Continuation of Commentary on Red Symphony:
And he said further:
"At the end of 1932 I, in connection with my nationalist activities, entered into treasonable
connections with Mr. N. We met in my office, where Mr. N used to come to see me on
business concerning a German concession.
THE PRESIDENT: Accused Rakovsky. {Rakovsky's final plea}
RAKOVSKY: Citizen President of the Court, Citizens Judges, yesterday I listened with
great and rapt attention to the speech for the prosecution delivered by the Procurator of
the Union, not because I intended to enter into a controversy with him. I had no such
intention. I confessed to all my crimes. What would it matter for the substance of the case
if I should attempt to establish here before you the fact that I learned of many of the
crimes, and of the most appalling crimes of the "bloc of Rights and Trotskyites," here in
Court, and that it was here that I first met some of the participants? It is of no import
whatever. I am connected with the "bloc of Rights and Trotskyites,' of course within the
limits defined by the Criminal Code, by that complicity, both political and juridical, which
follows from the fact that I belonged to this bloc.
Like a galley-slave fettered to his galley, I am fettered to the "bloc of Rights and
Trotskyites" with the heavy chain of my crimes. I participated in the underground counter-
revolutionary Trotskyite organization up to the last moment, to the moment of my arrest.
I was an active member of the "block of Rights and Trotskyites." I committed the
gravest crimes against the state. I am doubly a spy. In 1924 I established criminal
connections with the British Intelligence Service, and in 1934 I established criminal
connections with the Japanese intelligence service. In 1927 I carried on negotiations with
some of the Right capitalist circles in France, the object of these negotiations being in the
long run also directed against the Soviet Union. In 1935 I took advantage of the fact that
the French Minister Laval was on a visit in Moscow, accompanied by French journalists,
in order to attempt in a conversation with one of them (I mentioned his name) to hinder,
to disrupt, the Franco-Soviet rapprochement.
Citizens Judges, I informed you about Trotsky's letter of July 1934, in which he wrote
of the necessity of isolating Stalin internationally, that is to say, of strengthening,
consolidating the capitalist encirclement around the Soviet Union. I belonged to the so-
called "Fifth Column" of which the Procurator spoke yesterday, and I have deserved all
those maledictions which are now sweeping from all corners of the Soviet land against us
sitting here in the dock, maledictions of which the speech for the prosecution delivered by
the Procurator, however severe and trenchant it was with regard to us, was perhaps but
a weak reflection.
Citizens Judges, I share the State Prosecutor's regret that the enemy of the people,
Trotsky, is not here in the dock alongside of us. The picture of our trial loses in
completeness and depth because of the fact that the ataman of our gang is not present
here. Nobody will suspect me of saying this from a selfish desire, from a base motive to
shift on to Trotsky a part of that guilt and that responsibility which I myself bear. I am
older than Trotsky both in years and in political career, and I probably have no less
political experience than Trotsky. I regret his absence here for considerations of a
political nature. I am sorry, because Trotsky's absence in this dock means that no matter
how his opportunities may be limited, his activities will continue, and this presents a
danger, even if a small one for the international labour movement. It is true that even
beyond the Mexican meridian Trotsky will not escape that complete, final, shameful
ignominy which we all are undergoing here.
This, in substance, covers everything relating to the legal, juridical aspect of my
case, and I would have even foregone my last plea had I not considered it necessary,
after what was said here by the Procurator, to try in my turn to point out the exceptional
political importance of the present trial. But it seems to me that Citizen the Procurator
70
dwelt on only one aspect of the case. Yes, he stressed the monstrosity of the crimes
which we committed, but I should like to turn your attention,
Citizens Judges, to the fact that the monstrosity of this is also determined by the
persons who committed these crimes. Who were those who committed espionage,
wrecking, acts of diversion, terrorism, murder? They were committed not by candidates
for criminal court records, people living in slums and cellars. The criminals sitting here
had to be taken from the house of the government. And thus the question which arises
and to which I, as one of those involved, feel the necessity to find an answer, is the
question as to how former members of the Central Committee, former members of the
government, former ambassadors have ended up here. What form of insanity brought
them to this dock of political infamy?
I think that this is all the more necessary since this question faces every one of us
and every one is searching for an explanation. I shall mention one explanation which is
widely current. After all, this is not the first trial. I remember how this question was
answered in connection with the other trials. People are satisfied with the trite and
shallow bourgeois explanation, according to which all revolutions finish by devouring their
own children. The October Revolution, they say, did not escape this general law of
historical fatalism.
It is a ridiculous, groundless analogy. Bourgeois revolutions did indeed finish -
excuse me if I cite here some theoretical arguments which, however, are of significance
for the present moment - bourgeois revolutions did indeed finish by devouring their own
children, because after they had triumphed they had to suppress their allies from among
the people, their revolutionary allies of the Left.
But the proletarian revolution, the revolution of the class which is revolutionary to the
end, when it applies what Marx called "plebeian methods of retaliation, " it applies them
not to the advanced elements, it applies them to those who stand in the way of this
revolution, or to those who, as ourselves, were with this revolution, marched along with it
for a certain time, and then stabbed it in the back.
And I, an active Trotskyite, a very close personal friend of Trotsky (the Procurator
has established that our friendship was of 34 years' duration), a man who after many had
returned (true, with duplicity) into the Party, continued for many more years to carry on an
open struggle against the Party leadership. I want to answer this question. Permit me to
share with you my thoughts, on this subject.
Citizens Judges, why indeed did it happen that I turned against my Party and in the
end sank to the status of a criminal? What did we Trotskyites represent in the Party? We
were what is known as an alien body in the living Party organism. Trotsky joined the
Bolshevik Party only a few months before the October Revolution, his Ideology took
shape in the fight against Bolshevism. I joined the Party at the end of 1917, after I had
belonged for more than a quarter of a century to the Second International, which
developed under entirely specific conditions, under the conditions of peaceful
development of capitalism, and, although I belonged to its Left wing, I was permeated by
its opportunism. If you trace back the history of other Trotskyites, if I take Radek,
Pyatakov Preobrazhensky as examples, you will find that both before the October
Revolution and after the October Revolution every one of them as guilty of a number of
serious deviations.
And it must be said that from the very first moment we Trotskyites adopted the
attitude of antagonists of the Party leadership. From the very first moment. Brest-Litovsk.
I shall not refer here to the testimony (you know it) which clarifies Trotsky's role during
the period of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. The discussion about the trade unions. What
was that? It was a trial of forces. The accused Zelensky mentioned facts here which will
perhaps reveal that there was in general another attempt there, only, as far as
remember, all the persons whom he mentioned did not belong to the Trotskyite faction,
but to the so-called D. C. faction, the faction of Democratic Centralism. We suffered
defeat and immediately adopted an orientation toward foreign states. It is sufficient just to
remind you of the fact which was here established. We suffered defeat in 1921 in the
discussion on the trade unions. The Party in its striving to consolidate its internal unity
71
removed a number of Trotskyites from the Central Committee.
In 1921 Trotsky already gave his first instruction about establishing criminal
connections with the German intelligence service. In 1926 came the second instruction.
The first instruction was given to Krestinsky, the second to Rosengoltz. At the end of
1924 a recruiting aent of the intelligence service called on me; I could have thrown him
down the stairs, because he resorted to blackmail. But when he said: "Do not forget that
we obtained the agreement for you because we learnt that you were a Trotskyite, " this
touched the Trotskyite strain in me. I gave no answer at the time, I talked it over with
Trotsky. We knew the position we were in. I had been removed from the Ukraine, some
had been removed from the Central Committee, Smirnov had been removed from the
Siberian Revolutionary Committee, Radek and Pyatakov were also at loose end, and
Trotsky was saying that in the very near future, within the next few days, he would have
to quit the Revolutionary Committee, unless he wanted to be ousted from it with a bang.
I am arraying all these facts so that the picture may become clear. In 1926 we
already established connections with the foreign intelligence service. In 1927 it became
apparent that we were suffering defeat, and that it would be a defeat after which no
maneuver would succeed, because before that defeat the Zinovievite-Trotskyite
opposition stood at attention before the Party and remained in the Party while continuing
to work against the Party; we knew that at the Fifteenth Congress of the Party, at the very
latest, we would be expelled, if not all of us, at any rate Trotsky. Now we had to pass on
to work in secret. After that I left for France. In August and September I carried on
negotiations about uniting the opposition and about what we could obtain from certain
French circles in order to gain victory.
I shall not relate the history of Trotskyism, it is well known. I only want to speak about
the formation of the "bloc of Rights and Trotskyites. " The formation of the "bloc of Rights
and Trotskyites " was, if we may put it that way, "a marriage of convenience, " each party
contributing its dowery. We Trotskyites contributed our connections with foreign
intelligence services, the Rights contributed their cadres, their connections with the
nationalist, Menshevik, Socialist-Revolutionary and other elements, their connections
with the kulaks. Of course, in addition to this fixed capital of ours, each could contribute
something else. We did not hesitate before perfidy, before deceit, treason, bribery,
murder by means of poison or the revolver instead of the traditional dagger.
I shall not speak of any ideology of this bloc. You heard here the platform of my
fellow-accused in this trial, N. I. Bukharin . This, of course, represents restoration of
capitalist relations in two leaps, through opening the sluices for free trade with abroad,
through the return of the kulaks, through the liquidation of the collective farms, through
opening the doors wide for concession capital. We calculated that we would achieve
complete the triumph of capitalism in an extremely short period of time.
Ours was, of course, a counter-revolutionary ideology. We wanted to rely for support
on the elements which had already been doomed by the Five-Year Plans, the elements
which had been swept away, cast out. Of course there is nothing surprising in the fact
that these old ruins came down with a crash and we found ourselves buried under the
debris. I think that this is not enough. In my opinion, there is no precedent of politically
minded people, people who had a definite political past, experience, and so forth,
displaying such naivete, such self-delusion, such illusions as those which held sway over
them. Yes, it was raving, real raving, the ravings of a madman to think that way, but we
did think that way. We thought that with our insignificant forces, not only without any base
of support, but with the working class against us, with the Party against us - we thought
that we could achieve some results. These were ravings, calculating on some kind of
foreign assistance. Ravings in what sense? This foreign assistance would utilize us and
then throw us overboard. From a political force, we became a tool.
Ravings in every respect. Our misfortune was that we; occupied responsible posts,
that power had made us dizzy. We were blinded by that passion, by that ambition for
power. This cannot be explained by "ideology" alone. These two factors, taken together
and acting in combination, brought us to the dock.
We considered ourselves to be people sent by providence, we consoled ourselves
72
with the thought that we would be summoned, that we were needed. This is what both
the Trotskyites and the Rights said. We did not notice that the entire development of the
Soviet Union swept over us, that the peaceful revolution which transformed our
countryside swept over us, that this immense growth of the cultural and political level of
the masses of the people and the creation of new cadres of politically trained people from
among the Stakhanovites swept over us. All this swept over us, unnoticed by us.
The sobering moment had to come. Perhaps I will somewhat contradict what the
Procurator said, but I am of the opinion that the "bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" was
doomed to disintegration. Of course, this does not absolve the bloc of the responsibility
for the crimes which were committed.
There was no political future whatever in store for us. For many of us the moment of
sobering had not arrived, because it began only after we had been arrested.
Citizens Judges, I told everything that I committed, without concealing or holding
back a single fact. Both during the Court investigation, during the preliminary
investigation, and during the trial (I think I will not be mistaken if I say so) I was not found
guilty of a single contradiction or of concealing any fact.
I think that this proves that I revealed myself before you fully and entirely, that I stand
fully and entirely exposed.
I wish to make one appeal to you, an appeal which would never have escaped my
lips if this were a different court. But I make this appeal to you because I see in your
persons the Soviet Court, the proletarian Court. It is an appeal for mercy. Yesterday the
State Prosecutor made this task in a certain sense easier for me, inasmuch as he did not
demand the supreme penalty for me. But I must say that in the gradation of the minimum
and maximum which the citizen Procurator mentioned here, there is a certain limit which
exceeds the limits of my age. I want to mention this only: that, in applying the appropriate
articles of the law to me, you may consider this circumstance and form your decision in
accordance, so to speak, with the physiological limitations of the accused who stands
before you.
Citizens Judges, from my young days I honestly, truthfully and devotedly performed
my duty as a soldier of the cause of the emancipation of labour. After this bright period a
dark period set in, the period of my criminal deeds, of treason to the fatherland, a series
of dark crimes which I briefly summed up before you today. I told you all I knew, I told
everything, I concealed nothing, I held back nothing, I repent deeply and sincerely, and I
ask you to give me the opportunity to redeem even if an insignificant part of my guilt,
even by the most modest work, no matter under what circumstances. I have finished.
THE PRESIDENT: The accused Rosengoltz may make his last plea.
On Trotsky's second wife, Natalya Sedova
http//www. acts 17 11. com/red symphony. htm
As far as Trotsky's ties to the world financial elite are concerned, they were well-known long
before the publication of The Red Symphony. In 1919 the French government received from its
informer in Washington a detailed report (1618-6 No. 912), where "Red Leon's" New York
banker-sponsors were listed. It was noted that Trotsky established his connections with the
financiers after his marriage to the daughter of banker Abram Zhivotovsky . One of the main
financiers of the Revolution Felix Warburg compromised himself to such a degree by his
connections with the Bolsheviks that it was decided to remove him from the US Federal Reserve
Board, in order to "cover the traces" of American bankers' ties to the Russian Revolution.
Dmitri Volkogonov deals with Trotsky's time in New York in 1917 on pp. 64-5 of his biography
Trotsky: the Eternal Revolutionary.
He says that Trotsky spent 2 months there giving lectures & meeting other revolutionaries.
Then he returned to Russia.
His wife (2nd, Natalya Sedova) went to New York with him on the boat. (p. 63).
73
At first, I thought that the Red Symphony claim was that Trotsky married a Warburg daughter
in New York in 1917. But it is Natalya Sedova who it refers to - the claim being that she was
"associated with" Abram Zhivotovsky. Trotsky married her about 1904 (whether common-law or
formal, is not known).
The surname "Zhivotovsky" does not show up in the index of Volkogonov's book. Natalya
Sedova left her husband, for Trotsky; Trotsky's children with her were given the surname
"Sedov". Natalya may have kept her first husband's name. Alternatively, she may have kept her
mother's surname, just as Trotsky's children did.
There is only one reference to Natalya in Red Symphony, and it does not say that she is the
daughter of Zhivotovsky, although that is one of the interpretations.
It reads,
Sedova. Do you know who she is? She is associated with Zhivotovsky, linked with the
bankers Warburg, partners and relatives of Jacob Schiff, i.e. of that financial group which,
as I had said, had also financed the revolution of 1905.
The claim, thus put, is worth investigating.
Rakovsky's credibility at the Moscow Trials
From internet searches, I found that after Trotsky's expulsion, Rakovsky was his chief
representative in Russia, although he always remained an independent thinker. In searches, look
for C. G. Rakovsky , Christian Ravoksky , and Khristian Rakovsky .
Later, after the rise of Hitler, Rakovsky endorsed Stalin as the lesser evil; Trotsky then broke
with him. I found this information on a Trotskyist website.
Although witnesses at the Moscow Trials would have been subject to torture, this break
between Trotsky & Rakovsky gives added credibility to Rakovsky's evidence.
The official English transcript of the Moscow Trials, dealing with Rakovsky, contains an anti-
Trotskyist line, but says nothing of the llluminati.
But Red Symphony purports to be raw data, an interrogation in French - so that Russians
present would not understand - and in which the interrogator wants Rakovsky to tell much more
than could be disclosed later at the Trial, and in official documents.
In it, Rakovsky persists in an anti-Stalin line, saying that what passes for "Communism"
under Stalin is really Bonapartism, and that he - Rakovsky - stands for Socialism instead (this
makes it sound genuine to me). But, he says, Sedova's marriage wrought a tie between Wall
Street and Trotsky. Lenin and the other Jewish Bolsheviks did not know about it, but Lenin's wife
did.
It says that the rise of Stalin wrecked the Wall Street plan to control and use Communism, via
Trotsky. So they helped fund Hitler's rise to power - not that they controlled Hitler - partly because
he talked of attacking the USSR, and partly because War creates opportunities for the
Revolution.
According to Rakovsky, their message for Stalin was that he should divide Poland with Hitler.
If he did so, the West would attack Germany only. If he did not, they would let Germany attack
the USSR, without coming to its aid.
Illuminatus and the llluminoids - "Rowan Berkeley" on Red Symphony
Date: Sun, 9 May 2004 21:15:50 +0100
From: "Rowan Berkeley" <
rowan_berkeley@yahoo.co.uk>
> You take an equally hard line on Makow,
> Israel Shamir and Barry Chamish ...
> Do you accept that Mordecai Vanunu is
> genuine, or does he get caught up in
74
> your "fakery" net too? Aren't 18 years
> in jail (10 in solitary confinement)
> enough evidence?
... I hope I have never suggested or implied that Mordecai Vanunu was some sort of
plant. As for Barry Chamish and Henry Makow , though, I stick to my view, which is that
they have a discernable agenda, namely to minimize the apparent Jewish domination of
today's global elite, and to argue by means of whatever patter suits their respective
audiences that the masters of the elite are not Jews. The range of substitute evil elites
which has been created by the llluminoid disinformational chorus is quite stunning, really,
when you add it up: Sabbatians, Frankists, Satanists, Nazis, Freemasons, British Titled
Thugs and Monarchs, the European Black Nobility , the Jesuits , the Vatican , the
Merovingians , Lizards from Zeta Reticuli ... let the inner circle be composed of anything
other than Jews, is the golden rule, and you will be allowed to rant to your heart's
content.
In Barry's case, this is achieved by means of a highly inventive linguistic shell game,
which progressively defines Sabbatians and Frankists as bad Jews, then as non-Jews,
and finally as anti-Jews, so that the religious and ethnic elements in the definitions
become hopelessly mixed up. He learned this trick, ironically, from ultra-Orthodox Rabbis
who originally invented it to delegitimise Labour Zionists for being too preoccupied with
profane nationalism, but have now turned it round so as to delegitimise Labour Zionists
for not being preoccupied enough with profane nationalism, which therefore has to be
protected by religious Zionist fanatics of the Kachist sort. For an even more crass
example of Zionist propaganda masquerading as anti-NWO radicalism, see:
http://pushhamburqer.com
A bit of Googling has indicated that the Spanish text "Sinfonia en Rojo Major",
produced by Editorial E.R.S.A. under the well-known publisher Senor Don Mauricio
Carlavilla , etc etc, does after all exist, albeit untranslated. However, since this gentleman
is the publisher of George Knupffer's own works in Spanish translation, it is impossible to
determine who really is responsible for the book - Landowsky, Carlavilla, the 'Spanish
volunteer' ("This is the result of a painstaking translation of several copybooks found on
the body of Dr. Landowsky in a hut on the Petrograd front by a Spanish volunteer"), or
Knupffer himself.
I think I will stick with Anthony Sutton , actually, though I do enjoy the dialectical
elegance of "Red Symphony" and I am only indulging in sour grapes about it because I
have wasted money trying to get the full English version, which definitely doesn't exist
yet. There is a job here for a translator, if they can find a copy of the Spanish edition.
But Henry Makow is one of those who argue that Red Symphony is genuine, and important for
understanding the continuance of Communism post-Soviet Union, via the Feminist, Gay, and
other "minority" movements.
Makow put the "llluminati Defector" material on his website, which claims that the conspiracy
is 'Aryan'
Illuminati Defector Details Pervasive Conspiracy , but later agreed with me that it writes out the
Jewish role. It's possible that the defector is genuine, but unaware that she's in the lower ranks,
and is deceived herself.
Trotsky in Norway, accused of co-operating with the Gestapo
Trotsky explicitly promoted Radical Feminism, Youth Rebellion, Communal Childrearing and the
Destruction of the Family, in his book The Revolution Betrayed.
It was written in 1936, when Trotsky was living in Norway, and was first published in 1937.
The English translation is by Max Eastman.
How do you like your Trotsky - hot or cold?
The Revolution Betrayed is hot - a fiery manifesto, and the author comes across as a fearful
warrior wreaking social havoc; one is glad that he was contained. Yet his account of his time in
75
Norway is cold - it reads like a traveller's diary, and I cannot help feeling sympathy for him.
Trotsky in Norway:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotskv/works/1936/1936-nor.htm .
In The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky mentions Rakovsky as a close ally:
{p. 86} Chapter 5 THE SOVIET THERMIDOR
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1936-rev/ch05.htm
{p. 101} Christian Rakovsky, former president of the soviet of People's Commissars of
the Ukraine, and later Soviet Ambassador in London and Paris, sent to his friends in
1928, when already in exile, a brief inguiry into the Soviet bureaucracy, which we have
guoted above several times, for it still remains the best that has been written on this
subject. ...
It is true that Rakovsky himself, broken by the bureaucratic repressions,
subseguently repudiated his own critical judgments. But the 70-year-old Galileo too,
caught in the vise of the Holy Inguisition, found himself compelled to repudiate the
system of CopernicusNwhich did not prevent the earth from continuing to revolve around
the sun. We do not believe in the recantation of the 60-year-old Rakovsky, for he himself
has more than once made a withering analysis of such recantations.
Rakovsky features prominently in Red Symphony, as a prisoner at the Moscow Trials - which
were under way when Trotsky was in Norway (after writing The Revolution Betrayed). According
to Red Symphony, Rakovsky remained a Trotskyist, but confessed that High Finance was behind
Trotsky, through his wife Natalya Sedova, and that the powers thus promoting Trotsky, having
lost control of the Soviet Union to Stalin, would back Hitler, in order to destroy the wrong kind of
Communism Stalin was creating.
Could this be why, just before Trotsky left Norway, the Soviet Government accused him of
co-operating with the Gestapo?
Trotsky expresses his astonishment at this charge. Trotsky in Norway:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1936/1936-nor.htm .
Trotsky calls Stalin a Bonapartist
In the paragraphs below, from The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky calls Stalin a Bonapartist,
likening him to Napoleon I and Napoleon III. But he also likens him to Hitler, saying that all of
them were defeaters of the democratic forces. Trotsky never admits the covert Jewish leadership
of those "democratic" forces.
Contrary to Trotsky's position, what Napoleon I, Napoleon II, and Stalin have in common is
that they defeated Jewish and/or Freemasonic revolutionary movements from within, yet carried
the revolution forward; Hitler did the same from the outside.
Some may object over the Freemasonry claim. But Trotsky himself agreed, in his
autobiography, that the French Revolution had been launched by Freemasons or llluminiati. He
studied this topic when in Odessa prison.
The hardback edition is My Life: The Rise and Fall of a Dictator (Thornton Butterworth
Limited, London 1930); the paperback edition is My Life (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1975).
{hbk p. 106, pbk p. 124} It was during that period that I became interested in
freemasonry...
{hbk p. 107} In the eighteenth century freemasonry became expressive of a militant
policy of enlightenment, as in the case of the llluminati, who were the forerunners of the
revolution; on its left it culminated in the Carbonari. Freemasons counted among their
members both Louis XVI and the Dr. Guillotin who invented the guillotine. In southern
Germany freemasonry assumed an openly revolutionary character, whereas at the court
of Catherine the Great it was a masguerade reflecting the {pbk p. 125} aristocratic and
bureaucratic hierarchy. A freemason Novikov was exiled to Siberia by a freemason
Empress. ...
{hbk p. 108, pbk p. 126} I discontinued my work on freemasonry to take up the study
76
of Marxian economics. ... The work on freemasonry acted as a sort of test for these
hypotheses. ... I think this influenced the whole course of my intellectual development.
{Stalin resembles Napoleon 1}
{p. 186} Chapter VIM FOREIGN POLICY AND THE ARMY
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotskv/works/1936-rev/ch08.htm
{p. 197} Napoleon I, after radically abandoning the traditions of Jacobinism, donning the
crown, and restoring the Catholic cult, remained nevertheless an object of hatred to the
whole of ruling semi-feudal Europe, because he continued to defend the new property
system created by the revolution. Until the monopoly of foreign trade is broken and the
rights of capital restored, the Soviet Union, in spite of all the services of its ruling stratum,
remains in the eyes of the bourgeoisie of the whole world an irreconcilable enemy, and
German National Socialism a friend, if not today, at least of tomorrow.
{Stalin also resembles Napoleon III}
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotskv/works/1936-rev/chll.htm
Chapter 11
WHITHER THE SOVIET UNION?
Bonapartism as a Regime of Crisis ...
{p. 277} Caesarism, or its bourgeois form, Bonapartism, enters the scene in those
moments of history when the sharp struggle of two camps raises the state power, so to
speak, above the nation, and guarantees it, in appearance, a complete independence of
classes in reality, only the freedom necessary for a defense of the privileged. The Stalin
{p. 278} regime, rising above a politically atomized society, resting upon a police and
officers' corps, and allowing of no control whatever, is obviously a variation of
Bonapartism - a Bonapartism of a new type not before seen in history.
Caesarism arose upon the basis of a slave society shaken by inward strife.
Bonapartism is one of the political weapons of the capitalist regime in its critical period.
Stalinism is a variety of the same system, but upon the basis of a workers' state torn by
the antagonism between an organized and armed Soviet aristocracy and the unarmed
toiling masses.
As history testifies, Bonapartism gets along admirably with a universal, and even a
secret, ballot. The democratic ritual of Bonapartism is the plebiscite. From time to time,
the question is presented to the citizens: for or against the leader? And the voter feels the
barrel of a revolver between his shoulders. Since the time of Napoleon III, who now
seems a provincial dilettante, this technique has received an extraordinary development.
The new Soviet constitution which establishes Bonapartism on a plebiscite basis is the
veritable crown of the system.
{Stalin resembles Hitler}
In the last analysis, Soviet Bonapartism owes its birth to the belatedness of the world
revolution. But in the capitalist countries the same cause gave rise to fascism. We thus
arrive at the conclusion, unexpected at first glance, but in reality inevitable, that the
crushing of Soviet democracy by an all-powerful bureaucracy and the extermination of
bourgeois democracy by fascism were produced by one and the same cause: the
dilatoriness of the world proletariat in solving the problems set for it by history. Stalinism
and fascism, in spite of a deep difference in social foundations, are symmetrical
phenomena. In many of their features they show a deadly similarity. A victorious
revolutionary movement in Europe would im-
{p. 279} mediately shake not only fascism, but Soviet Bonapartism. In turning its back to
the international revolution, the Stalinist bureaucracy was, from its own point of view,
right. It was merely obeying the voice of self-preservation.
77
A Dating Anomaly
Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 21:57:34 -0400 From:
patricksmcnally@aim.com
... As for the alleged "Rakovsky interview" which appears in "Red Symphony," that, at least in its
present form, is clearly a fake. The World Bank was formed out of the Bretton Woods conference
of 1944. Christian Rakovsky himself died in 1941 and his trial occurred in 1938. There is no way
that the real Rakovsky could have made a comment such as 'I think I shall not be wrong if I tell
you that not one of "Them" is a person who occupies a political position or a position in the World
Bank.'
This comment was obviously written as bait for a paleo-conservative audience of the 1950s,
many of whom liked to charge that the World Bank and any other internationally functioning
organizations were 'Communist.' Whether that means that the actual script was written by a
paleo-conservative of the 1950s or by someone else with an altogether different motive, who
really knows? But it certainly wouldn't have been the authentic Rakovsky making such a
comment about the World Bank 6 years before the Bretton Woods conference.
Patrick S. McNally
Red Symphony remains intriguing because of its advocacy of Convergence as a policy. This
developed in detail many years later. Gorbachev, for example, was following that path.
Now that Stalinism has completely fallen, other variants of Communism - Trotskyist, New
Left, the Frankfurt School, Postmodernism, George Soros & Maurice Strong's Green/"New Age"
one - are making a comeback. They are all, broadly, in Trotsky's camp.
The Trots, even though "for the poor against the rich", are even more for "unifying the world".
Under themselves, of course. That's why they published a book in favour of Free Trade.
Convergence between Communism and Capitalism was supported by H. G. Wells and by
David Ben Gurion, when he predicted World Government by 1987, as well as by Gorbachev - via
his talk of a single "World Civilization"
In each case, they wanted to get rid of Stalinism in the USSR, and "Anti-Semitism" in the
West.
Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, invited in 1962 to predict what the world would
be like in 25 years' time, wrote in LOOK magazine, Jan. 16, 1962:
The image of the world in 1987 as traced in my imagination: the Cold War will be a thing
of the past. Internal pressure of the constantly growing intelligentsia in Russia for more
freedom and the pressure of the masses for raising their living standards may lead to a
gradual democratization of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, the increasing influence
of the workers and farmers, and rising political importance of men of science, may
transform the United States into a welfare state with a planned economy. Western and
Eastern Europe will become a federation of autonomous states having a Socialist and
democratic regime.
With the exception of the USSR as a federated Eurasian state, all other
continents will become united in a world alliance, at whose disposal will be an
international police force. All armies will be abolished, and there will be no more
wars. In Jerusalem, the United Nations (a truly United Nations) will build a shrine of
the Prophets to serve the federated union of all continents; this will be the scene of
the Supreme Court of Mankind, to settle all controversies among the federated
continents, as prophesied by Isaiah. Higher education will be the right of every
person in the world. A pill to prevent pregnancy will slow down the explosive natural
increase in China and India. And by 1987, the average life-span of man will reach
100 years.
78