Setting the Record Straight: Van Heijenoort and Volkogonov on Trotsky and Trotskyism

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: 
VAN HEIJENOORT AND VOLKOGONOV ON TROTSKY AND TROTSKYISM


Dmitri Volkogonov’s Trotsky, The Eternal Revolutionary (New York, The Free Press, 1996) is an English translation by Harold Shukman of a study published by Volkogonov in Russian in 1992. It is arguably the most significant biography of Trotsky yet written, the author being the first to have full public access to the archives of the NKVD, which as chairman of the Archives Declassifying Commission beginning during the August 1991 coup against Gorbachev, he helped make available. In preparation for this book, General Volkogonov had also interviewed surviving friends and relatives of Trotsky as well as a member of the NKVD detail that assassinated Trotsky. 

Volkogonov’s book, then, is a most important contribution to sovietology and Russian history. 

 In my review (Studies in Soviet Thought 20 (1979), 391–396) of Jean van Heijenoort’s memoirs, With Trotsky in Exile, From Principo to Coyoacán, I suggested (p. 392) that van Heijenoort “seems nearly to equate Trotskyism with Stalinism . . . by concluding that Bolshevism (Marxism-Leninism), in creating the dictatorship of the proletarian elite, was thereby the inevitable progenitor of Stalinism.” As I explained (pp. 160–161) in “Jean van Heijenoort, the Revolutionary, the Scholar, and Man (1912–1986)” (Studies in Soviet Thought 35 (1988), 147–178), my assertion of van Heijenoort’s near-equation of Trotskyism and Stalinism — to which van Heijenoort privately objected vigorously and bitterly — was based on van Heijenoort’s own metaphor of the poisonous Stalinist mushroom growing out of the Bolshevik soil (although I noted that this “near-equation” was not an explicit and complete identification, on van Heijenoort’s part, of Trotskyism with Stalinism), and I adduced evidence from Trotsky’s own writings in support of my interpretation. Volkogonov takes the argument one step closer, and does completely identify Trotsky as a Stalinist, heart and mind. Van Heijenoort’s mushroom–soil metaphor was, presumably, rooted in Trotsky’s own statement (see p. 336 of Trotsky’s Stalin (New York, Universal Library, 1941) that: “The Bolshevik Party was created by Lenin. Stalin grew out of its political machine and remained inseparable from it” [my italics]. 

However one interprets van Heijenoort’s mushroom–soil metaphor, the inescapable conclusion of Volkogonov’s book is that Trotsky was hoist by Stalin on a petard of Trotsky’s own manufacture. Expressing it as bluntly as possible, Trotsky fashioned, and in many cases often himself utilized against others, the very weapons that Stalin finally used against Trotsky. Alexander Solzhenitsyn (at p. 300n. in (Thomas P. Whitney, translator), The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956, I-II: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, I-II (New York/Evanston/San Francisco/London: Harper & Row, 1973), without citation or reference), quoted Trotsky as saying: “Terror is a powerful means of policy and one would have to be a hypocrite not to understand this.” The gist of Volkogonov’s thesis is well expressed by Shukman in his “Editor’s Preface” (p. xxvii): 

The claim, however, made by Volkogonov that Trotsky cannot be exonerated of the crime, as the author now sees it, of creating a system that behaved, while Trotsky was still a part of it and after, in a way that the world has become accustomed to call ‘Stalinist’.

 In one of the many assertions scattered through the biography, Volkogonov himself says it this way (pp. 283–284):

Stalin was not one to observe the ‘rules’ of the Party comradeship or elementary ethics in this struggle. Nor for that matter was Trotsky. But Stalin had the huge apparatus, the GPU and the Party cadres at his disposal. Trotsky could not win.

 That Trotsky at the very least knew of and acquiesced in the existence of the gulag and practices of the Cheka and the gulag at least as early as mid-1925, if not much sooner, is made evident from the example that we can derive from Volkogonov’s mention on p. 269 that Trotsky was made head of Glavelektro (the state electrification agency) and related scientific and technological oversight and policy-making agencies, especially when this is combined with the account of Trotsky’s behavior given by Vitaly Shentalinsky (John Crowfoot, translator, Arrested Voices: Resurrecting the Disappeared Writers of the Soviet Regime (New York/London/Toronto/Sydney/Singapore: The Free Press, 1996), p. 108), who notes that Trotsky, in his capacity as head of Glavelektro, several times explicitly directed his attention to the scientist, mathematician, philosopher and priest Fr. Pavel Florenskii, who was working at Glavelektro between his first exile and his final arrest and death in the gulag. Trotsky asked Florenskii to participate in a scientific conference, but to do so in civilian dress rather than in his clerical attire, whereupon Florenskii responded by saying that he could not but go about in his priestly garb. If, following his exhange with Florenskii, Trotsky did not realize that Florenskii was working at Glavelektro by compulsion, that can best be explained either by a moral blindness on Trotsky’s part. (Solzhenitsyn discussed Florenskii in Gulag but did not, apparently, know of this encounter between Florenskii and Trotsky.) Elsewhere, however, Volkogonov quotes Trotsky as suggesting that forced labor of “enemies” of the the Soviet regime is one of a number of perfectly reasonable means of treating such persons (see Volkogonov’s quote at p. 485 from the draft of Trotsky’s speech to the Ninth Party Congress (TsGASA, f. 33 987, op. 3, d. 2 l. 60), titled “Routine Tasks of Economic Construction”, to be discussed shortly.

In his notebooks (Philip Pomper (editor), Trotsky’s Notebooks, 1933–1935: Writings on Lenin, Dialectics, and Evolutionism (New York, Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 86; Russian text, p. 129), Trotsky had written: “Lenin created the apparatus. The apparatus created Stalin.” [“Lenin sozdal apparat. Apparat sozdal Stalina”.] But Volkogonov argues that Trotsky’s efforts to distinguish between the Party and the bureaucracy is self-serving, artificial and deceptive; he points out that the repression that was practiced by the apparatus did not originate with or because of the apparatus but with the conception of a dictatorship of the proletariat and consequently with the dictatorship of the Party, and ultimately with the Marxist-Leninist application of the theory that the ends justifies the means. In concrete terms, the militarism and terrorism of the Soviet regime was instituted by Lenin with the acquiescence, cooperation, and full participation of Trotsky. Trotsky, Volkogonov asserts, had a single-track mind, one devoted one hundred percent, both intellectually and emotionally, to the revolution, and he was committed to its attainment by any and all means. Trotsky himself was capable of, and on his own initiative in carrying out official his duties, ordered, the deliberate use of brutality and terror. Moreover, Volkogonov, without referring to Samuel Farber’s book Before Stalinism: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy (London & New York, Verso, 1990), would nevertheless incontestably and wholeheartedly disagree with Farber that there was a democratic element in Lenin’s thinking prior to the Russian revolution, but that it was the practical exigencies of the revolution and the civil war that led to the gradual evolution of totalitarianism which came to predominate in Lenin’s thinking. Volkogonov makes it clear that Lenin’s defense of democracy was merely a cynical and convenient tactic in dealing with the Kerensky regime. Similarly, Trotsky’s oppositionist  defense of Party democracy against the dictatorship of the apparatus was, according to Volkogonov, merely a cynical and convenient tactic in what was a personal power struggle, pure and simple, between Trotsky and Stalin for inheritance of the Leninist mantle. As I noted in “Jean van Heijenoort, the Revolutionary, the Scholar, and Man (1912–1986)”, p. 165, Trotsky in his work “The Defense of Terrorism” (1921) defended actions which, engaged in by Lenin or himself, he condemned when engaged in by Stalin; and I strongly suggested there (pp. 165–166) that, had Trotsky rather than Stalin, acceded to leadership after Lenin’s death, there would have been no material difference between a Trotskyite regime and Stalin’s. In explaining Pomper’s assay in Trotsky’s Notebooks, 1933–1935 of Trotsky’s views on dialectics as an integral part of Trotsky’s self-defense against Stalin, I wrote (The Russian Review 47 (1988), p. 107) that: “In identifying himself with Lenin, Trotsky must assume a measure of responsibility for Stalinism, by the very nature of his own political role in the Bolshevik government.” This is precisely Volkogonov’s conclusion as well. Volkogonov writes (p. 318):

The man who with Lenin had laid the foundations of a mighty and sinister state system had been definitively rejected by it. Not because he was un-suitable, but because there was room only for one at the summit of the system. He was one of the first not to accept Stalin and his dictatorship. He was also the first to create and defend that dictatorship.

Elsewhere, Volkogonov noted Trotsky’s “strong-arm tactics” during the civil war (p. 380) to suggest that he himself was not above the use of coercion and violence, and explained (p. 383) that “as the ‘second man’ in the country [Trotsky] himself laid the foundations of lawlessness.” Such a portrait of Trotsky’s personality cannot but be confirmed by the portrait that Volkogonov paints. 

 In my review of van Heijenoort’s With Trotsky in Exile, I stated (pp. 394–395) that “We are presented in van Heijenoort’s memoirs with an imperious and didactic Trotsky, self-confident and arrogant. ‘Crowned socialism’,” Trotsky’s name for Stalinism, “may not be limited to Stalin alone.” This perception is further enhanced by the recovery of a letter from Trotsky’s son Lev [Lyova] Sedov to his mother, Natalya Sedova Trotsky (which, however, remained unsent), in which Lyova wrote (as quoted by Anita Feferman in her authorized biography of van Heijenoort, Politics, Logic, and Love: The Life of Jean van Heijenoort (Boston & London, Jones and Bartlett, 1993; Wellesley, Mass., A K Peters, Ltd., 1993; reprinted as From Trotsky to Gödel: The Life of Jean van Heijenoort, Wellesley, Mass., A K Peters, Ltd., 2000), pp. 309–310):

I think that all of Dad’s deficiencies have not diminished as he grew older, but under the influence of his isolation . . . have gotten worse. His lack of tolerance, hot temper, inconsistency, even rudeness, his desire to humiliate, offend and even destroy have increased.

Van Heijenoort, Feferman noted (p. 310) retrospectively agreed wholeheartedly with this appraisal, saying: “You see what a bastard Trotsky was . . . ?” The same, mutatis mutandis, one could easily say, of Stalin. Moreover, Volkogonov cogently argues that it was precisely Trotsky’s didacticism that estranged him from the apparatus, whose functionaries were recruited by Stalin from among the comparatively ignorant and vulgar masses of the proletariat, and contributed first to Trotsky’s loss of popularity as a revolutionary hero precisely at the time he and Stalin were vying for legitimacy as Lenin’s successor, and consequently led to Trotsky’s downfall.

In The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1920; 3rd ed., 1962), Bertrand Russell described Trotsky (p. 30) as one “whom the Communists do not by any means regard as Lenin’s equal”; he made more of ani impression on Russell “from the point of view of intelligence and personality, though not of character . . . .” He adds that he thought, “per-haps wrongly, that his [Trotsky’s] vanity was even greater than his love of power — the sort of vanity that one associates with an artist or actor. The comparison with Napoleon was forced upon one. But I had no means of estimating the strength of his Communist conviction, which may be very sincere and profound.” This assessment is in line with Volkogonov’s, to the extent that Volkogonov emphasizes the theatrical in Trotsky’s behavior, and believes that Trotsky’s advocacy of “democracy” within the party after Lenin’s death and in exile was merely a pose, a propogandistic means of placing himself in opposition to Stalin, and it is worth noting that Trotsky had, in his turn, accused Stalin of Bonapartism. On the question of the sincerity and strength of Trotsky’s belief in Communism, we conclude that Volkogonov estimated that for Trotsky, Communism was both the stage upon which he acted and a religion which he followed blindly and whose errors he detected and condemned in Stalin, but not in his own mind. It was, for Volkogonov, one of Trotsky’s great weaknesses that, whereas he was quick to condemn even minor differences between others and himself, he was altogether blind to his own intemperate and intolerant fanaticism.

Volkogonov’s Trotsky seems to me, then, to confirm and even strengthen the interpretations which I had presented in my “Jean van Heijenoort, the Revolutionary, the Scholar, and Man (1912–1986)” (Studies in Soviet Thought 35 (1988), 147–178).

For Volkogonov, then, the biography of Trotsky is really the frame for a political analysis and evaluation of Boshevism. Volkogonov concludes — and this is his main thesis — that Trotsky cannot be absolved from his share of responsibility in creating the system that “created” Stalin, and that, if the apparatus did not create Stalinism, then it certainly created the conditions for Stalinism; and here, Trotsky was as much responsible as Lenin, or even Stalin himself. Asking whether a Trotsky regime would have been different than was Stalin’s, Volkogonov concludes insofar as it is possible to determine on the basis of Trotsky’s thought, his ideological and intellectual rigidity, and his actual behavior both when he was in a position to effect the development and shape of the regime and when he conducted himself as the leader of the Trotskyite opposition both at home and in exile, that, whereas it may have been somewhat different in style, it would not have been different in essence of in content. In support of this contention, Volkogonov (p. 485) quotes the draft of Trotsky’s speech to the Ninth Party Congress (TsGASA, f. 33 987, op. 3, d. 2 l. 60), titled “Routine Tasks of Economic Construction”, in which Trotsky asserts the need for a “regular, systematic, persistent and harsh struggle against labour desertion, in particular by publishing lists of penalties for desertion, by creating penal workers’ teams out of deserters, and finally imprisoning them in concentration camps.” Need one look much further for the origins or raison d’être of the gulag? Thus it is not surprising that, as Feferman explained (p. 215), the “culminating factor” in van Heijenoort’s rejection of Marxism was his conclusion that “it was not Stalin alone but the Marxist system as a whole that had created the potential for the tragedy” of the gulag, “and that had Trotsky been in power, he might have committed similar atrocities.” For his part Volkogonov (pp. 486–487) concluded that it was Trotsky who provided the ideological justifications for Stalin’s policies (see Volkogonov, p. 487) and for Stalin’s bloody dictatorship, including Stalin’s attacks upon Trotsky himself and upon Trotsky’s “deviationism.” As Volkogonov sees it, Trotsky’s “tragedy” was that his struggle with Stalin “facilitated Stalin’s regime of power in the party”, and he finds that, “Paradoxically, it was Trotsky’s furious fight against Stalin that helped Stalin to become a bloody dictator” (Volkogonov, p. 486). It was not even Lenin and Trotsky together, then, — ironically — but Trotsky alone, who created Stalinism (see Volkogonov, p. 487).

 But Volkogonov delves further in his political and ideological analysis of Bolshevism. What Trotsky (and Lenin, for that matter) failed to learn, he thinks, and indeed what perhaps Stalin alone best and most fully realized and solved, was that democracy within the Party is incompatible with the dictatorship of the Party, and that the latter must inevitably, and even inherently, lead to the former. Thus he explains the feud between Stalin and Trotsky exclusively in personal rather than ideological terms, as a struggle between them for power, which he summarizes by saying (p. 394): “Trotsky and Stalin may have been diametrically opposed in personal terms, but they both remained typical Bolsheviks, obsessed with violence, dictatorship and coercion.” (The details of the power struggle for control of the Communist party while Lenin still lay on his deathbed, has been documented by Valentina P. Vilkova, in The Struggle for Power: Russia in 1923 (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1996), based upon newly released archival materials.)

Finally, I should be grossly and entirely remiss if I failed to note the numerous factual errors, ambiguities and confusions in Volkogonov’s biography of Trotsky, or statements in Volkogonov’s work which otherwise do not accord, either fully or in part, with van Heijenoort’s memories, which I detected. The vast majority concern incidents where we have the direct evidence of a first-hand participant, Jean van Heijenoort. Moreover, van Heijenoort served as the cataloguer of the Trotsky papers at Harvard University’s Houghton Library from the early 1950s to 1980, and employed them to check the details of names, dates, and places that he discussed in With Trotsky in Exile. Additionally, following his retirement as philosophy professor at Brandeis University in 1977, van Heijenoort spent much of his time working with the Trotsky papers in the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. The larger number of such errors in Volkogonov’s book concern names dates, and places, for which van Heijenoort’s With Trotsky in Exile, followed by Feferman’s biography of van Heijenoort, based upon interviews with van Heijenoort, are the best sources for their correction, since van Heijenoort was present at many, if not most, of the events concerned. (There may — or may not, however, be others, as well, which I missed, as each rereading of Volkogonov’s book with van Heijenoort’s book being read alongside, has thus far led to detection of new errors or ambiguities.) This task of correction becomes all the more crucial given the major significance of Volkogonov’s book for Sovietology generally and for Trotsky biography in particular.
 
 On p. 7, Volkogonov wrote that “Trotsky loved mathematics . . . and dreamed of studying it at Novorossiisk University . . . .” The available evidence suggests that this is true and seems to be confirmed by Trotsky himself. Nevertheless, when the opportunity to enroll in the mathematics program at Novorossiisk actually arose, Trotsky, as he himself wrote in his autobiography (My Life (New York, Grosset & Dunlap, 1930; reprinted: New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960), p. 103) explicitly says that he did nothing about it. Feferman (p. 73), says — thus, in this instance, incorrectly — that Trotsky was “[a]t age eighteen, in his first year at the university,” when he decided to become a professional revolutionary.

On p. 328, Volkogonov wrote: “One night in March 1931, the house [in which Trotsky was living in Prinkipo] burned down” and that Trotsky wrote that everything that he and his family and fellow occupants possessed was burned. Van Heijenoort (pp. 24–25), who, admittedly, had not yet arrived at Prinkipo, on the basis of archival evidence and what others who were present told him, called it a “flash fire” that affected only parts of the attic and second floor, and that books, a collection of photographs, folders and clippings, some personal belongings, two Russian typewriters, and possibly some unanswered correspondence, either on Trotsky’s desk or that of his typist, were burned, and that most of the house and contents remained intact. He also reported (van Heijenoort, p. 152) that Natalya Sedova Trotsky had said that the library and photographs were burned, and reported that she recalled for him in 1958 that only printed materials and some unanswered correspondence was lost. Van Heijenoort himself (p. 25) recalled seeing the charred covers of other-wise undamaged books that survived the fire. The exact date of the fire was March 1 (see van Heijenoort, p. 6).

Volkogonov does not make it clear where the Trotskys stayed following the fire, nor whether he returned to the villa where the fire occurred or subsequently moved into another. Van Heijenoort (pp. 6–7, 155) noted that the Trotskys stayed at the Savoy Hotel on Prinkipo for four weeks following the fire, then moved to 22 Shifor Street in Moda, a suburb of Kadiköy, and from there to another villa from mid-January, 1932 to July 17, 1933, when they left Turkey for France. It should also be made clear that the “house at Büyük Ada” mentioned by van Heijenoort (p. 154) is not the “villa at Büyük Ada” mentioned by van Heijenoort (p. 155). It should likewise be noted that Büyük Ada is the Turkish name for the island of Prinkipo. Finally, it should be noted that the island of Prinkipo was, ironically, appropriately enough”, as van Heijenoort (p. 9) explained, “the place where the emperor of Byzantium would relegate princes who were out of favor . . . .” 

Volkogonov tells us too (p. 328) that Trotsky, when he was in Mexico, concluded that that fire was deliberately set. Van Heijenoort (p. 25) stated that the fire was caused by a water heater in the attic that had carelessly been left on all night.

On p. 328, Volkogonov wrote: “Trotsky hired two more secretaries, and several bodyguards . . . , making five in all.” When Trotsky first arrived on Prinkipo, his sole secretary was his son Lev [Lyova], who subsequently left Prinkipo for Berlin on 18 February 1931. When van Heijenoort arrived at Prinkipo on 20 October 1932 (see van Heijenoort, p. 1), Trotsky’s secretarial staff was comprised of Otto Schüssler, Pierre Frank, Jan Frankel (whom van Heijenoort was soon to replace), all of whom, along with van Heijenoort upon his arrival, doubled as bodyguards, and a typist, who commuted from Istanbul, Maria Ilinishna Pevsner. Somewhat later, there were only three or four staff persons at a time in Prinkipo (see van Heijenoort, p. 20). (The other residents in the Trotsky household at that time, besides Trotsky himself, was Trotsky’s wife Natalya Sedova Trotsky and thier grandson Vsevolod “Sieva” Volkov.)

 Moreover, “hired” suggests, erroneously, that the staff received regular salaries. Elsewhere, van Heijenoort allows us to assume that Natalya distributed funds to the staff as needed for their personal expenses, and Feferman (p. 97) explicitly explained that “no one in the movement was paid.”

On p. 328, and again on p. 365, Volkogonov wrote that van Heijenoort remained with Trotsky “until the last minute of his life.” In fact, van Heijenoort left Coyoacán for New York City on 5 November 1939 as Trotsky’s emissary to American Trotskyites; the assassination of Trotsky occurred on 20 August 1940 and he died on 21 August. When the news of the attack was announced in the newspapers and on the radio, van Heijenoort was in Baltimore. Indeed, van Heijenoort was certain that, had he been in Coyoacán in August of 1940, he would have been able to prevent the assassin Mercader from approaching Trotsky by detecting the foreignisms in Mercader’s French (see, e.g., van Heijenoort, pp. 146–147; see also Feferman, pp. 192–193). Hence, it is not literally true that van Heijenoort remained with Trotsky “until the last minute of his life.” What is literally true, as Feferman (p. 116) expressed it, was that “[d]uring Leon Trotsky’s eleven years of exile, none of his aides-de-camp served him longer or more loyally than Jean van Heije-noort.”

 On p. 328, and again on p. 365, Volkogonov calls van Heijenoort Trotsky’s “Dutch assistant”. In his diary Trotsky referred to van Heijenoort as his “young French comrade with the Dutch name” (E. Zarudnaia (editor), Trotsky’s Diary in Exile, 1935 (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1958, 1976). Van Heijenoort’s father Theodore emigrated to France from Delft and in 1910 married the Frenchwoman Charlotte Hélène Baligny; van Heijenoort was born in Creil, France and was a French citizen. For a period, until the remarriage of his mother, Jean van Heijenoort and his mother were, technically, Dutch citizens residing in France. See Feferman’s authorized biography of van Heijenoort, based upon interviews with van Heijenoort and others, for details. Whereas Feferman’s biography appeared after the Russian original of Volkogonov’s book on Trotsky, we know that Volkogonov knew of van Heijenoort’s With Trotsky in Exile, since he specifically mentions it by name on p. 328. Moreover, if Volkogonov had read, as he suggests he did read, Trotsky’s Diary in Exile, since he specifically cites it in places in his book, he would have known that Trotsky, in the Diary in Exile, 1935, explicitly referred to van Heijenoort  (p. 110) as “a young French comrade with a Dutch name” [my italics]. I cited this quote from the Diary in my 1988 “Jean van Heijenoort, the Revolutionary, the Scholar, and Man (1912–1986)”, at p. 154. In With Trotsky in Exile (p. 68), van Heijenoort himself made it amply clear that when he was in France with Trotsky, he was in his own country. And I mentioned several times (in my obituary “J. L. van Heijenoort”, Studies in Soviet Thought 34 (1987), 97, and in 1988, in “Jean van Heijenoort, the Revolutionary, the Scholar, and Man (1912–1986)”, p. 147) that van Heijenoort was born in France. All of these references appeared before Volkogonov published the Russian original of his Trotsky biography in 1992.

On pp. 321–323, Volkogonov gives the impression that Trotsky moved directly from the Soviet consulate in Constantinople [Istanbul] to a house on the island of Prinkipo, and states at p. 322 that on 6 March the Trotskys moved from the consulate to Prinkipo. Van Heijenoort (p. 8) was much more precise; he made it clear that on 6 March, the Trotskys moved from the consulate into the Tokatliyan Hotel on the main street of Pera for a few days, then into a furnished apartment in the Bomonti section of the Shishli suburb of Istanbul, located at number 29 Izzet Pasha Street. They did not move into the Izzet Pasha villa on Prinkipo until the end of April.

 On p. 329, Volkogonov wrote: “Blyumkin . . . took with him several letters from Trotsky, which he handed over to Radek on reaching Moscow.” Van Heijenoort (p. 96) noted that “Trotsky denounced Kharin as an agent provocateur in the letter that he entrusted to Blumkin in Prinkipo for the Moscow Trotskyites.” Solzhenitsyn asserted (at p. 370 in Gulag) that Blyumkin handed over to Radek a “package”, which Radek handed over to the state security.

The “fisherman he [Trotsky] knew” that Volkogonov mentions on p. 323 was almost certainly Kharalambos (see van Heijenoort, p. 11), and the “occasional” fishing trips were a regular feature of life for Trotsky on Prinkipo (see van Heijenoort, pp. 11–12).

 It is not entirely clear from the context in which they are presented whether the efforts, described by Volkogonov (p. 324) made by Trotsky in February 1932 through Edouard Herriot to gain Trotsky permission to “enter” France refer to the efforts of the police to get Trotsky out of France as quickly as possible, without any layovers in his traversal of that country following his lecture trip to Copenhagen, as recounted by van Heijenoort (p. 32), or if this reference is to the effort to obtain permission for Trotsky to reside in France. Van Heijenoort reminds us that Trotsky and his retinue entered France on residence permits in July 1933, and gave the impression that it was almost a last-minute decision on the part of the French government, whereas Volkogonov suggests that the negotiation for permission was rather protracted. 

In any case, Volkogonov’s reference to Herriot as the “former” French premier in February 1932 (p. 334) is anachronistic, since, as van Heijenoort stated in discussing the incident in France connected with Trotsky’s trip to Copenhagen, Herriot was still the French premier in December 1932.

 Volkogonov writes (pp. 328–329) that “The Turkish government deputed half a dozen policemen to provide round-the-clock security …” for Trotsky, whereas van Heijenoort’s recollection suggests that this is too precise; rather, van Heijenoort stated (p. 9) that “four to six” Turkish policemen were permanently stationed just inside the gate of Trotsky’s villa, which suggests that the precise number of policemen on duty fluctuated between four and six.

 The account (pp. 338, 359) of the illness and death of Trotsky’s son Lev [Lyova] in Paris following a successful appendectomy in a hospital run by émigré Russian doctors, a surgery which was followed by what Volkogonov called “signs of poisoning”, confirms van Heijenoort’s suspicions (pp. 92–93; see also Feferman, pp. 154–155, who erroneously calls Zborowski Russian) that Lyova’s death was “suspicious” and that the clinic which he entered “could only have been staffed by White Russians and Stalinist agents” who would have been eager for an opportunity to strike at Trotsky. Van Heijenoort thought that the choice of hospitals was influenced by Lyova’s aide Mark Zborowski, later identified as a Stalinist agent. Volkogonov’s account confirms both points. In 1958, van Heijenoort was a witness in the trial of Zborowski (see Feferman, p. 212).

Van Heijenoort expressed suspicions of a number of people as probable Stalinist agents who had infiltrated Trotsky’s circle in exile and Trotsky’s organization, especially Lyova’s circle, naming in particular Mark Zborowski and Ramón Mercader. Van Heijenoort also mentions several others, such as Obin, the Sobolevicius brothers (it is, presumably, they who Feferman (p. 233) calls the “Soble” brothers; as Isaac Don Levine noted (p. xvi, The Mind of an Assassin (New York, Farrar, Strauss, and Cudhay, 1959), Jack Soble was an alias of one of the Sobolevicius brothers, and in addition to Soble, other aliases used by them included Sobelevich and Senin), and Jakob Frank, remarking that all were Jews from eastern European countries bordering Russia (Zborowski, from Poland; Obin, from Ukraine; the Sobolevicius brothers, from Lithuania; Frank, from Czechoslovakia). While Volkogonov states, on the basis of Cheka-OGPU-GPU-NKVD-KGB files that Trotsky’s circle and organization were indeed infiltrated from the very moment he arrived in exile in Turkey up until his death at the hands of Mercader, Volkogonov mentions by name only Zborowski and Mercader by name from among those of whom van Heijenoort named as suspicious. Volkogonov was able, on the basis of the NKDV files, to fill in the precise details and method of Mercader’s infiltration, thereby at least partly solving the problem, therefore, that van Heijenoort had, of how Alfred Rosmer could have failed to detect the Hispanicisms in Mercader’s French, when Mercader claimed to be the Belgian Jacques Mornard (see van Heijenoort, p. 147; also Ronald Segal, Trotsky: A Biography (New York, Pantheon Books, 1979), p. 392 and Levine, p. 135f. for a biographical sketch of Mercader-Monard) — by pointing out that when the Rosmers were in contact with Mercader, he was using the identity of a Canadian named Frank Jacson (given him by the GPU). It is true that Mercader first identified himself to Sylvia Ageloff, through whom he gained entrée into Trotsky’s house at Coyoacán, as Belgian; but she may not have been in a position to detect any linguistic problems, and he had explained to her to her satisfaction his transformation from the Belgian Mornard to the Canadian Jacson (namely, that his father worked in Brussels). At the same time, it must be noted that whereas Volkogonov does not implicate or incriminate the Rosmers, Segal tells us (p. 392) that Sylvia Ageloff, whose suitor Mercader, as Jacson, became in order to win the confidence of the Trotsky household, had at one point expressed suspicions to Marguerite Rosmer about Mercader-Jacson, which, after a cursory investigation, the Rosmers dismissed. It is still not entirely evident even from Feferman’s account (pp. 193–194) that van Heijenoort knew that Mercader, as Jacson, knew that Mercader was posing as a Canadian.
Missing from Volkogonov’s account, however, is the remembrance by Frida Kahlo (reported by Hayden Herrera, in Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo (New York, Harper & Row, 1983), pp. 249–250) that Mercader asked her, while she was at an art show in Paris, to introduce him to Trotsky, and that she declined.
 
Volkogonov (p. 344) tells of a gramophone recording that Trotsky made in Coyoacán in October 1938 of a speech for a meeting of Trotskyites in New York. Van Heijenoort nowhere mentioned this episode, but did report (van Heijenoort, p. 106) on an effort to establish a telephone link between Mexico City and New York City so that Trotsky could speak to a meeting of American Trotskyites in New York City on 16 February 1937. Trotsky was to speak at the telephone exchange in Mexico City, but each time he prepared to speak, the circuit that had been established was broken. It may have been that it was this experience that led to the gramophone recording mentioned by Volkogonov. But Volkogonov does not mention the episode at the telephone exchange.

On p. 346 and elsewhere, the Sara Weber that Volkogonov names was also known as Sara Jacobs (see, e.g., the index entries at van Heijenoort, pp. 162, 163).

On p. 346, the Yekaterina Peshkova being mentioned was writer Maxim Gorky’s wife.

On p. 364, Volkogonov states that in July 1933 Trotsky and Natalya boarded a ship at Constantinople bound for Marseilles, accompanied by two secretaries. The precise date, given by van Heijenoort (p. 48), was 17 July, who added that Trotsky and Natalya were accompanied by Max Shachtman, Sara Jacobs (Weber), Rudolf Klement, and himself [van Heijenoort].

On p. 364, Volkogonov states that Trotsky and his entourage “settled in Grenoble for eleven months.” Volkogonov is here confusing Domène (“a small town some six miles east of Grenoble”; van Heijenoort, p. 73) with Grenoble.

On p. 364, Volkogonov writes that “Trotsky managed to spend just one day in Paris.” Van Heijenoort noted (p. 62), however, that soon after the move to Barbizon, “there were trips to Paris. We usually went every second or third Sunday, but at times every Sunday.” Only later, when residing in Domène, some three hundred miles from Paris, and the right-wing government of Doumergue that replaced the socialist government of Daladier placed restrictions on Trotsky, were trips to Paris out of the question for Trotsky. (It was with the acquiescence of the Daladier government that Trotsky had been granted permission to reside in France.)

On p. 365, Volkogonov states that Natalya was in Paris in September 1933, undergoing medical treatment. According to van Heijenoort (p. 56), she was visiting friends in Paris for several weeks in September 1933.

On p. 365, Volkogonov states that “In the spring he [Trotsky] was asked to leave Barbizon   . . . because the police could no longer guarantee his safety.” Van Heijenoort (pp. 64–68) fully described the activities of the press and crowds of curiosity-seekers in Barbizon and the circumstances leading to Trotsky’s departure. He tells us that the local district attorney was erroneously told by someone in the Ministry of Interior that Trotsky was supposed to be in Corsica (see van Heijenoort, p. 64), and that the district attorney’s query to the ministry was precipitated by the arrest outside of Barbizon of Rudolf Klement, who was driving a motorbike registered to van Heijenoort (see van Heijenoort, pp. 64–65). As van Heijenoort reported (p. 65), the press then “launched a hysterical campaign. The newspapers demanded that Trotsky go back “to Corsica”  . . . or that more stringent measures be taken against him.” The new right-wing government of Doumergue took advantage of the motorbike incident to order the explusion of Trotsky from Barbizon. Feferman (pp. 99–102) reproduces much of van Heijenoort’s original account.

On p. 365, Volkogonov wrote: “Following a hasty withdrawal from Barbizon, [Trotsky] spent just over another year in France, but without finding peace and security anywhere.” Van Heijenoort (p. 65) gave the date of Trotsky’s departure from Barbizon as 15 April 1934, three days after Klements’ arrest (12 April). Trotsky and Natalya were driven to Lagny by Lyova and Henri Molinier. For the remainder of Trotsky’s residences in France, see van Heijenoort, pp. 65–78; they were: Chamonix (from after a few days in Lagny to May 10); La Tronche (10–28 May); Saint-Pierre-de Chartreuse (28 May – early June); Lyons (early June – early July); Domène (early July 1934 – 13 June 1935). Discussing the period spent in Barbizon, Feferman (p. 98) asserts that “Aside from the constraint of maintaining his anonymity, Lev Davidovich had not felt so free in years. He was at liberty to go wherever he wished.” Thus the notion that Trotsky could find no peace and security anywhere in France should probably be understood as best applying to the period after the retreat from Barbizon.

Volkogonov asserts on p. 365 that Trotsky had during some of his escapes in France to shave his beard and disguise himself. Van Heijenoort mentioned (p. 4) that “at times, in France,” when Trotsky had to travel incognito, “in order to simplify the problem of guarding him,” Trotsky shaved off his goatee and brushed his hair to one side, dividing it with a part. He also said that, at other times, Trotsky covered his face with a handkerchief, as though he had a cold, to hide his beard, for example on the automobile trip from Marseilles to Saint-Palais (see van Heijenoort, p. 51). Van Heijenoort specified (p. 152) the times when Trotsky shaved off his goatee, specifically, on 9 October [1933], before a vacation trip to the Pyreenes, and again on 15 April before leaving Barbizon for Lagny. Van Heijenoort called shaving off the goatee, Trotsky’s “last resort” at disguise. Feferman (p. 97) explained that when taking public transportation in France, Trotsky would shave off his goatee and cover the lower part of his face.

On p. 365, Volkogonov says that “Once he [Trotsky] had to hide for several days in the attic of one of his son’s friends.” The reference may be to the Paris home shared by Lyova’s friend Gérard Rosenthal and Gérard’s father, a noted Parisian physician (see van Heijenoort, p. 51), while Natalya Sedova Trotsky (in Victor Serge and Natalia Sedova Trotsky, The Life and Death of Leon Trotsky (New York, Basic Books, 1975), p. 194), mentioned the “dilapidated little house Leon Sedov [Lyova] and his wife rented near Paris”, which van Heijenoort (p. 152) asserts was actually the dusty, but not at all dilapidated, house in Lagny. None of the abodes described by van Heijenoort fits the description of being an attic, however.

Volkogonov (p. 365) wrote that in his travels in France Trotsky was “usually accompanied” by Raymond Molinier or Jean van Heijenoort, “with one or two French bodyguards.” In several instances, others, among them Molinier and almost always van Heijenoort, accompanied Trotsky. The reference to “one or two French bodyguards” in addition is probably best explained by the presence of detective Gagneux, assigned to watch Trotsky to the French Sûreté Générale, beginning in La Tronche, after Trotsky left Barbizon (see van Heijenoort, pp. 69–70, 73, 76). Feferman (p. 102) noted that there were two local policemen stationed outside the residence in Barbizon after reports had surfaced of Trotsky’s habitation there. She also said (Feferman, p. 116) that the “rule was that Trotsky was never supposed to go anywhere, unless he was accompanied by at least one gun-toting bodyguard.”

Volkogonov (pp. 365–366) wrote: “At times he was changing hotel rooms five or six times a month, but he was always followed by silent, mysterious-looking policemen.” “Five or six times a month” seems to be a gross exaggeration; see van Heijenoort’s list of Trotsky’s French abodes. Feferman (p. 104) asserts that during the two months following the retreat from Barbizon, Trotsky moved five times. In La Tronche, Trotsky, Natalya, and van Heijenoort stayed at a boarding house, and in Lyons at a hotel. 

The “silent, mysterious-looking policemen” was almost indubitably Monsieur Gagneux, with whom, in reality, van Heijenoort frequently spoke and whose direct aid he sometimes enlisted (see van Heijenoort, pp. 69–70). Moreover, van Heijenoort told us (p. 69), that he and Trotsky had been informed of Gagneux’s presence from the outset.

On p. 366, Volkogonov states that “Only in a small village near Grenoble was he able to settle quietly for a few months.” It is unclear whether the small town to which Volkogonov refers is Domène or — less likely — La Tronche, another “small town near Grenoble” (van Heijenoort, p. 68 ) where Trotsky very briefly resided in May 1934 before the move to Saint-Pierre (“some twenty miles north of Grenoble”; van Heijenoort, p. 79), or, thereafter, in Domène. The quietude Trotsky experienced in the vicinity of Grenoble was the result of restrictions in their movements that Trotsky found irritating and unpleasantly confining (see, e.g., Feferman, p. 107).

On p. 366 Volkogonov states that it was while in the “small village near Grenoble” that Trotsky “tried to complete the book on Lenin for which he had already signed contracts with a number of publishers.” According to van Heijenoort (pp. 157–158), who checked the list of Trotsky’s writings, it was not until this time (around May 1934) that Trotsky even began considering writing a book on Lenin and started work on it.

On p. 367, Volkogonov gives the date of Trotsky’s arrival in Oslo as 15 June 1935; van Heijenoort (p. 79) gives the date of arrival as 18 June 1935. Volkogonov is confusing the date on which Trotsky boarded the ship in Antwerp that would take him to Oslo with the date of his arrival in Oslo.

 The “small hotel a two-hour journey from the capital” that Volkogonov mentions on p. 367 was in Jevnakar, “about thirty miles northwest of Oslo” (van Heijenoort, p. 79).

Volkogonov (p. 367) says that “Eventually they found a suitable place to live just north of Oslo” with the family of Konrad Knudsen. There is no precise agreement here: Feferman (p. 111) states that the Trotskys were taken to the Knudsen house “immediately upon arrival” in Oslo; van Heijenoort (p. 81) gives the date on which they took up residence in Knudsen’s house as June 23. The house was located in Hønefoss (about 40 miles northeast of Oslo).

On p. 373, “Jan Fraenkel” should be “Jan Frankel”.
 
On p. 394, Volkogonov states that the rift between Trotsky and Diego Rivera arose on ac-count of Rivera’s attack upon Mexican president Cárdenas (for whose hospitality Trotsky was grateful) and on Cárdenas’ policies, whereas van Heijenoort showed that the “rift” occurred at the end of December 1937, whereas Rivera’s attacks on Cárdenas occurred in February 1938 during the election campaign in which Rivera supported the right-wing opposition candidate General Almazán over the choice of the chosen successor to Cárdenas, and that the rift itself, between Trotsky and Rivera was precipitated by a letter Rivera wrote to Breton concerning a joint manifesto of socialist artists that was composed by Trotsky and André Breton, to which Rivera’s name was added, although Rivera wrote no part of it (see van Heijenoort, pp. 136–138, 153). Feferman (p. 160) asserts that, although Rivera had some ideological input on the manifesto, he did not write any part of it, but that he did sign it. Her account of the “rift” as caused by Rivera’s letter to Breton (Feferman, pp. 163–166) follows precisely van Heijenoort’s, adding (Feferman, p. 164) that initially the disputed point between Trotsky and Breton on the one hand and Rivera on the other concerned the question of the limits and role of art for art’s sake. Hayden Herrera, in Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo (New York, Harper & Row, 1983), pp. 247–249 does not specifically refer to attacks or alleged attacks by Rivera on Trotsky in connection with the Mexican elections, but both Herrera (p. 247) and van Heijenoort (p. 141) say that behind Trotsky’s back Rivera called Trotsky a Stalinist. Almazán’s name does not figure anywhere in Herrera’s account.

Volkogonov discusses the relationship between Trotsky and Diego Rivera’s wife Frida Kahlo, and its impact upon the relationships between Trotsky and Rivera and Trotsky and Natalya on pp. 394–395. This is also discussed by van Heijenoort (pp. 110–114), by Feferman (pp. 143–146), by Herrera (pp. 209–213), and, very briefly, by Phyllis Tuchman (p. 56, “The Many Faces of Frida Kahlo”, Smithsonian 33, no. 8 (November 2002), 51–60).

(In my reference in “Jean van Heijenoort, the Revolutionary, the Scholar, and Man (1912–1986)”, p. 172, n. 26 to Herrara’s book, change “his” to “her” in “In his biography Frida . . .”.)

 Volkogonov states (p. 395) that Trotsky acquired the house on Avenida Viena “in the spring of 1939”; van Heijenoort (p. 138) asserts that he found it “Around March”, but that the Trotskys undertook the actual move into the house from 1 to 5 May. Volkogonov also states that in doing so, Trotsky “at once assumed a financial burden beyond his means” (p. 395); but van Heijenoort said (p. 138) that “the rent was low”, although the house needed repairs and furniture had to be acquired. Volkogonov goes on to assert (pp. 395–396) that it was to ease this financial bur-den that led Trotsky to sell his archives to Harvard University’s Houghton Library for $15,000 (an amount repeated by Volkogonov on p. 464). The motivation for the sale was not pecuniary, but the security of the papers (see Anellis, “Jean van Heijenoort, the Revolutionary, the Scholar, and Man (1912–1986),” p. 151, and Feferman, p. 290). Harvard paid Trotsky $8,500 for his archives (see Anellis, loc. cit.). A second installment, with the remainder of Trotsky’s papers, was purchased from Trotsky’s widow Natalya in 1946. 

 Volkogonov asserts that the house on Vienna Street “took on the appearance of a small for-tress” and that on the outside it was “patrolled day and night by the police” (p. 396). Van Heijenoort (p. 160) says that: “There was, in fact, a single guard station, a kind of cabin located in front of the house gate, on the other side of the street. The policemen who were there would not stop all cars that passed. They watched only the cars that did stop and the persons who came near the house.” The “kind of cabin” was a brick guardhouse for the Mexican police (see van Heijenoort, p. 139).

On p. 398, Volkogonov states that the Rosmers arrived in Coyoacán in October 1939, bringing with them Trotsky’s grandson Sieva. Van Heijenoort (p. 143), however, remembered their arrival occurring on 8 August 1939.

(The same error occurred several times in the third volume of Isaac Deutscher’s The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky, 1929–1940, vol. III (London/New York, Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 404, 449, and it was to that error that van Heijenoort was responding on p. 143.)

Regarding some of the photographs between pp. 412–413, the following should be noted:

•  “Trotsky in Mexico, 1938, with (from left) Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Natalya, Reba Hansen, André Breton, a Mexican Trotskyite, Jesús Casas, one of Rivera’s drivers, and Jean van Heijenoort.” The photograph is from an outing in Chapultepec, June 1938; van Heijenoort (p. 124) identified the driver as Sixto, one of Diego Rivera’s two chauffeurs.

•  “Trotsky dictating to one of his secretaries in the 1930s”; this photo also appears in Feferman (p. 126); her caption reads: “Van, Trotsky, and the Russian secretary, at work in Coyoacán, 1937.”

• “At the Dewey Commission hearings in Mexico City, April 1937.” This photograph also appears in van Heijenoort (p. 109) and Feferman (top, p. 141). “Mexico City” should be replaced by “Coyoacán”. (Coyoacán is a suburb of Mexico City.)

•  “Trotsky feeding his rabbits, 1940.” This photograph also appears in van Heijenoort (bottom, p. 140), where it is said to have been taken in the autumn of 1939.
   
At pp. 444 and 456, Volkogonov asserts that Mark Zborowski wrote to van Heijenoort, suggesting that he [Zborowski] come to Mexico to join Trotsky’s staff there, but that van Heijenoort did not reply. Van Heijenoort in his discussions regarding Zborowski in With Trotsky in Exile never mentioned such correspondence. As previously noted, van Heijenoort testified in Zborowski’s 1958 spy trial, since he suspected Zborowski’s complicity in the death of Lyova (see Feferman, p. 212). It would seem to be remarkable if, in view of these circumstances, van Heijenoort had neglected to mention such letters in laying out his suspicions of Zborowski and Zborowski’s motivies in With Trotsky in Exile — unless there either were no such letters, they were never sent or never received, or if van Heijenoort either forgot about them or thought they were irrelevant.

On p. 444, change Volkogonov’s “Lev Zborowski” to “Mark Zborowski”.

On p. 458, Volkogonov writes that: “On one occasion he [Mercader] gave the Rosmers a lift into town ….” Volkogonov (p. 464) also mentions that Mercader took Sylvia Ageloff and Natalya Sedova Trotsky on a shopping trip to downtown Mexico City. Van Heijenoort (p. 146) noted that in 1972, Alfredo Zamora (who had been Trotsky’s friend and lawyer in Mexico) told him [van Heijenoort] that Mercader frequently made himself and his automobile available to the Rosmers for transportation. Thus “on one occasion” at p. 458 would seem more correctly to be “on more than one occasion.

It should also be noted that Volkogonov — or his translator, Harold Shukman — misspells Ageloff as “Agelof”, Cárdenas as “Cardenas”, and Coyoacán as “Coyoacan”.


Other scholars, reading Volkogonov’s work may possibly find additional difficulties or ambiguities regarding specific minute details of persons, dates, or places similar to those enumerated here. Those which I have enumerated do not, however — and certainly not in any obvious sense — by themselves detract from or lessen the veracity of Volkogonov’s principle thesis regarding the nature of Trostky’s personality or morality or of the tenor, tenets, or  character of Trotskyism, of Trotskyism’s relationship with Leninist-Stalinist Bolshevism, or of Leninist-Stalinist Bolshevism in general.

Meanwhile, it is important to consider several other recent studies that have appeared in the journal Cultural Logic Marxist Theory and Practice that purport to present solid documentation that strongly support evidence given in the Moscow trials that led to the conviction in absentia of Leon Trotsky. In “New Evidence Concerning the “Hotel Bristol” Question in the First Moscow Trial of 1936” (http://eserver.org/Clogic/2008/Holmstrom.pdf), Sven-Eric Holmström, concluded, among other things, that: Leon Trotsky lied deliberately to the Dewey Commission more than once; and that Trotsky’s son Leon Sedov and one of Trotsky’s witnesses also lied. Moreover, as evidence in favor of collabortion with oppositionists within the Soviet Union to overthrow Stalin, Holmström remarks on the fact that a few letters from Trotsky to Russian oppositionists are represented in the Harvard archives only by postal receipts is evidence that Jean Van Heijenoort or Isaac Deutscher and that Trotsky and van Heijenoort lied to the Dewey Commission and must have purged the archives. In a follow-up, “Evidence of Leon Trotsky’s Collaboration with Germany and Japan” (http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Furr.pdf), Grover Furr purports to present evidence that indeed Trotsky sought to engage in conspiracy with fascism to overthrow Stalin. The main problem with Holmström’s argument is that, he makes it seem as though the “purge” of the Trotsky archive about which he is speaking apparently took place either while preparations for the commission were underway, or when van Heijenoort was organizing the archives at Harvard — meaning not much earlier than 1986, that is, decades after Trotsky’s death and decades after the Dewey Commission met — that the “purge” of the incriminating evidence occurred, apparently, some time between 1956 and the 1980s when the archive was opened to the public, while the Dewey Commission met in 1937.  Since I have not examined either of these articles in detail, I am not yet able to comment further with confidence upon them beyond suggesting that, at least with respect to what we know about Trotsky, his behavior and his personality, the possibility must be considered very seriously that he engaged in deliberate falsification. I had known van Heijenoort personally, and professionally as professor, and can comment that, although I believe him to be truthful and scrupulous, he also could be reticent, not to say secretive and loyal to Trotsky to a fault.

Not having examined these records myself, I cannot, however, conclude with Holmström that van Heijenoort was culpable in the alleged falsification or purgation of the records.