Stalin nach Trotzki

Ich selbst charakterisierte Stalin ja bereits als eher unpolitisch, nur auf die Errichtung und Verteidigung von Fundamenten bedacht, dies allerdings mit der größten Härte, wenn überhaupt eher traditionalistisch gesonnen und nur deshalb zur Macht gekommen, weil sich die staatstragenden Organe der Sowjetunion nach genau so einem Mann sehnten.

Das alles auf der Grundlage seines Aussehens, genauer gesagt seines Gesichts.

Nun, interessanterweise sah Trotzki das alles ganz genauso, wobei ich freilich meine Abscheu vor Trotzkis Denken und Charakter kaum in Worte zu fassen vermag. Es ist verdammt nochmal keine Entschuldigung, wenn man, weil man jegliches kritisches Denken aus dem Fenster geworfen hat, sich einbilden kann, daß die größten Greuel dem Wohle der Menschheit dienen. Das alles mit dieser unerschöpflichen Herzensgüte, welche überall nur unschuldige Babies sieht, welche ein teuflischer Wind auf den falschen Pfad getrieben hat, welchen man nur recht gründlich abstellen müsse, damit sich Friede, Freude und Eierkuchen weltweit entfalten!

Ja, ne, so war Stalin nicht. Stalin war ein Barbar. Hört, hört!

Nun gut, aber gehen wir jetzt vielleicht einmal die paar Bemerkungen durch, welche Trotzki der Nachwelt über Stalin hinterlassen hat.

Stalin 1911: You have certainly heard about the ‘tempest in a teapot’ abroad; blocs – Lenin and Plechanov on one side, and Trotsky-Martov-Bogdanov on the other. The relation of the workers to the first bloc, as far as I know, is favorable. But in general the workers are beginning to look with contempt on the work abroad; ‘let them climb on the wall to their hearts’ content; in our estimation those should work to whom the interests of the movement are dear, and the rest will happen.’ This, in my estimation, is for the best.

Stalin kümmert sich nicht um Bemühungen, welche er für aussichtslos hält: Wer nicht will, der hat schon.

Trotzki dazu: This is not the place to consider how correctly Stalin defines the composition of the blocs. The question is not in this. Lenin led a fierce struggle against legalizers, liquidators, and opportunists, for the perspectives of the second revolution. This struggle determined fundamentally all the groupings abroad. But how does the Bolshevik Stalin appraise these battles? As the most helpless empiricist and unprincipled practicalist: “a tempest in a teapot; let them, so to say, climb on the wall; work, and all will be well.” Stalin welcomes the frame of mind of theoretical indifference and the imaginary superiority of the near-sighted practicalists over the revolutionary theoreticians. “In my estimation, this is for the best”, he writes, addressing those moods that were characteristic of the period of reaction and downfall. We have in this manner in the person of the Bolshevik Stalin not even a political conciliationalism, for conciliationism was an ideological current which strove to create a principled platform, – we have a blind empiricism which entirely disdains the principle problems of the revolution.

Lass' ich so stehen. Weiter im Text.

Stalin arrives in Petrograd with Kamenev about the middle of March 1917. Pravda, directed by Molotov and Shliapnikov, had a vague, primitive, but nevertheless “left” character directed against the provisional government. Stalin and Kamenev put aside the old editorship as too left and took up a thoroughly opportunist position in the spirit of the left mensheviks: (a) support of the provisional government as far as: (b) military defense of the revolution (i.e., the bourgeois republic); (c) a union with the mensheviks of the Tseretelli type. The position of Pravda in those days presents indeed a scandalous page in the history of the party and in the biography of Stalin. His March articles which were the revolutionary result of his meditations in exile explain perfectly why not a line from Stalin’s works from the war epoch have appeared up till how.

Dazu muß ich jetzt aber doch was sagen. Trotzki beschwert sich hier recht eigentlich darüber, daß Stalin und Kamenew 1917 lieber erstmal abwarten wollten, wie der Erste Weltkrieg ausgeht, anstatt blindlings die Revolution voranzutreiben.

Stalin 1926: ... the history of our party if taken from the moment of its birth in the form of a Bolshevik group in 1903, and traced through its subsequent stages up to our time; can be said without exaggeration, to be a history of the struggle of contradictions inside the party – there is not and cannot be a ‘middle’ line in questions of a principle character —

Trotzki dazu: These imposing words are aimed against ideological “conciliationism” in relation to those against whom Stalin led a struggle. But these absolute formulas of ideological irreconcilability are entirely contradictory to the political physiognomy and political past of Stalin himself. He was, as an empiricist, an organic conciliator, but particularly as an empiricist he did not give his conciliationism a principled expression.

Der Vorwurf hier: Der Mann tritt entschieden auf, obwohl er gar nicht entschieden ist. Naja, Herr Bronstein, ist doch aber auch besser so, als wenn jemand wirklich den fanatischen Irrsinn glaubt, welchen er absondert, nicht wahr? Wäre Stalin da ehrlich gewesen, hätte er sich nicht durchsetzen können, es wäre ihm als Schwäche ausgelegt worden - zu schade aber auch für Sie. Dabei bleibt Stalin bei dieser Verstellung nur der Realist, welcher er nunmal war. Anders ging's halt nicht.

Bleiben wir bei Stalins Aufstieg zur Macht.

To be sure, the banner of the Bolshevik-Leninists gathered tens of thousands of the best revolutionary fighters, including some military men. The advanced workers were sympathetic to the Opposition, but that sympathy remained passive; the masses no longer believed that the situation could be seriously changed by struggle. Meanwhile the bureaucracy asserted: “The Opposition proposes international revolution and is ready to drag us into a revolutionary war. Enough of shake-ups and misery. We have earned the right to rest. We need no more of ‘permanent revolution.’ We will build the socialist society at home. Workers and peasants, rely on us, your leaders!” This nationalist and conservative agitation was accompanied – to mention it in passing – by furious slanders, sometimes absolutely reactionary, against the internationalists. It drew the military and state bureaucracies tightly together, and indubitably found an echo in the weary and backward masses. So the Bolshevik vanguard found itself isolated and crushed piecemeal. Therein lies the secret of the victory of the Thermidorean bureaucracy.

    Talk about the extraordinary tactical and organizational qualities of Stalin is a myth, deliberately created by the bureaucracy of the USSR and of the Communist International and repeated by left bourgeois intellectuals who, despite their individualism, willingly bend the knee to success. These gentlemen neither understood nor recognized Lenin when, pursued by the international scum, he prepared the revolution. On the other hand, they “recognized” Stalin when this recognition brought only satisfaction and sometimes direct advantages.

    The initiative for the struggle against the Left Opposition belongs properly not to Stalin but to Zinoviev. At first Stalin hesitated and waited. It would be wrong to think that Stalin even had a strategic plan from the outset. He kept testing the ground. There is no doubt that his revolutionary Marxist tutelage weighed on him. In effect, he sought a simpler, more national, “surer” policy. The success which attended him was something unexpected, in the first place by himself. It was the success of the new leading layer, of the revolutionary aristocracy which was trying to liberate itself from the control of the masses and which needed a strong and reliable arbiter in its internal affairs. Stalin, a figure of the second rank in the proletarian revolution, appeared as the unchallenged leader of the Thermidorean bureaucracy, first in its ranks – nothing more.

Mit anderen Worten hatten die Verantwortungsträger, wie auch das Volk, die ideologischen Spinner satt und Stalin war schlicht so gar nicht wie sie, realistisch, Reste von Anstand und Moral aufweisend.

An letzterem könnte man mit Fug und Recht zweifeln, bei all dem, was Stalin so getan hat, aber Trotzki tut sein Bestes, einem diese Zweifel zu nehmen. Nein, Stalin hat das nicht aus eigener Initiative heraus getan, sondern nur, weil er, Trozki, ihn dazu getrieben hat! Wenn's nach Stalin gegangen wäre, wären die Russen erst reiche Bauern und dann wieder Kapitalisten geworden. Man höre und staune...

   Does that mean that Stalin’s victory was inevitable? Does that mean that the struggle of the Left Opposition (Bolshevik-Leninists) was hopeless? Such a way of putting the question is abstract, schematic, and fatalistic. The development of the struggle has shown, without any doubt, that the Bolshevik-Leninists would not have been able to win a complete victory in the USSR – that is to say, conquer power and cauterize the ulcer of bureaucratism – without support from the world revolution. But that in no way means that their struggle did not have results. Without the Opposition’s bold criticism and without the bureaucracy’s fear of the Opposition, the course of Stalin-Bukharin toward the kulak [wealthy peasant] would have ended up in the revival of capitalism. Under the lash of the Opposition the bureaucracy was forced to make important borrowings from our platform. The Leninists could not save the Soviet regime from the process of degeneration and the difficulties of the personal regime. But they saved it from complete dissolution by barring the road to capitalist restoration. The progressive reforms of the bureaucracy were the by-products of the Opposition’s revolutionary struggle. For us it is far too insufficient. But it is still something.

Das schrieb Trotzki 1935, nach dem Holodomor, immerhin etwas, in seinen Worten.

Dabei bin ich mir in diesem Punkt gar nicht so sicher, daß er Recht hat. Mag sein, daß er nur die Lorbeeren für die Industrialisierung der Sowjetunion einstreichen wollte, denn es paßt andererseits zu Stalins Wesen, die Zentralgewalt zu stärken, um etwas bewegen zu können. Nun ja, im Rahmen des Sozialismusses ist es auch schwer denkbar, etwas auf andere Weise zu bewegen. Immerhin, nach Trotzki spielte Stalin mit dem Gedanken einer ländlichen Idylle für Rußland. Schon seltsam, wie sehr Trotzki Stalin freispricht und sich selber anklagt. Es würde mich nach all dem auch nicht mehr wundern, wenn Trotzki die Verfolgung der Kulaken zwar große Klasse fand, aber die einzig positive Begleiterscheinung der Angelegenheit, nämlich die Erhöhung der Handlungsfähigkeit einer zentralisierten Sowjetunion, schlecht.

Barbaren aller Länder vereinigt euch gegen die Liebesbringer!