Pierre Monatte 1924
Source: Archives Pierre Monatte;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2005.
Translated: by Mitch Abidor.
June 16, 1924
Dear Comrade Zinoviev:
I was touched to receive the telegram in which the Presidium asks me to come to the congress to explain myself concerning the existing disagreements. Forgive me, though, for not accepting the invitation. After serious reflection I maintain my original decision, of which the Party Secretariat probably informed you.
The reasons behind my decision are the following:
The French Party, at its last National Council, unanimously supported the theses of its leadership committee (by 2,353 votes against 3). I could thus only bring before the presidium a simple personal opinion, and not that of certain strata of the Party. It is thus an opinion of no weight. In any event, what weight is there to this personal opinion after two delegates from the Executive, Kirsh in an article in l'Humanité and Klein at the tribune of the National Council, assimilated me to Frossard; It’s not what I could tell you that would change anything in the operation of the French party. Time and events will be more eloquent. Today the center and the left have the leadership of the party, which they exercise. I don’t want to be reproached for having caused l'Humanité to lose its clear Communist character nor to have poisoned the Party with my so-called pessimism and my real syndicalism.
During the past eighteen months I have often regretted having ceded to the demands of the delegate of the Executive when I wasn’t yet a member of the Party, and for having gone to work for l'Humanité after the Paris congress.
After eighteen months of experience on the editorial board of l'Humanité, after a year of vain efforts at the Commission syndicale centrale, I ask from you the freedom to remove myself from the leading spheres of the Party. I am returning to the workshop and reenter the ranks. I am certain to in this way better serve the Communist International, of which I remain the most devoted of foot-soldiers.
Tomorrow like today, rest assured comrade Zinoviev, of my absolute attachment to communist ideas, to the Russian Revolution, and to the world revolution.
Pierre Monatte