PARTISAN REVIEW
17
Lenin. Telling everybody revolution must begin in the industrial states.
This is where it will begin. Here
in
medieval, Asiatic Russia.
TR.OTSKY: Spontaneity is not enough, Makhaisky. Spontaneity is rebel–
lion born of rage, despair, hunger. That is not what we mean by
revolution. Risings of that kind went out with the Paris Commune.
They help nobody but the bourgeoisie. Not because
they
are revolu–
tionaries, but because they're what they are. They've got their hands
on property, on schools, the press, the army. We could mount the
barricades, yes. But what we really need is a general strike, mass meet–
ings, demonstrations. And the army. Without the army on our side
nothing will be achieved in our lifetime.
MAKHAISKY: With the old state creaking in every joint? Shoot a min–
ister and the Czar shivers with fright.
TROTSKY: Our concern is not killing ministers, but the total destruction
of the monarchy.
MAKHAISKY: A party of the kind you want will be just a new form of
tyranny. A chosen few - officials, technicians, scientists - fleecing the
proletariat. Maybe you talk now of abolishing the state. But you'll
forget all that when you have your own instrument of power. We
must go on as we began - to smash the state, its institutions and
its bureaucracy.
TROTSKY: Language of the past century, Makhaisky. Progress lies with
the researchers, the mathematicians, the administrators.
LUZIN: Once people see what's good for them, the power problem is
solved. We don't need a central committee to show them that.
MAKHAISKY: We must fight the state with the same weapons it uses
against us. Terrorize the fat bosses, the greedy moneybags, the gov–
ernmental gasbags. Terrorize the conformists. Then they'll show us
what they're really like. Everyone will recognize their ugly mugs.
LuzIN: We don't need the army. Bombs are easy to make. A bit of
nitric acid, a bit of potassium chlorate in a bottle, and the law courts,
the barracks, the Bank of Russia go up in flames.
TROTSKY: Your explosives are no substitute for the masses, Luzin.
Some of you will get burned, die your individual hero's deaths. But
you won't win the workers to your side.
3. LONDON
TROTSKY: London. Nineteen hundred and two. Ten Holford Place.
NADEZHDA KRUPSKAYA
appears.
NADEZHDA: Hardly the time for visits.
TROTSKY: Yes, it's very early. But it took me three months to get here.
I
can't wait now.
