A tribute to Vadim Rogovin by Ulrich Rippert

"You addressed the question that has been suppressed-- that there existed a socialist opposition to Stalinism"

On May 12, 1997 the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences held a meeting in Moscow to honor Vadim Rogovin, a leading researcher at the Institute, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. Ulrich Rippert, national secretary of the Partei fur Soziale Gleichheit (Socialist Equality Party) in Germany, made the following remarks at the meeting.

Dear Vadim Zakharovich! Dear guests! I am extremely pleased to be able to take part in the celebration of your sixtieth birthday. Your many friends in Germany have asked me to pass on their very best wishes on this occasion.

I would like to name just one, Professor Nathan Steinberger from Berlin. Although he spent nearly 20 years as a prisoner in the Soviet camp Kolyma and made many bitter experiences with Stalinism, he has remained faithful to his original socialist convictions. On hearing the news that the fifth volume of your history of the Left Opposition has been published, he was very pleased. He wishes you further creativity.

The great significance of your work in bringing to light the historical truth has already been emphasized. I want to say something about the situation in Germany which serves to illuminate this question.

Your lecture at Humboldt university in Berlin a year ago attracted a great deal of attention. This was not only reflected in the nearly 500-strong attendance. You addressed the question that has been suppressed by both sides in the East and the West: the fact that there existed a socialist opposition to Stalinism and that the great problem of this century lay in the violent and brutal suppression of this opposition.

How is one to understand the growing international interest in your lectures and books? In these final years of the millennium, all of the unresolved historical problems are erupting once again. We see this not just in the Balkans.

Naturally, we are not gathered here simply to compare the great tragedies that have afflicted our respective countries. Here the Stalinist terror ruled; in Germany, fascism and the Holocaust. But it is necessary to understand the connection.

In Germany today the questions of history are emerging with renewed force. Right-wing demagogues seek to exploit the conditions of growing social inequality and impoverishment as if 1933 had never happened. Everywhere one goes the question arises: how was it possible for Hitler to come to power and for the Holocaust to take place? How could this occur in the country with the biggest socialist mass movement outside of the Soviet Union, where a whole number of generations were raised and educated under the influence of socialist traditions and socialist culture, in the homeland not only of Marx and Engels, but also of Goethe, Beethoven and Hegel?

How was it possible, in such a land, that such a monstrous and barbaric crime could take place? The answer lies in the fact that the workers movement was politically disarmed, the outcome of the Stalinist repression of the Trotskyist Left Opposition.

Anyone who has had the opportunity to read any of Trotsky´s writings on Germany cannot fail to recognize that Trotsky possessed a profound and wide-ranging understanding of the situation in Germany. His struggle against the Stalinist slogan of "social fascism" established the basis for unifying and mobilizing the working class against Hitler. But the Trotskyist Opposition was suppressed, persecuted and murdered. In this way, the Stalinists prepared the road for the fascists!

Having read Trotsky's article, "Portrait of National Socialism," the most well-known German writer of that time-Kurt Tucholsky-wrote the following in a letter to the Weltbühne: "It is unbelievable that someone who does not live in Germany could explain so clearly the situation and show a way forward."

Following the defeat of the working class, Tucholsky observed how more and more intellectuals adapted to, or became servants of the new regime. In desperation, from his place of exile in Sweden, he took his own life.

Dear Vadim Zakharovitch!

We are very pleased that, despite the difficult conditions of the present period, rather than reacting with desperation, you are persevering with your task of uncovering and spreading the historical truth. You have made thereby an enormous contribution to the political renewal of the international workers movement. Only in this way is it possible to overcome the crimes of Stalinism, which have borne down like a nightmare on the consciousness of the working class.

As one of the previous speakers noted, a sign that the current political crisis was beginning to be overcome would be the broad recognition of your work. I merely wish to add: this process has begun!

Very soon we will have sold the first thousand copies of the book of your speeches and essays which we published at the end of last year in Germany. It has attracted considerable attention. The translation of your other books into German has begun and the announcement that we will shortly be publishing in Germany several of your volumes on the Left Opposition has been greeted with great interest. More and more, serious intellectuals and workers are beginning to seek and find answers in your books to the great questions of this departing century.

We would like to impart our most sincere and heartfelt thanks for your work and wish you the necessary strength to carry out your work to the very end.