Numerous sources claim that during the years of the revolution, one of the Bolshevik leaders made a threatening statement with elements of xenophobia. We checked whether Trotsky said this.

Here is a text often attributed to Leon Trotsky: “We must turn Russia into a desert inhabited by white Negroes, to whom we will give such tyranny as the most terrible despots of the East have never dreamed of... We will shed such torrents of blood that will make all the human losses of capitalist wars shudder and turn pale. The largest bankers from overseas will work in close contact with us. If we win the revolution, crush Russia, then on its funeral ruins we will strengthen the power of Zionism and become such a force before which the whole world will kneel... Through terror, bloodbaths, we will bring the Russian intelligentsia to complete stupidity, to idiocy, to an animal state... In the meantime, our young men in leather jackets are the sons of watchmakers from Odessa and Orsha, Gomel and Vinnitsa — they know how to hate everything Russian!”

This quote can be found on social networks (LiveJournal, "VKontakte», Twitter, Facebook), periodicals (magazines "Young Guard" And "Moskovsky Vestnik"), as well as in dozens of journalistic books on historical topics (for example, "Red Empire: Rise and Fall", "Ataturk: a special purpose", "Cossack Atamans", "Ethnic repression", "Secrets of Russian history of the 20th century"). Very often it is cited by anti-Semitic resources.

More than 80 years have passed since the assassination of Leon Trotsky, but the figure of the author theory of permanent revolution continues to excite the minds of history lovers in Russia and abroad. Considering the contradictory image of the revolutionary, which a number of researchers even calls author of the key principles of totalitarianism, the authenticity of the quote we are considering cannot be ruled out in advance. On the other side, knownthat at least before the revolution, Trotsky’s attitude towards Zionism was complex, even sometimes negative.

Let us immediately note that on the resource Google Books"This quote cannot be found in sources earlier than 1991. In the book "Cossack Atamans" indicated a publication in which a quote from Trotsky was once published. It's about the newspaper "Our Way" - the central organ of the Russian Fascist Party, published by emigrants in Harbin and Shanghai (China) in 1933–1943. This newspaper and its editor are sad known with its anti-Semitic rhetoric, and for obvious reasons, the publication had no direct connection with Trotsky, so such a source does not inspire confidence. Even if the quote actually appeared in it.

Journalist Valery Khatyushin, future editor of the Young Guard magazine, in his article 1991 cites a more specific source: the memoirs of Aron Simanovich, former secretary of Grigory Rasputin. It should be noted that Khatyushin’s quote has a more complete form, without punctuation.

Aron Samuilovich Simanovich, who became widely known as a confidant of Grigory Rasputin, after the February Revolution was arrested and imprisoned in the Kresty prison, from where the former merchant of the 1st guild was released only at the cost of huge expenses for bail and lawyers. After his release, Simanovich went abroad, where his memoirs entitled “Rasputin and the Jews. Memoirs of the personal secretary of Grigory Rasputin." Let us close our eyes for a moment to the fact that this work is written by leading Russian historians called a fruit of Khlestakov’s imagination, which “only the stupidest fool can trust.” The point is that throughout book the name of Leon Trotsky... does not appear even once. There is also no quote of interest to us with any attribution.

In a number of sources mentioned some newspaper "Russian Word" (No. 1) as a source of reference to Simanovich’s book. Let us note that this émigré publication began publishing in Buenos Aires in 1948, after Trotsky’s death, so at best it could have reprinted his words. However, as stated above, there is no such fragment in the memoirs.

Finally, in one of the issues of the newspaper “Evening Nikolaev” for 2011 stated, that the quote was taken “from L. Trotsky’s speech to the soldiers of the Bogulma division on the Eastern Front. Newspaper "Rabochaya Mysl" dated July 20, 1919." Let's start with the fact that the only formation called the "Bugulminskaya Division" (not Bogulminskaya) was formed only in 1941. As for the publication “Rabochaya Mysl”, it is the only one of its namesake newspapers with that name, coming out in the indicated years in the region of the Eastern Front (in this case in Tobolsk), defended the interests of the whites, so she could not have received Trotsky’s words first hand.

One of the issues of the Tobolsk newspaper “Rabochaya Mysl”

So, Trotsky most likely did not utter such words. Where then did this saying come from? Boris Ikhlov assumes, that a number of phrases for the quote were borrowed from a statement by the poetess Zinaida Gippius, which appeared in her diary at the end of November 1919: “Here is the exact formula: if in Europe in the 20th century there can exist a country with such phenomenal, historically unprecedented, universal slavery and Europe does not understand this or accepts it, Europe must fail. And that’s where she goes. <…> Yes, slavery. Physical killing of the spirit, every personality, everything that distinguishes a person from an animal. Destruction, collapse of the entire culture. Countless bodies of white blacks.”

Please note: two quotes mention white blacks, unprecedented slavery/tyranny, physical destruction and transformation into animals.

But this, apparently, is not the only source of the text in question. We see no less overlap with the quote from the false Trotsky (let’s call the author of the fake we are considering) in the seven-volume work of the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov "Notes on the Revolution". These are not only figures of speech (“to win the revolution”, “in close contact”, “by physically destroying”). In a number of places, the statements of Sukhanov and the false Trotsky are directly opposite, as if the author of the fake took the thoughts and statements of Sukhanov and turned them 180 degrees. Let's compare.

Sukhanov: “An attempt to take power through an uprising and maintain it through terror would be utopian and hopeless. <…> Secondly, the troops are marching for completely peaceful purposes and do not in any way threaten a coup or a bloodbath.”
False Trotsky: “We will bring about terror and bloodbaths...”

Moreover, Sukhanov cites... the speech of the real Trotsky on December 25, 1917, but the author of the fake again makes a “reversal” of it.

False Trotsky: “We will shed such streams of blood, before which all the human losses of capitalist wars will shudder and turn pale.”
Trotsky: “We were told that the uprising would cause a pogrom and drown the revolution in streams of blood. So far everything has been bloodless. We don't know a single victim. I know of no examples in history of a revolutionary movement in which such huge masses were involved and which would have passed so bloodlessly.”

Finally, in extended version the statements of the false Trotsky are the words: “Russia is our enemy. It is inhabited by evil tailless monkeys, who for some reason are called people.” Here the forger made a big mistake, since he took a whole phrase (“evil tailless monkeys called people”) from the book "My Life" the real Leon Trotsky. This autobiography was first published in Germany in 1930, which means that the fake could not have been written earlier. There, seven years earlier, Sukhanov’s volume with Trotsky’s speech was published. In the same Berlin they previously released diaries Zinaida Gippius. From all this it follows that the false text of the false Trotsky was cobbled together by an emigrant author around the 1930s from what he had at hand - perhaps this happened in Berlin. One way or another, he apparently has nothing to do with the personality of Lev Davidovich Trotsky.