Chapters from my Diary, by Leon Trotsky

8/13/2019 Chapters from my Diary, by Leon Trotsky

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Chapters fromMy Diary

By Leon Trotzky

PUBLISHED BYTHE REVOLUTIONARY ACE

a85 w.4sttbxxor-4 STREETBOSTON, MASS.


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Chapters fromMy Diary

BY Leon Trotzky

PUBLISHED BYTHE REVOLUTlON iRY AGE

88.5 WASHINGTON STR EETBOSTON. MASS.


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Chapters from My Diary *I

Serbian Terrorists and French Liberators.-View-nese Ctwreuts in the First Days of the War

THE immediate provocation for the monstroushappenings of the present war was the workof a number of Serbian youths; almost boys, who,l in July 1914, murdered the heir apparent to the .throne of Austria-Hungary, at Sarajevo. Beingrevolutiocists of a romantic, nationalist type, theyexpected less than anyone else, that their act ofterrorism would be followed by the consequences,of universal scope, which were its sequel.Later I met one of the members of this revolu-tionary organization in Paris ; it was in the earlymonths of the war. He was a member of the verygroup which had organized the Sarajevo assassi-nation; but he had gone abroad before the murderand volunteered as an interpreter in the FrenchNavy at the beginning of the war. The AlliePwere planning a landing on the Adriatic coast OPAustria-Hungary, with the intention of arousinga revolt in the Southern Slavic provinces of theHapsburg Monarchy. For this purpose, Serbiantype was loaded onto French warships, to enablethem to print revolutionary proclamations,. aawell as devoted Serbians who were to write theseproclamations, and, in general, to bring about anuprising for national independence. Officiallythey were designated as translators. As, how-ever, Serbian revolutionists, on the warships ofthe Republic, might constitute an over-inflam-mable material, a gray-haired Serbian spy wasalso placed among them for the purpose of first-hand supervision over the youthful enthusiasts.It is extremely probable that this great foresightis attributable to the Russian Embassy in Paris,for in operations of this nature that organ haaclear title to primacy among the Allies.

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The wh~lc burineaa, as irr well known, ~4rne Dsnaught. The French vessels sailed around in theAdriatic, devoted some attention to Pola, but,after firing a few fruitless shots, turned batagain. Why? was the perplexed question ofall the uninitiated. But in French political andjournalistic circles the explanation was alreadygoing the rounds : Italy is not willing. To arousea rebellion in the southern provinces of Austria-Hungary, it seemed, meant raising the banner ofa national unification of the Jugo-Slavs. Italy,however, considers that Dalmatia should byrights -belong to her-by right, let us say, of%imperialist appetite, and she issued a protest 0against the proposed landing of an allied force.At that time it was necessary to pay a price forItalys benevolent neutrality, later, for her par-ticipation in the war. That is why the Frenchships turned back so unexpectedly, together with$heir portable printing presses, their Serbian in-terpreters and their gray-haired spy.Whats this? was the question the young Serb revolutionist whom I have mentioned be-fore asked me. It is clear the Allies are simplyselling out the Serbs to Italy. How about the warfor the liberation of the small nations ? And, inthat case, what have we Serbs to fight for? Is itpossible that I have volunteered my servicessimply that I might shed my blood to secure thetransfer of Dalmatia to Italy? And what was: the reason for the sacrifice of my Sarajevo friendGavrilo Prinzip, and the rest ?

He was in the depth of despair, this youth withthe tawny, yet freckled face and the feverishlybright eyes. The true meaning of the war ofliberation had revealed itself to him,-as faras Dalmatia was concerned. I got a good deal ofinformation from him concerning the inner lifeof the southern Slav revolutionary organizations,and particularly the group of youngsters whokilled the Hapsburg heir-apparent, the head ofthe Austro-Hungarian war .party.The organization, which bore the romantic des-ignation The Black Hand, was constructed


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strictly on the basis of a carbonari* conspiracy.The initiation of new members involved a numberof mysterious formalities; the blade of a knifewas pressed against their bared breasts, and theywere sworn to silence and loyalty under the pen-alty of death, and so on. The meshes of thisorganization ( extended over all the Jugo-Slavprovinces of the Hapsburg Monarchy, makinguse of the most self-sacrificing elements of theeducated youth, and centred in Belgrade, in thecontrol of oficers and politicians who were equal-ly well-connected with both the Serbian Govern-ment and the Russian Embassv. As ic well knownon the Balkan Peninsula the Romanoffs have nev-er hesitated in the use of dynamite.Vienna clad itself in official mournins, althoughthe great masses of the. citys population paid Imighty little attention to the news of the destruc-tion of the heir to the throne of the Hapsburgs.So the press had to set about the task of workingun the nopular feelinps. It is difficult to find wordsthat will correctly designate the truly colossal vile-ness to which the press of all Europe-nay, ofall the world-has resorted and still does resortwith regard to the events of the present war. Inthis indecent orgy, the black and yellow press ofAustria-Huncrarv, distinguished neither by know-ledqe nor by talent, emnot be said to occupy aninsipnificant place. When the word was handedout from the centre, unseen to the public, fromthe diplomatic inferno in which the destinies ofnations are hatched, the scribblers of every shadeof political comnlexion. after the Sarajevo shoot-ing, spewed forth more lies than hsd ever beforebeen seen in the history of the world.We Socialists miwht have looked on with clrltidisdain at this irrefutable proof sf the moral deg-radation of bourgeois society, which was mani-fest in the murderous industry of the patrioticpress on either side of the trenches,-if-themost distinnuished Socialist orpans had not talrctithe same tgck. The unexnectedness of this blowinade it doubly mortifying to us.

*The carbonari were Italian revolutionists in the ~Dtbcentluy, who fought the Austrian tyraw.i


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By the way, when we apeak of unexpectedness,we cannot employ the term more than in a halfsense to the case of the Vienna Arbeiterzeitung.In the course of a seven-years stay in Vienna(1907-1914)) I had ample opportunity to acquaintmyself with the cast of mind of the leading circlesof the Austrian Social-Democracy, and expectedrevolutionary initiative from them less thanfrom any other quarter. The purely chauvinisticnature of the articles of Leuthner, who ran theinternational affairs end of the paper, was suffi- .~ ciently well known even before the war. As earlvas in 1909 I felt obliged to write in the Neue Zei?an article against the Prusso-Austrian tendencyof the central organ of the Austrian Social De-mocracy. More tm once, on my journeys in theBalkans, I heard bitter complaints from Balkan(particularly Serbian) Socialists (particularlyfrom my never-to-be-forgotten friend, DmitriTutsovich, who was killed as an officer in the pre-

sent war) who were indignant that the Serbiancapitalist press was maliciously quoting the chau-vinistic attacks of the Arbeiterzeitung on theSerbs, as a clear demonstration that the inter-national solidarity of the working class was sim- \ply a fairy tale. I nevertheless was not quite pre-pared for the boundless hatred of its fellow-menwhich this organ gave so many specimens of inthe early days of the war.After the presentation of Austria-Hungarysfamous ultimatum to Serbia, patriotic demonstra-tions were held in Vienna. Thev were attendedchiefly by yougsters. Of real chauvinism themobs presented very little: but there was alarmand excitefnent, and expectation of great events,of changes-changes for the better. of course,for it was difficult to imagine anything worse.And the press eagerly encouraged this feeling,intensified and aggravated it.Now everything depends on what Russiadoes, I was told by Leopold Wienarsky, Social-ist Deputy in the Reichsraht, who died last year:If the Czar interferes, the war will be popularin this country.And, as a matter of fact, there is no doubt

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that the idea of the Czarist invasion of Austriaand Germany has excited and alarmed the imagi-nation of the Austro-German masses. The inter-national reputation of Czarism, especially afterthe counter-revolution that succeeded the 1905upheaval, was too black to be overlooked, and thismay be said to have inspired the German states-men and scribes with the idea of declaring thewar against the Eastern despotism to be a warof liberation. All of which does not give theScheidemanns the slightest excuse for translatingthe Hohenzollern lies into the tongue of Social-ism. But it reveals to us the full depth of thefall of our Plekhanovs and Deutsches, who, intheir declining years, discovered within theirbreasts the urge to come out as champions forthe Czars diplomacy at the moment when it wasperpetrating its greatest crimes.* * t

Events came piling in one after the other. Thetelegraph delivered the news of the murder ofJaures. The papers had already become so fullof lies that it was possible-for some hours atleast-to doubt the truth of the reports. All themore, since they were succeeded by news of thekilling of Poincare and of uprising in Paris. Butsoon it became impossible to doubt any longer thatJaures had been killed. On August 2nd, Germanydeclared war on Russia ; on that very day beganthe exodus of Russian emigrants from Vienna.In the morning of August 3rd I walked overto the Wienzeile, to the Arbeiterzeitungs newbuilding, in order to talk over, with the deputies,what was to be the lot of us Russians.In the Secretarys Office, I found FriedrichAdler, or Doctor Fritz, as he is called in partycircles, to distinguish him from his father, Vic-tor Adler, who is called simply the Doctor, with-out further designation. Rather tall, lean, slightlystooping, with adistinguished brow edged by pr-ly locks of blond hair, and with an expression ofconstant thoughtfulness on his face, Fritz wasa figure all by himself in the rather numerousparty intelligencia of Vienna, which was given

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%a~ oo much to horatepiap and petty joking. I%had spent a year and a half or two years in Zurich,ae a Privatdozent in the Department of Physicsat the University, but also as editor of the localparty organ, Das Volksrecht. In the war periodSwiss Socialism began passing through a radicalprocess of internal rebirth; its interests beganto pursue two divergent paths. The old mandarinsof the.party, deeming that the essence of Marxistwisdom is in the proverb A rolling stone gathersno moss, withdrew into the background. But inthe years that Fritz spent at Zurich, the atmos-phere of Swiss Socialism was still characterizedby a profoundly provincial quality. It proved toomuch for Fritz, who returned to Vienna, becameSecretary of the Austrian Party and editor of itstheoretical monthly, Der Kampf. Simultaneouslyhe took upon himself the bringing out of a week-ly agitational sheet,Das Volk, which was printedin a very large edition, intended chiefly for cir-culation in the provinces. During tne weeks im-mediately preceding the war, Fritz was occupiedwith the preparations for the International Con-gress; on his desk lay the printed matter thathad been prepared for this event, the jubileestamps and other things: the party had expendedsome 20,000 kronen in the various preparation:,for the Congress.

It would be an exaggeration to say that it wasalready possible in those days to discern, in thebuilding in Wienzeile, two distinct groupings ofmen based on divergent principles ; they were notyet formed. But already it was possible to ob-serve a profound difference of psychological atti-tude toward the war. Some seemed to delight init, launched abuse at the Serbians and Russians,drawing no serious distinction between govern-ments and peoples: these were the nationalists.by nature, who had hardly been veneered by athin coating of Socialist culture, which was beingwashed off, not day by day, buthour by hour.The others, with Victor Adler at their head,regarded the war as an external catastiophe, andone had to grin and bear it. The watchful-waitingpassivity of the party leaders served merely as

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a; cloak, however, for the unconcealed agitationthat was carried on by the active nationalistwing. A sharp and incisive intellect, a charmingcharacter, Victor Adler stood far above his policy,which had been completely taken up, in the re-cent years, with the pursuit of combinations, inthe hopeless muddling activity, so characteristicof Austrian conditions, and so fruitful as a groundfor pessimistic resignation. Not only was theelder Adler far superior to his policy, but hispolicy, in turn, was superior, in its naturally in-dividualized character, to the political consortswith whom his policv surrounded the chief. Whatwas skepticism in him, became cynicism in them,and Adlers voluntary withdrawal into a decora-tive capacity was transformed, in their case,,into onen derision as to the basic values of Social-ism. And this natural selection of his collabora-tors constitutes the clearest expression and con-demnation of the elder Adlers system.

The son, with his genuinely revolutionary tem-perament, occunied. bv his very nature, a positionthat was hostile to this system. He directed hiscriticism, his mistrust, his hatred, chiefly againsthis own povernment. When we. last met (Aug. g3, 1914). he first of all showed the proclamationthe povernment had iust issued to the population,asking t.hem to follow UD and intercent all suspi-cious foreivners. With instsntlv-kindled wersionhe spoke of the openinna of the orgy of chauvin-ism that hqrl Pet in. His outward reserve onlyemphasized his profound moral seriousness. Halfan hour later, the Doctor arrived. He imme- diately proposed that we y-o to&her to the Pre- jfecture, to see Geier, the Chief of Political Police,in order to consult with him on the intentions ofthe authorities with regard to the Russian emi-grants living in Vienna.In the Putomohile, on the way to the prefecture,I observed to Adler that the war was anparentlyproducing, in Vienna, at least externally, a sortof holiday mood.Those who are having a good time are theones who dont need to go, he answered, andtheir joy appears now to be patriotic. Beaides,

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the streets are now full of the unbalanced andthe idiotic ; this is their hour. But decent peoplesit at home and shudder. The war will afforda free arena for every instinct and every formof insanity.Being by profession a pvchiatrist, and a me-dical man, Adler often applies to political affairs(particularly to those of Austria, he remarks.ironically), the criteria of the psycho-pathologi-cal point of view.How far he was at that moment from thethought that his own son would accomplish a po-litical murder [the assassination of Premier Stu-ergh, for which Fritz was given 13 years in pri-son] I recall this fact here, because, after Fritzsact, the yellow Austrian press, and a number ofsocial-patriotic organs attempted to depict Fritzas abnormal-from the standpoint, of course.of their own hollow norms. But the legalistic

Hapsburg machinery was obliged to break down ibefore the clear intellect and the manly stead-fastness of Fritz. What cold disdain he wouldshow to the cries of the eunuchs of social-patriot-ism, if their voices could penetrate to his cellThe Chief of Political Police expressed the opi-nion that tomorrow morning there may be anedict putting all Russians and Serbians under

guard. Those whom we know we will later libe-rate, but complications may arise. Besides, weshould not be able to permit them to leave thecountry after that.So you would recommend leaving the coun-try ?:Absolutely. And-the quicker the better.Very well. I shall go to Switzerland with myfamily tomorrow.Hm -1 should prefer it, if you should leavetoday.The time of this conversation was 3 P. M. At6.40 I was already seated in the train, with myfamily, and the train was leaving for Switzerland(Zurich).


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In Switzerland-The German Treason-Plekjw- _nov-Greulich.I ARRIVED in Zurich on August 4, 1914. Switz-erland was then already over-run with fugi-tives from the warring countries. The cen,tralquestion in Swiss life had become-the potato.Would there or would there not be enough? Theviolation of Belgian neutrality, the first com-munications of the general staffs, lists of killedand wounded, these things were already findingdifficulty in obtaining a hearing, but the ques-tion of the food supply was beginning to be im-perative. And the Russians who were strandedin Switzerland also conceived of world affairs, inthese early days, from the angle of the kitchen-garden. Credit suddenly had gone to pieces ;communications with Russia were broken, thebanks stopped changing Russian money,, thenthey would pay 100 francs for 100 roubles, thenthe rate would go up, then down, and then theystopped altogether.They were giving 240 francs for 100 roublesthis morning.You dont say

Yes, they were. You see England declaredwar yesterday. Change your fifty roubles atonce, or tomorrow Italy will come in, and theyllbegin giving us nothing again.* The Russian traveling public, the emigrants,the students, the pleasure-seekeh, formed a Com-mittee of Public Welfare out of their midst,around which all the fugitives grouped them-selves, the army deserter, the member of theOdessa supreme court, the Jewish laborer, thedirector of a hospital, some actresses, etc., etc.At Geneva they formed a General Administrationfor Economic Welfare, in the Russian colony, un-der the presidency of the Caucasian social-demo-crat T, who, as is the custom, was called Com-rade Chairman. Wes&l, the Russian Consul,who was present at the meetings (oh, sweet werethe days of national unity ) asked his neighbor in

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great ratonishment: If this is only the Comradeof the Chairman, who is the real Chairman?-after which he respectfully addressed his remarksto T.After the food crisis had abated; there begana discussion, among the political emigrants, asto the conduct of the Socialist parties of thevarious countries. The agreement of the Ger-man Social-Democratic Party to vote the hrstfive milliards of war credits, created an, impres-sion of dismay. Many would not believe it, andinsisted that the August 5th number of the Ber-lin Vorwaerts, which brought us H aases dec-laration, was a simple creation of the GermanGeneral Staff, intended to confuse the enemy aato the internal conditions of Germany.The first rather indistinct tendencies were al-ready observable toward the formation of groupswithin the party. P. B. Axelrod was completelyupset by the treason of the Germans: for thatis what we called the consent of August 4th inour private conversations. If Bebel were stillalive, declared Axelrod, he would never havepermitted it.,. The action of the French Social-ists, who on that very day, August 5th, did ex-actly what the Germans had done, namely, votedthe war credits, made much less of an impression.Most of us had always considered the FrenchSocialism inferior to the German, and others,Axelrod among them, found extenuating cir-cumstances pleading for the French in the cir-cumstances of the war itself.We began to receive news of the position ofPlekhanov, who, at the beginning of the war, wasin Paris. This news was not very definite atfirst, but what there was of it was calculated toproduce the greatest disquietude. I had a num-ber of conversations with Axehod on this sub-ject and he would never admit the possibility thatPlekhanov would turn out to be a patriot. Iadmit that he will make distinctions in his esti-mates of French and German Socialism, and thathe will desire a French victory, but that he willcome out for a victory of the Czars armies-never

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I did not share this confidence. Already at thmtime of the Russo-Japanese War, Plekhanov occu-pied a position by himself in the Iskra Group ofthose days. To be sure, he did not voice his pa-triotic feelings aloud, and at the Amsterdam Con-gress he ostentatiously shook the hand of Kata-yama, yet at the same time, he was openly hos-tile to the confidence, then so dear to the revolu-t.ionist, that the forces of Czarism would meetwith defeat in the war. But in 1913, when I wasat Bucharest, Rakovsky told me that just at thetime of the Russo-Japanese War, Plekhanov hadassured him with greater frankness than he hadshown toward us, that in his opinion the idea thatSocialism should be anti-nationalist, and that itshould work for national defeat (to use theexpression that has since become current), wasan importation into the party that had beenbrought about by the Hebrew intellectuals. Thisassertion must have appeared all the more re-markable to Rakovsky in view of the fact that atthat time not only the radical intellectuals, buteven the majority of the Liberal intellectuals, withMilyukov at their head, were permeated with out-spoken defeatist sentiments. Later, in July,1914, two or three weeks before the opening ofthe war, on the occasion of the unifying Rus-sian Conference at Brussels, I understood froma number of guarded observations made by Plek-hanov, that he was not well-disposed toward theanti-patriotic campaign which I had carried onin my communications from Serbia and Bulgariaat the time of the Balkan War. All these thingsproduced in me in August, 1914, an attitude ofsuspicion toward the anointed leader of the Rus-sian Social-Democracy. But the actual course ofevents far outstripped my most gloomy expecta-tions. In Paris, Plekhanov blessed the RussianRevolutionary Volunteers in their struggle withPrussian militarism, and then was unable tomuster manhood enough within himself to raisea voice in protest, when French militarism, rcp-resented in the persons of the non-corns of theForeign Legion, subjected the unhappy Russianidealists to degrading indignities. Plekkan%v

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acnt a communication to the Bulgarians, sum-moning them to intervene in the war on the sideof the Allies. Plekhanov mobilized Kant in thedefense of Czarist diplomacy. Plekhanov agitat-ed for Italian intervention in the war bywriting the most extravagant chauvinistic arti-cles for the Italian yellow journals. And, finally,Plekhanov combined with certain backward la-borites and populists, and with the renegadeAlexinsky, to form the staff of the Paris.Prizyv(The Call), which, from number to number,stamped us, the internationalists, as the agents ofthe German General Staff.

But let us return to the opening of the war. laZurich I met Greulich, a German, the patriarchof the Swiss Social Democracy. Not of tallstature, but rugged; not stout, but heavy; a com-plete contrast to his contemporary, the late Bebel,whose leanness was more like that of an emaciatedsteel spring ; Greulich produces an immediate* impression of importance, with his white maneand the deep furrows of his thoughtful face. Hewas fiercely indignant in these first weeks withthe action of the German Socialists ; later the pow-er of his indignation went down day by day.The International no longer exists, saidGreulich,. and I at once entered this observation ofhis in my notebook. In the discharge of our

every-day political labors, he continued, we feelthat we are a real force, and we really are a force.But when great masses sweep over the stage ofaction, when it is clear that we constitute a mi-nority, we may easily be hurled out of our oliti-cal pride into political self-debasement. Tp0 me,that is the kev to an understanding of all that isVictor Adler Austerlitz Penner are~$$%?lnSocialists, but &en they will be lo& al-together with the rest of the party in the welterof the politically amorphous masses.We are entering upon a period of great crisisfor the international. It may be reborn later, butit will not be on the same foundations. We mustgcknowledge before everything else that the polit-ical parties have compromised themselves. The


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/trade unions have kept aloof, but they cannot ax-ist without international bonds between them, Itis, therefore, my opinion, that the Internationalwill be reborn after the war on the basis of thetrade unions.But Greulich was only partly right in thesewords. Numerically, to be sure, we Socialists arein the minority. But the class that is waging thewar is also in the minority. In our social systemthere are still great masses of the populatlon thatare completely unhistorical in their point ofview, that is, who in normal times have no kin4of political life. The conditions of.Capitalism denot permit and never will permit of the elevationof t,hese lowly petit bourgeois, semi-proletarian,semi-hobo classes to the level of an equal partici-pation in the destinies of society. These classesare torn out of their intellectual death only bysuch catastrophes as war or revolution.

War shatters the fetters of the commonplace,and consequently the oppressive, debasing, unen-lightened conditions. War destroys the existingequilibrium, tears one out of the accustomedtrack, and gives promise of change. War clutch-es all classes, and, consequently, those who areoppressed and overburdened feel themselves on:ln equal footing with the wealthy and powerful.These powerful hopes for decisive changes areone of the reasons why war so often brings rcva-lution in its train. Because war alone can nevermake good the hopes which it arouses. Havingconvulsed the masses with the most excruciatingphysical crises,war invariably deceives them in theend. At the very same time sections of society,which in ordinary times are scarcely touched byour propaganda, look in the direction of the revo-lutionary party for the realization of the hopeewhich not so long ago they hoped the governmentwould make good, with its apparatus of war. Thesuccess of the Revolution depends to noslight de-gree on the extent to which the Socialist party isable to convince these masses that their hopes arenot illusions.


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mlihe Sz&w Social Democracy.--Gruetli.--Ein-

tracht.-F&z Platten.-My German Pamphlet:The War and the International.-Socialist Append-ages to the General Staff.,s WISS Socialism is bound by ties of languageon the one hand to .the Socialism of Germanyand on the other to that of France. It wasentirely natural that the crisis in these two pow-erful Socialist parties should at once expressitself in Switzerland, enclosed as the country is onall sides by the fires of war. The struggle wasmirrored all the more fiercely due to the factthat the Swiss social-patriots were naturally at-tracted by the contradictory centres of gravita-tion, the German side and the French side. Inthis connection the following case of politicalsymmetry is rather characteristic. In the SwissParliament there sit two deputies with identicalfamily names and identical Christian names ;they are Johann Sieg, of Zurich, and Jean Sieq, ofGeneva. Both are social-patriots, but JohannSieg is an outright Germanophile. while Jean Siegis a still more outright Francophile. Under thesecircumstances the internationalist policv of theSocialist Party would seem to be the unified mid-dle ground of self-preservation. The internation-al position met with very general favor in theranks of the party (and it was my privilege inthose days to attend many party meetings), butthis was not the case in the party leadership.

The support of the right national wing of theparty was clearly the Gruetli organization, thatwell-known body out of which the Swiss SocialistParty sprang. The most warlike nationalist ofthis body was found to be the former pastorPflueger, one of the partys representatives in theFederal Parliament. If I were the German Em-peror, he declared at one of the party meetings,in which the first dispute with resnect to the warwas being carried on, I also should have stood bywith drawn sword to oppose the Russian

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Months later, Pflueger repeated the same sent-ence at the Party Congress at Berne, but, unfort-unately for him, his eloquent oratory did not pro-duce the desired effect; there arose a great noise,laughter, whistling, #hisses, and the unhappycandidate for the post of German Emperor foundhimself unable to finish his speech.The focus of the left wing was the organizationknown as Eintracht, which was recruited al-most exclusively from among the foreigners:Germans, Austrians, Russians, etc. Of real SwissSocialists in this organization, the most activewas Fritz Platten, Secretary of the ExecutiveCommittee of the Party. He was of tall stature,with a frank, open face, an excellent popular ora-tor, himself a proletarian by birth and by hismode of life, although he was married to a Rus-sian student. Platten represents, in himself, oneof the doubtless most engaging personalities inthe Swiss Social Democracy. What a disgrace,he said at these first meetings, that the work-ers should again have bent their backs in thiscritical moment. But I .hope that they will yetshow, before this war is over; that they knowhow to die, not only in the service of others, butalso for themselves. And from Plattens lipsthese are not phrases. In 1905, when the Revolu-tion broke out in Russia. Fritz, then a young manof twenty, decided to take active part m it, jour-neyed to Riga, fought in the first ranks, and ac-quired at first hand a thorough acauaintance withthe inside of Russian jails. In 1912 he stood atthe head of the peneral strike in Zurich, as one ofits most determined and most influential leaders.Already in September, 1914, the EintrachtExecutive Committee worked out an aggressiveinternationalist manifesto, and invited the lead-ers of the party to a constituent meeting, atwhich I was to defend the manifesto in a lecture.But the leaders did not show up: they consi-dered it too risky to take a definite position insuch a delicate question, prefering a passive wait-ing attitude, and limiting themselves to an aca-demic criticism of the patriotic extravagances ofthe German and French Socialists. This, by the

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way, is the political mentality that is most frequently found in all the Socialist circles of theneutral countries, the United States among them:in fact it is more outspoken here than anywhereelse. [This was written about one month beforeAmericas entry into the war.]The Eintracht association almost unanimous-ly passed. the adoption of the resolution, whichwas subsequently published in the Socialist pressand served as a serious stimulus to the publicopinion of the party.At the Party Congress at Berne, to which refer-ence had been already made, an address on thewar was delivered by Judge Otto Lang. The toneof the lecture was that of a very moderate inter-nationalism, approaching the present position ofKautsky. But the attitude of the majority of theCongress was incomparabiy more determinedthan that of the lecturer. In fact, in general, inthe time of the war, the Swiss Party accomplisheda swift maneuver to the left, with the resultthat a considerable section of the Gruel3 peoplewere left high and dry, and were thus obliged toform an independent reformist and social:patriot-ic party. In this fact, it may be mentioned by theway, is another plain illustration of the extreme-ly profound gulf that separates social patriotismfrom internationalism.My stay in Switzerland was, as far as I wasconcerned, taken up chiefly with my work on mypamphlet, written in German, entitled The In-ternational and the War. The pamphlet aroseout of my diary, into which I entered, during thefirst few weeks, at first only for my own use, anattempt to elucidate the causes of the catastropheof the Socialist parties, as well as the modes ofescape from the catastrophe. Platten undertookthe task of distributing the pamphlet, and sawto it that several thousand copies were forwardedto Germany and Austria. At this time, I was al-ready in France, and read with astonishment inone of the French papers a telegram reportingthat a German judge had sentenced me, in absen-tia, to a prison term for having written the pam-phlet. I must confess that the Hohenzollem

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judge, in thus sentencing me to a term which Ihave not shown undue haste in serving, did mea favor that was quite valuable. To the social-patriotic fabricators and ideological snifflersof the Alexinsky type,l this sentence by a Germancourt, pronounced on me, will be a hard nut tocrack when they turn their distinguished talentsin the direction of proving that I am at bottoman agent of the German General Staff.The French Customs, in their turn, held up thepackage of pamphlets that had been sent fromSwitzerland, and informed me that the pamphlets .would be confiscated because of their Germanoriginal ( ). One of my Russian friends informedGustave Herve about this, and Gustave JYIerve atthat time stilP had his moments of oppositionalspirit, and in La Guerre Sociale, Herves paper,there appeared a satirical note directed againstthe confiscation of this anti-German pamphlet.For this or for some other reason, the Customsdelivered to me, a few days later, the packagethat they had held up.It is hardly necessary to say that the Germansocial-patriotic press attempted, on its part, toreveal the author of the pamphlet as a secretpatriot and a defender of the interests of theAllies. What is the relative proportion of con-scious misrepresentation and of chauvenistic fa-natism in accusations of this type? It would not beeasy to determine. At any rate, so much is cer-tain: Social patriotism debases men morally andmentally to such an extent that they are preventedfrom seeing in a Socialist simply a Socialist andnothing more. When two feudal serfs met on theroad they would ask each other: Whose manare you ?- I belong to Sheremetyeff .-Andwe belong to Bobrinsky.-Evidently the feudalnotion of belonging to somebody is deeply an-chored in tlie breasts of the social patriots. Theinterests of which general staff does he defendf- i 1The latest, number of the internationalist gazette,Nachalo, arriving from Paris, brings the news that thiqformer social-democrat of the Second Duma has beendismissed even from the personnel of the not over-fastid-ious social-patriotic paper Prizyv.

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I

The Romanoff master or the Hohenzollern master?These people are beginning to lose the ability tosee that it is possible to be an enemy of all ma&.ters at once, to follow ones own flag, and to fedones self,-to use Fritz Adlers beautiful expres-sion-a soldier in the eternal army of social rev-olution.Iv I

Entering France. - Paris. - Viviani. - Joffrr. -..Briand . - Clemenceau. I;NOVEMBER 19, 1914, I crossed the Frenchboundary. Already there were manywounded all over, ahd Red Cross Sisters wereat the doors of the cars with collection boxes., Everyone had a feeling that the war would end.not later than the Spring, although no one couldprecisely say why. Simple humanity had not yetcome to the point of regarding war as the normalcondition of affairs.Paris was sad: the hotels were closed, and byno means all the persons who had fled from thecity in August had as yet returned ; the streets: were plunged in darkness at night, the cafes closedat 8 P. M. What is the explanation for this laststep ? I asked the people who knew. Thatsvery simple; General Gallieni, the Governor ofParis, does not wish to have any gathering ofcrowds. In times like these, the cafes might veryeasily become, in the evenings the centres of cri-ticism and of dissatisfaction among the laboringclasses, which are kept busy by day.All over there were many women in black. Inthe first days, when the proudly patriotic moodwas still upon them, mourning was worn not onlyby mothers and wives, but even by rather distantrelatives. The children played at war all over, andmany had been dressed in army uniforms by theirmothers. Convalescent wounded soldiers, withfresh crosses on their breasts, swsrmed in all thestreets. In respectful, almost flattering conver-,&ion with them, stood old men, who were notonly patriotic, but sometimes physically able, in

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whose lapels were the ribbons of the Legion ofHonor. There are a lot of them in Paris, theseindestructible advocates of a war jusquau boutwho in 1870 were to young to serve and now aretoo old.At times there were Zeppelins. I remember anight in December (1914), when I was returninghome through streets that were in semi-darkness.From one dire&ion, later from another, thereT,ere trumpet blasts that were terrifying to thelast degree. Dark shadows rushed by, and one by. ,one the street lanterns, covered bv screens acrosstne top, were nut out. A few minutes later thestreets were absolutely dark, and not a soul inthem. I did not understand at all, although Ihdd an idea that something interesting was goingon.Suddenly there was a dull roar, then another-nearer, a third-again more distant. It became

clear that there was a bombardment: were theshots fired from the ground upward, or out ofthe air downward? That is, were the canonsshooting in order to fight off invisible Zeppelins,or were these cruisers of the air dropping explo-sive shells ?I learned later that both these things had beengoing on at once. Half an hour later the search-

light on the Eiffel Tower began to pierce theclouds. Once more in my hotel, I was confrontedwith an unusual tableau: all the time inmateswere sitting on the steps of the winding staircasereading, conversing, or playing cards by the lightof tallow candles. It was strictly prohibited toturn on the electric light in the rooms. From mywindow in the fifth story I had an indistinct sen-sation of the city that was in hiding beneath me.Distant explosions were twice heard again. Thesearchlights ceaselessly plaved over the clouds.IEarlv in the morning: we again heard the trumpetblasts, this time stormy and jovous: the enemyhsd been rut to flivht. pou might turn on yourlight, and those who had sought safety in thecellars might with impunity mount the staircaseto their rooms. The morning after that, the papers

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announced in what parts of the city houses hadbeen destroyed, and how many human victimsthere had been.* * *

At the head of the French Government at thebeginning of the war stood the rather colorlessphrasemaker Viviani, who had formerly been aSocialist and a pupil of Jaures. In fact, the Frenchbourgeoisie seems to make a practice of entrust-ing the most responsible government posts to theSocialists of yesterday. The French Radicals,who constitute the principal party of the Republic,are for the most part distinguished by their over-narrow and provincial petit-bourgeois outlook,which would prevent them from guiding the worldinterests of the French Bourse. A lawyer whohas gone through the school of Socialism, andwho knows what manner of speech to use towardthe working masses, is much more adaptable tothe complicated politics of the present day,-onthe condition, of course, that this lawyer is pre-pared to sell his conscience, so to speak, to Capi-talism for a sufficient consideration. Anotherformer Socialist, Briand, once an exponent of thegeneral strike, held the position of Minister ofJustice in the Viviani Ministry. Briand assumedan attitude of unconcealed skepticism toward thehead of his ministry, openly criticized the reac-tionary devices of his chief in the corridors of theChamber, and did not a little toward preparingthe downfall of his friend and superior in thisway.

The prestige of Joffre, at this moment: justafter the Battle of the Marne, by which the ad-vance of the Germans had been stopped, hadreached its highest point. The entire press couldnot speak of -him without genuflexions, and re-ferred to the Parliament of the Republic, withBonapartist contemptuousness, as to a body ofwindjammers, with no useful function in theworld. The reactionary depths were boiling withactive preparations for a great coup detat. Ne-gotiations were being carried on with the-chiefnewspapers of France, Le Temps, in this cormec-


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tion and reports concerning them were a matterof every-day gossip. As far as words merely wereconcerned. the Bonapartist coup detat was al-ready in the air. But, to reduce the hare to a ra-gout, as the French proverb puts it, it is neces-sary, first of all, to have *your hare ; that is justwhat was lacking: for you cannot have a Bona-partist coup detat without a Bonaparte.At any rate, hardly anyone could have been less.appropriate for this role than Papa Joffre. Hisguarded and cautious character, the absence ofany ideal spark, made him a precise opposite tothe great genius of French military tradition, Na-poleon. In the domain of strategy, Joffre is a pre-cise counterpart of the conservative and narrowFrench petite bourgeoisie, which is afraid of tak-ing any step that involves any risk. After theBattle of the Marne (the credit for which is as-cribed by many not to Joffre, but to Gallieni), themilitary prestige of the generalissimo began togo down, at first gradually, later with great swift-ness. Nor did the French army discover anothereagle to succeed him. Of new victories and of newglories there were none. The chances for a mili-tary coup detat naturally went by the board.In fact,. there are no eagles in the militarylife of France at the present time. On the con-trary, never has mediocrity prevailed with suchundisputed sway in the Third Republic, as at thepresent tragic epoch. The greatest man whomthe French bourgeoisie has managed to attractto a position of leadership is Aristide Briand.Without possessing a singIe dominating ,nation-al idea, without the most necessary guiding prin-ciples of statesmanship or morality, a past masterin the art of wire-pulling, a trafficker in the lostsouls of the French Parliament, an instigator ofbribery and corruntion, a prestidigitator with themanners of a political grisette. Aristide Briandis, in his every quality, a complete caricature ofthe greatness of the national war for libe-ration.

.

The most formidable opponent of Briand is theold undoer of ministries. the tiger of Frenchradicalism, the seventy-five-year-old Clemenceau.


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The impelling force of his great publicistic talentiS that of malice. Clemenceau is too well acquain-ted with all the inside wire-pulling of French pol-itics to cherish anv illusions as to its possessingany idealistic motives. He is too evil to permitsuch illusions to remain unstaired in others. Cle-menceau did more than anv other person to prickthe inflated renutations of thoqe who led the na-tions war: of Poincare, President of the Rem&-lie, of J,offre. Commander-in-Chief, and of the headof the Briand Ministry. Yet the same Clemenceauthat const,ituted a chip of Jacobinism in the reignof capitalist finance, utterly lacked any sort ofconstructive policy. He demands a tenfold exer-ti?n of forces to wage war to the end. Yet heknows the secret of success as little as does any-one else, And if his destructive criticism of theuninspired and deceptive and, timid policv of Bri-and should bring about the downfall of the latter,it is hardly likely that the French Parliament wil3decide to summon as his successor the great dis-intergrator, Georges Clemenceau.P. S. - After the above lines were written, thefall of the Briand Cabinet and the formation ofa new Cabinet became accomplished. facts. Cle-menceau has been passed over. At the head ofthe Cabinet was placed t,he aaed Ribot, the con-servative, somewhat leftish in tendencies, whohas no definite ideas on the auestions connectedwith the war. I should say that the Cabinet ofRibot is the Cabinet of fruitless waiting.


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VLetter to Jules Guesde, Socialist member of #he French Ministry, concerning Trotzkys expzalsionfrom France in 1916.

M . MINISTER : Before I leave the soil ofFrance, under the escort of a police officer,who personifies the liberties in whose de-fense you were appointed to the natonal minis-try, I consider it my duty to express to you afew thoughts, not in the vain hope that they mayconvince you, but that they may at least be use-ful and of value against you. When my expul-sion from France was decided upon, your col-league, Mr. Malvy, the Minister of Justice, didnot have the courage to tell me the reasons forthis measure. Nor did the other of your col-leagues, the Minister of War, consider it properto enumerate the causes that led to the suppres-aion of the Russian newspaper Nashe Slovo(Our Word), of which I was the editor, and whichhad, for two long years, suffered continually thetrials of censorship, under the watchful eye andspecial care of that same Minister of War,Still I need not conceal from you the fact thatthe reasons that led to my expulsion are no se-cret to me. You feel the need of adopting repres-sive measures against an international Socialist,against one of those who refuse to accept the partof defender or voluntary slave of this imperialisticwar.Moreover, even though the reasons for thi$action against me have not been communicated tome, whom they above all concern, these rea-sons have been stated by Mr. Briand to the depu-ties and to the journalists.In Marseilles last August a number of Russianmutineers killed their colonel. A court investi-gation is alleged to have disclosed that a numberof these soldiers were in possession of several

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numbers of the Nashe Slovo. At least this isthe explanation given by Mr. Briand in an inter-view with Deputy Longuet and with the presidentof the Chamber Committee of Foreign Affairs,Mr. Leygues, who, in turn, transmitted this ver-sion to the journalists of the Russian bourgeoispress. To be sure, Mr. Briand did not possessthe audacity to claim that the Nashe Slovo,which stood subject to his own censorship, wasdirectly responsible for the killing of the officer.It is likely that his thoughts were somewhatalong the following lines. In view of the presenceof Russian soldiers in France, it is necessary toweed out the Nashe Slovo an A to ,banish itseditors from the soil of the Republic. For a So-cialist newspaper that refuses to spread illusionsand lies may, according to the memorable doc-trine of Mr. Renaudel, open the eyes of the Rus-sian soldiers to hypocrisies and lead them intodangerous paths of reflection and meditation.Unfortunately, however, for Mr. Briand, this ex-planation of his is based upon a very vexatiousanachronism. A year ago Gustav Herve, at thattime stillia member of the permanent administra-tive committee of your party, wrote that thisforcible removal from France of Russian refu-

.

4 gees guilty of revolutionary internationalismwould be accepted by public opinion without pro-test or resistance. Obviously Herve received theinspiration for this prophecy from ministerialsources.At the end of July this same Herve whispered,officiously, that I would be expelled from France ;at about the same time-i. e., still before thekilling of the colonel in Marseilles-ProfessorDurkeheim, the President of the Commission forRussian immigrants, established by the Govern-ment, informed a representative of these immi-grants of the impending suppression of theNashe Slovo and the expulsion of its editors(vide, Nashe Slovo, July 30, 1916.) Every-thing had been prearranged, even the public opin-ion of the slaves of Mr. Herve. They waited onlyfor a pretext to strike the final blow. And thepretext was found. The unfortunate Russian

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soldiers killed their colonel at a moment that wasmost opportune to the interests of certain people.This happy coincidence invites a suspicion thatmay, I fear, penetrate the invulnerable skin ofeven your ministerial shame. Russian journal-ists who made a special investigation of the casein Marseilles have established the fact that inthis case, as in so many similar cases, the lead-ing role was played by an agent provocateur.What was his aim, or rather what were the aimsof the well-paid rascals who directed this agent, isnot difficult to comprehend. An excess of somekind among the Russian soldiers was necessarynot only to justify the rule of the knout againstthem, which was still somewhat offensive to theFrench authorities, but in order to create a pre-text for repressive measures against the Russianimmigrants, accused of abusing Frenchhospital-ity by demoralizing Russian soldiers during thewar. To their credit we will assume that the in-stigators of this project did not themselves be-lieve that the matter would assume such a fatalaspect, that they did not intentionally desire whatactually occurred from the very beginning. Itis probable that they hoped great gains by smallsacrifices. But all undertakings of this sort in-volve an element of business risk. In this casethe provocateur himself went unmolested, butColonel Krause and his assassins were the vic-tims. Even the patriotic Russian journalists,who are openly hostile to the Nashe Slovo, ex-pressed the suspicion that copies of our paperwere given to the soldiers, at the most auspiciousmoment, by the agent provocateur.May I beg of you, Mr. Minister, to institute,through the services of Mr. Malvy an in-vestigation of this matter? You do not seethat anything could be gained by such an investi-gation? Neither do I. Because-let us speakopenly-agents provocateur are at least as valu-able for national defense as Socialist ministers.And you, Jules Guesde, having so generously a8rsumed responsibility for the foreign policy of theThird Republic, for the France-Russian allianceand its consequences, for the conquest aims of the


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Czar, and for all the. aima and methods of tmwar-it remains for you to accept as well therenown for the deeds of these agents provocateurl f his Majesty the autocratic ruler of Russia.At the *ginning of the war, when promiseswere spread with a lavish hand, your partner,,Sembat, enchanted the Russian journalists withthe perspective of the most beneficial influence tobe exerted by the allied democracies upon the in-ternal regime of autocratic Russia. Moreover,this arpument was used persistently by the So-cial patriots of France and Belgium to reconcilethe revolutionary Russians with the French Gov-ernment, but with little success. Twenty-sixmonths of constant military coalition between thegeneralissimi, between dinlomats and narliamen-tarians, the visits of Viviani and Thomas toTsarkoe Selo, in short, twenty-six months of in-cessant influence exerted by the Western democ-racies upon the Russian regime have only servedto strengthen in our land the boldest and mostimpudent reaction, softened, to a small extent,by the chaos of the administration: have suc-ceeded, moreover, in transforming the internalregime of England and France until they havebecome very similar to that of Russia.The generous promises of Mr. Sembat a,re ob-viously less expensive than his coal. The un-fortunate fate of the ripht of asvlum is but aconspitiuous symlstom of materialistic and nolicerule that are becoming more and, more nredomi-nant on both sides of t.he Channel. Llovd Georae,of Dublin fame. the imnerialist incarnate, withthe manners of a drunken clergyman, and Mr;Aristide Briand. for whose characterization I begto refer you, Mr. Jules Guesde, to your own ar-ticle of eR.rlier days, these two figures represent,in the hiphest degree, the snirit of the presentwar, its justification, its morqlitv based unon theappetites of classes and of individuals. Can therebe a better and a more deserving partner forMessrs. Llovd George and Briand than this Mr.Sturmer, who, like a real Russian, has made acareer bv pinning himself to the Cossacks of the;Metropolitans and to the petticoats of bigoted


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m damrdr ? What a nplendid, what an imaom-parable trio Verily, history could have selectedno better colleagues and chieftains for Guesdc,the minister.Is it possible for an honest Socialist not to fightagainst them? You have transformed the Social-ist party into a submissive chorus, that servilelyimitates the leaders of capitalist highway rob-bery, at a historical epoch when bourgeois society-whose deadly enemy you, Juled Guesde, havehitherto been-has revealed and demonstratedits true nature to the core. From the events, pre-pared in a period of world-wide depredation androbbery, whose awful consequences we have sooften predicted, from the rivers of blood, fromthe awful sufferincr apd misfortune, from thecrimes, from the bloodthirsty ferocity and hvp+crisy of the Governments you, Jules Guesde. drawbut one lesson for the enlightenment of the Frenchproletariat: that Wilhelm IT and Francis Josephare two criminals, *ho, contrary to Nicholas IIand Mr. Poincare, refused to respect the rules andregulations pf international law.French Socialism. with its Plorious past, withits proud line of thinkers, of fighters and mar-tyrs, has at last found (-and what a dismaceto think that it has. found -) in Renaudel, atranslator. durincr .the most tragic period of theworlds history, for the elevating thouchts of theyellow book into the language of yellow journal-ism.The Socialism of Babeuf, of Saint-Simon, ofFourier, of Blanaui. of the Commune. of Jaures,and of Jules Guesde-yes, of the Jules Guesdeof the days of yore-has found its Albert Thomas,who consults with the Russian t.vrant concerningthe surest and safest method of capturing Con-atantinople: has found its Marcel Sembat, to,exercise and display dilettante nonchalance overthe corpses and the ruins of French civilization;has found its Jules Guede, to follow the triumphalchariot of the truml;eter Briand. And you be-lieve and vou hone that the Frellch nroletariat,.that has been bled to the point of exhaustion inthis endless war for the crime of the ruling classes,,a


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will continue to tolerate quietly, to the end, thisshameful union between official Socialism and theworst enemies of the proletariat? You are mis-taken. The opposition is growing. In spite ofmartial law, in spite of this mania of nationalism,which, whatever its form, be it royalistic, radical,or socialistic, always preserves its capitalistic, quintessence-revolutionary opposition is march-ing forward, slowly, but surely. Daily it is gain-ing ground. Nashe Slovo, the paper that youhave strangled, lived and breathed in the atmos-ghere of awakening French international Social-ism. The group of Nashe Slovo, expelled fromRussia by the counter-revolution that is gainingin power and strength through the help and sup-port of the French Banking Exchange, the groupof Nashe Slovo was privileged to echo, eventhough it was hindered and hampered by yourcensor-the voice of the French side of the newInternational, that raises its head in the midstof the terrors of fratricidal war. In our capacityas undesirable foreigners we have identifiedour cause and our fate with that of the Frenchopposition. We are proud to have received theArst blow from the French Government, fromyour government, Jules GuesdeWe have the honor, together with Monatte,Merrheim, Saumoneau, Rosmer, Bourderon, Lo-riot, Guilbeaut, and so many others, to be accused,all of us, of being pro-German, of friendlinesstoward Germany.The weekly Paris organ of your friend Plekcha-noff, your partner in honor and glory as well asin your inglorious fall, has denounced us weekafter week to the police of Mr. Malvy, as beingin the service of the German General Staff. For-merly you knew the value of such accusations,for you yourself had the honor of being subjectedto similar accusations. * But now you put yourstamp of approval upon Mr. Malvy by collecting,for the government of National Defense, thereports of Mr. Malvys police spies. Moreover,my political correspondence box contains a veryrecent prison sentence pronounced against me,during the war, by a German court, in continu-


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&ion-as I was not present-for my pamphlet,The War and the International.But besides this brutal fact, that can make animpression even upon the police brain-cells ofMr. Malvy, I should, I believe, emphasize that werevolutionary internationalists are more danger-ous ecemies of German reaction than all the Gov-ernments of the Allies taken together. Theirhostility to Germany is, at the bottom, nothingbut the hatred of the competitor; our revolution-ary hatred of its ruling class is indestructible.Imperialist competition may again unite the rivalenemy brethren of today. When the total de-struction of Germany has been realized, Englandand France, after a decade, would again approachthe Kaiserdom of the Hohenzollern in the friend-liest spirit, to defend themselves against the su-periority of Russia. A future Poincare will ex-change telegrams of congratulations with Wil-helm or with his heirs ; Lloyd George, in the pecu-liar language of the priest and the boxer, willcurse and condemn Russia, as the defending wallof barbarism and militarism ; Albert Thomas, asthe French ambassador to the Kaiser, would beshowered with flowers cut by the gentle handsof the court madams of Potsdam, as occurred SOrecently in Tsarskoe Selo.All the banalities of present-day speeches andarticles would again be unpacked. Mr. Renaudelwould have to change, in his article only the pro-per names, a task for which his mental facultiesand abilities would doubtless suffice. But we willremain the outspoken, sworn enemies of Ger-manys rulers that we are today, for we hate Ger-man reaction with the same revolutionary hatredthat we have sworn against Czarism and againstthe French moneyed aristocracy.

When you dare, you and your newspaper lack-eys, to applaud a Liebknecht, a Mehring, a Lux-emburg, a Zetkin, as the inflexible enemies of theHohenzollerns, dare you deny that they are ours,our faithful comrades, our comrades in battle?We are united with them against you and againstyour chiefs, with the unalterable unity of revo-lutionary warfare. \31


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Perhaps you console yourselves with thethought that we are few in number? We aregreater in number than the police souls of everygrade believe. In your official myopia you do notsee the ghost of rebellion that is arising from allthe places of suffering and martyrdom ; you donot see it spreading through France, throughEurope, in the suburbs, in the workmens dwell-ings, in the country places, in the shops and inthe trenches.You imprisoned Louise Soumoneau in one ofyour jails; but have you thereby diminished thedespair and the despondency of


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Chapters from my Diary, by Leon Trotsky

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