Special thanks to @Libertad and the many others who helped proofread and contribute to this piece
Cult of Personality
“Comrade Stalin brought up the issue of Trotsky once again in this latest visit, and he has become more insistent than usual.”
- John Reed in a letter to Crystal Eastman, 1936
“The biggest weakness of the Trotskyist bloc was that it was led by Leon Trotsky.”
- Harry Haywood to a WCPA cadre, 1947
“I may have no love for the man, but I’d spit at the idea of handing his head on a silver platter at [Stalin’s] whim. ”
- Emma Goldman on the matter of extraditing Trotsky, 1937
“The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end. ”
- Leon Trotsky, Their Morals and Ours (1938)
Excerpt from Renegade: Stalin, Trotsky and the Red May Revolutionby Michael O’Neill (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2012)
In the multiple biographies of both men, the Red May Revolution and the emergence of the United Republics are framed as a ‘turning point’ in the lives of both Stalin and Trotsky. While we will delve into why that is an understandable assumption, it is also somewhat of an overstatement, particularly for those who suggest that there was a complete shift in the mannerisms and personalities of both men. After all, Red May was only a few short years before Trotsky released A Revolution in Limbo , which suggested that the USSR and the UASR had only a fragile alliance. It was only a short time before the Moscow Trials started to cull the Old Guard that did not have full loyalty to Stalin. And while the ideals Trotsky had long championed held real prominence among many leading members of the Workers’ Communist Party of America (WCPA), the old man would never come close to actually shaping the direction of the international revolutionary movement. But that never stopped his old archrival in Moscow from always fearing that he would soon even lead the Communist International through his ideological grip on the Americans. For many Soviet historians, the Red May Revolution was merely one of the catalysts for the Great Purge that would ultimately follow.
While it is not so uncommon to witness a “historical earthquake” in a lifetime, it’s much rarer to live through one. It’s unheard of to live through two. But such was the luck of Lev Bronstein, who had the bragging rights of participating in not one or two, but three revolutions in his lifetime; in 1905, 1917, and 1933. Despite being in his mid-50s and being far removed from any sort of influence among the Workers’ Communist Party, Trotsky threw himself into the revolutionary scene of New York City, already with a highly conscious working-class following during the Biennio Rosso. Those same workers were now prominent leaders in the streets, who had 15 years ago idolized Lenin, Trotsky, and the October Revolution. This claim to fame allowed Trotsky to serve as a key figure in many of the revolutionary events that occurred in New York during the Civil War, including being consulted by the New York Commune to assist in its militia’s defensive preparations in case of White offensives against the city1. While far from his heady days as People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, Trotsky played a key role in the defense of ‘Metropolis’ (as it would later be renamed), a fact that cemented his celeb status in the city. There is a reason why the street containing his former residence bears his name today.
While Trotsky played the role of “prophet” of revolutionary Marxism, the cause of Red May had a seismic impact within the Comintern; for many international communists, the “Third Period” policies, being hostile to social democratic forces, had seemingly had tragic effects in the fall of Germany to Nazism. With the Great Depression having brought forth the crisis in capitalism that Marx predicted would come, Red May could be the second calling of what Red October was in 1917, a premonition that terrified France and Britain and emboldened the forces of reaction.
For Stalin, Red May signaled the start of the second part of the Great Turn. The removal of Trotsky had freed up Stalin to begin adopting similar economic policies, having adopted the Left’s platform of industrialization and collectivization. This “great break” in foreign policy was less drastic, as the Great Depression had already established ‘Third Period’ policies in the Comintern. But now with the revolutions ascendant in America and Mexico, the Soviets decided to finally place ‘socialism in one country’ into the dustbin of history and adopt a far more revolutionary stance; a return to proletarian internationalism.
Historical opinion is divided over Stalin’s real commitments to communist internationalism. Stalin was an Old Bolshevik and a close companion of Lenin, who had viewed internationalism as necessary to the survival of the Soviet Revolution. Issac Deutscher, in his biography of Stalin, discusses Stalin’s own work titled Foundations of Leninism, where Stalin reiterates the implementation of Marxism in the current age of imperialism, which is merely Leninism, where the proletariat of oppressed nations must support national liberation movements to dislodge imperialist nations2. In contrast, the proletariat in imperialist nations must fervently oppose the acts of their governments. It would be the overall shared experience of exploitation, uniting the proletariats of oppressed and ‘civilized’ nations alike, bringing forth internationalism. Perhaps Stalin was more cautious in initiating the conflicts in the early 20s due to the status of the Soviet Union as a pariah state, and the emergence of the UASR was the ally they needed to counter imperialist saber-rattling. Just as the Five-Year Plans seemed to send the Russian Communists back to their ideological roots in the economic sphere, it can also be said that the return to an internationalist foreign policy served a similar purpose.
C.L.R. James, in his work, World Revolution: The History of the Communist International , presents a far more cynical view of Stalin’s embrace of world revolution politics as a policy made in a desperate attempt to maintain the USSR’s preeminent status within the Comintern. James details Stalin’s move as one of self-serving realpolitik , rather than a return to ideological orthodoxy. As the revolutions spread throughout the New World, the Comintern gained an influx of national parties now governing their respective countries, which subscribed to a hardline, aggressive stance against imperialism. The United Republics were viewed as the geographical center of this second revolutionary wave, just like the Bolsheviks were during the first one. Stalin wasn’t a man who pushed against the grain.
Whichever it was - genuine internationalism or pragmatic realpolitik - Stalin’s bet was a safe one. The establishment of the UASR gave Stalin a large industrial ally that could match the Entente Cordiale should war break out between it and the Comintern. With American assistance, Stalin would become even more ambitious in building the Soviet Union into an industrialized superpower. While there is scholarly debate over Stalin’s industrialization policy and how successful it could have been without the industrial behemoth that was Deleon-Debs, the first Five-Year Plan saw a rapid industrialization program that was buoyed by foreign companies, even from the old United States, seeking out the Soviet Union during the beginning of the Great Depression.
What both Deutscher and James agree upon is that the UASR allowed the Soviet Union to pursue its economic programme without many of the constraints imposed by laws of bourgeois political economy.3 Foster, DeLeon, and many others in the WCPA Left saw the strife that the Great Turn caused as further proof that they needed to break the revolutionary stalemate as soon as possible: a position that Trotsky had long identified and supported, believing that a workers’ revolution in the United States would ease the social costs of crash industrialization and forceful collectivization. It is why many in the Right Opposition, such as Bukharin and Rykov, would later become “Americophiles,” seeing ties to American industry as a way to ease the pain of proletarianizing the peasantry.
The WCPA saw cooperation with the Soviet Union as an absolute necessity, and the material basis for that cooperation was straightforward. The Civil War had left the UASR’s industrial reconstruction partly dependent on the manufactured goods and technical capacity the Soviet Union could provide, while the USSR’s crash collectivization programme had produced the precise humanitarian conditions that American agricultural surplus was positioned to relieve. In theory, the UASR’s grain would alleviate the worst of the 1933 Soviet famine while Soviet manufactures accelerated American reconstruction; a complementary exchange that made the alliance not merely ideologically convenient but materially rational. In practice, whatever grain relief the United Republics provided did not accomplish the mass alleviation the Soviets had hoped for, a shortfall that shaped the urgency behind Bukharin’s reemergence and the Americophile argument that a less coercive pace of industrialization would have made the exchange more productive on both sides.
The remnants of the United Opposition and the Right Opposition united on this position, which gained enough traction that even Stalin began to adopt some aspects of it for its political expediency. But while the Americophiles were the last greatest threat to Stalin’s control of the Party, the General Secretary was soon able to wrestle them back to party discipline.
But the Americophiles were an oddity in Soviet political factionalism, in that Stalin adopted their positions before he could ever expel them from the Party. Many of the Americophiles weren’t considered to be “deviationists” or “revisionists” like their predecessors, mainly due to their connections with the United Republics. To both party insiders and the general population, the United Republics were their natural comrades. The American-Soviet relationship had a fundamental change in how the Soviets could approach this brief window of diverse political expression.
…The former United States played a very unique move in realpolitik when they accepted Trotsky’s request for political asylum: hosting a Marxist revolutionary was dangerous, especially when said country had a large and influential Marxist party. But the Hoover Administration viewed it as a risk in an attempt to have Trotsky’s presence become an awkward circumstance for the WCPA to explain to Moscow, or, thinking wishfully, cause a split that would weaken the party.
Unfortunately for them, the Left Fraction didn’t take the bait and instructed Trotsky to be tactful and stay out of trouble. Trotsky had listened–for the most part–and his destination paid off in him being a witness to Red May because history has a penchant for irony. Years later, some members among the recently defeated Americophiles–especially those with particularly anti-Stalin leanings–decided that they themselves might as well reside in the country so celebrated by Comrade Bukharin. It might even be a good place for a prolonged stay in exile, away from the suspicious eyes of Comrade Stalin. And in particular, the ‘Old Bolsheviks’ who had fallen out of favor with Stalin were still welcomed by their American counterparts with great honour and respect as icons. Alexandra Kollontai was one such figure, herself developing a friendship with Crystal Eastman.
This influx of prominent Bolsheviks that entered the United Republics did present an anxiety in the back of Stalin’s mind. This anxiety mainly stemmed from the presence of one particular individual. The presence of the ‘renegade’ Trotsky within the United Republics would always be a source of anxiety for the Man of Steel. Stalin had been reassured in private by John Reed and John Edgar Hoover that there was not a subversive network being formed among the Soviet emigres.
This did reassure Stalin, until Bukharin’s political comeback that genuinely seemed to catch the typically mindful General Secretary by surprise. The American Revolution and the shift towards internationalism had seemingly re-energized the opposition against Stalin for control of the Party. And the very fact that he had to bend to their policies without having to expel the Americophiles displayed some political vulnerability. Perhaps Comrade Stalin wasn’t politically untouchable after all.
For Stalin, the trend of his former political opponents exiling themselves to a new revolutionary state alongside the renewed strength and confidence of his domestic rivals felt all too possible given the siege mentality that had defined the Bolsheviks since the days of Lenin. Because while the United Republics may be cordial and a willing ally today, what would happen if DeLeon-Debs desired a more ‘like-minded’ partner?
Now these anxieties were nowhere near the reality among the actual relationships and objectives of the Soviet emigres, busy with their own projects and their own personal squabbles to dwell on. Not that the central government in Deleon-Debs would entertain such talk, especially given how vital this relationship was for both revolutionary states.
Because even as the Man of Steel had to beat back against renewed party opposition, it was not as if the Old Man would’ve been any sort of real threat.
…It is a true irony that Red May was perhaps the beginning of the end for what became known as Trotskyism. Not in its ideals or even its platform, as both the Soviet Union and especially the United Republics implemented policies in line with what many self-proclaimed Trotskyists advocated. It was rather the end of Trotsky’s short-lived cult of personality. Over the course of the Soviet Revolution, the course of the French Revolution was in almost all their minds, for Trotsky saw himself and the opposition that he led as the Jacobins, the true believers in what the revolution stood for, being subverted by Stalin’s Thermidor.
But the unique aspect about Trotsky and the ideals that he had advocated was that he had argued them from a position of weakness, when he and his followers lacked any real political capital from Stalin’s tight grip on the party. From a position of strength, when he was in the majority within the party, he advocated for a single-fraction state in emergency mode that had no tolerance for mass-based open interfractional conflict and soviet-based deliberation politics. Even for those within the WCPA who read the Soviet trajectory as a textbook case of bureaucratic substitutionism, with the party apparatus displacing the self-activity of the class it claimed to represent, Trotsky’s diagnosis remained the same one he had always offered: a flawed individual at the helm of a sound organizational vessel - when the question demanded was whether the vessel itself had been built on substitutionist foundations that no change of helmsman can ever repair. His conflict with Stalin at the personal level grew from the same roots as his earlier conflict with Lenin. But it was Trotsky’s recurring diagnosis of the men who outmanoeuvred him, and it revealed, each time he made it, that he had never understood that the problem was never the individual. In both cases, Trotsky could correctly identify the symptom: the invariant programme of the world communist revolution being displaced by the will of a single individual and the self-activity of the working class being administered from above rather than expressed from within, but without ever diagnosing the structural conditions that produced the substitutionism. It was just that Trotsky preferred that the single individual in charge of the world revolution was Trotsky. This began to shape a perception of Trotsky, particularly among WCPA cadres whose own Comintern work had given them direct experience of the Soviet Union’s programmatic drift, of Trotsky taking on the role of his departed colleague Julius Martov, Lenin’s old friend turned enemy, whom he had relegated to the dustbin of history. Trotsky, to his detractors, was back to what he always was: a Menshevik outmaneuvered by a Bolshevik.
By 1936, Trotsky continued to express caution that the Comintern could not be trusted so long as the Soviet bureaucracy retained a substantial grip on the international workers’ movement. However, the Comintern had, since 1933, been structurally transformed by the entry of new governing revolutionary states into precisely the more independent body his warnings had presumed impossible. His co-thinkers, drawing their own conclusions, were rejoining communist parties in droves across the Communist International. There was life in the revolutionary movement, and the international struggle seemed more alive than ever. By 1936, the questions many of the revolutionary movements were pressing were precisely the questions Trotsky’s theoretical framework had no vocabulary for, though this did not seem to weigh heavily on him.
While he always believed he would eventually return to the USSR, he directed his considerable energies toward other endeavors, such as polemics, contemporary commentary, and the settling of old theoretical scores. He even started to relish doing food and restaurant reviews. These activities were all productive in volume, but his political work continued to reveal their consistent tendency to locate the problem in individuals, factions, and tactical errors rather than in the organizational form that produced them. The pattern of broken alliances and accumulated antagonisms was not primarily a function of Trotsky’s temperament (though his temperament did not help), but of the organizational logic his politics required. It’s a politics that needed a correct individual at the party center, who could only ever produce coalitions conditional on that individual’s continued correctness, which no coalition could indefinitely sustain. However, Trotsky was not without perception. He could identify bureaucratic degeneration as a real phenomenon, name the suppression of inner-party deliberation as a genuine problem, and trace the outlines of what the international revolution was losing as the Stalin-led apparatus consolidated its control over the Soviet Union and the Comintern. What he could not do (and what the Revolt of the Cadres would demonstrate with finality) was locate the source of that degeneration anywhere other than in the wrong individuals holding the wrong offices. The diagnosis was correct. The address was wrong.
…Trotsky’s final break with the Internationalist Left came in 1937 with the Revolt of the Cadres; The moment drew immediate comparisons to the Kronstadt Rebellion from observers both inside and outside the UASR - comparisons that presumed the central government would respond as Trotsky himself once had: brutal suppression in the name of revolutionary discipline. The presumption proved wrong in a way that clarified, more sharply than any theoretical document could have, the distance between what the Internationalist Fraction had built and what the Bolsheviks had two decades prior. Trotsky, a man crucial to the defeat of the Kronstadt sailors, shared sympathies with the Detroit cadres, but still referred to them as “tragically misguided” in their aims: a formulation that revealed, more than he likely intended, the limits of his organizational and political imagination. It is likely due to how the cadres were doing what no disciplined revolutionary party, in Trotsky’s framing, could sanction: acting on their own authority outside the direction of the party center, as if the class could express its own will without needing the direction of the party. Some of Trotsky’s supporters suggested that this opinion was touted due to Trotsky’s own belief that the central government would crack down on the cadres for their oh-so open defiance. If so, it must’ve been a pretty shocking development for Trotsky when the central government publicly sided with the party cadres on Foster’s initiative, thus allowing the Internationalist Fraction’s ascendancy within the WCPA. The central government’s decision to side with the cadres was not merely a pragmatic concession on Foster’s part to an unruly rank and file; it was the organizational party form proving, under pressure, that the Party existed to express the self-activity of the working class rather than to administer it. This is what Trotsky could not have foreseen.
Now, the Revolt of the Cadres had a much wider effect on the course of the American Revolution (some referring to it as the beginning of the First Cultural Revolution). Still, for the sake of our scope, the aftermath of the Revolt of the Cadres signaled the irreversible decline of Trotsky’s standing inside the Internationalist Fraction. Those within the Internationalist tendency, whose organizational arguments the revolt had vindicated most directly, now moved to press that advantage against the emigre. Trotsky, whose position had been rendered not merely wrong but theoretically obsolete by the events of 1937, found himself subject to public critique from sources he had not anticipated. Among those who wrote public critiques of Trotsky’s position were old comrades, such as James Cannon and Martin Abern, whose objections stemmed from within the same tradition Trotsky claimed to represent. Emma Goldman, whose verdict is that Trotsky bore equal responsibility with Stalin for her disillusionment with the Soviet Revolution, arrived from an entirely different theoretical perspective and carried its own distinct weight: that is, of Trotsky’s own flawed analysis on the dynamics between the party and the masses.
Excerpt from a transcript of a session of the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Against Leon Trotsky (January 7th, 1938)
The following is a testimony and questioning of the witness LEON TROTSKY before the commission, chaired by EARL BROWDER. ALBERT GOLDMAN was present as counsel for the witness.
ELIZABETH GURLEY FLYNN : You have been very public in your criticisms of the USSR, correct?
LEON TROTSKY : I have, yes.
GURLEY FLYNN : And these criticisms, what do they consist of?
TROTSKY: The state of the [AUCP] placing its authority above the workers, and not deriving said authority from within.
GURLEY FLYNN : Would “bureaucracy” be a better term?
TROTSKY: I would say that to be accurate.
GURLEY FLYNN : You mentioned that term in numerous works regarding the Soviet Union. And in your works, you regard this bureaucracy as a degenerating presence, correct?
ALBERT GOLDMAN : Objection; the witness has already established this term as a criticism.
GURLEY FLYNN : I shall withdraw that then; Comrade Trotsky, this noted bureaucracy has been one of your many criticisms of the Soviet Union. In light of that, how do you see them as a workers’ state?
TROTSKY : Even a degenerated workers’ state is still a workers’ state. Private property is no more, and the capitalists do not hold the means of production.
GURLEY FLYNN : So it is not the economic relations of the nation, but rather the aforementioned bureaucracy?
TROTSKY : Correct.
GURLEY FLYNN : If such a bureaucracy was taking advantage of the working class in such a manner, what would be the solution, Comrade Trotsky?
TROTSKY : If you are suggesting my references to a political revolution brought upon by hubris as proof of a plot, you shall be disappointed. Regardless of my opinions, I’ve had no contact with anyone within the [AUCP].
GURLEY FLYNN : Yes, you’ve not been in contact, but as both of us know, comrade, revolutions are chaotic affairs. And if a whole party apparatus has been tainted, you really haven’t thought of yourself as a suitable alternative?
GOLDMAN : The witness has already attested his non-involvement with any plots to replace the leadership of the Soviet Union.
GURLEY FLYNN: Forgive me, Comrade Goldman, if I find your client’s claim lacking in merit.
GOLDMAN : If this commission aims to be a fact-finding mission, let’s investigate the concrete, not the abstract notion of Moscow’s claims.
EARL BROWDER : Order! Let us maintain decorum, comrades. Comrade Goldman, as this commission is not a tribunal, you are aware that this is not a trial on the witness.
GOLDMAN : I am aware, Chairman-
BROWDER : And as such a commission, our investigation is not subject to the rules of the court. I understand if this may seem informal to you, but this is an investigative commission that is far beyond the scope of this hearing. Comrade Gurley will continue her questioning.
GURLEY FLYNN : Comrade Trotsky, if so-called hubris results in this bureaucracy falling, what order do you see replacing it?
TROTSKY : If proletarian forces can regain control, a political order that regained the spirit of 1917. But it could very well result in a Bonapartist rising.
GURLEY FLYNN : If it were to follow the case of 1799, then this force would be military rule, correct?
TROTSKY : In a sense. It is not uncommon for military leaders to rise to prominence in a revolution.
GURLEY FLYNN : And you yourself are no stranger to military affairs? After all, you were head of the Red Army for five years? No, wait, it was six years.
TROTSKY : My position as Commissar of War did not bear unquestioned tactical decisions. And you will find many cases in the Civil War where my strategy was overruled.
GURLEY FLYNN : You say that, but when your opinion prevailed, it brought on great results. You built a Red Army of millions out of the country that had just lost the Great War. You were the very organizer of victory, correct? The ‘East-side Jew who conquered Europe?’
TROTSKY : I served the party and the proletariat in the capacity I was given as Commissar of War.
GURLEY FLYNN: But that must have gotten you some respect among the soldiers. As the man who helped win the war, they must hold you in a much higher standing.
TROTSKY : If I had had such adamant support among the military, then frankly, my comrade, I don’t think I would be an exile.
[chuckling ensues]
GURLEY FLYNN : I see you find this amusing, Comrade Trotsky.
GOLDMAN : If you do not wish for such antics, then you are free to move on from this line of questioning.
GURLEY FLYNN : Comrade Trotsky, you yourself publish political commentary regarding events of the Soviet Union, correct?
TROTSKY : I state the opinions that I believe are best for this Soviet Union and that would prolong its survival.
GURLEY FLYNN : And that includes pamphlets and newspapers that have been smuggled in past censors, such as Bulletin of the Opposition , that your son, Lev Sedov, is involved with, yes?
TROTSKY : The Bulletin is a journal of Marxist analysis, yes. My son assists in its publication in Europe to ensure the truth is not entirely suffocated by the Stalinist bureaucracy.
GURLEY FLYNN: So your son engages in smuggling these works, the works that state your opinions about the Soviet Union?
TROTSKY : Why would it matter who smuggled these papers in? What difference does it matter if it was a friendly comrade who believed the same?
GURLEY FLYNN : It makes a difference when the individual is suggested to be involved in attempts to overthrow the Soviet government, and is, in fact, your own kin!
GOLDMAN : This commission is as well aware that the witness is not responsible for the actions of Lev Sedov unless there is direct proof of such collaboration!
GURLEY FLYNN : Comrade Trotsky, do you share the claim that you do not have anything to do with the actions and accused crimes of Lev Sedov?
BROWDER : The witness is directed to answer.
TROTSKY : No, I did not direct any actions of my son in the actions that he is accused of, nor do I believe that he is responsible for the actions he is accused of.
Excerpt from Revolutionary Abroad: Trotsky in the UASRby Wilhelm Bachmann (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 1979)
While Trotsky built a life in exile in Metropolis, his eldest son, Lev Sedov, grew even more deeply involved in the opposition to Stalin within the Soviet Union. While his father turned his focus elsewhere after the collapse of the Bloc of Oppositions and the Red May Revolution, Sedov took an increased initiative in building connections within the Soviet Union, particularly with the “Americophile” bloc that had posed Stalin his greatest challenge for control of the party. Sedov was far more willing to make attempts to connect with Internationalists within the Soviet Union, especially as the Great Purge intensified, seeing in the Americophiles the best chance to fully dislodge Stalin as leader, surmising that a pro-UASR bloc would gain support and backing from De Leon-Debs, who would desire a more friendly leadership in Moscow.
Trotsky saw it differently, not only in the case of Bukharin and the Americophiles’ lack of desire and inability to take control of the Party via internal means, but also due to Sedov’s misunderstanding of the relations between the United Republics and the Soviet Union. Regardless of the differing values initially held by the leadership of the WCPA and AUCP, the latter had clearly shifted its stance into cooperation through supporting internationalism with the United Republics as an equal partner. The latter viewed the Soviet Union as their strongest ally against a Europe growing ever more hostile and sought, more often than not, to satiate Moscow. This honeymoon would face its first crisis in 1937-38, as the Revolt of the Cadres made Stalin wary of ‘internationalist’ factions within the Party, which he surmised were of a Trotskyist nature. In actuality, Trotsky was nowhere near as connected among the Internationalists as Stalin presumed, who was equally as wary of him as they were of Stalin.
In August 1937, two months after the Revolt of the Cadres, the second Moscow Trial would commence: The Case of the Internationalist-Adventurist Anti-Soviet Conspiracy , which would place Alexander Bogdanov, Nikolai Bukharin, and Karl Radek (in absentia) at the heart of an ‘internationalist’ conspiracy to sabotage the Soviet Union by supporting adventurist actions abroad and to overthrow the Soviet Union, under the direction of Leon Trotsky. The August trial came as a shock to the United Republics, in particular the charges laid against Bukharin, who had been viewed as one of the most friendly figures within the Soviet government towards the United Republics and the strengthening of the revolutionary duumvirate. The fact that many of the Americophiles had been implicated a mere two months after the events in Detroit raised alarm bells among the Internationalists in the American Central Executive Council (CEC) about the–at that point–unquestioned legitimacy of the Moscow Trials. It also served to make the Internationalists even more mistrustful of their relationship with Moscow. But it is with the trial of Bukharin that a question was posed: what to do if Stalin demanded Trotsky’s extradition?
While Trotsky had been given freedom to publish his works and was a fairly public figure in Metropolis, he was still the subject of surveillance from Public Safety, particularly under the hyper-paranoid J. Edgar Hoover. Upon the latter’s ousting during the Revolt of the Cadres, his successor, Henry Winston, felt far more comfortable easing up on Trotsky’s surveillance due to the latter’s political discredit, alongside Public Safety’s focus on counter-revolutionary threats. The second Moscow Trial, however, raised the previously unspoken matter of Soviet emigres, with Trotsky at its center. If the Soviet Union had found that Trotsky and Radek had conspired to overthrow a government friendly to the United Republics, shouldn’t the matter of extradition be considered?
While many in the UASR accepted the verdicts of the trials, in private, many members within the CEC were heavily skeptical. Henry Winston and Attorney General Crystal Eastman were among the voices that called into question the actual validity of Trotsky being involved in such a plot of such a magnitude without Public Safety’s knowledge. Premier Foster shared a similar mindset, but was unwilling to directly snub Moscow in such a manner that would cause a break in relations.
It would be in fall 1937 that Stalin would finally broach the subject, telling John Reed during a meeting concerning strategy in Spain, that the threat of Trotsky to the Soviet state was too much to ignore, and brought up the matter of extradition. Exasperated but not desiring to directly reject Stalin’s demands, Reed told the General Secretary that he would forward his concerns to the CEC, but was also privately sceptical of Trotsky’s guilt. When informed of the meeting, the American government found itself divided among two camps: The Appeasers and the Defiants.
The Appeasers–made up of figures like Foster, Browder, and Gurley Flynn–were figures among the WCPA that desired to avoid a split with the USSR by any means necessary. This meant pursuing actions and policies that placated the Soviets, even if it meant handing over Trotsky to Stalin’s clutches. Many of the figures in this camp were those who had deeper ties to Moscow through the 1920s and were mainly within the upper echelon of the party.
The Defiants, inversely, were those who mainly shared the belief that constant and blind acceptance of Soviet demands would be detrimental to the revolutionary project as a whole. Many of those in this camp ranged from the left of the WCPA and former Trotskyists and ‘Left Communists’ to the various Anarchist forces within the United Republics. Within the CEC, this included Emma Goldman, John Reed, Crystal Eastman, and Martin Abern. Many of those in the Defiants camp were members of the Internationalist Fraction, who wielded their newfound control of the party to drive much of the issue regarding Trotsky’s possible extradition. Eastman brought forth that any question of extradition would require some form of independent investigation of the crimes for which Trotsky was accused. Given the nature of the evidence, purely based on confessions—which Reed had privately corresponded seemed dubious in nature—the CEC would have to investigate the merits of the charges before considering the matter of extradition.
Foster, aligned with the Internationalists but still/also an Appeaser, used this course as the best chance for a compromise option, where this would serve for the United Republics and its wider public as a chance to settle the debate once and for all and avoid a party split. While not officially a trial and merely an inquiry commission, it was effectively presented and treated as a matter of uncovering Trotsky’s guilt and the extent of his involvement in Soviet affairs. Trotsky himself was in favor of an opportunity to defend himself for the crimes he was accused of, as well as a chance to rehabilitate himself in the wider public.
The Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Against Leon Trotsky was thus established, officially in a non-judicial manner. A 12-person commission, split evenly between Appeasers and Defiants alike, had a mandate to investigate the validity of the charges laid against Trotsky and provide a recommendation following their investigation. However, for many contemporaries at the time, it was seen as the closest thing to putting Trotsky on trial.
[…]
The Commission was much more aggressive than Trotsky had initially anticipated. While many of the Defiants were not inclined to bend to the will of Moscow, Trotsky had burned many of the Internationalists for his opposition to the Detroit Cadres in the previous May, and there were many within the Internationalists who viewed the exile as more trouble than he was worth.
Trotsky’s testimonies before the Commission elicited sharp questioning about his roles within Soviet opposition groups after his exile. There was no question that Trotsky had ties to opposition blocs, but whether Trotsky had ties to groups that pursued actions that involved terrorism and sabotage was the main emphasis of the Commission. Despite the airing out of Trotsky’s past missteps and his shortcomings being put in the public view, it was his own volatility that absolved the exile of any particular wrongdoing. Trotsky’s last involvement with a Soviet opposition bloc was in 1933, not even communicating with the figures of the Americophiles, who didn’t want to associate with the exile for numerous reasons, both strategic and personal.
Lev Sedov was a story in his own right; he attempted to reach out to members of the Americophile Bloc on numerous occasions. However, in reality, the Americophiles had little interest in associating with Sedov, even those who had previously been in their bloc. Upon investigation of the Commission, in association with Comintern agents abroad, it was found that Sedov was engaging in acts that could be considered ‘seditious in nature’ as the Commission found. Although Trotsky was cleared of any association with such plots, the public report did much to reveal Trotsky and Sedov’s past opposition bloc attempts, as well as the latter’s seditious actions.
In February 1938, a month after the Commission’s findings were released, Sedov died in a hospital in Paris after complications from appendicitis. The subject of his death is highly debated, with many putting his death on the agents of Stalin, but no such evidence of an order exists.
[…]
Operation Teutonic and the spark of global war that followed would place Trotsky firmly within the revolutionary unity camp; more particularly, writing in defense of uniting to defend the Soviet Union. Or at least within the most abbreviated history summary. In truth, Trotsky’s own defense and ‘regained optimism’ for the Soviet Union progressed with the latter half and following years of the Great Revolutionary War.
Trotsky wasn’t truly divorced from his initial claims in A Revolution in Limbo ; that the world of international socialism was headed by two rival powers pursuing different goals, but pragmatically staying united against their shared enemies. By 1940, this viewpoint of the UASR and USSR being rivals would be dropped by Trotsky, but their views as to who their enemies were were just as divided as Trotsky’s first hypothesis.
Interwar conflicts, particularly the Spanish Civil War, displayed how fascist states were being utilized by the twin empires of the Entente to contain the rising tides of revolution. Hitler’s ambitions in Europe, aiming to destroy the Versailles Treaty order that he so despised, would be pointed east: to dominate Eastern Europe and destroy the Soviet Union. Trotsky, like most within the United Republics, saw Germany as the nation against which the next war would be fought. The Soviet-German Pact that was revealed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Poland blindsided many, especially Trotsky. The Soviet-German Pact almost broke the Comintern, and it was only due to a combination of Foster’s politicking and the threat of Berlin that kept the Comintern from breaking apart. Trotsky, while not concerned with the Comintern’s ultimate fate, saw in this event the ultimate conclusion of the struggle over who would be the “standard bearer” of international communism.
Trotsky stated, in a work titled The March to War,
“Under the examples of collaboration with the German Reich, the attack dog of reaction, the masses will come to the conclusion of which nations have taken up the vanguard of the revolution. Moscow has discredited itself and has instead let the Americans take up that standard. And when Hitler does march East to crush the revolution he so despises, it will be the Americans who will inevitably answer their call. ”
The irony of Stalin writing a non-aggression deal with Germany was not lost on Trotsky, and it was perhaps the news of this alliance that did more to restore Trotsky’s public reputation than any other action since his exile. In the months between the fall of Poland and Operation Teutonic, Trotsky wrote openly about the inevitable treachery of Germany, as it would aim to advance eastwards with the Entente looking on. Trotsky may have critiqued the Soviet Union countless times, but he was well aware of its role within the wider Comintern. If the Soviet Union were to fall, the United Republics would merely find themselves in a similar position to that Trotsky and the Bolsheviks did in the aftermath of their revolution.
Trotsky, to the surprise of many, outlined the viewpoint that this upcoming conflict would not be a “war of imperialist aims” as World War I was. Instead, such a conflict against Germany would be one purely of proletarian liberty; that this next conflict wouldn’t be the capitalist world tearing itself apart, but instead a revolutionary conflict that would at last bring forth his theory of permanent revolution. Many of Trotsky’s erstwhile critics who were in the pacifist camp, such as Emma Goldman, spoke up to critique Trotsky’s position. However, there were far more within the United Republics who saw eye-to-eye with Trotsky that conflict with Germany was approaching and that defending the Soviet Union would be vital to the security of the global revolutionary project.
Warhawks within the WCPA were open to amplifying Trotsky’s writings regarding the lead-up to war, and it was through this alignment that Trotsky began to regain credibility within the American political arena. The exile still kept himself within Metropolis and had no political ambitions within the New World, but he was now more able to interact and have correspondence with the warhawks in DeLeon-Debs, such as John Reed; whom saw Trotsky as a useful political piece to outweigh the influence of the senior yet still influential Goldman. Reed’s political ally, Martin Abern, himself used this period to mend his past relationship with Trotsky during this time, reconnecting with his own ideological mentor. Trotsky served both Abern and Reed as a voice amplifying the threat of Germany and the Axis Powers towards the American public.
The war would commence as Trotsky predicted, with the Germans launching their invasion of the USSR on May 15th. Coincidentally, Trotsky’s rival and critic Emma Goldman passed away the day before at the age of 70. Trotsky, now at the ripe age of 60 himself, would avoid his usual barbs and snipes, especially given the tumultuous nature of her funeral and the arrival of war the same day.
[…]
The years of the Great Revolutionary War (1940-46) would see Trotsky and his writings consumed by the war. While he wrote on various other events, both foreign and domestic, there is a reason why much of his writing during this time has been compiled into a collected work titled Writings of the Second World War. The work itself has been compiled into six volumes, one for each year of the war, but much of the first three are devoted to actions in Europe. Trotsky served to analyse and critique the strategies and policies implemented on the Eastern Front, although there was no surprise that he made many of his critiques towards the Soviets during the first years of the war, though he still proclaimed his support for the USSR.
With his military reputation still renowned, Trotsky was given a functionary role within the WFRA’s home front as “Quartermaster Commissar-General ”. Though he would not serve as a general on the war front, his image and likeness were utilized in the campaigns for war bonds, enlistments, and rationings to drum up continued support at home for the war. Trotsky, with his natural charisma, fell into this role seamlessly and became a staple within the broader propaganda campaigns that filled the airwaves of the United Republics during the war.
Though Trotsky was more ‘critic’ than actor, and the Red Army had much to critique through Stalin’s micromanaging of the war and the clique of Soviet generals who clung to outdated methods for modern warfare, a crime he thought more unforgivable given the lessons of the First World War. This was personified through men like Marshal Semyon Budyonny—one of Stalin’s favorites and a man who had rivalries with both Frunze, Eisenhower, and Haywood—and the head of the NKVD, Lavrentiy Beria. Trotsky’s own criticisms of the war effort were never published to the public until well after the war due to wartime censorship, but in his writings, Trotsky lamented how the purges had weakened the RKKA to such an operational degree.
“In line with the general causes of the catastrophe inherent in imperialism, it is impermissible to forget the role played by the Kremlin and Stalin. Nobody else created such a dangerous situation for the USSR as Stalin. His pact had worsened the USSR’s position. The Polish buffer disappeared, and now the Red Army, decapitated and demoralized by Stalin, demonstrated its weakness before the whole world. Only the dismantling of the Moscow clique, only the regeneration of Soviet democracy can unleash the forces of the Soviet peoples in this patriotic struggle. ”
- L. Trotsky, On the Kiev Catastrophe(written 1941, published 1947)
The news of defeat on the front brought forth questions at home about what exactly was the cause of the deteriorating situation. And for many outside the halls of government, it made sense to look at the ally that had conducted military purges merely three years prior, rather than suggest something was wrong with the American war effort. While criticisms could never be as cutting as Trotsky’s, given wartime censors, more and more started to see the defeats as ‘Soviet bungling’, a perception that persisted in the early American homefront experience.4
Then came the Battle of Moscow, a seminal event for not just the Soviet Union but the wider Comintern. Stalin’s death during the battle gave rise to elements within the Soviet government alongside the American expeditionary forces to course-correct the war effort. Trotsky himself reacted to Stalin’s death with an initial disbelief; the idea that his entrenched mortal enemy had met his end without the fall of Moscow was an alien one. But it was indeed true, and in his death, Stalin’s old favourites who had been frustrating the war effort were either swept aside like Budyonny, or eliminated to prevent any ideas for their rise to power, like Beria.
Stalin’s death had given Trotsky his first hope of a chance of returning to his homeland. Perhaps not during the war, or this iteration of government, but perhaps someday. But instead of the elderly Trotsky returning in glory to take control of the Soviet Union, it seemed mainly a desire to see his homeland again. That probably wouldn’t happen under a loyal Stalinist such as Vyacheslav Molotov, but much was changing because of the war.
The Americans had built their revolution on similar ideals that the Left Opposition envisioned, and while Trotsky’s name was less than mud in his homeland, many within the RKKA interacted with their American counterparts and gained ideas and experiences within the Great Patriotic War. As many beyond their borders assisted them in their struggle, many of these took on the idea of supporting the international proletariat, of reliving dreams of an international revolution.
While Trotsky wrote his own thoughts and remarks on his fallen comrade-turned-mortal-enemy (On the Death of Stalin), back in the Soviet Union, the seeds of what would become the Internationalist Opposition would be sown.
- The Battle of Long Island revolved around White holdouts in Long Island, opposed to the Reds’ control of New York City, which aimed to serve as a base for White reinforcements to push back the Reds. Trotsky was not a leader within the revolutionary authority, but his input was valued and considered in relation to the organizational structure of the Red militia and guards.
- Chapter VI: The National Question
- Reference to a previous source in a threadmark: “Yuri Shokk, The Great Break: Stalin’s Counterrevolution”
- This source was written around three decades after the Second World War, and so it refers to a domestic misconception about the Soviet war effort, which has long been discredited.
*[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation
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