The Trotskyists Remained Faithful to October

(Quote of the Week)

The heroic Soviet spy Leopold Trepper created the “Red Orchestra” that transmitted invaluable intelligence to the USSR from occupied Europe and Nazi Germany during World War II. In his memoirs, Trepper recalled the Trotskyists’ heroism in the face of Stalin’s purges in the 1930s. We Trotskyists of the International Communist League continued the struggle for unconditional military defense of the Soviet degenerated workers state against imperialism and counterrevolution as well as for proletarian political revolution to sweep away the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy until the final destruction of the USSR through capitalist restoration in 1991-92. Today, we apply this same program to the remaining deformed workers states: China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam.

The glow of October was being extinguished in the shadows of underground chambers. The revolution had degenerated into a system of terror and horror; the ideals of socialism were ridiculed in the name of a fossilized dogma which the executioners still had the effrontery to call Marxism.

And yet we went along, sick at heart, but passive, caught up in machinery we had set in motion with our own hands. Mere cogs in the apparatus, terrorized to the point of madness, we became the instruments of our own subjugation. All those who did not rise up against the Stalinist machine are responsible, collectively responsible. I am no exception to this verdict.

But who did protest at that time? Who rose up to voice his outrage?

The Trotskyites can lay claim to this honor. Following the example of their leader, who was rewarded for his obstinacy with the end of an ice-axe, they fought Stalinism to the death, and they were the only ones who did. By the time of the great purges, they could only shout their rebellion in the freezing wastelands where they had been dragged in order to be exterminated. In the camps, their conduct was admirable. But their voices were lost in the tundra.

Today, the Trotskyites have a right to accuse those who once howled along with the wolves. Let them not forget, however, that they had the enormous advantage over us of having a coherent political system capable of replacing Stalinism. They had something to cling to in the midst of their profound distress at seeing the revolution betrayed. They did not “confess,” for they knew that their confession would serve neither the party nor socialism.

—Leopold Trepper, The Great Game (1977)