LETTER TO THE 22nd CONGRESS AND TO THE LEADERSHIP OF THE CPSU by the International Secretariat
Comrades,
In 1937 Leon Trotsky, leader of the October Revolution, a founder with Lenin of the soviet state, creator of the Red Army, threw in Stalin's face:
"The authors of the purges and the monstrous Moscow trials will be covered with obloquy; the Soviet people will erect a monument in honour of their victims".
Today this prediction is verified. At your Congress the first secretary of your Party has promised the erection of this monument; he has commenced to lift the veil from the terrible crimes that followed the assassination of Kirov by the G.P.U.
But the victims of the crimes of Stalin and his lieutenants are not only thousands and thousands of nameless militants, devoted to the cause of Communism and of the working class. Among them are found the most glorious names in the his. sory of the Party, the most faithful companions of Lenin, comrades Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykow, Piatakou, Rakovsky, Krestinsky, Smilga, Preobrazhensky, Tomsky, Ra. dek, and above all comrade Leon Trotsky. Their names must be engraved in letters of gold on the monument erected in honour of the victims of Stalin. They must be immediately rehabilitated.
These leading militants of Soviet and international communism were killed in criminal fashion. As well they шете scandalously calumniated. All the Communist Party leaders throughout the world servilely, repeated and justified these calumnies. The honour of Communism demands a public, official and complete review of these trials and accusations. This is a matter which concerns not only members of the C.P.S.U. It is a matter for the Communists and workers of the whole world.
We demand the constitution of an international commission of inquiry, composed of delegates of your Party, and of représentatives of the international workers' and revolutionary movement, of the Chinese C.P., the Polish W.U.P.P., the Italian C.P., the League of Yugoslav Communists, of the Japanese ranion organisation SOHYO, of the British union confederation T.U.C., the Italian Socialist Party, the Chilean workers' federation (C.U.T.Ch.), rep. resentatives of the Cuban and Algerian revolutions, терresentatives of all the big tendencies of the international worker's movement, including the Trotskyist tendency.
The International Secretariat of the Fourth International demands to have its testimony heard by this commission, as representing the only Communist current that understood and denounced all the crimes from the beginning, which fought uninterruptedly for the defence and rehabilitation of the victims, for whom you now erect a monument after. twenty-five years delay.
We demand that light be shone on all these crimes committed in the U.SS.R. and elsewhere against militants of the international workers' movement, and that any com. plicity be not passed over in silence
At the same time we demand that comrade Natalia Sedova be heard, so that the truth may be exposed on the subject of the murder of Leon Trotsky, and so that the inspirers and executors of this crime may be publicly denounced and punished. Comrades,
The enormous revelations of the 22nd Congress, amplifying and surpassing those of the 20th Congress does not end a phase of "liquidation of a shameful past". It reopens a period of discussion which will raise all the key questions of the communist programme, of the construction of social. ism, of the international revolution.
You have just publicly revealed all the horror of the Stalinist era. But you continue to refer to what is called "the cult of the personality" to explain this era. This explana. tion satisfied no one after the 20th Congress. It will be still less satisfying after the latest revelations. For Marx. ists, phenomena of such scope can only be explained by social factors.
Khruschev takes up the term "usurper" which Trotsky used when he declared that Stalin had usurped the power to guarantee the privileges of a bureaucratic caste which in a hostite capitalist world, and Soner paletan hisolaned.
and concentrated in his hands control of the economy and of the State.
The Trotskyists have defended this opinion over long years. They denounced the bureaucratic degeneration of the workers' state resulting from this, while continuing uninter. ruptedly, despite all the crimes committed against them, the unconditional defence of the U.S.S.R. against imperialism.
All communists do not share this explanation, but all feel the need to discuss this problem. This discussion will develop in any case, strongly stimulated by the revelations of the 22nd Congress. In the interests of political clarification, in the interests of the international workers' move. ment, this discussion must develop freely in all communist parties and above all in the C.P.S.U. All tendencies of international communism, the Chinese C.P., the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the Fourth International must participate in this discussion. This discussion concerning the general problems of Marxist-Leninist theory must be publicly developed, as was the case in the discussion in the epoch of Lenin. The principle according to which these discussions should not be publicly unfolded is totally contrary to the practices and principles of Bolshevism.
In this discussion must be brought out the platforms, books and articles written by the Communist victims of Stalin, above all those of Trotsky and the Left Opposition, and those of Bukharin, publication of which in the U.S.S.R. we demand.
Our organisation demands that this discussion include all the big problems now under discussion in the communist movement, and notably the problems discussed be. tween the Soviet C.P. and the Chinese C.P. Only the imperialist bourgeoisie can profit from the present silence, which permits all kinds of rumours and falsified information to penetrate into the ranks of the communist move. ment. A frank and public discussion of these divergences, on the other hand, will cement the necessary union of the People's Republic of China, the U.S.S.R. and all the workers' states.
Today the cause of communism in the world has become invincible. The revolution marches from victory to victory. But this cause will only triumph when its banner will have been cleansed of all the stains of blood and mire, when the usurpatory bureaucracy will have been driven out, when Soviet democracy will have been fully reestablished, when the proletarians will have in their hands, in the demo. cratically elected soviets, control of the economy and the State, when it will again be the banner of the International of the Communist World Revolution.
Long live the immortal heritage of Lenin, which our Bolshevik-Leninist movement has victoriously defended in spite of all opposition!
Long live Communism! The International Secretariat of the Fourth International -
31st October 1961