Soviet press agency does a turnaround on
THE GREAT specialist on Trotskyism of the Soviet press agency Novosti, Dr. Nikolai Vasetski, had gained notoriety for his pamphlet entitled Contemporary
Trotskyism against peace and detente. It was printed in
1986, and widely distributed by the Soviet embassies, including, notably, those in Havana and Managua. This pamphlet was full was the purest Stalinist slanders.
USSR
IF THIS LOWTINVES, THEY'L
END UP EXPELLING ME
FROM THE PARTY!
BRIT•
Since then, the wind of glasnost has blown through the Novosti agency, ruffling even Dr. Vasetski. ERNEST MANDEL
T HE SOVIET judicial authorities
have quashed the verdicts of the three Moscow trials and cleared all the accused, including Trotsky, of the slanderous changes (repeated by Vasetski) of collaboration with capitalist governments.
Put in an awkward position by this turnabout by the Soviet judicial authorities and by the prevailing demand of Soviet public opinion today for restoring historic truth, Dr. Vasetski has had to backtrack on Trotskyism and put a lot of water in his poison wine.
In fact, in December 1988 the Novosti agency distributed an article signed by him entitled "Modern Trotskyism, ideology and practice." In this new piece, all the slanderous accusations in the 1986 pamphlet have disappeared. There is, of course, a certain turn of phrase that appears embarrassed (and embarrassing for the author in the climate of glasnost):
No political or moral authority
"Unfortunately, the modern Trotskyists do not always study first of all the contributions that Trotsky made as a revolutionary and which won him praise from Lenin and attention from the party and the Comintern. As a general rule, they prefer to base themselves on those of his contributions that it would be better not to display publicly and to leave forgotten."
I defy Dr. Vasetski to quote a single activity of experience of Trotsky that would not stand examination in the light of day. On the part of a scholar who has so recently spread slanders and who today does not even have the courage to mention what he wrote yesterday or to make the least self-criticism about it, such an insinuation has no political, let alone, moral authority. If the slanders have, in general, disappeared, gross distortions remain.
Vasetski labels USFI as
"left reformists"
For example, the Trotskyists are portrayed as guilty of "leftist" orientations prompted by the fact that in the past they have recruited in the marginal strata of society (students, impoverished bourgeoisie, the poorest layers of the proletariat, immigrants, and so on).
An alleged tendency to "innumerable splits" is presented as "innate" in Trotskyism, without posing the question of how many opposing tendencies the Communist movement (to say nothing of the workers' movement) as a whole has split into.
The most astonishing thing is that Dr. Vasetski claims that the Trotskyists organized by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (and myself personally) are "left reformists," because we participate in elections and work "for reforms that could improve the working conditions and lives of working people." Does fighting for reforms make you a reformist?
Does Dr. Vasetski know a single Communist Party in the world that opposes participating in elections and fighting for reforms that would improve the living conditions of the working people?
Is he unaware of the fact that the present West German minister of foreign affairs, Genscher, expelled me from that country when he was the minister of the interior, citing my "revolutionary convictions and
Dr. Vasetski's article contains many other distortions of the Trotskyists' political theses and activity. But it does assess our movement as a real force in the workers' movement with a base in the working class and peasantry.
The countries where the Trotskyists are relatively the strongest are correctly listed, with the exception of Spain, Sweden and Mexico. Could the latter oversight be due to the fact that the Mexican Communist Party has dissolved itself, and the Mexican section of the Fourth International, the Revolutionary Workers' Party (PRT) is now the only socialist/communist party in the country?
But let us leave aside these secondary questions. Dr. Vasetski's turnaround — did he take his cue from the top? - leads him to quite a sensational conclusion: "Most of the left organizations adopt an attitude of "active neutrality' to Trotskyism.
A signal to the French
Communist Party?
"This does not exclude the possibility of practical collaboration with the Trotskyists. There are already many examples of such collaboration by Communist and Socialist parties, anti-war organizations and movements in a series of West European and Latin American counties, as well as in Australia. Electoral blocs, political alliances, and agreements for waging short-term, and sometimes long-term, campaigns have been made with Trotskyist groups.
"It is necessary to judge in each concrete case to what extent such collaboration can produce results. In our opinion, alliances of this nature must be alliances either 'against' or 'for.' 'Against' the anti-popular policy of monopoly imperialism, 'for' transformations in the interests of the working people. Only such collaboration can make any sense and not have negative consequences for the parties concerned. " Is this a signal to the French Communist Party, 15 despite its reticence about glasnost? *
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Trotskyism
International Viewpoint #155 • January 23, 1989