(Militant No. 400, 7 April 1978, p. 8-9)
Reviewed by Peter Taaffe – Part 1
When “The Great Game” was first published last year it was widely commented on in the capitalist press. To read the reviews would be to suppose that the chief merit of this book lay in the account of the author, Leopold Trepper, of the work of the “Red Orchestra”, the name given by the Gestapo to the Russian intelligence network that functioned in underground Europe during the second world war. The publishers seek to deepen this impression by emblazoning the book jack with the title “Memoirs of a Master Spy”.
The more serious commentators, on the other hand, have highlighted the persecution of Trepper by the Stalinist regimes of Russia and Poland because he is a Jew. But not withstanding these very interesting aspects of the book, its real importance to the labour movement lies in Trepper’s account of the heroic struggle of his generation against capitalism and its distilled essence – fascism. Moreover, despite his terrible sufferings through the nightmare of Stalinism, his faith in the socialist future of mankind is undimmed. Not for Trepper the whining of the Sakharovs, Solzhenitsyns and their hankering for a return to capitalism in Russia and Eastern Europe. He merely asks that today’s youth absorb the lessons of the defeats of his generation in the struggle for socialism.
Trepper was born is Poland, and became a Left wing Zionist and left for Palestine in 1924, at the age of twenty. His experiences soon taught him that Zionism was no solution to the problems of the Jews. Only a socialist society could eliminate racial and religious divisions and oppression. He therefore joined the Palestinian Communist Party and successfully organised the Arab and Jewish workers through Ichud (Unity). To the consternation of Ben Gurion and other Zionist leaders, “By the end of 1925 there were clubs in Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel Aviv, and even in the agricultural villages where Arabs and Jews worked side by side.” The British authorities, illegalised the CP and forced it underground and the Zionist leaders vigorously persecuted those who wished to cement Jewish and Arab unity. Later on the British and the Zionists found an unexpected ally in Stalin’s “Communist International” (Comintern).
In 1929, during the insane ultra-left “Third Period”, ordained by Stalin and imposed on the Communist Parties throughout the world, “The directors of the Comintern had given the Palestinian Communist Party the watchword ‘Bolshevisation and Arabisation’. Since the party leaders were Jewish, they were all called back to Moscow.” All of these leaders perished in Stalin’s purges and the murders of foreign Communists in the 1930s. Most of them, including Trepper, had opposed the Comintern’s incredible support for the anti-Jewish rioting in 1928 which was accompanied by lynchings. The Comintern hailed this as “the beginning of the rise of the Arab proletariat”!
On the other hand, Trepper also shows that the thoroughly corrupted Communist Party leaders would not hesitate to beat the drum of Jewish chauvinism if it served their purpose. After his forced emigration from Palestine to France, Trepper worked among the Jewish workers of Paris. On one occasion he organised a meeting of Jews in a synagogue and invited the French CP leader, Marcel Cachin, to address the meeting:
“’Dear Friends, it is a great honour for me to be here among the representatives of a race which has given the world some great revolutionaries. I am talking about Jesus Christ, Spinoza, and Marx!‘
The speaker was interrupted by thunderous applause. Surprised and annoyed by these words, which had the ring of petit-bourgeois nationalism, I lowered my eyes, not daring to look around the room. But Marcel Cachin went on in the same tone.
“I’m sure you’re aware, my friends, that Karl Marx’s grandfather was a rabbi.”
I could not care less about all this; but the audience was entranced by it. They seemed to find it much more important than the writing of ‘Capital’ by the grandson of the rabbi in question.”
Many such incidents are related by the author, showing the organic opportunism and stupidity of Stalin and his puppets in the leadership of the “Communist” Parties of Western Europe. In his criticism of Stalin’s and the German CP leadership’s refusal to organise a United Front with the Social Democrats against the rise of Nazism, he echoes the criticism of Leon Trotsky at the time.
But the core of the book and the most important are the chapters which detail the inner mechanics of Stalin’s regime. Trepper was ideally placed to observe the Stalinist machine in operation. In 1932, full of idealism, he had set out for “the Land of the October Revolution” in order to deepen his “theoretical knowledge”. But very quickly “an abyss was suddenly gaping between the theory disseminated at our university and reality.”
Protest
He read Lenin’s “suppressed testament” which had called for the removal of Stalin as General Secretary. He also witnessed – and as a journalist was forced to participate in – the deification of Stalin as the God-head of the bureaucratic élite which had usurped power and was ruthlessly suppressing all opposition.
The tyrannical power of Stalin alarmed even sections of the bureaucracy and briefly flared up in a silent opposition at the 1934 (Stalinist) Party conference:
“In 1934, at the seventeenth congress of the party, was the first time no resolution came to a vote. By the show of hands, the delegates passed a motion resolving to let themselves “be guided by the ideas and objectives proposed in the speeches by Comrade Stalin.” This sanctioned the total domination of the party by the secretary general. But every coin has another side. This absolute power, despotic and already tyrannical, which had slowly asserted itself over the past ten years, alarmed some of the delegates. The election of the members of the Central Committee by secret ballot was the occasion for a last flicker of life. The victory went to Stalin and Kirov. The official proclamation was that they had received the votes of all the delegates but three. What really happened was quite different: two hundred and sixty delegates, or over a quarter of the total, had crossed out Stalin’s name. The organiser of the congress, Kaganovich was terrified; he decided to burn the ballots and announce the same number of votes for Stalin that had actually been won by Kirov. Naturally, this behind-the-scenes transaction did not escape Stalin’s notice; the vote triggered the bloody process that would lead to the great purges.”
Shortly after this, Kirov was assassinated and Leon Trotsky speculated that, although Nikolayev had pulled the trigger, it could not be discounted that Stalin was behind the Kirov affair. This is confirmed by Trepper: “Stalin eliminated a rival and justified the purge at the same time.” And this was but the dress rehearsal for the show trials and blood purges which resulted in the elimination of all Lenin’s closest collaborators – Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin – the destruction of the last vestiges of the Bolshevik Party and the murder of foreign revolutionaries who had sought refuge in Russia, some of them from Mussolini and Hitler.
But Trepper is not satisfied with merely detailing the crimes of Stalin. Not even sparing himself, he indicts all those who remained silent while Stalin and his henchmen perpetrated their dirty deeds. With rare honesty, moreover, he reserves the greatest praise for those who, against enormous odds, fought Stalinism to the death. His words deserve to be quoted in full:
“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, terrorised 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 Trotskyists can lay claim to this honour. 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 Trotskyists 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.” (My emphasis – PT)
What a magnificent vindication of Leon Trotsky and his struggle against the nightmare of Stalinism! Nor could Trepper be accused of harbouring “secret Trotskyist” sentiments at the time. As he himself remarks, he had vigorously fought the Trotskyists in France in the 1930s. Compare the bold conclusions and criticisms of Stalinism made by Trepper to the shamefaced and partial objections to some aspects of Stalinism by some of the leaders and miserable scribes of the “Communist Party” today.
Following the death of Stalin, many of these worthies made haste to declare their ignorance of Stalin’s crimes. Trepper completely punctures this myth. He details the foreign communists who were struck down by Stalin’s purges and then comments:
“These decisions were made in official meetings of the International. How is it that no leader of the great parties of Europe raised his hand to call for the creation of a committee of investigation? How could they have looked on while their comrades in arms were sentenced without proof? After the twentieth congress in 1956, all these leaders feigned astonishment. To hear them, Khrushchev’s report was a real revelation. In reality they had been the knowing accomplices of the liquidations, including those of members of their own parties.”
Trepper correctly concludes that the Trotskyists – that is, genuine Marxism – had an “enormous” advantage over others. Then – and now – they were the only ones who were armed with a scientific analysis of the causes of Stalinism and a programme of workers’ democracy capable of replacing it.
Explanation
Leon Trotsky and his supporters were alone in explaining the reasons for the rise of a privileged caste of officials with Stalin as their spokesman. This élite which had usurped power from the working class destroyed the soviets, the workers’ and peasants’ democracy established by the October Revolution, and killed all those who were linked, no matter how tenuously, to the heroic period of the October Revolution. He showed in a series of brilliant works that the causes of Stalinism lay in the isolation of the Russian Revolution to a single, predominantly peasant-based country.
Lenin and Trotsky had envisaged the Russian Revolution as the spark which would ignite European and world revolution. Before the Revolution they had shown that it was impossible to establish socialism in one country or even in a number of backward countries.
The beginning of socialism is only possible on the basis of a high level of production and technique higher than the highest stage reached by capitalism, i.e. higher than capitalist America today. Only on the basis of a super-abundance of goods, with want abolished completely, would it be possible to begin to dissolve the state, money, and classes, into a self-governing community. A world socialist federation would undoubtedly open up such possibilities. But for the betrayals of the Social Democratic leaders of Germany, Italy, France and the rest of Western Europe in the period of 1917-23, the Russian Revolution would have ushered in the establishment of a socialist federation throughout the world.
But the isolation of the Revolution, the low level of culture, the backwardness and the deepened poverty and hunger caused by the Civil War (when parts of Russia reverted to cannibalism), together with the destruction of the self-sacrificing and heroic generation of workers and peasants who had participated in the October Revolution, led to the growth of a conservative stratum of officials in the State, the Army and the Party. Over a period of time, the masses were elbowed aside from the management and control of the state, and the soviets, the workers’ and peasants’ councils, were emasculated. Gradually, the growing bureaucratic élite concentrated power in its hands and the state machine rose above society.
Stalin personified and reflected the pressure of this within the Bolshevik Party. His utterly anti-Marxist “theory” of “socialism in one country” was a summing-up of the abandonment by these parvenus of Bolshevism’s perspectives of world revolution. In its place they put a policy of diplomatic pressure on the capitalist states and horse-deals with the leaders of the workers’ parties of Western Europe. This in turn resulted in the wrecking of many revolutionary opportunities in Europe and the colonial world, which further isolated the Russian Revolution and thus strengthened the hold of the bureaucracy.
From a position of lacking any confidence in the victory in the Revolution in the West, the bureaucracy moved to the situation at the time of the Spanish Civil War, where it mortally feared the success of the Revolution in the West. They understood that a successful revolution in the West would lead to their overthrow and the regeneration of the Revolution through workers’ democracy. It was for this reason that Stalin acted as the grave-digger of the Spanish Revolution and at the same time unleashed the purge trials, characterised by Trotsky as a “one sided Civil War”.
All those who were connected with the heroic period of the Russian Revolution and Spanish Revolution were struck down. Trepper relates the protests of General Berzin, then head of Russian intelligence, on his return from Spain, who protested personally to Stalin at the persecution, torture and murder of Communists in Spain, even though he knew that this would cost him his life.
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