Unconscious of Trotsky

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WE SERVE NE AND! i Army outside Liberty Hall, Dublin The Executive's position was easily carried by ninetysix votes to twenty-three.

Sinn Fein publications expressed their appreciation, Labour they said 'had done the right thing at the right time.

Other commentators saw it ditferently. With that happy facility of the bourgeoisie for understanding nothing in a world that they own, the Irish Times warned "Sedition and Bolshevism will go hand in hand to the polls."

It was not only the Irish Times that saw an imaginary advance for Bolshevism.

James Larkin was very alarmed about Labour's passivity in securing representation and even more alarmed and suspicious about any alliance with Arthur Griffith.

He wrote to Thomas Foran of the Congress Executive in 1919:

"I see that Sinn Fein wants a republic in Ireland now. What is to become of Arthur's Kings Lords and Commoners? Does he not want the foreign capitalists come and start up industry in Ireland because land is cheap labour cheap and unorganised. .. Not only do we demand a free Ireland but we demand a free Ireland of free men and women."

To which Foran naively replied:

"Griffith has had to move with the times. The national movement here is more advanced than you seemed to think and every day becomes more infected with Bolshevik propaganda... A big section of Sinn Fein is favourable to our propaganda and we are getting recruits every day from that quarter."

Sinn Fein swept to victory in the 1918 election and called a public meeting to inaugurate the new national assembly.

This "revolutionary" Dail was a one-party body but Labour, which by abstaining had eased Sinn Fein's path to power, was now going render further assistance by drafting a social and economic declaration of aims for the new assembly.

Sinn Fein felt that they needed such a programme now that they were assuming governmental responsibility (1) and so they turned to Labour to help them to write it.

radical Johnson, O Brien and Cathal O'Shannon collaborated on writing a draft inspired by Patrick Pearse's socioeconomic views. But the Pearse of 1916 was 100 radical for Sinn Fein of 1919.

Michael Collins wanted the document suppressed. EvenA KING NOR KAISER. tually it was decided to redraft it, omitting some radical declarations and toning down others.

The document known as the Democratic Programme was adopted by the Dail, though nothing was done to implement it.

From 1919-1921, as the war with the British raged, it was not regarded as opportune to press its execution. The Free State government that issued from the Civil War regarded it as no more than "poetry" , and its sections on natural resources "communistic". In any case the Government of Cosgrave did not regard itself as at all bound by it.

Labour delegations trayelled to Berne in 1919 for the first post-war gathering of the Second International.

The nationalists probably telt that having endorsed a socio-economic programme drafted by Labour representatives, the delegation would be well placed to secure Ireland's right to self-determination.

The delegation compromised with Ramsay Macdonald, whose English delegation agreed to home rule provided it was within the British Em pite.

Thomas Whatever it revealed about Irish labour representatives, this international recognition more than satisfied de Valera and Sinn Fein.

The Irish delegates declined to affiliate to the Second International and voted against an anti-Soviet Union resolution at Berne.

Becoming infectious But abstention on virtually every political question was becoming infectious and it declined to affiliate. tn , the though a substantial minority favoured joining.

While working internationally on behalf of Sinn Fein the Labour leaders attempted not to give official recognition to the Dailhoping no doubt that it would be an ephemeral institution that would give way to a more representative body when the British withdrew.

Yet British attempts to destroy Sinn Fein were forced to come up against the organised opposition of Irish labour. A number of examples can indicate the capacity of labour and the dependency of Sinn Fein upon it.

In April 1919 the British authorities proclaimed Limerick a special military area and imposed a system of permits for access to the city.

In response, the Limerick Trades Council called a general strike. The response was total, and from April 14 for 12 days the strike committee set up with workers' delegates was in complete control of the city.

The Limerick Soviet dissolved itself on April 26 when the British said they withdrew their permit order plans for the town.

Next year on April 5, 100 political prisoners went on strike in Mountjoy jail.

Lord French the Irish viceroy expressed the view that they could die if they chose to do so.

In response the executive • called a general strike for their release.

Apart from Belfast, the strike was completely effective and after two days the authorities changed their attitude to the prisoners and the strike was called off.

In May, Dun Laoghaire lockers refused to unload a British munitions ship. When British troops intervened, the railway drivers struck as well.

The NUR executive in London, led by chief bourgeois lackey, J.H. Thomas, tried to get the strike called off and promised a union conference that would demand an end to the British occupation of Ireland.

By three to two, the vote at the conference took the strongest pro-Irish position yet seen in England.

The leadership limited itself to a few strikes and the NUR's real attitude is probably best revealed by its refusal to pay union benefit to those who refused to move munition trains.

Critical All these actions played a critical part in the struggle against the British. The tragedy was that under the leadership of a Bolshevik party it could have been carried much further, and under the banner of the working class.

It is probably this knowledge that guided de Valera's speech at the 1921 Congress Party meeting.

"It is not necessary for me to say - you know it so well - that were it not for the solidarity of Labour behind the national cause ... the Irish cause would not be where it is today... We who are in a position to guage the Irish advance know what your support has been to us and what your refusal to put forward your own interests has meant to the cause of Ireland over the last two years."

Labour's subordination of workers" interests to the nationalists could hardly have been more eloquently expressed.

A review of 'The Trial lished by Fontana, price Packed into this short novel is a wealth of insight into the barren decadence of the daily life of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union.

Only the knowledge that atter his prolonged imprisonment for *slandering the Soviet Union', Sinyavsky emigrated to France in 1973 and has since abstained from politics confirms that the novel embodies the sharpest of artistic observation rather than political analysis.

Perhaps for this reasolt. the compressed narrative of this ninety-tive page book conveys a vivid impression of the internal corruption. hollowness and instability of the bureaucracy that usurped political power in the Soviet Union following the death of Lenin, and which now rests uneasily on the nationalised property relations established in October 1917:

The bureaucrat's paranoid obsession with 'enemies' 'gangsters', 'spies' recurs again and again as the novel charts the progress of Public Prosecutor Globov, his wife and his son, during the year of Stalin's death.

Globov, risen from peasant epit mises the instity st life to a every bureaucrat.

'In strict confidence he told her that spy centres had been uncovered in X-gania and Y-akia. A group of criminals in the Z Regional Party Committee had been plotting to seize power. The enemy, whose insolence now went beyond all bounds, attempted to spread panic and wild rumours were flying round the city, one more fantastic than the other-for instance that cancer germs concealed in matches had been infiltrated into the country by a foreign power (you pick your teath with & match and its all over with you), or that, under the influence of cosmic rays, women were only giving birth to girls (to the detriment of our Army)': (P.62)

The bureaucracy is throughout portrayed as feeling itself under seige, scared not only of working class opponents from below, but also of each other.

Within this unstable framework, the only release is an occasional opportumty to turn, with admiration and relief, to the "master' on whom their positions depend.

The parallels with the petty bourgeois delight at this year's royal jubilee are obvious, as Globov's rebellious son Seryozha attends a massive parade:

'Our darling! Our joy!' groaned the bony woman, craning her neck to the left. She looked as if she might foam at the mouth at any moment, and Seryozha felt embarassed by his own indifference. To his shame, he could not make out, among the blobs on the grandstand, the One whose proud name intoxicated all the rest like wine' (P.59)

Seryozha, along with a young girl, come to the conclusion that a new revolution is necessary to overthrow privilege and repression. ins', Abram Op.

He rebels against Stalinist propaganda, and against its most central tenet-the concept of building socialism in one country.

'You know Granny', he said happily, his voice still raw with tears, 'I've come to a conclusion: there's only one thing that can help us now-a world revolution'.

But the girl, Katya, seeks support from cynical bureaucrat, Yury Karlinsky. He takes one look at their draft programme, and attacks it out of hand:

'But it's Trotskyism, pure Trotskyism!' The decades of witch-hunting and mind-blocking by the bureaucracy now makes itself felt on the young girl:

'Katya was shocked. What did enemies of the people, spies and saboteurs have to do with it? Such men had to be destroyed, mercilessly, as was being done by Berya. But Seryozha's organisation, so statue demolished in Budapest after his far nameless, existed for the struggle for freedom and for a genuinely Soviet regime. She shuddered with disgust as a newspaper cartoon came into her mind: Trotsky, or Tito, some such mercenary killer, pictured as a longtailed rat and surrounded by his hangers-on, sat enthroned upon a hill of human bores' Demoralised by Karlinsky the cynic, Katya's will is broken.

Remains defiant

But Seryozha remains strong, defiant, even in imprisonment. The youth in the novel bears out Trotsky's picture of youth under *They have; thus, but three possibilities open to them; participate in the bureaucracy and make a career; submit silently to oppression, retire into economic work, sciences or their own petty personal aifairs; or finally, to go ground and learn to struggle and temper their character for the future' Revolution Betrayed P 63 Alongside the repression of youth, Sinyarsky's novel highlights the bureaucracy's repression of women.

Again seeming almost to echo Trotsky, Sinyarsky approaches this question through the prohibition of abortion, and the conscious turn by the bureaucracy to the resutrertinn of tha (Andrey Sin yavsky).

bourgeois family.

Chapter one begins w Globov reading the case o gynaecologist named Rabi vich who had procured illegal abortion.

Stable hierarchy The case and the 'cri of abortion recurs as a stri running through the novel. the empty court room night, Globoy speaking the whole bureaucracy ma his imaginary speech:

*No Rabinoviches undermine the basis of society, he proclaims.

Sinyaysky may or may have known that his un: standing of the issue is the same "lines as 1 expressed in Revolut Betrayed;

"The most compel motive for the present i of the family is undoubte the need of the bureaucr for a stable hierarchy of lations and for the dis lining of youth by me of 40,000,000 points of port for authority power.

But explicit scenes statement in the novel interwoven with a picture the real decadence and deg eration of the leading lay of the Stalinist bureaucrac!

Colleagues

Perhaps the most vivic the gentiy ironic picture the party given by Inter gator Skromnykh for his w placed friends:

'Globoy found he : enjoying himself and deci to stay late. He liked th people; they were Skr nykh's colleagues, every • with a face like an open br a past as clear as glass an stainless conscience. Kin men of whom perhaps l the world was terrified.

• .. The dread invisi army was relaxing at festive meal The Trial Begins is ner republished by Fonta clearly hoping to cash in the now lucrative 'disside market.

But unlike the later wo of Solzenhitsyn and other carres a message that is from anti-communism.

It is sardonic, live exposure of a microcosm the Soviet state bureaucrac Read it!