19. Paris and Zimmerwald¶
Core Argument¶
In November 1914, Trotsky crossed into France as a war correspondent for Kievskaya Mysl, entering a Paris transformed by war into a city of darkness and desolation. The working masses, deceived by the Social Democracy, had fallen silent. Two Russian émigrés had launched a tiny daily paper, Golos (later Nashe Slovo), on a capital of merely thirty francs, and Trotsky began working for it immediately. The paper would survive constant deficits and censorship for two and a half years, until the February 1917 revolution.
The French Socialist Party lay demoralised and broken. Vaillant had become intensely chauvinistic; Guesde placed his authority at the service of national defence; Sembat joined Briand's ministry; Renaudel imitated Jaurès; Jouhaux abandoned syndicalist anti-statism; and Hervé turned from extreme anti-militarist to extreme chauvinist. Among Russian émigrés, Martov was the outstanding figure, but his revolutionary first reactions were undermined by doubt and lack of will. Trotsky and Martov soon clashed on Nashe Slovo, leading to Martov's resignation. Trotsky met syndicalists Monatte and Rosmer, and others like Merrheim, Guilbeaux, Bourderon and Loriot. They met weekly to exchange news and map out the future.
From autumn 1914, Nashe Slovo insisted the war would be hopelessly protracted, that France would emerge as a larger Belgium, and that US world-dictatorship was approaching. The reactionary French newspaper La Liberté published anonymous communications, paid for as advertisements, accusing the Nashe Slovo group of being Germanophiles. Anonymous letters containing threats arrived constantly, clearly originating from the Russian embassy. Suspicious individuals loitered around the printing works; Hervé threatened police action. Professor Durckheim, chair of the government committee on Russian exiles, reported that government circles discussed closing Nashe Slovo and expelling its editors. Action was delayed because Trotsky had broken no law, not even the censor's illegal extensions of it. A reasonable excuse was needed, so one was eventually manufactured.
In September 1915, Trotsky attended the Zimmerwald conference with Merrheim and Bourderon. The revolutionary wing led by Lenin and the pacifist majority agreed on a common manifesto drafted by Trotsky. Lenin stood on the extreme left, tightening the spring of future international action and laying the cornerstone of the revolutionary International. The conference gave a powerful impetus to anti-war movements; the Spartacists expanded in Germany, and a Committee for the Restoration of International Connections was established in France.