British ‘Democratic’ Traditions
From Chapter 45 of My Life (1930).
On 5 June 1929, the Independent Labour Party, of which Ramsay MacDonald is a member, sent me an official invitation, on its own initiative, to come to England and deliver a lecture at the party school. The invitation, signed by the general secretary of the party, read: “With the formation of the Labour government here, we cannot believe that any difficulties are likely to arise in connection with your visit to England for this purpose.” Nevertheless difficulties did arise. I was neither allowed to deliver a lecture before the supporters of MacDonald, nor was I allowed to avail myself of the aid of English physicians. My application for a visa was flatly refused. Clynes, the Labour Home Secretary, defended this refusal in the House of Commons. He explained the philosophical meaning of democracy with a directness that would have done credit to any minister of Charles II. According to Clynes, the right of asylum does not mean the right of an exile to demand asylum, but the right of the state to refuse it. Clynes’ definition is remarkable in one respect: by a single blow it destroys the very foundations of so-called democracy. The right of asylum, in the style of Clynes, always existed in tsarist Russia. When the Shah of Persia failed to hang all the revolutionaries and was obliged to leave his beloved country, Nicholas II not only extended to him the right of asylum, but supplied him with sufficient comforts to live in Odessa.[1] But it never occurred to any of the Irish revolutionaries to seek asylum in tsarist Russia, where the constitution consisted entirely of the principle expounded by Clynes, namely, that the citizens must be content with what the state authorities give them or take from them. Mussolini accorded the right of asylum to the King of Afghanistan in exact agreement with this very principle.[2]
The pious Mr. Clynes ought at least to have known that democracy, in a sense, inherited the right of asylum from the Christian church, which, in turn, inherited it, with much besides, from paganism. It was enough for a pursued criminal to make his way into a temple, sometimes enough even to touch only the ring of the door, to be safe from persecution. Thus the church understood the right of asylum as the right of the persecuted to an asylum, and not as an arbitrary exercise of will on the part of pagan or Christian priests. Until now, I had thought the pious Labourites, though little informed in matters of socialism, certainly well versed in the tradition of the church. Now I find that they are not even that.
But why does Clynes stop at the first lines of his theory of the state law? It is a pity. The right of asylum is only one component part of the system of democracy. Neither in its historical origin, nor in its legal nature, does it differ from the right of freedom of speech, of assembly, etc. Mr. Clynes, it is to be hoped, will soon arrive at the conclusion that the right of freedom of speech stands not for the right of citizens to express their thoughts, whatever they may be, but for the right of the state to forbid its subjects to entertain such thoughts. As to the freedom of strikes, the conclusion has already been drawn by British law.[3]
Clynes’ misfortune is that he had to explain his actions aloud, for there were members of the Labour faction in Parliament who put respectful but inconvenient questions to him. The Norwegian premier found himself in the same unpleasant situation.[4] The German cabinet was spared this discomfiture because in the whole Reichstag there was not a single deputy who took any interest in the question of the right of asylum. This fact assumes special significance when one remembers that the president of the Reichstag, in a statement that was applauded by the majority of deputies, promised to accord me the right of asylum at a time when I had not even asked for it.[5]
The October revolution did not proclaim the abstract principles of democracy, nor that of the right of asylum. The Soviet state was founded openly on the right of revolutionary dictatorship. But this did not prevent Vandervelde or other social-democrats from coming to the Soviet republic and even appearing in Moscow as public defenders of persons guilty of terrorist attempts on the lives of the leaders of the October revolution.
The present British ministers were also among our visitors. I cannot remember all of those who came to us – I haven’t the necessary data at hand – but I remember that among them were Mr. and Mrs. Snowden. This must have been as far back as 1920.[6] They were received not simply as tourists but as guests, which was probably carrying it a little too far. A box in the Grand Theatre was placed at their disposal. I remember this in connection with a little episode that it may be worth recounting at this point. I had arrived in Moscow from the front, and my thoughts were far away from the British guests; in fact I did not even know who those guests were, because in my absorption in other things I had hardly read any newspapers. The commission that was receiving Snowden, Mrs. Snowden, and if I am not mistaken, Bertrand Russell and Williams, as well as a number of others, was headed by Lozovsky, who told me by telephone that the commission demanded my presence in the theatre where the English guests were. I tried to excuse myself, but Lozovsky insisted that his commission had been given full power by the Politburo and that it was my duty to set others an example of discipline. I went unwillingly. There were about a dozen British guests in the box. The theatre was crammed to overflowing. We were gaining victories at the front, and the theatre applauded them violently. The British guests surrounded me and applauded too. One of them was Snowden. Today of course he is a little ashamed of this adventure. But it is impossible to erase it. And yet I too should be glad to do so, for my “fraternising” with the Labourites was not only a mistake, but a political error as well. As soon as I could get away from the guests, I went to see Lenin. He was much disturbed. “Is it true that you appeared in the box with those people?” (Lenin used a different word for “people”.) In excuse, I referred to Lozovsky, to the commission of the Central Committee, to discipline, and especially to the fact that I had not the remotest idea who the guests were. Lenin was furious with Lozovsky and the whole commission in general and for a long time I too couldn’t forgive myself for my imprudence.
One of the present British ministers visited Moscow several times, I believe; at any rate, he rested in the Soviet republic, stayed in the Caucasus and called on me. It was Mr. Lansbury. The last time I met him was at Kislovodsk. I was urged to drop in, if only for a quarter of an hour, at the House of Rest where some members of our party and a few foreign visitors were staying. A goodly number of people were sitting around a large table. It was in the nature of a modest banquet. The place of honour was held by the guest, Lansbury. On my arrival, he offered a toast and then sang: For he’s a jolly good fellow. Those were Lansbury’s feelings toward me in the Caucasus. Today, he too would probably like to forget about it.
When I applied for the visa, I sent special telegrams to Snowden and Lansbury, reminding them of the hospitality that had been accorded them by the Soviets and in part by myself. My telegrams had little effect. In politics, recollections carry as little weight as democratic principles.
Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb most courteously paid me a visit quite recently, early in May of 1929, when I was already on Prinkipo.[7] We talked about the possible advent of the Labour party to power. I remarked in passing that immediately after the formation of MacDonald’s government, I intended to demand a visa. Mr. Webb expressed the view that the government might find itself not strong enough, and because of their dependence on the Liberals, not free enough either. I replied that a party that isn’t strong enough to be able to answer for its actions had no right to power. Our irreconcilable differences needed no new test. Webb came into power. I demanded a visa. MacDonald’s government refused my application, but not because the Liberals prevented it from following its democratic convictions. Quite the contrary. The Labour government refused the visa, despite the protests of the Liberals. This was a variant that Mr. Webb did not foresee. It must be pointed out, however, that at that time he was not yet Lord Passfield.
Some of these men I know personally. Others I can judge only by analogy. I think that I measure them correctly. They have been raised up by the automatic growth of labour organisations, especially since the war, and by the sheer political exhaustion of liberalism. They have completely shed the naive idealism that some of them had twenty-five or thirty years ago. In its stead, they have acquired political routine and unscrupulousness in the choice of means. But in their general outlook they have remained what they were – timid petty bourgeois whose methods of thought are far more backward than the methods of production in the British coal industry. Today, their chief concern is that the court nobility and the big capitalists may refuse to take them seriously. And no wonder. Now that they are in power, they are only too sharply aware of their weakness. They have not and cannot have the qualities possessed by the old governing cliques in which traditions and habits of rulership have been handed down from generation to generation, and often take the place of talent and intellect. But neither do they have what might have constituted their real strength – faith in the masses and the ability to stand on their own feet. They are afraid of the masses who put them there, just as they are afraid of the conservative clubs whose grandeur staggers their feeble imaginations. To justify their coming to power, they must show the old ruling classes that they are not simply revolutionary upstarts. God forbid! No, they really deserve every confidence because they are loyally devoted to the church, to the King, to the House of Lords, to the system of titles; that is to say, not simply to the sacrosanct principle of private property, but to all the rubbish of the Middle Ages. For them to refuse a visa to a revolutionary is really a happy opportunity to demonstrate their respectability once again. I am very glad that I gave them such an opportunity. In due time, this will be taken into account, since, in politics, as in nature, there is no waste.
One needs no great imagination to picture Mr. Clynes’ interview with his subordinate, the chief of the political police. During the interview, Mr. Clynes feels as if he were undergoing an examination, and is afraid that he will not seem firm enough to the examiner, or statesmanlike or conservative enough. Thus it needs little ingenuity on the part of the chief of the political police to prompt Mr. Clynes to a decision that will be greeted with full approval in the conservative papers next day. But the conservative press does not merely praise – it kills with praise. It mocks. It does not take the trouble to conceal its disdain for the people who so humbly seek its approval. No one will say, for instance, that the Daily Express belongs to the most intelligent institutions in the world.[8] And yet this paper finds very caustic words to express its approval of the Labour government for so carefully protecting the “sensitive MacDonald” from the presence of a revolutionary observer behind his back.
* * *
Trotsky: Doesn’t Britain realise that her industrial success is now so in the balance that it depends entirely on how soon she throws aside her quarrel with Russia? America does and if Great Britain is not careful she will find the ground cut away from under her feet; the second-comers will only get the crumbs.
Daily Express: What are your views on resuming relations?
Trotsky: My views? Well, Great Britain is apparently blind but she will get a serious knock very soon that will restore her sight when it is too late and this knock will come from America. Great Britain’s fear of communism reminds me of a child which closes its eyes when it is frightened, yet she is big enough to act like a man and grapple with anything she considers menaces her. With Anglo-Russian relations resumed she will still be able to say who shall enter her territory. Every government has this prerogative: look at me, I am not wanted so out I have gone. Then again, the fact of Great Britain being on friendly terms with Soviet Russia would give her an advantage in getting friendly consideration of her desires. But to continue her stand for reparations for alleged damages will only result in Great Britain being outrun by America. Russia has a score of millions of millions marked up against Great Britain for blame for the bloody revolution attaches to her, or rather to her soldiers and her gold. To persist in making Russia only a debtor will never lead to any good, and the sooner this is realised so much the better for England.
Daily Express: Where are you going after leaving Turkey?
Trotsky: I have as yet had no reply from Germany. I suppose it is because of the cabinet crisis there but I have no doubt they will give me a visa. I only sent in my request after Herr Löebe’s favourable speech. Reports that I have applied to France, Czechoslovakia, and Holland are lies. I wonder what would be the result if I asked to go to England. You know I spent a happy period in London visiting the British Museum in 1902 and I sometimes think I would like to see it again. Apparently the mere mention in the House of Commons of the possibility of my requesting a visa for England was sufficient to bring the House down in laughter. I have studied what appears to be the joke for some time but I fail to see the point of it.
* * *
My state of health has obliged me to decline all interviews during the past few weeks, but I now desire to receive a representative of an English newspaper, especially after false information concerning me has been spread throughout the world by a prominent London newspaper from its Constantinople correspondent,[9] and in view of its inconceivable refusal to publish the formal denial which I forwarded to it immediately this information came to my knowledge.
It is untrue that I have addressed a demand to return to Russia to the Stalinist faction, which for the moment governs Soviet Russia. Nothing is changed in my situation as an exile, and it ought not to have been necessary to make a denial to the fantasy of a poor imagination, which is without scruples concerning so-called plans in the Orient and the Extreme Orient. The Near East begins in Turkey, and my sojourn here has shown that I understand the right of refuge.
I have just addressed a request to the British government for permission to go to England. This is not because I have any reason to complain of the treatment which I have received at the hands of the Turkish authorities. On the contrary, they have shown themselves to be perfectly loyal and hospitable. I should not dream of leaving Turkey were I not compelled to do so for a number of important reasons.
My state of health and that of my wife demands treatment which it is impossible to obtain here. Furthermore, residence in London would allow me to pursue my scientific work and enable me to superintend the publication of my books in English. Here I am deprived of the necessary sources of information. The smallest verification entails a great loss of time.
I do not wish to conceal that there is besides, at this moment, a special interest for me to go to England, where a great political change has just taken place.
The party which for the second time assumes power in Great Britain believes that the difficulties created by private ownership can be surmounted through the medium of democracy.[10] I want to see how it will be done.
I do not think that democracy which believes it can solve the gravest problems by democratic methods can begin by refusing the right of asylum – a democratic institution – to an adversary who has no intention of interfering with or intervening in British political affairs, but who desires only to observe and to learn.
It is well known that the German Government refused to give me a visa for Germany. I was therefore unable to receive that lesson in democracy which Herr Löebe, the President of the Reichstag, had promised me. The right of asylum exists in Germany only for its political friends, which means that it does not exist at all, despite the fact that it is continually affirmed that Germany is the freest country in the world.
The Norwegian Government, which, by the way, I had not approached, declared itself unable to undertake responsibility for my personal security. Suffice it to say that I am the only private person whose security is dependent on oneself and one’s friends. To put the question on a humane basis, I demand that less importance be attributed to my security and more to my health.
(Signed) Leon Trotsky
—
I asked Mssr. Trotsky then how he would reconcile the offer of refuge by Great Britain to a man exiled from Russia with a renewal of diplomatic relations between the two countries. He replied that he saw nothing in that connection whereby difficulties might arise.
On the contrary [he said], for the British Government, clinging firmly to the principle of non-intervention, the right of refuge is entirely one of an internal order. Equally am I sure that with the re-establishment of diplomatic relations the British Government would not think of demanding that the Soviet Government should modify its internal regime.
He added laughingly that of course he would never have dreamed of asking for permission to enter England while Sir Austen Chamberlain was at the Foreign Office.
Sir Austen [he said] for some reason has a personal objection to me which he has aired on not a few occasions.
Yes [he continued, speaking of the question of resumed relations], I hope the new Government will repair the mistake committed by its predecessor. That British industry should be made to suffer merely because of discontent with the Communist International is a thing I cannot understand. I believe, moreover, that this is also the opinion of British industrialists, who found it necessary to send an important delegation to Russia to study the situation.
Mssr. Trotsky spoke of his works which are now in preparation, citing especially that which has for its subject the world situation since the war, notably the situation of the United States vis-à-vis Europe in general and in particular vis-à-vis Great Britain.
What is my opinion [he concluded] concerning the possibilities of the new Socialist Government and the perspectives open before it? It is precisely these questions which I shall treat in my new book on world politics.
The great experiment which begins with Mr. MacDonald’s new Cabinet will furnish me with new elements for appreciation and discussion.
* * *
John O’London’s Weekly, Saturday, 20 April 1929.
Mr. Churchill is Wrong
In 1918-1919 Mr. Churchill attempted to overthrow Lenin by force of arms. In 1929 he attempts a psychological and political portraiture of him in his book, The Aftermath (Thornton Butterworth). Perhaps he was hoping thereby to secure some sort of literary revenge for his unsuccessful appeal to the sword. But his methods are no less inadequate in the second mode of attack than they were in the first.
“His [Lenin’s] sympathies cold and wide as the Arctic Ocean. His hatreds tight as the hangman’s noose”, writes Mr. Churchill. Verily, he juggles with antitheses as an athlete with dumbbells. But the observant eye soon notices that the dumbbells are painted cardboard, and the bulging biceps are eked out with padding.
The true Lenin was instinct with moral force – a force whose main characteristic was its absolute simplicity. To try to assess him in terms of stage athletics was bound to spell failure.
Mr. Churchill’s facts are miserably inaccurate. Consider his dates, for instance. He repeats a sentence, which he has read somewhere or other, referring to the morbid influence exercised on Lenin’s evolution by the execution of his elder brother. He refers the fact to the year 1894. But actually the attempt against Alexander III’s life was organised by Alexander Ulyanov (Lenin’s brother) on 1 March 1887. Mr. Churchill avers that in 1894 Lenin was sixteen years of age. In point of fact, he was then twenty-four, and in charge of the secret organisation at Petersburg. At the time of the October revolution he was not thirty-nine, as Mr. Churchill would have it, but forty-seven years old. Mr. Churchill’s errors in chronology show how confusedly he visualises the period and people of which he writes.
But when from the point of view of chronology and fisticuffs we turn to that of the philosophy of history, what we see is even more lamentable.
Mr. Churchill tells us that discipline in the Russian army was destroyed, after the February revolution, by the order abolishing the salute to officers. This was the point of view of discontented old generals and ambitious young subalterns; otherwise, it is merely absurd. The old army stood for the supremacy of the old classes, and was destroyed by the revolution. When peasants had taken away the landowners’ property, the peasants’ sons could hardly continue to serve under officers who were sons of landowners. The army is no mere technical organisation, associated only with marching and promotion, but a moral organisation, founded on a definite scheme of mutual relations between individuals and classes. When a scheme of this kind is upset by a revolution, the army unavoidably collapses. It was always thus…
Mr. Churchill grants that Lenin had a powerful mind and will. According to Lord Birkenhead, Lenin was purely and simply non-existent: what really exists is a Lenin myth (see his letter in The Times, 26 February 1929). The real Lenin was a nonentity upon which the colleagues of Arnold Bennett’s Lord Raingo[11] could look down contemptuously. But despite this one difference in their appraisement of Lenin, both Tories are exactly alike in their utter incapacity to understand Lenin’s writings on economy, on politics, and on philosophy – writings that fill over twenty volumes.
I suspect that Mr. Churchill did not even deign to take the trouble carefully to read the article on Lenin which I wrote for the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1926. If he had, he would not have committed those crude, glaring errors of dates which throw everything out of perspective.
One thing Lenin could not tolerate was muddled thought. He had lived in all European countries, mastered many languages, had read and studied and listened and observed and compared and generalised. When he became the head of a revolutionary country, he did not fail to avail himself of this opportunity to learn, conscientiously and carefully. He did not cease to follow the life of all other countries. He could read and speak fluently English, German, and French. He could read Italian and a number of Slavonic languages. During the last years of his life, though overburdened with work, he devoted every spare minute to studying the grammar of the Czech language in order to have access, without intermediaries, to the inner life of Czechoslovakia.
What can Mr. Churchill and Lord Birkenhead know of the workings of this forceful, piercing, tireless mind of his, with its capacity to translate everything that was superficial, accidental, external into terms of the general and fundamental? Lord Birkenhead, in blissful ignorance, imagines that Lenin never had thought of the password: “Power to the Soviets” before the revolution of February 1917. But the problem of the Soviets and of their possible functions was the very central theme of the work of Lenin and of his companions from 1905 onwards, and even earlier.
By way of completing and correcting Mr. Churchill, Lord Birkenhead avers that if Kerensky had been gifted with a single ounce of intelligence and courage, the Soviets would never have come into power. Here is, indeed, a philosophy of history that is conducive to comfort. The army falls to pieces in consequence of the soldiers having decided not to salute the officers whom they meet. The contents of the cranium of a Radical barrister happen to have been one ounce short, and this deficiency is enough to lead to the destruction of a pious and civilised community! But what indeed can a civilisation be worth which at the time of dire need is unable to supply the needful ounce of brain!
Besides, Kerensky did not stand alone. Around him was a whole circle of Entente officials. Why were they unable to instruct and inspire him, or if need was, replace him? To this query Mr. Churchill can find but this reply: “The Statesmen of the Allied nations affected to believe that all was for the best, and that the Revolution constituted a notable advantage for the common cause” – which means that the officials in question were utterly incapable of understanding the Russian revolution – or, in other words, did not substantially differ from Kerensky himself.
Today, Lord Birkenhead is incapable of seeing that Lenin, in signing the Brest-Litovsk peace,[12] had shown any particular foresight.[13] He considers, today, that the peace was then inevitable. In his own words, “only hysterical fools” could have imagined that the Bolsheviks were capable of fighting Germany: a very remarkable, though tardy, acknowledgement!
The British Government of 1918, and, indeed, all the Entente Governments of that time, categorically insisted on our fighting Germany, and when we refused to do so replied by blockade of, and intervention in, our country. He may well ask, in the energetic language of the Conservative politician himself: Where were, at that moment, the hysterical fools? Was it not they who decided the fate of Europe? Lord Birkenhead’s view would have been very far-seeing in 1917: but I must confess that I, for one, have little use for far-sight which asserts itself twelve years after the time when it could have been of use.
Mr. Churchill brings up against Lenin – and it is the very keystone of his article – statistics of the casualties of the civil war. These statistics are quite fantastic. This, however, is not the main point. The victims were many on either side. Mr. Churchill expressly specifies that he includes neither the deaths from starvation nor the deaths from epidemics. In his would-be athletic language he declares that neither Tamerlane[14] nor Genghis Khan[15] were as reckless as Lenin in expenditure of human lives. Judging by the order he adopts, one would hold that Mr. Churchill considers Tamerlane more reckless than Genghis Khan. In this he is wrong… statistical and chronological figures are certainly not the strong point of this Finance Minister. But this is by the way.
In order to find examples of mass expenditure of human life, Mr. Churchill goes to the history of Asia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The great European war of 1914-1918, in which 10 million men were killed and 20 million crippled, appears to have entirely escaped his memory. The campaigns of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane were child’s play in comparison with the doings of civilised nations from 1914 to 1918. But it is in a tone of lofty moral indignation that Mr. Churchill speaks of the victims of civil war in Russia – forgetting Ireland, and India, and other countries.
In short, the question is not so much the victims as it is the duties and the objects for which war was waged. Mr. Churchill wishes to make clear that all sacrifices, in all parts of the world, are permissible and right so long as the object is the power and sovereignty of the British Empire – that is, of its governing classes. But the incomparably lesser sacrifices are wrong which result from the struggle of peoples attempting to alter the conditions under which they exist – as occurred in England in the seventeenth century, in France at the end of the eighteenth, in the United States twice (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), in Russia in the twentieth century, and as will occur more than once in the future.
It is vainly that Mr. Churchill seeks assistance in the evocation of the two Asiatic warrior chiefs, who both fought in the interests of nomadic aristocracies, but yet aristocracies coveting new territories and more slaves – in which respect their dealings were in accordance with Mr. Churchill’s principles, but certainly not with Lenin’s. Indeed, we may recall that Anatole France,[16] the last of the great humanists, often expressed the idea that of all kinds of the bloodthirsty insanity called war, the least insane was civil war, because at least the people who waged it did so of their own accord and not by order.
Mr. Churchill has committed yet another mistake, a very important one and, indeed, from his own point of view, a fatal one. He forgot that in civil wars, as in all wars, there are two sides; and that in this particular case, if he had not come in on the side of a very small minority, the number of the victims would have been considerably less. In October, we conquered power almost without a fight. Kerensky’s attempt to reconquer it evaporated as a dewdrop failing on a red-hot stone. So mighty was the driving power of the masses, that the older classes hardly dared attempt to resist.
When did the civil war, with its companion, the Red Terror, really start? Mr. Churchill being weak in the matter of chronology, let us help him. The turning point was the middle of 1918. Led by the Entente diplomatists and officers, the Czechoslovakians got hold of the railway line leading to the East.[17] The French ambassador, Noullens, organised the resistance at Yaroslavl.[18] Another foreign representative organised deeds of terror and an attempt to cut off the water supply of Petersburg. Mr. Churchill encourages and finances Savinkov, he is behind Yudenich. He determines the exact dates on which Petersburg and Moscow are to fall. He supports Denikin and Wrangel. The monitors of the British fleet bombard our coast. Mr. Churchill proclaims the coming of “fourteen nations”. He is the inspirer, the organiser, the financial backer, the prophet of civil war: a generous backer, a mediocre organiser, and very bad prophet.
He had been better advised not to recall the memories of those times. The number of the victims would have been not ten times, but a hundred or a thousand times smaller but for British guineas, British monitors, British tanks, British officers, and British food supplies.
Mr. Churchill understands neither Lenin nor the duties that lay before him. His lack of comprehension is at its worst when he attempts to deal with the inception of the New Economic Policy. For him, Lenin thereby gave himself the lie. Lord Birkenhead adds that in ten years the very principles of the October revolution were bankrupt. Yes: he who in ten years failed to do away with the miners’ unemployment, or to palliate it,[19] expects that in ten years we Russians can build up a new community without committing one mistake, without one flaw, without one setback; a wonderful expectation which gives us the measure of the primitive and purely theoretical quality of the honourable Conservative’s outlook. We cannot foretell how many errors, how many set-backs, will mark the course of history; but to see, amid the obstacles and deviations and set-backs of all kinds, the straight line of historical evolution was the achievement of Lenin’s genius. And had the Restoration been successful at the time, the need for radical changes in the organisation of the community would have remained as great.
When the Stuarts came back to power, they had far better reasons to think of a bankruptcy of Cromwell’s principles. Yet, despite the triumphant Restoration, despite the many ebbs and flows of the following periods, the contest between Whigs and Tories, Freetraders and Protectionists, it was the Cromwellian leaven that gave rise to the new England.[20] And it is only in the last quarter of the nineteenth century that this ferment began to lose its potency, whence the unavoidable decrease of the part played by England in the world’s affairs.
Endnotes
[1] The Persian bourgeois revolution which began in 1905 eventually deposed the pro-Russian reactionary Shah Muzaffor Ud-Din in 1907, after he had made a number of attempts to hold back the tide of reform. He fled to Russia after being deposed, and was protected by Tsar Nicholas. In July 1911 the ex-Shah led an army of invasion which was defeated. Later in the same year Russian forces intervened, and they remained there until after the October 1917 revolution.
[2] King Amanullah was forced to flee from Afghanistan in 1929 following the success of a palace coup backed by British imperialism. After a brief period in India, he arrived in Rome in July and, under the protection of the fascist regime, occupied the Afghan embassy.
[3] The 1927 Trade Disputes and Trade Union Act, passed by the Tories in the wake of the General Strike, had, among other attacks on trade union rights, declared illegal all sympathetic strikes as well as those considered to be “calculated to coerce the government”, or to inflict “hardship upon the community”. It was repealed in 1945.
[4] The Prime Minister of Norway at this time was Johan Mowinckel (1870-1943), leader of the so-called ‘Left Party’, who presided over a coalition of various bourgeois parties from 1928 to 1931. Trotsky was to fare little better with the subsequent social-democratic government, which in 1935 permitted him to enter Norway only then to subject him to detention and deportation.
[5] Before his deportation from the Soviet Union, Stalin’s Politburo informed Trotsky that his application to visit Germany had been refused by the Müller government. Soon afterwards Paul Loebe, Social Democratic Speaker of the Reichstag, made a speech asserting that Trotsky would be granted asylum in Germany. He therefore requested asylum, but the application was repeatedly blocked. Trotsky was told he could enter the country only if in need of medical treatment; when he replied that he was, the government decided that he was not ill enough for them to be obliged to grant entry. As Trotsky relates in My Life: “I could thus appreciate the full advantages of democracy only as a corpse.” (Wellred Books, 2018, p. 505.)
[6] During the visit of the British Labour Delegation of that year. The delegation was sent as a the result of a motion passed at a special meeting of the Trades Union Congress on 10 December 1919 deciding to initiate an independent and impartial inquiry into the industrial, political and economic conditions in Russia. Its members arrived there in May 1920, and remained for three to six weeks respectively. Those representing the Labour party included Ethel Snowden and Robert Williams, and the TUC delegates included A. A. Purcell. They issued a generally favourable report later in 1920, though Mrs. Snowden published her own hostile account called Through Bolshevik Russia. Philip Snowden was not a member of the delegation, nor was Bertrand Russell, though he was one of many British visitors to the Soviet Union at about this time, and produced his own unfriendly picture in The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism.
[7] Trotsky was exiled in February 1929, arriving on the island of Prinkipo the following month. The Webbs arrived to visit him on 29 April 1929.
[8] This paper was of course known for its right-wing views even before a controlling interest was taken in it in 1916 by Sir Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook). Thereafter, it was closely identified with various reactionary causes, notably with strong support for the maintenance of the British Empire.
[9] The Times, 10 May 1929: “He [Trotsky] has just sent a request to Moscow for permission to return to Russia and support Stalin and the ruling clique.” The Times, 30 May 1929: “Trotsky has been given permission to return in July to Russia.” The Constantinople correspondent alleged that Trotsky had left Russia only to do secret work on Stalin’s behalf.
[10] The second minority Labour Government was returned to office in the General Election of May 1929.
[11] Lord Raingo is a satirical novel published in 1926 by the English writer Arnold Bennett (1867-1931). Raingo, a self-made millionaire who became a Cabinet Minister, is supposed to represent the ‘new men’ who were beginning to replace the established leaders of the landed aristocracy and the industrial bourgeoisie.
[12] The Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty was signed on 3 March 1918 after three months of negotiations in which the Soviet delegation was led by Trotsky. The policy was carried through by Lenin and Trotsky against the opposition of Bukharin and the ‘Left Communists’. This faction wished to make it a principle to carry on a ‘revolutionary war’ in the face of threats that German imperialism would renew the offensive after talks were broken off at one point. Trotsky deals with the Stalinist distortion of this history in The Stalin School of Falsification.
[13] I do not insist upon the fact that Lord Birkenhead represents me as in favour of war with Germany in 1918. The honourable Conservative, on this point, follows far too docilely the utterances of the historians of the Stalin school. – Trotsky
[14] Timur (known as Tamerlane in Europe) (1336-1405) – Mongol ruler and conqueror who carried out some of the most ambitious military campaigns in history. Won historical notoriety for his massacres, in one instance of 100,000 Indian prisoners.
[15] Genghis Khan (1167-1227) – Founder of the Mongol world empire, won through sweeping military campaigns against China and throughout Asia, in the course of which the Tartars were exterminated.
[16] Pseudonym of Jacques Thibault (1844-1924), the French novelist. Trotsky had been re-reading his works on the journey into exile, in the weeks before the writing of this article (see My Life, Wellred Books, 2018, p. 499).
[17] The Czechoslovaks were prisoners of war from the Austro-Hungarian Army who were formed into a legion to fight on the Allied side. The officers were bourgeois nationalists hostile to Austrian rule but also to Bolshevism. For a period during 1918 they held Kazan and other strategic points on the route from Moscow to the East. The recapture of Kazan in September was the first victory of the newly formed Red Army and marked a turning point in the fight to beat back the imperialist invasion.
[18] A rising of White Guards in the summer of 1918. Noulens was aided by the British agent Bruce Lockhart in instigating it. Yaroslavl is only 160 miles North-East of Moscow.
[19] In his years as a minister of the successive Tory governments of the 1920s.
[20] Though Cromwell’s death was followed by the restoration of Charles II in 1660 and Cromwell’s body was dug up to be hung, drawn and quartered, the bourgeois revolution of the seventeenth century was by then accomplished. Capital ruled while permitting the aristocracy to govern. The revolution of 1640 was what laid the basis for Britain’s industrial supremacy in the nineteenth century.