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From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 17, 26 April 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
A copy of the following letter was sent us by Natalia Trotsky. This letter, which reached her only after considerable delay, was addressed to Comrade Natalia by a Russian non-returnee refugee. It is the first information in 14 years as to the fate of Sergei Trotsky.
Sergei Trotsky was the youngest of Trotsky’s four children. He was never active in politics but devoted himself to scientific work. When Trotsky was exiled in 1929 by Stalin, Sergei remained in Russia, continuing to pursue his scientific work. He little reckoned with the bloodthirsty monster who usurped the power of the Soviet state.
Stalin not only continued to hound Leon Trotsky, until he succeeded in assassinating him in 1940, but he relentlessly pursued each of Trotsky’s surviving children.
In 1932, Zinaide, Trotsky’s daughter, was driven to suicide in Berlin, after Stalin arbitrarily deprived her of her Soviet citizenship.
In 1936, Leon Sedoff, Trotsky’s eldest son and closest political collaborator, was murdered by the GUP, all circumstances point, while lying helpless on a hospital bed after an operation.
The letter below shows that even Sergei, who was never active in politics, was unable to escape the sadistic fury of the Kremlin monster. He was arrested in 1935, charged with the planning of mass poisoning of workers.
Esteemed Natalia Ivanovna,
Having learned quite accidentally your address, I, a man who is unknown to you, consider it my duty to give you the information which I have concerning the fate of your son, by profession a chemist I believe [Sergei Trotsky was an engineer], who remained in the USSR and who worked, if my memory doesn’t fail me, in a scientific research institute (or “filial”) either in Krasnoyarsk, or maybe in Omsk, or perhaps in Tobolsk, in short, somewhere in Siberia.
Toward the end of 1935 or at the beginning of 1936, during the mass, liquidation of the so-called Trotskyites, your son was arrested. In September 1936 I already met him in the concentration camp Vorkutstroi (at that time still known as Vorputslag.) which was located in the Far North in the Arctic circle on the shores of the Barents Sea. On me he made the impression of a very gentle, quiet and cultured young man, but absolutely removed from an active political figurh. His health was very poor, and for this reason he was excused from the mine and was assigned work in the capacity of orderly in the prison barracks. In the course of a never before known in the history of political prisons and exile camps mass hunger strike (in which about 700 participated) which lasted 104 days, your son took part, out of a feeling of solidarity. During the trial of Bukharin, Rykov, Radek and others (at the beginning of 1937), your son together with other prominent figures of the Trotskyist opposition was ordered to be sent immediately to Moscow. I cannot here describe those unforgettable dramatic scenes which took place during the removal by force of your son and others from the barrack of the hunger strikers. Suffice it to say that for almost half a day the special political squad NKVD tried to seize the designated people and were unable to do so. And only thanks to the assistance of the camp bandits and murderers (the so-called social prisoners) to whom Department III (NKVD) gave arms and promised privileges of one sort or another, did they succeed by bloody measures in seizing the designated people, including your son.
They were guarded en route by a convoy composed of these same criminal murderers, under the command, of course, of a trusted member of Department III.
As I learned later, not far from Ust-Use your son was no longer able to bear the insults and brutality of the convoying bandits, and either struck one of them, or expressed his protest in some other way. As a result there was a scene ; one of the convoy-bandits fired and shot your son through the leg. Wounded, he was taken further in the direction of Moscow, About his subsequent fate I heard nothing.
Esteemed Natalia Ivanovna, in writing you this brief note I am guided by the best possible feeling of letting a mother know the latest, even if so grave, news about the fate of her son. If you have any kind of new information about the fate of your son, I would be very grateful to receive it from you.
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Respectfully yours, |
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