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FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
ENGLISH • LANGUAGE EDITION OF THE THEORETICAL ORGAN OF THE
INTERNATIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
NATALIA SEDOVA em Number 14
The technical preparation of this issue of the Fourth International was almost complete when we received the news of the death of Natalia Trotsky, which took place at Corbeil, near Paris on the 23rd January 1962.
Natalia was born at Romi, Poltava province in the Ukraine, in 1882 and from her early youth she had been active in the revolutionary movement. During her first stay in Paris in 1903 she met Leon Trotsky and became his companion. Alongside Trotsky she participated in the movement and activities which led up to the October revolution. She was arrested in 1905. Returning to Russia with her husband and two sons from the United States, she took part in the revolution and played a leading role in cultural organisations of the new
As the bureaucratic degeneration of the first workers' state developed Natalia supported wholeheartedly Trotsky's struggle against growing stalinism and together with Trotsky she was exiled to Alma Alta and then in 1928 expelled from the Soviet Union. Thus started the most tragic period of her life, during which she first lost both her sons and finally in 1940 she suffered the worst blow of all when Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico.
Remaining true to the memory of Trotsky and his ideas and fully confident of the final victory of revolutionary socialism, she devoted the rest of her life to defending the heritage of her companion against the slanders of stalinism and all other distortions.
Winter 1961 - 1962
In the last year of her life she expressed solid. arity with the two leaders of the Fourth International, Raptis and Santen, who were on trial in Holland for their activities on behalf of the Algerian Revolution, by sending a letter to the chairman of the Amsterdam court.
After the 22nd Congress she demanded of the leadership of the CPSU that they revise the Moscow trials and authorise the publication of Trotsky's works in the land of the October Revolution.
The funeral of Natalia was held in Paris at the Père Lachaise cemetery on the morning of the 29th of January 1962. There was a large attendance of old revolutionary fighters, of members of the working class movement and of a new generation of proletarian militants and intellectuals. The chief mourner was Seva, the grandson of Trotsky, who came over from Mexico. Natalia's ashes will be flown to Mexico to rest alongside those of Trotsky.
The speakers, all of whom knew Natalia personally, were André Breton, French writer; Marguerite Bonnet, in the name of Alfred Rosmer who was unable to be present because his wife died three days before Natalia; Pierre Naville, French sociol. ogist; Isaac Deutscher, Trotsky's biographer; Laur ent Schwartz, professor of mathematics at La Sorbonne and chairman of Committee of Solidarity with Algerian victims of imperialist repression; Joseph Hansen, editor of the Militant of the United Sstates; Pierre Frank, secretary of the French section of the Fourth International and Livio Maitian on bealf of the International Secretariat.