Dorothy Thompson

Buffalo News/February 29, 1928

Exiled Trotsky, a Jewish Intellectual, Opposes Stalin, a Typical Provincial Type

The vivid contrast of Trotzky and Stalin is graphically described by Dorothy Thompson, a Buffalo girl, in today’s article, the 21st^t of a series on Soviet Russia.

Two personalities stand out in Russia. One is a man from Georgia—from Turkish Russia —so silent and inconspicuous that not even the oldest established ambassador has ever seen him. Lenin called him “Steel”—a name which stuck. Steel, in Russian is Stalin. Lenin warned against him. “These Georgians over-spice their food—he will cook you peppery dishes,” he said. 

The other is one of the most romantic characters in history. 

A Jewish intellectual, he spent years in prison and exile under the czar. He worked as a journalist in New York and lived in the Bronx. He returned to Russia with Lenin on the verge of the Bolshevist revolution, and was its Danton: its fireiest speaker; its most magnetic personality. 

Comrades at Crossroads

He organized the Red army. He was, for the outside world, the revolution’s most brilliant apologist, and his comments were translated into all western languages and enjoyed the consideration of others than Communists. 

He has gone over the same hard road he traveled in 1905— beyond the vast steppes to an exile in Siberia. 

The comrade of his former exile sent him. A British newspaper dug out a picture of a group of exiles departing for Siberia after the ill-fated revolution of 1905. In the group Lenin stands in the background; Stalin and Trotsky in the foreground. 

This time Stalin sits in the Kremlin and issues the decree banning Trotsky. 

Climax of Political Crisis

This is the climax of the greater inner political crisis in Russia since the Bolshevist revolution and the establishment of the Soviet republic—just ten years ago: the greatest crisis since the dictatorship of the proletariat was declared and power was vested, nominally, in the Soviets, and actually in the Communist party—the only legal political body in Russia. 

Trotsky made another party, underground, illegal, persecuted.

It is also Communist. 

For the outsider it is harder to distinguish the difference between Stalin-Communism and Trotsky-Communism than it is for an outsider to tell the difference between our Democrats and Republicans.

Mutual Recrimination

Each talks about the other in somewhat the some terms, but with far more bitterness than our parties do on the eve of an election. 

The Stalinists say that Trotsky is a counter-revolutionary. 

Lloyd George said: “Trotsky will be Russia’s Napoleon.” 

Loose-thinking bourgeois people in Russia, hating the present regime, turn to Trotsky because they think that he, being against the regime, must have something in common with them. 

Trotsky himself says that he and his group are the true Leninists. 

Their expulsion from the Communist party he termed the Russian Thermidor—referring to that moment when the French revolution swung into reaction. 

He maintains that the present regime is itself bringing in the counter-revolution.

Stalin a Man With Grudge

“I am no Napoleon: Lloyd George is mistaken again. I shall never turn against the revolution,” he said, packing up thousands of books to help him while away the long Siberian evenings. 

This time they sent him off in a salon car. There are, after all, some advantages in being exiled by one’s former comrades. 

The clue to the difference in the Stalin and Trotsky programs lies in the personalities of the two leaders.

Stalin is a man with a long-standing grudge; a man who feels he never got his just deserts. A strong man, admittedly: a true revolutionary, who, like the others, suffered prison and exile. Yet he never got into the limelight during Lenin’s lifetime. The dramatic days of the revolution did not bring him forward.

Lenin Disliked Stalin

Lenin disliked him. Lenin was surrounded by exiles who had been his friends and confidants abroad—in Switzerland, elsewhere in Europe, men who knew the inside of every European labor movement.

Stalin has never been out of Russia in his life. He knows no European language.

He is a sound, logical speaker, rather limited; obstinate; of no intellectual brilliance; not altogether scrupulous when working for what seems a desirable end; a magnificent machine politician.

He prepared the way for his rise to power carefully. The secretaries of local party organizations became, mysteriously, Stalinist Communist party candidates, who were loyal Stalinites preferred to other applicants for membership. The clique functioned efficiently.

Trotsky Has Personal Charm

Stalin became secretary-general of the Communist party, the body in absolute control of the political machinery, of the press, theater, schools, books, radio, of the industry and trade, of the exploitation of natural resources, of the course of justice of the railroads and public utilities, of one of the largest, richest countries in the world.

Trotsky is a Jew, an intellectual and an ironist. 

His convictions are with the proletariat; his manners are those of the cultivated European.

He is frail and small, thin-skinned, with an exaggerated forehead and hands as fine as a woman’s.

He speaks English, French and German and is at home in Paris or London.

He is a brilliant causeur, a connoisseur of the arts, a man of the world. He is vain.

He has great personal charm.

Men Vastly Different

He loves a fine gesture and knows how to make it. In the end he accepted this last hard sentence with the same sangfroid and grace with which he took upon himself that czar’s decree of exile in 1905. His personal courage is impressive.

The differences in program between Stalin and Trotsky arise out of these differences in personality and experience. 

Although both men are committed to the Marxian doctrine of world revolution and to the Leninist credo that Socialism can be developed only under the dictatorship of the proletariat, although both men are anti-national in their theories, Trotsky is instinctively internationalist, accustomed to think and feel internationally, whereas Stalin is instinctively Russian. 

Theory and Reality

But the difference between Trotsky and Stalin is largely one of emphasis. Trotsky says: “Industrialization, fast, with all the outside foreign capital which you can get; concessions there, if necessary; none inside the country; rigorous suppression of profiteers; rigorous suppression of peasants who are profiteers.”

Were Trotsky in power it is a question whether he would act much different from Stalin. The industrialization of Russia is not halted by Stalin’s program, but by Russia’s world situation. It is a question whether foreign capitalists would have more confidence in Mr. Trotsky than they have in the silent, non-European overlord of Russia’s destiny.

Trotsky Strangely Docile

The probabilities are that were Trotsky’s criticisms to become incorporated into a program the result would merely be a disaffection of the peasants without the rapid industrialization. 

The discipline of the Communist party in Russia is one of the phenomena of the world. Between Stalin and Trotsky there is still some bond. With all the violence of his nature, Trotsky has opposed the Stalin program. With all the violence of the ancient czars Stalin has meted out to him his punishment.

Yet in the end Trotsky accepted his fate and the party’s will with an amazing degree of docility. In the end he went to Turkestan without resistance. And going, he reaffirmed his belief in Communism, in the world revolution and in the Soviet system. From such an opposition the bourgeois world has nothing to hope.