The Menace of Aerial Warfare - Part 3 (1936)

From the September 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2.

In 1923 the League of Nations arranged for an authoritative investigation of the possibilities of bacteriological warfare. The result of the investigation is summed up in Victor Lefebure's “Scientific Disarmament."

Open the book at page 215 and skim the pages which follow: —

. . . they referred to the use of cultures of cholera and typhus, mainly by infecting water supplies. Professor Pfeiffer, although pointing out the obstacles in the way of successful use by infecting the supplies of larger towns, stated, “There are, no doubt, other possibilities. Infectious germs might, for instance, be thrown from aircraft direct into pure water reservoirs. In such a case filtration would be ineffectual.” He refers to the possibility of inoculation, but goes on, “An epidemic whose very name recalls the horrors and devastations which it caused in former centuries, and which is, therefore, particularly likely to spread terror and dismay, is the human plague. The most likely way of spreading an epidemic of plague would, no doubt, be the scattering of plague-infected rats, which might very easily be achieved with the help of aircraft. In this way an epidemic of bubonic plague might almost certainly be brought about in the trenches, which in any case are alive with rats; in the interior of the enemy country, also, the dissemination of plague germs on a large scale would be possible, resulting undoubtedly in the formation of centres of infection. . . Professor Pfeiffer also deals with artificial infection of projectiles with . . . anthrax, glanders and perhaps rabies. . . . Professor Cannon comments on crop attack. . . . Professor Madsden gives a balanced view of the possibilities as to the present and the future. . . . The means which bacteriology possesses in its present state of development would certainly suffice to give rise to epidemics of greater or lesser extent; airmen or persons with a knowledge of the topography of localities might infect the central sources of the water or milk supply of a big city, and thereby propagate epidemics of typhoid fever, cholera or other intestinal diseases. Epidemics of this nature might even be fairly serious.

Major Lefebure continues to point out that, although Professor Madsden and some others believe that epidemics could be got under control without much damage being done, they obviously are not taking into full account the special circumstances of war and the fact that diseases would be propagated on a far larger scale than is usual under peace conditions.

He says, quite rightly: —

Now if an attack of this nature were to be made producing hundreds of thousands of casualties requiring (special) treatment quickly, it would take us far and away outside our normal medical facilities both as to appliances and personnel. (The word (special) here replaces a phrase of the same meaning to reduce the necessary quotation to a minimum. L.G.S.).

In addition, resistance to a particular disease is not nearly so high if the population is not exposed to the bacteria of the disease in normal life. It would, therefore, be very unsafe to prophesy the possible rate at which an epidemic of (say) Bubonic plague would spread, since Europeans have not been exposed to this bacteria for several hundred years.

The position at the present time cannot be calculated, but I think it cannot be denied that bacteriological warfare is an additional menace to the security of civilian populations as well as to combatants. Its possibilities we shall learn if we experiment, although the value of such an experiment is yet to be established, but it is certain that expert opinion is firmly convinced that, be the damage great or small, bacteria are definitely an addition to the armoury of destructive weapons.

The quotations I have used were taken from a report made in 1923—it is now 1936.

Protection

There is, and can be, no possible protection whatever for civilian populations against chemical warfare from the air—(Major-Gen. Jackson, ex- Assistant Director, War Office).

There is no protection for the civilian against aerial attack.

Nowhere must this be better realised than in Government circles which have access to knowledge denied to the general public, and the services of experts in all departments of warfare and technology.

They suggest, as a precaution, that the people be instructed in methods of protection, when they know quite well that there are none.

The very best that can be done is to arrange and organise essential services, such as power-stations, fire brigades and doctors, so that they can function and perhaps relieve some part of the suffering with a minimum of interference. That this much is possible, if only gas be considered, is admitted, but high-explosive, thermit and the inevitable stampede of the people, we have not even begun to take into account.

The Government plans decontaminating centres, i.e., receiving stations where the injured can be medically treated and have their dangerous clothing destroyed or made safe for use. It plans to make respirators available for the essential services, and, possibly, a modified form of mask for the civilian population which would afford partial or temporary protection for the lungs, the assumption being, presumably, that this latter type would be used as a subsidiary protection.

The cost of an efficient respirator at the moment is about £4, but mass production would probably result in a considerable drop in price—to (say) 30s. if the manufacture was unsubsidised. Taking war-time production as a basis for calculation, about six months would be required to manufacture 10,000,000 masks. This does not take into account the special needs of young children or aged persons, for whom respiratory protection is a very difficult matter. It has been suggested that very small children might be placed in a sack of some gas-proof material, the air to be supplied by a pump through a filter, but the efficacy of the idea is doubtful, and no useful suggestions have yet been made to overcome the fact that a gassed or injured parent would be unable to continue pumping. Presumably, too, it would be necessary to anaesthetise the child before inserting it into the sack. Otherwise it would probably act in the same way as a cat in a bag—struggle furiously to get out.

To the suggestion of gas-shelters I oppose the following facts and figures. If bomb- and gas-proof shelters could be constructed to house (say) 500 people, and such large shelters present a considerable engineering problem, about 10,000 would be required as a minimum to house the population of London in immediate danger.

These shelters, which at present exist on paper and in the minds of optimistic speculators, would take months, if not years, to build. They would need a reinforced concrete roof 13 feet thick, or to be sunk to a depth of 80 feet underground to provide reasonable safety from high-explosive. The walls, if the shelter was built above ground, would need to be strong enough to carry the roof and to withstand the shock of high-explosive on the roof or the side-thrust on the walls if it dropped in the immediate vicinity. Such shelters would have to be constructed to admit no air whatsoever except through special filters. Apart from the fact that no device is known that will go on filtering indefinitely, and, therefore, if intensive attacks were carried out over a period of several days the filters would probably release the gas in ever-growing quantities into the chamber, the smallest crack in the structure would admit air directly from outside and make the filters useless.

Chimneys could be used to draw pure air from above the gas-cloud, but to be reasonably safe they would have to be constructed to a height of at least 150 feet—an excellent target for high-explosive. The following facts should demolish any arguments in favour of chimneys: —

A 500/1,000 kg. explosive bomb can demolish a whole block of houses, even if it only explodes in the vicinity.

A 100/200 kg. explosive bomb can destroy a house of several stories.

A 50 kg. explosive bomb can cause serious damage.

(General Von Haeften.)

The chimney that could withstand the explosive force of a 100-200 kg. bomb planted reasonably near the base cannot be built.

Water would be a serious problem since mustard gas, in particular, sinks to the bottom of reservoirs and renders water drawn from such a source undrinkable.

Food supplies would have to be rigorously protected from mustard and lewisite, and as attacks on docks and wharves with high-explosive, thermit and mustard gas would be an enemy's certain course of action, it is difficult to see how it could be done.

If an air-raid on London was signalled, the city would be plunged into total darkness. At the same time the public would be told of the impending raid in some way or another, and, human nature being what it is, would attempt to evacuate the city. Almost the whole of London’s private car traffic would be thrown, in pitch darkness, on to roads already incapable of providing for normal traffic. Buses would leave their routes and head for open country. People would make for the country on foot, by cycle, lorry or any kind of transport they could commandeer. The rate of evacuation would not, perhaps, be very great until the raid commenced, but when the dead and wounded and fires springing up in every direction became an actuality, then it cannot be doubted that something {in the nature of a stampede would commence. Necessarily, thousands would be killed in the raid, but the problem would take on its most serious aspects when the question of food, shelter and sanitary arrangements for several million panic-stricken people became of urgent importance. It is more than possible that famine and epidemic diseases would have to be dealt with.

If it is thought that I exaggerate possibilities, here are the words of the military correspondent of the Daily Telegraph: —

It has been suggested that in the event of severe air attacks, 40 per cent. of London's population would leave the city within the first 48 hours, and 80 per cent. within the week. Such an estimate may be exaggerated, but it is, nevertheless, essential to consider ways of controlling any such mass evacuation and of feeding and housing refugees. 

Gerald Heard has expressed much the same opinion recently, and from occasional items of news it is permissible to assume that the Government are awake to this probability.

Even if efficient gas-shelters were in existence, it is mere likely than not that their protective capacity would be doubted and an evacuation take place on nearly as large a scale.

The imagination refuses to function except in vague generalisation. To fill in details would be beyond its scope.

For man, woman or child there is no sure protection.

Summary

War would inevitably lead to destructive air attacks on the cities, not only of England, but of all belligerent countries, with effects very much as I have described.

Modern warfare is, above all, a battle of productive capacity, and a necessary condition of the factory operative being able to function is that he shall be reasonably free from attack. It is therefore very much to a country’s advantage to harry its enemy’s centres of production and distribution.

It is more than possible that, after simultaneous raids on the capital cities of all the belligerents, the effects would be so grave that an immediate armistice would be sought by ail parties. The vulnerable spots in any country are its great centres of population and production, but without such centres it is impossible to wage war on a modem scale with modern weapons, and, in spite of opinions to the contrary, there can be little doubt that the full possibilities of unrestricted warfare in Europe are well-known to all European Governments and military experts. The present spectacle qf elderly statesmen trying to adapt the diplomacy of Metternich, the Napoleonic wars and the fin-de-siecle to modern conditions, would be amusing if it did not carry within itself the germs of gigantic tragedy.

We may observe the fear in action in the bluff and counter-bluff that has characterised the dispute between Italy and England. There is no doubt that Italy's action threatened British capitalists' African and Imperial interests, and, in pre-war days, strong military action would have been taken at the commencement of the dispute. Now the case is altered. By using the League of Nations to declare an economic siege against Italy, Britain hoped to protect its interests without resorting to that unknown quantity—war. Mussolini had already made tentative arrangements to evacuate Naples, but it is doubtful if his advisers would have allowed him to declare war.

It would be a very bold speculator indeed who would dare to predict the future, but the possibility of war will be more remote when its dangers are more widely realised.

L. G. Savage

[Concluded.]

The Mining Disaster (1936)

From the September 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again an English mining town has been stricken by a tragic disaster, this time Barnsley. In the early hours of Friday, August 7th, at the Wharncliffe, Woodmoor Colliery, occurred one of the worst explosions this country has known.

Fifty-eight men who had gone down the mine to work returned—but to the mortuary: their bodies twisted and battered beyond recognition. The wives, children and dependants who gathered at the pithead had one—though pitiful —consolation: death was swift. Unlike many previous disasters, the victims were not buried alive for days to suffer the tortures of lingering deaths.

There is hardly a year in which there is not a big disaster or series of accidents in the mines. They have come to be taken for granted. The miners accept the risk they run, inevitably, as men who have to earn their daily bread. They receive neither medals nor decorations, which such risks would bring in other spheres. Rather, their earnings are almost the lowest among organised workers.

Can mining be made safe, or safer, so that the risk of the loss of life through accidents may become non-existent or at least very much reduced? Responsible and professional opinion says that it can, as the following from the Daily Telegraph (July 29th) shows. Reporting the proceedings of the Royal Commission on Safety in Coal Mines, sitting at Caxton Hall, Westminster, the evidence of Mr. Arthur Roberts, President of the Colliery Under-Managers of Great Britain, is given as follows: —

 If the provisions of the Coal Mines Act, with the accompanying regulations and orders, were consistently carried out by all the parties concerned, he said, there would be a big drop in the accident rate. This particularly applied to accidents caused by falls of roof and sides, haulage and machinery.

And again, the evidence of a Government inspector in the same newspaper on the same day:—

  Nearly half the colliery accidents in the North-Western Division last year could have been avoided, states the Divisional Inspector of Mines, Mr. W. J. Charlton, in his report issued yesterday.
 He reports that 99 persons were killed and 322 injured during the year in the division, which contains the coalfields of Lancashire and Cheshire, North Staffs and North Wales.
  Falls of ground accounted for 54 of the deaths, and Mr. Charlton calls attention to the “disturbing increase” in the number of accidents from falls of side at the working face.

Here is opinion from two independent and opposing sources that mining could at least have been made safer to the extent that nearly fifty per cent. of the accidents in a certain period could have been avoided if “the provisions of the Coal Mines Act” had been “carried out.” Why were they not carried out? It is doubtful whether that question will be heard outside a Royal Commission of Inquiry. It is a measure of the ethical standards of capitalism that the complete resources of its scientifically equipped police force, supported by immense funds, would be set in motion to track down an homicidal maniac, yet expert opinion, which says that negligence has caused workers' deaths, is just quietly reported. There are no screaming headlines; no Scotland Yard sleuths to fix culpability for the slaughter.

It has often been argued that the cost of making some mines safe is prohibitive; that the result would be less profits and the inability to compete with fellow-capitalists in the markets, or no profits. Mark this, fellow-workers in the mines: Profits—but twisted and battered bodies and widows and fatherless children. No profits or less profits and less of these appalling and tragic "visitations from God”—which? If the choice were between these two simple alternatives then capitalism would choose—the first.

That is the tragedy.

When society is organised to produce things for use only, instead of for profit, then will risk to life in daily work be reduced to its minimum, and human life, health and well-being, be looked upon as society's first duty.

Harry Waite

Editorial: The Truth About the Popular Front (1936)

Editorial from the September 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Amidst the heated argument for and against the formation of a "Popular Front" of Liberals, Labour Party and Communists in Great Britain, one very significant aspect has been entirely overlooked. Having their eyes fixed on the question which appears to them to be so important at the moment, the advocates of uniting the parties on a strictly limited programme of popular demands have not noticed that their action is a tardy admission of a fundamental mistake made by the British and Continental workers 30 or 40 years ago. At that date, more especially in Great Britain, the workers were faced with two great capitalist parties, the Tories and the Liberals. Because the latter represented very largely the interests of industrial capitalists, they had stood traditionally for democratic government against the earlier undemocratic rule of landed property and the small number of ruling class families. With the extension of the franchise to the workers, both Liberals and Tories had to busy themselves with questions of social reform. Nevertheless it was the Liberals who were associated, more or less justifiably, with the two ideas of democracy and social reform, and for many years before (and even after) the formation of the I.L.P. and Labour Party the notion persisted that the workers must look to Liberal governments for the defence of democracy and the extension of reform legislation. Mr. Lloyd George’s campaigns for political and social reforms in the years before the War were a case in point.

Needless to say, the results were disappointing for the workers. Capitalism cannot be made to work satisfactorily from the point of view of the exploited class. It was therefore inevitable that more and more workers should turn their attention to other methods of securing working class emancipation or at least relief from the worst evils of capitalism. It was here that a disastrous mistake was made. What was the need of the times? Two answers were given to that question. The Labour leaders said, “ Form a new party of democracy and social reform," which meant in effect forming a new Liberal Party. The S.P.G.B. pointed this out and warned against it. We said—and who will dispute it now?—that unless the new party was to be a Socialist party, composed of Socialists and fighting for Socialism, the workers might just as well go on as they were. Why spend a lifetime breaking up one Liberal Party only to form another ?

Events have proved us right, but they have done something more. Without realising it, the advocates of the Popular Front are trying to undo their own handiwork. They are trying to reconstitute a great mass party, able to win a majority at an election, and based on the two pillars of democracy and social reform! They are trying to reconstitute the great Liberal Party which they smashed to form the Labour Party.

Their argument is a plausible one. “Things are bad for the workers economically," they say, “and democracy is in great peril. Let us then unite to save the latter and introduce social reforms to relieve the former." But who put democracy in danger? In recent years it has been the Communists above all others, yet they are now most vociferous in demanding a United Front to save it. It was the Russian Communists who set the modern fashion of seizing power and installing a dictatorship. It is undisputed that Mussolini, and after him Hitler, learned much from Lenin in the technique of seizing power and holding it by force, supported by mass propaganda and political suppression.

It was the Communists who, year in and year out, derided democratic Government, poured scorn on Parliament and the whole parliamentary system, preached Minority revolt and civil war, and in every way idealised the method of violence. Everywhere that their propaganda penetrated they left a trail of hostility to parliamentary methods and a liking for the pseudo-progressive system of armed force and dictatorship.

Let there be no mistake about this. When Mr. Gallacher, for the Communist Party, writes, as he did in Forward (25th July, 1936), that the Communists did not mean “military violence or military revolutionary action," Mr. Gallacher is a liar. The original basis of the Communist International (the “Twenty-one Points") prescribed an “armed struggle," and “heavy civil war" was the favourite catchword. But we have more recent evidence from Communists, indeed from Mr. Gallacher himself. At the 1929 Conference of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Mr. Harry Pollitt made a speech in which he explained to his fellow Communists that “only through armed insurrection can the workers gain power” (see report in Manchester Guardian, December 2nd, 1929). At the same conference, Mr. Gallacher, who now pretends that armed revolt was not intended, said this: —

   They had talked of a Revolutionary Workers’ Government, but did they realise what was implied? Would the organisation of the workers for the revolutionary Government be a legal one? The task of fighting for a revolutionary Government would be a task of bringing the workers out on to the streets against the armed forces of capitalism.”—(Worker's Life, December 6th, 1929.)

While the Communists are explaining away the above proclamations of their intention to stage armed revolt, let them also try to justify, if they can, their complete somersault with regard to association with the Liberal and Labour parties. Mr. Gallacher now declares his willingness to work with the Liberals. Only a year ago, at the 7th World Congress of the Communist International, when G. Dimitrov presented a report on “The Working Class against Fascism,” that report specifically mentions the need, while supporting the Labour Party, to oppose Lloyd George, the Liberal leader. (Report published by Communist Party of Great Britain, p. 36.) Even more amazing, however, is the change of front towards the Labour Party and Labour Government. At the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain, held in November, 1932, a report was considered called “The Crisis Policy of the Labour Party, the T.U.C., etc.” In this interesting declaration of Communist policy we read that the policy of the Labour Government in 1929-1931 was not only “capitalist” but also “Fascist,” and that “the Labour Party took decisive steps towards strengthening the dictatorship of the capitalists during the Labour Government.” Also that, while opposing the means test in words, the Labour Party “supported the attacks of the National Government upon the unemployed.”

Then we are told that “parliamentary democracy” is a “sham” which the Communists must expose, and that: —

   Any party which accepts parliamentary democracy, however revolutionary its phrases, is an instrument of the capitalists.

Lastly, the Report tells us: —

   It is unmistakably clear that a third Labour Government is not a “Lesser Evil” than a National Government, or a Tory Government, or a coalition between Labour and capitalist parties.

We are not here concerned with the accuracy of the statements then made by the Communist Party—many of them are absurdly inaccurate—but only with the fact that the Party which held these views now pretends to be enthusiastic for Labour Government, democracy, parliamentary methods, etc. They want now to save us from Fascism, and tell us to do it by supporting the Party whose policy when in office was a “Fascist policy.” They want to save democracy and fight dictatorship (yet their masters created and glorified dictatorship in Russia), and their method is to have another Labour Government, although they say that the last Labour Government helped to strengthen “the dictatorship of the capitalists.” They want to save democracy, although as recently as 1932 they declared it to be a sham.

In short, the Communists are what they have always been, fickle, unscrupulous, superficial in their judgment of working class questions and an unmixed danger to the interests of the working class and the Socialist movement. True they do not belong to the conception of a reconstituted Liberal Party (whether called Liberal, Labour or Popular Front) which could gain a majority on a programme of democracy and social reform. But neither do they belong to the conception of a Socialist Party, for democracy is essential to the progress of the Socialist movement. They are unwittingly an instrument of reaction, unable to assist in saving democracy in the present, and equally unable to use democracy for the promotion of the Socialist movement.

The Lesson of the Russian Trial (1936)

From the September 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russia is in the news again with another spectacular trial, and one that has a particular meaning for those who are not blind to the nature of the development of Russia under Stalin’s leadership.

The victims of the present trial must be nearly the last of the “old guard” of the Bolshevik movement that engineered the uprising of 1917 which, under Lenin and Trotsky, was heralded as the beginning of a world revolution to inaugurate Socialism by means of dictatorships.

Nearly twenty years have passed since then, and these years have made it quite clear that Lenin and his associates were pursuing a chimera that has had a disheartening influence upon the working-class movement everywhere.

At the moment of writing, the main trial is over, the prisoners having been executed. The published reports contain certain important points that merit notice.

The first staggering thing that strikes one after reading the reports, is the way the defendants admit their guilt and go out of their way to paint themselves as black as possible—this appears to be no curiosity in Russia when the ruling clique proceeds against opponents. The nature and wording of the admissions are so utterly ridiculous that none but the interested or the dream-sodden can take them seriously—yet they have been treated seriously by newspapers that must know better. The Sunday Observer, for August 23rd, ends its report with the remark:

  “It is futile to think that the trial was staged and the charges trumped up. The Government’s case against the defendants is genuine.”

Yet immediately under this is the following paragraph, which gives a key to the whole business:

MOSCOW, Saturday. 

  The extraordinary Congress of Soviets, which is to adopt the draft of the new Constitution for Russia, prepared by the Stalin Committee set up for the purpose, will meet in Moscow at the end of November.

  The forthcoming three months’ purge of oppositionists, which is already in full swing, will probably be the most thorough of all the Soviet purges, so that at the Congress it can be announced that the internal enemy has been exterminated.—Exchange.

Before commenting on the above we would point to the strange fact that even the Daily Herald, which was sceptical in the case of the British-Vicker’s Engineers in 1933, raised no doubt about the genuineness of the charges during the early part of the present case.

The trial is quite evidently a fake and designed to get out of the way all who might use the new Russian Constitution to put forward policies at variance with those of the clique at the head of affairs. The new constitution that was given to the world as an example of the stability of the Bolshevik regime is more likely an instance of the growing weakness of Stalin’s position. In spite of the safeguards put into it, Stalin is taking precautions that dissatisfied elements shall not be able to make use of it against him—he is trying to put them out of temptation altogether! Whatever freedom of voice or vote the new constitution may allow, it must only be a freedom to support Stalin and his henchmen.

Now let us glance at some of the statements made by Kamenev, one of the principal of the accused, as reported in the News Chronicle for August 21st—all the papers give similar reports: The defendants are accused of a terrorist conspiracy aimed at assassinating Stalin and other Soviet leaders and overturning the present Soviet regime.

In answers to questions, Kamenev told the court that he was organising the conspiracy and that articles he had written in 1932 professing loyalty to the Communist Party were ”frauds.”

He was asked by Vishinsky, the prosecutor:

   “Were you a bloodthirsty enemy of the Soviet Union?”

The News Chronicle gives his reply in the following words:

“ 'I was a bloodthirsty enemy,' replied Kamenev. (Laughter).”

That parenthesis is suggestive. Either Kamenev is treating the matter sarcastically or he has been cowed. It is a tragic-comedy and the court knows it.

He is also reported to have made the following remarks in the course of a long statement:

“Yes, I lied often since I started the struggle with the Bolshevist Party. I went all the way from opposition, through counter-revolution, to terrorism—actually to Fascism, because Trotskyism plus terrorism is Fascism.”

The above, from a man of undoubted intelligence, supposed to be on trial for his life is too patently absurd to impose upon any but the most gullible adherents of Bolshevism. All the statements at the trial bear upon them the marks of Government inspiration. The plot is even alleged to have originated in Berlin. No wonder Trotsky said, “Moscow must believe the world is full of idiots," when interviewed on the matter.

The list of accused shows how ruthless Stalin is in his intention to rout out all likely rivals. Among those concerned are men who held or have held controlling positions in the Soviet Union, such as Zinoviev (reported to be dying of consumption), Bukharin, Tomsky (reported by the Communist Party to have committed suicide), Rykov, Pyntakov, Sokolnikov, Serebryakov and Uglanov. If it is true, as the Stalin group contend, that these first-class Soviet leaders have betrayed the Soviet movement, and are even the inspired agents of Germany, then Russia is evidently a breeding ground for people who throw overboard their opposition to capitalism. That being so, the question may well be asked what essential difference is there between Russia and ordinary capitalist states that throw up similar types?

A point worth noting in passing is that while the trial was taking place and these erstwhile Bolshevik stalwarts were the subject of virulent attacks, Mr. Attlee, the leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party here, was on a visit to Russia and was being pleasantly entertained by one of Stalin’s subordinates. Not long ago, the Conservative Minister, Mr. Eden, was given an enthusiastic reception. The accused are representatives of a band which, however, mistaking their tactics, stood for opposition to world capitalism—but that was a long time ago!

One allegation is that one of the accused prepared a bomb and arranged with student supporters of Trotsky that they were to throw the bomb while marching past Stalin in the Red Square. This is a very significant statement and corroborates previous evidence that bitter dissatisfaction with the Soviet regime exists amongst the youth of Russia. When one takes into account the complete control of youthful education by the Russian Government, one is forced to the conclusion that there must be something radically wrong with affairs there when its youthful products are prepared to risk liberty and life by engaging in assassination projects.

Perhaps the crowning piece of humour that gave the keynote to the comedy was the statement by one of the accused, Holzman, made diffidently, that the secret code was contained in the book the “Arabian Nights.” The whole business suggests a piece out of the ”Arabian Nights Entertainment ”! Trotsky declares it to be the biggest frame-up since the Nazi Reichstag fire trial.

Another curiosity worth remarking is that ten of the sixteen accused are Jews. Is this an accident or is Russia going in for the other purging fashion? This should give Jewish Communists abroad something to think over!

Trotsky is alleged to be the fountain head of the conspiracy and the prosecution is aimed at him and those that are alleged to side with him. It is reputed to be a final attempt to destroy what is called the Trotsky opposition movement. .

To those who are prepared to examine the matter dispassionately it is quite obvious that a conspiracy such as described by the prosecution is quite out of line with Trotsky’s record. It is too foolish and out of touch with the ideas for which he has always fought. Trotsky and Stalin are quite different types (one has knowledge and the other ruthless cunning) and stand for entirely different programmes.

Before the Bolshevik uprising Trofsky was opposed to the view that Russia could jump from semi-feudalism into Socialism, but Lenin persuaded him against his judgment. The line taken in 1917 by the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky led where it was bound to lead—to an abortion. When the retreat from the original aim of the movement was gaining momentum (after Lenin died) Trotsky wished to stop the drift but here he came up against Stalin, who was prepared to hang on to power at any cost and had little interest in theoretical questions. Stalin had already dug himself into the bureaucratic side of the Russian movement and he was able to push Trotsky out of all positions that gave him any power—and finally to push him out of Russia altogether.

The Trotsky movement has been an attempt to bring Russian policy back to its starting point. Stalin has resisted this and has been cunning enough to set his rivals against each other and then lop them off one by one. Permanent compromise with world capitalism is the summit of Stalin’s achievement.

Russia offers a valuable object lesson to those interested in Popular Fronts. A good deal of its history since 1917 has been taken up with the internal struggles of different groups, in which contest the more ruthless groups have been successful. The “Old Guard” have now nearly completed the eating of each other. If in Spain and other countries the Communists are successful then, as the Communists have indicated in their propaganda, the eating process will begin, for the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat," according to the Communist idea, is but the struggle of cliques for power to suppress rival cliques.

Gilmac.

Blogger's Note:

See also the article, 'The Russian "Terrorist" Trial', (October 1936).