"Stalinist" Reacts to Trotsky Documentary (pt.2) 

He holds the Palpatine chair of Economics at Adolf Hitler University in...oh, Kiev!

Or almost every work and publication by Trotsky before Lenin's death, where he trashed Lenin, calling him dictator, autocrat, bonapart etc. Basically everything he called Stalin later.

​@@nonono4160True. I just find Trotskyists as clowns, and they got no clue on what they're talking about, including spreading Anti-Communist propaganda.

What a meaningless point You probably haven’t read Lenin’s testament. And before you say the testament was some kind of magic forgery let me point out that this was not a point that was made by anyone at the time in the 1920s or anywhere nearly after that. In 1927 Stalin says it’s authentic and he’s always right, right?

​@@substance-m7u-boredigger what a load of bull. First of all, there is so called "testament" and there are "letters to congress". The later is legit, the former is bollocks. Don't mix those two up. Second, if you have some link about Stalin repeatinjg drivel about Lenin's testament, put it here, don't be shy. Third, Trotsky wrote about it in newspaper that is was bull (before being exiled and doing 180 on it). Fourth, even if it was true, who cares? USSR wasn't a frigging empire or kingdom where the absolute power is passed down to a chosed by previous leader successor, it was a proletarian democracy and Stalin was chosen for his position according to this democracy. Anyone who seriously tries to present an argument about Lenin's testament can't be called a communist for the last reason alone.

@@substance-m7u-boredigger Cult victim.

Stalin was a good leader. He was not a coward. The circumstances of the USSR required tremendous courage in everyone involved. Trostky clearly didn't like Stalin's courage. Perhaps, Trotsky was jealous.... he wasn't pessimistic enough to accept the fact that Stalin was a great leader. There is clearly no discernable alternative.

@@jmgresham93 Don't see what was wrong with Trotsky. Dude led the Red Army to victory and successfully defended Soviet Russia in its infancy from White counter-revolution. I think it's safe to say he contributed more to revolutionary struggle than either of us!

@geekyradical4985 He appears to have betrayed his comrades, but I really only am focused right now on the lack of Bekhterevian science used there. Instead, Lynsenkoism was employed and led to the failure of Soviet communities to adapt to changes in opportunities and resources. The Bolsheviks did use some of Bekhterev's work until Stalin ideologically had his work removed from Soviet textbooks. I reject the analysis that Bekhterev necessarily had the same intentions as Bukharin because Bekhterev actually synthesized multiple fields of science and was creative in that respect. However, Bukharin may have had a different objective mood and, therefore, associated with different responses for different reasons.

This video is slander against Trotsky

@@TurtleChad1 yeah that’s the fckin point…

You should look into the American council of Bolsheviks americancouncilofbolsheviks.org/

If i was professional assassin, then i would just shoot him through the windows or something. Anything better than going in unarmed and hope to find some improvised weapon. And i don't think Trotsky had some serious security detail, if he had, why weren't they with him personally when he was killed? Just doesn't make sense.

Its possible, although it seems a bit weird they'd let him into Trotsky's room alone with a pickaxe too

@@thefinnishbolshevik2404 What you don't have an emotional support pickaxe you carry at all times?

What if it never happened? False flag?

@@redleaderantilles1263 Now I'm picturing a Monty Python type skit in which Mercader talks his way into Trotsky's house with an ice axe that he insists is his emotional support axe to Trotsky's skeptical bodyguard.

Good comment, compañero. ✊

Say what you will about Trotsky, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, but at least they actually achieved a revolution! We can criticise revolutionary leaders as much as we like but I think I can confidently say that Trotsky and co accomplished more for the proletariat than either of us! I mean, we talk theory all the time but they actually put theory into practice!

@@CulturalMarxist4985 What are you even talking about? First of all don't conflate Trotsky with Lenin and the Bolsheviks, or imply that criticizing Trotsky means criticizing Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Secondly, anyone is allowed to criticize someone who does wrong. And thirdly, Trotsky was rejected and expelled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for his counterrevolutionary behavior. The world communist movement rejected him. He's only still worshiped mainly in Western countries where the left is overwhelmingly petit bourgeois and contains strong liberal tendencies. And fourthly, David Alfaro Siqueiros was also a revolutionary, a communist who participated in the Spanish Civil War fighting against Franco's fascist legions under the banner of the International Brigades organized by the Comintern. So don't imply that Siqueiros was less of a revolutionary than Trotsky. Siqueiros was a revolutionary, and a better one than Trotsky because, unlike Trotsky, Siqueiros didn't betray the Soviet Union and collaborate with enemies of communism.

@@kawadashogo8258 Dude led the Red Army to victory in the civil war and hammered the counter-revolutionary Whites! Like Lenin, Trotsky was a true comrade if there ever was one. It's one thing for us to criticise socialist revolutions and their leaders, but it's another thing altogether to just dismiss their vast accomplishments and contributions to revolutionary struggle. If we have any hope of getting rid of capitalism, it would be kind of foolish to just ignore their revolutionary legacy. But hey! That's just me!

@@kawadashogo8258 In addition, that guy Siqueiros no doubt called himself a communist, but I think it's safe to say he invalidated his supposed communist beliefs by literally attacking the home of an actually successful communist revolutionary and actually trying to murder him! Siqueiros tried to beat Franco and failed miserably. And then actively tried to assassinate Leon Trotsky, the guy who crushed the White Army! Perhaps the dude was just sour after his failure to successfully fight fascism, and jealous that Trotsky had actually managed to successfully defeat a counter-revolutionary army. Regardless, I think we can say with certainty that his attempt to murder a revolutionary leader outweighs his failed resistance to fascism.

I don't get it? Cause he was more brutal?

@@nicholascharles9625Because he was actually guilty of a lot of the stuff Stalin was accused of.

Trotskyists are communism's true believers. Fact

@@TurtleChad1 Yes, and Evangelical Christians are the true believers in Magic Sky Dude™️. Try science, homes.

thefinnishbolshevik@gmail.com

Thanks comrade. I'll try to reply to your points. 1) Yezhov himself was accused of deliberately killing innocent people as a form of rightist sabotage masked as ultra-leftism. There is evidence to support this claim, and after studying the Chinese revolution (see for example my video on William Hinton) I noticed that the Liu-Deng clique acted in a very similar way on a number of occasions, which makes me think the accusation against Yezhov has credibility. There were also many other people who did similar things in the USSR. So I do not consider Yezhov's actions to be a criticism of Stalin. 2) Regarding the population transfers. Some of them seemed to have reasonable grounds. I can give you the information I have if you want, but I don't have any information regarding the Koreans. 3) I don't agree at all that the Baltic revolution was somehow artificially exported. The presence of the Soviet forces allowed the revolution to take place peacefully, which is ordinarily almost impossible, but the Baltic states certainly carried out the revolutions themselves. They had all participated in the October Revolution and built Soviet power later, which was only crushed due to German invasion. 4) Did the Soviet investment in SovRoms not consist of confiscated fascist property? I'm pretty sure it did. In any case, I don't see what's wrong with such joint companies. They were mutually beneficial, or even more beneficial to Romania, which required Soviet aid. The USSR returned some previously held concessions in China such as Port Arthur. They also returned the Chinese Eastern Railway in 1952 but had some other special agreements. In any case, I don't see these concessions as particularly important for either country. 5) You claim there was violation of democracy etc. in the Stalin era but you don't substantiate this in any way. There was press debate which didn't align with the party line, and internal discussion which could diverge from the party line before it had been finally settled, but in a democratic centralist party statements which go against the party line are not supposed to be accepted. You also claim there was election fraud but I've never seen evidence of it. 6) Khrushchev purposefully allowed reactionary opinions to spread, while also allowing the views of certain "stalinists" because he needed their support against other critics. This is not a democratic upsurge. Khrushchev changed his policy all the time, which is why he had to do this. He rehabilitated Tito, but once he fell out with Tito in 1956-57, he again needed to allow Hoxha to criticize Tito, despite Hoxha's speech "going against the 20th congress of the CPSU". Khrushchev was constantly playing such a game. He allowed anti-stalinists like Solzhenitsyn to publish their works, because it served his agenda, but soon he ran into problems with such blatant reactionaries and needed to rely on "stalinist die-hards" to suppress them. 7) There is absolutely no reason to think that everyone who was critical received prison sentences. There is also absolutely no reason to think most reactionaries convicted of anti-soviet agitation were socialists. Of course that depends on what you consider socialism to be. Even Solzhenitsyn, a supporter of Vlasov, pretended to be a "democratic socialist" and all his friends were Trotskyists. Its actually possible Solzhenitsyn himself was or claimed to be a Trotskyist initially, because he used Trotskyist talking points about "restoring Leninism from Stalin's tyranny" etc., while simultaneously writing anti-Soviet pro-fascist poems and writings. He denied his support of Vlasov throughout the 50s and 60s, but admits it openly in The Gulag Archipelago. He received only 5-7 years in prison for anti-Soviet defeatist agitation in the military during war time, despite the police finding his fascist texts and despite his friend turning out to be a Trotskyist. His friend received a lesser sentence.

​​​​​​​​​​@@thefinnishbolshevik2404 Thanks for the quick answer. 1.) It's true that Yezhov acted behind Stalin's back. But my comment concerned not so much the person Stalin, rather than the USSR during the Stalin era, since leaders don't make history. That said, it was the CC that initiated the Troikas, not Yezhov alone. 2.)en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Koreans_in_the_Soviet_Union 3.) Do you really believe that, after 20 years of bourgeois governance, 99.2% of the voters would vote communist, with a turnout of 95.1%? Why were so many people deported in the aftermath of Lithuanias integration into the USSR? The numbers provided by bourgeois scolars is probably too high. But let it be 1/10th of that, and the point still stands. How were the Germans able to find so many collaborators? How did Anti-Soviet guerilla movements cause so much trouble way into the '50s, killing thousands of people? 4.) I'd have to search for my sources regarding the SovRoms again (sorry, this is rather embarrasing in a debate like this). But regarding China, why would the Soviets take control of the Changchun Railway and Port Arthur at all? 5.) "Workers in the city which had supposedly suffered at least as much as any other in the Great Terror were still able to criticize a director to his face and apparently to get a job back after cursing at a supervisor. While sane, calm, and sober, no worker would have dared to say that socialism was a poor system and that Stalin was an idiot. But such bounds allowed a great deal that was deeply significant to the workers, including some aspects of production norms, pay rates and classifications, safety on the job, housing, and treatment by managers." - Robert Thurston, "Reassesing the History of the Soviet Workers - Opportunities to Criticize and Participate in Decision Making". This notion of far-reaching possibilities to criticize regarding local issues and very restricted possibilities to criticize regarding major political issues is supported by many other serious (i.e., not fanatically anti-communist and well sourced) works on the topic of Samokritika and participation ("Public Spheres in Soviet-Type Societies", "Public Opinion in Soviet Russia", Wendy Goldman's works and the works of Rigby). Thurston is quite pro-Soviet, that's why I decided to quote him here. Regarding the question of censorship and the press, my arguments are based on the aforementioned "Public Opinion in Soviet Russia" (for free on Lib Gen) aswell as "Gralshüter eines untergehenden Systems Zensur der Massenmedien in der UdSSR 1981-1991" (not that anti-Soviet and well sourced). But if you can prove me wrong, I'll change my position. Do you have a source om controversial debates in the Soviet press regarding major issues? 6.) Again, reffering to Rigby's article (for free on Sci Hub). 7.) No no, don't get me wrong. Of course one could criticize, and the party actively encouraged it. People were in all likelyhood way more political and critical than they are today in the western bourgeois democracies. But, as mentioned in "5.)", this criticism had very strict limits. "58-1. “Counterrevolutionary” is understood as any action directed toward the overthrow, subversion, or weakening of the authority of the soviets of workers and peasants or of their chosen (according to the Constitution of the USSR and constitutions of union republics) workers’ and peasants’ governments of the USSR, union and autonomous republics, or toward the subversion or weakening of the external security of the USSR and the fundamental economic, political, and national gains of the proletarian revolution." - 1. Counterrevolutionary Crimes, Penal Code of the RSFSR. Note that the weakening of the authority of the government was classfied as counterrevolutionary. Also, Solzhenitsyn was a bastard. No tear shed for people like him.

@@potatoman7604 In my opinion, Joseph Vissarionovich caused irreparable damage to the Soviets by canceling the election of deputies by production collectives and replacing them with territorial elections. Immediately, the recall of deputies and their replacement by others, through production meetings, significantly decreased

You call yourself a marxist-leninist yet you repeat all the libieral talking point 1-for-1. Curious. Honestly complaining about "troikas" shows that you never spent for than a couple of minutes researching the subject. You just a copypasta machine.

​@@nonono4160 I've been organized since my 14th year of age. And I doubt that any liberal would state that Stalin's "Concerning the Questions of Leninism" to this day is a great description of how the future state is to look like (in the general sense of course) or that Lithuania was liberated in 1940. As for the Troika, it is a fact that the accused were deprived of the right to legal defense. Furthermore, it is a fact that many innocent people suffered - and as FinBol correctly remarked, it was for this reason that Yezhov himself was executed.

I think it was Kotkin who said Lenin made Stalin the head of the party. Lenin being the premier makes him head of state but has no bearing on him being head of the party

@@thefinnishbolshevik2404 well, I think the Central committe also held all Politburo members, so in a sense, Lenin as head of that highest executive body had a say in that, I realise that being premier or minister in the Soviet system don't hold real power, as that lay with the Party. My point is more that there was no "heir to the Throne" or something like that, it was more like Stalin held certain positions that he was voted into, that way he had more power than other Politburo members. I think you made a video or someone else explaining the inner workings of the Soviet political system, as it is pretty complex. I will take a look

My understanding is that Lenin recommended that Stalin be elected to the position of General Secretary of the Party and that the Central Committee elected him in something like November, 1922.

Like Fanny Kaplan (the Left Socialist Revolutionary who shot Vladimir Lenin), Siqueiros and Ramon Mercader were very likely salty at their inability to accomplish a socialist revolution, and so they vented their frustration by attempting to kill an actually successful communist revolutionary.

I discuss that in the video. According to dubious sources he was allegedly given a medal, but according to them it was done secretly, so its very difficult to tell if it ever even happened at all.

You are surprisingly illogical in your thinking. Of course the Zinoviev group only used Nikolaev as their killer. According to other sources such as Arch Getty, Nikolaev was a mentally disturbed man who also wrote in his diary that his fantasy was to become a famous assassin and terrorist. The zinovievists needed someone like that in order to carry out the murder. Or at least it was very useful to have someone like that they could use. Nikolaev agreed to carry out the murder plot, and that is all they wanted.

​​​@@thefinnishbolshevik2404 How did they use him if they didn't organize the assassination, as Molotov states? You're ignoring not only what I said, but also what Molotov said, exploiting his incoherence (resulting from his attempt to at least minimally justify the actions of the Soviet government in the 1930s). You're the one being illogical AND dishonest. Nikolaev was mentally unbalanced, correct. But why would they try to use such a person, a person that could easily reveal the whole thing to others, to committ such a crime? After all, the only "evidence" of Kotolynov et al. organizing the assassination or participating in it, came from a mentally unbalanced person, Nikolaev. The whole case was therefore based on the confessions of one mentally unbalanced individual (Molotov even stated that "there was no specific document that this was done by decision of the Zinovievite group"). Not one of the other defendants confessed to participating in the assassination - not even Zvezdov and Antonov, presented in the indictment as the two defendants that confessed their full guilt besides Nikolaev, confessed of participation in the assassination of Kirov! Most of the defendants confessed only to participating in an underground opposition group, which is precisely in accordance with what Molotov said - they were, in reality, sentenced to death not for the assassination of Kirov, but only for participating in the Zinovievite organization.

@@Heghelion You have absolutely no basis for your statements, nor does Molotov claim they weren't behind the killing. It is completely expected that there was no document. Not only did Nikolaev testify but there were testimonies of others, and there is also the fact Nikolaev had help from others, even from inside the party and government. We also have the writings of Humbert-Dross, who stated that Bukharin asked him to join in a plan together with the Zinovievites to kill Stalin in 1929. We also have the writings of G. Tokaev, another underground Bukharin supporter, who stated that his group had carried out many attempted killings and also wanted to kill Kirov, but the Zinoviev group did it first. I've also read the autobiography of Lev Rubin who used to belong to a Trotskyist opposition group. He writes that the Trotskyists threatened to murder Kirov and Stalin as revenge. According to GPU agent Zborowski, who infiltrated into Lev Sedov's group, they were also planning to murder Stalin. There are many independent sources stating that the Zinoviev, Bukharin and Trotsky groups all planned assassinating Stalin and Kirov, and we have the documents from the Trotsky archive proving that Trotsky created the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites in 1932, while we know that Zinovievites and Bukharinites already worked jointly since 1929. How many times do they need to plan killing Kirov, before you admit they actually did it?

​​​@@thefinnishbolshevik2404 You are lying when you say that Tokaev claimed in his works that his group intended to kill Kirov - on the contrary, he claimed that his group was horrified when it heard about the assassination, as well as that his group was opposed to such methods in principle and that it knew that the consequences would be terrible (as for his claim that the assassination was committed by another group, that is only an assetion, a claim that he does not prove with anything, since you are dismissing Molotov's assetion as nothing more than an assertion even though Molotov had incomparably more knowledge about what happened than Tokaev, you have to dismiss Tokaev's claims too). "I must make one thing clear. Neither my own underground movement nor the military group into which I had been drawn had anything whatsoever to do with the initiation, preparation or execution of the killing of Kirov. When we heard of it we were horrified because we knew that this was not the way to achieve our aims, and we also knew that the consequences would be terrible." (G. A. Tokaev. Betrayal of an Ideal. Indiana University Press, 1955. pp 240-241) This, moreover, is completely in line with what other (former) oppositionists thought. Former member of the Left Opposition Nikolay Muralov said in the family circle: "[T]his is a signal to start the Bartholomew night" (Nikolai Muralov. Moscow, 1990. S. 189) Former Zinovievist and Yugoslav communist Voja Vujović said on the day of Kirov's murder: "This is the end. It will start with us, and then it will go like an avalanche" (Cited in: Moskovsky komsomolets. 1989. 2 noyabrya.) Bukharin himself said in the editorial office of Izvestia, according to Ehrenburg: "Do you understand what this means? After all, now he can do whatever he wants with us!" (Erenburg I. Iz literaturnogo proshlogo - Oktyabr'. 1988. № 7. S. 162.) The works of Humbert-Droz? You mean the single sentence Humbert-Droz „remembered“ more than 40 years after Bukharin allegedly uttered it? I thought that as someone who reads Getty you know well enough the problems with memoirs written decades after. Or do you leave that criticism only for those memoirs whose conclusions you disagree with? The reliability of Humbert-Droz's testimony is further undermined by the fact that he was only a Bukharin sympathizer for a short time - moreover, during the height of the Great Purge, in 1937-38, he was welcomed to Moscow and discussed with Dimitrov ways to propagandize the Moscow Trials. So it is wrong to present him as Bukharin's supporter. Testis unus, testis nullus. I suggest you take a closer look at one of those sources you really like to quote, Tokaev's works: "Bukharin was for working up a 'spirit of opposition' by intensifying ideological work, by agitation and propaganda, by persuasion and theoretical discussion. By these methods an appeal should be made to the youth among the workers and the peasants; we should pit our individual personalities against Stalin's robot functionaries and bureaucrats. 'The task,' he said again, 'is to get the masses to realize the dangerous political and economic consequences of Stalin, Molotov and Kirov's general line, but this can only be done by persuasion. How much time will be needed to awaken the consciousness of the mass of the people? In how many years will the peoples of the U.S.S.R. be able to grasp how impossible the present road is? Nobody knows, neither I nor Stalin, neither Molotov nor Kirov. Perhaps five years, but perhaps as many as ten.'" As well as: "[I]n 1934, we attacked Bukharin and his fellows savagely, accusing them of slithering back into the bogs of Stalinism, but eventually we were to understand that they knew far better than we did what was possible and what was not" (G. A. Tokaev. Betrayal of an Ideal. Indiana University Press, 1955. 167-168). So according to Tokaev himself, whose works you use as proof of Bukharin's terrorist activity, Bukharin advocated exclusively persuasion methods - intensification of ideological work, agitation and propaganda, and theoretical discussion. Decide whose works you will refer to - Humbert-Droz's or Tokaev's? You can't do both. Also, it's Lev Kopelev, not Lev Rubin - learn your own talking points properly if you're going to use them. Kopelev was only a Trotskyist for a short time, in 1928-29, and an insignificant figure at that. In his works, he quotes a statement from one Trotskyist leaflet from February 1929, which reads: "If they try to kill Comrade Trotsky, they will avenge him ... We place personal responsibility for his safety on all members of the Politburo" (Kopelev L. I sotvoril sebe kumira. Ardis, SSha, 1978. S. 579.) The key word is "if". It's about hypothetical thinking, maybe you've heard of it, but you probably haven't used it. In addition, and this is what you cannot or do not want to understand - the words of a Trotskyist, or even of a group of Trotskyists, are not Trotsky's words nor do they represent his thinking. Not only were there many disagreements among oppositionists, but also within different opposition currents, and I have already shown you that among old revolutionaries like Muralov, Bukharin and Vujović, there was an opinion that individual terrorism can only lead to negative consequences. Trotsky shared this opinion and expressed it several times. Finally, let me address Zborowski and Sedov. This, I assume, is the quote in question: "On January [22], during our discussion at his apartment concerning the second Moscow trial and the role in it of individual defendants (Radek, Piatakov and others), L. Sedov declared: 'Now there is no need to waver any more, Stalin must be killed.'(Cited in: Volkogonov D. A. Trotskii, Book 2, p. 198) You are ignoring a very important piece of information - this only "evidence" comes not from 1932, not from 1934 when Kirov was killed, not from 1936 when the first Moscow trial was organized, but from 1937. It is not about a plan to assassinate Stalin, but about expressing anger about the situation in the USSR (Moscow Trials, Great Purge) and identifying the culprit. I ask you - if someone gets angry because of, say, a proxy war in Ukraine and says that objectively the assassination of Putin or Biden or whoever would make the situation easier, does that mean that person is organizing the assassination? In addition, Volkogonov himself, who transmits the above quote, expresses skepticism about its credibility - a skepticism based on the fact that Zborowski was an NKVD agent provocateur. Finally, Zborowski himself stated years later that Trotsky and Sedov not only did not collaborate with the Nazis, but also did not prepare a conspiracy against the USSR. Even if the "examples" you mentioned were correct - and they are not, as I have shown - the only thing they would prove is that Tokaev, Kopelev, etc. were considering the use of terrorist methods, or even that they were working on the organization of some assassinations. However, none of this means that Trotsky, Zinoviev or Kamenev had anything to do with it - neither Tokaev nor Kopelev mention them as organizers of terrorism, and neither Tokaev nor Kopelev (as well as Alexander Zinoviev - that's the talking point you forgot) are mentioned in Nikolaev's diary, nor in the transcripts from the investigation from December 1934, nor in the transcripts from the three Moscow trials of 1936-38. None of that means they had anything to do with Nikolaev, too.

​@@Heghelion Yes, it was incorrect for me to say Tokaev's group did it. Rather he only talked about the terrorist group which had carried out many similar actions. But although he claims to be horrified, he portrays the terrorists very sympathetically. He also sympathized with Bukharin. The fact he did not know about Bukharin's involvement in terrorism doesn't mean Bukharin wasn't involved in terrorism. Did I really write Rubin and not Kopelev? Well, its because the character Rubin in the works of Solzhenitsyn is based on Kopelev. But I thought I wrote Kopelev. You have fabricated this idea that Molotov somehow supports your point of view. You do not deal with Tokaev's statement in any satisfactory way. Also when it comes to Kopelev, the point is that the Trotskyist were ready to embrace assassination - even if they justified it as revenge. Did Trotsky himself not justify Kirov's murder by saying 'the stalinist tyranny will give rise to acts of vengeance by the proletariat'? That's just a veiled way of saying his young supporters like those Kopelev knew, were carrying out these killings. Zborowski is not a reliable enough source on his own, but he is corroborated by all these other sources. The fact he changed his story when it became unacceptable to be "stalinist" doesn't prove anything though. But it is a bit strange why Zborowski would falsely tell his superiors that Sedov wants Stalin dead. I wouldn't bring up Alexander Zinoviev because as far as I know he had no connection with Trotskyists, Zinovievists or Bukharinists, or did he? I have not read him. You are moving the goal post. Why would Nikolaev talk about Tokaev or Kopelev in his diary? They were from different secret groups which did not know about each other. Kopelev was a random newbie in some local Trotskyist group. Tokaev was in a bourgeois group, with only loose connections to other groups. Nikolaev was in the Zinovievist Leningrad group, but he was just their tool. You also do not deal with Humbert-Droz's statements in any satisfactory way, you only dismiss information which goes against your preconceived notion. Humbert-Droz had already turned against communism entirely, and certainly was against Stalin when he wrote his words. He was in fact a supporter of Bukharin, though he later split with him. But why would he lie against Bukharin and in Stalin's favor? Why would Trotsky not do exactly what he was accused of? It would be strange if he didn't. He wanted to remove the stalinist leadership, but he did not have any mass support. He wanted to carry out a putsch during a war situation, by playing the 'stalinist' regime against the nazis, or other imperialist powers by using their contradictions and exploit the arising "revolutionary situation". He would then make a peace treaty similar to Brest-Litovsk, granting territories to the imperialists, but securing a breathing space for his new regime. He was convinced the USSR could not win the war, and he had already outlined an exactly similar defeatist plot already in the 1920s.

Source? Kamenev edited the published versions of Lenin's works and deliberately censored them to remove criticisms of Trotsky. It is entirely impossible that Lenin would ever have written such a footnote. A consistent internationalist? Lenin himself said Trotsky was nothing of the kind but a Kautskyist.

@@thefinnishbolshevik2404 Except for the fact that from 1917 to 1926, Kamenev was on the opposite side of Trotsky on almost all issues - the issue of support for the Provisional Government and the war, the boycott of the pre-parliament, the October Uprising, the composition of the post-October government, the negotiations in Brest-Litovsk, discussions about trade unions in 1920-21, the New Course discussion in 1923-24, the so-called literary discussion in 1924-25 (that started with Trotsky's publication of the Lessons of October), etc. Kamenev was Trotsky's political opponent all that time, including in the early 1920s when the first edition of Lenin's collected works was published. Moreover, Kamenev was Stalin's ally all along in the unprincipled conspiratorial triumvirate directed against Trotsky from the spring of 1922 (Michael Reiman even shows the evidence that the triumvirate was actually founded in 1921) and then in the septemvirate from 1924. Do I need to remind you that at the joint plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission in January 1925, Kamenev, together with Zinoviev, even called for the expulsion of Trotsky from the party? Do I need to remind you that a few months earlier, Kamenev participated in the campaign against Trotsky's Lessons of October, speaking and writing, along with Stalin, Zinoviev and his other allies, things like this: "Comrade Trotsky has become the channel through which the elementary forces of the petty bourgeoisie find their way into our Party. The whole character of his advances, and his whole historical past, show this to be the case. In his contentions against the Party he has already become a symbol, all over the country, for everything directed against our Party... It must be perfectly clear to every conscious member of the Party that for us, the Bolsheviki, and for the international proletariat marching forward to victory. Leninism is sufficient, and that it is not necessary to substitute or improve Leninism by Trotskyism." (Lev Kamenev: Leninism or Trotskyism?) Who are you trying to fool? You're not fooling me, you're fooling your followers. And I gave you the source. You can look it up on IstMat.

​@@Heghelion You're coping. Kamenev disagreed with Trotsky about certain things, while agreeing on others, some of which were unimportant side issues. Kamenev opposed the October Revolution and wanted Bolsheviks to win power through the parliament. As a result he demanded that the Bolsheviks wait until the 2nd congress of Soviets before deciding on any uprising. Trotsky claimed he disagreed with Kamenev but also demanded that they wait until the 2nd congress of Soviets, even though the plans of the revolution had been leaked by Kamenev, and Lenin said it would lead to the failure of the revolution. Trotsky was acting in cahoots with Kamenev. He always acted dishonestly in those years. He pretended to not support Bukharin on Brest-Litovsk, yet he actually supported Bukharin against Lenin. That was how he acted. Lenin said countless times that Trotsky never reveals his views honestly. I'm not trying to fool anyone. According to B. Farnsworth in their Kollontai biography, Kamenev censored Lenin's writings on Trotsky when they were published. I didn't even know that until I heard it from them. Why does it matter that later in 1925 Kamenev turned against Trotsky? It clearly has no bearing on him protecting Trotsky' from Lenin's criticism earlier. Kamenev allied with Trotsky on numerous occasions and Trotsky spent his whole career allying with opportunists with views different from his own. It is entirely misguided to try to look for some kind of consistency or principle from these people, rather than pure careerism and opportunism.

That's a bull and i don't even need to look it up to say that. Lenin couldn't have said that for two reasons 1) That's not what Trotsky (and Parvus) peddled under the name of permanent revolution 2) ...because that was Marx idea that in a country with remaning feudalist superstructure after capitalist revolution, porkies would turn on workers so workers should not stop and bourgeoisie revolution and continue to the sociealist revolution. Trotsky and Parvus used the same name but peddled the ideas of counter-revolutionary role of peasantry and impossibility of socialist revolution in such countries where peasantry are majority.

@@thefinnishbolshevik2404 just ignore this guy, he's a crazy trotskyist

Is this your version of selling newspapers on Laurier E.?

Ah yeah, that’s why he build a terrorist organization in the USSR, because he was a fried of the Soviet people - that shows just how he lied

Ah yeah, the guy Trotzky, who refused to build socialism, because he didn’t believe in the Soviet people and said the USSR was too backward and without the support of Europe lost

@Benja90835 He was right though, wasn't he? He correctly predicted that the USSR would be doomed without the spread of the revolution to the advanced Western capitalist countries.

@@CulturalMarxist4985 Noone denied that, but this argument is bad because 1.) The revolution spread from East Germany to Vietnam 2.) This was not the real reason of the Soviet dissolution, read a book 3.) He said that because he feared an intervention, which the Soviet people crushed