The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-02-20

letter cannot but be subjective,
therefore it might be better if Trot-
sky should change the wording in
any way he might see fit. Yaro-
slavsky's article continues:
Continued from Last Issue.)
81 therefore," Joffee writes on
November 16, mot only give you
complete authority to revise my let
ter, but also request you most earn
estly to omit from it anything that
appears superfluous to you and to
add anything you consider essen
tial."
This is more than breach, this is
pronounced disintegration. Nay, more.
friends would be capable of adding to
his last letter anything they consid-
cred essential, i. e., to practice fraud
and forgery. Only in the decadence
and disintegration of this semi
Menshevist fraction, which is now
fighting against the Party of Lenin,
can such poisonous plants thrive. And
lit was only under the supposition that
the illegal fraction of Trotsky would
keep this testament" secret that it
could be drawn up at all. Had Joffe
known that his letter would become
known without any dressing" what
ever, he would never have dared to
write it.
Evidence of Decadence.
Only those who breathe this foul
atmosphere of disintegration, of de-
cadence, and of immortality in rela-
ton to the Party of Lenin, of which
they themselves were members, while
all the while engaged in constructing
a party of their own-only the Trot-
skyites, under the alag Of Joffe,"
could in the face of all this still write
in their illegal publication that "the
suicide of Joffe was no phenomenon
of decadence and social pessimism,
but on the contrary a phenomenon of
social optimism"
1t would be profitless to initiate
polemics on the question whether
aul and Laura Lafargue were right
hen they came to the conclusion that
hey could be of no further use to the
cause of revolution. But the bour-
geois France of the late nineties is
something altogether different from
the Soviet Union. There is a great
difference between the period of i'm
perialist rule and the socialist con-
struction in the first workers state.
From the very first pages of Joffe's
letter we learn that he had long be-
fore acquired such fatalistic stand
point, which, sooner or later, was
bound to lead him to commit suicide.
But what has the Party to do with
that? Certainly there is nothing
proletarian about this philosophy.
Every worker aiding in production
and even such as are invalid and
therefore cannot aid in production but
yet do their best to help in the public
work of their class, would repudiate
such philosophy as something alien
to them.
We do not intend, either, to pole
mise against the other "thesis" of A.
Joffe, that all our activity is in the
service of infinity. We do not recog-
nize this as a proletarian sentiment
either.
iii For Years.
Joffe was ill for several years. This
illness of his made him not only ir-
ritable, but also, as is frequently the
case in regard to sick people, unjust
towards his surroundings. In this case
his injustice expressed ITSELF in COM
plants as to his treatment at the
hands of the Party. This accusation
has been taken up and spread abroad
by the Opposition. But in what did
this ill-treatment, this inattention,
consist? One of the physicians who
worked in the Medical Commission of
the Central Committee reports as fol-
lows:
"Comrade A. A. Joffe was trans
ported from Japan to Moscow in
! 1923 in thoroughly sick condition
and was Immediately lodged in the
Pokrovsko-S tryeshnevo sanatorium
for nervous diseases, since his main
complaints were morphinism and
so-called Korsakov psychosis.
"In 1922, Comrade Joffe had con-
tracted an infectious disease in
Manchuria and had for year and
half undergone treatment first in
China and then in Japan on account
of the results of this disease, which
had originally lasted for about ten
days. The treatment included the,
use Of opium and morphia prepare
tions as pain-killing means. During
this cure, Comrade Joffe absorbed
great quantities of these drugs, as
much as two grammes of morphia
daily, though OIL gramme of NOR
phium, taken at one dose, is suffi-
cient to entail death.
"Comrade Joffe, who was not on
ly cured of his general nervous NAL
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