TROTSKY
369
In the public debates that followed-for a certain measure of
political opposition could still be expressed in Russia-the Menshevik
leader Raphael Abramovich opposed such forced labor battalions
with the query: "Wherein does your socialism differ from Egyptian
slavery?
It
was just by similar methods that the Pharaohs built the
pyramids, forcing the masses to labor." Trotsky replied: "Abramovich
sees no difference between the Egyptian regime and our own. He has
forgotten the class nature of government. . ..
It
was not the Egyptian
peasants who decided through their Soviets to build the pyramids
. . . our compulsion is applied by a workers' and peasants'
government ..."
It
was an unfortunate argument, Trotsky at his weakest. In
advancing it he failed to acknowledge that by 1920 the Russian
workers were not deciding very much on their own; it was the
Bolshevik government that made the decisions. A great deal of the
support the Bolsheviks had enjoyed among the workers since the
October revolution had by now been lost or badly weakened. The
policies of this government could not be justified simply because it
was, or called itself, a workers' government; its rights to that title
might better be justified by the nature of the policies it put forward.
But most unfortunate of all, Trotsky'S argument provided the formula
that could later be used all too easily for rationalizing the Stalinist
plunge into totalitarianism.
In arguing for labor armies and also in justifying the suppres–
sion of dissident socialist groups, Trotsky invoked the harsh neces–
sities of fighting a desperate civil war and salvaging a collapsed
economy. As he began, upon the completion of the civil war, to
work at the revival of industrial production, all his enormous talents
came into play; but his political role took on a harsh and authoritarian
cast which cannot be justified even to the extent that certain of
his measures during the civil war might be. Driven by the force
of intolerable circumstances, but also trapped in the vise of a Bolshe–
vik exclusivism which led to greater concentrations of power at the
summit of the ruling party just when an opening of political and
economic life might alone have saved the situation, Trotsky now
condoned acts of repression which undercut the remnants of
"So–
viet democracy." A few years earlier the left-Menshevik leader, Julius
Martov, had warned against the tendency of the Bolsheviks to
