PARTISAN REVIEW
35
questions and making notes.
NATALIA
comes past with a large bunch
of flowers.
BLUMKIN: The name of Trotsky is being scratched from the records
of the revolution. In Eisenstein's film about the October rising you're
not even mentioned. Coming generations will know nothing about you.
History is being rewritten. And all that remains is He. From the be–
ginning it was
he
alone who stood at Lenin's side.
He
is putting into
effect what you and Lenin planned ten years ago, and what you failed
to do. You tried
to
achieve socialism through education, by way of a
cultural revolution. His way is through force, over the bodies of men.
And he'll be proved right. He'll make the country so strong, industrial–
ly and militarily, that it will stand up to all attacks. You yourself,
Lev Davidovich, didn't hesitate to use force when the proletarian
dictatorship was threatened.
TROTSKY: Blumkin, you must not go back. You'll be put against the wall
and shot when they hear you've been visiting me.
BLUMKIN: I'm an old terrorist, you know that. I couldn't be in both
the GPU and the opposition at once if I didn't know how to look
after myself. I can always say I visited you as a secret agent, in an
attempt to make you show your hand.
BLUMKIN
goes off.
LEV SEDOV: He won't .last long. Not even Dzerzhinsky, if he were still
alive, could help him now. Blumkin was always one for desperate acts.
Nineteen eighteen, when he shot the German ambassador, he could
have wrecked the revolution. Wanted war to the bitter end, at any
price.
TROTSKY: Terror. This idea confused many of us. We were against acts
of individual terrorism. The romantic illusion of a handful of rebels
wrecking Czarism with revolver shots, a knife and a few bombs. The
masses were to be led towards class warfare, not invited to put their
hopes in a few avengers and liberators acting on their behalf.
LEV SEDOV: And today, Father? You condemn violence and acts of
sabotage against the bureaucrats?
TROTSKY: Terrorism as a method of opposition? That would be mad–
ness. The Soviet Union must be protected at all costs. Our task is to
strengthen the International. To support the fight outside.
(He rises,
walks to and fro)
The only terrorism we ever recognized was the terror
of the masses. It was necessary in the fight against the bourgeoisie,
the Social Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks. Only with this politically
based terrorism, this revolutionary force, could the Russian proletariat,
a tiny minority, come to power. Magnificent audacity. Magnificent
