May/June 2013

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20 May 2013

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Suppressed Testament of Lenin - pt. 12

Author: Leon Trotsky
Website: RL Online
Department:
Page: 13 ( 15) pages

Summary: The Hypothesis of The "Duumvirate"

The Hypothesis of The "Duumvirate"

We have indicated above the sign-posts of the final struggle between Lenin and Stalin. At all these stages Lenin sought my support and found it. From the speeches, articles and letters of Lenin you could without difficulty adduce dozens of testimonies to the fact that, after our temporary disagreement on the question of the trade unions, throughout 1921 and 1922 and the beginning of 1923, Lenin did not lose one chance to emphasize in open forum his solidarity with me, to quote this or that statement from me, to support this or that step which I had taken. We must understand that his motives were not personal, but political. What may have alarmed him and grieved him in the last months, indeed, was my not-active-enough support of his fighting measures against Stalin. Yes, such is the paradox of the situation! Lenin, fearing in the future a split on the line of Stalin and Trotsky, demanded of me a more energetic struggle against Stalin. The contradiction here, however, is only superficial. It was in the interests of the stability of the party leadership in the future, that Lenin now wished to condemn Stalin sharply and disarm him. What restrained me was the fear that any sharp conflict in the ruling group at that time, when Lenin was struggling with death, might be understood by the party as a casting of lots for Lenin's mantle. I will not raise the question here as to whether my restraint in that case was right or not, nor the broader question as to whether it would have been possible at that time to ward off the advancing danger with organizational reforms and personal shiftings. But how far were all the actual positions of the actors from the picture which is given us by this popular German writer who so lightly picks the keys to all enigmas!

We heard from him that the testament "decided the fate of Trotsky" -- that is, evidently served as a cause of Trotsky's losing power. According to another version of Ludwig, expounded alongside of this with not even an attempt to reconcile them, Lenin desired "a duumvirate of Trotsky and Stalin." This latter thought, also, doubtless suggested by Radek, gives excellent proof that even now, even in the close circle around Stalin, even in the tendentious manipulation of a foreign writer invited in for a conversation, nobody dared assert that Lenin saw his successor in Stalin. In order not to come into too crude conflict with the text of the testimony, and a whole series of other documents, it is necessary to put forward ex post facto this idea of a duumvirate.

But how reconcile this story with Lenin's advice: remove the General Secretary? That would have meant to deprive Stalin of all the weapons of his influence. You do not treat in this way the candidate for duumvir. No, and moreover this second hypothesis of Radek-Ludwig, although more cautious, finds no support in the text of the testament. The aim of the document was defined by its author—to guarantee the stability of the Central Committee. Lenin sought the road to this goal not in the artificial combination of a duumvirate, but in strengthening the collective control over the activity of the leaders. How in doing this he conceived the relative influence of individual members of the collective leadership—as to this the reader is free to draw his own conclusions on the basis of the above quotations from the testament. But he should not lose sight of the fact that the testament was not the last word of Lenin, and that his attitude to Stalin became more severe the more closely he felt the denouement approaching.

Ludwig would not have made so capital a mistake in his appraisal of the meaning and spirit of the testament, if he had interested himself a little bit in its further fate. Concealed by Stalin and his group from the party, the testament was reprinted and republished only by Oppositionists -- of course, secretly. Hundreds of my friends and partisans were arrested and exiled for copying and distributing those two little pages. On November 7, 1927—the Tenth Anniversary of the October Revolution—the Moscow Oppositionists took part in the anniversary demonstration with a placard: "Fulfill the Testament of Lenin." Specially chosen troops of Stalinists broke into the line of march and snatched away the criminal placard. Two years later, at the moment of my banishment abroad, a story was even created of an insurrection in preparation by the "Trotskyists" on November 7, 1927. The summons to "fulfill the testament of Lenin" was interpreted by the Stalinist faction as a summons to insurrection! And even now the testament is forbidden publication by any section of the Communist International. The Left Opposition, on the contrary, is republishing the testament upon every appropriate occasion in all countries. Politically these facts exhaust the question.

Radek as a Source of Information