Seven years with Trotsky

An interview with Jean van Heijenoort

Part 1 | Part 2

The purpose of my book

The political writings by and about Trotsky do not tell us very much about Trotsky the man. That is the gap I wanted to fill. Therefore I concentrated on the personal side of his life. It is true that the decision to include something in my book was often made on the basis of whether or not it was already known from other sources.

Isaac Deutscher

Just to take an example, I include an episode with Diego Rivera that is not accurately described elsewhere and is entirely distorted in Deutscher's book. I go into this in some detail because I am the only person who really knows what happened.

So my book takes into account what other people have already said or different versions. Deutscher's book, for example, is very useful in some ways, but historians will have to begin all over again because it includes so many errors. And his errors have been picked up and expanded upon by other writers.

Trotsky as a member of the 'Besançon' Cell

Trotsky was not a person to engage in idle chatter. But discussions that took place in an organized way were something else. In Prinkipo we used to meet at 4:30 in the afternoon in Trotsky's study. Whoever was present in the household at the time would attend: Frank, Schussler, Frankel, Swabeck and myself. The transcripts of the discussions on Germany and those with Swabeck on the Black question, are in the archives. Some of them have been published.

At Royan we had the famous "Besançon" cell. We named it after a distant city. Trotsky was a member, along with Craipeau, Beaussier, Vera Lanis, Jeanne Martin, and myself. There was a tendency struggle going on, and it would have been wrong not to have counted the votes of those French comrades who were working in the Trotsky household. The "Besançon" cell discussed and drafted resolutions, with Trotsky's participation. My book contains an interesting passage from a discussion about the name of the new international, taken from the transcript of one of these meetings.

Royan (1933): From left to right, Rudolf Klement, Trotsky, Yvan Craipeau (a visiting Trotskyist), Jeanne Martin (Lyova's second wife), Sara Weber; in front, Jean van Heijenoort

In Mexico, meetings were set up when Cannon arrived with half of the SWP Political Committee. Discussions took place morning and afternoon for four or five days, and a transcript was made. It was all very well organized.

Secretaries without pay

I never received what you could call a paycheck. When I needed a toothbrush I would buy it and get the money from Natalia. We would take turns making an expedition to Istanbul every three weeks -Frank, Schussler and myself- to do the shopping. Natalia would give us the money and when we returned we would give her an accounting; it was that simple.

Only the American comrades who worked at Coyoacán were paid as fulltimers by the SWP. My finances continued to be worked out with Natalia. Breton has described me as being poor. This shocked me. I didn't know what he was talking about. I never considered myself poor.

Most of the income for the Trotsky household came from the royalties he received, largely for My Life and for the History of the Russian Revolution. We lived quite well on these royalties in Prinkipo. But the reserve was quickly exhausted. The trip to Copenhagen at the end of 1932 depleted our resources severely. The money Trotsky received for his interviews with students and with the American radio did not even cover the expenses of the comrades who had to accompany him.

There were times when things were really tight, when Natalia and I would go over our budget repeatedly. When we were completely out of money, Trotsky would sometimes sell an article to Life or to the Saturday Evening Post; the $500 or $600 this brought would keep us going for two or three months.

Trotsky never worried about money problems. Natalia would discuss them with me and then just tell him, "You know, there is nothing left."

Trotsky's asceticism

People might be surprised at my description of the absence of odds and ends and souvenirs in Trotsky's house. This was a reflection of his asceticism. Trotsky was not attached to material possessions. The only thing he cared about was the quality of the pen he wrote with, the tool of his trade. He was totally indifferent to material wealth. This seems amazing, since he was a man who had actually been in power at the head of a great state. He owned nothing. Not a painting, not even a real library. His books were accumulated here and there from what people brought him and sent him.

A section of Trotsky's house

Trotsky and Surrealism

I have to make a few more comments on this subject. The books that Trotsky found most absorbing were Jules Romains's Men of Good Will. He had read seventeen or eighteen volumes of the series and watched for the publication of the next one. He called Romains an "incomparable artist." His evaluation of Céline, Malraux, and Malaquais' Men From Nowhere are well known. In 1936 when he was in Norway I sent him a copy of I Won't Eat That Bread by Benjamin Péret. He responded very negatively in a letter.

Before Breton came to visit, I bought a few of his books and put them in Trotsky's office. Trotsky set them down in a far corner and left them there. Maybe he leafed through them from time to time. He allowed himself only a brief period for reading literature, during his afternoon rest. He always had a book with him, generally French novels, sometimes Russian books, and later an occasional American book. He was not familiar with the poetry of the surrealists.

Through his writings, I am going to try in my next book to draw a kind of intellectual portrait of Trotsky, starting from the time he first joined the revolutionary movement. One thing I will try to indicate is the intellectual difference between Lenin and Trotsky.

Concluded