Leon Trotsky - To the students of Edinburgh University

Dear Sirs,

I am indebted to you for your so unexpected and flattering proposal, to put me up as candidate for the rectorate of your university... The elections to the rectorate, you write, are conducted on a non-political basis and your letter itself is signed by representatives of every political tendency.  But I myself occupy too definite a political position; all my activity has been and remains devoted to the revolutionary liberation of the proletariat from the yoke of capital... I would ... consider it a crime toward the working class and a disloyalty toward you to appear on no matter what public tribune not under the Bolshevik banner.  You will find, I have no doubt, a candidate much more in conformity with the traditions of your university...

Leon Trotsky, 'To the Students of Edinburgh University' (7 June 1935) in Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1934-35, pp. 401-402, quoted in Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism by Emanuele Saccarelli.