Written: 16 April 1930.
Source: The Militant, Vol. III No. 27, 26 July 1930, p. 3.
Transcription/HTML Mark-up: Einde O’Callaghan for the Trotsky Internet Archive.
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More than three months ago. the following letter from comrade Trotsky was transmitted to Harry Winitsky business manager of the Revolutionary Age, organ of the American Right wing:
Buyuk-Ada, April 16, 1930
Dear Comrade Winitsky:
I have received your organ regularly. The various addresses signify the same. In thanking you for your kind attention. I nevertheless feel the need of expressing openly to you a certain surprise on my part in connection with your letter. The Revolutionary Age has from its very beginning, and its present director [1] long before its appearance, constantly and energetically denounced me and my friends as counter-revolutionists. I cannot doubt that this happened out of honest conviction.
You sign yourself, dear comrade Winitzky, “fraternally”. The sincerity of this salutation I also have absolutely no right to question. But since we are no diplomats, and what we say must correspond to what we think, I assume that if not the Revolutionary Age as a whole, then at least a section around it, no longer regards us as “counter-revolutionists”. Would it then not be in place to acknowledge this openly?
I raise this question not in my interest but in the interest of political clarification in general.
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In this spirit I also sign myself, Fraternally, |
Three months, and many issues of the Revolutionary Age, have elapsed, but no answer has been made in that paper, unless one can count as such the continued misrepresentations of Trotsky’s and the Opposition’s standpoint that appear in it regularly. The letter, it is true, was reported at the recent “convention” of the Lovestone group, and interpreted by the professional Trotsky-slayer, Bert Wolfe, as a “bid for unity” with the Right wing! But Wolfe’s conjuring tricks are not yet enough to obviate the need for an open reply to comrade Trotsky’s letter.
What have Winitzky and his paper to say?
1. Trotsky refers to Jay Lovestone.
Last updated on: 22.10.2012