Leon Trotsky: Why I Am Being Expelled from France

April 18, 1934

[Writing of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 14, New York 1979, p. 476-478]

The press gives an explanation from an unofficial source for the government’s decree depriving me of the right to stay in France. This explanation is false, as is the statement that the press attributes to the minister of the interior.

1. It is correct that in letters addressed to private persons who were interested in my visa I had openly declared my firm intention to abstain from any political activity, not to appear on a public platform, take part in public demonstrations, write pamphlets, or be a member of a combat organization. Anyone who says I have broken the word I gave in this statement, which was made on my own initiative and never demanded by anyone, is telling a falsehood.

2. As for the French authorities, nobody has imposed special restrictions on me. On the contrary, on my arrival in France I signed a statement announcing that I had been admitted to French territory on the same conditions as any other foreigner. I know of no law that forbids a foreigner to express his opinions in the form of books or articles. Nobody indicated to me that my writings published during my stay in France would overstep the bounds of legality.

3. The press quotes the Communist League and its paper, La Vérité They forgot to add that the League and La Vérité have existed for almost five years. In about twenty other countries there are organizations and periodicals that are similar, that is, they adhere to the ideas that I also defend in my writings. The League existed before my arrival in France; it published my articles and my pamphlets, many of which concerned the political situation in France. It is only since my entry into France that I have abstained from making pronouncements in the press on questions of French politics. The articles that appeared in La Vérité during the nine months of my stay in France were all translated by the editors, on their own initiative, from Russian or German, and dealt with foreign questions.

Such is the situation in fact; the unofficial motive for my expulsion does not stand up. The real reasons are quite different; there are two.

The collapse of French Radicalism is the first and most immediate reason. It was a Radical government in the honeymoon of power that gave me authorization [to stay in France]. There was no reason to hope that the right of asylum for a foreign revolutionary would be respected after the complete collapse of the Radicals in the face of the wave of reaction. There are other rights that are threatened, rights that more immediately affect the toiling masses of the French people themselves.

The second reason is the idea of the Fourth International. It is no accident that almost the whole bourgeois press has imputed to me an incoherent statement on the Fourth International at the time of my meeting with the inspectors from Melun. In reality, I had no opportunity to make pronouncements before the public prosecutor and the examining inspector on burning questions of the international revolutionary movement. But it is true — I have no reason to hide it; on the contrary, I have every interest in proclaiming it loudly — that I am a staunch advocate of the creation of the Fourth International on the foundation of Marx and Lenin. It is also correct that the Communist League of France, like twenty or so other organizations, is working in the same spirit.

The semiofficial report emphasizes the weakness of the League and even affirms that the circulation of La Vérité is less than five hundred copies. Because of my retired life, I was not able to participate in the life of the League and its press. I am absolutely certain that the stated figure would have to be multiplied by twenty or thirty in order to approach the real figure. That is not much; I see no need to hide or mask the relative weakness of the groupings of the Fourth International; revolutionary politics in the long run has nothing in common with bluff. But the very fact that — despite this semi-officially exaggerated weakness and the lack of credible accusations that I can be charged with — the government has found it necessary to take exceptional measures against me shows that the idea of the Fourth International has already become a force to be reckoned with.

And justly so! What the working masses in Germany and in Austria lacked during their decisive struggles was a clear and correct line, a strong and flexible leadership, the true banner of the world revolution. The Third International, after the Second, has thoroughly compromised itself. In the service of the conservative Stalinist bureaucracy, it strives to hide, with extravagant and contradictory lies and slanders, the bankruptcy of its ideas and methods. Only the Fourth International can regroup nationally as well as internationally the revolutionary cadres to bar the road to fascism and to guide the proletariat to the conquest of power and the socialist transformation of society.

The little episode of my expulsion falls within this political framework. I am pursued as a partisan of the Fourth International, that is, of the ideas of Marx and Lenin: this is the truth that cannot be obscured or distorted by all of the dishonest or malicious commentaries.