What is the concrete relationship between the Trotzkyites and Zinovievites with the open white-guard elements, the police in the imperialist general staffs? Comrades, this relationship is becoming more and more direct and organic every day. From being the ideological vanguard of the counter-revolution, the Trotzkyites are becoming also the organizational vanguard of the counter-revolution. This was demonstrated above all by the Kirov assassination. This is one of the lessons that we must bring down to the Party, to every member of the Party, to every worker, to all honest elements, to make them acutely and keenly conscious of it and transmit this consciousness to the broad working masses in the United States. Make them feel the significance of this thing and to organize the revolutionary offensive against all of the enemies of the revolution. We cannot carry on our defense of the Soviet Union; we cannot carry forward the struggle for the conquest of power unless we strengthen this offensive against the Trotzkyite counter-revolutionary ideology, which is the spear-head of counter-revolution. Is it not clear that on the banner of every White Guardist, in their attack against the Soviet Union are written the slogans and quotations of Trotzky and the Trotzkyites.

It is not an accident that in the period of the spring and summer and early fall of 1934 when there was thirty or forty assassin groups sent into the Soviet Union from the surrounding fascist countries with the specific objection [objective] to murder the members of the Political Euro of the Russian Party and first of all Comrade Stalin, that all of these terrorist groups within the border of the Soviet Union were successfully rounded up and none of them got close even to their objective. They are not such a menace. It was possible to moet and overcome quickly and very effectively this menace.

What enemy was it that reached the goal, struck down the comrade standing next to Comrade Stalin. It was precisely the remnants of the Trotzky-Zinoviev opposition in the Party…. They have become the armor makers, the weapon makers for all of the forces of counter-revolutionary imperialism and finally they became that arm of the imperialists which struck down one of the leaders of the Socialist Fatherland.

All of this has a most direct and immediate bearing on the subjects of this meeting, which is to consider agitational propaganda work of our Party, has a direct bearing significance upon every phase of this question. I only want to speak of one particular phase, the arming of our Party with the theories— Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin. What is the basis of the degeneration of those elements, formerly members and leaders of the Communist Party who became the very vanguard of the counter-revolutionary attack against our Party. It was in each and every case the starting point, the foundation for the whole development, the departure from the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin. These elements became the representatives of the hostile class forces against the proletarian dictatorship.

What is the foundation for every similar development that we see in the United States, as for example, the open passing over into the counter-revolutionary camp—the Cannons, the Schachtmans, and their newest recruit Muste—on the part of such a miserable renegade as Joseph Zack at the moment when this camp had struck down Comrade Kirov? … It gives us our own excellent concrete example of the truth of what Lenin said when he pointed out that any sustained and continued opposition against the line of the Party inevitably leads directly over into the opposite camp, the camp of counter-revolution. This must teach us also the lesson to become much more irreconcilable in our struggle against every deviations in our movement. We can be very patient and long-suffering in dealing with the shortcomings and weaknesses of new, raw proletarian elements who are coming to us. But we have got to be more stern and decisive and unrelenting in dealing with the deviations of people who are not new raw people just clearing themselves of confusion and coming to us, but who represent certain fixed and stubborn deviations from our revolutionary theory and who are trying to implant these deviations into the center of our movement.

Our Party has got to be firmly founded upon the unchallenged leadership of the theory and practice of bolshevism and of the great leaders of bolshevism, and this must find its expression in the everyday reactions and activities of our Party into a sharp uncompromising, intolerant struggle, first of all, against Trotzkyism and everything it stands for, to make Trotzkyism the hated word among the masses of the workers, to make it synonymous for what it is, the struggle against Socialist construction, the struggle against the world party of revolution, the struggle against Bolshevism, the active collaboration with all the enemies of the revolution, the hand of imperialist reaction, the murderer of the leaders of the revolution.

These things are firmly, clearly established facts and these we must carry to the workers, to the broadest masses of the workers, establish these facts and all of the conclusions that must be drawn from them among the broadest masses of the workers as one of the central most essential part of the winning of the majority of the working class for the revolution, for the Bolshevization of our Party, for the rooting of our Party among the masses as capable Bolshevik leaders of the revolutionary class struggle in the United States.