Conference report
Trotsky in St. Petersburg
A conference commemorating the 90th anniversary of the 1905 St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers Deputies was held in St Petersburg, (tormerly Leningrad, formerly Petrograd) Russia on December 4, 1995.
The St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies, of whic eon Trotsky was a President and a key political leader, was established on October 13, 1905 as a product of massive worker rebellions. It survived for 50 days as a council of workers' delegates and an incipient organ of a workers' government before it was suppressed by the Isar's police. The idea for this conference originated with the Committee for the Study of Leon Trotsky's Legacy (CSLTL) which was founded at the first conference on Trotsky in Russia held in November 1994 in Moscow.
The 1995 conference, "An International Symposium on The Fate of Soviet Democracy'" ", was intended to have a special focus on the possibilities for the rebirth of such councils of workers' rule today, with a special focus on Trotsky's enormous contribution in connection with it. After all, he developed his theory of the permanent revolution as a result of his experiences in the 1905 revolution. He realized from that experience that the councils of workers delegates or deputies formed the basis for the dictatorship of the proletariat which he explained was essential to replace and overthrow the hegemony ot the capitalists and their bourgeois dictatorship not only in the developed capitalist countries, but in the colonial countries as well.
The symposium was jointly sponsored by the CSLTL, the History Faculty of St. Petersburg University-which hosted the conference and Scholars for Democracy and Socialism. Addressing the conference were professors and political activists from Russia and abroad. About 60 people gathered as the Conference was opened by local academics.
V. V. Kalashnikov, a professor at St. Petersburg University and also the co-chairperson of the Socialist Party of Toilers one of several parties to have emerged from the ruins of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union-made the opening remarks. He discussed the rise of workers democracy from 1905 through the Russian revolution of 1917 and its immediate aftermath and the subsequent repression of workers democracy to the present time. It is noteworthy that Kalashnikov managed to cover this history without once mentioning Leon Trotsky, either for his role in the 1905 or October 1917 revolutions or his struggle in defense of workers' democracy trom 1923 as leader of the Lett Opposition until his assassination by Stalin's agent in 1940. It is precisely such selective, falsified versions of history that have characterized the stalin and post-Stalin periods in the Soviet Union anc Russia, and that the CSLTL was established to correct
Kalashnkiov also offered some useful remarks about more recent Russian history. In particular he dealt with the problems ot an historic tendency for Russia to try to catch up with the West by the use ot a strong state. Such a state undermines the possibilities for democracy.
Kalashnikov was followed by S.I. Patolov, a professor of history and department chair at the Russian Academy of Sciences speaking on "The Revolution of 1905 and the First Soviets in Russia, " N.V. Mikhailov, also a professor of history at the Russian Academy of Sciences speaking on "The Petersburg Workers and the Organization of Workers Councils 1905-1907," N.N. Smirnov a professor of history at St. Petersburg University on "Soviets and the Crisis of Power in 1993," sociologist M.P. Rubinchuk on "Culture and the Soviets", , and history protessor Geoff Barr of the University of Exeter in England on An Old Story, Trotsky and Democracy: Soviets versus Parliaments."
The speakers were asked to confine their remarks to roughly ten minutes which most did, with many-but not all-of the reports translated into either Kussian or English. Serving as indispensible translators were Nikolai Preobrazhensky, a Marxist historian of the workers movement who lives in St. Petersburg; Rob Jones, a member of the Militant Labor Party who lives in Moscow; and Alexei Gusev, who also addressed the meeting. The morning session was meant to focus on historical aspects of the theme with the afternoon session devoted more to the relevance of the lessons of the 1905 revolution today.
Nearly 90 people attended the morning session, most of them young students in the history faculty. Unfortunately, the audience shrank considerably to some 25 after the lunch break, seven of whom were international guests. Afternoon speakers included Alexei Gusev, candidate of historical sciences at Moscow State University and an International Coordinator of the CSLTL, who spoke on "L. Trotsky, the Trotskyists, and the Problem of Soviet Democracy: 1923-1940;" Gusev raised some interesting questions about the policies of the Trotskyist opposition trom the early 1920s through to 1933. He pointed to the evolution of the opposition's thinking under the pressure of vents. He argued that while Trotsky favored party democracy le did not favor Soviet democracy in the period of the Lef Opposition (1923-5). He suggested that the Trotskyists only favored full Soviet democracy after 1933
This contribution led to vigorous debate. Some argued that Trotsky's position was far more democratic than Gusev had suggested. Others thought that Gusev was accurate in his assessment and that there was no basis in the 1920s for Soviet de milled Ticktin, a Reader at the University of Glasgow spoke democracy.
Hillel Ticktin, a Reader at the University of Glasgow spoke on "The Permanent Revolution of Leon Trotsky and Soviet Democracy; He spoke of the rigor and persistence of Trotsky, and sharply outlined the theory of permanent revolution and related it to Marx's ideas. The backwardness of the Soviet Union meant that a cultural revolution was needed before the kind of workers' democracy envisaged by the Russian revolutionaries could work. Ticktin pointed especially to the international aspects of permanent revolution and argued that the Soviet revolution was unsustainable without revolutions in the West.
Alexander Buzgalin, Professor of Economics at Moscow State University spoke on "The Fate of Democracy on the Eve of the Twentieth Century. " He argued that the key question was workers' self-management. He pointed out that under both the New Economic Policy of the 1920s and under Gorbachev's Perestroika there were struggles by workers to manage their own factories.
International Viewpoint January 1996 33
Geoffrey Caveney, a young political activist and student of Russian revolutionary history from Chicago spoke on "Trotsky, Youth, and the Call for 'Stability'"'; Boris Tamarkin, a young student, on "Trotsky the Polemicist." The latter speaker appeared at the conference unexpected with a very large collection of notes on works of Trotsky's he had just recently read while preparing his report.
The symposium was chaired throughout by Protessor Mikhail Voyeikov, Economics Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow who is a key organizer of the CSLTL in Moscow. After the reports, time was allowed for discussion.
The weak attendance at the conference's afternoon session reflected above all the fact that the CSLTL had no cadre in St. Petersburg to organize the event and had to rely on the History Faculty of St. Petersburg University to organize and publicize the conference there. Unfortunately, that Faculty, aside from providing the lecture hall—which was, of course, much appreciatedapparently confined its publicity efforts to inviting some of the professors classes with students who seemed unfamiliar with the conference theme. One reporter from a "mainstream" paper attended the afternoon session and requested more information.
The Russians attending and those involved in the conference from both St. Petersburg and Moscow were no discouraged by the small attendance. Immediately following the conference they and the international guests met to review ways to improve efforts. Local working committees need to be formed not only in Moscow and St. Petersburg but in the U.K., France, Greece, and elsewhere, which most of those attending seemed ready to do.
Just how much work remains to be done to revive the buried history and Trotsky's role in it was apparent the next day when some of those who attended the conference, led by Professor Voyeikov, set out to tour some of the historic cites of the 1905 revolution. The tourists arrived at the Technological Institute, where the plenary of the 1905 St. Petersburg soviet of workers deputies was about to meet when the building was surrounded by the Tsars police. The executive committee of the soviet, with Trotsky as its president, were meeting inside. They were all arrested on December 3, 1905 and the uprising was defeated.
What we learned at the site was disappointing. The only museum therewhich was closed due to renovations— is devoted to scientific achievements by scholars such as Mendeleyev who also worked in that building over the years. Although there was a wall that held pictures of apparently political importance, that wall was covered over, also due to renovation. No one at the Institute seemed to know which was the room the Executive Committee and Trotsky were meeting in when the police arrested them. The allegedly learned women in charge claimed not to know who the presidents of the 1905 soviet were and would not credit rotsky with any role in it. She finally assigned one of her lower-ranking assistants to guide the tourists in their search. They think that they managed to find the historic room but it was closed, unmarked and also under renovation. History in the former Soviet Union is still buried deeply, behind closed doors.
The Committee for the Study of Leon Trotsky's Legacy, whose working committee met in St. Petersburg in conjunction with the conference, voted to continue its efforts and will sponsor its next conference in Moscow November 22-24, 1996 on the subject "The Revolution Betrayed, 60 Years Later:" It will focus on the book by Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed, published in exile in 1936, when Trotsky was in enforced exile Many feel this book, Trotsky's scientific analysis of the degeneration of the Russian revolution and of Stalinism, is the most crucial expression of Marxist thought in the twentieth century, indispensable to understanding the evolution of the class struggle in our epoch, particularly in the former Soviet Union. There are at least three, small editions of this book available in Russian in Russia.
by Marilyn Vogt-Downey (with additional information contributed by Geoff Barr).
Announcement The International Committee for the Study of
Leon Trotsky's Legacy has agreed that it will return to Moscow for a larger conference from 22 to 24 November 1996.
In 1936 Trotsky wrote The Revolution Betrayed
Sixty years later this classic will be assessed against the passage of time. It will provide an opportunity for us to examine the historic importance of Trotsky's works and it will be a time to look at where the countries of the ex-
Soviet Union are going now.
The Committee has resolved to expand its work among academics in Russia and in the wider world. The main focus of the publications program remains publishing Trotsky's work in
Russian. 'The Case of Leon Trotsky' in Russian is the next major project. The key papers of the
1994 Conference are also being prepared for publication in Russian. After some discussion it was also agreed to start a program of publication of Trotsky's writings in Ukrainian.
For more information, contact: Professor Mikhail Voyeikov, Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ul. Krasikov, 27,
117218 Moscow, Russia; Tel: 095-332-4525 (w) or 095-326-3497 (h) or
Cormittee for the Study of Leon Trotsky's Legacy, P.O. Box 1890, New
York, NY 10009; tel: 718-636-5446 or e-mail: [email protected] or fax:
212-807-1832.
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