The autumn of 1902 was marked by frequent lectures in the Russian colony in Paris. The Iskra group, to which I belonged, saw first Martov, and then Lenin. A war was being fought against the "Economists" and the Socialist-Revolutionists. In our group there was some talk about the arrival of a young comrade who had escaped from Siberia. He called at the house of E. M. Alexandrova, formerly one of the Narodovoltsi, who had joined the Iskra. We of the younger generation were very fond of Ekaterina Mikhailovna, listened to her talks with great interest, and were much under her influence. When the young contributor to the Iskra made his appearance in Paris, Ekaterina Mikhailovua bade me find out if there was a vacant room near by. There happened to be one in the house where I lived. The rent for it was twelve francs a month, but the room was small, dark and narrow, just like a prison cell.

The split came unexpectedly for all the members of the congress. Lenin, the most active figure in the struggle, did not foresee it, nor had he ever desired it. Both sides were greatly upset by the course of events. After the congress Lenin was sick for sevetal weeks with a nervous illness. "From London, L. D. wrote almost daily," writes Sedova in her memoirs. "His letters were expressive of a growing alarm, and finally there was a letter reporting the split, that said with despair that the Iskra was no more, that it was dead ... The split in the Iskra upset us dreadfully. After L. Ws return from the congress I soon left for St Petersburg with reports of the congress written in a microscopic hand on thin paper, and inserted inside of the binding of a Larousse French dictionary.'

How did I come to be with the 'softs' at the congress? Of the Iskra editors, my closest connections were with Martov, Zasulitch and Axelrod. Their influence over me was unquestionable. Before the congress there were various shades of opinion on the editorial board, but no sharp differences. I stood farthest from Plekhanov, who, after the first really trivial encounters, had taken an intense dislike to me. Lenin's attitude towards me was unexceptionally kind. But now it was he who, in my eyes, was attacking the editorial board, a body which was, in my opinion, a single unit, and which bore the exciting name of Iskra. The idea of a split within the board seemed nothing short of sacrilegious to me.
Revolutionary centralism is a harsh, imperative and exacting principle. It often takes the guise of absolute ruthlessness in its relation to individual members, to whole groups of former associates. It is not without significance that the words "irreconcilable" and "relentless" are among Lenin's favourites. It is only the most impassioned, revolutionary striving for a definite end - a striving that is utterly free from anything base or personal - that can justify such a personal ruthlessness. In 1903 the whole point at issue was nothing more than Lenin's desire to get Axelrod and Zasulitch off the editorial board. My attitude towards them was full of respect, and there was an element of personal affection as well. Lenin also thought highly of them for what they had done in the past. But he believed that they were becoming an impediment for the future. This led him to conclude that they must be removed from their position of leadership. I could not agree. My whole being seemed to protest against this merciless cutting off of the older ones when they were at last on the threshold of an organized party. It was my indignation at his attitude that really led to my parting with him at the Second Congress. His behaviour seemed unpardonable to me, both horrible and outrageous. And yet, politically it was right and necessary, from the point of view of organization. The break with the older ones, who remained in the preparatory stages, was inevitable in any case. Lenin understood this before anyone else did. He made an attempt to keep Plekhanov by separating him from Zasulitch and Axelrod. But this, too, was quite futile, as subsequent events soon proved.

My break with Lenin occurred on what might be considered `moral' or even personal grounds. But this was merely on the surface. At bottom the separation was of a political nature and merely expressed itself in the realm of organization methods. I thought of myself as a centralist. But there is no doubt that at that time I did not fully realize what an intense and imperious centralism the revolutionary party would need to lead millions of people in a war against the old order....

The leader of the Mensheviks, Martov, must be counted as one of the most tragic figures of the revolutionary movement. A gifted writer, an ingenious politician, a penetrating thinker, Martov stood far above the intellectual movement of which he became the leader. But his thought lacked courage; his insight was devoid of will. Sheer doggedness was no substitute. Martov's initial reaction to events always showed a revolutionary trend of thought. Immediately, however, his thought, which lacked the support of a live will, died down. My friendship with him did not survive the test of the first important events precipitated by the approaching revolution.

Whatever I may say about it, however, the Second Congress was a landmark in my life, if only because it separated me from Lenin for several years. As I look back now on the past, I am not sorry. I came to Lenin for the second time later than many others, but I came in my own way, after I had gone through and had weighed the experience of the revolution, the counter-revolution and the Imperialist war. I came, as a result, more surely and seriously than those `disciples' who, during the master's life, repeated his words and gestures - not always at the right moment - but, after his death, proved to be nothing but helpless epigones and unconscious tools in the hands of hostile forces.

I have already mentioned the fact that N. I. Sedova had been made prisoner during a cavalry raid on a May Day meeting in the woods. She served about six months in prison and was then sent to live under police supervision at Tver. After the October Manifesto, she returned to St Petersburg. Under the names of Mr and Mrs Vikentiyev, we rented a room in the apartment of a man who turned out to be a gambler on the stock exchange. Business in the stock-market was bad, and many a speculator had to take in roomers. Newsboys brought us all the published papers every morning. Our landlord would sometimes borrow them from my wife, read them, and gnash his teeth. His affairs were constantly getting worse. One day he burst into our room waving a newspaper wildly. "Look," he yelled, as he pointed his finger at my newly written article "Good morning, St Petersburg janitors!" "Look, they are now reaching out for the janitors! If I came across the jailbird I would shoot him with this gunl' And he pulled a gun out of his pocket and shook it in the air. He looked like a maniac. He wanted sympathy. My wife came to my office at the newspaper with this disturbing news. We felt we had to look for new quarters. But we didn't have a free minute; so we trusted to fate. We stayed on with this despairing speculator until my arrest. Fortunately, neither he nor the police ever learned the identity of Vikentiyev. After my arrest our room was not even searched.

When I received the telegram in Terioki, a Finnish village near St Petersburg where I was staying alone with my baby son, I was beside myself with joy and excitement. That same day I received a long letter from Leon written on his way to exile, in which, aside from its description of the journey, he asked me to take with me when I left for Obdorsk a number of aiticles necessary in the north, among them certain books. It now looked as if he had changed his mind and was flying back in some mysterious way, and was even arranging for me to meet him at a station where the trains cross. But strangely enough, the name of the station was left out of the telegram. Next day I went to St Petersburg and tried to find out from the railway guide what station I had to book a ticket for. I was afraid to make inquiries, and finally set off on my journey without knowing the name of the station. I booked for Viatka and left in the evening. The car was full of landowners returning to their estates from St Petersburg, with parcels of table delicacies for the feast of Carnival week. The conversations were about pancakes, caviare, smoked sturgeon, wine, and such things. I could scarcely endure this talk - I was so excited about the meeting ahead of me, and I was worried by the fear of possible accidents ... And yet, I felt sure that we would meet.

I could hardly wait for the morning when the train was to arrive at the station of Samino - I had found out its name on the way, and memorized it forever. The trains stopped; ours and the other. I ran out to the station. Nobody there. I jumped into the other train, ran through one car after another, and he was not there. Suddenly I recognized Leon's fur coat in a compartment. So he had come with the train. But where was he? I leaped out of the car, and immediately ran into Leon, who was rushing out of the station looking for me. He was indignant about the mutilation of the cable and wanted to make a complaint about it right away. I could stop him from doing so only with difficulty. After he had sent me the cable, he of course realized that instead of me, he might be met by the secret police, but he felt that being with me would make it easier for him in St Petersburg, and he trusted to his lucks star. We took our seats in the compartment, and continued our journey together. I could not help being amazed at Leon's freedom and ease as he laughed and chatted aloud in the train and at the station. I wanted to keep him invisible, to hide him away, because of the threat of hard-labour hanging over him for his escape. But he was in full view and said that it was his best protection.

The house was better than we could usually get, as the villas here were usually rented in the spring, and we rented ours for the autumn and winter. From the windows we could see the mountains, all dark-red autumn colours. One could get into the open country through a back gate without going to the street. In the winter, on Sundays, the Viennese cane by on their way to the mountains, with sleds and skis, in little coloured caps and sweaters. In April, when we had to leave our house because of the doubling of the rent, the violets were already blooming in the garden and their fragrance filled the rooms from the open windows. Here Sergei was born.

The children spoke Russian and German. In the kindergarten and school they spoke German, and for this reason they continued to talk German when they were playing at home. But if their father or I started talking to them, it was enough to make them change instantly to Russian. If we addressed them in German, they were embarrassed, and answered us in Russian. In later years they also acquired the Viennese dialect and spoke it excellently.

They liked to visit the Klyachko family, where they received great attention from everybody - the head of the family, his wife, and the grown-up children - and were shown many interesting things and treated to others. The children were also fond of Ryazanov, the well-known Marxian scholar, who was then living in Vienna. He caught the imagination of the boys with his gymnastic feats, and appealed to them with his boisterous manner. Once when the younger boy Seryozha was having his hair cut by a barber and I was sitting near him, he beckoned to me to come over and then whispered in my ear: "I want him to cut my hair like Ryazanov's." He had been impressed by Ryazanov's huge smooth bald patch; it was not like everyone else's hair, but much better.

When Lev entered the school, the question of religion came up. According to the Austriarn law then in force, children up to the age of fourteen had to have religious instruction in the faith of their parents. As no religion was listed in our documents, we chose the Lutheran for the children because it was a religion which seemed easier on the children's shoulders as well as their souls. It was taught in the hours after school by a woman teacher, in the schoolhouse; Lev liked this lesson, as one could see by his little face, but he did not think it necessary to talk about it. One evening I heard him muttering something when he was in bed. When I questioned him, he said, "it's a prayer, you know prayers can be very pretty, like poems".

During the last days of the preparation for October, we were staying in Taurid Street. Lev Davydovich lived for whole days at the Smolny. I was still working at the union of wood-workers, where the Bolsheviks were in charge, and the atmosphere was tense. All the working hours were spent in talking about the uprising. The chairman of the union upheld "the point of view of Lenin-Trotsky" (as it was called then), and we carried on our agitation together. The question of the uprising was discussed everywhere - in the streets, at meal-time, at casual meetings on the stairs of the Smolny. We ate little, slept little, and worked almost twenty-four hours a day. Most of the time we were separated from our boys, and during the October days I worried about them. Lev and Sergei were the only "Bolsheviks" in their school except for a third, a "sympathizer", as they called him. Against them these three had a compact group of off-shoots of the ruling democracy - Kadets and Socialist-Revolutionists. And, as usually happens in such cases, criticism was supplemented by practical arguments. On more than one occasion the head master had to extricate my sons from under the piled-up "democrats" who were pummelling them. The boys, after all, were only following the example of their fathers. The head master was a Kadet, and consequently always punished my sons with "Take your hats and go home." After the revolution it was quite impossible for the boys to remain in that school, and so they went to a "people's school" instead. Everything was much simpler and cruder there, but one could breathe more freely.

Lev Davydovich and I very seldom were at home. The boys would come home from school and, finding that we weren't in, would think it unnecessary for them to stay within the four walls either. In those days of demonstrations, clashes and shootings we were worried for their safety, because they were then in such a revolutionary mood ... At our brief meetings they would tell us with the greatest joy: "Today we were with some Cossacks in a street-car and saw them read Dad's appeal, Brother Cossacks!"

"Well?"

"They read it and passed it on to others; it was fine!"

"Fine?"

"Fine."

An acquaintance of Lev Davydovich's, the engineer K., who had a large family of children of all ages, with a governess and so forth, offered to keep the boys in his home, where there would be someone to look after them. I jumped at this as a saving grace. I had to call at the Smolny about five times a day to carry out different commissions for Lev Davydovich. We would return to Taurid street late at night; in the morning we would separate again, Lev Davydovich going to the Smolny, and I to the union. At the culmination of events we almost never left the Smolny. For days at a time Lev Davydovich would not come to Taurid Street even to sleep. And I often stayed at the Smolny, as well. We slept on sofas and chairs without undressing. The weather was not exactly warm; it was autumn; the days were dry and lowering, and the wind blew in sharp, cold gusts. The main streets were quiet and deserted. And in this stillness one felt an intense watchfulness. The Smolny was bubbling over. The enormous hall sparkled with the thousands of lights from the magnificent chandeliers; day and night it was filled to the brim with people. Life in the mills and factories was strained, but the streets had quieted down. They were as still 'as if the city, in fright, had drawn its head down between its shoulders.

I remember that on the morning of the second or third day after the uprising, I dropped into a room at the Smolny and found Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin) there with Lev Davydovich. With them, if I remember correctly, were Dzerzhinsky, Joffe, and a crowd of others. Their faces were a greyish-green from lack of sleep; their eyes were inflamed, their collars soiled, and the room was full of smoke... Someone was sitting at a table surrounded by people waiting for orders. Lenin and Trotsky were also in the midst of a waiting mob. It seemed to me that orders were being given as if by people who were asleep. There was something of the somnambulist in the way they talked and moved about. For a moment I felt as if I were seeing it all in a dream, and that the revolution was in danger of being lost if "they" didn't get a good sleep and put on clean collars; the dream was closely bound up with those collars. I remember that next day I met Lenin's sister, Marya, and reminded her hurriedly that Vladimir Ilyich needed a clean collar. "Oh, yes, of course," she replied, laughing. But by that time this matter of clean collars had lost its nightmarish significance for me.

My wife joined the commissariat of education and was placed in charge of museums and ancient monuments. It was her duty to fight for the monuments of the past against the conditions of civil war. It was a difficult matter. Neither the White nor the Red troops were much inclined to look out for historical estates, provincial Kremlins, or ancient churches. This led to many arguments between the war commissariat and the department of museums. The guardians of the palaces and churches accused the troops of lack of respect for culture; the military commissaries accused the guardians of preferring dead objects to living people. Formally, it looked as if I were engaged in an endless departmental quarrel with my wife. Many jokes were made about us on this score.

I now communicated with Lenin chiefly by telephone. His calls to me and mine to him were very frequent, and referred to an infinite number of things. The departments often bothered him with complaints against the Red army; Lenin would immediately call me. Five minutes later he would want to know if I could meet a new candidate for the people's commissary of agriculture for inspection, and tell him what I thought of him. An hour later he was interested to know if I had watched the theoretical discussion on proletarian culture, and whether I intended to make a counter-attack on Bukharin. Then the question would be: Could the war department on the southern front allot motor-trucks for the transport of food-supplies to the stations? Another half-hour would bring Lenin's inquiry whether I was following the disagreements in the Swedish communist party. And that was the way it went every day that I was in Moscow.

Our son Leon (Lev)... applied himself to the task which his father could not fulfill. In order to ease the latter's burden he came out himself with the exposure of the vile masters of the "Moscow Trials" whom he branded for what they were and who have written into the annals of history its most shameful and most revolting pages. Leon fulfilled this task brilliantly. In our jail we read his "Red Book" with great excitement. "All very true, all very true, good boy," said his father with a friend's tenderness. We wanted so much to see him and to embrace him!

In addition to his revolutionary activity and his literary work, our son occupied himself with higher mathematics which greatly interested him. In Paris he managed to pass examinations and dreamed of some time devoting himself to systematic work. On the very eve of his death he was accepted as a collaborator by the Scientific Institute of Holland and was to begin work on the subject of the Russian Opposition He was the only one among the youth who had had an enormous experience in this field and who was exhaustively acquainted with the entire history of the Opposition from its very inception.

Our economic instability used to worry him a great deal. How he yearned for economic independence! He once wrote me about his prospective earnings. The possibilities were good but he did not yet have definite assurance. "It would be a remarkable thing" (i.e., work in the Scientific Institute), he said and then added facetiously, "I would be in a position to assist my aging parents." "Why not dream?" he asked. His father and I often recalled these words of our son with love and tenderness. Mr. Spalding - assistant supervisor of the Russian Department in Stanford University-conducted some negotiations with our son in Paris concerning a prospective work, and here is what he later wrote about Leon: "The news of Sedov's death came to me as a shock. He impressed me as an extremely able and attractive personality, his future would undoubtedly have been brilliant. We are quite unclear about the circumstances of his death: some sources of our information indicate that it was due to medical negligence, or even something more terrible. Could you find it possible to write a brief note summarizing the conversation I had with Sedov last October (1937), including the tentative agreement which I had concluded with him. I could use such a note in ease it is possible to obtain certain information from Trotsky concerning the Russian civil war and war communism."

Leon entered the revolution as a child and never left it to the end of his days. The semi-conscious loyalty of his childhood toward the revolution later matured into a conscious and firmly intrenched devotion. Once in the summer of 1917, he came from school with a bloody hand into the office of the Woodworkers Trade Union (Bolshevik) where I was then working as editor and proof-reader of its organ, "Woodworkers Echo." It was the time of hot debates which took place net only in the Tauride Palace, the Smolny, or the Circus but also in the streets, the streetcars, schools and at work. Early in the morning, as a rule, a multitude of workers milled in the officer of our union, discussing current questions, i.e., the questions involving the impending seizure of power by the proletariat For the mass of workers these questions were indissolubly bound up with the personality of L.D. They discussed his speeches--and in these discussions could be felt the unity and inflexibility of will: a burning desire to march forward, summoning for a decisive struggle with unconquerable faith in victory.

After a brief siesta, I saw him (Trotsky) sitting at his desk, which was already covered with items relating to the El Popular case. He continued to be in good spirits. And it made me feel more cheerful. Lev Davidovich had of late been complaining of enervation to which he succumbed occasionally. He knew that it was a passing condition, but lately he seemed to be in greater doubt about it than ever before; today seemed to us to mark the beginning of improvement in his physical condition. He looked well too. Every now and then I opened the door to his room just a trifle, so as not to disturb him, and saw him in his usual position, bent over his desk, pen in hand. I recalled the line, "One more and final story and my scroll is at an end." Thus speaks the ancient monk-scribe Pimen in Pushkin's drama "Boris Godounov," as he recorded the evil deeds of Czar Boris.

Lev Davidovich led a life close in semblance to that of a prisoner or a hermit, with this difference that in his solitude he not only kept a chronological record of events but waged an indomitably passionate struggle against his ideological enemies...

At five, the two of us had tea, as usual. At twenty minutes past five, perhaps at half past, I stepped out on the balcony and saw L. D. in the patio near an open rabbit hutch. He was feeding the animals. Beside him was an unfamiliar figure. Only when he removed his hat and started to approach the balcony did I recognize him. It was "Jacson."

"He's here again," it flashed through my mind. "Why has he begun to come so often?" I asked myself.

"I'm frightfully thirsty, may I have a glass of water?" he asked, upon greeting me.

"Perhaps you would like a cup of tea?"

"No no. I dined too late and feel that the food is up here," he answered, pointing at his throat. "it's choking me." The color of his face was gray-green. His general appearance was that of a very nervous man.

"Why are you wearing your hat and topcoat?" (His topcoat was hanging over his left arm, pressed against his body.) "It's so sunny today."

"Yes, but you know it won't last long, it might rain." I wanted to argue that "today it won't rain" and of his always boasting that he never wore a hat or coat, even in the wont weather, but somehow I became depressed and let the subject drop. Instead I asked:

"And how is Sylvia feeling?"

He did not appear to understand me. I had upset him by my previous question about his topcoat and hat. And he was completely lost in his own thoughts, and very nervous. Finally, as if rousing himself from a deep sleep, he answered me: "Sylvia?... Sylvia?..." And catching himself, he added casually: "She's always well."

He began to retrace his steps towards Lev Davidovich and the rabbit hutches. I asked him as he walked away: "Is your article ready?"

"Yes, it's ready."

"Is it typed?"

With an awkward movement of his hand, while he continued to press against his body his topcoat in the lining of which were sewn in, as it was later revealed, a pickaxe and a dagger, he produced several typewritten pages to show me.

"It's good that your manuscript is not written by hand. Lev Davidovich dislikes illegible manuscripts."

Two days earlier he had called on us, also wearing a topcoat and a hat. I did not see him then as, unfortunately, I was not at home. But Lev Davidovich told me that "Jacson" had called and had somewhat surprised him by his conduct Lev Davidovich mentioned it in a way which indicated that he had no desire to elaborate upon the matter, but at the same time he felt that he had to mention it to me, sensing some new feature about the man.

"He brought an outline of his article, in reality a few phrases - muddled stuff. I made some suggestions to him. We shall see." And Lev Davidovich added, "Yesterday he did not resemble a Frenchman at all. Suddenly he sat down on my desk and kept his hat on all the while."

"Yes, it's strange" I said in wonderment. "He never wears a hat."

"This time he wore a hat," answered Lev Davidovich and pursued this subject no further. He spoke casually. But I was taken aback: it seemed to me that on this occasion he had perceived something new about "Jacson" but had not yet reached, or rather was in no hurry to draw conclusions. This brief conversation of ours occurred on the eve of the crime.

Wearing a hat.. topcoat on his arm... sat himself down on the table - wasn't this a rehearsal on his part? This was done so that he would be more certain and precise in his movements on the morrow.

Who could have suspected it then? It stirred us to embarrassment, nothing more. Who could have foretold that the day of August 20, so ordinary, would be so fateful? Nothing bespoke its ominousness. From dawn the sun was shining, as always here, the whole day brightly. Flowers were blooming, and grass seemed polished with lacquer... We went about our tasks each in his own way, all of us trying in whatever we did to facilitate Lev Davidovich's work. How many times in the course of that day did he mount the little steps of this same balcony, and walk into this, his room, and sit down on this very same chair beside the desk... All this used to hem ordinary and is now by its very ordinariness so terrible and tragic. No one, none among us, not he himself was able to sense the impending disaster. And in this inability a kind of abyss yawns. On the contrary, the whole day was one of the most tranquil. When L. D. stepped out at noon into the patio and I perceived him standing there bareheaded beneath the scorching sun, I hastened to bring him his white cap to protect his head against the merciless hot rays. To protect from the sun... but even at that very moment he was already threatened with a terrible death. At that hour we did not sense his doom, an outburst of despair did not convulse our hearts.

I recall that when the alarm system in the house, the garden and the patio was being installed by our friends and guard posts were being assigned, I drew L. D.'s attention to the fact that a guard should also be posted at his window. This seemed to me at the time so palpably indispensable. But L. D. objected that to do so it would be necessary to expand the guard, increase it to ten which was beyond our resources both in point of money and of available people at the disposal of our organization. A guard outside the window could not have saved him in this particular instance. But the absence of one worried me. L. D. was likewise very touched by a present given him by our American friends after the attack of May 24. It was a bullet proof vest, something like an ancient shirt of mail. As I examined it one day, I happened to remark that it would be good to get something for the head. L. D. insisted that the comrade assigned to the most responsible post wear the vest each time. After the failure suffered by our enemies in the May 24 attack, we were absolutely certain that Stalin would not halt, and we were making preparations. We also knew that a different form of attack would be used by the G.P.U. Nor did we exclude a blow on the part of a "solitary individual" sent secretly and paid by the G.P.U. But neither the bullet-proof vest nor a helmet could have served as safeguards. To apply these methods of defense from day to day was impossible. It was impossible to convert one's life solely into self-defense--for in that case life loses all its value.

As "Jacson" and I approached Lev Davidovich the latter addressed me in Russian, "You know, he is expecting Sylvia to call on us. They are leaving tomorrow." It was a suggestion on his part that I should invite them to tea, if not supper.

"I didn't know that you intend leaving tomorrow and are expecting Sylvia here."

"Yes...yes... I forgot to mention it to you."

"It's too bad that I didn't know, I might have sent a few things to New York."

"I could call tomorrow at one."

"No, no, thank you. It would inconvenience both of us."

And turning to Lev Davidovich, I explained in Russian that I had already asked "Jacson" to tea but that he refused, complaining about not feeling well, being terribly thirsty and asked me only for a glass of water. Lev Davidovich glanced at him attentively, and said in a tone of light reproach, "Your health is poor again, you look ill... That's not good."

There was a pause. Lev Davidovich was loath to tear himself away from the rabbits and in no mood to listen to an article. However, he controlled himself and said, "Well, what do you say, shall we go over your article?"

He fastened the hutches methodically, and removed his working gloves. He took good care of his hands, or rather his fingers inasmuch as the slightest scratch irritated him, interfered with his writing. He always kept his pen like his fingers in order. He brushed off his blue blouse and slowly, silently started walking towards the house accompanied by "Jacson" and myself. I came with them to the door of Lev Davidovich's study; the door closed, and I walked into the adjoining room....

Not more than three or four minutes had elapsed when I heard a terrible, soul-shaking cry and without so much as realizing who it was that uttered this cry, I rushed in the direction from which it came. Between the dining room and the balcony, on the threshold, beside the door post and leaning against it stood... Lev Davidovich. His face was covered with blood, his eyes, without glasses, were sharp blue, his hands were hanging.

"What happened? What happened?"

I flung my arms about him, but he did not immediately answer. It flashed through my mind. Perhaps something had fallen from the ceiling - some repair work was being done there - but why was he here?

And he said to me calmly, without any indignation, bitterness or irritation, "Jacson." L.D. said it as if he wished to say, "It has happened." We took a few steps and Lev Davidovich, with my help, slumped to the floor on the little carpet there.

"Natasha, I love you.'" He said this so unexpectedly, so gravely, almost severely that, weak from inner shock, I swayed toward him.

"0...0... no one, no one must be allowed to see you without being searched."

Carefully placing a pillow under his broken head, I held a piece of ice to his wound and wiped the blood from his face with cotton...

"Seva must be taken away from all this..."

He spoke with difficulty, unclearly, but was - so it seemed to me - unaware of it.

"You know, in there... " his eyes moved towards the door of his room... "I sensed... understood what he wanted to do.... He wanted to strike me... once more... but I didn't let him," he spoke calmly, quietly, his voice breaking.

"But I didn't let him." There was a note of satisfaction in these words. At the same time Lev Davidovich turned to Joe, and spoke to him in English. Joe was kneeling on the floor as I was, on the other side, just opposite me. I strained to catch the words, but couldn't make them out. At that moment I saw Charlie, his face chalk-white, revolver in hand, rush into Lev Davidovich's room.

"What about that one" I asked Lev Davidovich. "They will kill him."

"No... impermissible to kill, he must be forced to talk," Lev Davidovich replied, still uttering the words with difficulty, slowly.

A kind of pathetic whining suddenly broke upon our ears. I glanced in a quandary at Lev Davidovich. With a barely noticeable movement of his eyes, he indicated the door of his room and said condescendingly, "It's he"... "Has the doctor arrived yet?"

"He'll be here any minute now... Charlie has gone in a car to fetch him."

The doctor arrived, examined the wound and agitatedly stated that it was "not dangerous." Lev Davidovich accepted this calmly, almost indifferently as though one could not expect any other pronouncement from a physician in such a situation. But, turning to Joe and indicating his heart, he said in English, "I feel it here... This time they have succeeded." He was sparing me.

Everything we said in connection with the violent death of L.D. Trotsky is today being wholly confirmed by the confession of Louis Budenz, a former leader of the American “Communist” Stalinist Party, in his book, This Is My Story, published in March of this year. The testimony of this GPU sub-agent, who took part in the conspiracy against the life of L.D. Trotsky, introduces nothing factually new, but it does authoritatively corroborate everything that we said on the basis of general political considerations as well by taking into account the numerous facts which occurred during the years of our exile.

The confessions of Louis Budenz throw light upon the entire activity of Stalin’s secret “Apparatus,” which has usurped power and which acts with bloody arbitrariness. According to Budenz, Earl Browder and Jack Stachel participated in the plot against Trotsky’s life. The plan of Stalin’s terroristic deed was discussed in New York. For many reasons, and in the first instance, because Constantine Oumansky, who for many long years was attached to the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs in the capacity of secret police agent, participated both in the “accidental” and non-accidental deaths of Stalin’s enemies, it is difficult to suppose that he was not involved in one way or another in the crime perpetrated in Mexico during his stay as Soviet Ambassador in the United States. Oumansky himself “fell victim of an accident.” Was he perhaps in reality doomed to perish?

Louis Budenz leaves much that is unsaid ... he probably knows much more! But under the conspiratorial system, where each of the participants in the plot is told only what concerns him and nothing more, Budenz might have remained uninformed about some of the most important things. Let us hope that presently others will come forward with supplementary revelations.

Stalin cherished the project of physically destroying the leader of the anti-totalitarian Opposition even before the expulsion of Trotsky from the Russian Communist Party. Sometime after the death of Lenin, as was testified by Zinoviev and Kamenev, who at that time formed together with Stalin the secret ruling Triumvirate, Stalin posed to himself the task of getting rid of his opponent at any price. This found its confirmation in attempts which at that time looked like accidents, but which were highly suspicious nevertheless. Thus in 1924 when L.D. was recuperating in Kislovodsk, we happened one night to be returning in a hand-car from a hunting trip together with Muralov and our guards The hand-car suddenly jumped the rails and overturned. We escaped only with contusions. But we never received a plausible explanation of what had caused the derailment.

On November 7, 1927 during the demonstration in celebration of the 1917 Revolution, the Trotskyist Opposition marched with its own banners and its Left slogans. Shots were fired at the automobile of L.D. Trotsky. At that time the Stalinist clique could not go beyond attempts of this sort.

To the uninitiated it might appear incomprehensible why Stalin should have first exiled Trotsky abroad and then tried over a period of years to do away with him. In 1928 when Trotsky was exiled to Central Asia, it was still impossible to talk not only about shooting him but also about arresting him. The generation with whom Trotsky had passed through the entire October Revolution and the Civil War was still alive. The Political Bureau felt itself besieged from all sides and Stalin’s project could not have been realized at that time either politically or psychologically. Even the legal exile of L.D. was not managed successfully by Stalin; it was broken up by a huge demonstration which took place at night in the railway station. The tumultuous crowd set up a large portrait of the leader of the October Revolution on one of the cars, cheered enthusiastically, and halted the train as it started moving. But Trotsky was not on it. The departure had been cancelled. Here, too, Stalin was obliged to resort to deception and to a secret train in order to achieve the exile.

Comrades: You know quite well that I have not been in political agreement with you for the past five or six years, since the end of the war and even earlier. The position you have taken on the important events of recent times shows me that, instead of correcting your earlier errors, you are persisting in them and deepening them. On the road you have taken, you have reached a point where it is no longer possible for me to remain silent or to confine myself to private protests. I must now express my opinions publicly.

The step which I feel obliged to take has been a grave and difficult one for me, and I can only regret it sincerely. But there is no other way. After a great deal of reflections and hesitations over a problem which pained me deeply, I find that I must tell you that I see no other way than to say openly that our disagreements make it impossible for me to remain any longer in your ranks.

The reasons for this final action on my part are known to most of you. I repeat them here briefly only for those to whom they are not familiar, touching only on our fundamentally important differences and not on the differences over matters of daily policy which are related to them or which follow from them.

Obsessed by old and outlived formulas, you continue to regard the Stalinist state as a workers state. I cannot and will not follow you in this.

Virtually every year after the beginning of the fight against the usurping Stalinist bureaucracy, L.D. Trotsky repeated that the regime was moving to the right, under conditions of a lagging world revolution and the seizure of all political positions in Russia by the bureaucracy. Time and again, he pointed out how the consolidation of Stalinism in Russia led to the worsening of the economic, political and social positions of the working class, and the triumph of a tyrannical and privileged aristocracy. If this trend continues, he said, the revolution will be at an end and the restoration of capitalism will be achieved.

That, unfortunately, is what has happened even if in new and unexpected forms. There is hardly a country in the world where the authentic ideas and bearers of socialism are so barbarously hounded. It should be clear to everyone that the revolution has been completely destroyed by Stalinism. Yet you continue to say that under this unspeakable regime, Russia is still a workers state or with socialism. They are the worst and the most dangerous enemies of socialism and the working class. You now hold that the states of Eastern Europe over which Stalinism established its domination during and after the war, are likewise workers states. This is equivalent to saying that Stalinism has carried out a revolutionary socialist role. I cannot and will not follow you in this.

After the war and even before it ended, there was a rising revolutionary movement of the masses in these Eastern countries. But it was not these masses that won power and it was not a workers state that was established by their struggle. It was the Stalinist counter-revolution that won power, reducing these lands to vassals of the Kremlin by strangling the working masses, their revolutionary struggles and their revolutionary aspirations.

By considering that the Stalinist bureaucracy established workers states in these countries, you assign to it a progressive and even revolutionary role. By propagating this monstrous falsehood to the workers vanguard, you deny to the Fourth International all the basic reason for existence as the world party of the socialist revolution. In the past, we always considered Stalinism to be a counter-revolutionary force in every sense of the term. You no longer do so. But I continue to do so. In 1932 and 1933, the Stalinists, in order to justify their shameless capitulation to Hitlerism, declared that it would matter little if the Fascists came to power because socialism would come after and through the rule of Fascism. Only dehumanized brutes without a shred of socialist thought or spirit could have argued this way. Now, notwithstanding the revolutionary aims which animate you, you maintain that the despotic Stalinist reaction which has triumphed in Eastern Europe is one of the roads through which socialism will eventually come. This view marks an irredeemable break with the profoundest convictions always held by our movement and which I continue to share.

I find it impossible to follow you in the question of the Tito regime in Yugoslavia. All the sympathy and support of revolutionists and even of all democrats, should go to the Yugoslav people in their determined resistance to the efforts of Moscow to reduce them and their country to vassalage. Every advantage should be taken of the concessions which the Yugoslav regime now finds itself obliged to make to the people. But your entire press is now devoted to an inexcusable idealization of the Titoist bureaucracy for which no ground exists in the traditions and principles of our movement.

This bureaucracy is only a replica, in a new form, of the old Stalinist bureaucracy. It was trained in the ideas, the politics and morals of the GPU. Its regime differs from Stalins in no fundamental regard. It is absurd to believe or to teach that the revolutionary leadership of the Yugoslav people will develop out of this bureaucracy or in any way other than in the course of struggle against it.

Most insupportable of all is the position on the war to which you have committed yourselves. The third world war which threatens humanity confronts the revolutionary movement with the most difficult problems, the most complex situations, the gravest decisions. Our position can be taken only after the most earnest and freest discussions. But in the face of all the events of recent years, you continue to advocate, and to pledge the entire movement, to the defense of the Stalinist state. You are even now supporting the armies of Stalinism in the war which is being endured by the anguished Korean people. I cannot and will not follow you in this.

As far back as 1927, Trotsky, in reply to a disloyal question put to him in the Political Bureau by Stalin, stated his views as follows: For the socialist fatherland, yes! For the Stalinist regime, no! That was in 1927! Now, twenty-three years later Stalin has left nothing of the Socialist fatherland. It has been replaced by the enslavement and degradation of the people by the Stalinist autocracy. This is the state you propose to defend in the war, which you are already defending in Korea.

I know very well how often you repeat that you are criticizing Stalinism and fighting it. But the fact is that your criticism and your fight lost their value and can yield no results because they are determined by and subordinated to your position of defense of the Stalinist state. Whoever defends this regime of barbarous oppression, regardless of the motives, abandons the principles of socialism and internationalism. In the message sent me from the recent convention of the SWP you write that Trotsky's ideas continue to be your guide. I must tell you that I read these words with great bitterness. As you observe from what I have written above, I do not see his ideas in your politics. I have confidence in these ideas. I remain convinced that the only way out of the present situation is the social revolution, the self-emancipation of the proletariat of the world.

In the interview written by Michel Gordey and published in France-Soir on Monday November 7th, it says in the second paragraph "She (ie, myself) hopes, before she dies, to witness the rehabilitation by world communism of the one (Trotsky) who was, after Lenin, the greatest revolutionary of the modern times and the spiritual father of Mao Tse-Tung, the Chinese communist leader." These were certainly not my words; they were introduced by the author of the interview. I am therefore forced to clarify this by the following:

1. A great revolutionary like Leon Trotsky can in no way be the spiritual father of Mao Tse-Tung, who achieved his position in China in direct struggle with the left opposition (Trotskyist) and consolidated it by the assassination and persecution of revolutionaries, exactly as Chiang Kai-Shek did. The spiritual fathers of Mao and of his party are obviously Stalin (whom he in fact claims as such) and his collaborators, Khruschev included.

2. I consider the present Chinese regime, as well as the Russian regime or any other built on the same model, to be as far away from Marxism and from a proletarian revolution as Franco's regime in Spain.

3. The police terror and the slanders of Stalin were only the political aspects of a struggle to the death against the revolution, led by the whole of the bureaucracy. One therefore cannot expect the re-establishment of the truth in any other way than through the annihlation of the bureaucracy by the working class they have reduced to slaves. I do not have hopes for the Russian party nor for its immitators, who are basically anti-communist. Any de-Stalinization will turn out to be a confidence trick if it does not lead to the seizure of power by the proletariat andthe dissolution of the police, political, military and economic institutions, the basis of the counter-revolution, which established the Stalinist state capitalist regime.