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Trotsky and Bor'ba

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Ian D. Thatcher
Ian D. Thatcher
Affiliation:
University of Auckland
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Abstract

Leon Trotsky's contributions to the journal Bor'ba, published in St Petersburg between February and July 1914, have been overlooked in scholarly accounts of his biography. This paper has two aims. First, to provide an exposition of Trotsky's contributions to this journal; and, second, to explain why they have been forgotten. Three explanations are offered. First, Trotsky biographers look to Deutscher's trilogy for the main events in Trotsky's life, and he does not mention Bor'ba. Second, Trotsky himself did not refer to his work for the journal in his autobiography My Life. Finally, Stalin did not use Lenin's critique of Trotsky's participation in Bor'ba as further ammunition against Trotsky in the power struggle after Lenin's death.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , March 1994 , pp. 113 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 Editorial, ‘Ot' redaktsii’, Bor'ba, no. i, p. 6.Google Scholar

2 Ibid. p. 3.

3 Ibid. p. 6.

4 The most recent western biography of Trotsky is that by P. Broué. His commentary on Trotsky's involvement with Bor'ba is limited to the following: ‘At the beginning of 1914 the Russian workers’ movement came to life again; a legal workers' press began to develop, with the Bolshevik Pravda and Luch for the Mensheviks carrying the polemic into the open. In February Trotsky returned to the Russian scene with Bor'ba, whose platform was unitary and non-fractional. First Lenin triumphed: it is demonstrated that the August Bloc has fragmented: then he becomes worried and accuses Trotsky of advocating unity with the liquidators above everything else. It would appear that Trotsky did not reply to him. But the workers' movement which culminated in July 1914, with strikes and street demonstrations, is abruptly interrupted by the declaration of war and the repression. The ephemeral existence of Bor'ba, eight numbers of which three were seized, between February and July, will allow Trotsky's ideological sympathizers to regroup, and these one finds again in 1917 in the organization which in Petrograd was called the Mezhrayonka – the inter-district organization.

But it will not bring about reconciliation between Trotsky and Lenin. On the contrary.' Broué, P., Trotsky (Fayard, 1988), p. 143.Google Scholar

5 Anon, ‘Istoricheskoe desyatiletie (1904–1914)’, Bor'ba, no. 1, pp. 7–13Google Scholar. Reprinted in Trotskii, L., Politicheskaya khronika, Sochineniya, IV (Moscow, 1926), 497–506Google Scholar. This article is here incorrectly attributed to Bor'ba no. 4. Although the editorial to vol. 4 states that ‘The notes, appearing at the end of this volume, are intended to give readers factual information about the events, people and political groupings etc mentioned in the volume. Several of the notes supply documents or extracts from documents, restoring long forgotten episodes of the political struggle to the readers' memory’ (ibid. p. VIII), there are no explanatory notes for Bor'ba or the August bloc. Furthermore, although vol. 4 covers the years 1900–14 the chronology of main events (ibid. pp. 633–41) ends in 1913, thus ruling out any mention of Bor'ba.

6 This date refers to the change in the electoral law governing elections to the Duma. This amendment was issued by imperial manifesto with the aim of making the composition of the Duma more favourable to the government. Trotsky referred to 3 June 1907 as a ‘coup d'état’. For a different interpretation of this event see Pipes, R., The Russian Revolution (New York, 1990), pp. 180–2.Google Scholar

7 ‘Istoricheskoe desyatiletie’, p. 12.

8 Anon, ‘Gosudarstvo i narodnoe khozyaistvo’, Bor'ba, no. 2, pp. 3–8Google Scholar. Reprinted in Sochineniya, IV, 525–33.

9 Ibid. p. 4.

10 Ibid. p. 8.

11 Trotskii, N., ‘Parlamentarizm i rabochii klass’, Bor'ba, no. 1, pp. 31–5.Google Scholar

12 Ibid. p. 32.

13 Ibid. p. 34.

14 Anon, ‘Dumskii lokaut’, Bor'ba, no. 5, pp. 3–8Google Scholar. Reprinted in Sochineniya, IV, 488–97.

15 Ibid. pp. 3–4.

16 Trotskii, N., ‘Rabochiya koalitsii’, Bor'ba, no. 3, pp. 11–15.Google Scholar

17 Ibid. p. 11.

18 Ibid. p. 13.

19 Ibid. p. 15.

20 Loc. cit.

21 Trotskii, N., ‘Martovskie itogi’, Bor'ba, no. 4, pp. 8–13Google Scholar. Reprinted in Sochinenijya, IV, 506–14.

22 Ibid. p. 12.

23 Deutscher, I., The Prophet Armed (Oxford, 1954)Google Scholar; The Prophet Unarmed (Oxford, 1959)Google Scholar; The Prophet Outcast (Oxford, 1963).Google Scholar

24 One further reason for Deutscher's oversight is that he, unlike subsequent researchers, did not have access to Sinclair's, Louis excellent Trotsky: A Bibliography (Stanford, 1972)Google Scholar. An updated two-volume edition of this work was published by Scolar Press in 1989.

25 For example, in My Life Trotsky stressed that Lenin had been correct in arguing against unity in social democratic ranks. However, he tried to minimize the significance of his involvement in such groupings as the August bloc by stating that the history of Russian social democracy was also one of a move towards unity. We thus find such seemingly contradictory statements as: ‘the party was formed by a merciless struggle of Bolsheviks against the Mensheviks… the history of the struggle of the Bolsheviks with the Mensheviks is at the same time a history of uninterrupted attempts at unity’. Trotskii, L., zhizn', Moya (Moscow, 1990), pp. 250 and 258Google Scholar. Indeed, I have been able to find only one subsequent reference by Trotsky to Bor'ba, in the article ‘Diversii’ published in Nashe Slovo of 11 July 1915. Here Trotsky defended the group Bor'ba after the foreign secretariat of the organizational committee had pointed to the patriotic views of comrade An' (a member of the group Bor'ba) in response to Trotsky's critique of patriotic views in the foreign secretariat.

26 Lenin, V. I., ‘O narushenii edinstva, prikryvuemom krikami o edinstve’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, XXV (Moscow, 1961), 183–206Google Scholar. See also V. I. Lenin, ‘Raspad “Avgustovskogo” bloka’, ibid. pp. 1–4; ‘Razoblachenie “Avgustovskoi” fiktsii’, ibid. pp. 27–30; ‘Edinstvo’, ibid. pp. 77–80, etc.

27 See, for example, ‘Voprosy edinstva’, Bor'ba, no. 3, pp. 34–39Google Scholar. This editorial argued for the principle of democratic centralism in workers' organizations. However, it was also claimed that the success of this organizational principle would be directly dependent upon the degree of independent activity on behalf of the advanced section of the working class. See also ‘Bor'ba za edinstvo i marksistskii tsentr'’, Bor'ba, no. 7–8, pp. 3–8Google Scholar. This editorial argued against the establishment of a ‘unity’ social democratic fraction. Instead it stated that those in favour of unity should maintain contact (hence the August bloc and Bor'ba), while remaining within existing fractions with the aim of bringing about a united workers' party based on the principles of democratic centralism and a marxist centre. According to this editorial it is the marxist centre which ‘ideologically overcomes the centrifugal tendencies of the right- and left-wings and becomes the stronghold of general party opinion and party discipline’ (ibid. p. 7). It is claimed that without the marxist centre of Bebel and Kautsky, German social democracy would not have been able to maintain unity so successfully.

28 T., , ‘Pamyati B. N. Grossera-Zel'tsera (umer 6 Dekabrya 1912)’, Bor'ba, no. 1, pp. 52–4Google Scholar. Reprinted in Trotskii, L., Politicheskie siluety, Sochineniya, VIII, 208–11Google Scholar. The notes to this volume also contain no entry for Bor'ba or the August bloc.

29 T., , ‘Pamyati P. A. Zlydneva’, Bor'ba, no. 3, pp. 40–2Google Scholar. Reprinted in Sochineniya, VIII, 205–8.

30 T., , ‘S. L. Klyachko’, Bor'ba, no. 4, pp. 34–6Google Scholar. Reprinted in Sochineniya, VIII, 211–14.

31 ‘Pamyati B. N. Grossera-Ze'tsera’, p. 52.

32 Ibid. p. 53.

33 ‘Pamyati P. A. Zlydneva’, p. 41.

34 Loc. cit.

35 ‘S. L. Klyachko’, p. 36.

36 Loc. cit.

37 For Trotsky's response to Stalin's ‘uneven development’ critique, and how this motivated Trotsky to reinterpret his earlier writings on the Russian revolution to correspond with the law of uneven and combined development, see Thatcher, I. D., ‘Uneven and combined development’, Revolutionary Russia, IV (2) (1991), 235–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 For example, one finds no reference to Trotsky's involvement with Bor'ba in the infamous Short Course. However, this book does contain a section on the August bloc: Istoriya vsesoyuznoi kommunisticheskoipartii (bol'shevikov) (Moscow, 1938), pp. 131–3.Google Scholar

39 The entry in the 1929 reference book is as follows: ‘“Bor'ba”, journal published in 1914 in Petersburg. The ideological leader of the journal was L. D. Trotsky. In the introductory article to No. 1, issued in February 1914, the editorial announced that they stood on the platform of the August bloc. At that time the August bloc was disintegrating, and this was reflected by the fact that Trotsky published his journal and left the liquidationist Nasha zarya. The editorial of Bor'ba called the organ a “non-fractional workers' journal” and informed about its intention to fight for “the purification of social democracy from all and every type of existing fractionalism” both from the Bolsheviks and from the liquidationists. The journal defended the idea of the formation of a marxist “centre”, which would be the basis for the unification of all “currents” among Russian social democracy. Defending unity with the liquidationist-Mensheviks, in fact splitting from the working class, the journal preached “conciliation” and silence on the question of how the party underground acted in favour of the liquidationists and the anti-party elements of social democracy. Trotsky's organ supported the Mensheviks and also the “vperedovtski” – finally with several reservations. Nos. 1, 2 and 5 of Bor'ba were confiscated by the police. The final number, 7–8, was issued in July 1914. At the beginning of the war Bor'ba was closed by the government along with other social democratic organs. Despite the fact that that journal called itself a workers' journal, in reality it had no connections with proletarian organizations.' Bol'shaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, VII (Moscow, 1927), 204.Google Scholar

40 ‘In 1914 Trotsky founded a new journal, Bor'ba, which continued the same line as the Viennese Pravda: “non-fractional line” supporting the Mensheviks.’ Nevskii, V., ‘Trotskii’, Deyateli SSSR i Oktybr'skoi Revolyutsii (Moscow, 1989), p. 723.Google Scholar

41 To my knowledge there are four forthcoming Soviet Trotsky biographies: Yu. Emel'yanov, Eskiyi k portretu Trotskogo; M. Kun, Put k Koioakanu. O. L. D. Trotskii; N. Nikulin, Trotskii: vzglady i domysly; and N. A. Vasetskii, ‘Ta ne gozhus' na vtorye roli…’: Stranitsy politicheskoe biografii L. D. Trotskogo. For the re-emergence of Trotsky studies in the U.S.S.R. under Gorbachev see Thatcher, I. D., ‘Recent Soviet writings on Leon Trotsky’, Coexistence, III (1990), 141–67Google Scholar, and Thatcher, I. D., ‘Soviet writings on Leon Trotsky: an update’, Coexistence, I (1992), 73–96Google Scholar. In his recent biography of Trotsky, published chapter by chapter by the journal Oktyabr', Dmitri Volkogonov makes no mention of Trotsky's work for Bor'ba. See Volkogonov, D., ‘Lev Trotskii. Politicheskii portret’, Oktyabr', V (1991), 3–32Google Scholar; VI (1991), 139–60 VII (1991), 114–49; VIII (1991), 109–38; IX (1991), 96–124.