Malaparte Curzio, Coup d'etat, The Technique of Revolution (2004)

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struggle originated many years before the October Revolution of 1917. It was
after the Congress of London in 1903 when the split occurred between Lenin and
Martoff, between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, that Trotsky openly disagreed
with Lenin s ideas. Though he did not then join Martoff s party, he found the
Menshevik program much more attractive than that of the Bolsheviks. But in
reality, all these personal and doctrinal origins, and the fact that the danger of
Trotskyism (i.e., of deviations, deformations, and heresy) in the interpretation of
Lenin s thought had to be suppressed, were only official pretexts and
justifications for a hostility whose origin lay deep in the Bolshevik mentality
itself, in the feelings and aims of the peasant and working-class masses and in
the political, economic and social situation in Soviet Russia after Lenin s death.
The history of that struggle between Stalin and Trotsky is the story of
Trotsky s attempt to capture the State and of the kind of defense of the State
which was used by Stalin and the old Bolshevik Guard. It is the story of an
unsuccessful coup d Etat. Stalin countered Trotsky s theory of the permanent
revolution with Lenin s ideas on the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Both
factions fought each other in the name of Lenin.
But events of far graver import than mere essays on the interpretation of
Leninism lay concealed beneath these intrigues, discussions and sophisms.
Supreme power was at stake. The question of a successor to Lenin arose
long before his death when the first symptoms of his illness appeared, and it was
not merely a theoretical question. Personal ambitions lay concealed behind
doctrinal problems: we must not be misled by the official pretexts of the
discussion. Trotsky s chief concern in this controversy was to appear as a
disinterested defender of Lenin s moral and intellectual legacy, as the guardian
of the principles which guided the October revolution, and as an intransigent
Communist struggling against the degeneration of the party into a bureaucracy
and against the growth of a bourgeois spirit in the Soviet State. But Stalin , in the
controversy, chiefly wanted to keep both the Communists of other countries and
the capitalists, liberals, and democrats in Europe, in ignorance of the real reason
why the disciples of Lenin, genuine representatives of Soviet Russia, were
fighting amongst themselves. In point of fact, Trotsky struggled to capture the
State, Stalin to defend it. Stalin has no trace of the Russian s apathy about him,
none of his effortless submission to good and evil alike, his vague rebellions and
perverse self-sacrifice or his cruel and childish kindness. Stalin is not Russian but
Georgian. His cleverness lies in patience, willpower, and good sense. He is
confident and obstinate. His enemies accuse him of lacking knowledge and
intelligence; they are mistaken. He is not a cultured man in the European sense of
the word, not overfed with sophistry and psychological fanaticism. Stalin is a
barbarian, in Lenin s sense of the word, an enemy of Western culture,
psychology and ethics. His intellect is entirely physical and instinctive, in a
natural state, and without the prejudices or the moral sense of a cultured man. It
has been said that men reveal their character in their bearing. I saw Stalin in May
1929 at the Pan-Russian Soviet Congress, walking up on to the stage in the Grand
Theatre of Moscow. I was just below the footlights in the orchestra stalls when he
appeared from behind a double row of the People s Commissaries, the delegates
from Tzic and the members of the Party s Central Committee, lined up on the
stage. He was quite simply dressed in a gray jacket of military cut and dark cloth
trousers gathered into his high boots. Square-shouldered, short, thick-set, his
massive head covered with black curly hair, and narrow eyes accentuated by
very black eyebrows; his face was darkened by shaggy black moustaches; he
walked slowly and heavily, striking the ground with his heels as he went; his
head thrust forward and his arms swinging made him look like a peasant, but a
peasant from the highlands-hard, patient, and obstinate. Ignoring the thunder of
applause which greeted him, he walked on slowly, took his place behind Rykoff
and Kalinin, raised his head, looked at the huge crowd which acclaimed him,
and stood motionless and stooping slightly-his eyes fixed straight in front of him.
About twenty Tartar deputies, representing the autonomous Soviet Republics of
the Bakirs, the Bouriat-Mongols, Iakouts, and Daghestan alone observed a rigid
silence in their stage-box. They were dressed in yellow and green silk kaftans,
with silver- embroidered tartar caps on their long black shiny hair and they
stared at Stalin with little narrow slit eyes: at Stalin the dictator, the iron fist of
the Revolution, mortal enemy of the West and of civilized and bourgeois Europe.
When the delirious shouts of the crowd began to die down, Stalin slowly turned
his head toward the Tartar deputies: the Mongols eyes met those of the dictator.
A great shout filled the theatre: it was the greeting of Proletarian Russia to Red
Asia, to the people of the plains, the deserts, and the great Asiatic rivers. Again
Stalin turned coolly to the crowd. He remained bent and motionless, his
unseeing eyes fixed straight in front of him.
Stalin s strength lay in his serenity and patience. He watched Trotsky s
actions, studied his movements and followed in his quick, irresolute, nervous
steps at his own pace, which was that of a peasant, heavy and slow. Stalin was
reticent, cold, and obstinate; Trotsky proud, violent, egoistic, impatient,
governed by his ambition and his imagination. He was passionate, bold, and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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