This document was written after Trotsky
was defeated by Stalin and exiled.
'In the spring of 1924, after one of the Plenums of
the Central Committee at which I was not present because
of illness, I said to Smirnov: ''Stalin will become
the dictator of USSR''. Smirnov knew Stalin well. They
had shared revolutionary work and exile together for
years, and under such conditions people get to know
each other best of all.
''Stalin?'' he asked me with amazement. ''But he is
a mediocrity, a colourless nonentity.''
''Mediocrity, yes; nonentity, no,'' I answered him.
''The dialectics of history have already hooked him
and will raise him up. He is needed by all of them-by
the tired radicals, by the bureaucrats, by the nepmen,
the kulaks, the upstarts, the sneaks, by all the worms
that are crawling out of the upturned soil of the manured
revolution.
He knows how to meet them on their own ground, he speaks
their language and he knows how to lead them. He has
the deserved reputation of an old revolutionist, which
makes him invaluable to them as a blinder on the eyes
of the country. He has will and daring. He will not
hesitate to use them and to move them against the Party.
He has already started doing this. Right now he is organising
around himself the sneaks of the Party, the artful dodgers....'''
