Natalia Sedova Trotsky

Natalia Sedova Trotsky

Corrections to France-Soir Interview

Written: November 9, 1961
First Published:1971 (English translation)
Source:Natalia Trotsky and the Fourth International Pluto Press, 1972
Online Version: Natalia Sedova Internet Archive, December 2001
Transcribed/HTML Markup: Mike Bessler

Monsieur le Directeur:

In the interview written by Michel Gordey and published in France-Soir on Monday, November 7th, it says in the second paragraph “She (i.e., myself) hopes, before she dies, to witness the rehabilitation by world communism of the one (Trotsky) who was, after Lenin, the greatest revolutionary of the modern times and the spiritual father of Mao Tse-Tung, the Chinese communist leader.” These were certainly not my words; they were introduced by the author of the interview. I am therefore forced to clarify this by the following:

1. A great revolutionary like Leon Trotsky can in no way be the spiritual father of Mao Tse-Tung, who achieved his position in China in direct struggle with the left opposition (Trotskyist) and consolidated it by the assassination and persecution of revolutionaries, exactly as Chiang Kai-Shek did. The spiritual fathers of Mao and of his party are obviously Stalin (whom he in fact claims as such) and his collaborators, Khruschev included.
    
2. I consider the present Chinese regime, as well as the Russian regime or any other built on the same model, to be as far away from Marxism and from a proletarian revolution as Franco’s regime in Spain.
    
3. The police terror and the slanders of Stalin were only the political aspects of a struggle to the death against the revolution, led by the whole of the bureaucracy. One therefore cannot expect the re-establishment of the truth in any other way than through the annihlation of the bureaucracy by the working class they have reduced to slaves. I do not have hopes for the Russian party nor for its immitators, who are basically anti-communist. Any de-Stalinization will turn out to be a confidence trick if it does not lead to the seizure of power by the proletariat andthe dissolution of the police, political, military and economic institutions, the basis of the counter-revolution, which established the Stalinist state capitalist regime.

Footnote by MIA

1. This document was written by Natalia Sedova shortly before her death and is purported to be her last written statement. The statement was published in its entirety in one edition of France-Soir. It was printed in abbreviated form in other editions.

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Last updated on: 14 September 2015