David North’s November 1989 trip to the Soviet Union and the publication of the Russian Bulletin from 1989 to 1994 created the basis for an extensive correspondence by North with dozens of workers and youth from the Soviet Union. We are publishing a selection of these letters here, many of them for the first time.
This correspondence testifies both to the great interest in Trotskyism at the time, and the principled approach toward matters of history, political analysis and theory that the ICFI took in clarifying fundamental issues in the working class.
We are also publishing on this page Trotsky’s letter to the workers of the USSR from 21 April, 1940, one of the last pieces he wrote before his death at the hands of a Stalinist agent in Mexico just four months later, on August 21.
This open letter was written by Trotsky in April, 1940, shortly before his assassination at the hands of Stalinist agent Roman Mercader.
This letter was written by North to a Soviet youth three months after his November 1989 trip to the Soviet Union.
This document includes a letter written by a Soviet youth to the International Committee of the Fourth International, and a subqsequent reply written by North.
In this letter to Professor Stepansky, North responded to the latter’s claim that the program of capitalist restoration and perestroika had been adopted and supported by the Soviet working class.
This includes a letter written by a worker in the industrial region of Volzhsky, who had received a copy of the Bulletin of the Fourth International, the theoretical journal of the ICFI, as well as a reply from North addressing political, social and cultural questions in the American working class.
This includes a letter written by a worker in the region of Vortuka, and a reply from North addressing the profoundly revolutionary heritage of the October Revolution and the Bolshevik Party and its betrayal by Stalinism.
In this letter to a youth in Ukraine, North warns of the catastrophic consequences of capitalist restoration in Ukraine: “Remember, a capitalist Ukraine would be an economic colony of imperialism, enjoying no greater independence and self-determination than capitalist India!”
In this letter, North elaborated on the Trotskyist position on the national question and the struggle of the Left Opposition over this issue against Stalinism.
In this letter to a worker, Golubev, North addresses the attitude taken by the Trotskyist movement toward religion.
In this extensive letter, North reviews the principled record of the Trotskyist opposition to Stalinism, which was based on the perspective of world socialist revolution, and distinguishes this perspective from the right-wing opponents of Stalinism seeking to justify the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.
This is a letter to Ivan Vrachev, a surviving former member of the Left Opposition, and Rebecca Boguslavskaya, the daughter of the Old Bolshevik Mikhail Boguslavsky who was murdered by Stalin in 1937.