Judas Trotsky’s Blush of Shame

Written: Written after January 2 (15), 1911

Published: First published on January 21, 1932, in Pravda, No. 21. Published according to the manuscript.

Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [1974], Moscow, Volume 17, page 45.

Translated: Dora Cox

Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala

Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2004). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. • README

At the Plenary Meeting Judas Trotsky made a big show of fighting liquidationism and otzovism. He vowed and swore that he was true to the Party. He was given a subsidy.

After the Meeting the Central Committee grow weaker, the Vperyod group grew stronger and acquired funds. The liquidators strengthened their position and in Nasha Zarya[1] spat in the face of the illegal Party, before Stolypin’s very eyes.

Judas expelled the representative of the Central Committee from, Pravda and began to write liquidationist articles in Vorwärts.[2] In defiance of the direct decision of the School Commission[3] appointed by the Plenary Meeting to the effect that no Party lecturer may go to the Vperyod factional school, Judas Trotsky did go and discussed a plan for a conference with the Vperyod group. This plan has now been published by the Vperyod group in a leaflet.

And it is this Judas who beats his breast and loudly professes his loyalty to the Party, claiming that he did not grovel before the Vperyod group and the liquidators.

Such is Judas Trotsky’s blush of shame.

Notes

[1] Nasha Zarya (Our Dawn)—a legal journal published monthly by the Menshevik-liquidators in St. Petersburg from 1910 to 1914. It became the rallying centre of the liquidators in Russia.

[2] Vorwärts (Forward)—the central organ of German Social-Democrats which began publication in 1876. Wilhelm Liebknecht was one of its editors. Frederick Engels waged a struggle in its columns against all opportunist manifestations. In the mid-nineties, after the death of Engels, Vorwärts regularly published articles by the opportunists who dominated German Social-Democracy and the Second International.

[3] The School Commission (or School Committee) was appointed by the January Plenary Meeting of the C.C. of the R.S.D.L.P., 1910, to organise a Party school abroad. It was composed of nine people: two Bolsheviks, two Mensheviks, two members of the Vperyod group and one representative from each of the national organisations—the Bund and the Latvian and Polish Social-Democratic organisations.