In my 1984 book, “Lenin’s Struggle for a Revolutionary International,” I provided what I hoped was a representative selection of Trotsky’s 1914-16 writings on the war, presented in their historical context beside writings from other viewpoints, ranging from Lenin to Kautsky. I am not aware of any more recent anthology that has provided a more comprehensive selection.

I’d certainly be interested in hearing (and perhaps publishing) your impression of that collection of Trotsky’s wartime writings, and its limitations.

This book is still in print and exists in PDF format, but the digital record has not been made available — not even in the form of short promotional excerpts, which would help build sales. That is why I have undertaken to provide my own collection of excerpts on this blog and in the U.S. Socialist Worker. Unfortunately, because of copyright issues, I must do entirely new translations, which limits the scope of this enterprise.

In preparing that book, I relied mainly on Trotsky’s post-1917 collection of his wartime writings, Voina i Revoliutsiia. It’s a fascinating anthology, particularly in Trotsky’s willingness to publish writings that were in sharp conflict with Lenin’s positions at the time. This is indicative of the freedom of discussion of historical issues among Bolsheviks at the time. In Lenin’s time, they had no “party line” on history — in contrast to so many small revolutionary groups today.

There is another anthology, and I must admit I cannot for the moment recall its title. (I lost access to my files in 2004.) This book was also published in Russian in the 1920s, and it contains the writings that Trotsky did not find worthy of inclusion in his main volume. A partially annotated draft translation by Brian Pearce exists and passed through my hands in the 1980s; I secured its deposit in the Amsterdam IISG, and it can be accessed there.

This collection consists of Trotsky’s journalistic writings, especially for Kievskais Mysl’, and the articles do not say much on the key strategic issues that you are concerned with. Still, it’s interesting to see how Trotsky handled the challenge of writing for legal, non-revolutionary papers functioning under war censorship, and much of the descriptive material is vivid and revealing.

I don’t see how you can say the “peace movement” failed in 1914-18. What failed was the concept of a peace movement separated from the class struggle as a whole. Perhaps this is what you mean. As I wrote in “Responding to capitalist global disaster: World War and climate change”, this lesson seems applicable to our response to capitalism’s current war against a sustainable physical environment for humankind.

By the way, Paul Kellogg gave a strong defense of key aspects of Trotsky’s wartime positions in a paper at the May 2015 Historical Materialism conference in Toronto. Also, Lars Lih has underlined how Lenin shifted his position on “defeatism” soon after the February 1917 revolution.

John Riddell

Pat, thanks for your thoughtful comments. I’ll respond early in the week…

John Riddell

Also, some years back I had hoped that ‘Trotsky and the First World War’ by Ian Thatcher was going to give me access to Trotsky’s positions on the anti-war struggle but unfortunately, Ian chose to quote very little of what Trotsky actually wrote, preferring to give his interpretations of what he wrote. Once again a very frustrating state of affairs.
Pat

It is a great misfortune that while we have access in English to almost all of Lenin’s writings there is still a significant section of Trotsky’s material that has not yet been translated and made available. This is particularly the case with Trotsky’s writing in the First World War. So your publication here of his article is very much appreciated.

I would argue that the century-long lack of availability of Trotsky’s war-time writing was a political decision by both the Leninist and Trotskyist movements not to publish what they would regard at best as irrelevant or at worst as embarrassing material. Material that might undermine the “infallible” image of Lenin or Trotsky or both. In doing so I think that they have done not only a disservice to the historical debate but have underestimated the intelligence of the socialist community.

Coming on to the important difference between Lenin and Trotsky on their response to the First World War, I believe that in this difference lies an explanation of why the socialist left in Europe failed to develop an effective anti-war movement in Europe despite the great potential laid for it in Zimmerwald.

Hopefully, as we progress through the 100th anniversary of the various stages of the First World War, great comrades like John Riddell and others will encourage the translation and publication of the relevant war-time writings of Trotsky and others so that we can understand what happened to “The Peace Campaign That Never Was”.
Pat Byrne
patbyrneme@gmail.com

Dear Angelos–
Thank you for pointing out the unfortunate omission from my reprint of the Lenin article in my “100 years ago: Two calls to struggle against the world war.” I have restored the missing words on my website.
How could this have happened? As you surmise, the text was lifted directly from Marxists Internet Archive, without omissions. Was a line perhaps inadvertently deleted? Perhaps. If I find a better explanation, I’ll tell you.
I offer my apologies to all my readers for this misleading error.

Just curious: how could this happen? didn’t you just cut and paste the publication in Marxists Internet Archive, which you quite properly credit as your source?