What accusations did Stalin put forward against Trotsky. Stalin and Trotsky: A History of Conflict in the Struggle for Power. Good old methods
When at the beginning of 1923 Lenin's health deteriorated in the leadership of the CPSU (b), a serious struggle for power began. The situation was aggravated by the "Letter to the Congress", in which Lenin sharply criticized his closest associates - Stalin and Trotsky, calling the former "rude and disloyal", the second "boastful and self-confident." It was Trotsky who found himself at a disadvantage in the upcoming battle: the troika consisting of Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, armed with the term "Trotskyism", was preparing to give a serious battle to their main political opponent.
To begin with, the composition of the Central Committee was expanded at the expense of the supporters of the troika, which allowed the main Bolshevik body to make decisions bypassing Trotsky. Later, Stalin, who headed the Orgburo and the Secretariat of the Central Committee, began to appoint his proteges to key party posts, which ultimately neutralized the competitor. Lev Davidovich could have been saved by the 13th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in May 1924 in Moscow, but after losing the debates preceding the Congress, he remained in an absolute minority and soon completely lost control of the Central Committee.
Stalin's struggle against Trotsky was not caused at all by personal enmity and not a thirst for power, as it is sometimes believed, it was a struggle between two opposing views on the country's future, a struggle to choose the path of its development.
Trotsky L.D. was a supporter of active action. He advocated to ignite the fire of revolution around the world. He said that building socialism in one country is impossible. First, it is necessary to achieve a world revolution and only then take up the construction of socialism.
Stalin I.V. talked about the opposite. He argued that the victory of socialism even in one country is a unique phenomenon and that everything possible must be done to build socialism in the USSR. However, he completely rejected the idea of a world revolution.
Trotsky said that the USSR should not be developed. According to his ideology, the country did not need schools, museums, hospitals or universities. In general, nothing was needed, except for the army and everything that the army provides. The Soviet army had to fight the whole world in order to kindle the ghostly hotbed of the world revolution. Stalin, on the other hand, talked about the need to create benefits within the country. The USSR possessed all the necessary resources to build socialism. The struggle for power in the party between Trotsky and Stalin essentially meant a struggle between the prosperity and the collapse of the country. Stalin's victory in this struggle made it possible to improve the quality of life in the USSR.
Despite the fact that many people associate the repressive methods of Soviet politics exclusively with the name of Stalin, the Bolshevik terror is an invention of Trotsky. If the latter had inherited the power in the USSR, the scope of the repressions would have been no less, and perhaps even more ambitious, than under Stalin. In 1920, Trotsky wrote a book with the ominous title "Terrorism and Communism", which was a response to the theses of the German Marxist Karl Kautsky. In it, Lev Davidovich not only justifies the Red Terror of the period Civil War, but also urges not to abandon it after its end. Even in political struggle, Trotsky advises to operate not with arguments, but with force: "The conquest of power by the proletariat does not complete the revolution, but only opens it."
Trotsky explained the coercive policy of the state by the interests of the working masses, without which the government cannot do anything. However, no one would have given guarantees that with the concentration of all power in the hands of Trotsky, he would not have introduced an absolute dictatorship. Trotsky's political methods were most clearly demonstrated during the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion, when more than 1000 sailors were killed, which testified to the true attitude of the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council to democracy.
Until the end of his life, Trotsky believed that a communist state "United States of Europe and Asia" would be built in the eastern hemisphere of the earth, in which citizens freed from bourgeois chains would live and universal equality and prosperity would reign. If the state led by Trotsky conducted a consistent campaign to communize the planet, then it is quite possible that the Western countries would take up arms against the USSR, uniting in an anti-Soviet coalition. Without reliable allies, our country, most likely, would have to enter into a protracted military conflict with the leading powers of the world - the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Japan, and no one knows how this confrontation would end.
Trotsky's concept of the overindustrialization of the country was initially rejected by Stalin. The leader of the USSR was more attracted by the reform model proposed by Nikolai Bukharin, which assumed the development of private entrepreneurship by attracting foreign loans. However, already in 1929, the Bukharin approach was replaced by the Trotskyist one, albeit without the extremes inherent in the methods of war communism, on which Lev Davidovich was going to rely. According to Trotsky's program of forced industrialization, the rapid growth of the national economy was to be achieved on the basis of the use of exclusively internal resources, the development of heavy industry by means Agriculture and light industry. With this one-sided approach, the peasantry had to "pay" for the costs of rapid industrial growth.
Trotsky was considered the second person after Lenin. Behind him stood the command of the Red Army.
In civilian life he was the people's commissar of defense. Many officers from his hands received both positions and titles ...
But that is not all:
Trotsky and him immediately after the civil war
took all power at the level of district committees, city committees and regional committees. Stalin pushed Trotsky away from the helm of power at the top, but at the middle and lower levels
right up to the war itself, Trotsky's supporters had real power.
This was the tragedy of our people.
Joseph Vissarionovich created in parallel with the repressive structure of the NKVD
his own super-covert intelligence.
This pocket intelligence was so secretive that they knew nothing about it either in the secret police,
neither in the Kremlin, nor ... beyond the cordon ...
Stalin directed this structure to collect material, first of all, against the "fiery" ones.
Compromising evidence was needed against the "Leninist" guard, moreover, as soon as possible.
And after a while, Iosif Vissarionovich found the following document on his desk:
Kamenev - 40 million Swiss francs at Credit Swiss, 100 million francs at Paribaud,
700 million marks at Deutsche Bank,
Bukharin - 80 million pounds in Vastmister Bank, 60 million francs in Credit Swiss.,
Radzutak - 200 million marks at Deutsche Bank, 30 million pounds at Vastmister Bank,
Felix Dzerzhinsky - 70 million Swiss tailcoats at Credit Swiss, etc.
In fact, by the political processes of 1937-1938, Joseph Vissarionovich saved our people from death.
Unfortunately, very few people here understand this fact ..
The most tragic page of the Stalin era and the entire Soviet history was the Great Patriotic War... Could Trotsky have prevented this catastrophic event if he took over as head of state? It is known that Trotsky treated Hitler with hostility, but the Fuhrer, on the contrary, showed every respect to the prominent revolutionary. Hitler's biographer Konrad Heiden recalled how highly the German leader praised Trotsky's memoirs, calling them "a brilliant book" and noting that "he learned a lot from their author." There is even evidence in the documents of the Reich that the German government was making plans to create a collaborationist government of the USSR headed by Trotsky. However, it was not Stalin's personality that prompted Germany to aggression against the USSR, but Hitler's irrepressible ambitions. If Trotsky had been in Stalin's place, Hitler, a convinced anti-Semite, would have found additional arguments for an attack on the Soviet Union.
Reviews
1. Trotsky was a superficial Cockerel, and "in. In the law" quickly realized how weak and helpless he was, like a child. Koba easily twisted around the "romantics" - not only Bronstein, but also his "allies" - Rosenfeld (Kamenev) and Apfelbaum (Zinoviev). It's even a shame for the "sophisticated" Jewish mind. Lenin in confusing matters sometimes said to the honest and offended Stalin: "Here you can't do without the Jews" ... 2. Trotsky harbored no illusions about the "strength" and capabilities of the Red Army after WWI and the Polish failure. "Naive" relied on the Germans in the years 23-26. Disguised as a Ukrainian teacher, I went to Germany in the 26th (!) To "study" .. The Politburo tried to persuade him NOT to go ("to spite my mother, I will frostbite my ears") Well, not a fool? Such people were called later in the Stalinist empire - "I will come * ok camp" ...
After Lenin's death on January 21, 1924, it began in the USSR. The situation was complicated by the fact that Lenin had several close associates who claimed power. Besides Trotsky and Stalin, they were Kamenev, Bukharin and Zinoviev. Lenin did not call anyone his successor. The real struggle unfolded only between Trotsky and Stalin.
In order to understand what potential leaders prepared for the country, let us consider the main points of their programs.
Trotsky L.D. was a supporter of active action. He advocated to ignite the fire of revolution around the world. He said that building socialism in one country is impossible. First, it is necessary to achieve a world revolution and only then take up the construction of socialism.
Stalin I.V. talked about the opposite. He argued that the victory of socialism even in one country is a unique phenomenon and that everything possible must be done to build socialism in the USSR. However, he completely rejected the idea of a world revolution.
In other words, Trotsky said that the USSR should not be developed. According to his ideology, the country did not need schools, museums, hospitals or universities. In general, nothing was needed, except for the army and everything that the army provides. The Soviet army had to fight the whole world in order to kindle the ghostly hotbed of the world revolution. Stalin, on the other hand, talked about the need to create benefits within the country. The USSR possessed all the necessary resources to build socialism. in essence, it meant a struggle between the well-being and the collapse of the country. Stalin's victory in this struggle made it possible to improve the quality of life in the USSR.
The first move in the struggle was made by Stalin. He, implementing Lenin's program to attract ordinary people to the party, from February to August 1924, increased the number of the Bolshevik party by 203 thousand people, which significantly increased his authority.
In response, Trotsky publishes an article that he timed to coincide with the seventh anniversary of October. In this article, he describes in detail his role in the revolution, mentions many names, except for one - Stalin. The January 1925 congress of the RCP (b) party raised the issue of mistrust in Trotsky, since he smeared the history of the revolution. The day before, Trotsky wrote a statement asking to be relieved of all his posts. At the end of 1925, the RCP (b) was renamed the VKP (b), the All-Union Communist Party.
In 1927, Trotsky, with the support of Kamenev and Zinoviev, tried to organize his own demonstration, timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. This demonstration was to take place exclusively under the slogans of Trotsky. As a result, Stalin, and the people who supported him, expelled Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev from the party. In 1928, Trotsky and his associates were exiled to Alma-Ata. In 1929, Trotsky was expelled from the country. Thus, power struggle in the party between Trotsky and Stalin ended with the victory of Stalin.
turned out to be fateful for the country and for many years determined the vector of its development.
"Eternity was arbitrary - if, say, Stalin had not killed Trotsky, but on the contrary, completely different people would have inhabited it." Victor Pelevin, Generation P.
And if no one killed anyone, and Leon Trotsky took over as leader of the Soviet Union? What would life be like in the country: would it be better or worse? Our experts tried to choose between Scylla and Charybdis from the communist party
Questions:
Could Trotsky become the leader of the USSR?
Andrey Zubov
Of course I could. Somewhere in the year 1923-24, he could have outplayed Stalin. But could not! After 1925, its fall began.
Mikhail Khazin
He didn't want to be the leader of the USSR. He wanted to be the leader of the world revolution. This is a fundamental difference. His task, the entire resource of which was on the territory of the former Russian Empire, was to throw all his strength into kindling the fire of the world revolution. And he did not want to build the Soviet Union at all. Therefore, I doubt that he could become the leader of the country.
Can the programs of Trotsky and Stalin be opposed?
Andrey Zubov
Trotsky was in the same mood for domestic affairs, because neither Lenin nor Stalin succeeded in the world revolution. Trotsky - a man no less intelligent than these two - understood perfectly well that then it was necessary to "dig in" in the part of the world that they had already received, and wait for the right moment to spread their influence. So Stalin waited for this moment in 1939. Probably Trotsky would have waited.
Mikhail Khazin
Stalin's programmatic point of view was to restore the state. Trotsky, however, has always fiercely hated the state. Trotsky and Stalin had two fundamentally different positions. At the same time, at the first stage, up to 1922, they could not even be compared, since Trotsky's position was so much higher than Stalin's that Stalin's position did not play any role at all in the policy of the state. Stalin began to emerge as a person who defined the opposition only in the late 1920s. And he received power in the country in 1938, not earlier.
Would it have been better under Trotsky than under Stalin?
Andrey Zubov
I can say bluntly that horseradish radish is not sweeter: they are both absolutely terrible people. Trotsky was somewhat more educated, but no less cruel, fanatical and inhuman than Stalin. So I think that if Trotsky was there, it would be just as bad as it was under Stalin. It doesn't matter which of the communist leaders is. They are all absolutely the same, and the nuances of their personal qualities do not mean anything in big politics. They were all anti-Russian people, for whom Russia was just a way of self-exaltation and implementation of their crazy ideas. There is no difference between them.
Mikhail Khazin
I do not really understand what is meant by this question and by the words that Trotsky had more democratic and free views. If this means that he was ready to kill millions of people in order to achieve his goals - then yes, of course. But he was a much bigger cannibal than Stalin, even during the Civil War. People meant nothing to him at all. For him, it was about power in the world.
Who could Stalin be under Trotsky?
Andrey Zubov
It's hard for me to say. I don't like such fantasies.
Mikhail Khazin
Stalin was not the kind of person who could emigrate. He, if you look at his biography, has practically never been abroad. Therefore, I am inclined to believe that if Leon Trotsky came to power, then Stalin and his team would be destroyed here, inside the country. But there is no doubt that he would not emigrate.
On August 21, 1940, Leon Trotsky died. The day before, he was attacked by Ramon Mercador, hired by Joseph Stalin to deal with his old enemy. Louis Fischer, a longtime Soviet columnist for The Nation, published this text on the rivalry between Trotsky and Stalin in an upcoming issue.
The enmity between Trotsky and Stalin escalated into a battle of giants that rocked the Soviet Union for many years and had a profound effect on the rest of the world. The struggle was long. None of the participants released their grip, and only the death of one of them was able to separate them. Until the very day of his death, Trotsky continued to attack the dictator who prevented him from becoming Lenin's successor. In his poisonous invectives sounded the anger and rage of a genius who failed to realize his aspirations. However, Stalin - the victorious and still retaining power in the Soviet Union - also did not lower his weapons. He tirelessly pursued Trotsky all over the world. The Moscow trials were, in essence, the trials of the recalcitrant Trotsky. The purges were directed against his friends, against the friends of his friends, and against everyone who was or could become a Trotskyist. The blood feud between the two revolutionaries continued to the very end, although one was a powerful ruler of a people of 180 million, and the other was a poor writer from a small country on the sidelines of the world.
Because of their great war tens of thousands of people were shot, ended up in jail, and went to rot in the icy desert. It disfigured the foreign and domestic policy of the Soviet Union, distorted and rewritten history, weakened and split the world labor movement. In 1939, I discussed the Stalinist purges and the Moscow trials with the British popularizer of Marxism, John Strachey - and, in his opinion, they contributed to Munich. Hitler's triumph over Czechoslovakia and, possibly, even the Second itself World War were the consequences of this fantastic fight between a Ukrainian Jew and the son of an illiterate Georgian shoemaker from a village on the border between Europe and Asia.
Was it a personal conflict or a clash of ideas? Trotsky admitted that he strongly disliked Stalin. “[Stalin] was always unpleasant to me,” he wrote in his autobiography. “He was distinguished by his narrow interests, empiricism, psychological rudeness, and the particular cynicism of a provincial.”
The Stalinists and Trotskyists argued over the world revolution, the revolution in China, and economic policy in Russia. However, Stalin intrigued against Trotsky, and Trotsky complained to Lenin about Stalin long before these problems became urgent. Apparently, Stalin from the very beginning was jealous of Trotsky's successes. In the fall of 1918, Trotsky received the Order of the Red Banner. Deputy Prime Minister Lev Kamenev offered to give the same award to Stalin. "For what?" - the future Soviet president Mikhail Kalinin was surprised. “Don't you understand? Bukharin answered. - Lenin thought of everything. Stalin will not tolerate if he does not get what the other gets. He will never forgive it. " Lenin advised Trotsky to find a compromise with Stalin - but that was impossible.
Criticizing people, Trotsky was stern and merciless.
He ignored the psychology of the interlocutor or did not understand it. He stepped on other people's calluses - and, as he himself later admitted, those on whose calluses he managed to step on, Stalin methodically attracted to his side. Trotsky did not know how to obey anyone - not even Lenin. He refused to be second after Lenin and preferred for himself such a field of activity where he could be the first. He was an extravagant and headstrong individualist. His speeches and articles were inspiring and captivating, but in personal relationships he was cold. People were cold with him too. Even the friendly and cheerful Lenin could not get close to him and in his letters addressed him as a "respected comrade" and not as a "dear comrade." Chicherin in conversations with me called Trotsky "diva".
There was something pedantic about Trotsky. He was a brilliant administrator and organizer who demanded strict adherence to instructions and attention to detail. He was very neat in his clothes and everyday habits. Exemplary order reigned on his table. He tried to teach punctuality to Russians - those very Russians who are capable of being four hours late and casually say, "Sorry, the phone call delayed me." These qualities made Trotsky a good military leader, but a bad politician. He never controlled the party machine and most likely never even tried to do so. He held his head so high above the clouds that his feet never stood on the firm ground of the party organization. For all the brilliance and attractiveness of his personality, for all the power of his intellect, he was Gibraltar with no connection to the continent or a dreadnought without an escort, vulnerable to attacking submarines. It was easy for the enemy to get close to him unnoticed. Stalin was much inferior to him as an orator and journalist, was less educated, less versed in Marxism - but the party secretaries were subordinate to him.
The peace between Stalin and Trotsky was based on the authority of Lenin. Without him and in the conditions of the struggle for the empty seat of the head of the communist movement, they simply could not get along together. Many emphasize their theoretical differences, but in reality they often differed only on the issue of pace and timing. Both Trotsky and Stalin wanted Soviet power in China - but Trotsky believed that this should happen earlier than Stalin planned. Undoubtedly, in such cases, a difference of several months can be decisive. However, if not for the political enmity between Trotsky and Stalin, they might have come to a compromise on the Chinese question. In 1926, Trotsky advocated the fight against the kulaks. After his victory over Trotsky in 1928, Stalin crushed his kulaks. In 1929, Stalin's five-year plan did not receive harsh criticism from Trotsky. While in Russia, Trotsky never said that Stalin was not a Bolshevik. Nobody doubted Trotsky's Bolshevism either.
Thus, there were no insurmountable theoretical differences between Stalin and Trotsky. Lenin also did not advise putting Stalin at the head of the country because of his rudeness and lust for power, and not because of his economic and political ideas. In his will, deposited with Krupskaya in December 1922, Lenin wrote: “Comrade. Stalin, having become general secretary, concentrated immense power in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be able to use this power with sufficient caution. " A little later, Lenin asked Krupskaya for his will and added the following startling words to it: “Stalin is too rude ... Therefore, I invite my comrades to consider a way to move Stalin from this place ... This circumstance may seem an insignificant trifle. But I think that from the point of view of protection from a split and from the point of view of what I have written above about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky, this is not a trifle, or it is such a trifle that can acquire decisive importance. " Thus, Lenin foresaw this great battle. However, in the Soviet Union, his will remains unpublished to this day. Krupskaya read it twice at the meetings of the Central Committee, there were rumors about him - though, oddly enough, not too widely - but most of my Russian acquaintances did not even hear about him. It hardly hurt Stalin.
IN last days on "Dilettant" the confrontation between Trotsky and Stalin intensified. They had a skit in the "Periscope", under the heading "Duels" the correspondence polemic between the historian Zubov and the economist Khazin took place. Where does this interest come from? Coincidentally, I guess. Although sometimes it seems that the actualization of the period of the great Russian revolution is clearly overkill. It's time to finish this story. Well, in fact, so many years have passed, and the disputes are going on as about today. Is it like arguing desperately? where the country would have turned if the Decembrists had won, sometime in 1924. And it is clear that on the eve of the century of those events, interest in them will only warm up, and the number of publications will grow.
I also, like many amateurs from history, spent time studying the great Russian revolution. In particular, a lot has been read from Stalin, about Stalin, and practically everything about Trotsky and, of course, his work. Listening to the arguments of the current Stalinists, I understand very well that they "have not read Pasternak, but they condemn". They know Trotsky from the works of Vyshinsky, and consider him: 1) an enemy of the USSR; 2) the murderer of the Russian people and the Orthodox Church.
I'm not going to dissuade anyone, it's even good that the average person is so poorly educated. As Ecclesiastes says, “There is much sorrow in much wisdom; and whoever multiplies knowledge multiplies sorrow. " And in the same place: "There is a time for everything ... a time to be silent, and a time to speak."
Now is the time to be silent.
I will only touch upon one more "crime" of Trotsky, which the townsfolk impute to him, namely, the permanent revolution, his desire to throw the Russian (Soviet) people into the furnace of the world revolution. This is in continuation to my post "Building socialism in a water country"
In 1935, after the beginning of the mass purges, Stalin decided that an informational expansion in Europe was necessary. For this, the European press is bought up, and to create a positive image of the leader in the USSR, the French pacifist writer Henri Barbusse was hired.
Barbus spoke a number catch phrases and among them is this: "The one who defends the truth has no right to remain silent!"
Well I do not know.
Barbusse was officially invited to the VII Congress of the Comintern, and was supposed to correct the first edition of Stalin's biography from 1930, taking into account the retirement of a number of characters.
As a talented writer, he coped with the task perfectly: “... A man with the head of a scientist, with the face of a worker, in the clothes of a simple peasant ... Whoever you are, the best in your destiny is in the hands of this person. He is a true leader, Stalin is Lenin today. "
Now let us deviate to Trotsky.
There was such a figure during the tsarist regime, Artur Germanovich Rafalovich. Rafalovich served with Witte, and then with Kokovtsov as a confidant for the conclusion of loans in France.
Back in 1894, Rafalovich came into contact with Rothschild. Rothschild recommended to him the banker Jacob Schiff, a German Jew who owned the Kuhn, Loeb & Co banking house. Through this channel, the tsarist government prepared loans for itself in French banks. During Russo-Japanese War, the tsarist government instructed Rafalovic to also bribe French prints so that they contribute to the creation of public opinion about the stable economic situation in Russia. After the collapse of tsarism, Rafalovich remained the manager of state assets Russian Empire in the amount of 21 million gold rubles. He did a lot of interesting things, but among other things he bought the French newspaper Temps. And Temps was the secret mouthpiece.
And here is what Trotsky wrote in 1935 in his diary.
“In 1925 (or 1924?) Krasin, as the Soviet plenipotentiary in France, negotiated with the Temps director and reported on them at the [sitting] of the Politburo in order to receive the necessary directives. Temps's proposals were as follows: a) the editorial office, after a certain time, sends to Moscow an employee who begins with critical, but calm in tone of correspondence; b) the fight against the USSR stops in the editorials; c) a few months later (I remember, six) the newspaper begins to pursue a policy friendly to the USSR in foreign policy; d) correspondence from Moscow takes on a benevolent character; e) in the second editorial - internal politics - the editorial board retains complete independence in criticizing Bolshevism; f) the Soviet [government] pays Temps one million francs a year. Krasin started with half a million, went up to 750,000 (the negotiations stopped at this) and now asked the Politburo whether to go further. The question was resolved negatively ... Whoever takes the trouble to look through the Temps for 1933−34 will see that the deal was fully implemented, only with a delay of 9 years. "
Rafalovich died in 1921, but his counterparties successfully continued the business. Temps published articles about the "Trotskyist trace" in the assassination of Kirov, and generally described the high-profile Moscow trials of the 1930s in an exculpatory manner. But this is just food for thought.
What is curious for me about contemporary Russian politics is the de facto state ideology that has taken shape. Moreover, it has developed on a historical foundation, that is, it is not an innovation. Its features are easily recognizable - Russian imperialism, Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality. Yes, a nationality, no worse than the serf "nationality" that was formulated by Count Uvarov, Minister of Education under Nicholas I.
The theory of "bad Trotsky (coup d'etat of 1917) and good Stalin (restoration of the empire)" conveniently fits into the paradigm of the triad.
And the current ministry of education continues to work in this field, diligently promoting the ideals of the triad, primarily in cinematography. From time to time, in the deadening silence of Russian cinema, there is a loud crunch of a French roll.
However, recently it was reported that Rodnyansky was filming a grandiose series about Trotsky, "Enemy of the USSR," apparently for the centenary of events. I'm afraid to imagine what it will be. Will that change.
Then, finally, another Barbusse. Fragment of the work "True Stories". Somewhere in Romania, in the dark basements of the Cigurans. A visitor came to a prisoner who had served six years in solitary confinement, who eagerly asks:
“- Well, in Russia the Bolsheviks are still in power? - Yes! She shouted. But the watchman cut them off abruptly: - No political talk, hey, you! Silence. Then she finally asked: - Do you want something, Comrade Bujor? "No," he said, "now I'm happy."
