Natalia Sedova Trotsky
Natalia Sedova Trotsky
Written: April 1948.
Source: The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 20, 17 May 1948, p. 3.
Online Version: Natalia Sedova Internet Archive, February 2022.
Transcribed/HTML Markup: Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
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We are printing the answer of Natalia Trotsky, widow of the famed revolutionary leader, to the latest Stalinist forgery printed in the French newspaper France Dimanche, and answered by The Militant of April 5, Natalia Trotsky has furthermore instituted suit for libel against France Dimanche. |
The French weekly, France Dimanche, presented to its readers on March 21 of this year a testament supposedly drawn up by Trotsky on May 20, 1940. This political will attributes to Trotsky a change of heart regarding the socialist revolution and his faith in the working class. The editors of the paper hasten to attest to their complete objectivity in publishing this “sensational document.” They did not bother, however, to question me on the subject. They found it more objective to refer to their interview of Dec. 8, 1946 with the assassin “Jacson-Mornard,” whom they designate, repeating the lie of the GPU, as a collaborator of Trotsky’s. This, fact alone suffices to brand them as paid hirelings of the Stalin apparatus. The unscrupulous gangsters of the pen cite the gangster of the pick-axe and the knife.
The so-called “Mornard” interview supplemented by his “confessions” concerning the crime committed by him eight years previously, gives a new version of the murder. The “sensational document” is but a continuation of a long chain of forgeries exposed by the Dewey commission in 1937.
The origin of the document is just as mythical as the document itself. According to France Dimanche, the testament was drawn up in July 1940, and that same month a Soviet agent succeeded in procuring a copy and sending it to Moscow. What speed in so delicate a matter! A second copy came into possession of the France Dimanche editors a short time back, presumably through the recently deceased Victor Serge (Kibalchich).
In this case the GPU manifested an incredible sluggishness. It provided itself with a copy so as to confirm therewith in case of need the existence of the France Dimanche document. Thus, eight years of significant silence were broken in the venal press. The Stalinist apparatus manufactures not only the document, but the proper occasion for its revelation.
The Soviet agent presumably procured a copy at the end of July from a “close friend” of Trotsky’s. France Dimanche mistakenly places the date of the assassination on July 20, 1940, so that the document, according to their calendar, was stolen soon after the assassination. But Trotsky was murdered a full month later. It must now be explained how the theft went unnoticed during an entire month. Neither I, nor any of the friends and co-workers of Trotsky ever saw or heard of such a testament.
But three copies somehow came into the possession of the writer Victor Serge. How? Victor Serge left Paris at the end of May 1940, before the Germans entered Paris, and for months moved about the south of France, without a permanent domicile. Serge himself emigrated to Mexico only in September of 1941, 13 months after the death of Trotsky. But the master forgers care nought for accuracy! Logic is foreign to them; they follow unswervingly Hitler’s maxim: “The bigger the lie, the readier will it be believed.”
Moreover, Trotsky had broken politically with Serge back in 1937 and criticized him sharply in many of his articles. Serge, who had great respect for Trotsky, moved away from revolutionary Marxism, if he was ever a genuine revolutionary Marxist.
What need would Serge have had for concealing the existence of so important a document, especially since it was seemingly intended as an “open declaration to the world’s workers?” True to the GPU form set in the Moscow Trials, everything hinges on a witness who can never be called to testify. Victor Serge is dead.
What aim does the GPU pursue in fabricating this testament of Trotsky? One does not have far to seek. Efforts along such lines were not only to be expected; they were actually predicted at the time of the Nuremberg trial of the Nazi arch-criminals. The Stalinist prosecutor present at the trial did not dare to accept the challenge of numerous petitions sent to the presiding judge, requesting that questions be put to Hess and the others to test the accuracy of testimony of the Moscow Trials concerning the alleged tie-up between Trotsky and the Nazis. The resounding silence, the utter failure to produce one single document that could even remotely bolster up the GPU frame-ups made it a foregone conclusion that new lies would be concocted, not in the light of day, but under circumstances more favorable for Stalinist fraud.
It is evident that a new campaign of slander and calumny is being set in motion, first of all in France. France is today the critical testing ground for the proletariat. It is no accident that along with the forgery of a will, there is appearing in French the GPU book of the Stalinist henchmen, Kahn and Sayers, The Great Conspiracy. The fake testament and the book of frauds are intended to divert attention from the real testament of Trotsky. Everything that he ever wrote is open to the working class of the entire world, for whom it was intended. When the murderer’s pick-axe entered the brain of Trotsky, his life blood spattered over his last work. It was the manuscript on Stalin. This work is about to appear in France. The Stalinists have every reason to fear the influence of this work upon workers and public opinion. The biography is one part of the real testament of L.D. Trotsky. The last words of Trotsky on his death-bed, spoken in my presence, show how unbreakable was the revolutionary spirit of this man. It is the complete answer to the new calumny. “Tell our friends that I am sure of the victory of the Fourth International. Go forward!”
That message was immediately transmitted by wireless and press to all corners of the world. It is the meaning of that message reinforced by all the living ideas of Trotskyism, that leaves the Stalinists no peace. The very lies, in their monstrous growth, one negating the other, and yet, being feverishly manufactured anew, are a tribute to the strength of the real ideas of Trotsky. Stalin would like to shut the door of Trotskyism to the workers by having them think that it leads to hopelessness and bankruptcy. That door is Stalinism. Precisely through the heritage of the unconquerable Marxist teaching, inspired by the revolutionary fervor of L.D. Trotsky, will the world working class regain its confidence and its unified strength.
In vain do the Stalinist gravediggers of the revolution use their temporary power to bury the gigantic thought contained in the October revolution. All the lies of the frightful totalitarian regime that now rules Russia will. crumble along with the regime itself – this is inevitable. Trotskyism will find its proper place with the coming of a sharp turn to a new revolutionary upsurge. Trotskyism remains the sole continuator of the, great revolutionary: traditions of Marx, Engels and Lenin. That is the essence of the real testament of Leon Trotsky.
Last updated on: 3 February 2022