Leon Trotsky

To Generous Friends

Two Letters

(August 1940)

Written: Both letters written on 3 August 1940.
First Published: Fourth International, Vol.1 No.5, October 1940, pp.125-126.
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Transcriber’s comments:

These two letters are part of a series of letters published in this issue of Fourth International
under the heading of Trotsky’s Last Letters,
– D.W., 2002.

August 3, 1940

Dear Mr. ...

My old friends, during their visit here and later in their letters, have communicated to me that your friendship is indefatigable. This fact is one hundred times more precious now, when the chauvinistic epidemic created by the war dominates even honest liberal friends and removes them from us – who are incorrigible revolutionaries.

Thanks to the efforts of the North American friends, our peaceful suburban house is now being transformed, week by week, into a fortress – and at the same time into a prison. Not in the modern manner, it is true, but rather like a prison in medieval times. My young friends, who have the difficult and risky job of being guards are hopeful that, thanks to the reconstruction now under way, the assailants will not escape a second time as easily as they did the first.

My wife, Natalya, and I send you our warmest greetings and hope – in case your plans make it necessary or possible for you to come to Mexico – that we will have the pleasure of meeting you, and of showing you our “fortress”.

With cordial greetings and thanks, I am,
Sincerely yours,
L. TROTSKY

August 3, 1940.

Dear Mr. Kay:

The only thing I know about you, through my friends Jim Cannon and Farrell Dobbs, is that you are a very sure and generous friend. There are not many such friends in these times of war fury; of nationalistic tendencies and red-baiting.

We live here, my family and my young friends, under the permanent threat of a new “blitzkrieg” assault on the part of the Stalinists and, as in the case of England, the material aid comes from the States.

During the past two months the house has been undergoing transformation into a kind of “fortress”; in a few more weeks we will be very well protected against new “blitzkrieg” assaults.

Please be assured of my friendliest thanks and best wishes.

Sincerely yours,
L. TROTSKY