Trotzky Out

For continuous outspoken opposition to the ruling oligarchy, headed by Josef Vissarionovitch Stalin, the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Third (Communist) International last week deposed Lev (Leon) Davidovitch Trotzky and his aide one Vuyovitch.

Summoned before that august Bolshevist body, the former potent War Minister accused M. Stalin and Nikolai Bucharin, editor of the Pravda (official Moscow newspaper), of placing the question of their survival above all principle. He called them usurpers, Bonapartist dictators, without authority from the masses.

Defending his supporters, M. Trotzky asserted: "In their politics these men tower over those who conceal their crimes under party discipline. Nowadays no organization deliberates or decrees; all they do is carry out orders. Even the Presidium of the Communist International is no exception."

In answer to this defiance the Presidium formally ousted M. Trotzky, explaining its action as follows: "The presidium deems Trotzky's and Vuyovitch's remaining in the Communist International impossible because of their violent struggle against the organization by means of underground printing plants coupled with organizing illegal centers and inciting malicious slander against Soviet Russia abroad. To preserve unity in Lenin ranks, to counteract the undermining activities of the oppositionist rebels, considering previous warnings sufficient and that to further refrain from disciplinary measures becomes dangerous and impossible, the presidium of the Communist International unanimously decided to expel Trotzky and Vuyovitch from the Communist International's executive body."

Leon Trotzky, ne Bronstein, was born 50 years ago, son of bourgeois Jewish parents. In Odessa, he received an excellent high school and university education, aged 17, he became a revolutionary, working for the downfall of the Tsarist regime. Like all Russian revolutionaries, he spent long terms in prison and longer terms in exile in a dozen different countries, including the U. S., where he lived for a time in the Bronx, New York City.

When the Tsar abdictated in 1917, M. Trotzky left the U. S. for Russia, but was arrested and taken ashore by the British at Halifax and kept in jail until the Provisional Government of Russia. demanded his release. He entered Russia a few weeks later at about the same time as Lenin, with whom he worked in preparation for the famed November revolution that set the seal of Bolshevism over all the Russias. His part in preparing for the Bolshevist revolution is admittedly hardly less than that of Lenin himself, and he is regarded by some as the greater organizing genius of the two.

When the first Bolshevist government was formed in November, 1917, M. Trotzky became the first Commissioner of Foreign Affairs, in which capacity he represented Russia at the Brest-Litovsk peace conference with Germany. He at first refused the German terms, but the continued advance of German troops into the heart of Russia eventually forced the Bolsheviki to sign far worse terms of peace. M. Trotzky agreed to the necessity of ending hostilities, and handed over his portfolio of Foreign Affairs to become Commissar of War, in which capacity he organized the Red Army.

Since the death of Lenin in 1924, Leon Trotzky has been pushed more and more into the background. A sick man, he was indefatiguable in support of an active Bolshevising policy designed to please the younger rank and file of the Communist Party. Old-timers like Josef Stalin and Gregory Zinoviev, remembering that Trotzky joined the party only in 1917, began to attack him as a "upstart," and after Lenin's death it was not long before he was ousted from the Commissariat of War and reduced to political impotence by his powerful enemies. Even the Communist Party disavowed him, and, not actually expelling him from the Party, demoted him from the high office he held.

Ousted from the Third International Presidium, the once powerful creator of Russia's great Red Army now retains but one official position: as a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Economic Council, he heads the Central Committee for Concessions--an unimportant sinecure.

It is the consensus that Leon Trotzky is the most brilliant of all the Soviet leaders, not even excepting Lenin. In stature small and unimpressive and in appearance like a university professor, he is a striking orator with a rare gift for metaphor. As an organizer, he probably has not an equal in all Russia, which is not noted for producing genius of that type. Fearlessness in debate has at once been his strength and his weakness; for by it he conquered and because of it he was conquered.