Stalin: an Appraisal of the Man and His Influence

Stalin: an appraisal of the man and his influence

Leon Trotsky

First edition approved by the estate of Leon Trotsky, 2016

Second Edition: Wellred Books, 2019

Material translated and edited from the previous editions © Alan Woods

Background to Trotsky’s Stalin by Rob Sewell

Foreword by Esteban Volkov

Index and additional footnotes by John Peter Roberts

Cover design by José Camo

All images used from the David King Collection, with the kind permission of David King, or from the public domain

Ebook produced by Martin Swayne. Published June 2020, Smashwords edition.

United Kingdom distribution:

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Ebook ISBN: 978-1-913026-06-6

Table of Contents

Foreword

Background to Trotsky’s Stalin

Editor’s note

Introduction by Leon Trotsky

1. Family and School

2. ‘Professional Revolutionist’

3. The First Revolution

4. The Period of Reaction

5. The New Resurgence

6. War and Exile

7. The Year 1917

8. The People’s Commissar

9. How the Revolution Was Armed

10. The Civil War

11. From Obscurity to the Triumvirate

12. The Road to Power

13. ‘Kinto’ in Power

14. The Thermidorian Reaction

Editor’s Afterword: Trotsky’s Stalin – a Marxist Masterpiece

Trotsky’s Appendices to Stalin

Appendix 1. The French Thermidor

Appendix 2. Stalin as Theoretician

Appendix 3. Stalin’s Official Historiography

Appendix 4. Three Concepts of the Russian Revolution

Appendix 5. Unpublished Fragments

Stalin’s Aliases and Pseudonyms

Communist Party Congresses

Foreword

Trotsky’s last work finally completed

On the tiny planet Earth, lost like a particle of sand in the vastness of space, the most complex and wonderful phenomenon emerged: Life itself. This has taken the most diverse and unimaginable forms, the most amazing of which is the human species. Our species in turn has given rise to a wide variety of individuals. Some are gifted with high levels of generosity and heroism, to the extent of giving their lives without hesitation in the struggle for the improvement and well-being of their fellow human beings.

At the other end of the scale, one can observe the most primitive instincts of cruelty and evil. From a psychological and historical point of view, the character of Stalin is doubtless of great scientific interest. No one was in a better position than Leon Trotsky, that master of Marxist dialectics, to dissect the anatomy and morphology of the man who was raised to power by the triumph of the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union after the death of Lenin.

The last work written by Leon Trotsky before he was assassinated on 20th August 1940 was the unfinished text of the biography of Joseph Djughashvili, better known as Stalin. Here we have a truly multidimensional analysis. Always within the framework of Marxism, it enables us to decipher the inner meaning of Stalin and Stalinism; to understand the dynamic of historical circumstances and the environment that allowed one of the most bloodthirsty and cruel characters that history has recorded to rise to power.

According to the Soviet historian Volkogonov, Stalin lived in fear of the man who organised the Red Army and was Lenin’s comrade in arms. The news that in distant Mexico that same indomitable revolutionary was working on a biography which would reveal many uncomfortable truths about the tyrant in the Kremlin was deeply disturbing to him and there can be little doubt that it hastened the plans for Trotsky’s assassination.

The biography of Stalin was made at the request of the US publishing house Harper & Brothers. Contrary to the opinion of many literary critics and historians, the making of this biography had nothing whatsoever to do with anger or revenge. As a matter of fact, Leon Trotsky only undertook the task reluctantly. His main interest was to conclude a biography of Lenin, which he had already begun.

At the time Trotsky was living in Coyoacán in a small ‘family’ composed of himself, Natalia Sedova and a group of young Trotskyist comrades. Harper & Brothers offered a substantial sum of money for the book. Obliged by pressing financial difficulties and constant shortages, the Russian revolutionary felt he had no alternative but to accept.

Charles Malamuth was assigned the task of translating Trotsky’s work from Russian into English, despite the fact this did not please the author. When Trotsky was assassinated on Stalin’s orders, Harper & Brothers appointed Malamuth to also edit the unfinished biography with a view to its publication. Displaying a total lack of ethical spirit, Charles Malamuth introduced a large number of annotations of his own writing that contravened the author’s ideas and also shortened the text, excluding a large amount of material.

The publishers’ interest in the book was purely commercial. They were not worried about the accuracy and objectivity of its content. Harper & Brothers went ahead with publication of the book, which was published in 1946 in this mutilated form. The vehement protests and demands of Trotsky’s widow Natalia Sedova and his lawyer Albert Goldman against these changes and irregularities were ignored.

Fortunately, three quarters of a century after the death of Leon Trotsky, some very knowledgeable Marxist revolutionaries, who fully identify with his ideas, have undertaken the admirable and difficult task of re-issuing his last great work in all of its authenticity and its fullest dimensions. For more than ten years the comrades of Wellred Books have worked to restore as much of the missing material as possible and eliminate all the additions and distortions of Malamuth.

The current edition is enlarged by a third on the previous editions. It has added to and enriched the vast arsenal of Marxist theory which is the ultimate legacy of Leon Trotsky. It only remains for me to express my great admiration for the tenacious and enthusiastic efforts made by members of Socialist Appeal and the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), as well as many generous friends, whose names I will not mention as the full list would be too long.

I would like to mention Rob Sewell, who was the originator of this project, venturing into the files of the manuscript for the Stalin biography, in the Houghton Library at Harvard. The result represents a most valuable and impressive achievement made possible by the patient work of many generous and skilled collaborators, who managed to collect this very heterogeneous material in both English and Russian. Much of it was in manuscript form, often in a poor condition, which then had to be typed up from microfilm copies.

Finally, I should like to pay tribute to the British Marxist Alan Woods. With his knowledge of the Russian language and his very profound familiarity with the ideas of Leon Trotsky, I believe there is no other person more suitable for the task of translating, editing and incorporating this new material, reorganising and refining the text to produce the best version of the last work which the great Marxist revolutionary was unable to complete.

Esteban Volkov

23rd May 2016

Background to Trotsky’s Stalin

Leon Trotsky’s Stalin was commissioned by the New York publisher Harper & Brothers in February 1938 and was first published in English in 1946. A year later, in 1947, it was published in London by Hollis and Carter. Stalin was Trotsky’s last major book, on which he worked in the final years of his life. However, Trotsky’s life was cut short by a Stalinist assassin on 20th August 1940 and the book was never finished.

While Trotsky worked on the book, the manuscript of each chapter of Stalin, originally dictated in Russian, was being translated into English by Charles Malamuth. Following his assassination, the unfinished manuscripts, on instructions from the publisher, were handed over to Malamuth, not simply for translation, but in order to edit the work for publication.

Whatever Charles Malamuth’s talents, this was a political task for which he was completely unsuited. When the book was finally published, the new ‘edited’ version contained large chunks of material inserted by the editor, which were clearly in violation of Trotsky’s political thought. Despite indignant protests from Trotsky’s widow, Natalia Sedova, the offending material was retained by the publishers. In certain editions, Natalia expressed her objections in the preface to the book:

The phrases inserted throughout this book by Charles Malamuth are solely his responsibility. He was commissioned to do this job by Harper & Brothers, the publishers of the American edition of this book, and not by Natalia Trotsky, widow of Leon Trotsky. These insertions have not been checked by anyone who could claim to have been a collaborator of Leon Trotsky, and thus should be considered as only expressing the ideas of Malamuth, who is a political opponent of Trotsky.

The primary reason for the republication of this newly-expanded edition of Trotsky’s Stalin is to put right this violation and to insert the material that was excluded by the editor. The project to re-publish Trotsky’s original Stalin in this updated form has been more than a decade in the making. The volume removes Malamuth’s political insertions, which amounted to more than 10,000 words, and restores the original manuscript from unpublished material deposited in the Trotsky archives at Harvard University.

This new edition is the most complete ever published in any language, including in English or Russian, and has increased the size compared to the original version of the book by over thirty percent. It represents the most extensive work ever undertaken to rebuild the book, and comprises nearly 100,000 more words than the original 1946 edition.

Malamuth explained that he had left alone the first seven chapters, except for a few deletions of repetitious material. We have taken the liberty of restoring this repetitious material to the best of our ability, the position of which is indicated for the reader. The points where these insertions begin and end are marked with an asterisk: ‘*’.

In the second half, rather than follow Malamuth’s arrangement, we have chosen our own, following the chronology of events. The editing of this material to ensure the maximum continuity has been carried out by Alan Woods, who also translated the bulk of the Russian material. Where fragments of text require connecting phrases or longer explanation, the editor’s words are indicated within square brackets: ‘[…]’. Some material of various lengths that could not be easily inserted into the text has been placed separately in the appendices.

One further change to note is our treatment of the transition from the old Julian calendar to the new Gregorian calendar, which was implemented in Soviet Russia on 14th February 1918 in the midst of the events described in Chapter 8. In this chapter we have used dates according to the Gregorian calendar, but Julian calendar dates are in brackets where necessary.

The Trotsky archives

In 2003, while on a political trip to the United States, I visited Boston and took the opportunity to visit the Trotsky archives at the nearby university. The impressive archive at Harvard is itself a political treasure trove which fills 172 manuscript boxes and comprises Trotsky’s pre- and post-exile correspondence, articles, working papers, photographs and notes, namely, all the most significant documents of his extremely rich political life. Trotsky, who was extremely meticulous, made copies of almost everything he ever wrote. Simply for the period 1929 to 1940, covering his years of exile from the Soviet Union, the archive contains some 20,000 documents, including around 4,000 letters. Trotsky had agreed that the material would be dispatched to Harvard for safe keeping. The archives are leaving [for the United States] this morning on the train, wrote Trotsky on 17th July 1940, a little over a month before his assassination.[1]

After filling in the necessary forms, I was shown into the reading room of Houghton Library. While viewing the prospectus, I was astonished by the vast amount of material contained in the archive. I decided to look at material relating to Britain and then South Africa as part of my research on the history of British Trotskyism. After that, I began looking through the archives more or less at random due to the limited time at my disposal and the scope of the collection. After a trawl in different directions, my attention was drawn to the material about Trotsky’s last book – Stalin. To my amazement, I discovered that there were nine large manuscript boxes in the archive, the Harper Manuscripts (items H1-H28), containing all of the preparatory materials for the Stalin book. These contained all the original files, the drafts, galley proofs, press cuttings and notes, handwritten and in typed form, as well as a number of boxes containing all of Charles Malamuth’s English translations of Trotsky’s Russian originals.

The first thing that strikes you about the Stalin collection is the different layers, built up like geological strata, which were eventually used to produce the first half of the book, that is to say, up to and including 1917. The first drafts contained hand-written and typed texts, the second drafts were completely typed, translated and then passed back to Trotsky for further correction, editing and polishing. Trotsky certainly took a great deal of pride in polishing his writings as well as seeking to improve upon the English translations, so that the meaning could be as precise as possible.

My first visit to Harvard simply identified what was there. On subsequent visits, I asked to see the entire archive on Stalin, which was delivered to the reading room on a large trolley. The files containing the materials are housed in large archive boxes and numbered in separate folders (bMSRuss 13.3, H1-H28). These also contain all the paper clippings and various materials that were translated into English but not used in the final edition of the book, including the original drafts, held in folders H14-H19.

Interspersed with the hand written material is typed copy, with various underlining in red pencil. Further additions to the text were glued on. There are numerous lines penned by Trotsky changing the order of sentences, revealing his meticulous attention to detail. The work is then divided into numbered chapters, at least for the first part of the book. What really impresses you is the colossal amount of editing that Trotsky undertook, with crossings out in blue pencil and ink, until he was satisfied with the final version. It is clear that he was a stickler for detail. Eventually, the proof copies were glued together sheet by sheet to produce a continuous and extremely long strip.

Given the scarcity of paper in Mexico at this time, the original manuscript is written on different qualities of paper – from 90gsm sheets to very flimsy grease-proof type paper – which also contained a mixture of typeface and handwriting. Some sentences are double-spaced and others single-spaced. There is text in different languages: Russian, German, French, English and Spanish.

Charles Malamuth

The first part of Stalin deals in a masterly fashion with the role of the individual in history, tracing the evolution of Stalin from a young boy in the Seminary to a professional revolutionary in the years before the revolution of 1917. However, the incomplete second part, which, even in the mutilated published edition, contains extremely interesting material, was marred by the additions introduced by Charles Malamuth. This was not simply bridging material, as he maintained, but was made up of whole chunks of text in certain chapters, which clearly contradicted the political line of the book.

When Trotsky’s widow, Natalia Sedova, and Trotsky’s attorney, Albert Goldman, were shown the text, they vehemently objected to the book’s publication in this vulgarised form. Esteban Volkov, Trotsky’s grandson, also tried unsuccessfully to prevent the book’s re-publication. Five years after the death of Natalia, Esteban, along with Dr. Adolfo Zamora, who had been his grandfather’s representative, sought to prevent the publication of the Stein and Day edition in 1967, which contained a foreword by the notorious Bertram D. Wolfe. But to no avail.

Charles Malamuth was an assistant professor in Slavonic languages at the University of California. He spent a year in 1931 in the Soviet Union as a newspaper correspondent for United Press International. It was a period of upheaval in Russia with Stalin’s forced collectivisation of agriculture and the drive to complete the first Five-Year Plan in four years. Malamuth had witnessed at first hand Stalin’s repression against the Left Opposition, which was in full swing. In early January 1932, on his return to the United States, he wrote two letters, one to Trotsky’s son, Leon Sedov, who was living in Germany, and a second to the Communist League of America, the name adopted by the American Trotskyists. My year in Russia has taught me to admire the Trotskyists more than any other group, he wrote to Martin Abern, a leading member of the League, expressing admiration and offering his assistance to the movement.[2]

Despite this admiration for Trotskyism, he never actually joined the Communist League. He remained a ‘fellow-traveller’ or ‘admirer’ of the Trotskyists, a position he seemed to hold throughout the 1930s. This view of him was held by John G. Wright, a leading American Trotskyist, who in a letter to Trotsky in December 1938, described Malamuth simply as a sympathiser.[3]

In this period of the 1930s, Trotskyism had become fashionable among certain sections of the radical intelligentsia in America. Malamuth was part of this milieu. Isaac Deutscher, Trotsky’s biographer, states:

Trotskyism became something of a vogue which was to leave many marks in American literature. Among the writers, especially critics, affected by it, were Edmund Wilson, Sidney Hook, James T. Farrell, Dwight MacDonald, Charles Malamuth, Philip Rahv, James Rorty, Harold Rosenburg, Clement Greenberg, Mary McCarthy, and many, many others.

How did a man like Malamuth end up editing Trotsky’s Stalin? Charles Malamuth’s knowledge of Russian was certainly useful and his talent was put to good use in translating some of Trotsky’s articles. Trotsky, as we will see, was never very impressed by this young ‘sympathiser’ or his abilities. Nevertheless, he was badly in need of help and had to work with the material at his disposal.

On 15th February 1938 (the day before the murder of Leon Sedov, Trotsky’s son, in Paris), Trotsky was approached by Harper & Brothers, the American publishers, with an offer of $5,000, to be paid in instalments, to write a biography of Stalin. The request also enquired about a possible translator for such a project. Trotsky, who was deeply affected by the tragic loss of his son, was not at all keen about the publisher’s offer. The death of Sedov was a devastating blow to Trotsky and Natalia, a further act of revenge by Stalin. Moreover, Trotsky had already commenced work on another book, namely a biography of Lenin, the first part of which he had already finished in November 1934.

Pressurised by serious financial difficulties, Trotsky eventually overcame his reluctance and accepted Harper & Brothers’ proposal. Charles Malamuth, who had translated some of Trotsky’s smaller writings, was available, and was therefore given the task of translating the newly-commissioned work. Clearly delighted by the prospect of such a tempting offer, Malamuth wrote in a letter, "Stalin promises to be a milestone in my translation efforts." Trotsky, however, was not totally convinced, but had little alternative given the lack of available Russian translators. Furthermore, he had received assurances that he would be able to personally supervise and sign off all the translations before publication.

This was no secondary matter for Trotsky, who had been unhappy with Max Eastman’s earlier translations of his writings. In February 1938, in a letter to Jan Frankel, Trotsky revealed these anxieties about Eastman as a possible translator for his book on Lenin:

From every point of view the translation is fundamental. The History of the Russian Revolution, in spite of the magnificent style, is full of errors. And why? Because I had no opportunity of supervising the translation.[4]

He was not going to make the same mistake again.

The work begins – and the problems

In early April 1938, the work on Stalin began in earnest. On 26th April, Trotsky wrote to Sara Weber informing her that he was now working on the Stalin book. He had, however, encountered a problem he wanted her to resolve. At every page I am faced with research upon geographical, historical, chronological, biographical, etc., data, and so he asked her, would it not be possible to find an old pre-revolutionary [Russia] encyclopaedia in New York?… The question is very important to me because otherwise my work would be handicapped at every step.

Within a few months, on 7th July, Malamuth received the Russian manuscript of the first chapter of the work, ‘Family and School’, in order to translate. Things seemed to proceed quite quickly. The second chapter was mailed to Malamuth on 16th August and the third chapter on 12th September. But the work did not go so smoothly because of various interruptions. Before the end of the year, Harper & Brothers had refused Trotsky financial advances on the grounds that he was slow in delivering portions of the manuscript.

There were other problems with the book. Without asking Trotsky’s permission, Malamuth had shown the manuscript to third parties, namely Max Shachtman and James Burnham who were leading a minority in the American Socialist Workers’ Party that opposed Trotsky’s analysis of the character of the USSR. When Trotsky found out about this he was furious, regarding the incident as a breach of trust. Trotsky complained to Joseph Hansen:

Then, against all my warnings, he [Malamuth] permitted himself a condemnable indiscretion with my manuscript. I protested. His elementary duty should have been to apologise for his mistake and everything would have been in order again. I also find that comrades Burnham and Shachtman committed an error in entering into a discussion with him about the quality of the manuscript without asking him whether or not he had my authorisation to give them the manuscript. The best thing would be for comrades Burnham and Shachtman, on their own initiative, to explain that they, together with Malamuth, committed something of an indiscretion and it was best to recognise it as such and let it go at that.

In this letter, Trotsky concluded bluntly:

Malamuth seems to have at least three qualities: he does not know Russian; he does not know English; and he is tremendously pretentious. I doubt that he is the best of translators…[5]

In these few words Trotsky reveals a shrewd appreciation of Malamuth’s pretentiousness, which was amply demonstrated by subsequent events. However, there was little choice but to continue to use his services.

Trotsky’s indignation at this indiscretion reflected his deep concern about security and the fear that the Stalin manuscript could fall into the wrong hands. This was a very real danger at the time. Trotsky was engaged in a life-and-death struggle against the crimes of Stalinism on a world stage. Stalin was obsessed by Trotsky and was determined to silence him. He therefore ordered his secret police agents – the GPU – to penetrate the Trotskyist movement and carry out the maximum of sabotage.

Stalinist agents had already managed to set fire to his household in Prinkipo, Turkey, where some of his papers and documents were destroyed. The GPU is going to do everything in its power to get its hands on my archives, wrote Trotsky on 10th October, 1936.[6] A month later, his archives entrusted to the Dutch Institute of Social History were ransacked in Paris and certain documents stolen. In order to render me powerless in the face of slander, the GPU is trying to get its hands on my archives, whether by theft, housebreaking, or assassination, stated Trotsky.[7]

Mark Zborowski, a Stalinist agent, had infiltrated the movement in France and wormed his way into Leon Sedov’s confidence. Russian speakers were in short supply and the movement was in desperate need of assistance. Eventually, he came to assist in the editing of the Bulletin of the Opposition in Paris. Zborowski, whose party name was ‘Etienne’, soon had access to the secure box containing the correspondence between Sedov and Trotsky. Using his position, he regularly passed on information about Trotsky to Soviet intelligence, which was then passed on to Stalin personally. It was Zborowski who ensured that copies of Trotsky’s writings were placed on Stalin’s desk before they were even published. Stalin read each issue of the Bulletin of the Opposition, paying particular attention to articles about himself.

Trotsky feared that through burglary or other such means, Stalin’s agents would try to steal or destroy the drafts. Therefore, all precautions were taken to keep them safe. These fears were well-founded. When Stalin was informed about Trotsky’s new work, he was furious and was prepared to go to any lengths to prevent its publication.

Throughout 1939, Trotsky soldiered on with Stalin, but he was faced with further interruptions, not least the need to leave Diego Rivera’s household in May, dealing with Rivera’s break with Trotskyism, and then the legal tussle over the custody of his young grandson, Sieva (Esteban Volkov). Sieva was to leave Europe and take up his new home with Trotsky and Natalia in Mexico City on 6th August 1939.

Trotsky’s assassination

By May 1940, at the time of the first assassination attempt on his life, half of the book had been finished (up until 1917) and the remainder of the book was at various stages of completion. The book was now on hold, with time almost completely taken up with the legal depositions needed for the investigation of the attack, as well as the Mexican courts. Trotsky also had to answer a continual barrage of lies and slander from the Stalinist newspapers in Mexico and abroad, as they stepped up their verbal assaults.

By the time of Trotsky’s assassination on 20th August, the book had still only been half completed, with a large amount of material remaining in draft form in different states of readiness. Trotsky had managed to revise the original first seven chapters of the book in Russian, as well as ‘Three Concepts of the Russian Revolution’, contained in the appendices. He managed to check the English translation of the first six chapters, but had not had the opportunity to check the seventh.

A number of myths have been circulated about the Stalin book, mainly by Charles Malamuth himself. Malamuth invented the story that in the August attack some of the Stalin manuscripts were splattered with blood and some completely destroyed. He repeats this in his foreword to the Stalin book:

Some of the manuscript of the unfinished portion was in Trotsky’s study, strung out in enormously long strips of many sheets pasted end-to-end, at the time of the murderous attack upon him, and in the struggle with the assassin portions of the manuscript were not only spattered with blood but utterly destroyed.

There is no evidence whatsoever in the Trotsky archives at Harvard to support this claim. Having examined every single page of the original Stalin material, including the long strips pasted end-to-end, I can safely say that there is no evidence of blood stains or anything else that would support this fairy tale. No damage at all can be seen. The police photograph of Trotsky’s study following the assassination reveals some newspapers scattered on the floor following the struggle, but there is no sign of any long strips of galleys proofs spattered with blood. Clearly Charles Malamuth invented this story in order to dramatise the whole thing and thus boost his own role in ‘rescuing’ Trotsky’s manuscript. This is not the only example of unscrupulous behaviour on his part.

Following Trotsky’s death, the American publishers, who owned the rights to the book, placed Malamuth in charge, not only of the translation, but of ‘editing’ the final book. For them, this was simply a commercial deal to salvage the book following the author’s death. Trotsky’s views did not enter into their calculations. A few days after the assassination, Malamuth made enquiries about the manuscript to Joseph Hansen, Trotsky’s secretary in Mexico. In his reply four days after Trotsky’s death, Hansen outlines the very difficult position in the household.

Mexico City, 25th August 1940

To Charles Malamuth

All of us are oppressed and in the greatest grief.

We have not yet been able to enter the study in order to see what Trotsky had left in the way of final writings. However, he had spent, in the period from 24th May until the second assault, all of his time almost exclusively on his deposition for the court.

On the Saturday before this last assault he told me that he was now practically finished with this work and could again return to the Stalin book. I think he expected to begin the final pages of this book on the 22nd.

Naturally we will try to ascertain as soon as the court has unsealed his office whether there is anything more which could be added to the book. I suppose that Harpers will proceed with its publication immediately, in view of the fact that the book was almost finished. LD[8] told me last December that at that time the major part of the book was completed and that all that remained was the period of the Left Opposition.

Joe Hansen

The description of almost finished is obviously an exaggeration, but Hansen was not to know. Trotsky was certainly looking forward to being rid of the business of the 24th May assault and to settle down to his real work, namely his biography of Stalin. But it would still have required some months of work to complete. He was eager to resume work on my poor book after a long interval on 22nd August 1940, as Hansen suggests – one day after his actual murder. Such was Trotsky’s unfinished plan.

The following is an interesting report by Jean van Heijenoort, who had earlier been one of Trotsky’s secretaries, dated 14th October 1940, concerning the part of the archives connected with the Stalin book. It shows the fragmentary nature of the later ‘chapters’.

The last completed chapter of the book on Stalin, written a few months ago, is ‘The Year 1917’. It has already been translated into English.

For the ensuing chapters, LT prepared a series of folders, each bearing a title written by him and containing materials and manuscripts. Each folder does not correspond to a future chapter of the book; several of the folders were probably intended to be used for a single chapter. It has been impossible to find how many chapters were planned and what titles they would bear.

Our task consisted in making an exact inventory of the folders and placing in them some material obviously displaced during the last days of LT’s life. We counted 70 of these folders. They are, moreover, of very different size. Some of them contain sub-folders and form a future chapter of the book; others contain merely a few sheets.

To give an idea of their contents, their titles could enter into the following categories: Brest-Litovsk, The Civil War, The First Period of the Soviets, Lenin’s Sickness and Death, Toward Thermidor, The Struggle against the Opposition, Stalin’s Personal Characteristics.

There is no chapter near completion – after the last one, ‘The Year 1917’. Besides numerous quotations and material of all kinds, the folders contain as manuscript only fragmentary notes, handwritten by LT or typewritten. Most often each note consists of a few lines. The longest of them attain ten pages. An estimate of the total length of these notes is rather difficult, but we estimate they may come to 300 regular typewritten pages, double spaced.

Jean van Heijenoort, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 14th October, 1940.[9]

Malamuth’s distortions

As soon as Malamuth had gained access to Trotsky’s unfinished manuscripts, he continued with his translation. It seems that the method Malamuth used was to verbally translate pages of Russian text to an English-language typist. This can be seen from the numerous misspellings of Russian names in the typewritten drafts. Malamuth then went over these first versions to polish up the translation.

From this point on Malamuth, now translator and editor of Trotsky’s Stalin, would decide what would go in and what would be left out of the book. He was also free to add his own commentaries as bridging material. The editorial policy in regard to the unfinished portion of the manuscript was to publish Trotsky’s text entirely except for repetitious and utterly extraneous material, states Malamuth in his editor’s note. Under the circumstances, extensive interpolations by the editor were unavoidable. In addition, eight pages of text were made up of portions of the author’s notes [but] summarised by the editor.

Malamuth used his position as editor to introduce his own political commentary into parts of the book, using extensive interpolations in square brackets. These unauthorised additions served to distort and misrepresent Trotsky’s political standpoint and went against the entire political spirit of the book. They are similar to the views of Souvarine or Sidney Hook, who regarded Stalinism as the inevitable outgrowth of Bolshevism – a view that was in direct contradiction to the position held by Trotsky, which is clearly expressed in his biography of Stalin.

To illustrate the extent of these interpolations, it is sufficient to look at the original Chapter 11: ‘From Obscurity to the Triumvirate’. Of the roughly 1,200 lines in this chapter, sixty-two percent are by Malamuth and thirty-eight percent are by Trotsky. There is not a single word of Trotsky until after seven-and-a-half pages by Malamuth. All this was passed off in the editor’s note as simply commentary essential for fluency and clarity!

This political meddling led to bitter exchanges between Malamuth and Natalia Sedova. After being shown the final proofs of the book, Natalia and Trotsky’s attorney, Albert Goldman, objected strenuously to the content. There is a whole section of letters in the Trotsky archive containing their objections. Their indignation is revealed in their damning comments written on the page proofs: False! Completely false!; CM writes so much crap! His opinions are like Sidney Hook, writes Goldman. "False, completely false… Trotsky’s own and complete ending should be used. Not the ‘edited’ Life copy.; Unacceptable Revision of history!; Unacceptable; False revision of historical events."; and so on.

Trotsky’s widow objected to the unheard-of violence committed by the translator on the author’s rights. She went on to insist, everything written by the pen of Mr. Malamuth must be expunged from the book. As a concession, Natalia and Goldman wrote, we could agree to include LD’s own text – provided it is first checked against the originals by us. They then went on to cross out pages of commentary by Malamuth. But it was all to no avail, the unauthorised commentaries were all maintained in the published version.[10]

Natalia resorted to legal action to prevent publication, but the case was lost. When the book finally saw the light of day, Malamuth cynically announced the publication was taking place without censorship either by Trotskyists or by Stalinists! The publication of Stalin was originally planned for 1941. But while the book was in the process of being printed and distributed to wholesalers, the US government intervened to halt publication. Following Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Roosevelt did not wish to annoy his new ally – Joseph Stalin.

"It [Trotsky’s Stalin] was printed by its publisher, Harper & Brothers, but withdrawn by them prior to public sale late in 1941," writes Frank C. Hanighen, feature writer for Robert M. La Follette’s Progressive in the 1st May 1944 issue. The publishers gave as the reason for withdrawal ‘a concern for the work’s adverse effect on international relations’ says Mrs Lombard… Helen Lombard, a Washington Evening Star journalist, exposed the book’s suppression. One member of Congress was asked not to let the book get out of his hands nor permit it to be examined by any other person… State Department officials have made informal suggestions that any quotation from the book would be harmful to Soviet-American relations… explained Frank Hanighen.[11]

Only in 1946, after Britain and the United States had fallen out with Stalin, did the book finally appear. As expected, the publication of Stalin provoked outrage from the Stalinists. They had cheered the suppression of the book, which they hoped would be permanent. But the times had changed and the indignation of the Stalinists knew no bounds:

"He [Trotsky] set his secretaries to work on a massive, vituperative Life of Stalin," stated Sayers and Kahn in The Great Conspiracy against Russia, published in the US in early 1946. It went on:

Trotsky’s friends in the United States made arrangements to have this book published by Harper & Brothers of New York. Although the book was set up in print, Harper decided at the last minute not to distribute the book; and the few copies that had been sent out were withdrawn from circulation. Sections of the book had previously been published in article form by Trotsky. The last article to be published before his death appeared on August, 1940, in Liberty magazine; the article was entitled, ‘Did Stalin Poison Lenin?’ In April, 1946, amidst a new upsurge of anti-Soviet propaganda in the United States, Harper & Brothers reversed their original decision and published Trotsky’s tirade against Stalin.[12]

Five years after it had been withdrawn to avoid embarrassment to Stalin, the book was now seen as a useful stick with which to beat him. Malamuth’s insertions provided the necessary ‘adjustments’ to turn Trotsky’s work into a weapon in the struggle not only against Stalinism but also against Bolshevism. For their part, Harper & Brothers were keen to make money from its delayed publication. The whole episode is characterised by the most blatant cynicism on all sides: the publishers, Malamuth and the US government all conspired to use and abuse this book for their own ends. The one voice that was silenced was that of the author, Leon Trotsky.

Malamuth’s omissions

When Stalin was finally published, a great amount of the material had been left out of the book, despite being translated by Malamuth, who judged this material to be superfluous. The following lines are quite typical of his attitude: I found little or nothing in this appendix, stated Malamuth in the notes concerning the draft.

If you agree with me that it is not really indispensable how about leaving it out of the book altogether? I honestly found it the dullest, most repetitious and least illuminating of all the chapters and by taking it out we could save about 5,000 words elsewhere.

Written on the manuscript in Malamuth’s handwriting is the note: This phrase is unclear, more guesswork on my part.[13] In fact, Malamuth was clearly incapable of ‘guessing’ or distinguishing between what was important and what was not.

Another thing that struck me when examining the manuscripts in the archives was Malamuth’s misleading use of square brackets. These were supposed to distinguish his editorial handiwork from Trotsky’s original text. However, when you compared the later and earlier drafts, these square brackets only appeared after he had already translated Trotsky’s material. In other words, in some cases, he had placed square brackets around Trotsky’s own words without any explanation, thus giving the impression that these comments or words were his own. Thus, the reader sometimes does not know whether he is reading Trotsky or Malamuth. This goes far beyond the bounds of what would be regarded as editing and enters the realm of deliberate distortion.

There was therefore clearly a great deal of work to be done in restoring as far as possible the original, although unfinished, text of Trotsky. The first task was to remove the political interpolations of Malamuth. In the archive, we again went through the text in order to identify the gaps and omissions. Fortunately, most of the missing material was numbered and could, with considerable detective work, be reunited with the original text to one degree or another.

Acknowledgements

On a visit to the archive in 2005, we purchased copies of the missing material in the form of microfilm. With kind assistance from Philip Wallace and Carol McCullum of the Trotsky collection at Glasgow Caledonian University, photocopies were produced from the film. Then these copies were meticulously typed up into a word document, including all the changes, comments and deletions. This onerous task took about two years and was carried out by Hazel Brookshaw, who struggled single-handedly to decipher and type up all the photocopies into usable Word files. Once accomplished, we were then able to painstakingly piece together the original, but still unfinished, work and to slot together all the missing parts of the book. Any small gaps we missed initially were restored thanks to the help of Steve Iverson in Boston, who made visits to the archives on our behalf.

From the time we first obtained the necessary material to the moment we were ready to publish the new edition more than ten years have passed. We have had the benefit of a committed team of people who have dedicated a great deal of time and effort to ensure the success of this important project, none of whom were able to work on it full time.

I managed to find the most appropriate places to insert the new material. The most complicated and time-consuming task, however, actually involved completely reworking the text, work that proceeded painfully slowly. This was the task of Alan Woods who, using his political judgement and knowledge of Russian, has been able to complete this important but extremely complicated and difficult work over a period of about three years. The task was further complicated by the discovery of new material, both in English and Russian. Other material, which did not easily fit, had to be inserted in the most appropriate place according the narrative and its political context.

We must mention David King for his encouragement and support prior to his tragic passing in May 2016. Thanks must go to John Peter Roberts for his valuable contributions in providing an index for this book, additional footnotes, suggestions and oversight. We would also like to pay gratitude to Ana Muñoz for her efforts in typing up the corrections and proofreading and Timur Dautov for his assistance in translating from Russian. Niklas Albin Svensson, Niki Brodin Larsson and Guy Howie worked on formatting the text and on laying out the book. In addition, the following people should be thanked for their help in proofreading the text: Phil Sharpe, Sion Reynolds, Julianna Grant, John Peterson, Francesco Merli, Fred Weston, Julian Sharpe, Steve Iverson and lastly Hazel Brookshaw, in addition to her transcribing of the original manuscripts.

This project could not have been successful without the kind permission of the Houghton Library at Harvard University to examine, translate, and publish material from their collection. We would like to thank in particular Thomas Ford and the other librarians at Houghton Library for their help and assistance.

In publishing this book we have finally fulfilled the wishes of Trotsky’s widow, Natalia Sedova, to expunge all traces of Malamuth’s interpolations from the text. Trotsky’s critique of Stalin and Stalinism stands in its own right as a classic work of Marxism. We fervently hope that our decision to republish this important work by Trotsky, purged of the earlier distortions, will serve to restore Trotsky’s last work to the place of honour it deserves in the political literature of the 20th century.

Rob Sewell

June 2016

Notes

[1] Leon Trotsky, Writings, Supplement to 1934-40, p. 863.

[2] Letter to Martin Abern, dated 7th January 1932, Leon Trotsky Exile Papers bMSRuss 13 2861, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

[3] Letter from Wright to Trotsky, dated 2nd December 1938, bMSRuss13. T4738.

[4] Letter to Jan Frankel, 3rd February 1938.

[5] Leon Trotsky, Writings, Supplement to 1934-40, p. 830, my emphasis – RS.

[6] Leon Trotsky, Writings, 1935-6, p. 440.

[7] Ibid., p. 462.

[8] Initials for ‘Lev Davidovich’, Trotsky’s first name and patronym, by which he was known by family and close friends as was customary in Eastern Slavic culture at the time.

[9] BMSRuss 13.1 T4801.

[10] BMSRuss 13.3 – H12 (1 of 2).

[11] Reprinted from the British Socialist Appeal, August 1944.

[12] Michael Sayers and Albert E. Khan, The Great Conspiracy Against Russia, p. 111.

[13] BMSRuss 13.3, folder H.14 (2 of 2).

Editor’s note

Nobody can ever claim to have produced the definitive edition of Stalin. It was unfinished on the day of Trotsky’s assassination and will remain unfinished for all time. What we can say without fear of contradiction is that this is the most complete version of the book that has ever been published. We have brought together all the material that was available from the Trotsky archives in English and supplemented it with additional material in Russian.

There have been other editions of the book; they have never been satisfactory, and some were even misleading. In preparing for this project, we compared the translations of other versions, all of which were inadequate in different ways. The most striking example is the version that was published in French in 1948 under the direction of Jean van Heijenoort, who was one of Trotsky’s secretaries in the 1930s, in collaboration with Alfred Rosmer, a lifelong friend and collaborator of Trotsky.

Van Heijenoort claimed to have gone back to the Russian originals, and for this reason many people were led to believe that the French edition was more authentic than the English version of Charles Malamuth. However, a careful page-by-page examination of the French text soon revealed that this was not the case. We found only a few pages of new material, most of which was incidental and of little interest. The rest was translated word-for-word from Malamuth’s English version. Van Heijenoort had omitted even more of Trotsky’s words than Malamuth. Pages upon pages were missing from the French edition.

To make matters even worse, in many places the brackets that Malamuth had placed around his interpolations to distinguish them from Trotsky’s text had been removed. Probably this was intended to give the impression that Malamuth’s comments had been eliminated. The reality is that not only are Malamuth’s commentaries retained, but it is impossible to see where Trotsky’s text ends and Malamuth’s begins. This goes far beyond what is permissible for any editor of another person’s work. These mutilations and arbitrary omissions are even worse than Malamuth’s hatchet job, if that is possible.

In the same year that the French edition appeared, a Spanish version was produced by Plaza & Janés. This was a translation based on the Malamuth edition, but at least this Spanish edition carried a ‘health warning’ written by Natalia Sedova, disclaiming any responsibility for the additions and revisions made by Malamuth in the Harper & Brothers edition. The Spanish edition was later republished elsewhere, most notably in Argentina in 1975. This translation leaves a lot to be desired.

Interestingly, in 1985, the first ever Russian edition was produced, edited by Yuri Felshtinsky who, unlike the others, did take the trouble to go back to the original manuscripts in the Trotsky archive in Harvard. This version contains some new material in comparison with Malamuth’s, but for whatever reason, unfortunately left out a lot of material already published in the English edition. We have compared the two versions and added the material in Felshtinsky’s version that was not in any of the published editions in a new translation.

A complex task

When I was first approached with the proposal to edit Stalin, I did not hesitate to accept what was clearly a very important task of ‘rescuing’ a major work of Trotsky and presenting it to the reading public in a more complete and finished form. However, neither I, nor anyone else associated with it, had any idea of the enormous difficulty and complexity of this project.

I had assumed that all that was required was to find the appropriate places from where the new material had been omitted and put it back into place. But on re-reading Malamuth’s translation it soon became evident that this would not be sufficient. Malamuth not only carried out many arbitrary deletions of material he did not like or considered irrelevant. He also put the text together in an equally arbitrary manner that frequently did violence not just to the political content (clearly a matter of indifference to him, though not to the author) but also to historical logic.

I had already noticed that in his Russian version Felshtinsky had radically changed the order of the paragraphs, so that the Russian edition bears very little resemblance to the English version that has been generally taken as the model for all other translations. I therefore decided to follow his example and deconstruct the existing English version, take it to pieces and then re-assemble it, adding in all the new material at my disposal. This was a far more difficult and time-consuming task than anyone had anticipated. The criterion that I adopted was to follow, insofar as possible, a strict chronological order. That was the simplest, most logical approach, although some exceptions had to be made.

A few words have to be said about the quality of Malamuth’s translation. The art of translating political works is a difficult one. It supposes three things: a good knowledge of one’s own language; a good knowledge of the language to be translated from; and a good level of political understanding. In my experience it is extremely rare to find all three qualities in a translator. And when it is a question of translating Trotsky, the matter becomes far more complicated. Apart from being a master of Marxist theory, Trotsky was also a highly accomplished writer with a very keen sense of literary style. To adequately convey all the richness of the original is therefore a serious challenge to any translator.

It is no wonder then that Trotsky was so demanding and so critical of the translations of his works. He always felt that they were missing one or other element: either political precision or stylistic creativity. Of course, he was not wrong. In the case of Max Eastman, Trotsky felt that he was too inclined to sacrifice political correctness for the sake of literary effect. He undoubtedly had a point and Eastman’s political weakness and impressionism was shown by his later evolution. But the reader of his brilliant translation of The History of the Russian Revolution will surely forgive him many of his sins and will not even have noticed those shortcomings that Trotsky corrected so mercilessly.

We know that Trotsky made some sharp criticisms of Malamuth’s translation. But, as we know from his criticisms of Max Eastman’s translations, he was a perfectionist in these matters, as in everything else. Moreover, Trotsky’s criticism of Malamuth’s work came at a time when he was exasperated by the latter’s faux pas in showing parts of the unfinished Stalin to Burnham and Shachtman at a moment when they were in political conflict with him. The fact that Trotsky subsequently agreed to allow Malamuth to continue working on Stalin indicates that he did not completely write off his abilities as a translator, although it is true that he did not have any alternative at the time.

Charles Malamuth never reached the level of Max Eastman. His style is pedestrian and does not contain a hint of Trotsky’s literary genius. But far more serious than that are his political interpolations. To cite just one example, he describes the October Revolution as a ‘coup’, which simply repeats the slanders of bourgeois critics. Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the Bolshevik Revolution will know that was not a coup at all, but the most popular and democratic revolution in history. To use the word ‘coup’ in this context constitutes a gross distortion of the ideas of Trotsky, a clear example of how Malamuth tried to introduce his own ideas into the text of Stalin – ideas that are in flat contradiction to the author’s intentions.

Despite his political interference, having examined every sentence of the second half of Stalin, taken it to pieces and put it together again, I consider that in general Malamuth’s English translation is not all bad. Although it can hardly be considered a literary masterpiece, it is mostly a correct translation – as long as we leave to one side the interpolations in brackets. We decided at the outset to delete all of Malamuth’s additions. Here too we found a problem. In some places Malamuth has included material written by Trotsky in brackets and presented them as his own. We had to disentangle these twisted knots, and this task was carried out with admirable diligence (along with a hundred other detailed tasks) by Rob Sewell. Finally, every trace of Malamuth’s interference with the text has been expunged. Where this has created gaping holes in the text, I have added some ‘bridging’ passages, which are clearly indicated in square brackets.

The work of ‘deconstructing’ Stalin was a bit like taking a Rolls Royce apart and looking at all the bits neatly laid out on the floor of the garage, wondering where to begin. At times it was a dispiriting experience. The work proceeded slowly and painfully, particularly as I had to do other work at the same time, which constantly interrupted the work on Stalin.

After each interruption it was more difficult to take up the strands where one had left off. Delays were caused by the need to translate parts of the Russian version, a task that only I was able to perform until, quite late in the day, I received welcome assistance from Timur Dautov. Then, just when it seemed that we were about to finish, I was informed that an American comrade had found more missing material that had to be put in! It brought to my mind the myth of Sisyphus, who was condemned to repeat forever the task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll downhill again.

At last, after almost three years of hard work, the task is complete. The reader will wish to know what the final balance sheet is: how much has been added and where. We initially considered indicating every addition, but this would have been a very complicated task: some of the additions were quite lengthy, whereas others were only a few sentences, or even a single sentence. To have filled pages and pages with asterisks and footnotes would have encumbered the text and rendered it almost unreadable. We therefore decided to favour the interests of the general reader as against the curiosity of the literary specialist.

We can, however, say exactly how much new material has been added. We decided not to interfere with the first part (Chapters 1-7) that goes as far as the Russian Revolution. This is because this part was published while Trotsky was alive and was therefore approved by him. However, having read this part carefully, we found that here too Malamuth had omitted some things that were in Trotsky’s original manuscript. These parts are few in number, and so in this case we have decided that they should be indicated.

The really major changes are to be found in the second half of the book (that is, in the old edition Chapters 8-12; now Chapters 8-14). Together with the new appendices (‘The French Thermidor’; ‘Stalin as Theoretician’; ‘Stalin’s Official Historiography’; ‘Three Concepts of the Russian Revolution’ and ‘Unpublished Fragments’) this amounts to almost double the material contained in the old edition. To be precise, in the old version (excluding Malamuth’s comments in brackets) there were 106,000 words. The new edition contains an additional 86,000 words, that is to say, in the second part the text has been augmented by approximately ninety percent.

If Trotsky had lived, it is very clear that he would have produced an infinitely better work. He would have made a rigorous selection of the raw material. Like an accomplished sculptor he would have polished it and then polished it again, until it reached the dazzling heights of a work of art. We cannot hope to attain such heights. We do not know what material the great man would have selected or rejected. But we feel we are under a historic obligation at least to make available to the world all the material that is available to us.

Of this material we have omitted very little – mainly those parts that are clearly repeated elsewhere. However, certain ideas may be repeated with subtle nuances that convey a slightly different meaning and these repetitions we have left in. We are aware that this approach does no justice at all to Trotsky’s wonderful style. But Trotsky understood that content is more important than form. And at any rate, we believe that our criteria in the selection of material are far more reliable than that pursued by someone who did not share Trotsky’s views and had no interest in propagating them.

Despite all the difficulties, this work has been of great educational value. We have found in many pieces that were discarded as things of no interest fascinating insights into Trotsky’s thought. Like the last works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, the writings of Trotsky’s last few years are the products of a mature mind that was able to draw on a whole lifetime of rich experience. Of particular interest are his observations about dialectics and Marxist theory in the Appendix ‘Stalin as a Theoretician’, which, as far as I know, have never been published before.

In making available for the first time a great deal of material that was arbitrarily excluded from Stalin and hidden in dusty boxes for three quarters of a century, we are discharging a debt to a great revolutionary and simultaneously providing a wealth of new and valuable material to the new generation that is striving to find the ideas and programme to change the world. This is the only monument Trotsky would have ever wanted.

In conclusion, I wish to pay tribute to the man who, more than anyone else, has encouraged me in this work. I refer to Leon Trotsky’s grandson, my old friend and comrade Esteban Volkov, who has spent a lifetime fighting for the cause of historical truth. From the moment I told him about this project, he showed the liveliest enthusiasm. More than anyone else, Esteban was extremely anxious to see this important work of his grandfather’s restored after so many years. Now it is finally completed, I have no hesitation in dedicating it to him.

Alan Woods

London

30th June 2016

Introduction

by Leon Trotsky

The reader will note that I have dwelt with considerably more detail on the development of Stalin during the preparatory period than on his more recent political activities. The facts of the latter period are known to every literate person. Moreover, my criticisms of Stalin’s political behaviour since 1923 are to be found in various works. The purpose of this political biography is to show how a personality of this sort was formed, and how it came to power by usurpation of the right to such an exceptional role. That is why, in describing the life and development of Stalin during the period when nothing, or almost nothing, was known about him, the author has concerned himself with a thoroughgoing analysis of isolated facts and details and the testimony of witnesses; whereas, in appraising the latter period, he has limited himself to a synthetic exposition, presupposing that the facts – at least, the principal ones – are sufficiently well known to the reader.

Critics in the service of the Kremlin will declare this time, even as they declared with reference to my History of the Russian Revolution, that the absence of bibliographical references renders a verification of the author’s assertions impossible. As a matter of fact, bibliographical references to hundreds and thousands of Russian newspapers, magazines,