the_dunk_tank

Traitors all the way down, right?

No one ever said a lot of the Communists that were shot over that period were brazen counter-revolutionaries that one day woke up and marched into the camp of counter-revolution.

By holding onto bad ideas, bad theory and terrible analysis they walked step by slow step into open counter-revolution.

Trotsky (and his followers) for instance did not believe at the time that the Soviet Union would last a day versus German Imperialism. This defeatism that coloured their outlook meant "given that the USSR will fall in a war we must make peace at any cost and Stalins path to confrontation will result in absolute disaster".

Can we, however, expect that the Soviet Union will come out of the coming great war without defeat? To this frankly posed question, we will answer as frankly: If the war should remain only a war, the defeat of the Soviet Union would be inevitable. In a technical, economic, and military sense, imperialism in incomparably more strong. If it is not paralyzed by revolution in the West, imperialism will sweep away the regime which issued from the October revolution.

Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed (1936)

This is what Trotskys followers believed. That the USSR would fall.

The Moscow Trials were largely about the fact Trotsky and Tukhachevsky wanting to carve off a huge rump of the Soviet Union (Ukraine) to the Hitlerites for assistance in coming to power. They believed the USSR was going to be defeated anyway. Better to present the land Hitler had demanded in MeinKampf for Lebensraum (the Ukraine for its Oil fields).

This is why even in 1939 Trotsky was writing about the "independence of Ukraine" despite the independence forces being bourgeois nationalists and fascists who would only in a few short years setup their own SS divisions and collaborate with Nazis under Nazi occupation. While the pro Communist part of the population was pro-Stalin

Leon Trotsky, Independence of the Ukraine and Sectarian Muddleheads, https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/07/ukraine.htm

In the 1980s both Arch J Getty and (trotskyite) historian Pierre Broue discovered that a bloc was created in the USSR which Trotsky had denied his entire life

“[The bloc] is organized. In it have entered the Zinovievites, the Sten-Lominadze group and the Trotskyites (former ‘[capitulators]’). The group of Safar. Tarkhkan has not formally entered yet – they stand on too extreme a position; they will enter in a very short time. – The declaration of Z. and K. concerning their enormous mistake in ’27 was made during negotiations with our people concerning the bloc, immediately before the exile of Z and K.” - Sedov to his father Trotsky

Pierre Broue, The “Bloc” of the Oppositions against Stalin in the USSR in 1932, https://www.marxists.org/archive/broue/1980/01/bloc.html

“It is clear, then, that Trotsky did have a clandestine organization inside the USSR in this period and that he maintained communication with it. It is equally clear that a united oppositional bloc was formed in 1932”

(Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938)

“Stalin must be killed!” –Leon Sedov

“Stalin… is crushing the country … Inplacable hatred is accumulating around him, and a terrible vengeance hangs over his head… An assassination attempt? It is possible that this regime… will ultimately suffer individual terror. One can add that it would be contrary to the laws of history that the gangsters in power not be subject to acts of vengeance…” –Leon Trotsky

About the same time American historian Arch Getty was discovering that Trotsky had secretly sent letters to at least Radek, Sokol’nikov, Preobrazhenskii, Kollontai, and Litvinov. The first three had been Trotskyites before publicly recanting their views. Getty did not find the letters – only the certified mail receipts for them in the Trotsky Harvard Archive. Getty realized this meant that the Trotsky Archive has been ‘purged.’ These letters had been removed. Other materials had undoubtedly been purged as well.

Therefore it has been well established by scholars by the mid-1980s that a Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc did in fact exist and that it was formed in 1932 and that Zinoviev and Kamenev were personally involved. Sedov also foresaw the entry into the group of Safarov, who in any case had a group of his own.

The reason the Soviet state came down on them like a ton of bricks was because they had moved into open killings like they did when they Assassinated Kirov.