Leon Trotsky, lifelong Marxist revolutionary and founder of the Fourth International, was murdered by a GPU assassin in Mexico on August 20, 1940.
His assailant walked into Trotsky’s villa at Coyoacan on the pretext of showing him an article. Concealed under his coat was an ice pick, which he used to kill his victim.
The assassination revealed that Stalin’s secret police had penetrated deeply into the close circle of devoted followers around Trotsky.
The assassin struck in 1940, but the penetration of the Trotskyist movement for this murderous attack began some 10 years earlier in Germany.
Stalin sent two groups of GPU agents into the ranks of the Left Opposition of the German Communist Party (KPD).
The first were two brothers named Sobolevicius, born in Lithuania. They took the party names of Roman Well and Senin and held important posts in Trotsky’s German section.
They corresponded with Trotsky, on one occasion Senin visited Trotsky in exile, and both undertook courier missions across Europe.
Throughout this period, they were acting as Stalin’s agents, a fact suspected by Trotsky himself but only definitely proved on January 25, 1957, when a Manhattan businessman, Mr. Jack Soble, alias Senin, was arrested in New York.
After he was jailed for Soviet espionage, Soble told the US Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security on November 21, 1957:
My services for the Soviet secret police went back to 1931. The job was to spy on Leon Trotsky for Joseph Stalin, who was obsessed with the idea of knowing everything his hated rival was doing and thinking, even in exile.
The second agent was Mark Zborowski, born in Poland, who found prominence in the European Left Opposition because of an aptitude for Russian translation.
He became the most trusted political confidant of Trotsky’s son, Leon Sedov. When the dangers of the Nazi takeover proved too great, Leon Sedov moved to Paris, where he teamed up with Zborowski (party name, Etienne) to establish the headquarters of the embryonic Fourth International.
At the founding conference of the Fourth International in France on September 3, 1938, the reporter on the Russian question (in the enforced absence of Trotsky) was none other than Stalin’s man, Etienne.
At the opening session, the delegates paid tribute to three leading Trotskyists—Leon Sedov, Rudolf Klement, and Erwin Wolf—by posthumously making them honorary presidents of the Fourth International. Etienne played the key role in all three assassinations.
Through his inside knowledge of the Fourth International, he insinuated Trotsky’s assassin into the confidence of one of Trotsky’s secretaries while she was in Paris. When she returned to Mexico, the assassin Mercader followed.
When last heard of, Etienne was basking in relative respectability as Professor Mark Zborowski of the anthropology department of the University of California at Berkeley.
This early history of the Trotskyist movement should be sufficient to convince any comrade of the necessity for security vigilance.
But it does not convince Joseph Hansen, the leading Pabloite revisionist of the Socialist Workers Party of the United States.
This is made clear not only in his hysterical attack on the insistence on security in the International Committee of the Fourth International, but in his own movement’s presentation of the early history of Trotskyism.
Take, for example, the Writings of Leon Trotsky (1932-33), published by Hansen’s Pathfinder Press, edited in 1972.
The central question taken up by Trotsky in these writings is the position of the Left Opposition in Germany where the Stalinists were operating their wholly reactionary ‘social fascist’ theory against the social democrats, and the Nazis were storming into the government with the aid of monopoly capitalism and sections of the armed forces.
Although the documents are factually and courteously presented, there is not a single mention in the foreword that Trotsky was fighting, at this stage, against a clique of Stalinist GPU agents in the German Left Opposition who were trying to liquidate and disrupt the German section. It just isn’t mentioned.
Trotsky returned to his home-in-exile in Turkey in December 1932 after a lecture visit to Norway deeply disturbed by the “crisis in the German section.”
He immediately began to fire off letters and instructions to the German comrades as well as other sections. The crisis centered on a line developed by Well, alias Sobolevicius, alias Dr. Robert Soblen, which amounted to a policy of capitulation to the Stalinists.
Writing to the leadership of the German Left Opposition on December 28, 1932, Trotsky said:
Dear Comrades,
The crisis in the German section called forth by Comrade Well (Dr. Robert Soblen) and his group makes the following communication necessary in order to clarify the matter. When I met Comrade Senin (Jack Soble) in Copenhagen, he stated that Comrade Well complained that I corresponded only with his opponents and not with him. I was completely surprised by this news since the numerous interruptions of our correspondence always came from Comrade Well and occurred each time I made some critical remark or did not agree with him on one question or another.
From Well’s letters, conversations, and many articles, in any case, I have long ago seen that he takes a vacillating position on many questions. I have often insisted that Comrade Well formulate his misgivings, replies, etc., in a precise manner. He has never done this.
That the vacillations of Well have condensed into an explosion surprised me all the more since Comrade Senin, who takes approximately the same standpoint, assured me in Copenhagen of complete agreement (Trotsky’s emphasis) and in the course of a two-hour discussion we went through practically all important questions.
Since then, from my whole experience with Well (Landau question, French question, Mill question, Spanish question), I have become convinced that he is unfortunately too much inclined to put purely personal factors ahead of political and principled ones.
Trotsky concluded by saying that Well’s pro-Stalinist “mood, of course, cannot be tolerated in the ranks of the Left Opposition.”
On the same day Trotsky wrote an article, “On those who have forgotten the ABC — Against Roman Well and others” in which he flayed the Well clique.
Another document, also written in December 1932, for the coming conference of the Left Opposition (Bolshevik-Leninists) raised the Well affair as the central question of his report on Germany.
The preconference declares that in spite of exceptionally favorable conditions and correct initial positions, the German section has not utilized all the possibilities that were open to it. The crisis connected with the capitulation of Well and Co., has shown that the cadres of the German Opposition need a serious renovation. While the overwhelming majority of the rank-and-file members of the organization, after getting the first serious information about the crisis, immediately took the correct attitude toward Well’s clique, expressed in the word “Outside!”, the leadership and the editorial staff, on the other hand, showed impermissible vacillation and lost time, failing to provide adequate information to either their own local organizations or the foreign sections.
With such methods on the part of the leadership a revolutionary organization cannot win. The Bolshevik-Leninists are being bitterly persecuted not only by all the forces of the old society, including the Social Democracy, but also by the Stalinist bureaucracy...To tolerate in the leadership those who are vacillating, passive, tired, or candidates for capitulation is an out-and-out crime.
Nor did Trotsky leave the Well question there. On January 4, 1933, he sent an urgent note to the International Secretariat and to all sections of the International Left Opposition (Bolshevik-Leninists). In it, he sharply criticized two German Left Oppositionists, Comrades Witte and Kin, for having “spoken too mildly” on the Well issue. He says of Well: “Capitulation to the enemies of the party means the same thing as stepping over into the camp of counterrevolution.”
Trotsky concludes by telling the member sections:
It is no secret that Well is most confused in his opinions. All attempts to help him to a clearer insight in innumerable letters were in vain. The confusion in this case finally crystalized into a completely Stalinist form...Well has proven that there is no basis for further discussion.
And in that, in my opinion, consists the mistake of the International Secretariat. It is not sufficient that two members expressed their opinion and a third member joined them. It was their duty at once as the Secretariat, as the highest institution, to declare that the present views of Well are incompatible with membership in the Left Opposition.
And it was the decision, not only the minutes, which the International Secretariat should have laid before all the sections for examination and confirmation.
I for my part do not hesitate for a moment, in the name of the Russian Opposition, which in spite of all the Stalinist slander exists, grows, struggles and gains in influence, to declare: “If Well holds onto the opinions he expressed in the minutes of December 15, he must not stay in our ranks another twenty-four hours.”
On January 28, 1933, Trotsky was again combing through the Well experience to educate his young organizations in the struggle for a Marxist cadre.
Under the title “Serious lessons from an inconsequential thing,” Trotsky began:
It would be substantially incorrect to pass by the Well case in silence and merely refer to the fact that a dozen lazy fellows have gone astray and have taken with them two or three dozen dead souls who for a long time have taken no part in the organization. We really have no reason to exaggerate the extent of the loss. But it is quite indispensable to clearly take account of the event.
Well, like his twin Senin, remained always a strange figure in the ranks of the Opposition. More than once we had to ask: “What keeps these inflated petty bourgeois in the Opposition?”
They formerly belonged to the party, then joined the Right, then came to the Left Opposition and immediately on different occasions began to talk on this or that point of our platform understanding it halfway or not at all. Yet not once, in spite of repeated proposals, did they try to formulate their real position. This is explained by the fact that they had no position.
To all those Pabloite revisionists, Hansen in particular, who accuse the International Committee of “paranoia” in relation to security, we would like to quote Trotsky’s final remarks on Well:
A half an hour before their capitulation, all of them, Graef and Mill, and Well and Senin, drew back with indignation at the mere thought of the possibility of their return to Stalin’s camp. And thirty minutes after their last oath, they broke with the Opposition in the most impudent and noisy manner in order to immediately raise their price in the market of the Stalinist bureaucracy. At the mildest estimate, we can call these people nothing but the garbage of the revolution.
In the Comintern, in the GPU, in each national section, there is a special apparatus for the disintegration of the Left Opposition, composed for the most part of deserters of the Opposition or of Stalinist agents who make themselves out to be Oppositionists.
If the German comrades take the necessary trouble, they will surely discover the connection of such agents which leads from Well and Graef to Manuilsky and Menzhinsky.
It stands to reason that no agent can destroy a historically progressive tendency embodied in the tradition of revolutionary Marxism. But it would be an unpardonable frivolity to ignore the actions of the Stalinist agents for the introduction of confusion and disintegration as well as direct corruption. We must be attentive and watch out!
In this 1933 article Trotsky foreshadowed the exposure of the Sobolevicius brothers as GPU agents 24 years before it came to light.
This was no accident. Trotsky was the foremost exponent of revolutionary Marxism in the world and his considerable experience in such matters was the historical lifeline in the task of founding the Fourth International.
The International Committee of the Fourth International is not going to betray these founding principles and traditions of the movement. But Hansen has. According to his doctrine, Trotsky would be a “paranoid” for some of the accusations he makes in the course of educating the International Secretariat on the Well affair.
Not only does the foreword to the Pathfinder publication not mention the crucial security implications which Trotsky himself raised, but the footnotes on Well and Senin are a masterpiece in understatement and political dishonesty.
Buried on page 330 in the book’s footnotes is this insignificant note to “explain” the crisis in the German section involving the two brothers:
Roman Well and Senin were pseudonyms of the Sobolevicius brothers, originally from Latvia. As Dr. Robert Soblen, Well committed suicide in 1962 when he was under prosecution as a Soviet espionage agent in the United States. Senin, under the name of Jack Soble, told a US Senate committee in 1957 that he had been a GPU agent while functioning inside the Left Opposition, although it was not customary for GPU agents to engage in political disputes with Trotsky.
This is astounding! Senin’s purpose was not to have “political disputes” with Trotsky, that was a cover. His job was to get as close as possible to the center of Trotsky’s organization and place other people there under cover of artificially induced factional fights.
Trotsky rumbled the Sobolevicius brothers and set out to explain the political implications of the case to the movement at once. When he testified to the Dewey Commission in 1937, Trotsky made a point of recalling Senin’s visit to him in Norway:
I had the suspicion, as other German friends who worked in the German organization, that the so-called Trotskyite was more or less an agent of the Stalinists. He came to assure me that it was not true—that is, Senin came, and we had a conversation for one hour or a bit more.
Soble’s own account, given to the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security in 1957, was more illuminating:
Trotsky called me in and in a fit of rage told me he had discovered what I was up to. He said, “You will one day regret what you are doing. I never want to see you again.”
Hansen comes along and buries these crucial political experiences made during the movement’s early history. The fact that two Stalinist agents conducted one of the most successful penetration jobs on the Left Opposition, is reduced to a distorted back-page footnote.
Such people as Hansen cannot carry forward the fight for Trotskyism since they try to disembowel its revolutionary history at every stage.