The Trotskyist "World Socialist Web Site" consistently lies to its readers about the history of the Communist movement. Here we expose one of those articles. At the end we’ll make a few remarks about Trotskyism and where these lies come from.
On June 2, 2007 the WSWS published an article titled "France: Guy Môquet, Sarkozy and the Stalinist school of falsification." As we’ll show, what’s really going on is a Trotskyist falsification.
It can take many paragraphs to disprove one sentence of lies. There are so many lies in this article that we can’t thoroughly investigate them all.
For example, here is one:
Instead of attempting to mobilise the world working class against this imperialist alliance [the Munich pact of September 30, 1938, at which British and French bosses gave Hitler part – eventually, all – of Czechoslovakia, without even asking the Czechs], Stalin made a pre-emptive alliance of his own: the Hitler-Stalin Pact of August 23, 1939.
There are a lot of lies in this one sentence!
* There was no "Hitler-Stalin Pact." The Trotskyists are referring to the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty.
* There was no "alliance" at all. In fact, the Soviets even tried to offer some protection to the fascist and militarist Polish state against a possible defeat by the Nazi forces (the Polish fascists refused to take it).
But these lies merely set the stage for the main falsehood in the article:
* that two "Trotskyists" were among the 27 prisoners shot on October 22, 1941 by the German occupiers in retaliation for the shooting of a Nazi officer, the rest being members of the French Communist Party, or PCF:
* that "the presence of Trotskyists in the group of 27 prisoners executed with Guy Môquet by a Nazi firing squad in Chateaubriant was denied by the PCF leaders up to the 1990s."
"Trotskyists" means more than one, right? Let’s take a look.
The second man "counted" as a Trotskyist here, Pierre Guéguin, was NOT a Trotskyist, but a "critical communist", one who did not agree with the German-Soviet Pact of 1939 but who never quit the Party. The French Wikipedia page on Guéguin is careful not to say that he quit the CPF or joined any Trotskyist party.
The PCF newspaper calls him a "Trotskyist". Who knows why? Because, according to the same article Guéguin broke with the CPF over the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact?
However, Guéguin never resigned his political office, to which he had been elected as a PCF member, and was dismissed from it with all other PCF office-holders when France declared war on Germany. This is further evidence that Guéguin was not only not a Trotskyist, but had never left the CPF. According to this article Guéguin became reunited with the other communists at Chateaubriant, the camp they were shot in.
Then there is Marc Bourhis, whom both the CPF and the WSWS say was a "Trotskyist." He wasn’t.
According to the French Wikipedia article on him Bourhis was a member of the PSOP. This was not really "Trotskyist" at all, but related to the "London Bureau" like the British Independent Labour Party and the Spanish POUM, not to Trotsky's 4th International. See the Wikipedia (French) articles on the PSOP and on the London Bureau.
Therefore, even Bourhis was not really a Trotskyist, though his party was "influenced" by Trotskyism.
The French Wikipedia page says only that in December 1937 he had organized and chaired a single meeting of the Trotskyist party, the POI. But the POI lasted until 1939!
Therefore, there were NO Trotskyists executed at Chateaubriant!
It is true, as this article agrees, that Bourhis and Gueguin became friends and that Bourhis might have been able to escape but chose to stay with his friend. They'd have been heroes even if he had been Trotskyists. But they weren't.
There were not "Trotskyists" in this group. Not two, not even one. In reality, there were ZERO.
There are probably some reasons peculiar to the French pseudo-"left" at work here. The Communist movement in France played an especially heroic role in the anti-Nazi resistance during WW2.
But there were few if any Trotskyists active in the Resistance. So this may be an attempt to claim there were. Bourhis and Guéguin were certainly heroes. The problem is: they were not Trotskyists.
A more fundamental reason underlies all the Trotskyist falsehoods about the Communist movement, which they call "Stalinist".
The Trotskyist movement is itself based on a lie –the huge "cult of personality" around the figure of Leon Trotsky. Try to find a Trotskyist party that has any criticisms of this figure!
PLP has consistently criticized such "cults" over Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Lenin and Marx. "Cults" like this one are fatal to any understanding of reality, and can destroy the best leadership. However, these were giant figures in the working-class movement for liberation.
Trotsky was a megalomaniac and dishonest schemer who conspired against his own Bolshevik Party and then conspired again with the Nazis and Japanese militarists to overthrow the Soviet government.