Alfred Rosmer as witness
Alfred Rosmer at the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920, standing between Lev Trotsky and Paul Levi. |
Rosmer lived in Moscow from 1920 to 1921, and again from 1922 to 1924, serving as a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI). During this period, he established close ties with leading Bolsheviks such as Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Karl Radek; with Trotsky in particular, he formed a deep intellectual and personal bond.
Rosmer took a political stand in support of the Left
Opposition led by Trotsky and was consequently expelled from both the Comintern
and the French Communist Party.
Rosmer’s memoir, Moscow Under Lenin, published in 1953,
remains one of the most compelling and authentic first-hand accounts of the
early years of the October Revolution. The book offers a detailed portrait of
the social, economic and political transformations that took place in Moscow
after the revolution, while also recounting internal debates among the
leadership and the daily struggles of the time in a candid, engaging style. It
stands as a vital source documenting the hardships endured by the working class
and other segments of the labouring population, the reforms introduced by the
new Soviet government, and everyday life in Moscow. (That Moscow Under Lenin
has yet to be translated into Turkish is, without doubt, a serious omission.)
In the concluding section of Moscow Under Lenin, Rosmer cautions his readers against the Stalinist barrage of propaganda which, by the time of the book’s publication, had been ongoing for thirty years and was rooted in a gross distortion of history. He issues the following warning:
The way in which the history of that period is too often written today is such that readers may perhaps think, observing in my work the absence of certain names and the amount of space devoted to others, that I too, for the purposes of my argument, have suppressed, falsified and distorted. I can say that this is not the case. I had no 'argument' to put forward, only facts and texts to present and to bring out the importance of them. If Stalin's name does not appear in my story, it is because he is never mentioned in the debates which took place during those four years, although they were varied and bore on all aspects of the labour movement. Likewise he does not figure in John Reed's book, Ten Days that Shook the World, because the author, an eye-witness, did not see Stalin among the heroes of those memorable days. From 1920 to 1924 I caught only two glimpses of Stalin; once in the circumstances I have related, furtively plotting with Zinoviev and Kamenev against Trotsky; and again, in the Kremlin corridors, during the Fifth Congress of the Communist International. He had never been seen there before, and he was noticed all the more because he was wearing military uniform, although the civil war had finished four years earlier, and he had boots on, even though it was July. Besides, he took no part in the debates. He simply wanted to make first contacts with the delegates from the sections of the International, doubtless hoping to establish a clientele among them. [*]
[*] Alfred Rosmer, Moscow Under Lenin, trans. Ian H. Birchall, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1973, pp. 219-220.
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