Churchill in fact used the phrase "Like the cancer bacillus he grew, he fed, he tortured, he slew in fulfillment of his nature"
first in Nash’s Pall Mall Magazine (December 1929). “Trotsky: The Ogre of Europe” was later reprinted in Great Contemporaries.
In the same year, 1929, he also remarked in _The Aftermath_ that the Germans “transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague
bacillus from Switzerland into Russia.”
See my discussion, “The Creeds of the Devil”: Churchill between the Two
Totalitarianisms, 1917-1945, on the Churchill Centre site:
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/support/the-churchill-centre/publications/finest-hour-online/725-the-creeds-of-the-devil-churchill-between-the-two-totalitarianisms-1917-1945
Professor Antoine CAPET, FRHistS
Head of British Studies
University of Rouen
76821 Mont-Saint-Aignan
France
[email protected]
'Britain since 1914' Section Editor
Royal Historical Society Bibliography
Reviews Editor of CERCLES
http://www.cercles.com/review/reviews.html
================================================
-----Message d'origine-----
From: Carey Stronach
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2011 6:12 AM
To: ChurchillChat
Subject: [ChurchillChat] Churchill and Trotsky
In his recent book, "In Defense Of Leon Trotsky," David North quotes WSC as saying of Trotsky in 1937, "Like the cancer bacillus
he grew, he fed, he tortured, he slew in fulfillment of his nature."
Was Churchill on the mark with these comments, or was he mistaken, possibly grossly mistaken (as North claims)? The Russian
revolution was terribly bloody, but many, perhaps most, of the atrocities were committed on the orders of others, Lenin, Stalin
and the NKVD.
It's a fascinating, but ultimately frustrating, game to construct alternative histories. Trotsky lost the power struggle with
Stalin in 1927 and left the Soviet Union in fear of his life in 1929. (He was eventually murdered in Mexico by a Stalinist thug in
1940.) The worst horrors of the Soviet regime lay in the future, the Ukrainian famine of 1931-33, and the great purge of 1937-38.
The book "Bloodlands," by Timothy Snyder, documents these terrors in excruciating detail, as does the historical novel "Everything
Flows," by Vasily Grossman.
Let us assume for the moment that Trotsky had defeated Stalin in the 1920s. Would the Soviet people have accepted a Jewish leader?
Would the USSR have morphed into a social democracy along the lines of a Slavic Sweden? Or would there have been a coup, perhaps
led by the army, that might have brought a right-wing dictatorship to power? If Trotsky had prevailed, World War II might never
have happened, at least not along the lines of what actually took place. This is because a Trotsky - Hitler pact would have been
utterly unthinkable, indeed laughable in its absurdity. Then Britain and Churchill would not have had to endure the supreme
challenge of 1940-41, and WSC might have ended his career as a relatively unknown back bencher.
This chat group has been relatively quiet recently. I know that there are a number of distinguished scholars present, from both
right and left. Maybe this topic will draw out some interesting and divergent opinions.
CES
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