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From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 29, 3 June 1933, pp. 1 & 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
From Paris comes the alarming news of a Hitler-Pilsudski plot against the Soviet Union. J. Sauerwein, Foreign editor of the Paris Matin, reveals the whole machination in a wire to the New York Times of June 1.
French authorities made the news public in an effort to hold Poland and the Little Entente in line, a task which has become increasingly difficult for Quai D’Orsay diplomacy due to the rigors of the world-wide economic crisis. The Polish move in support o£ the conspiracy, originally concocted by Nazi statesmen, is interpreted as an attempt to counteract the Four Power Pact plans of France, which have met with resistance from Warsaw due to provisions for rearmament made for former Central Power nations, which the Pilsudski regime fears. Sauerwein writes:
“The idea of the Nazi scheme, as the French understand it, is that Poland would make a big territorial concession to Germany in the Polish corridor and receive as compensation territory in Soviet Ukraine in the direction of the Black Sea. It is a German idea ... Marshal Pilsudski has had his eye on the Ukraine ever since he fought the Russians there in 1920.”
From the report, which Monseiur Sauerwein says, the French consider reliable and which they obtained from “secret sources,” one thing stands out most clearly, Namely, that on every side of the European diplomatic tangle the way out is, seen – in an attack against Soviet Russia and in its subsequent colonization.
Furthermore, in this attack, Hitler is indubitably to be the spearhead. The French merely want to contract him for the job under the conditions of the Four Power Pact, with Poland as a subsidiary. Poland itself wrangles for a more prominent place.
That the French are losing their grip somewhat is apparent. With Mussolini to the South and Hitler to the East of them, loss of control over Poland and the Little Entente would seriously weaken them. That is why they hold on so desperately.
Hitler, on the other hand, would like nothing better than to gird himself for the French by an alliance with the other notorious adventurer of Eastern Europe, Pilsudski. In this he no doubt hopes for Washington’s blessing. The Roosevelt “peace message,” which the Nazi chancellor was only too ready to welcome in his last Reichstag address, leaves ample room for such an aspiration. The first step in its fulfillment is clear – the Nazi-Polish alliance against the USSR. What else has Hitler to offer Pilsudski? On what other grounds can Pilsudski meet Hitler?
Yet, no matter which way the Franco-German tangle is solved, with France directing or with Hitler in the lead under American auspices ultimately, the line-up must be against the fatherland of the workers. It will be concluded. That much is obvious. Only the purblind cannot see this. To trust in non-aggression pacts, as the Litvinoffs and Stalins and Karakhans do, means under these conditions, to prepare the ground objectively for a smashing defeat of Soviet Russia.
To put confidence in the imperialist contradictions alone, as the present regime in the Soviet Union does, means to go to the slaughter blindfolded.
The Western powers are heading for an intervention agreement. Japan, in the Far East, is making ready for collusion in the attack by the seizure of the Chinese Eastern, by the setting-up of a new North China vassal state, by the conclusion of a binding truce with the lackeys of the Kuomintang. From all sides, imperialist ambuscades lurk ahead for the fortress of the world revolution.
Stalinism has paralyzed the Communist International, the arm of world revolution.
Stalinism has betrayed the Chinese proletariat and helped into power the Kuomintang bandits, who have sold out to the Japanese aggressor.
Stalinism has betrayed the German working class by a senseless, unrealistic policy which has played into the hands of Fascism.
To what end? So that socialism might be built in one country – in Russia!? Where has this wise, “practical policy,” which has “compromised” with Chiang Kai Shek and alienated the bulk of the reformist working class of the world, led to?
It must be plainly said: It has led to the isolation of the revolutionary fatherland. It has laid it open to attack from without by opportunist compromises directed against the world revolution. It has laid it open to decay from within by the adventuristic reeling of bureaucratic centrism.
The fortress of the world revolution is in danger. By the perfidy of non-aggression pacts, by the trust it gives to the conflicts of world imperialism, Stalinism is only throwing dust into the eyes of the workers. It is only undermining the worker’s’ fatherland and the cause of world revolution.
If workers’ Russia is to live, Stalinism must go. If the land of the Soviets is to light the way for world revolution, the reactionary theory of socialism in one country must be thrown overboard.
Back to the line of Marx and Lenin – bajck to the Marxist perspective of the permanent revolution! Return the exiled Bolshevik-Leninists, Trotsky, Rakovsky and their comrades, to the post of struggle which they held in the victorious October! That is the command of the hour.
Every Communist worker who sees the danger; to whom the Four Power Peace Pacts and the Hitler-Pilsudski plots reveal it; who is not fooled by the capitalist non-aggression pacts and the peace talk, must do his duty.
Demand the reinstatement of the International Left Opposition into the Communist International! Demand the return of Trotsky and Rakovsky! That is the way to bring new vigor, a new source of strength to the proletarian army, which is sorely in need of it.
Act while there is still time to act!
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