Speech on Comrade Zinoviev’s Report ‘The Tactics of the Communist International’ at the Eleventh Party Conference [1]¶
Core Argument¶
At the Eleventh Party Conference, Trotsky addressed the contradictory character of the European situation, arguing that official recognition of the Soviet Republic was imminent but would be followed by a period of acute difficulty. The bourgeoisie, having regained political self-confidence after the profound economic crisis of 1920–21, now felt strong enough to consider recognising Russia for trade advantages while simultaneously manoeuvring against it. Trotsky sharply criticised the mechanistic, non-Marxist view that the capitalist crisis must automatically deepen until proletarian victory. He insisted that capitalism moves in cycles of boom and crisis; unless a victorious revolution intervenes, a commercial-industrial revival is inevitable. The crisis of 1920–21 had already accomplished its work, and a revival—though anaemic and certain to generate further revolutionary impulses—was beginning. The rising tide of the labour movement would lift all groupings, testing them in action.
The bourgeoisie, self-confident and facing economic difficulties, was manoeuvring on multiple fronts. Diplomatically, it convened the Washington Conference in November 1921, ostensibly to address disarmament but in reality intensifying arms expenditures. Militarily, it concentrated Polish troops and armed bands on the Western borders. Trotsky warned that closer recognition drew nearer the moment when the bourgeoisie would attempt to enforce submission through military action. The Red Army, he insisted, must be in perfect order.
The report also referenced G.V. Chicherin, a diplomat who had served in the tsarist Ministry of Foreign Affairs before joining the Russian Socialist movement during the 1905 revolution. Forced into exile, he returned to Russia in January 1918, joined the Bolsheviks, and served as Commissar of Foreign Affairs from March 1918 until 1930. He died under Stalin in isolation and disgrace, a fate emblematic of the purges that would later consume many of the revolution’s leading figures. Trotsky’s speech thus combined a rigorous Marxist analysis of capitalist cycles with a clear-eyed assessment of the immediate military and diplomatic threats facing the Soviet Republic, warning against both economic fatalism and political complacency.