The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-03-14
Background of Collapse of
7 rotzkyiSm in Germany


a word about this. In a resolution
"On the recent events in the army
and in the navy" it was stated:
cit was necessary to draw the at
tention of the comrades to the I'M
desirability and extreme danger Of
any outbreaks in the army and in the
navy isolated from the popular move
ment, and any attempts at military
revolt"
On this platform Trotsky achieved
that which he had been long striving
after, and which Lenin, already on
January 3, 1911, briefly characterized
in a letter to Cork:
"The scoundrel Trotsky is uniting
the 'Colos' and the 'Vperiod' people
against us. Warl'
BIG DREAMS
OF A RENEGADE
Exactly 20 years ago, therefore,
Trotsky stood for the first time at
the height of his fame, full of hope
of being able to play big role. And
it was precisely in those days, at the
end of January and beginning OF
February, 1918, that he enjoyed his
greatest triumph; he wrote letter
to the editorial board Of the "Lutch"
(the Ray, the Petersburg, legal daily
paper of the hquidatorS which ap-
peared in 1929 in which he re-
buked them for having abandoned
the Zine" of the August Conference.
The liquidators with whom, in Au-
gust, he had 1iquidated the line and
the organization of the Party, were
too liquidatory for him! Trotsky de-
manded a change in the editorial
board and the latter made conces-
sions to him. He was on the heights,
he was the leader.
1t is true, this did not last long.
There soon came new conflict, and
in May, 1918, Trotzky was no longer
a member of the editorial board Of
the 'Lutch' Already in February
he had resigned from the editorial
board of "Nasl1a Sarja" (Our Dawn,
the legal paper of the liquidators,
which appeared in 1910-14 in ST.
Petersburg; he had requested that
his letter Of resignation should not be
published, as he did not want an open
scandal in the "bloc."
AUGUST BLOC
COLLAPSED IN 1914
Already in the year 1918 the
August bloc" began to Crumble, and
at the beginning of 1914 it came to
an open and admitted collapse.
Trotsky, whose "Pravda" had come
to an end in 1912, again started bust
ness on his own account. At the
beginning Of 1914 there appeared the
first number Of his "Borba" (Fight),
the program Of which was: to pro-
mulgate the ideas of the August bloc,
which had been betrayed by the liqui-
dators - to found a ''MarNst
center as q basis for uniting all
|. tendencies in the Russian social
democracy.
Trotsky-naturally the center-p point
round which the world had to unite
and rotate-juggled with these big
words at q time when the Bolsheviki
in Russia had already gathered round
them the masses of the social demo-
cratic workers, as was proved at the
elections in the trade unions, the
sick insurance institutions, the work
ers' fraction in the Duma, when the
Bolshevikt received great majorities.
1t is not due to chance that in
recent times the Social Democratic
press has shown increased interest
in Trotsky. They think as follows:
He may be absolutely done for 81 far
as the revolutionary labor movement
|. is concerned, but he can still be made
use Of by us. They think of the
Trotsky of today as Dan wrote of
Trotsky in 1909, He really belongs
to us. We say the Soviet Union, he
says Stain, but the most important
thing is that we attack the same
enemy" And in the well-organized
system Of divisions Of labor obtaining
in the social democratic apparatus
for deceiving the workers, where
everybody (the most Right as well
as the most Left among the leaders
and functionaries performs his part
in the common work, Trotsky too
can be usefully employed at the right
spot and at the right moment.
One must therefore repeatedly
point out to the social democratic
workers what piece Of useless
rubbish is being set before them as
new attraction.