452
PARTISAN REVIEW
Then came Abramovitch for the
Bund,
the o rgan of the J ewish
Social Democrats- hi s eyes snapp ing behind thick glasses,
trembling with rage.
What is taking pl ace now in Pet rograd is a monstrous
calam ity' .. . 'Our duty to the Ru ss ia n proletariat doesn't permit
us
to
rema in here a nd be responsible fo r these crimes. Because
the firin g on the Winter palace doesn't cease, the Municipal
Duma togethel' with the Mensheviki a nd Socialist Revoluti on–
aries, a nd the Executive Committee o f the Peasa nts' Soviet, has
dec ided to perish with the Provisiona l Government, and we are
go ing with them! Unarmed we will expose our breasts to the
machine gun s of the Terrorists. .. We invite all delegates to
thi s Congress-----.' The rest was los t in a storm of hoots, menaces
a nd curses which rose to a hellish pitch as fifty delegates got up
a nd pushed their way out. ...
K ame niev jangled the bell, shou ting, ' Keep you r scats a nd
we'll go on with our business!' And Trotsky, standing up with a
pale, cru el face, letting out hi s rich voice in cool contempt , 'All
these so-called Socialist compromi sers, these fri ghte ned
M enshev iki , Socialist Revoluti ona ries,
Bund-Iet
them go! They
a rc just so mu ch re fu se which will be swept into the garbage -heap
o f hi story .'
The Greek Chorus does have the fin a l word. First , the rect ifi–
cation of an hi stori cal mista ke. It was not R a phael Abramovitch who
made that speech , but H enryk Erlich, the leader of the Polish J ewish
Socialist Bund . Abramovitch died peacefully in New York in 1963
(though hi s son Mark R e in was murde red by the G.P.U. in Spain in
1937) . He nryk Erlich, togethe r with the Polish J ewish trade union
leader Victor Alte r , was executed in the Lubya nka dungeons by
Sta lin , a ft er the two had re treated into the Soviet Union following
the partition of Poland during the Nazi-Sovie t pact. For some years
during the wa r , the socialist moveme nts of the world dema nded
to
know the fate of Erlich a nd Alte r , a nd when Mrs. Roosevelt and
Wendell Wilki e ra ised thi s quest ion with Stalin they were blandly
told that the two me n were alive but lost somewhere in the confusion
of refugee throngs in Siberia . Kamenev, who jangled the bell , was
executed by Stalin in 1936, a fter the first Moscow trial. And
Trotsky? Trotsky was murdered by a Stalinist agent, Jacques
Mornard , in 1940 , with an ice-axe driven into hi s bra in . Mornard
served more than twenty years in a M exican jail without ta lking
and, on his release, vanished into Czechoslovakia , and beyond .
These are the facts , not fabl es. And it all did ha ppen , a nd not so
long ago . The garbage-heap of history , howeve r , is full of ma ny
other things.
