18
PETER WEISS
NADEZHDA: Vladimir Ilyich, the Pen has arrived.
TROTSKY: Nadezhda Krupskaya, the cabman's outside. I had no money
to pay him.
NADEZHDA KRUPSKAYA
goes off.
LENIN
comes in and goes quickly
to the desk.
TROTSKY
goes to meet him. Both sit down, and the
conversation begins at once.
The question is being asked all over Russia: what should the party
do? Is it to think, decide and act for the proletariat? The workers
say nobody can tell them how to run their factories. Once the own–
ers are wiped out, they'll set up their own organization.
LENIN: Hm. They can form trade unions. Can force the management
into improving their conditions. But the irreconcilable differences be–
tween their interests and the system as a whole - that they will
have to be shown from outside.
TROTSKY: They'll tolerate no party that tries to run them. They're al–
ready strong enough to impose conditions on society. The middle
classes are brutal, greedy. But cowards. The proletariat will swamp
the bourgeois revolution.
LENIN: Hm. How old are you?
TROTSKY: Twenty-three.
LENIN: Lev Davidovich, you're trying to cut corners. You're impatient.
For Russia a bourgeois revolution is the necessary first step. To break
down feudalism. Put through land reforms. We need a democratic
republic before the working class can mobilize, prepare for battle. It's
still a minority. Must join hands with the semiproletariat, the peasants.
TROTSKY: It's too late now for a bourgeois revolution in Russia. The
proletariat is ready to go. We can't wait for the capitalist stage to
be developed. Wouldn't any way bring it up to European standards.
In
backward countries democracy can be achieved only through the
workers.
LENIN: At this stage a revolutionary government in Russia could only
be a coalition of parties. Even then the socialists would be a minority.
Extremely dangerous, your illusions.
TROTSKY: We must go out for socialist revolution from the very start.
For the dictatorship of the proletariat. Without letting up. Until
our attacks flood out and infect the movement in other countries.
LENIN: Lev Davidovich. You are called the Pen because you express
your thoughts quickly and easily. We need you for the
Iskra.
To put
over from here the ideas which will lead in time to revolution. But
revolutionaries who cannot move slowly and patiently are bad rev–
olutionaries. Anyone can be a revolutionary once revolution has
broken out. Much more difficult and more valuable to be a revolu-
