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From New International, Vol.4 No.11, November 1938, p.351.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
A lady named Lillian Symes who writes in the Socialist Call (July 23, 1938) and who is interested also in the labor movement, declares:
Stung by these exposures of early Bolshevik morality (which does not, of course, excuse the later variety), Trotsky recently undertook to answer all these non-Stalinist critics in a long article called Their Morals and Ours. It is an amazing attempt to rationalize and defend the Kronstadt massacre of 1921, the suppression of all non-Bolshevik revolutionaries, Lenin’s and his own slandering of opponents and the wiping out of the Workers’ Opposition within the Bolshevik party. It is a typical Bolshevik performance which will impress no one but his followers. Too much is now known on these subjects.
It is only on the ground that she knows “too much” about the subject that one can explain Miss Symes’ morality, which apparently permits attacks upon unread articles. For Trotsky’s Their Morals and Ours contains only one (1) passing reference to Kronstadt (“For the same reason Pharisees of various hues return to Kronstadt and Makhno with such obstinacy ...”); no (0) reference at all to the suppression of all non-Bolshevik revolutionaries; no (0) reference at all to Lenin’s and Trotsky’s slandering of opponents; and just as little (0) reference to the wiping out of the Workers’ Opposition. The Symes performance is also typical, but not of Bolsheviks.
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