Our Mexican comrades have today informed us of the death of Esteban Volkov, Trotsky’s grandson who was present, and indeed himself wounded, during two assassination attempts by Stalinist agents on Trotsky at his then home in exile in Mexico. The second attempt was successful. Since then Esteban Volkov devoted his life to keeping the ideas of his grandfather alive, and maintaining their home in Coyoacán as a Memorial to the great revolutionary.
As the Stalinist regime was collapsing, with Mikhail Gorbachev’s “perestroika” and “glasnost” gathering pace, Esteban addressed the 1988 “Militant Rally” (organised by the former British section of the ISA) in London. This could have been a deeply personal recollection of his grandfather’s life, but Esteban did what Trotsky himself would have done by addressing the hall with a political challenge to the dying Stalinist regime.
Esteban would have been pleased to discover that just three years after his speech, CWI members (now the ISA) were instrumental in publishing for the first time in the Soviet Union Trotsky’s “Revolution Betrayed” with a print run of 100,000 copies. To mark with respect Esteban’s passing, we republish his address to the Militant Rally in 1988.
Rehabilitate Leon Trotsky
“I SHOULD like to send warm, fraternal greetings to everyone participating in this important event. We watch with interest the changes being implemented by Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, which are opening new roads and seem to mark the end of one of the most sinister chapters in the history of this century: the Stalinist era.
At the same time, I would urge all those countries based upon the nationalisation of the means of production to return to the road of genuine socialism based upon freedom and workers’ democracy and to fully restore historical truth.
After the great victory in Russia in October 1917 of the world’s first proletarian socialist revolution, successfully led by the Bolshevik party with Lenin and Trotsky at its head, the process of historical advance was momentarily halted, with the revolution being confined within the limits of its national frontiers. In the context of tremendous shortages and backwardness, this gave rise to the counter-revolution led by Joseph Stalin.
It produced one of the most barbarous tyrannies in the annals of history which became a colossal obstacle in the path of bringing about genuine socialism on our planet. In order to return to the road of genuine socialism it is vital to denounce without any ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’, all the wicked lies, falsifications, betrayals, tyranny and crimes of the Stalinist regime.
Silence means complicity. These methods and procedures, more appropriate to the inquisition and Tsarism than to the ideals of Marxism, must be wiped out. Among the endless betrayals and crimes of the Stalinist regime against socialism and the human race, we must mention the following:
The abolition of all freedom of expression, democracy, and the political power of the working class within the Soviet Union;
The imposition of a system of lies and slander at all levels, and the falsification of history as a ‘general method’;
The abandonment of internationalism and the betrayal of the working class, entering into deals and alliances with its most vicious enemies-Chiang Kai Shek, Hitler, Batista and others. The sending of ten to fifteen million Soviet citizens to work as slaves in forced labour camps in the most inhospitable regions of the Soviet Union. This forced labour, used on major construction schemes in the country’s infrastructure, was an important pillar of the Russian economy at that time.
The extermination of all the Bolshevik comrades of Lenin, as well as the destruction of wide sections of the Communist Party at that time, found guilty of the most absurd accusations, and the murder of the most famous leaders after the grotesque farce of the notorious Moscow trials.
The murderous arm of Stalin reached far away to Mexico to silence the voice of that revolutionary Marxist, Lenin’s close collaborator and organiser of the Red Army: Leon Trotsky.
In his paranoia, Stalin even decapitated the Red Army, executing its most brilliant and experienced generals and officers shortly before Hitler’s invasion. This left the country virtually defenceless in the face of the Nazis, whose armies succeeded without much difficulty in penetrating to the very heart of Russia, literally arriving at the gates of Moscow, inflicting colossal losses and limitless destruction. In fact, in this first phase of the war, the Nazis were only halted by problems of logistics, in the vastness of Soviet Russia, and the arrival of General Winter‘. By placing in danger the USSR’s survival, Stalin stands condemned of the crime of high treason. Very different was the role of Leon Trotsky when he created the Red Army and led the successful fight back against the enemy armies who attacked the infant Soviet states on all fronts.
Yet another crime of Stalin and the system he personified was to stifle the inexhaustible potential for human creativity brought about by the enthusiasm of a genuine socialist society, which was prevented from coming into existence.
Many of Stalinism’s crimes read more like horrific novels than 20th century history. These events have left behind millions of innocent victims who urgently demand justice before the court of history. The names of each and every victim should be made known. There must be no further delay in cleansing them of all the calumnies and false accusations; their families must be compensated, materially or morally, for the harm and suffering so unjustly inflicted upon them.
The human mind is the most marvellous instrument which mankind possesses, yet it cannot flourish in a dark and dank dungeon. Motivation, information and communication are essential for it. This was something that Stalin never understood-or maybe he understood it only too well! In order to return to real socialism it is vital to be able to think, speak and discuss freely and exercise the right to decide and vote democratically at all levels of Soviet life.
The task of re-establishing the historical truth about the protagonists of them is the man who was twice President of the Petrograd Soviet, Lenin’s intimate collaborator, the organizer of the Red Army-the Russian revolutionary and Marxist theoretician, Leon Trotsky.
That indomitable defender of the working class, one of the key people in the victory of the Russian revolution and the founding of the Soviet Union, was the first man to denounce the deviations and betrayals of Joseph Stalin against the ideas of Marxism and the October revolution. He waged an implacable struggle against them, and for this he became the most persecuted revolutionary on the planet.
If ‘glasnost’ is to be credible and successful, there can be no forbidden areas. Leon Trotsky must now be freed from the avalanche of false accusations, lies, slanders and falsifications poured over himself and his ideas in Russia and other deformed worker’s states for over than half a century. Justice demands that he should now occupy the place he deserves in the history of the Soviet Union. His works, writings and political theses must be published, freely discussed and evaluated objectively, as well as the writings of others who played a role in the Russian revolution and in universal human thought.
The ideas of Marxism have in no way lost their applicability. Capitalist society has generated unimaginable knowledge and scientific development, yet it has not found, nor it will ever find, the formula to eradicate hunger, misery and injustice from our planet. On the contrary, it has placed the human race on the edge of infernal atomic conflagration.
The alternative would be a socio-economic system in which mankind would master its own destiny and not be just an object to be used and discarded. Real socialism or barbarism-that is the choice facing us.”
