The
ECCI Secretariat's resolution to member parties of the Comintern on carrying
out the campaign against Trotskyism.
Secret
[5
February 1937]
Final
text
5.2.37
GDim
ON
CARRYING OUT THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TROTSKYISM
In
connection with the trial’s outcome, conduct a mobilization of the com[munist] parties in order to develop
a broad, mass campaign against Trotskyism so as to destroy it completely. This
must be the task of the whole Party and the entire working class. To this end,
it is essential that the Politbureau of every party plan a series of measures
aimed at making the campaign, by its character and scale, not only of an
intra-party character, but one designed for the widest popular masses. It is
necessary to show these masses [that] Trotskyism is an agency of fascism, and
[to show] Trotsky and Trotskyists as the most dastardly enemies of the USSR, as enemies of the
peoples’ liberty and independence, as advocates of the restoration of
capitalism in the USSR, and as warmongers. Using the trial materials, this
campaign must give a complete and concrete picture of the Trotskyists’
counterrevolutionary activities in Spain and France, as well as their wrecking
work in the workers’ movement throughout the world and in each given country,
[and] by their attempts to subvert the movement toward the United [Popular]
Front and the working class unity. In addition to the trial materials, it is
essential to base this mass campaign upon the facts of the Trotskyists’
counterrevolutionary activity in each specific country, taking into account its
local conditions and the level of the workers movement. It is essential to
explain, on the basis of the facts
revealed at the trial, the harm that is caused in each country by the
Trotskyists’ subversive activity and by Trotsky’s arrangement with German
fascism and Japanese militarism. During the campaign, it is necessary to strive
to get those people and organizations affiliated with Trotskyism to
disassociate themselves from Trotsky as an agent of fascism. At the same time,
during the campaign, the broad masses of people must put forward the demand to
expel Trotsky from Mexico, [and] the demand that Trotsky face the proletarian
court of the USSR rather than hide behind the back of agents whom he has
recruited.
In
addition to party meetings that explain the results of the trial, this campaign
should take the form of broad mass meetings in which the most prominent party
representatives have to participate, as well as members of other parties and
organizations who have expressed a readiness to fight against Trotskyism as a
fascist agency. When carrying out this campaign, there should be a
differentiated approach to different strata of the population (working class,
peasantry, intelligentsia, etc.). The Secretariat considers it very expedient
for comrades who were present at the trial--Cachin, Vaillant-Couturier,
Linderut, Humbert-Droz and others--to give speeches in the largest European
capitals.
The
Secretariat also considers it essential that the parties and their local
organizations, as well as communists working in the non-party organizations,
conduct a thorough verification of the ranks of these organizations so as to
expose double-dealing Trotskyist elements and to throw them out of these
organizations. At the same time, it is necessary to intensify the explanatory
work in all the party and non-party organizations so that the members of these
organizations are not left with unanswered questions, and they will be prepared
for the struggle against Trotskyism.
The
Secretariat recommends that the C[entral] C[ommittees] of the com[munist]
parties and their agit[ation and] prop[aganda department]s plan concrete
measures to raise the ideological-political level of the party education,
especially of the illegal parties, both in regard to schools, classes, the
periodical press, and in regard to all the publishing activity of the party. In
this propaganda work, it is necessary to show the real history of the VKP(b)
and the October Revolution, the prolonged struggle of the party of Lenin-Stalin
against Trotsky, and to show the evolution of Trotskyism which has slid down
the path of open counterrevolution and is an agency of fascism.
The
Secretariat charges the Press and Propaganda Department of the ECCI
Secretariat, together with the Editorial-Publishing [Department] of the ECCI
Secretariat, to plan a series of publications on the struggle against
Trotskyism on the basis of the proposals of the commission appointed by the
Secretariat.
RGASPI,
f. 495, op. 2, d. 246, ll. 144-145.
Original in Russian.
Typewritten.
------------------------------------------------------------------------