the simpletons. My close co worker, which, through the Anglo Russian Committee, ters only a sham campaign and serves above all to Georgi Vassilievitch Butov, secretary of the Rev.
supported the British General Council, the bulk cover up the real war of annihilation against the olutionary War Council during all the years of wark of imperialist reaction, in the most difficult Bolshevik Leninists before the masses. The world the civil war, was arrested and detained under months for the traitorous reformists; which in Po bourgeoisie and international menshevism have unheard of conditions. From this upright and land, at the sharp internal turning point, trans both blessed this war: these judges have long ago CONTINUED ON PAGE is the wild