Letter of rupture Ignace Reiss (alias Ludwig) to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
July 17, 1937
“The letter that I am writing to you today I should have written to you a long time ago, the day when the “Sixteen” [1] were massacred in the Lubyanka caves, on the order of the “Father of the Peoples” .
I kept quiet then. I did not raise my voice to protest the assassinations that followed either, and this silence places a heavy responsibility on me. My fault is great, but I will do my best to repair it, and to repair it quickly in order to lighten my conscience.
Until then I have walked with you. I will not go one step further by your side. Our paths diverge! Whoever is silent today becomes an accomplice of Stalin and betrays the cause of the working class and of socialism!
I have been fighting for socialism since I was twenty. On the threshold of my forties, I don’t want to live off favors from a Yezhov.
I have sixteen years of underground work behind me. It’s something, but I still have enough strength to start all over again. Because it is a question of "starting all over again", of saving socialism. The struggle began a long time ago. I want to resume my place there.
The noise organized around the airmen who fly over the Pole aims to stifle the cries and moans of the victims tortured in Lubyanka, Svobodnaia, Minsk, Kiev, Leningrad, Tiflis. These efforts are in vain. The word, the word of truth, is louder than the noise of the mightiest engines.
The aviation recordmen, it is true, will touch the hearts of American ladies and the youth of the two continents intoxicated by sport, more easily than we will succeed in conquering international opinion and moving the conscience of the world! Make no mistake, however: the truth will make its way, the day of truth is nearer, much closer than the lords of the Kremlin think. The day is approaching when international socialism will judge the crimes committed during the last ten years. Nothing will be forgotten, nothing will be forgiven. The story is severe: "the brilliant leader, the father of peoples, the sun of socialism", will give an account of his actions: the defeat of the Chinese revolution, the red plebiscite [2], the crushing of the German proletariat, the social-fascism and the Popular Front, the confidences to Howard [3], the tender flirtation with Laval: all things more brilliant than the others?
This trial will be public, with witnesses, a multitude of witnesses, dead or alive; they will all speak once again, but this time to tell the truth, the whole truth. They will all appear, these innocent slaughtered and slandered, and the international workers’ movement will rehabilitate them all, these Kamenevs and these Mrachkovsky, these Smirnov and these Mouralovs, these Drobnis and these Serebriakov, these Mdivani and these Okoudjava, these Rakovsky and these Andres Nin, all these "spies and provocateurs, all these Gestapo agents and saboteurs".
In order that the Soviet Union and the entire international workers ’movement do not succumb definitively to the blows of open counterrevolution and fascism, the workers’ movement must get rid of its Stalin and its Stalinism. This mixture of the worst opportunism - unprincipled opportunism - of blood and lies threatens to poison the whole world and wipe out the remnants of the labor movement.
Merciless struggle against Stalinism!
No to the popular front, yes to the class struggle!
No to the committees, yes to the intervention of the proletariat to save the Spanish revolution: these are the tasks on the agenda! Down with the lie of "socialism in one country"!
Return to Lenin’s internationalism! Neither the Second nor the Third International are capable of accomplishing this historic mission: disintegrated and corrupted, they cannot prevent the working class from fighting; they only serve as auxiliaries to the police force of the bourgeoisie. Ironically, the bourgeoisie once drew from its ranks the Cavaignac and Gallifet, the Trepovs and the Wrangels. Today it is under the "glorious" leadership of the two Internationals that the proletarians themselves fulfill the role of executioners of their own comrades. The bourgeoisie can go about its business quietly; everywhere reigns "order and tranquility": there are still Noske and Ejov, Negrins and Diaz. Stalin is their leader and Feuchtwanger their Homer!
No, I can’t take it anymore. I take back my freedom. I come back to Lenin, his teaching and his action. I intend to devote my modest strength to the cause of Lenin: I want to fight, because only our victory - the victory of the proletarian revolution - will liberate humanity from capitalism and the Soviet Union from Stalinism! Forward to new struggles for socialism and the proletarian revolution! For the construction of the Fourth International!
Ludwig (Ignace Reiss)
July 17, 1937
P.S.: In 1928 I was decorated with the Order of the “Red Flag”, for services rendered to the proletarian revolution. I send you this decoration attached. It would be against my dignity to wear it at the same time as the executioners of the best representatives of the Russian working class. The Izvestia have published in the last two weeks lists of newly decorated whose functions have been modestly ignored: they are those carrying out death sentences.
Notes
[1] Indicted in the first Moscow trial.
[2] Plebiscite demanded in Saxony by the National Socialists against the Social Democratic government and supported by the Communists.
[3] Stalin had told American journalist Roy Howard in May 1935 that the idea that the U.S.S.R. could encourage a world socialist revolution was a "tragicomedy".
Letter of rupture Ignace Reiss (alias Ludwig) to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
July 17, 1937
“The letter that I am writing to you today I should have written to you a long time ago, the day when the “Sixteen” [1] were massacred in the Lubyanka caves, on the order of the “Father of the Peoples” .
I kept quiet then. I did not raise my voice to protest the assassinations that followed either, and this silence places a heavy responsibility on me. My fault is great, but I will do my best to repair it, and to repair it quickly in order to lighten my conscience.
Until then I have walked with you. I will not go one step further by your side. Our paths diverge! Whoever is silent today becomes an accomplice of Stalin and betrays the cause of the working class and of socialism!
I have been fighting for socialism since I was twenty. On the threshold of my forties, I don’t want to live off favors from a Yezhov.
I have sixteen years of underground work behind me. It’s something, but I still have enough strength to start all over again. Because it is a question of "starting all over again", of saving socialism. The struggle began a long time ago. I want to resume my place there.
The noise organized around the airmen who fly over the Pole aims to stifle the cries and moans of the victims tortured in Lubyanka, Svobodnaia, Minsk, Kiev, Leningrad, Tiflis. These efforts are in vain. The word, the word of truth, is louder than the noise of the mightiest engines.
The aviation recordmen, it is true, will touch the hearts of American ladies and the youth of the two continents intoxicated by sport, more easily than we will succeed in conquering international opinion and moving the conscience of the world! Make no mistake, however: the truth will make its way, the day of truth is nearer, much closer than the lords of the Kremlin think. The day is approaching when international socialism will judge the crimes committed during the last ten years. Nothing will be forgotten, nothing will be forgiven. The story is severe: "the brilliant leader, the father of peoples, the sun of socialism", will give an account of his actions: the defeat of the Chinese revolution, the red plebiscite [2], the crushing of the German proletariat, the social-fascism and the Popular Front, the confidences to Howard [3], the tender flirtation with Laval: all things more brilliant than the others?
This trial will be public, with witnesses, a multitude of witnesses, dead or alive; they will all speak once again, but this time to tell the truth, the whole truth. They will all appear, these innocent slaughtered and slandered, and the international workers’ movement will rehabilitate them all, these Kamenevs and these Mrachkovsky, these Smirnov and these Mouralovs, these Drobnis and these Serebriakov, these Mdivani and these Okoudjava, these Rakovsky and these Andres Nin, all these "spies and provocateurs, all these Gestapo agents and saboteurs".
In order that the Soviet Union and the entire international workers ’movement do not succumb definitively to the blows of open counterrevolution and fascism, the workers’ movement must get rid of its Stalin and its Stalinism. This mixture of the worst opportunism - unprincipled opportunism - of blood and lies threatens to poison the whole world and wipe out the remnants of the labor movement.
Merciless struggle against Stalinism!
No to the popular front, yes to the class struggle!
No to the committees, yes to the intervention of the proletariat to save the Spanish revolution: these are the tasks on the agenda! Down with the lie of "socialism in one country"!
Return to Lenin’s internationalism! Neither the Second nor the Third International are capable of accomplishing this historic mission: disintegrated and corrupted, they cannot prevent the working class from fighting; they only serve as auxiliaries to the police force of the bourgeoisie. Ironically, the bourgeoisie once drew from its ranks the Cavaignac and Gallifet, the Trepovs and the Wrangels. Today it is under the "glorious" leadership of the two Internationals that the proletarians themselves fulfill the role of executioners of their own comrades. The bourgeoisie can go about its business quietly; everywhere reigns "order and tranquility": there are still Noske and Ejov, Negrins and Diaz. Stalin is their leader and Feuchtwanger their Homer!
No, I can’t take it anymore. I take back my freedom. I come back to Lenin, his teaching and his action. I intend to devote my modest strength to the cause of Lenin: I want to fight, because only our victory - the victory of the proletarian revolution - will liberate humanity from capitalism and the Soviet Union from Stalinism! Forward to new struggles for socialism and the proletarian revolution! For the construction of the Fourth International!
Ludwig (Ignace Reiss)
July 17, 1937
P.S.: In 1928 I was decorated with the Order of the “Red Flag”, for services rendered to the proletarian revolution. I send you this decoration attached. It would be against my dignity to wear it at the same time as the executioners of the best representatives of the Russian working class. The Izvestia have published in the last two weeks lists of newly decorated whose functions have been modestly ignored: they are those carrying out death sentences.
Notes
[1] Indicted in the first Moscow trial.
[2] Plebiscite demanded in Saxony by the National Socialists against the Social Democratic government and supported by the Communists.
[3] Stalin had told American journalist Roy Howard in May 1935 that the idea that the U.S.S.R. could encourage a world socialist revolution was a "tragicomedy".