Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky | |
|---|---|
Лев Троцкий | |
.jpg) Trotsky in 1918 | |
| People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs of the Soviet Union[a] | |
| In office 14 March 1918 – 12 January 1925 | |
| Premier | |
| Preceded by | Nikolai Podvoisky |
| Succeeded by | Mikhail Frunze |
| People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Russian SFSR | |
| In office 8 November 1917 – 13 March 1918 | |
| Premier | Vladimir Lenin |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | Georgy Chicherin |
| Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet | |
| In office 20 September 1917 – 26 December 1917 | |
| Preceded by | Nikolay Chkheidze |
| Succeeded by | Grigory Zinoviev |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Lev Davidovich Bronstein 7 November 1879 (N.S.) Yanovka, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) |
| Died | 21 August 1940 (aged 60) Mexico City, Mexico |
| Manner of death | Assassination |
| Resting place | Leon Trotsky House Museum, Mexico City, Mexico |
| Citizenship |
|
| Political party |
|
| Spouses | |
| Children | |
| Signature |  |
Central institution membership Other offices held
| |
Lev Davidovich Bronstein[b] (7 November [O.S. 26 October] 1879 – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,[c] was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a key figure in the 1905 Revolution, October Revolution of 1917, Russian Civil War, and the establishment of the Soviet Union, from which he was exiled in 1929 before his assassination in 1940. Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin were widely considered the two most prominent figures in the Soviet state from 1917 until Lenin's death in 1924. Ideologically a Marxist and a Leninist, Trotsky's ideas inspired a school of Marxism known as Trotskyism.
Born into a Jewish family in Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, Trotsky joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898. He was arrested and exiled to Siberia, but in 1902 escaped to London, where he met Lenin. Trotsky initially sided with the Mensheviks against Lenin's Bolsheviks in the party's 1903 schism, but declared himself non-factional in 1904. During the 1905 Revolution, Trotsky was elected chairman of the Saint Petersburg Soviet. He was again exiled to Siberia, but escaped in 1907 and lived abroad. After the February Revolution of 1917, Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks and was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. He helped lead the October Revolution, and as the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, by which Russia withdrew from World War I. He served as People's Commissar for Military Affairs from 1918 to 1925, during which he built the Red Army and led it to victory in the civil war. In 1922, Lenin formed a bloc with Trotsky against the growing Soviet bureaucracy[3] and proposed that he become a deputy premier,[4] but Trotsky declined.[5] Beginning in 1923, Trotsky led the party's Left Opposition faction, which opposed the market concessions of the New Economic Policy.
After Lenin's death in 1924, Trotsky emerged as a prominent critic of Joseph Stalin, who soon politically outmaneuvered him. Trotsky was expelled from the Politburo in 1926 and from the party in 1927, exiled to Alma Ata in 1928, and deported in 1929. He lived in Turkey, France, and Norway before settling in Mexico in 1937. In exile, Trotsky wrote polemics against Stalinism, advocating proletarian internationalism against Stalin's theory of socialism in one country. Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution held that the revolution could only survive if spread to more advanced capitalist countries. In The Revolution Betrayed (1936), he argued that the Soviet Union had become a "degenerated workers' state", and in 1938 founded the Fourth International as an alternative to the Comintern. After being sentenced to death in absentia at the Moscow show trials in 1936, Trotsky was assassinated in 1940 in Mexico City by Stalinist agent Ramón Mercader.
Written out of official history under Stalin, Trotsky was one of the few of his rivals who was never politically rehabilitated by later Soviet leaders. In the West, Trotsky emerged as a hero of the anti-Stalinist left for his defense of a more democratic, internationalist form of socialism[6][7] against Stalinist totalitarianism, and for his intellectual contributions to Marxism. While some of his wartime actions are controversial, such as his ideological defence of the Red Terror[8] and violent suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion, scholarship ranks Trotsky's leadership of the Red Army highly among historical figures, and he is credited for his major involvement with the military, economic, cultural[9] and political development of the Soviet Union.
Childhood and family (1879–1895)
[edit].jpg)
| ||
|---|---|---|
|
Personal Russian political activities Deposition Political ideology Affiliations
.svg) |
||
.jpg)
Lev Davidovich Bronstein was born on 7 November 1879 in Yanovka, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire (now Bereslavka, Ukraine), into a wealthy but illiterate Jewish farming family.[10] He was the fifth child of David Leontyevich Bronstein (1847–1922), a Russified Jewish colonist, and Anna Lvovna (née Zhivotovskaya, 1850–1910). Trotsky's younger sister, Olga (1883–1941), also became a Bolshevik and Soviet politician, and married fellow Bolshevik Lev Kamenev.[11]
Some authors, notably Robert Service, claim Trotsky's childhood first name was the Yiddish Leiba.[12] However, Trotskyist writer David North argues this is an assumption based on Trotsky's Jewish heritage, lacking documentary evidence, especially as Yiddish was not spoken by his family.[13] Both North and historian Walter Laqueur state Trotsky's childhood name was Lyova, a standard Russian diminutive of Lev.[14] North likens the speculation to an undue emphasis on Trotsky's Jewish surname.[13][14] The family spoke a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian (Surzhyk), not Yiddish.[15][16] Although Trotsky acquired good proficiency in French, English, and German, he stated in his autobiography My Life that he was truly fluent only in Russian and Ukrainian.[17] Raymond Molinier noted Trotsky spoke French fluently.[18]
When Trotsky was eight,[19] his father sent him to Odessa for education. He enrolled in a Lutheran German-language school (St. Paul's Realschule), which admitted students of various faiths[20] and became increasingly Russified during his time there due to the Imperial government's Russification policy.[21] Trotsky and his wife Natalia later registered their children as Lutheran, as Austrian law then required children to receive religious education "in the faith of their parents".[22] Odessa, a bustling cosmopolitan port city, differed greatly from typical Russian cities and contributed to the development of young Trotsky's international outlook. He excelled academically, particularly in science and mathematics, and was a voracious reader, often disciplined for reading non-curriculum books during class.[23]
Early political activities and life (1896–1917)
[edit]Revolutionary activity and imprisonment (1896–1898)
[edit]
Trotsky became involved in revolutionary activities in 1896 after moving to the port town of Nikolayev (now Mykolaiv) on the Black Sea.[24] Initially a narodnik (revolutionary agrarian socialist populist), he opposed Marxism but was converted by his future first wife, Aleksandra Sokolovskaya. He graduated from high school with first-class honours the same year.[25] His father had intended for him to become a mechanical engineer.[26]
Trotsky briefly attended Odessa University, studying engineering and mathematics. A university colleague noted his exceptional mathematical talent. However, bored with his studies, he increasingly focused on political philosophy and underground revolutionary activities.[27] He dropped out in early 1897 to help organize the South Russian Workers' Union in Nikolayev.[25][28] Using the name "Lvov",[29] he wrote and printed leaflets, distributed revolutionary pamphlets, and popularized socialist ideas among industrial workers and students.[30]
In January 1898, over 200 union members, including Trotsky, were arrested. He spent the next two years in prison awaiting trial, first in Nikolayev, then Kherson, Odessa, and finally Moscow.[31] In Moscow, he encountered other revolutionaries, learned of Lenin, and read Lenin's The Development of Capitalism in Russia.[32] Two months into his imprisonment, the first Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) was held (1–3 March 1898).[33] From then on, Trotsky identified as an RSDLP member.
First marriage and Siberian exile (1899–1902)
[edit]
While imprisoned in Moscow in the summer of 1899, Trotsky married Aleksandra Sokolovskaya (1872–1938), a fellow Marxist, in a ceremony performed by a Jewish chaplain.[34] In 1900, he was sentenced to four years of exile in Siberia. Due to their marriage, Trotsky and his wife were exiled together to Ust-Kut and Verkholensk in the Baikal region. They had two daughters, Zinaida (1901–1933) and Nina (1902–1928), both born in Siberia.
In Siberia, Trotsky studied history, philosophy, economics, sociology, and the works of Karl Marx to solidify his political stance.[35] He became aware of internal party differences, particularly the debate between "economists", who focused on workers' economic improvements, and those who prioritized overthrowing the monarchy through a disciplined revolutionary party.[36] The latter position was advocated by the London-based newspaper Iskra (The Spark), founded in 1900. Trotsky quickly sided with Iskra and began writing for it.[37]
In the summer of 1902, urged by his wife, Trotsky escaped from Siberia hidden in a load of hay.[38] Aleksandra later escaped with their daughters.[35] Both daughters married and had children but died before their parents. Nina Nevelson died from tuberculosis in 1928. Zinaida Volkova, also suffering from tuberculosis and depression, followed her father into exile in Berlin but committed suicide in 1933. Aleksandra disappeared in 1935 during Stalin's Great Purge and was murdered by Soviet forces in 1938.
First emigration and second marriage (1902–1903)
[edit]Until this point, Trotsky had used his birth name, Lev (Leon) Bronstein.[39] He adopted the surname "Trotsky"—reportedly the name of a jailer in the Odessa prison where he had been held—which he used for the rest of his life.[40] This became his primary revolutionary pseudonym. After escaping Siberia, Trotsky moved to London, joining Georgi Plekhanov, Vladimir Lenin, Julius Martov, and other editors of Iskra. Writing under the pen name Pero ("quill" or "pen"), Trotsky soon became one of the paper's leading writers.[41]
.jpg)
The six editors of Iskra were split between an "old guard" led by Plekhanov and a "new guard" led by Lenin and Martov. Lenin, seeking a majority against Plekhanov, expected the 23-year-old Trotsky to side with the new guard. In March 1903, Lenin proposed Trotsky's co-option to the editorial board:
I suggest to all the members of the editorial board that they co-opt 'Pero' as a member of the board on the same basis as other members. [...] We very much need a seventh member, both as a convenience in voting (six being an even number) and as an addition to our forces. 'Pero' has been contributing to every issue for several months now; he works, in general, most energetically for the Iskra; he gives lectures (in which he has been very successful). In the section of articles and notes on the events of the day, he will not only be very useful, but absolutely necessary. Unquestionably a man of rare abilities, he has conviction and energy, and he will go much farther.[42]
Due to Plekhanov's opposition, Trotsky did not become a full board member but participated in an advisory capacity, earning Plekhanov's animosity.
In late 1902, Trotsky met Natalia Sedova (1882–1962), who soon became his companion. They married in 1903 and remained together until his death. They had two sons, Lev Sedov (1906–1938) and Sergei Sedov (1908–1937), both of whom predeceased their parents. Trotsky later explained that, for "citizenship" requirements after the 1917 revolution, he "took on the name of my wife" so his sons would not have to change their name. However, he never publicly or privately used the name "Sedov".[43] Natalia Sedova sometimes signed her name "Sedova-Trotskaya".
Split with Lenin (1903–1904)
[edit]In August 1903, Iskra convened the RSDLP's Second Congress in London. Trotsky attended with other Iskra editors. After defeating the "economist" delegates, the congress addressed the Bund's desire for autonomy within the party.[44]
Subsequently, the pro-Iskra delegates unexpectedly split. The initial dispute was organisational: Lenin and his supporters (the Bolsheviks) advocated for a smaller, highly organized party of committed members, while Martov and his supporters (the Mensheviks) favoured a larger, less disciplined party that included sympathizers. Trotsky and most Iskra editors supported Martov, while Plekhanov backed Lenin. During 1903–1904, allegiances shifted; Trotsky left the Mensheviks in September 1904, disagreeing with their insistence on an alliance with Russian liberals and their opposition to reconciliation with Lenin and the Bolsheviks.[45]
From 1904 to 1917, Trotsky described himself as a "non-factional social democrat". He attempted to reconcile party factions, leading to clashes with Lenin and others. Trotsky later admitted he was wrong to oppose Lenin on party organization. During this period, he developed his theory of permanent revolution and worked closely with Alexander Parvus (1904–1907).[46] During their split, Lenin referred to Trotsky as "Judas" (Iudushka, after a character in Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin's novel The Golovlyov Family),[47][48] a "scoundrel",[49] and a "swine".[50]
1905 revolution and trial (1905–1906)
[edit]Anti-government unrest culminated in Saint Petersburg on 3 January 1905 (O.S.), when a strike began at the Putilov Works. This escalated into a general strike, with 140,000 strikers in Saint Petersburg by 7 January 1905.[51]
On Sunday, 9 January 1905, Father Georgi Gapon led a procession to the Winter Palace, ostensibly to petition the Tsar. Accounts differ, but the Palace Guard fired on the demonstration, resulting in numerous deaths and injuries. This event, known as Bloody Sunday, intensified revolutionary fervour. Gapon's own biography suggests a degree of provocation by radicals within the crowd, a claim later echoed by some police records.[52][53]
Following Bloody Sunday, Trotsky secretly returned to Russia in February 1905 via Kiev.[54] He wrote for an underground press in Kiev before moving to Saint Petersburg. There, he worked with Bolsheviks like Leonid Krasin and the local Menshevik committee, pushing the latter in a more radical direction. A police raid in May forced him to flee to rural Finland, where he further developed his theory of permanent revolution.[55]
On 19 September 1905, typesetters at Ivan Sytin's Moscow printing house struck for shorter hours and higher pay. By 24 September, 50 other Moscow printing shops joined. On 2 October, Saint Petersburg typesetters struck in solidarity. On 7 October, railway workers of the Moscow–Kazan Railway also struck.[56] Amidst this turmoil, Trotsky returned to Saint Petersburg on 15 October. He addressed the Saint Petersburg Soviet (Council) of Workers' Deputies at the Technological Institute, with an estimated 200,000 people gathered outside—about half the city's workers.[57]
After his return, Trotsky and Parvus took over the newspaper Russian Gazette, increasing its circulation to 500,000. Trotsky also co-founded "Nachalo" ("The Beginning") with Parvus, Julius Martov, and other Mensheviks, which became a successful newspaper during the 1905 revolutionary climate in Saint Petersburg.[58]
Before Trotsky's return, Mensheviks had independently conceived of an elected, non-party revolutionary body representing the capital's workers: the first Soviet. By Trotsky's arrival, the Saint Petersburg Soviet was functioning, headed by Khrustalyev-Nosar (Georgy Nosar, alias Pyotr Khrustalyov), a lawyer chosen as a compromise figure.[59] Khrustalyev-Nosar became popular and was the Soviet's public face.[60][59] Trotsky joined the Soviet as "Yanovsky" (after his birthplace) and was elected vice-chairman. He performed much of the practical work and, after Khrustalyev-Nosar's arrest on 26 November 1905, became its chairman. On 2 December, the Soviet issued a proclamation on Tsarist government debts:
The autocracy never enjoyed the confidence of the people and was never granted any authority by the people. We have therefore decided not to allow the repayment of such loans as have been made by the Tsarist government when openly engaged in a war with the entire people.[61]
The following day, 3 December 1905, government troops surrounded the Soviet, and its deputies were arrested.[62] Trotsky and other leaders were tried in 1906 for supporting an armed rebellion. On 4 October 1906, he was convicted and sentenced to internal exile in Siberia.
Second emigration (1907–1914)
[edit]
En route to exile in Obdorsk, Siberia, in January 1907, Trotsky escaped at Berezov[63] and made his way to London. He attended the 5th Congress of the RSDLP. In October, he moved to Vienna, Austria-Hungary. For the next seven years, he participated in the activities of the Austrian Social Democratic Party and occasionally the German Social Democratic Party.[44] In Vienna, he became close to Adolph Joffe, his friend for the next 20 years, who introduced him to psychoanalysis.[64]
.jpg)
In October 1908, Trotsky joined the editorial staff of Pravda ("Truth"), a bi-weekly, Russian-language social democratic paper for Russian workers, co-editing it with Adolph Joffe and Matvey Skobelev. It was smuggled into Russia.[65] The paper appeared irregularly, with only five issues in its first year.[65] Avoiding factional politics, it proved popular with Russian industrial workers. After the 1905–1907 revolution's failure, both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks experienced multiple splits. Funding for Pravda was scarce. Trotsky sought financial backing from the RSDLP Central Committee throughout 1909.[66]
In 1910, a Bolshevik majority controlled the Central Committee. Lenin agreed to finance Pravda but required a Bolshevik co-editor.[66] When various factions tried to reunite at the January 1910 RSDLP Central Committee meeting in Paris (over Lenin's objections),[67] Trotsky's Pravda was made a party-financed 'central organ'. Lev Kamenev, Trotsky's brother-in-law, joined the editorial board from the Bolsheviks. However, unification attempts failed by August 1910. Kamenev resigned amid mutual recriminations. Trotsky continued publishing Pravda for another two years until it folded in April 1912.[23]
The Bolsheviks launched a new workers' newspaper in Saint Petersburg on 22 April 1912, also named Pravda. Trotsky, upset by what he saw as the usurpation of his newspaper's name, wrote a bitter letter to Nikolay Chkheidze, a Menshevik leader, in April 1913, denouncing Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Though he quickly moved past the disagreement, the letter was intercepted by the Okhrana (secret police) and archived. After Lenin's death in 1924, Trotsky's opponents within the Communist Party publicized the letter to portray him as Lenin's enemy.[41]
The 1910s were a period of heightened tension within the RSDLP. A major disagreement between Trotsky and the Mensheviks on one side, and Lenin on the other, concerned "expropriations"—armed robberies of banks and businesses by Bolshevik groups to fund the Party.[68] These actions, banned by the 5th Congress, were continued by Bolsheviks.
In January 1912, most of the Bolshevik faction, led by Lenin, held a conference in Prague, broke away from the RSDLP, and formed the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks). In response, Trotsky organized a "unification" conference of social democratic factions in Vienna in August 1912 (the "August Bloc") to reunite Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, but this attempt was largely unsuccessful.[44]
In Vienna, Trotsky published articles in radical Russian and Ukrainian newspapers like Kievskaya Mysl, using pseudonyms such as "Antid Oto", a name chosen randomly from an Italian dictionary. Trotsky joked he "wanted to inject the Marxist antidote into the legitimate newspapers".[69][70] In September 1912, Kievskaya Mysl sent him to the Balkans as its war correspondent, where he covered the two Balkan Wars for the next year. There, Trotsky chronicled ethnic cleansing carried out by the Serbian army against Albanian civilians.[71] He became a close friend of Christian Rakovsky, later a leading Soviet politician and Trotsky's ally. On 3 August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, with Austria-Hungary fighting the Russian Empire, Trotsky was forced to flee Vienna for neutral Switzerland to avoid arrest as a Russian émigré.[29]
World War I (1914–1917)
[edit]World War I caused a sudden realignment within the RSDLP and other European social democratic parties over issues of war, revolution, pacifism, and internationalism. The RSDLP split into "defeatists" and "defencists". Lenin, Trotsky, and Martov advocated various internationalist anti-war positions, viewing defeat for their own country's ruling class as a "lesser evil" and opposing all imperialists in the war. "Defencists" like Plekhanov supported the Russian government to some extent. Trotsky's former colleague Parvus, now a defencist, sided so strongly against Russia that he wished for a German victory. In Switzerland, Trotsky briefly worked with the Swiss Socialist Party, prompting it to adopt an internationalist resolution. He wrote The War and the International,[72] opposing the war and the pro-war stance of European social democratic parties, especially the German party.
As a war correspondent for Kievskaya Mysl, Trotsky moved to France on 19 November 1914. In January 1915 in Paris, he began editing Nashe Slovo ("Our Word"), an internationalist socialist newspaper, initially with Martov (who soon resigned as the paper moved left). He adopted the slogan "peace without indemnities or annexations, peace without conquerors or conquered." Lenin advocated Russia's defeat and demanded a complete break with the Second International.[73]
Trotsky attended the Zimmerwald Conference of anti-war socialists in September 1915, advocating a middle course between those like Martov, who would stay in the Second International, and those like Lenin, who would break from it and form a Third International. The conference adopted Trotsky's proposed middle line. Lenin, initially opposed, eventually voted for Trotsky's resolution to avoid a split among anti-war socialists.[74]
In September 1916,[75] Trotsky was deported from France to Spain for his anti-war activities. Spanish authorities, not wanting him, deported him to the United States on 25 December 1916. He arrived in New York City on 13 January 1917, staying for over two months at 1522 Vyse Avenue in The Bronx. In New York, he wrote articles for the local Russian-language socialist newspaper Novy Mir and, in translation, for the Yiddish-language daily Der Forverts ("Forward"). He also gave speeches to Russian émigrés.[76]
Trotsky was in New York City when the February Revolution of 1917 led to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. He left New York aboard SS Kristianiafjord on 27 March 1917, but his ship was intercepted by the Royal Navy at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Trotsky was arrested and detained for a month at the Amherst Internment Camp in Nova Scotia. In the camp, he befriended workers and sailors among his fellow inmates, describing his month there as "one continual mass meeting".[77] His speeches and agitation angered German inmates, who complained to the camp commander, Colonel Morris, about Trotsky's "anti-patriotic" attitude.[77] Morris subsequently forbade Trotsky from making public speeches, leading to 530 prisoners protesting and signing a petition against the decision.[77] In Russia, after initial hesitation and under pressure from workers' and peasants' Soviets, Foreign Minister Pavel Milyukov demanded Trotsky's release as a Russian citizen. The British government freed him on 29 April 1917.[77]
He reached Russia on 17 May 1917. Upon his return, Trotsky largely agreed with the Bolshevik position but did not immediately join them. Russian social democrats were split into at least six groups, and the Bolsheviks awaited the next party Congress to decide on mergers. Trotsky temporarily joined the Mezhraiontsy, a regional social democratic organization in Petrograd, becoming one of its leaders. At the First Congress of Soviets in June, he was elected a member of the first All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) from the Mezhraiontsy faction.[78]
After an unsuccessful pro-Bolshevik uprising in Petrograd in July (the July Days), Trotsky was arrested on 7 August 1917. He was released 40 days later following the failed counter-revolutionary uprising by Lavr Kornilov. After the Bolsheviks gained a majority in the Petrograd Soviet, Trotsky was elected its chairman on 8 October [O.S. 25 September] 1917.[79] He sided with Lenin against Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev when the Bolshevik Central Committee discussed staging an armed uprising, and he led the efforts to overthrow the Russian Provisional Government headed by socialist Aleksandr Kerensky.
Joseph Stalin wrote the following summary of Trotsky's role in 1917 in Pravda on 6 November 1918:[80]
All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organized.
Although this passage was quoted in Stalin's book The October Revolution (1934),[80] it was expunged from Stalin's Works (1949).[81]
After the success of the October Revolution on 7–8 November 1917, Trotsky led efforts to repel a counter-attack by Cossacks under General Pyotr Krasnov and other troops loyal to the overthrown Provisional Government at Gatchina. Allied with Lenin, he defeated attempts by other Bolshevik Central Committee members (Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, etc.) to share power with other moderate socialist parties. Trotsky advocated for a predominantly Bolshevik government and was reluctant to recall Mensheviks as partners after their voluntary withdrawal from the Congress of Soviets. However, he released several socialist ministers from prison. Neither Trotsky nor his colleagues in 1917 initially wished to suppress these parties entirely; the Bolsheviks reserved vacant seats in the Soviets and the Central Executive Committee for these parties in proportion to their vote share at the Congress.[82] Concurrently, prominent Left Socialist Revolutionaries assumed positions in Lenin's government, leading commissariats such as agriculture (Andrei Kolegayev), property (Vladimir Karelin), justice (Isaac Steinberg), posts and telegraphs (Prosh Proshian), and local government (Vladimir Trutovsky).[83] According to Deutscher, Menshevik and Social Revolutionary demands for a coalition government included disarming Bolshevik detachments and excluding Lenin and Trotsky, which was unacceptable even to moderate Bolshevik negotiators like Kamenev and Sokolnikov.[84] By the end of 1917, Trotsky was unquestionably the second most powerful man in the Bolshevik Party after Lenin, overshadowing Zinoviev, who had been Lenin's top lieutenant for the previous decade.
Russian Revolution and aftermath
[edit]Commissar for Foreign Affairs and Brest-Litovsk (1917–1918)
[edit]
After the Bolsheviks seized power, Trotsky became People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. He published the secret treaties previously signed by the Triple Entente, which detailed plans for post-war reallocation of colonies and redrawing state borders, including the Sykes–Picot Agreement. This revelation on 23 November 1917 caused considerable embarrassment to Britain and France.
Brest-Litovsk
[edit]
In preparation for peace talks with the Central Powers, Trotsky appointed his old friend Adolph Joffe to represent the Bolsheviks. When the Soviet delegation learned that Germany and Austria-Hungary planned to annex Polish territory, establish a rump Polish state, and turn the Baltic provinces into client states ruled by German princes, the talks were recessed for 12 days. The Soviets hoped that, given time, their allies would join the negotiations or that the Western European proletariat would revolt; thus, prolonging negotiations was their best strategy. As Trotsky wrote, "To delay negotiations, there must be someone to do the delaying".[85] Consequently, Trotsky replaced Joffe as head of the Soviet delegation at Brest-Litovsk from 22 December 1917 to 10 February 1918.[86]
The Soviet government was divided. Left Communists, led by Nikolai Bukharin, believed no peace was possible between a Soviet republic and a capitalist empire, advocating a revolutionary war for a pan-European Soviet republic.[87][88] They cited early Red Army successes against Polish forces, White forces, and Ukrainian forces as proof of its capability, especially with propaganda and asymmetrical warfare.[87] They were willing to negotiate to expose German imperial ambitions but opposed signing any peace treaty, favouring a revolutionary war if faced with a German ultimatum. This view was shared by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, then junior partners in the coalition government.[89]
Lenin, initially hopeful for a swift European revolution, concluded that the German Imperial government remained strong and that, without a robust Russian military, armed conflict would lead to the Soviet government's collapse. He agreed a pan-European revolution was the ultimate solution but prioritized Bolshevik survival. From January 1918, he advocated signing a separate peace treaty if faced with a German ultimatum. Trotsky's position was between these factions. He acknowledged the old Russian army's inability to fight:[90]
That we could no longer fight was perfectly clear to me and that the newly formed Red Guard and Red Army detachments were too small and poorly trained to resist the Germans.
However, he agreed with the Left Communists that a separate peace treaty would be a severe morale and material blow, negating recent successes, reviving suspicions of Bolshevik-German collusion, and fuelling internal resistance. He argued that a German ultimatum should be refused, which might trigger an uprising in Germany or inspire German soldiers to disobey orders if an offensive was a naked land grab. Trotsky wrote in 1925:[91]
We began peace negotiations in the hope of arousing the workmen's party of Germany and Austria-Hungary as well as of the Entente countries. For this reason we were obliged to delay the negotiations as long as possible to give the European workman time to understand the main fact of the Soviet revolution itself and particularly its peace policy. But there was the other question: Can the Germans still fight? Are they in a position to begin an attack on the revolution that will explain the cessation of the war? How can we find out the state of mind of the German soldiers, how to fathom it?
In a letter to Lenin before 18 January 1918, Trotsky outlined his "no war, no peace" policy: announce war termination and demobilization without signing a treaty, placing the fate of Poland, Lithuania, and Courland on the German working people. He believed Germany would find it difficult to attack due to internal conditions and opposition from various German political factions.[92][93][94] Lenin initially responded on 18 January: "Stalin has just arrived; we will look into the matter with him and let you have a joint answer right away," and "please adjourn proceedings and leave for Petrograd. Send a reply; I will wait. Lenin, Stalin."[95] Trotsky, sensing disagreement, returned to Petrograd. During their debate, Lenin concluded: "In any case, I stand for the immediate signing of peace; it is safer."[96]
On 10 February 1918, Trotsky and the Russian delegation withdrew from peace talks, declaring an end to the war on Russia's side without signing a peace treaty.[97] Privately, Trotsky had expressed willingness to relent to peace terms if Germany resumed its offensive, albeit with moral dissent.[98] Germany resumed military operations on 18 February. The Red Army detachments proved no match for the German army. On the evening of 18 February, Trotsky and his supporters abstained in a Central Committee vote, and Lenin's proposal to accept German terms was approved 7–4. The Soviet government sent a radiogram accepting the final Brest-Litovsk terms.[99]
Germany did not respond for three days, continuing its offensive. The response on 21 February contained such harsh terms that even Lenin briefly considered fighting. However, the Central Committee again voted 7–4 on 23 February to accept. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on 3 March and ratified on 15 March 1918. Closely associated with the previous "no war, no peace" policy, Trotsky resigned as Commissar for Foreign Affairs.
Head of the Red Army (spring 1918)
[edit]
On 13 March 1918, Trotsky's resignation as Foreign Affairs Commissar was accepted. He was appointed People's Commissar of Army and Navy Affairs, replacing Podvoisky, and chairman of the Supreme Military Council. The post of commander-in-chief was abolished, giving Trotsky full control of the Red Army, responsible only to the Communist Party leadership, whose Left Socialist Revolutionary allies had left the government over the treaty. The entire Bolshevik Red Army leadership, including former Defence Commissar Nikolai Podvoisky and commander-in-chief Nikolai Krylenko, vigorously protested Trotsky's appointment and eventually resigned. They believed the Red Army should consist only of dedicated revolutionaries, rely on propaganda and force, and have elected officers. They viewed former imperial officers as potential traitors. Their views remained popular, and their supporters, including Podvoisky (who became one of Trotsky's deputies), were a constant source of opposition. Discontent with Trotsky's policies of strict discipline, conscription, and reliance on supervised non-Communist military experts led to the Military Opposition, active within the Party in late 1918–1919.[100]
Civil War (1918–1920)
[edit]1918
[edit]
The military situation tested Trotsky's organizational skills. In May–June 1918, the Czechoslovak Legions revolted, leading to the loss of most of Russia's territory, increasingly organized resistance from anti-Communist forces (the White Army), and widespread defections by military experts Trotsky relied on.[102]
Trotsky and the government responded with a full mobilization, increasing the Red Army from under 300,000 in May 1918 to one million by October, and introducing political commissars to ensure loyalty of military experts (mostly former Imperial officers) and co-sign their orders. Trotsky viewed the Red Army's organization as built on October Revolution ideals. He later wrote:[103]
An army cannot be built without reprisals. Masses of men cannot be led to death unless the army command has the death-penalty in its arsenal. So long as those malicious tailless apes that are so proud of their technical achievements—the animals that we call men—will build armies and wage wars, the command will always be obliged to place the soldiers between the possible death in the front and the inevitable one in the rear. And yet armies are not built on fear. The Tsar's army fell to pieces not because of any lack of reprisals. In his attempt to save it by restoring the death-penalty, Kerensky only finished it. Upon the ashes of the great war, the Bolsheviks created a new army. These facts demand no explanation for any one who has even the slightest knowledge of the language of history. The strongest cement in the new army was the ideas of the October revolution, and the train supplied the front with this cement.
A controversial measure was hostage-taking of relatives of ex-Tsarist officials in the Red Army to prevent defection or betrayal.[104] Service noted this practice was used by both Red and White armies.[105] Trotsky later defended this, arguing no families of betraying ex-officials were executed and that such draconian measures, if adopted earlier, would have reduced overall casualties.[106] Deutscher highlights Trotsky's preference for exchanging hostages over execution, recounting General Pyotr Krasnov's release on parole in 1918, only for Krasnov to take up arms again shortly thereafter.[107]
Red Terror
[edit]
The Red Terror was enacted following assassination attempts on Lenin and Trotsky, and the assassinations of Petrograd Cheka leader Moisei Uritsky and party editor V. Volodarsky.[108] The French Reign of Terror is seen as an influence.[109][10] The decision was also driven by early White Army massacres of "Red" prisoners in 1917, Allied intervention, and massacres of Reds during the Finnish Civil War (10,000–20,000 workers killed by Finnish Whites)."[108] In Terrorism and Communism, Trotsky argued the terror in Russia began with the White Terror under White Guard forces, to which the Bolsheviks responded with the Red Terror.[110]
Felix Dzerzhinsky, director of the Cheka (predecessor to the KGB), was tasked with rooting out counter-revolutionary threats.[111] From early 1918, Bolsheviks began eliminating opposition, including anarchists.[112] On 11 August 1918, Lenin telegraphed orders "to introduce mass terror" in Nizhny Novgorod and to "crush" landowners resisting grain requisitioning.[113]
On 30 August, Fanny Kaplan, a Socialist Revolutionary, unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Lenin.[109][111] In September, Trotsky rushed from the eastern front to Moscow; Stalin remained in Tsaritsyn.[114] Kaplan cited growing Bolshevik authoritarianism. These events persuaded the government to heed Dzerzhinsky's calls for greater terror. The Red Terror officially began thereafter, between 17 and 30 August 1918.[109][111] Trotsky wrote:
The bourgeoisie today is a falling class... We are forced to tear it off, to chop it away. The Red Terror is a weapon utilized against a class, doomed to destruction, which does not wish to perish. If the White Terror can only retard the historical rise of the proletariat, the Red Terror hastens the destruction of the bourgeoisie.[115]
Desertions
[edit]Trotsky appealed politically to deserters, arousing them with revolutionary ideas.
In...Kaluga, Voronezh, and Ryazan, tens of thousands of young peasants had failed to answer the first recruiting summons by the Soviets ... The war commissariat of Ryazan succeeded in gathering in some fifteen thousand of such deserters. While passing through Ryazan, I decided to take a look at them... The men were called out of their barracks. "Comrade-deserters—come to the meeting. Comrade Trotsky has come to speak to you." They ran out excited, boisterous, as curious as schoolboys... I spoke to them for about an hour and a half... I tried to raise them in their own eyes; concluding, I asked them to lift their hands in token of their loyalty to the revolution... They were genuinely enthusiastic... Later on, regiments of Ryazan "deserters" fought well at the fronts.
The Red Army first used punitive barrier troops in summer/autumn 1918 on the Eastern Front. Trotsky authorized Mikhail Tukhachevsky, commander of the 1st Army, to station blocking detachments behind unreliable infantry regiments, with orders to shoot if front-line troops deserted or retreated without permission. These troops comprised personnel from Cheka punitive detachments or regular infantry regiments.[116] In December 1918, Trotsky ordered more barrier troops raised for each infantry formation.[116] Barrier troops were also used to enforce Bolshevik control over food supplies, earning civilian hatred.[117]
Given manpower shortages and 16 opposing foreign armies, Trotsky insisted on using former Tsarist officers as military specialists, combined with Bolshevik political commissars. Lenin commented:
When Comrade Trotsky informed me recently that the number of officers of the old army employed by our War Department runs into several tens of thousands, I perceived concretely where the secret of using our enemy lay, how to compel those who had opposed communism to build it, how to build communism with the bricks which the capitalists had chosen to hurl against us! We have no other bricks! And so, we must compel the bourgeois experts, under the leadership of the proletariat, to build up our edifice with these bricks. This is what is difficult; but this is the pledge of victory.[118]
.jpg)
In September 1918, facing military difficulties, the Bolshevik government declared martial law and reorganized the Red Army. The Supreme Military Council was abolished, and the position of commander-in-chief restored, filled by Jukums Vācietis, commander of the Latvian Riflemen. Vācietis handled day-to-day operations. Trotsky became chairman of the new Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, retaining overall military control. Despite earlier clashes with Vācietis, Trotsky established a working relationship. This reorganization caused another conflict between Trotsky and Stalin in late September. Trotsky appointed former imperial general Pavel Sytin to command the Southern Front, but Stalin refused to accept him in early October, and Sytin was recalled. Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov tried to reconcile Trotsky and Stalin, but their meeting failed.
In 1919, 612 "hardcore" deserters out of 837,000 draft dodgers and deserters were executed under Trotsky's draconian measures.[119] According to Orlando Figes, most "deserters...were handed back to the military authorities, and formed into units for transfer to one of the rear armies or directly to the front". Even "malicious" deserters were returned to the ranks when reinforcements were desperate. Figes noted the Red Army instituted amnesty weeks, prohibiting punitive measures against desertion, which encouraged the voluntary return of 98,000–132,000 deserters.[120]
1919
[edit]
Throughout late 1918 and early 1919, Trotsky's leadership faced attacks, including veiled accusations in Stalin-inspired newspaper articles and a direct attack by the Military Opposition at the VIIIth Party Congress in March 1919. He weathered them, being elected one of five full members of the first Politburo after the Congress. But he later wrote:[100]
It is no wonder that my military work created so many enemies for me. I did not look to the side, I elbowed away those who interfered with military success, or in the haste of the work trod on the toes of the unheeding and was too busy even to apologize. Some people remember such things. The dissatisfied and those whose feelings had been hurt found their way to Stalin or Zinoviev, for these two also nourished hurts.
In mid-1919, the Red Army had grown from 800,000 to 3,000,000 and fought on sixteen fronts, providing an opportunity for challenges to Trotsky's leadership.[121] At the 3–4 July Central Committee meeting, after a heated exchange, the majority supported Kamenev and Smilga against Vācietis and Trotsky. Trotsky's plan was rejected, and he was criticized for alleged leadership shortcomings, many personal. Stalin used this to pressure Lenin[122] to dismiss Trotsky.
Significant changes were made to Red Army leadership. Trotsky was temporarily sent to the Southern Front, while Smilga informally coordinated work in Moscow. Most non-day-to-day Revolutionary Military Council members were relieved of duties on 8 July, and new members, including Smilga, were added. The same day, Vācietis was arrested by the Cheka on suspicion of an anti-Soviet plot and replaced by Sergey Kamenev. After weeks in the south, Trotsky returned to Moscow and resumed control. A year later, Smilga and Tukhachevsky were defeated at the Battle of Warsaw, but Trotsky's refusal to retaliate against Smilga earned his friendship and later support during 1920s intra-Party battles.[123]
By October 1919, the government faced its worst crisis: Denikin's troops approached Tula and Moscow from the south, and General Nikolay Yudenich's troops approached Petrograd from the west. Lenin decided Petrograd had to be abandoned to defend Moscow. Trotsky argued[124] Petrograd needed to be defended, partly to prevent Estonia and Finland from intervening. In a rare reversal, Trotsky, supported by Stalin and Zinoviev, prevailed against Lenin in the Central Committee.
1920
[edit]With Denikin and Yudenich defeated in late 1919, government emphasis shifted to the economy. Trotsky spent winter 1919–1920 in the Urals region restarting its economy. A false rumour of his assassination circulated internationally on New Year's Day 1920.[125] Based on his experiences, he proposed abandoning War Communism policies,[126] including grain confiscation, and partially restoring the grain market. Lenin, still committed to War Communism, rejected his proposal.
In early 1920, Soviet–Polish tensions led to the Polish–Soviet War. Trotsky argued[122] the Red Army was exhausted and the government should sign a peace treaty with Poland quickly, not believing the Red Army would find much support in Poland. Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders believed Red Army successes meant "The defensive period of the war with worldwide imperialism was over, and we could, and had the obligation to, exploit the military situation to launch an offensive war."[127] Poland defeated the Red Army, turning back the offensive at the Battle of Warsaw in August 1920. Back in Moscow, Trotsky again argued for peace, and this time prevailed.
Trade union debate (1920–1921)
[edit]During the 1920–1921 trade union debate, Trotsky argued that trade unions should be integrated directly into the state apparatus, advocating for a "militarization of labour" to rebuild the Soviet economy. He believed that in a workers' state, the state should control unions, with workers treated as "soldiers of labour" under strict discipline.[128]
This position was sharply criticized by Vladimir Lenin, who argued unions should retain some independence and act as "schools of communism" rather than state instruments. Lenin's view prevailed at the 10th Congress in 1921. Several of Trotsky's supporters, including Nikolay Krestinsky, lost leadership positions.
Kronstadt rebellion
[edit]
In March 1921, during the Kronstadt Rebellion, sailors and soldiers at the Kronstadt naval base revolted against the Bolshevik government, demanding greater freedom for workers and peasants, an end to one-party rule, and restoration of civil rights.[129] The rebellion, occurring simultaneously with the 10th Party Congress, further destabilized the fragile political situation.
Trotsky, as Commissar of War, was instrumental in ordering the rebellion's suppression. On 18 March 1921, after failed negotiations, the Red Army stormed the island, resulting in thousands of Kronstadt sailors' deaths.[130] Trotsky justified the action by presenting evidence of foreign backing, a claim contested by several historians.[131] His role has been criticized, with anarchists like Emma Goldman accusing him of betraying the revolution's democratic ideals.[132]
Trotsky's contribution to the Russian Revolution
[edit]
Historian Vladimir Cherniaev sums up Trotsky's main contributions:
Trotsky bears a great deal of responsibility both for the victory of the Red Army in the civil war, and for the establishment of a one-party authoritarian state with its apparatus for ruthlessly suppressing dissent... He was an ideologist and practitioner of the Red Terror. He despised "bourgeois democracy"; he believed that spinelessness and soft-heartedness would destroy the revolution, and that the suppression of the propertied classes and political opponents would clear the historical arena for socialism. He was the initiator of concentration camps, compulsory "labour camps", and the militarization of labour, and the state takeover of trade unions. Trotsky was implicated in many practices which would become standard in the Stalin era, including summary executions.[133]
Historian Geoffrey Swain argues:
The Bolsheviks triumphed in the Civil War because of Trotsky's ability to work with military specialists, because of the style of work he introduced where widescale consultation was followed through by swift and determined action.[134]
Lenin said in 1921 that Trotsky was "in love with organisation," but in working politics, "he has not got a clue." Swain explains this by arguing Trotsky was not good at teamwork, being a loner who had mostly worked as a journalist, not a professional revolutionary like others.[135]
Lenin's illness (1922–1923)
[edit].jpeg)
In late 1921, Lenin's health deteriorated. He suffered three strokes between 25 May 1922 and 9 March 1923, causing paralysis, loss of speech, and eventual death on 21 January 1924. With Lenin increasingly sidelined, Stalin was elevated to the new position of Central Committee General Secretary in April 1922.[d] Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev[e] formed a triumvirate (troika) with Stalin to prevent Trotsky, publicly number two and Lenin's heir presumptive, from succeeding Lenin.
The rest of the expanded Politburo (Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky, Bukharin) initially remained uncommitted but eventually joined the troika. Stalin's patronage power[f] as General Secretary played a role, but Trotsky and his supporters later concluded a more fundamental reason was the slow bureaucratisation of the Soviet regime after the Civil War. Much of the Bolshevik elite desired 'normality,' while Trotsky personified a turbulent revolutionary period they wished to leave behind.
Evidence suggests the troika initially nominated Trotsky for minor government departments (e.g., Gokhran, the State Depository for Valuables).[136] In mid-July 1922, Kamenev wrote to the recovering Lenin that "(the Central Committee) is throwing or is ready to throw a good cannon overboard". Lenin, shocked, responded:[137]
Throwing Trotsky overboard—surely you are hinting at that, it is impossible to interpret it otherwise—is the height of stupidity. If you do not consider me already hopelessly foolish, how can you think of that????
Until his final stroke, Lenin tried to prevent a split in the leadership, reflected in Lenin's Testament. On 11 September 1922, Lenin proposed Trotsky become his deputy at the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom). The Politburo approved, but Trotsky "categorically refused". This proposal is interpreted by some scholars as Lenin designating Trotsky his successor as head of government.[138][139][140][141][142]
In late 1922, Trotsky allied with Lenin against Stalin and the emerging Soviet bureaucracy.[143] Stalin had recently engineered the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), further centralising state control. The alliance was effective on foreign trade[g] but was hindered by Lenin's progressing illness.
In January 1923, Lenin amended his Testament to suggest Stalin's removal as General Secretary, while also mildly criticising Trotsky and other Bolsheviks. The Stalin-Lenin relationship had completely broken down, demonstrated when Stalin crudely insulted Lenin's wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya. In March 1923, days before his third stroke, Lenin asked Trotsky to denounce Stalin and his "Great-Russian nationalistic campaign" at the XIIth Party Congress.
At the XIIth Party Congress in April 1923, after Lenin's final stroke, Trotsky did not raise the issue.[144] Instead, he spoke about intra-party democracy, avoiding direct confrontation with the troika.[h] Stalin had prepared by replacing many local delegates with his loyalists, mostly at the expense of Zinoviev and Kamenev's backers.[145] Delegates, mostly unaware of Politburo divisions, gave Trotsky a standing ovation. This upset the troika, already infuriated by Karl Radek's article, "Leon Trotsky – Organiser of Victory,"[i] published in Pravda on 14 March 1923. Stalin delivered key reports on organisational structure and nationalities; Zinoviev delivered the Central Committee political report, traditionally Lenin's prerogative. Resolutions calling for greater party democracy were adopted but remained vague and unimplemented.
The power struggle also impacted prospects for world revolution. The German Communist Party leadership requested Trotsky be sent to Germany to direct the 1923 insurrection. The Politburo, controlled by Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, rejected this, sending a commission of lower-ranking Russian Communist party members instead.[147]
Left Opposition (1923–1924)
[edit]
From mid-1923, the Soviet economy faced significant difficulties, leading to widespread strikes. Two secret groups within the Communist Party, "Workers' Truth" and "Workers' Group", were suppressed by the secret police. On 8 October 1923, Trotsky wrote to the Central Committee and Central Control Commission, attributing these problems to a lack of intra-Party democracy:
In the fiercest moment of War Communism, the system of appointment within the party did not have one tenth of the extent that it has now. Appointment of the secretaries of provincial committees is now the rule. That creates for the secretary a position essentially independent of the local organization. [...] The bureaucratization of the party apparatus has developed to unheard-of proportions by means of the method of secretarial selection. [...] There has been created a very broad stratum of party workers, entering into the apparatus of the government of the party, who completely renounce their own party opinion, at least the open expression of it, as though assuming that the secretarial hierarchy is the apparatus which creates party opinion and party decisions. Beneath this stratum, abstaining from their own opinions, there lies the broad mass of the party, before whom every decision stands in the form of a summons or a command.[148]
Other senior communists with similar concerns sent The Declaration of 46 to the Central Committee on 15 October, stating:
[...] we observe an ever progressing, barely disguised division of the party into a secretarial hierarchy and into "laymen", into professional party functionaries, chosen from above, and the other party masses, who take no part in social life. [...] free discussion within the party has virtually disappeared, party public opinion has been stifled. [...] it is the secretarial hierarchy, the party hierarchy which to an ever greater degree chooses the delegates to the conferences and congresses, which to an ever greater degree are becoming the executive conferences of this hierarchy.
Though secret at the time, these letters significantly impacted the Party leadership, prompting a partial retreat by the troika and its supporters, notably in Zinoviev's Pravda article of 7 November. Throughout November, the troika sought a compromise to placate Trotsky and his supporters (made easier by Trotsky's illness in November–December). Trotsky rejected the first draft resolution, leading to a special group (Stalin, Trotsky, Kamenev) to draft a mutually acceptable compromise. On 5 December, the Politburo and Central Control Commission unanimously adopted this final draft. On 8 December, Trotsky published an open letter expounding on the resolution's ideas. The troika used this letter to launch a campaign against Trotsky, accusing him of factionalism, setting "the youth against the fundamental generation of old revolutionary Bolsheviks,"[149] and other "sins".
Trotsky defended his position in seven letters collected as The New Course in January 1924.[150] The illusion of a "monolithic Bolshevik leadership" shattered, and a lively intra-Party discussion ensued in local organizations and Pravda pages through December and January, until the XIIIth Party Conference (16–18 January 1924). Opponents of the Central Committee's position became known as the Left Opposition.[151] In 1924, at Sverdlov University conferences, Stalin critically cited "the Permanentists" as Trotsky's followers of 'Permanent revolution'.
Since the troika controlled the Party apparatus via Stalin's Secretariat and Pravda via editor Bukharin, it directed the discussion and delegate selection. Though Trotsky's position prevailed within the Red Army, Moscow universities, and received about half the votes in the Moscow Party organization, it was defeated elsewhere. The Conference was packed with pro-troika delegates. Only three delegates voted for Trotsky's position, and the Conference denounced "Trotskyism"[j] as a "petty bourgeois deviation".
Left Opposition members, representing many international elements, held high-ranking posts, with Christian Rakovsky, Adolph Joffe, and Nikolay Krestinsky serving as ambassadors in London, Paris, Tokyo, and Berlin.[152] Internationally, Trotsky's opposition received support from several Central Committee members of foreign communist parties, including Rakovsky (Chairman of the Ukrainian Sovnarkom), Boris Souvarine of the French Communist Party, and the Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party (led by Maksymilian Horwitz, Maria Koszutska, and Adolf Warski).[153]
After Lenin's death (1924)
[edit]
Throughout most of 1924, there was little overt political disagreement within the Soviet leadership. Publicly, Trotsky remained a prominent Bolshevik leader, though his "mistakes" were often alluded to by troika partisans. Behind the scenes, he was cut off from decision-making. Politburo meetings were formalities; key decisions were made beforehand by the troika and its supporters. Trotsky's control over the military was undermined by reassigning his deputy, Ephraim Sklyansky, and appointing Mikhail Frunze, groomed to replace him.
At the XIIIth Party Congress in May, Trotsky delivered a conciliatory speech:[154]
None of us desires or is able to dispute the will of the Party. Clearly, the Party is always right... We can only be right with and by the Party, for history has provided no other way of being in the right. The English have a saying, "My country, right or wrong"... We have much better historical justification in saying whether it is right or wrong in certain individual concrete cases, it is my party... And if the Party adopts a decision which one or other of us thinks unjust, he will say, just or unjust, it is my party, and I shall support the consequences of the decision to the end.[155]
Meanwhile, the Left Opposition, which had formed somewhat unexpectedly in late 1923 and lacked a definite platform beyond general dissatisfaction with the intra-Party "regime," began to crystallise. It lost some less dedicated members due to troika harassment but started formulating a program. Economically, the Left Opposition opposed capitalist elements in the Soviet economy and advocated accelerated industrialization through state-led policies,[156] putting them at odds with Bukharin and Rykov (the "Right" wing) who supported the troika. On world revolution, Trotsky and Karl Radek saw stability in Europe, while Stalin and Zinoviev predicted an "acceleration" of revolution in Western Europe in 1924. Theoretically, Trotsky remained committed to the idea that the Soviet Union could not create a true socialist society without world revolution, while Stalin gradually developed the policy of "socialism in one country". These ideological divisions formed the basis of the political divide.
At the XIIIth Congress, Kamenev and Zinoviev helped Stalin defuse Lenin's Testament, which had belatedly surfaced. Shortly after, the troika, an alliance of convenience, showed signs of weakness. Stalin began making veiled accusations against Zinoviev and Kamenev. In October 1924, Trotsky published Lessons of October,[157] a summary of the 1917 revolution. He described Zinoviev and Kamenev's opposition to the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, something they preferred left unmentioned. This started a new intra-party struggle, the Literary Discussion, with Zinoviev and Kamenev again allied with Stalin against Trotsky. Their criticism of Trotsky focused on:
- Trotsky's pre-1917 disagreements with Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
- Trotsky's alleged distortion of 1917 events to emphasize his role and diminish others'.
- Trotsky's harsh treatment of subordinates and other alleged Civil War mistakes.
Trotsky, ill again, was unable to respond while his opponents mobilized to denounce him. They damaged his military reputation enough to force his resignation as People's Commissar of Army and Fleet Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council on 6 January 1925. Zinoviev demanded Trotsky's expulsion from the Party, but Stalin, playing the moderate, refused. Trotsky kept his Politburo seat but was effectively on probation.
A year in the wilderness (1925)
[edit]
1925 was a difficult year for Trotsky. After the Literary Discussion and losing his Red Army posts, he was effectively unemployed through winter and spring. In May 1925, he received three posts: chairman of the Concessions Committee, head of the electro-technical board, and chairman of the scientific-technical board of industry. Trotsky wrote in My Life[76] that he "was taking a rest from politics" and "naturally plunged into the new line of work up to my ears".[158] He also delivered a tribute to Lenin in his 1925 short book, Lenin.[159][160]
Some contemporary accounts depict a remote and distracted man.[161] Later in the year, Trotsky resigned his two technical positions, citing Stalin-instigated interference and sabotage, and concentrated on the Concessions Committee.[162]
One of the few political developments affecting Trotsky in 1925 was American Marxist Max Eastman's book Since Lenin Died (1925), which described the controversy over Lenin's Testament. Trotsky publicly denied Eastman's statements in an article.[163]
Meanwhile, the troika finally broke up. Bukharin and Rykov sided with Stalin, while Krupskaya and Soviet Commissar of Finance Grigory Sokolnikov aligned with Zinoviev and Kamenev. The struggle became open at the September 1925 Central Committee meeting and peaked at the XIVth Party Congress in December 1925. Zinoviev and Kamenev, dubbed The New Opposition, with only the Leningrad Party organization behind them, were thoroughly defeated. Trotsky refused to get involved and did not speak at the Congress.
United Opposition (1926–1927)
[edit]In early 1926, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and their "New Opposition" supporters gravitated towards Trotsky's supporters. The two groups soon formed an alliance, incorporating some smaller opposition groups, known as the United Opposition.
The United Opposition faced repeated threats of sanctions from the Stalinist leadership. Trotsky had to agree to tactical retreats, mainly to preserve his alliance with Zinoviev and Kamenev. The opposition remained united against Stalin throughout 1926 and 1927, especially regarding the Chinese Revolution. Stalinist methods against the Opposition became increasingly extreme. At the XVth Party Conference in October 1926, Trotsky could barely speak due to interruptions and catcalls; at its end, he lost his Politburo seat. In 1927, Stalin began using the GPU (Soviet secret police) to infiltrate and discredit the opposition. Rank-and-file oppositionists were increasingly harassed, sometimes expelled from the Party, and even arrested.
Soviet policy toward the Chinese Revolution became the ideological demarcation line. The revolution began on 10 October 1911,[164] leading to Emperor Puyi's abdication on 12 February 1912.[165] Sun Yat-sen established the Republic of China, but it controlled little of the country, much of which was divided among warlords. The Republican government formed the Kuomintang (KMT). In 1920, the KMT opened relations with Soviet Russia. With Soviet help, the KMT built up its army. The planned Northern Expedition to crush northern warlords became a point of contention. Stalin urged the small Chinese Communist Party to merge with the KMT for a bourgeois revolution before attempting a Soviet-style workers' revolution.[166]
Trotsky wanted the Communist Party to complete an orthodox proletarian revolution and maintain clear class independence from the KMT. Stalin funded the KMT during the expedition.[167] He countered Trotskyist criticism in a secret speech, saying Chiang Kai-shek's right-wing KMT were the only ones capable of defeating imperialists, that Chiang had funding from rich merchants, and his forces should be used until "squeezed for all usefulness like a lemon before being discarded". However, Chiang reversed the tables in the Shanghai massacre of 12 April 1927, massacring the Communists in Shanghai midway through the Northern Expedition.[168][169]
Defeat and exile (1927–1928)
[edit]
On the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution in November 1927, the Opposition held a street demonstration in Moscow against Stalin's government. It was dispersed by Soviet authorities, and Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party shortly thereafter.[170][171] Trotsky delivered the eulogy at his friend Adolph Joffe's funeral in November 1927; it was his last public speech in the Soviet Union. When the XVth Party Congress made United Opposition views incompatible with Communist Party membership, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and their supporters capitulated and renounced their alliance with the Left Opposition. Trotsky and most of his followers refused to surrender. Trotsky was exiled to Alma Ata (now Almaty), Kazakhstan, on 31 January 1928. He was expelled from the Soviet Union to Turkey in February 1929, accompanied by his wife Natalia Sedova and their eldest son, Lev.[172]
Fate of Left Oppositionists after Trotsky's exile (1929–1941)
[edit]
After Trotsky's expulsion, Trotskyists within the Soviet Union began to waver. Between 1929 and 1932, most leading Left Opposition members surrendered to Stalin, "admitted their mistakes," and were reinstated in the Communist Party. An initial exception was Christian Rakovsky, who inspired Trotsky from 1929 to 1934 with his refusal to capitulate as state suppression increased. In late 1932, Rakovsky failed to flee the Soviet Union and was exiled to Yakutia in March 1933. At Trotsky's request, French mathematician and Trotskyist Jean Van Heijenoort, with Pierre Frank, unsuccessfully appealed to influential Soviet author Maxim Gorky to intervene for Rakovsky, boarding Gorky's ship near Constantinople.[173] According to Heijenoort, they only met Gorky's son, Maxim Peshkov, who promised to pass on their request.[173] Rakovsky was the last prominent Trotskyist to capitulate, in April 1934. His letter to Pravda, titled There Should Be No Mercy, depicted Trotsky and his supporters as "agents of the German Gestapo".[174] Rakovsky was appointed to high office in the Commissariat for Health and allowed to return to Moscow, also serving as Soviet ambassador to Japan in 1935.[175] However, he was implicated in allegations concerning Sergey Kirov's murder and was arrested and imprisoned in late 1937 during the Great Purge.[176]
Almost all Trotskyists remaining in the Soviet Union were executed in the Great Purges of 1936–1938. Rakovsky survived until the Medvedev Forest massacre of September 1941, where he was shot with 156 other prisoners on Stalin's orders, less than three months into the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. Trotsky's sister and Kamenev's first wife, Olga Kameneva, was also among the Medvedev Forest victims.[11]
Exile (1929–1940)
[edit]Turkey
[edit]Deported from the Soviet Union in February 1929, Trotsky arrived in Turkey. For his first two months, he lived with his wife and eldest son at the Soviet Consulate in Istanbul and then a nearby hotel. In April 1929, Turkish authorities moved them to the island of Büyükada (Prinkipo), into a house called the Yanaros mansion.[177] During his Turkish exile, Trotsky was under surveillance by Mustafa Kemal Pasha's police. He was also at risk from former White Army officers on Prinkipo. However, his European supporters volunteered as bodyguards, ensuring his safety.[178] He requested entry to Belgium, France, Norway, Germany, and the United Kingdom, but all refused.[179]
Soon after arriving in Turkey, Trotsky established the Bulletin of the Opposition, a Russian-language journal first published in July 1929 in Paris.[180][181] In a 1931 letter titled "What is Fascism," he attempted to define fascism, asserting the Communist International wrongly described Primo de Rivera's dictatorship as "fascist" because it lacked a mass movement base in the lower classes.[182]
On 20 February 1932, Trotsky and his family lost their Soviet citizenship and were forbidden to enter the Soviet Union.[183][184] In 1932, he entered fascist Italy[185][186] en route to a socialist conference in Denmark.[187] By late 1932, Trotsky contacted the anti-Stalin opposition inside the USSR to discuss forming a bloc.[188] There was no evidence of any alliance with Nazi Germany or the Empire of Japan, as the Soviet government claimed. Alleged bloc members included Zinovievites, rightists, and "capitulated" Trotskyists like Kamenev and Zinoviev. Trotsky feared the right gaining too much power within the bloc. Historian Pierre Broué concluded the bloc dissolved in early 1933, as some members like Zinoviev and Kamenev rejoined Stalin, and Trotsky's Harvard archive letters do not mention the bloc after 1932.[189]
France
[edit]In July 1933, Prime Minister Édouard Daladier offered Trotsky asylum in France. Trotsky accepted but was forbidden to live in Paris and was soon under French police surveillance. From July 1933 to February 1934, Trotsky and his wife lived in Royan. Philosopher and activist Simone Weil arranged for them and their bodyguards to stay briefly at her parents' house.[178] Following the 6 February 1934 crisis, French Minister of Internal Affairs Albert Sarraut signed a decree to deport Trotsky.[178] However, no foreign government would accept him. French authorities then instructed Trotsky to move to a residence in the village of Barbizon under strict police surveillance, where his contact with the outside world became even more restricted than in Turkey.[178] In May 1935, soon after France agreed to the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance, Trotsky was officially told he was no longer welcome. He applied to move to Norway.
Norway
[edit]
After Justice Minister Trygve Lie granted permission, Trotsky and his wife became guests of Konrad Knudsen at Norderhov, near Hønefoss, living at Knudsen's house from 18 June 1935 to 2 September 1936. Trotsky was hospitalized for a few weeks at Oslo Community Hospital from 19 September 1935.[190][191]
Following French media complaints about Trotsky's role in encouraging the May–June 1936 mass strikes in France with his articles, the Norwegian government, led by Johan Nygaardsvold, grew uneasy. In summer 1936, Trotsky's asylum became a political issue for the fascist Nasjonal Samling, led by Vidkun Quisling,[192] alongside increased Soviet pressure. On 5 August 1936, Nasjonal Samling fascists burgled Knudsen's house while Trotsky and his wife were out. The burglars targeted Trotsky's works and archives. The raid was largely thwarted by Knudsen's daughter, Hjørdis, though some papers were taken.[193] "Evidence" from the burglary was used by the government against Trotsky.[192]
On 14 August 1936, the Soviet TASS agency announced a "Trotskyist–Zinovievist" plot and the imminent start of the Moscow Trials. Trotsky demanded a full, open inquiry. The accused, including Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, were sentenced to death and executed on 25 August 1936. On 26 August, eight policemen arrived at Knudsen's house, demanding Trotsky sign new residency conditions: no writing on current politics, no interviews, and all correspondence inspected. Trotsky refused and was told he and his wife would be moved.[193] The next day, police interrogated him about his political activities, officially citing him as a "witness" to the 5 August fascist raid.[194]
On 2 September 1936, Trygve Lie ordered Trotsky and his wife transferred to a farm in Hurum,[195] where they were under house arrest.[192] Treatment at Hurum was harsh: confined indoors 22 hours daily under constant guard, with only one hour twice daily for walks. Trotsky was prevented from posting letters or responding to critics. Only his lawyers and Norwegian Labour Party Parliamentary leader Olav Scheflo were allowed visits.[192] From October 1936, even outdoor walks were prohibited.[192] Trotsky smuggled out one letter on 18 December 1936, The Moscow "Confessions".[196] On 19 December 1936, they were deported on the Norwegian oil tanker Ruth, guarded by Jonas Lie. Later, in Mexico, Trotsky scathingly criticized his treatment, accusing the Norwegian government of trying to silence his opposition to the Moscow Trials:
When I look back today on this period of internment, I must say that never, anywhere, in the course of my entire life—and I have lived through many things—was I persecuted with as much miserable cynicism as I was by the Norwegian "Socialist" government. For four months, these ministers, dripping with democratic hypocrisy, gripped me in a stranglehold to prevent me from protesting the greatest crime history may ever know.[192]
Mexico
[edit].jpg)
The Ruth arrived in Mexico on 9 January 1937.[192] President Lázaro Cárdenas welcomed Trotsky and arranged a special train, The Hidalgo, to bring him to Mexico City from Tampico.[197]
From January 1937 to April 1939, Trotsky and his wife lived in Coyoacán at La Casa Azul (The Blue House), home of painter Frida Kahlo (with whom Trotsky had an affair) and her husband, fellow painter Diego Rivera.[198][199] Kahlo later presented him with Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky on his birthday, the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution.[200] His final move, after a break with Rivera, was to a residence on Avenida Viena in April 1939.[199]
Trotsky wrote prolifically in exile, including History of the Russian Revolution (1930) and The Revolution Betrayed (1936), a critique of the Soviet Union under Stalinism. He argued the Soviet state had become a "degenerated workers' state" controlled by an undemocratic bureaucracy, which would either be overthrown via a political revolution establishing workers' democracy, or degenerate into a capitalist class.[201]
In Mexico, Trotsky worked closely with James P. Cannon, Joseph Hansen, and Farrell Dobbs of the Socialist Workers Party of the United States, and other supporters.[202] Cannon, a long-time leader in the American communist movement, had supported Trotsky since reading his criticisms of the Soviet Union in 1928. Trotsky's critique of Stalinism, though banned, was distributed to Comintern leaders. Chen Duxiu, founder of the Chinese Communist Party, was another supporter.[203]
Trotsky collaborated with André Breton and Diego Rivera on the Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art (1938), emphasizing artistic freedom outside capitalist and Stalinist constraints. This inspired the International Federation of Independent Revolutionary Art (FIARI) in 1938, though it was short-lived, ending before 1940.[204]
Moscow show trials
[edit]In August 1936, the first Moscow show trial of the "Trotskyite–Zinovievite Terrorist Center" was staged. Zinoviev, Kamenev, and 14 other prominent Old Bolsheviks confessed to plotting with Trotsky to kill Stalin and other Soviet leaders. The court found all defendants guilty, sentencing them, including Trotsky in absentia, to death. The second show trial (Karl Radek, Grigori Sokolnikov, Yuri Pyatakov, and 14 others) in January 1937 linked more alleged conspiracies and crimes to Trotsky. These trials were widely seen as fabrications. In response, an independent Commission of Inquiry, chaired by American philosopher John Dewey, was established. After investigating the allegations, the Dewey Commission found Trotsky not guilty of the charges made against him in the Moscow Trials. Its findings were published in the book Not Guilty.[205]
The Moscow trials are perpetuated under the banner of socialism. We will not concede this banner to the masters of falsehood! If our generation happens to be too weak to establish Socialism over the earth, we will hand the spotless banner down to our children. The struggle which is in the offing transcends by far the importance of individuals, factions and parties. It is the struggle for the future of all mankind. It will be severe, it will be lengthy. Whoever seeks physical comfort and spiritual calm let him step aside. In time of reaction it is more convenient to lean on the bureaucracy than on the truth. But all those for whom the word 'Socialism' is not a hollow sound but the content of their moral life—forward! Neither threats nor persecutions nor violations can stop us! Be it even over our bleaching bones the future will triumph! We will blaze the trail for it. It will conquer! Under all the severe blows of fate, I shall be happy as in the best days of my youth; because, my friends, the highest human happiness is not the exploitation of the present but the preparation of the future.
— Leon Trotsky, 'I Stake My Life', opening address to the Dewey Commission, 9 February 1937[206][207]
Fourth International
[edit]| Part of a series on |
| Trotskyism |
|---|
 |
Initially, Trotsky opposed establishing parallel communist parties or a parallel international organization to compete with the Third International (Comintern), fearing it would split the communist movement. He changed his mind in mid-1933 after the Nazi takeover in Germany and the Comintern's response. He stated:[208]
An organization which was not roused by the thunder of fascism and which submits docilely to such outrageous acts of the bureaucracy demonstrates thereby that it is dead and that nothing can ever revive it... In all our subsequent work it is necessary to take as our point of departure the historical collapse of the official Communist International.[209]
In 1938, Trotsky and his supporters founded the Fourth International, intended as a revolutionary and internationalist alternative to the Stalinist Comintern.
The Dies Committee
[edit]
In late 1939, Trotsky agreed to appear as a witness before the Dies Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, a precursor to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Representative Martin Dies Jr., the committee chairman, sought the suppression of the American Communist Party. Trotsky intended to use the forum to expose NKVD activities against him and his followers. He also planned to argue against suppressing the American Communist Party and to call for transforming World War II into a world revolution. Many supporters opposed his appearance. When the committee learned the nature of Trotsky's intended testimony, it refused to hear him, and he was denied a U.S. visa. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union immediately accused Trotsky of being paid by oil magnates and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).[210]
Final months
[edit]After quarrelling with Diego Rivera, Trotsky moved to his final residence on Avenida Viena in April 1939.[211] On 27 February 1940, he wrote "Trotsky's Testament," expressing his final thoughts. Suffering from high blood pressure, he feared a cerebral haemorrhage. He reiterated his "unshaken faith in a communist future."[212] Forcefully denying Stalin's accusations of betraying the working class, he thanked his friends and, above all, his wife, Natalia Sedova, for their loyal support:
In addition to the happiness of being a fighter for the cause of socialism, fate gave me the happiness of being her husband. During the almost forty years of our life together she remained an inexhaustible source of love, magnanimity, and tenderness. She underwent great sufferings, especially in the last period of our lives. But I find some comfort in the fact that she also knew days of happiness. For forty-three years of my conscious life I have remained a revolutionist; for forty-two of them I have fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to begin all over again I would of course try to avoid this or that mistake, but the main course of my life would remain unchanged. I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is not less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth.
Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.
L. Trotsky
27 February 1940
Coyoacán.[212]
Assassination
[edit]
After a failed assassination attempt in March 1939, Stalin assigned NKVD officer Pavel Sudoplatov to organize Trotsky's murder. Sudoplatov, in turn, co-opted Nahum Eitingon. According to Sudoplatov's Special Tasks, the NKVD set up three autonomous agent networks for the task, separate from existing U.S. and Mexican spy networks.[213]
On 24 May 1940, Trotsky survived a raid on his villa by armed assassins led by NKVD agent Iosif Grigulevich and Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros.[214] Trotsky's 14-year-old grandson, Vsevolod Platonovich "Esteban" Volkov (7 March 1926 – 16 June 2023), was shot in the foot. A young assistant and bodyguard, Robert Sheldon Harte, disappeared with the attackers and was later found murdered; it is probable he was an accomplice who granted them access.[215] Trotsky's other guards fended off the attackers.[216] Following this, Trotsky wrote an article, "Stalin Seeks My Death" (8 June 1940), stating another attempt was certain.[217][218]
On 20 August 1940, Trotsky was attacked in his study by Spanish-born NKVD agent Ramón Mercader, who used an ice axe.[219][220][k] The operation was codenamed "Utka" (Duck) within the NKVD.
A mountaineering ice axe has a narrow pick and a flat, wide adze. The adze struck Trotsky, fracturing his parietal bone and penetrating 7 cm (2.8 in) into his brain.[222] The blow was bungled and failed to kill him instantly. Witnesses stated Trotsky spat on Mercader and struggled fiercely, breaking Mercader's hand. Hearing the commotion, Trotsky's bodyguards burst in and nearly beat Mercader to death, but Trotsky stopped them, laboriously stating the assassin should be made to answer questions.[223] Trotsky was taken to a hospital and operated on but died at age 60 on 21 August 1940 from blood loss and shock.[224][222] Mercader later testified:
I laid my raincoat on the table in such a way as to be able to remove the ice axe which was in the pocket. I decided not to miss the wonderful opportunity that presented itself. The moment Trotsky began reading the article, he gave me my chance; I took out the ice axe from the raincoat, gripped it in my hand and, with my eyes closed, dealt him a terrible blow on the head.[223]
According to James P. Cannon, secretary of the American Socialist Workers Party, Trotsky's last words were, "I will not survive this attack. Stalin has finally accomplished the task he attempted unsuccessfully before."[225] Mercader was convicted and spent 20 years in a Mexican prison. Stalin claimed the assassin was a dangerous Trotskyist. Mercader initially received no awards, though his mother was presented with the Order of Lenin for her role. Upon his release in 1960 and arrival in the USSR in 1961, Leonid Brezhnev signed a decree awarding Mercader the Order of Lenin, the Gold Star, and the title Hero of the Soviet Union "for the special deed." KGB boss Alexander Shelepin presented these awards to Mercader personally.[226][227]
An estimated 300,000 people passed by Trotsky's funeral casket in Mexico City over several days by 27 August 1940.[228][229][230]
Personality and characteristics
[edit]
Trotsky was regarded as an outstanding orator,[231] preeminent theoretician,[232] and organiser who, in historian Michael Kort's view, "forged and directed the Red Army".[233] He was an original Politburo member in Lenin's government.[234][235] Biographer Isaac Deutscher considered him the "prompter of [the] planned economy and industrialization" in the early Soviet Union.[236]
Old Bolshevik Anatoly Lunacharsky viewed Trotsky as the best-prepared Social Democratic leader during the 1905–1907 revolution, stating he "emerged from the revolution having acquired an enormous degree of popularity, whereas neither Lenin nor Martov had effectively gained any at all".[237] His personal secretary and later historian of mathematical logic, Jean van Heijenoort, found him amicable, inquisitive, and occasionally charming with new acquaintances in his final years in Mexico.[238]
Historian Dmitri Volkogonov characterised him as a "vivid, complex, multi-faceted personality... remembered with hatred and respect, anger and admiration" decades after his assassination.[239] Volkogonov considered Trotsky "far superior" to figures like Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Zhdanov, and "also superior to Stalin and Stalin knew it".[240]
Biographer Robert Service described him as "volatile and untrustworthy",[231] an "arrogant individual"[231] who impressed supporters even during "personal adversity in the 1920s and 1930s"[231] but failed to "coax and encourage them to the full".[231] Service stated Trotsky gave "minimum time to the Jewish question" and believed "he ceased to be a Jew in any important sense because Marxism had burned out the fortuitous residues of his origins".[241]
Political scientist August Nimtz regarded Trotsky as having better foresight than many Marxist and non-Marxist observers with his work The Revolution Betrayed (1936), arguing the Stalinist regime was an "ephemeral phenomenon," a view Nimtz believed was proven by the Soviet collapse after 1989.[242] Other scholars have similarly described Trotsky's prescient judgment on events like the Stalinist alliance with the Kuomintang,[243] the rise of Nazi Germany, and the Spanish Civil War.[244][245] Deutscher also referenced his "uncanny clear sightedness" in predicting the emergence of a single dictator who would "substitute himself" for the Central Committee, the party, and the working class.[246]
Trotsky was a Marxist intellectual.[247][248][249][250] Russian historian Vladimir Buldakov considered Trotsky, in some respects, a "typical representative" of "Russia's radical intelligentsia" with "elements of bourgeois origin".[251] His diverse and profound interests exceeded those of other Bolshevik theoreticians like Nikolai Bukharin.[252] Aside from political activism, Trotsky worked as a statistician and journalist.[253] He loved literature, particularly French novels.[231] He and Natalia Sedova enjoyed Viennese galleries and visited museums like the Louvre and Tate Gallery.[254] He retained a personal interest in science from his youth studying engineering, mathematics, and physics.[255]
His arch-enemy, Stalin, read and sometimes appreciated much of his writing.[256] According to Rubenstein, Stalin acknowledged that "after Lenin, Trotsky was the most popular figure in the country" at the Civil War's end.[142] Stalin himself wrote in a 1918 Pravda editorial: "All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the president of the Petrograd Soviet".[257][258][259]
Upon his 1929 exile, eighteen close relatives remained in the Soviet Union; all faced repression. Seven family members, including his son Sergei Sedov, sister Olga Kameneva, and brother Aleksandr Bronstein, were shot.[260] He spoke several European languages "with a markedly Russian accent"[261] and identified as a cosmopolitan and internationalist.[262] Trotsky wrote about 30,000 documents, most now in archives.[263] Deutscher stated Trotsky wrote most Soviet manifestos and resolutions, edited its Izvestia newspaper, and composed the Red Army's oath of loyalty.[264]
Political stature and conflicts with Stalin
[edit]Had Trotsky won the struggle to succeed Lenin, the character of the Soviet regime would almost certainly have been substantially different, particularly in foreign policy, cultural policy, and the extent of terroristic repression. Trotsky's failure, however, seems to have been almost inevitable, considering his own qualities and the conditions of authoritarian rule by the Communist Party organization.
Trotsky lacked the political acumen to succeed against Stalin's machinations.[266][139][267] Lenin had encouraged Trotsky to challenge Stalin at the Twelfth Party Congress over the Georgian Affair, but Trotsky relented.[268] Historian Martin McCauley commented that Trotsky "displayed a lamentable lack of political judgement" on multiple occasions, such as declining Lenin's proposal to become deputy chairman of Sovnarkom, failing to build a power base before forming a bloc with Lenin against the Orgburo, and not immediately recognising the troika established to prevent his succession.[266] Biographer Joshua Rubenstein attributed Trotsky's decision to decline Lenin's proposal to his belief the position had "little authority of its own" and overlapped with other government and party officials.[142] Deutscher believed he underestimated Stalin's cunning, ruthlessness, and tenacity on several occasions.[269]
His enmity with Stalin developed during the Civil War due to Stalin's disregard for military specialists whom Trotsky considered indispensable. In Tsaritsyn, Stalin ordered several specialists imprisoned on a barge in the Volga; the floating prison was sunk, and the officers perished.[270][271] Another instance was Stalin's disobedience of Trotsky's order to march on Warsaw, contributing to the Red Army's defeat at the Battle of Warsaw in 1920.[272][273] Former Politburo secretary Boris Bazhanov claimed Stalin's antagonism also stemmed from Trotsky's Jewishness and that Stalin refused to obey his military orders during the Civil War.[274] According to Rogovin, Trotsky received hundreds of letters reporting the use of antisemitic methods during the inter-party struggle between Stalin and the United Opposition.[275]
With all the greater frankness can I state how, in my view, the Soviet government should act in case of a fascist upheaval in Germany. In their place, I would, at the very moment of receiving telegraphic news of this event, sign a mobilisation order calling up several age groups. In the face of a mortal enemy, when the logic of the situation points to inevitable war, it would be irresponsible and unpardonable to give that enemy time to establish himself, to consolidate his positions, to conclude alliances… and to work out the plan to attack.
Rubenstein regarded Trotsky's position among Soviet elites as largely dependent on Lenin, adding that he had an outsider image within party circles as he had previously been an "outspoken critic of Lenin".[277] Conversely, Volkogonov stated Trotsky had the support of many party intellectuals, but this was overshadowed by Stalin's control of the vast party apparatus, including the GPU and party cadres.[278]
Trotsky attributed his political defeat to external, objective conditions rather than Stalin's individual qualities. He argued that failed international insurrections (e.g., Bulgaria 1923, China 1927) diminished prospects for world socialism and demoralised the Russian working class, strengthening internal Soviet bureaucracy.[279] Russian historian Vadim Rogovin remarked that Trotsky, in the 1930s, did not abandon hope for revolutionary spread, arguing his prognosis was plausible as many European countries (Germany, France, especially Spain) "went through a period of revolutionary crisis".[280] However, Daniels contended Trotsky would have been no more prepared than other Bolsheviks to risk war or lose trade opportunities, despite his support for world revolution.[281]
Relations with Lenin
[edit].jpg)
Trotsky's relationship with Lenin is a source of intense historical debate.[282] Historian Paul Le Blanc and philosopher Michael Löwy described Lenin and Trotsky as the "widely leading figures in the Russia's Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 as well as in the final years of the rising world communist movement".[283]
Swain, however, viewed the notion of Trotsky as Lenin's natural heir as a myth, citing scholars like Erik Van Ree, James D. White, and Richard B. Day who challenged the traditional characterization of their relationship.[284] Le Blanc disputed Swain's representation, referencing historians across generations including E. H. Carr, Isaac Deutscher, Moshe Lewin, Ronald Suny, and W. Bruce Lincoln. According to Le Blanc, these historians generally supported the view that Lenin desired a collective leadership in which Trotsky played an important role, and within which Stalin would be dramatically demoted or removed.[285]
Historian Roy Medvedev noted the close association of Trotsky and Lenin in the Soviet republic from 1921 to 1924, mentioning public commendations where "greetings in honour of comrades Lenin and Trotsky were announced at many rallies and meetings, and portraits of Lenin and Trotsky hung on the walls of many Soviet and party institutions".[286]
Lenin's succession
[edit]Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand, as his struggle against the C.C. on the question of the People's Commissariat of Communications has already proved, is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present C.C., but he has displayed excessive self-assurance and shown excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work.
Trotsky was generally viewed as Lenin's choice as a successor in 1923.[293][294] He had been nominated as Lenin's deputy in 1922 and 1923 and was expected to assume responsibility over the Council of National Economy or Gosplan.[295] Lenin and Trotsky were the only Soviet leaders elected honorary presidents of the Communist International.[296] Before the 1921 factional ban, Trotsky had considerable support among party activists and Central Committee members against Lenin's narrow majority. His supporters also controlled the Orgburo and Party Secretariat before Stalin's appointment as General Secretary.[297][298] McCauley states Lenin planned to retire and arranged for Trotsky to speak on his behalf as his natural successor, which triggered the troika's formation.[299] Historian Orlando Figes highlighted the increasing alignment between Lenin and Trotsky in 1923, citing Lenin's testament (critical of Stalin and bureaucracy) and their shared positions on foreign trade, party reform, and the Georgian affair.[300]
Soviet historian Victor Danilov believed Lenin's proposed appointment of Trotsky as deputy "would have made him in effect Lenin's successor". Danilov cited Politburo Secretary Bazhanov's notes of Trotsky's concluding speech in 1923, where Trotsky explained declining the deputy position due to concerns his "Jewish origins" could accentuate antisemitic attitudes towards the Soviet Union.[301][302] McCauley stated Trotsky would "almost certainly" have become successor had Lenin died after his first stroke in 1922.[303] Deutscher noted Zinoviev was Lenin's closest disciple from 1907 to 1917, but Zinoviev's opposition to the October Revolution strained his relations with Lenin.[304]
Opponents like Winston Churchill argued "Lenin [had] indeed regarded Trotsky as his political heir" and sought to protect him before his 1924 death. In My Life, Trotsky maintained Lenin intended him as successor as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, beginning with his proposed appointment as deputy. He explained this process would have started after their 1923 alliance with a commission to mitigate state bureaucracy, facilitating his party succession.[305]
Legacy
[edit]
In 1923, the historic town of Gatchina in Petrograd Governorate (now Leningrad Oblast) was renamed Trotsk (Russian: Троцк) by Soviet authorities after Leon Trotsky.[306] After Joseph Stalin became General Secretary, Trotsky was gradually exiled, and the town was renamed Krasnogvardeysk (Красногварде́йск, Red Guard City) in 1929. In 1944, to boost morale, its historic name Gatchina was restored.[307]
Trotsky's house in Coyoacán is preserved much as it was on the day of his assassination and is now the Leon Trotsky House Museum, run by a board that included his grandson Esteban Volkov (1926–2023).[308] His grave is on its grounds. The "International Friends of the Leon Trotsky Museum" foundation raises funds to improve the museum.
Shortly before his assassination, Trotsky agreed to sell most of his remaining papers to Harvard University. After his death, his widow, Natalya Sedova, collected his remaining papers and sent them to Harvard. Over the years, Harvard acquired additional papers hidden from Soviet and Nazi agents in Europe.[309] These papers now occupy 65 feet (20 m) of shelf space in Harvard's Houghton Library.[310]
Trotsky was never rehabilitated by the Soviet government, despite de-Stalinization-era rehabilitations of most other Old Bolsheviks. His son, Sergei Sedov (died 1937), was rehabilitated in 1988, as was Nikolai Bukharin. Beginning in 1989, Trotsky's books, forbidden until 1987, were published in the Soviet Union. Trotsky was rehabilitated on 16 June 2001 by the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.[311]
Historian Harold Shukman assessed conflicting perspectives on Trotsky's legacy:
Trotsky's legacy, unlike those of Stalin and Lenin, had long been submerged and obliterated as a topic of debate, and his place in Soviet history books had correspondingly diminished to one of no importance. For Western readers, however, Trotsky has always been one of the most enigmatic and powerful personalities of the Russian revolution, a Mephistophelian figure whose life ended in an appropriately dramatic way.[312]
Political theorist David North attributed Trotsky's diminished historical influence to the "virtually unlimited resources of the Soviet regime, and of Stalinist-run parties throughout the world, [which] were devoted to blackguarding Trotsky as an anti-Soviet saboteur, terrorist and fascist agent. Within the Soviet Union, his political co-thinkers, past and present, were ruthlessly exterminated".[313] North also criticized biographical literature on Trotsky by some historians (Ian Thatcher, Geoffrey Swain, Robert Service), viewing these trends as a "confluence of neo-Stalinist falsification and traditional Anglo-American anti-Communism".[314]
.jpg)
In 2018, John Kelly wrote that "almost 80 years after Leon Trotsky founded the Fourth International, there are now Trotskyite organisations in 57 countries, including most of Western Europe and Latin America". However, he argued no Trotskyist group had ever led a revolution or built an enduring mass political party.[315] British historian Christian Høgsbjerg countered that academic literature on Trotskyism minimized its historical role in building social movements, stressing British Trotskyists' key role in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (1966–1971), Anti-Nazi League (1977–1981), All Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation (1989–1991), and Stop the War Coalition (from 2001).[316]
Outside the Fourth International, Trotsky has been admired by figures including philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre,[317] military general Mikhail Tukhachevsky,[318] Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg,[319] economist Paul Sweezy,[320] philosopher John Dewey,[321] historian A. J. P. Taylor,[322] psychoanalyst Erich Fromm,[323] philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre,[324] literary critic Edmund Wilson,[325] painter Diego Rivera,[326] political leader Martin Tranmæl,[327] and literary writer Lu Xun.[328]
Historical reputation
[edit]
Trotsky's legacy in modern historiography evokes conflicting interpretations.[329] Before the October Revolution, he was part of an old radical democracy movement including Left Mensheviks and Left Bolsheviks.[330] By 1917, Bolshevik figures like Anatoly Lunacharsky, Moisei Uritsky, and Dmitry Manuilsky held him in comparable stature to Lenin; the October insurrection was carried out according to Trotsky's plan.[331] Contemporaries and later historians viewed him as a hero of the revolution.[332]
In the Soviet Union, his reputation deteriorated during the succession struggle, his views presented as sectarian and anti-Leninist.[333] Throughout the Stalin era, his name and image were erased from history books, museums, and films, becoming a bogeyman associated with ideological heresy.[334] His works remained banned until the Gorbachev era.[335] After de-Stalinization, later Soviet and Russian historians re-evaluated his role with varying interpretations.[333]
Scholarly consensus holds Trotsky demonstrated remarkable leadership of the Red Army during the Civil War.[336][337] He received the Order of the Red Banner for his role, including organising Petrograd's defence when other Bolshevik leaders were prepared to abandon it.[338] Swain asserted the Bolsheviks would certainly have lost the Civil War within a year without Trotsky leading the Red Army.[339]
Some scholars and Western socialists argue Trotsky represented a more democratic alternative to Stalin, emphasizing his pre-Civil War activities and leadership of the Left Opposition.[340] Deutscher described Trotsky as the "Soviet's moving spirit" in 1905, representing Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and other Soviets.[341] Trotsky proposed electing a new Soviet presidium with other socialist parties based on proportional representation in September 1917.[342] Rogovin argued the Left Opposition, led by Trotsky, represented a "real alternative to Stalinism," which was Stalin's primary motive for the Great Terror.[343] Daniels stated that the most distinctive features of Stalin's rule such as his campaigns against "bourgeois experts" as seen with "the Shakhty trials, his contemptuous anti-intellectualism and the dogmatization of Marxism, the purges—run totally counter to Trotsky's thought".[344]
Conversely, figures such as Volkogonov have strongly criticised his defence of the Red Terror and the dictatorship of the proletariat.[345] Service argued that his "ideas and practices laid several foundation stones for the erection of the Stalinist political, economic, social and even cultural edifice".[346] Cherniaev considered Trotsky partly responsible for establishing a one-party, authoritarian state and initiating military practices like summary executions, which later became standard in the Stalinist era.[133] Thatcher cited Trotsky's defence of terror in Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky but acknowledged his capacity for leniency, noting he personally urged understanding treatment for White army deserters.[347]
_with_Photos_-_Leon_Trotsky_Museum_-_Coyoacan_-_Mexico_City_-_Mexico_(15517085251).jpg)
Other writers believe Trotsky has been maligned and caricatured, necessitating historical reappraisal.[348] French socialist Pierre Broué criticised Western representations of Trotsky's role in the Kronstadt rebellion, arguing they falsely presented him as the principal figure responsible for the repression. Broué added that military tribunals and executions for desertion were common features of all wars, not exclusive to the Red Army under Trotsky.[349] Historian Bertrand Patenaude regarded Service's characterisation of Trotsky as a "mass murderer and a terrorist" as reflective of a wider attempt to discredit him, noting Service's work featured inaccuracies and distortions of the historical record.[350]
Various historians credit Trotsky and the Left Opposition with shifting Soviet economic orientation from the NEP towards a planned economy through their proposals for mass industrialization.[351] Trotsky delivered a joint report to the April 1926 Central Committee Plenum proposing national industrialization and replacing annual plans with five-year plans. His proposals were rejected by the Central Committee majority (controlled by the troika) and derided by Stalin at the time.[352] The eventual adoption of five-year plans in 1928 served as the basis for Soviet modernization.[353]
Several scholars regard his historical writings on the Soviet bureaucracy as having considerable influence in shaping the receptive attitudes of later Marxists and many non-Marxists.[354] Trotsky associated bureaucratism with authoritarianism, excessive centralism, and conservatism. Political scientist Baruch Knei-Paz argued Trotsky did more than any other political figure to "show the historical and social roots of Stalinism" as a bureaucratic system.[354] British cybernetician Stafford Beer, who worked on the decentralized economic planning project Project Cybersyn (1970–1973), was reportedly influenced by Trotsky's critique of the Soviet bureaucracy.[355] Professional historians have noted the literary value of his social analysis in works like 1905 and The History of the Russian Revolution for wider historiography.[356][357]
Political ideology and contributions to Marxism
[edit]
Trotsky considered himself a "Bolshevik-Leninist",[358] advocating for the establishment of a vanguard party. He viewed himself as an advocate of orthodox Marxism.[359] Trotsky adhered to scientific socialism, seeing it as a conscious expression of historical processes.[360] His politics differed from those of Stalin or Mao Zedong, most importantly in his rejection of "socialism in one country" and his insistence on the need for an international "permanent revolution".
In the post-Lenin struggle, Trotsky and the Left/United Opposition advocated rapid industrialization, voluntary agricultural collectivisation, and the expansion of workers' democracy.[361][362] In 1936, Trotsky called for restoring the right of criticism in areas like economic policy, revitalizing trade unions, and allowing free elections involving multiple Soviet parties.[363][364] In the Transitional Program (drafted for the 1938 founding congress of the Fourth International), Trotsky reiterated the need for political pluralism and workers' control of production.[365] Supporters of the Fourth International echo Trotsky's opposition to Stalinist totalitarianism, advocating political revolution and arguing socialism cannot sustain itself without democracy.[366]
Economic programme
[edit]
Trotsky was an early proponent of economic planning (from 1923) and favoured accelerated industrialization.[367] In 1921, he supported strengthening Gosplan to guide balanced economic reconstruction after the Civil War.[368] He also urged economic decentralisation between the state, oblast regions, and factories to counter inefficiency and bureaucracy.[369]
He had proposed the principles underlying the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1920 to mitigate urgent economic problems from war communism, later privately reproaching Lenin for the delayed government response in 1921–1922.[370][371] His position differed from the majority who fully supported the NEP.[367][372] Trotsky believed planning and NEP should coexist in a mixed framework until the socialist sector gradually superseded private industry.[373] He found allies among economic theorists and administrators like Yevgeni Preobrazhensky and Georgy Pyatakov (deputy chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy).[374] Intellectuals formed the core of the Left Opposition during the succession period.[281]
Trotsky specified the need for "overall guidance in planning i.e. the systematic co-ordination of the fundamental sectors of the state economy in the process of adapting to the present market" and urged for a national plan[375] alongside currency stabilization.[376] He rejected the Stalinist focus on heavy industry, proposing instead the use of foreign trade as an accelerator and directing investments via comparative coefficients.[377]
In response to the Scissors Crisis (1923–1924), which strained worker-peasant relations, Trotsky and the Left Opposition developed economic proposals including a progressive tax on wealthier groups (kulaks, NEPmen), balancing import-export to purchase machinery abroad, and accelerating industrialization.[378][379] In 1932–1933, Trotsky maintained the need for mass participation in economic planning.[380] When questioned by the Dewey Commission in 1937 about industrialization, he emphasized the need for Soviet democracy:
The successes are very important, and I affirmed it every time. They are due to the abolition of private property and to the possibilities inherent in planned economy. But, they – I cannot say exactly – but I will say two or three times less than they could be under a regime of Soviet democracy.[381]
According to Fitzpatrick, the scholarly consensus is that Stalin appropriated the Left Opposition's position on industrialization and collectivisation.[382] Other scholars argue Trotsky's economic programme differed from Stalin's forced collectivisation (post-1928) due to the latter's brutality.[383][281]
Permanent Revolution
[edit]
Permanent Revolution theory holds that in countries with delayed bourgeois democratic development, these tasks can only be accomplished by establishing a workers' state, which inevitably involves inroads against capitalist property. Thus, bourgeois democratic tasks transition into proletarian ones. Though closely associated with Trotsky, the call for "Permanent Revolution" first appeared in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' March 1850 Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League:
It is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far—not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world—that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. ... Their battle-cry must be: The Permanent Revolution.
Trotsky's conception, drawing on Russian Marxist founder Georgy Plekhanov, argued that in "backward" countries, the bourgeoisie itself could not achieve bourgeois democratic tasks. Trotsky developed this with Alexander Parvus in 1904–1905. Relevant articles were collected in Trotsky's 1905 and Permanent Revolution (which includes his essay "Results and Prospects"). Some Trotskyists argue the state of the Third World demonstrates capitalism offers no way forward for underdeveloped countries, proving the theory's central tenet.[384]
According to Deutscher, Trotsky supported revolution through proletarian internationalism but opposed achieving it via military conquest. Deutscher cites Trotsky's opposition to the Polish–Soviet War (1920), his proposed armistice with the Entente, and his temperance regarding staging anti-British revolts in the Middle East.[385]
United front and theory of fascism
[edit]
Trotsky was a central figure in the Comintern during its first four congresses, helping generalize Bolshevik strategy and tactics to new Communist parties. From 1921, the united front—a method uniting revolutionaries and reformists in common struggle while winning workers to revolution—was the central tactic advocated by the Comintern after the German revolution's defeat.
Trotsky strongly criticized the shifting Comintern policy under Stalin that directed German Communists to treat social democrats as "social fascists". Historian Bertrand Patenaude believed this Comintern policy facilitated Hitler's rise.[386] Marxist theorist Hillel Ticktin argued Trotsky's political strategy, emphasizing an organizational bloc between the German Communist Party and Social Democratic Party during the interwar period, likely would have prevented Hitler's ascent to power.[387] Trotsky formulated a theory of fascism, analyzing Italian Fascism and the early emergence of Nazi Germany (1930–1933) through a dialectical interpretation.[388]
After exile, Trotsky continued advocating a united front against fascism in Germany and Spain. According to Joseph Choonara of the British Socialist Workers Party, his articles on the united front represent an essential part of his political legacy.[389]
Uneven and combined development
[edit]The concept of uneven and combined development derived from Trotsky's political theories.[390] Developed alongside permanent revolution theory to explain Russia's historical context, he later elaborated on it to explain specific laws of uneven development (1930) and conditions for possible revolutionary scenarios.[391] According to Thatcher, this theory was later generalized to "the entire history of mankind".[392]
Political scientists Emanuele Saccarelli and Latha Varadarajan valued his theory as a "signal contribution" to international relations, arguing it presented "a specific understanding of capitalist development as 'uneven', insofar as it systematically featured geographically divergent 'advanced' and 'backward' regions" across the world economy.[393]
Literary criticism and socialist culture
[edit]Faith merely promises to move mountains; but technology, which takes nothing 'on faith', is actually able to cut down mountains and move them. Up to now this was done for industrial purposes (mines) or for railways (tunnels); in the future this will be done on an immeasurably larger scale, according to a general industrial and artistic plan. Man will occupy himself with re-registering mountains and rivers, and will earnestly and repeatedly make improvements in nature.
In Literature and Revolution (1924), Trotsky examined aesthetic issues related to class and the Russian revolution. Soviet scholar Robert Bird considered it the "first systematic treatment of art by a Communist leader" and a catalyst for later Marxist cultural and critical theories.[395] Trotsky defended intellectual autonomy regarding literary movements and scientific theories like Freudian psychoanalysis and Einstein's theory of relativity, theories increasingly marginalised during the Stalin era.[396] He later co-authored the 1938 Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art with endorsements from André Breton and Diego Rivera.[397] Trotsky's writings on literature, advocating tolerance, limited censorship, and respect for literary tradition (e.g., his 1923 survey), strongly appealed to the New York Intellectuals.[398]
Trotsky critiqued contemporary literary movements like Futurism and emphasized cultural autonomy for developing socialist culture. According to literary critic Terry Eagleton, Trotsky recognized, "like Lenin on the need for a socialist culture to absorb the finest products of bourgeois art".[399] Trotsky viewed proletarian culture as "temporary and transitional," providing foundations for a classless culture. He argued economic well-being and emancipation from material constraints were prerequisites for artistic creativity.[400]
Political scientist Baruch Knei-Paz characterised Trotsky's view of the party's role as transmitting culture, raising educational standards, and facilitating entry into the cultural sphere, but leaving artistic creation (language, presentation) to the practitioner. Knei-Paz noted key distinctions between Trotsky's approach and Stalin's cultural policy in the 1930s.[400]
In popular culture
[edit]- The comedy film The Trotsky (2009) centres on a protagonist named Leon Bronstein (played by Jay Baruchel) who believes himself the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky.[401]
- The characters Snowball in George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) and Emmanuel Goldstein in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) are based on Trotsky.[402][403]
- Trotsky's final days were dramatized in the film The Assassination of Trotsky (1972), directed by Joseph Losey and starring Richard Burton as Trotsky.[404][405]
- The 8-episode biographical drama Trotsky debuted on Russia's Channel One in 2017. Netflix acquired distribution rights in 2018.[406]
- The 1980s UK band The Redskins' debut single was titled "Lev Bronstein", released on the CNT record label in 1982.[407]
- Playwright David Ives wrote a short play, Variations on the Death of Trotsky, published in his 1994 collection All in the Timing.
- Punk band The Stranglers refer to Trotsky in their 1977 single "No More Heroes" with the lyric "Whatever happened to Leon Trotsky? / He got an ice pick / That made his ears burn".[408]
See also
[edit]- Entryism
- Fourth International
- French Turn
- Leon Trotsky bibliography
- Predictions of the collapse of the Soviet Union
- Scissors Crisis
- Socialist democracy
- Trotsky's train, armoured train carriage which was used for logistical travel and oration speeches.
- World socialism
- In popular culture
- The Assassination of Trotsky, 1972 film
- Reds, 1981 film about the October Revolution
- Variations on the Death of Trotsky, 1991 play
- Frida, 2002 film
- The Chosen, 2016 film
- Trotsky, 2017 TV series
Notes
[edit]- ^ Trotsky was People's Commissar for Military Affairs from 14 March 1918 and People's Commissar for Naval Affairs from April 1918 before the offices were merged osn 12 November 1923.
- ^ Russian: Лев "Лейба" Давидович Бронштейн, romanized: Lev "Leyba" Davidovich Bronshteyn, IPA: [lʲef lʲɪjbə dɐˈvʲidəvʲɪtɕ brɐnʂˈtʲejn]
- ^ /ˈtrɒtski/;[2] Russian: Лев Давидович Троцкий, romanized: Lev Davidovich Trotskiy, IPA: [ˈlʲef ˈtrotskʲɪj] ⓘ; Ukrainian: Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated Lyev, Trotski, Trockij and Trotzky
- ^ Yakov Sverdlov was the Central Committee's senior secretary for personnel affairs from 1917 until his death in March 1919. He was replaced by Elena Stasova, then Nikolai Krestinsky in November 1919. After Krestinsky's ouster in March 1921, Vyacheslav Molotov became senior secretary but lacked Krestinsky's authority as he was not a full Politburo member. Stalin took over as senior secretary, formalized at the XIth Party Congress in April 1922, with Molotov as second secretary.
- ^ It is unclear why Kamenev, a mild-mannered man with few leadership ambitions and Trotsky's brother-in-law, sided with Zinoviev and Stalin against Trotsky in 1922. Trotsky later speculated it might have been due to Kamenev's love of comfort, which Trotsky found "repelled me." He expressed his feelings to Kamenev in late 1920 or early 1921: "Our relations with Kamenev, which were very good in the first period after the insurrection, began to become more distant from that day."
- ^ The Central Committee's Secretariat became increasingly important during and after the Civil War, as the Party shifted from elected to appointed officials. This was driven by the need for rapid manpower allocation and the party's transformation from a small revolutionary group to the ruling party, with increased membership including career seekers and former members of banned socialist parties, viewed with apprehension by Old Bolsheviks. To prevent party degeneration, membership requirements for officials were instituted, and the Secretariat gained ultimate power over local appointments, concentrating enormous power in the General Secretary's hands.
- ^ Lenin's letter to Stalin, dictated on 15 December 1922: "I am sure Trotsky will uphold my views as well as I." Faced with united opposition from Lenin and Trotsky, the Central Committee reversed its previous decision and adopted the Lenin-Trotsky proposal.
- ^ Trotsky explained in Chapter 12 of his unfinished book Stalin that he refused to deliver the report because "it seemed to me equivalent to announcing my candidacy for the role of Lenin's successor at a time when Lenin was fighting a grave illness."
- ^ Radek wrote:[146]"The need of the hour was for a man who would incarnate the call to struggle, a man who, subordinating himself completely to the requirements of the struggle, would become the ringing summons to arms, the will which exacts from all unconditional submission to a great, sacrificial necessity. Only a man with Trotsky's capacity for work, only a man so unsparing of himself as Trotsky, only a man who knew how to speak to the soldiers as Trotsky did—only such a man could have become the standard bearer of the armed toilers. He was all things rolled into one."
- ^ The term "Trotskyism" was first coined by Russian liberal politician Pavel Milyukov, the first foreign minister in the Provisional Government, who in April 1917 demanded the British government release Trotsky.
- ^ The murder weapon was an ice axe (not an ice pick, an awl-like bartender's tool). This misnomer likely arose from the assassin's use of the French term picolet (referring to the mountaineering tool resembling a pickaxe) and the multiple languages involved in reporting. Many historical sources confuse the two tools.[221]
References
[edit]- ^ Cliff, Tony (2004) [1976]. "Lenin Rearms the Party". All Power to the Soviets: Lenin 1914–1917. Vol. 2. Chicago: Haymarket Books. p. 139. ISBN 9781931859103. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
Trotsky was a leader of a small group, the Mezhraionts, consisting of almost four thousand members.
- ^ "Trotsky". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster.
- ^ Mccauley 2014, p. 59; Deutscher 2003b, p. 63; Kort 2015, p. 166; Service 2010, p. 301–20; Pipes 1993, p. 469; Volkogonov 1996, p. 242; Lewin 2005, p. 67; Tucker 1973, p. 336; Figes 2017, pp. 796, 797; D'Agostino 2011, p. 67.
- ^ Getty 2013b, p. 53; Douds 2019b, p. 165.
- ^ Bullock 1991b, p. 163; Rees & Rosa 1992b, p. 129; Kosheleva 1995b, pp. 80–81.
- ^ Barnett, Vincent (7 March 2013). A History of Russian Economic Thought. Routledge. p. 101. ISBN 978-1-134-26191-8.
- ^ Deutscher 2015a, pp. 1053.
- ^ "Leon Trotsky: Terrorism and Communism (Chapter 4)". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 16 November 2022.
- ^ Knei-Paz 1979, p. 296; Kivelson & Neuberger 2008, p. 149.
- ^ a b "Библиотека газеты "Революция". Клушин В.И. Малоизвестное о Троцком". www.revolucia.ru. Retrieved 17 October 2022.
- ^ a b Parrish 1996, p. 69.
- ^ Service 2010, p. 11.
- ^ a b North 2010, pp. 144–146.
- ^ a b Laqueur 1990, pp. 59–60.
- ^ Троцкий, Лев (1930). Моя жизнь (in Russian). Berlin. pp. 22, 109.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ North 2010, p. 145.
- ^ Trotsky, Leon. "My Life – Chapter VIII, My First Prisons". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 20 May 2021.
- ^ Molinier, Raymond. "On Meeting with Trotsky". Translated by Crawford, Ted. Archived from the original on 4 June 2007. Retrieved 29 January 2022.
- ^ "Leon Trotsky – Biography, Books, Assassination, & Facts". Archived from the original on 15 September 2017. Retrieved 24 October 2017.
- ^ Mein Leben. Ein Essay über Trockijs Autobiographie und den jungen Trockij (1879–1904), Wolfgang und Petra Libitz, 2022, p. 48.
- ^ Albert S. Lindemann (2000). Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews. Cambridge University Press. p. 446. ISBN 978-0-521-79538-8. Retrieved 26 September 2013.
- ^ Trotsky, Leon. "My Life – Chapter XVII, Preparing for a New Revolution". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
- ^ a b Deutscher 2003a, Chapter 1.
- ^ Deutscher 2003a, p. 36.
- ^ a b Deutscher 2003a, p. 39.
- ^ Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul, eds. (1992). The Trotsky reappraisal. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-7486-0317-6.
- ^ Renton 2004, p. 19.
- ^ Eastman, Max (1970). Leon Trotsky: the Portrait of a Youth. AMS Press. p. 68. ISBN 978-0-404-02235-8.
- ^ a b chapter XVII of his autobiography, My Life Archived 19 November 2005 at the Wayback Machine, Marxist Internet Archive
- ^ Renton 2004, pp. 22–24.
- ^ Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials, The Case of Leon Trotsky (1937, reprinted 1968).
- ^ Deutscher 2003a, p. 40.
- ^ Schapiro 1970, p. 645.
- ^ Deutscher 2003a, p. 42.
- ^ a b Warth 1978, p. 22.
- ^ Schapiro 1970, pp. 31–32.
- ^ Deutscher 2003a, p. 67.
- ^ Deutscher 2003a, p. 55.
- ^ Deutscher 2003a, p. 7.
- ^ cf, for instance, "Leon Trotsky" Archived 14 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine, The Columbia Encyclopedia
- ^ a b Deutscher 2003a, pp. 6–7.
- ^ Quoted in chapter XII of 'My Life' Archived 21 November 2005 at the Wayback Machine, Marxist Internet Archive
- ^ Trotsky's 'Thermidor and anti-Semitism' (1937) Archived 29 November 2005 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b c Trotsky, Leon. My life: an attempt at an autobiography. Courier Corporation, 2007.
- ^ Cavendish, Richard (2003). "The Bolshevik–Menshevik Split". History Today. 53 (11). Archived from the original on 22 October 2014. Retrieved 22 October 2014.
- ^ Weber, Nicholas (1975). "Parvus, Luxemburg and Kautsky on the 1905 Russian Revolution: The Relationship with Trotsky". Australian Journal of Politics and History. 21 (3): 39–53. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8497.1975.tb01151.x. ISSN 0004-9522.
- ^ Lenin: "Judas Trotsky's Blush of Shame" Archived 3 July 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Marxists Internet Archive; retrieved 26 July 2013.
- ^ Goryachkina, М.S. М.Е.Saltykov-Shchedrin. The Selected Works. Critical and biographical essay. Khudozhestvennaya Literatura Publishers. Moscow. 1954. Pp. 5–24.
- ^ CPGB: Stalin: "Slander and Truth" Archived 25 June 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Marxists Internet Archive; retrieved 26 July 2013.
- ^ Lenin: 123. To Alexandra Kollontai Archived 10 January 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Marxists Internet Archive, (9 June 2006); retrieved 26 July 2013.
- ^ Trotsky 1971, p. 73.
- ^ Gapon, Georgy. The Story of My Life. Chapman & Hall; 1st THUS edition (1 January 1905)
- ^ Smith, Edward Ellis. The Okhrana; The Russian Department of Police; A Bibliography. Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 1967.
- ^ Deutscher 2003a, p. 117.
- ^ Leon Trotsky (1969) [1929]. "Results and Prospects". Permanent Revolution. New York: Pathfinder Press. pp. 27, 122.
- ^ Trotsky 1971, pp. 85–88.
- ^ Deutscher 2003a, p. 126.
- ^ Deutscher 2003a, pp. 138–139.
- ^ a b Deutscher 2003a, p. 131.
- ^ Trotsky 1971, p. 218.
- ^ Quoted in Chapter XIV of My Life Archived 14 April 2006 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Trotsky 1971, pp. 231–233.
- ^ Chapter XXIII of 1905 Archived 5 March 2006 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Chapter XVII of My Life Archived 5 March 2006 at the Wayback Machine, Marxist Internet Archive; retrieved 31 January 2018.
- ^ a b Deutscher 2003a, p. 191.
- ^ a b Deutscher 2003a, p. 192.
- ^ V. I. Lenin (1974). "Towards Unity". Internet Marxists Archive. pp. 147–155.
- ^ Chapter XVI of My Life Archived 20 April 2006 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Service 2010, p. 62.
- ^ L. Trotsky. "My Life, Chapter IX". Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ Perritt, Henry H. Jr. (2010). The Road to Independence for Kosovo: A Chronicle of the Ahtisaari Plan. Cambridge University Press. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-521-11624-4. Retrieved 1 January 2020.
- ^ "Marxists.org, The War and the International". Archived from the original on 20 November 2005. Retrieved 31 August 2005.
- ^ Fischer, Louis (2001). The Life of Lenin. UK: Weidenfeld & Nicolson History. ISBN 978-1-84212-230-3.
- ^ Gus Fagan. Christian Rakovsky biography Archived 19 June 2006 at the Wayback Machine, marxists.org; accessed 31 January 2018.
- ^ Rubenstein 2011, p. 75.
- ^ a b Chapter 22 of My Life Archived 20 April 2006 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b c d Leon Trotsky: My Life – In a Concentration Camp Archived 8 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine, ns1758.ca; accessed 31 January 2018.
- ^ "Leon Trotsky | Biography, Books, Assassination, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
- ^ Wade 2004, p. xxi
- ^ a b In One And The Same Issue Archived 15 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine New International, Vol. 2 No. 6, October 1935, p. 208.
- ^ J. V. Stalin. "The October Revolution and the National Question". Internet Marxists Archive.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (1954). The Prophet Armed Trotsky 1879-1921 (1954). Oxford University Press. pp. 330–336.
- ^ Abramovitch, Raphael R. (1985). The Soviet Revolution, 1917-1939. International Universities Press. p. 130.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (1954). The Prophet Armed Trotsky 1879-1921 (1954). Oxford University Press. p. 331.
- ^ Trotsky, Leon (1930). "My Life" (PDF). Marxists. Charles Schribner's Sons. p. 286.
- ^ "Treaties of Brest-Litovsk". Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2 February 2024.
- ^ a b "Leon Trotsky". Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
- ^ Service, Robert (2005). A history of modern Russia from Nicholas II to Vladimir Putin. Internet Archive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 75–80. ISBN 978-0-674-01801-3.
- ^ Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (Left SRs) Archived 16 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine; Glossary of organizations on Marxists.org
- ^ The "Brest-Litovsk" chapter in Trotsky's 1925 book Lenin Archived 25 November 2005 at the Wayback Machine, marxists.org; Retrieved 1 June 2018.
- ^ Lenin Archived 25 November 2005 at the Wayback Machine, marxists.org; Retrieved 31 January 2018.
- ^ "Letters From Trotzky and From Kerensky's War Minister". Current History. VIII (Second part): 113. 1918. Retrieved 10 April 2023.
- ^ Magnes, Judah Leon (1919). Russia and Germany at Brest-Litovsk: A Documentary History of the Peace Negotiations (1st ed.). Rand School of Social Science. pp. 122–123. Retrieved 10 April 2023.
- ^ The authenticity of this letter was confirmed by Trotsky to John Wheeler-Bennett in 1937. Wheeler-Bennett, John W. (1938). Brest-Litovsk: the Forgotten Peace, March 1918 (1st ed.). London: Macmillan and Co., Limited. pp. 185–186.
The authenticity of this letter, which has been in doubt for twenty years, was personally confirmed to the writer by Leon Trotsky in conversation in Mexico City, in September 1937.
; the letter was auctioned in 1990. Pyle, Richard (23 March 1990). "Revolutionary's Letter to Lenin Auctioned". Associated Press. Retrieved 10 April 2023. - ^ Meijer, Jan M., ed. (1964). The Trotsky Papers, 1917–1922. The Hague: Mouton & Co. pp. 6–7.
- ^ Trotzky, Leon (1925). Lenin. New York: Blue Ribbon Books Inc. p. 107-110. Retrieved 10 April 2023.
- ^ Trotsky, L. "Statement By Trotsky At The Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference On Russia's Withdrawal From The War". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 10 April 2023.
- ^ Deutscher 2015a, pp. 389.
- ^ Felshtinsky, Yuri (26 October 2010). Lenin and His Comrades: The Bolsheviks Take Over Russia 1917–1924. New York: Enigma Books. ISBN 978-1-929631-95-7.
- ^ a b Trotsky, Leon (1930). "XXXVI". My Life.
- ^ Hanebrink, Paul (2018). A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-0-674-04768-6.
- ^ Bradley, J.F.L (1963). "The Czechoslovak Revolt against the Bolsheviks". Soviet Studies. 15 (2): 124–151. doi:10.1080/09668136308410353. JSTOR 149174.
- ^ Chapter XXXIV of My Life Archived 20 April 2006 at the Wayback Machine, marxists.org; accessed 31 January 2018.
- ^ Kort 2015, p. 130.
- ^ Service 2010, p. 263.
- ^ Rogovin, Vadim Zakharovich (2009). Stalin's Terror of 1937-1938: Political Genocide in the USSR. Mehring Books. p. 376. ISBN 978-1-893638-04-4.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (5 January 2015). The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky. Verso Books. pp. 339–340. ISBN 978-1-78168-721-5.
- ^ a b Liebman, Marcel (1975). Leninism under Lenin. London: J. Cape. pp. 313–314. ISBN 978-0-224-01072-6.
- ^ a b c Wilde, Robert. 2019 February 20. "The Red Terror." ThoughtCo. Retrieved 24 March 2021.
- ^ Kline, George L (1992). In Defence of Terrorism in The Trotsky reappraisal. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds). Edinburgh University Press. p. 158. ISBN 978-0-7486-0317-6.
- ^ a b c Bird, Danny (5 September 2018). "How the 'Red Terror' Exposed the True Turmoil of Soviet Russia 100 Years Ago". Time. Retrieved 24 March 2021.
- ^ Berkman, Alexander; Goldman, Emma (January 1922). "Bolsheviks Shooting Anarchists". Freedom. 36 (391): 4. Retrieved 9 May 2023.
- ^ Alter Litvin «Красный и Белый террор в России в 1917—1922 годах» ISBN 5-87849-164-8.
- ^ Kotkin, Stephen (23 October 2014). Stalin, Vol. I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928. Penguin Books Limited. ISBN 978-0-7181-9298-3.
- ^ Leon Trotsky (1975) [1920]. Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky. p. 83.
- ^ a b Volkogonov 1996, p. 180.
- ^ Lih, Lars T., Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914–1921, University of California Press (1990), p. 131.
- ^ Lenin, Vladimir Ilych (1919). "Achievements and Difficulties of the Soviet Government". marxists.org. Progress Publishers. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 6 November 2015.
- ^ Reese, Roger R. (3 October 2023). Russia's Army: A History from the Napoleonic Wars to the War in Ukraine. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-8061-9356-4.
- ^ Figes, Orlando (1990). "The Red Army and Mass Mobilization during the Russian Civil War 1918-1920". Past & Present (129): 168–211. doi:10.1093/past/129.1.168. ISSN 0031-2746. JSTOR 650938.
- ^ "Lost leaders: Leon Trotsky". The New Statesman. UK. Archived from the original on 23 April 2010. Retrieved 22 April 2010.
- ^ a b Chapter XXXVII of My Life Archived 20 April 2006 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Isai Abramovich's memoirs Archived 26 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine re: the Smilga episode. Abramovich (1900–1985), a friend of Smilga's, was one of the few Trotskyists who survived the Great Purges and returned from Stalin's camps in the late 1950s.
- ^ My Life (Chapter XXXV) Archived 20 April 2006 at the Wayback Machine, marxists.org; accessed 31 January 2018.
- ^ "Assassinate Trotzky, Report; Ex-Leader Of Russia Soviet Slayer's Victim, Berlin Officials Hear". Los Angeles Herald. 1 January 1920. p. 1. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
- ^ My Life (Chapter XXXVIII) Archived 10 December 2005 at the Wayback Machine, marxists.org; accessed 31 January 2018.
- ^ Pipes 1996, Political Report of the Central Committee of the RKP(b) to the Ninth All-Russian Conference of the Communist Party delivered by Lenin on 20 September 1920, Document 59.
- ^ Tony Cliff; Trotsky: The Sword of the Revolution 1917–1923 Archived 15 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine; Chapter 11: War Communism at an impasse; paragraph "The militarisation of all labour"; Bookmarks, London 1990.
- ^ Kronstadt Rebellion, Kronstädter Aufstand In: Dictionary of Marxism, http://www.inkrit.de/e_inkritpedia/e_maincode/doku.php?id=k:kronstaedter_aufstand
- ^ "More on the Suppression of Kronstadt" Archived 21 November 2007 at the Wayback Machine by Leon Trotsky
- ^ Goldman, Emma (1939). Trotsky Protests Too Much. The Anarchist Communist Federation.
- ^ Goldman, Emma (1938). "Trotsky Protests too Much" (PDF). Glasgow: The Anarchist Communist Federation. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 January 2018. Retrieved 14 August 2018.
- ^ a b V. I͡U. Cherni͡aev, "Trotsky" in Acton, Edward; Cherni͡aev, Vladimir I͡u.; Rosenberg, William G., eds. (1997). Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914–1921. Indiana University Press. p. 191. ISBN 978-0-253-33333-9.
- ^ Swain 2014a, p. 210.
- ^ Swain 2014a, p. 211.
- ^ Pipes 1996, Document 103 (22 May 1922).
- ^ Pipes 1996, Document 106.
- ^ Pipes 1996, Document 109.
- ^ a b Bullock, Alan (1991). Hitler and Stalin: parallel lives. London: HarperCollins. p. 163. ISBN 978-0-00-215494-9.
- ^ Mandel 1995, p. 149.
- ^ Ceplair, Larry (21 July 2020). Revolutionary Pairs: Marx and Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, Gandhi and Nehru, Mao and Zhou, Castro and Guevara. University Press of Kentucky. p. 93. ISBN 978-0-8131-7945-2.
- ^ a b c Rubenstein 2011, p. 127.
- ^ Chapter XXXIX of My Life Archived 20 April 2006 at the Wayback Machine, Marxist Internet Archive
- ^ Chapter 11 of Trotsky's unfinished book, entitled Stalin Archived 29 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Chapter 12 of Trotsky's unfinished book, entitled Stalin Archived 12 July 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 22 November 2005. Retrieved 24 October 2005.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ Rogovin, Vadim Zakharovich (2021). Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years. Mehring Books. p. 272. ISBN 978-1-893638-97-6.
- ^ Leon Trotsky, "The First Letter to the Central Committee" contained in the Challenge of the Left Opposition: 1923–1925 (Pathfinder Press: New York, 1975) pp. 55–56.
- ^ Quoted in Max Shachtman. The Struggle for the New Course, New York, New International Publishing Co., 1943. The Campaign Against "Trotskyism" Archived 9 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Leon Trotsky, "The New Course" contained in The Challenge of the Left Opposition: 1923–1925, pp. 63–144.
- ^ Left Opposition Archived 16 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine; Glossary of organizations on Marxists.org
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (5 January 2015). The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky. Verso Books. p. 735. ISBN 978-1-78168-721-5.
- ^ Rogovin, Vadim Zakharovich (2021). Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years. Mehring Books. pp. 139, 249, 268–269. ISBN 978-1-893638-97-6.
- ^ Chapter VIII of Boris Souvarine's Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism Archived 30 April 2006 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Leon Trotsky, "Speech to the Thirteenth Party Congress on May 26, 1924" contained in The Challenge of the Left Opposition: 1923–1925, pp. 161–62.
- ^ Preobrazhensky, Yevgeni. The New Economics. Oxford University Press, 1965.
- ^ Leon Trotsky "Lessons of October" contained in Challenge of the Left Opposition: 1923–1925, pp. 199–258.
- ^ Leon Trotsky, My Life (Pathfinder Press: New York, 1970) p. 520.
- ^ Trotsky, Leon. "Lenin (1925)".
- ^ Trotsky, Leon (1959). Lenin. Garden City Books. p. 215.
- ^ Nikolai Valentinov-Volsky's account of his work with Trotsky in 1925 in Novaia Ekonomicheskaia Politika i Krizis Partii Posle Smerti Lenina: Gody Raboty v VSNKh vo Vremia NEP, Moscow, Sovremennik, 1991.
- ^ "Leon Trotsky: My Life (42. The Last Period of Struggle Within the Party)". 22 November 2018. Archived from the original on 22 November 2018. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
- ^ "Leon Trotsky: Letter on Eastman's Book". 22 November 2018. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
- ^ Sterling Seagrave, Dragon Lady (Alfred A. Knopf Inc.: New York, 1992) p. 454.
- ^ Compilation Group for the "History of Modern China" Series, The Revolution of 1911 (Foreign Languages Press: Peking, 1976) p. 153.
- ^ Joseph Stalin, "The Prospects of Revolution in China" a speech to the Chinese Commission of the Executive Committee of the Communist International on 30 November 1926" contained in J. Stalin on Chinese Revolution (Suren Dutt Publishers: Calcutta, India, 1970), pp. 5–21.
- ^ Peter Gue Zarrow (2005). China in war and revolution, 1895–1949. Vol. 1 of Asia's transformations (illustrated ed.). Psychology Press. p. 233. ISBN 978-0-415-36447-8. Retrieved 1 January 2011.
- ^ Robert Carver North (1963). Moscow and Chinese Communists (2 ed.). Stanford University Press. p. 96. ISBN 978-0-8047-0453-3. Retrieved 1 January 2011.
{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) - ^ Walter Moss (2005). A history of Russia: Since 1855. Vol. 2 of A History of Russia (2, illustrated ed.). Anthem Press. p. 282. ISBN 978-1-84331-034-1. Retrieved 1 January 2011.
- ^ J. Arch Getty, Oleg V. Naumov. Road to Terror. pp. 26-27
- ^ "Anti-Stalinist Demonstration on November 7, 1927". Topography of Terror, Moscow. 2 December 2015. Archived from the original on 10 January 2024. Retrieved 10 January 2024.
- ^ Rubenstein 2013, pp. 155, 202.
- ^ a b Tova Yedlin, Maxim Gorky: A Political Biography, Praeger/Greenwood, Westport, 1992, pp. 201–02. ISBN 978-0275966058
- ^ Medvedev 1976, p. 169.
- ^ Feofanov & Barry 1995, p. 22.
- ^ Fagan, Gus; Biographical Introduction to Christian Rakovsky; chapter Opposition and Exile Archived 15 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Oxley, Greg (1 February 2004). "Esteban Volkov: Return to Prinkipo". Marxist.com. Archived from the original on 10 January 2017. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
- ^ a b c d "Leon Trotsky: An Open Letter to the French Workers". Marxists.org. 10 June 1935. Archived from the original on 23 November 2016. Retrieved 8 January 2017.
- ^ Application by Leon Trotsky for permission to reside in England. UK National Archives. 24 June 1929.
- ^ Lubitz, Petra; Lubitz, Wolfgang (August 2004). "Biulleten' oppozitsii". trotskyana.net. Retrieved 29 May 2024.
- ^ Kassow, Samuel (Summer 1977). "Trotsky and the Bulletin of the Opposition". Studies in Comparative Communism. 10 (1 / 2): 184–197. doi:10.1016/S0039-3592(77)80006-9. ISSN 0039-3592. JSTOR 45367174. Retrieved 29 May 2024.
- ^ L. Trotsky (15 November 1931). "What is Fascism".
- ^ Swain 2006, p. 191.
- ^ "Open Letter to the C.E.C. of the U.S.S.R." 1 March 1932.
- ^ "The Stanford Daily, Volume 82, Issue 44, 5 December 1932". Stanforddailyarchive.com.
- ^ "Former Soviet leader Leon Trotsky, in exile visits ruins of ancient Roman sites with other dignitaries in Naples, Italy". Criticalpast.com. 1932.
- ^ "The Stalinists and Trotsky's Radio Speech to America". Marxists.org. 3 December 1932.
- ^ Thurston, Robert W. (1996). Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934–1941. Yale University Press. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-300-06401-8. JSTOR j.ctt32bw0h.
- ^ "Pierre Broué: The "Bloc" of the Oppositions against Stalin (January 1980)". Marxists.org. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
- ^ Geoffrey Swain, Trotsky (Taylor & Francis, 2014) pp.199-202
- ^ Oddvar Høidal, Trotsky in Norway: Exile, 1935–1937
- ^ a b "Leon Trotsky in Norway (1936)". Marxists.org. January 1937. Archived from the original on 23 November 2016. Retrieved 8 January 2017.
- ^ "Leon Trotsky in Norway". Marxists.org. Archived from the original on 15 July 2018. Retrieved 8 March 2018.
- ^ "En sensasjonell rettssak". Archived from the original on 29 September 2013. Retrieved 31 August 2013.
- ^ "The Moscow "Confessions"". Marxists.org. 18 December 1936. Archived from the original on 23 November 2016. Retrieved 6 January 2017.
- ^ Woods, Alan (30 June 2003). "The House in Coyoacán – Reflection on Trotsky's last years". Marxist.com. Archived from the original on 10 January 2017. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
- ^ Herrera, Hayden (1983). A Biography of Frida Kahlo. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0060085896
- ^ a b Patenaude, Bertrand M. (2009) Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0060820688
- ^ Kettenmann, Andrea (2003). Frida Kahlo, 1907-1954: Pain and Passion. Taschen. p. 41. ISBN 9783822859834.
- ^ Daniel Gaido, "Marxist Analyses of Stalinism", Science & Society 75/1 (Jan. 2011): 99–107. www.jstor.org/stable/25769086.
- ^ "James P. Cannon". Spartacus Educational. Archived from the original on 6 November 2018. Retrieved 6 November 2018.
- ^ Chen, Duxiu. "The Unification of the Chinese Opposition" Archived 11 December 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Militant, 15 June 1931.
- ^ André Breton and Leon Trotsky, Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art, 1938, in Free Rein, University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
- ^ Not Guilty; Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials, John Dewey, chairman, New York, London, Harper & brothers, 1938, xv, 422 pp. 2nd edition New York, Monad Press, distributed by Pathfinder Press 1973, c. 1972 xxiii.
- ^ North 2010, p. viii.
- ^ Full text of ~ "I Stake My Life!" Archived 14 November 2010 at the Wayback Machine – Leon Trotsky's telephone address to the N.Y. Hippodrome Meeting for the opening event of the Dewey Commission on the Moscow Trial, delivered on 9 February 1937.
- ^ "Marxists.org". Archived from the original on 21 November 2005. Retrieved 26 October 2005.
- ^ Leon Trotsky. To Build Communist Parties and an International Anew, 15 July 1933.
- ^ Deutscher 2003c, p. 482.
- ^ Patenaude, Bertrand M. (2009) Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary New York: HarperCollins; ISBN 978-0060820688, pp. 171–73.
- ^ a b "Trotsky's Testament" Archived 24 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine (27 February 1940) Retrieved 12 June 2011.
- ^ Pavel Sudoplatov; Anatoli Sudoplatov; Jerrold L. Schecter; Leona P. Schecter (1994). Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness – A Soviet Spymaster. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-77352-2.
- ^ "Trotsky Injured in Attack on Home; Leon Trotsky and Home in Mexico Where He Was Attacked". The New York Times. 25 May 1940. Archived from the original on 23 July 2018. Retrieved 23 July 2018.
- ^ Service 2010, p. 485.
- ^ Trotsky's grandson recalls ice pick killing Archived 11 August 2018 at the Wayback Machine, BBC News, Mike Lanchin, 28 August 2012.
- ^ "Leon Trotsky: Stalin Seeks My Death". Marxists.org. 8 June 1940. Archived from the original on 23 November 2016. Retrieved 4 January 2017.
- ^ Christopher Weaver, "The Assassination of Trotsky" History Today (Oct 1971), pp. 697–707 online.
- ^ Borger, Julian; Tuckman, Jo (13 September 2017). "Bloodstained ice axe used to kill Trotsky emerges after decades in the shadows". The Guardian. London. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 25 May 2022.
- ^ Isaac Don Levine (1960). The Mind of an Assassin. New York: New American Library. ISBN 0-313-20972-3.
{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) - ^ Conquest 1992, p. 418.
- ^ a b Soto-Pérez-de-Celis 2010.
- ^ a b Volkogonov 1996, p. 466.
- ^ Walsh, Lynn, The Assassination of Trotsky Archived 22 June 2004 at the Wayback Machine, Militant International Review, Summer 1980; retrieved 29 July 2007.
- ^ Australian Associated Press, Death of Leon Trotsky Archived 2 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine, The Age 150th Anniversary edition reprint, 23 August 1940; retrieved 22 March 2007.
- ^ "Ramón Mercader, mission of silence". Oncubanews.com. 27 May 2019. Retrieved 29 January 2022.
- ^ Don Levine, Isaac (1960), The Mind of an Assassin, D1854 Signet Book, pp. 109–10, 173.
- ^ North 2010, p. 129.
- ^ Mahoney, Harry Thayer (1998). The saga of Leon Trotsky: his clandestine operations and his assassination. San Francisco: Austin & Winfield. p. 452. ISBN 1572921242.
- ^ Garza, Hedda (1986). Leon Trotsky. Chelsea House. p. 106. ISBN 978-0-87754-444-9.
- ^ a b c d e f Service 2009, pp. 1–10.
- ^ Traugott, Mark (2010). The Insurgent Barricade. University of California Press. p. Chapter 7. ISBN 978-0-520-26632-2.
- ^ Kort, Michael (2010). The Soviet colossus: history and aftermath (7th ed.). Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe. p. 176. ISBN 978-0765623867.
- ^ Volkogonov 1996, p. 185.
- ^ Hough, Jerry F.; Fainsod, Merle (1979). How the Soviet Union is Governed. Harvard University Press. p. 125. ISBN 978-0-674-41030-5.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (1965). The prophet unarmed: Trotsky, 1921–1929. New York, Vintage Books. p. 468. ISBN 978-0-394-70747-1.
- ^ Lunacharsky, Anatoly Vasilievich (1968). Revolutionary Silhouettes. Hill and Wang. p. 61.
- ^ Heijenoort, Jean Van (1978). With Trotsky in Exile: From Prinkipo to Coyoacán. Harvard University Press. p. 47. ISBN 978-0-674-80255-1.
- ^ Volkogonov 1996, p. xxxi.
- ^ Volkogonov, Dmitri (2000). Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. Phoenix. p. 228. ISBN 978-1-84212-026-2.
- ^ Service 2009, pp. 200–201.
- ^ August Nimtz. Krieger, Joel (ed). (2013). The Oxford Companion to Comparative Politics. OUP USA. p. 74. ISBN 978-0-19-973859-5.
- ^ Deutscher 2015a, pp. 886–887.
- ^ "Trotsky...maintained during the period of Hitler's rise to power so persistent and, for the most part, so prescient a commentary on the course of events in Germany as to deserve record".Carr, Edward Hallett (1986). The twilight of Comintern 1930–1935. Macmillan. p. 433. ISBN 978-0-333-40455-3.
- ^ Martin, James (2002). Antonio Gramsci: Marxism, philosophy and politics. Taylor & Francis. p. 398. ISBN 978-0-415-21749-1.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (1954). The prophet armed: Trotsky, 1879–1921. New York, Oxford University Press. p. 522.
- ^ Traverso, Enzo (19 October 2021). Revolution: An Intellectual History. Verso Books. p. 68. ISBN 978-1-83976-333-5.
- ^ Rees, John (1998). "Trotsky and the Dialectic of History". The Algebra of Revolution. Routledge: 263–290. doi:10.4324/9780203983171-12. ISBN 9780203983171.
- ^ Blackledge, Paul (2006). "Leon Trotsky's Contribution to the Marxist Theory of History". Studies in East European Thought. 58 (1): 1–31. doi:10.1007/s11212-005-3677-z. JSTOR 20099925. S2CID 85504744.
- ^ Figes, Orlando (1997). A people's tragedy: a history of the Russian Revolution. New York, NY: Viking. p. 795. ISBN 978-0-670-85916-0.
- ^ Buldakov, Vladimir (1992). Trotsky: October and its perspective in the Trotsky reappraisal. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds). Edinburgh University Press. p. 102. ISBN 978-0-7486-0317-6.
- ^ Mandel 1995, pp. 168–169.
- ^ Renton 2004, p. 6.
- ^ Deutscher 2003a, p. 152.
- ^ Service 2009, p. 327.
- ^ Roberts, Geoffrey (2022). Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books. Yale University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-300-17904-0.
- ^ Black, Robert (1970). Stalinism in Britain. New Park Publications. p. 422. ISBN 978-0-902030-02-2.
- ^ Marriott, Emma (30 September 2011). Bad History: How We Got the Past Wrong. Michael O'Mara Books. pp. 50–100. ISBN 978-1-84317-777-7.
- ^ Stalin, Joseph. "Telegram to V. I. Lenin (1918, on the first anniversary of the Revolution)". www.marxists.org.
- ^ Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul, eds. (1992). The Trotsky reappraisal. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-7486-0317-6.
- ^ Service 2009, p. 200.
- ^ Service 2009, pp. 200–205.
- ^ Volkogonov 1996, p. xxx.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (2003). The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879–1921. Verso. pp. 109, 472. ISBN 978-1-85984-441-0.
- ^ Daniels 1993, pp. 945–946.
- ^ a b Mccauley 2014, p. 59.
- ^ Magill, Frank N. (13 May 2013). The 20th Century O–Z: Dictionary of World Biography. Routledge. p. 3728. ISBN 978-1-136-59369-7.
- ^ Patenaude, Betrand (21 September 2017). "Trotsky and Trotskyism" in The Cambridge History of Communism: Volume 1, World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941. Cambridge University Press. p. 199. ISBN 978-1-108-21041-6.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (2003). The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky 1929–1940. Verso. p. 249. ISBN 978-1-85984-451-9.
- ^ Brackman, Roman (23 November 2004). The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life. Routledge. p. 129. ISBN 978-1-135-75840-0.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (1959). The prophet unarmed: Trotsky, 1921–1929. London; New York: Oxford University Press. p. 76. ISBN 978-0-19-501094-7.
{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) - ^ Dziewanowski, M. K. (2003). Russia in the twentieth century. Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Prentice Hall. p. 157. ISBN 978-0-13-097852-3.
- ^ Brackman, Roman (23 November 2004). The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life. Routledge. p. 135. ISBN 978-1-135-75840-0.
- ^ Bazhanov, Boris; Doyle, David W. (1990). Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin. Ohio University Press. p. 59. ISBN 978-0-8214-0948-0.
- ^ Rogovin, Vadim Zakharovich (2021). Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years. Mehring Books. pp. 440–441. ISBN 978-1-893638-97-6.
- ^ Deutscher 2015a, pp. 1192–1193.
- ^ Rubenstein 2011, p. 126.
- ^ Volkogonov 1996, p. 284.
- ^ Trotsky, Leon (1991). The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and where is it Going?. Mehring Books. pp. 85–98. ISBN 978-0-929087-48-1.
- ^ Rogovin, Vadim Zakharovich (2021). Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years. Mehring Books. p. 381. ISBN 978-1-893638-97-6.
- ^ a b c Daniels, Robert V. (1 October 2008). The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia. Yale University Press. p. 195. ISBN 978-0-300-13493-3.
- ^ Swain 2014b, pp. 1–10; North 2010, pp. 52–90.
- ^ Rockmore, Tom; Levine, Norman (19 December 2018). The Palgrave Handbook of Leninist Political Philosophy. Springer. pp. 231–255. ISBN 978-1-137-51650-3.
- ^ Swain 2014b, pp. 1–10.
- ^ Blanc, Paul Le (15 April 2015). Leon Trotsky. Reaktion Books. pp. 1–30. ISBN 978-1-78023-471-7.
- ^ Medvedev, Roj Aleksandrovič (1989). Let history judge: the origins and consequences of Stalinism (Rev. and expanded ed.). Columbia Univ. Press. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-231-06351-7.
- ^ Lewin 2005, p. 80.
- ^ Kuromiya, Hiroaki (16 August 2013). Stalin. Routledge. p. 60. ISBN 978-1-317-86780-7.
- ^ Lenin, Vladimir Ilʹich (1970). Selected Works in Three Volumes. Progress Publishers. p. 682. ISBN 978-0-7178-0300-2.
- ^ Moss, Walter G. (1 October 2004). A History Of Russia Volume 2: Since 1855. Anthem Press. pp. 237–238. ISBN 978-0-85728-739-7.
- ^ Suny, Ronald (25 August 2020). Red Flag Wounded. Verso Books. p. 59. ISBN 978-1-78873-074-7.
- ^ Edele, Mark (11 June 2020). Debates on Stalinism. Manchester University Press. pp. 137–239. ISBN 978-1-5261-4895-7.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (2003). The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921-1929. Verso. pp. 77–78. ISBN 978-1-85984-446-5.
- ^ Schapiro, Leonard (1967). The Government and Politics of the Soviet Union. Hutchinson. p. 48.
- ^ Getty, J. Arch (27 August 2013). Practicing Stalinism: Bolsheviks, Boyars, and the Persistence of Tradition. Yale University Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-0-300-16929-4.
- ^ Deutscher 2015a, pp. 605.
- ^ Daniels, Robert V. (1 October 2008). The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia. Yale University Press. p. 162. ISBN 978-0-300-13493-3.
- ^ Reiman, Michal (1992). Trotsky and the struggle for "Lenin's heritage". Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds). Edinburgh University Press. pp. 42–52. ISBN 978-0-7486-0317-6.
- ^ Mccauley 2014, p. 52.
- ^ Figes, Orlando (1997). A people's tragedy: a history of the Russian Revolution. New York, NY: Viking. pp. 796–801. ISBN 978-0-670-85916-0.
- ^ Danilov, Victor; Porter, Cathy (1990). "We Are Starting to Learn about Trotsky". History Workshop (29): 136–146. ISSN 0309-2984. JSTOR 4288968.
- ^ Daniels, Robert V. (1 October 2008). The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia. Yale University Press. p. 438. ISBN 978-0-300-13493-3.
- ^ Mccauley 2014, p. 51.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (1959). The prophet unarmed: Trotsky, 1921–1929. London; New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 78–79. ISBN 978-0-19-501094-7.
{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) - ^ Trotsky, Leon (5 April 2012). My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography. Courier Corporation. p. 479. ISBN 978-0-486-12340-0.
- ^ Гатчинский уезд (февраль 1923 г. – август 1927 г.) (in Russian). Система классификаторов исполнительных органов государственной власти Санкт-Петербурга. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 27 February 2014.
- ^ Троцкий район (август 1927 г. – август 1929 г.), Красногвардейский район (август 1929 г. – январь 1944 г.), Гатчинский район (январь 1944 г.) (in Russian). Система классификаторов исполнительных органов государственной власти Санкт-Петербурга. Archived from the original on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 27 February 2014.
- ^ Pérez, David Marcial (17 June 2023). "Muere a los 97 años Esteban Volkov, nieto y guardián de la memoria de León Trotsky" [Esteban Volkov, grandson and guardian of Leon Trotsky's memory, dies at 97]. El País México (in Mexican Spanish). Retrieved 18 June 2023.
- ^ Gerald M. Rosberg, "Leon Trotsky's Personal Papers", The Harvard Crimson, 3 July 1967.
- ^ Leon Trotsky exile papers, MS Russ 13.1 in the Houghton Library.
- ^ В. В. Иофе. Осмысление Гулага. Archived 21 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine НИЦ «Мемориал»
- ^ Volkogonov, Dmitri (18 June 2008). Trotsky: Eternal Revolutionary. Harold Shukman (ed. and trans.). Simon and Schuster. pp. xxi (Preface). ISBN 978-1-4391-0573-3.
- ^ North 2010, pp. 160–161.
- ^ North 2010, pp. 127.
- ^ Kelly, John (14 March 2018). Contemporary Trotskyism: Parties, Sects and Social Movements in Britain. Routledge. p. iii. ISBN 978-1-317-36894-6.
- ^ Høgsbjerg, Christian (18 October 2018). "Trotskyology: A review of John Kelly, Contemporary Trotskyism: Parties, Sects and Social Movements in Britain". International Socialism (160).
- ^ Birchall, Ian H. (2004). Sartre Against Stalinism. Berghahn Books. p. 86. ISBN 978-1-57181-621-4.
- ^ Medvedev, Roy Aleksandrovich (1979). On Stalin and Stalinism. Oxford University Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-0-19-215842-0.
- ^ Luxemburg, Rosa (15 March 2022). The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg Volume IV: Political Writings 2, On Revolution (1906-1909). Verso Books. p. xviii. ISBN 978-1-78873-810-1.
- ^ Saccarelli, Emanuele (28 February 2008). Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism: The Political Theory and Practice of Opposition. Routledge. p. 242. ISBN 978-1-135-89980-6.
- ^ Gregson, John (11 December 2018). Marxism, Ethics and Politics: The Work of Alasdair MacIntyre. Springer. p. 186. ISBN 978-3-030-03371-2.
- ^ Roy, James Charles (31 May 2024). All the World at War: People and Places, 1914–1918. Pen and Sword Military. pp. 1–672. ISBN 978-1-3990-6034-9.
- ^ Wilde, Lawrence (30 April 2016). Erich Fromm and the Quest for Solidarity. Springer. p. 121. ISBN 978-1-137-07511-6.
- ^ Saccarelli, Emanuele (28 February 2008). Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism: The Political Theory and Practice of Opposition. Routledge. p. 114. ISBN 978-1-135-89980-6.
- ^ Wald, Alan M. (10 October 2017). The New York Intellectuals, Thirtieth Anniversary Edition: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s. UNC Press Books. p. 157. ISBN 978-1-4696-3595-8.
- ^ Feferman, Anita Burdman (28 January 2022). From Trotsky to Gödel: The Life of Jean van Heijenoort. CRC Press. p. 123. ISBN 978-1-000-11079-1.
- ^ Hoidal, Oddvar (1 October 2013). Trotsky in Norway: Exile, 1935–1937. Cornell University Press. p. 298. ISBN 978-1-5017-5806-5.
- ^ Benton, Gregor (24 January 2020). "Lu Xun and Leon Trotsky". www.historicalmaterialism.org.
- ^ Blanc, Paul Le (15 April 2015). Leon Trotsky. Reaktion Books. pp. 1–30. ISBN 978-1-78023-471-7.
- ^ Daniels, Robert V. (1 October 2008). The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia. Yale University Press. p. 181. ISBN 978-0-300-13493-3.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (5 January 2015). The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky. Verso Books. p. 1283. ISBN 978-1-78168-721-5.
- ^ Volkogonov 1996, p. 272; Rubenstein 2011a, p. 96; Thatcher 2003, pp. 100–105; Carr 1978, pp. 1–167; Deutscher 2015a, pp. 310, 629; Patenaude 2010b, pp. 2.
- ^ a b Thatcher, Ian D. (27 June 2005). Trotsky. Routledge. pp. 1–30. ISBN 978-1-134-57214-4.
- ^ Patenaude, Betrand (21 September 2017). "Trotsky and Trotskyism" in The Cambridge History of Communism: Volume 1, World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941. Cambridge University Press. p. 208. ISBN 978-1-108-21041-6.
- ^ Marples, David R. (14 January 2014). Russia in the Twentieth Century: The quest for stability. Routledge. p. 114. ISBN 978-1-317-86228-4.
- ^ Selbin, Eric (7 February 2018). Modern Latin American Revolutions. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-97459-5.
- ^ Martel, William C. (12 January 2015). Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice: The Need for an Effective American Foreign Policy. Cambridge University Press. p. 133. ISBN 978-1-107-08206-9.
- ^ Patenaude, Betrand (21 September 2017). "Trotsky and Trotskyism" in The Cambridge History of Communism: Volume 1, World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941. Cambridge University Press. p. 197. ISBN 978-1-108-21041-6.
- ^ Swain, Geoffrey (22 May 2014). Trotsky. Routledge. p. 3. ISBN 978-1-317-86876-7.
- ^ Daniels 2008b, pp. 189–198; Barnett 2013b, p. 101; Rogovin 2021b, pp. 1–15, 497; Day 1990, pp. 159–188; Deutscher 2015a, pp. 674–676, 1558.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (6 January 2015). The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky. Verso Books. pp. 141, 674–676. ISBN 978-1-78168-560-0.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (5 January 2015). The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky. Verso Books. p. 293. ISBN 978-1-78168-721-5.
- ^ Rogovin, Vadim Zakharovich (2021). Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years. Mehring Books. pp. 1–15. ISBN 978-1-893638-97-6.
- ^ Daniels, Robert V. (1 October 2008). The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia. Yale University Press. p. 189. ISBN 978-0-300-13493-3.
- ^ Volkogonov 1996, p. xxiii.
- ^ Service 2009, pp. 3.
- ^ Thatcher, Ian D. (27 June 2005). Trotsky. Routledge. p. 102. ISBN 978-1-134-57214-4.
- ^ Dukes, Paul (1992). "Introductory essay" in The Trotsky Reappraisal. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds). Edinburgh University Press. pp. 1–20. ISBN 978-0-7486-0317-6.
- ^ Broue., Pierre (1992). Trotsky: a biographer's problems in The Trotsky reappraisal. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds). Edinburgh University Press. pp. 19, 20. ISBN 978-0-7486-0317-6.
- ^ Patenaude, Bertrand M. (2011). "Review of Trotsky: A Biography; In Defense of Leon Trotsky". The American Historical Review. 116 (3): 900–902. doi:10.1086/ahr.116.3.900. ISSN 0002-8762. JSTOR 23308381.
- ^ Carr & Davies 1971, p. 199; Phillips 2000, p. 23; Fitzpatrick 2008, p. 110; Payne & Phillips 2013, p. 1936; McDermott 2006, p. 61; Lee 2005, p. 8; Deutscher 2003b, p. 468.
- ^ Rogovin, Vadim Zakharovich (2021). Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years. Mehring Books. p. 358. ISBN 978-1-893638-97-6.
- ^ Engerman, David C. (15 January 2004). Modernization from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Development. Harvard University Press. p. 153. ISBN 978-0-674-27241-5.
- ^ a b Twiss, Thomas M. (8 May 2014). Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy. BRILL. pp. 1–15. ISBN 978-90-04-26953-8.
- ^ "Beer also read Trotsky and found inspiration in Trotsky's critique of the Soviet bureaucracy".Medina, Eden (10 January 2014). Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile. MIT Press. p. 292. ISBN 978-0-262-52596-1.
- ^ Wolfe, Bertram D. (1961). "Leon Trotsky as Historian". Slavic Review. 20 (3): 495–502. doi:10.2307/3000510. JSTOR 3000510.
- ^ White, James D. (3 July 2021). "Leon Trotsky and Soviet Historiography of the Russian Revolution (1918–1931)". Revolutionary Russia. 34 (2): 276–295. doi:10.1080/09546545.2021.1983938.
- ^ Leon Trotsky (July 1933). "To Build Communist Parties and an International Anew". Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ Cox 1992, p. 84.
- ^ Trotsky, Leon (25 March 2019). In Defence of Marxism. Wellred Publications. p. 138. ISBN 978-1-913026-03-5.
- ^ Mandel, Ernest (5 May 2020). Trotsky as Alternative. Verso Books. pp. 32–66. ISBN 978-1-78960-701-7.
- ^ "Leon Trotsky: Platform of the Joint Opposition (1927)". www.marxists.org.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (5 January 2015). The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky. Verso Books. p. 1348. ISBN 978-1-78168-721-5.
- ^ Trotsky, Leon (1991). The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and where is it Going?. Mehring Books. p. 218. ISBN 978-0-929087-48-1.
- ^ Wiles, Peter (14 June 2023). The Soviet Economy on the Brink of Reform: Essays in Honor of Alec Nove. Taylor & Francis. p. 31. ISBN 978-1-000-88190-5.
- ^ Ree 1998.
- ^ a b Twiss, Thomas M. (8 May 2014). Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy. BRILL. pp. 88–113. ISBN 978-90-04-26953-8.
- ^ Deutscher 2015a, pp. 587.
- ^ Twiss, Thomas M. (8 May 2014). Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy. BRILL. pp. 105–106. ISBN 978-90-04-26953-8.
- ^ Deutscher 2015a, pp. 507–508, 585.
- ^ Rubenstein 2011, p. 161.
- ^ Day, Richard B. (1973). Leon Trotsky and the Politics of Economic Isolation. Cambridge University Press. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-521-52436-0.
- ^ Deutscher 2015a, pp. 646.
- ^ Deutscher 2015a, pp. 592.
- ^ "Trotsky: The Single Economic Plan (1923)". www.marxists.org.
- ^ Nove, Alec (12 November 2012). Socialism, Economics and Development (Routledge Revivals). Routledge. pp. 89–90. ISBN 978-1-136-58266-0.
- ^ Gueullette, Agota (1992). Trotsky and foreign economic relations. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds). Edinburgh University Press. p. 212. ISBN 978-0-7486-0317-6.
- ^ Mandel 1995, p. 62.
- ^ "Documents of the 1923 opposition". www.marxists.org.
- ^ Trotsky, Leon (1972). Writings of Leon Trotsky. [Edited by George Breitman and Evelyn Reed]: 1932-33. Pathfinder Press. p. 96.
- ^ Woods, Alan; Grant, Ted (1976). Lenin and Trotsky: What They Really Stood For. Wellred Books. pp. 147–148.
- ^ Fitzpatrick, Sheila (22 April 2010). "The Old Man". London Review of Books. 32 (8). ISSN 0260-9592.
- ^ Mandel 1995, p. 59.
- ^ "The mass uprising in Tunisia and the perspective of permanent revolution". World Socialist Web Site. International Committee of the Fourth International. 17 January 2011. Archived from the original on 29 May 2013. Retrieved 3 June 2013.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (5 January 2015). The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky. Verso Books. pp. 472–473. ISBN 978-1-78168-721-5.
- ^ Patenaude, Betrand (21 September 2017). "Trotsky and Trotskyism" in The Cambridge History of Communism: Volume 1, World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941. Cambridge University Press. p. 203. ISBN 978-1-108-21041-6.
- ^ Ticktin, Hillel (1992). Trotsky's political economy of capitalism. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds). Edinburgh University Press. p. 227. ISBN 978-0-7486-0317-6.
- ^ Wistrich, Robert S. (1976). "Leon Trotsky's Theory of Fascism". Journal of Contemporary History. 11 (4): 157–184. doi:10.1177/002200947601100409. ISSN 0022-0094. JSTOR 260195. S2CID 140420352.
- ^ Joseph Choonara, "The United Front" Archived 7 January 2008 at the Wayback Machine, International Socialism, 117.
- ^ Peck, Jamie; Varadarajan, Latha (6 March 2017). "Uneven Regional Development". International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: 1–13. doi:10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0721. ISBN 9780470659632.
- ^ Cultures of Uneven and Combined Development: From International Relations to World Literature. BRILL. 8 July 2019. pp. 1–20. ISBN 978-90-04-38473-6.
- ^ "Talk of uneven development becomes dominant in Trotskii's writings from 1927 onwards. From this date, whenever the law is mentioned, the claim consistently made for it is that 'the entire history of mankind is governed by the law of uneven development'." – Ian D. Thatcher, "Uneven and combined development", Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 4 No. 2, 1991, p. 237.
- ^ Saccarelli, Emanuele; Varadarajan, Latha (7 June 2023). "Leon Trotsky and the political conundrum of international relations". Global Social Challenges Journal. -1 (aop): 105–126. doi:10.1332/CBXB8720.
- ^ Trotsky, Leon (2005). Literature and Revolution. Haymarket Books. p. 204. ISBN 978-1-931859-16-5.
- ^ Bird, Robert (1 September 2018). "Culture as permanent revolution: Lev Trotsky's Literature and Revolution". Studies in East European Thought. 70 (2): 181–193. doi:10.1007/s11212-018-9304-6. ISSN 1573-0948. S2CID 207809829.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (5 January 2015). The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky. Verso Books. pp. 729–730. ISBN 978-1-78168-721-5.
- ^ Deutscher 2015a, pp. 1474.
- ^ Patenaude, Betrand (21 September 2017). "Trotsky and Trotskyism" in The Cambridge History of Communism: Volume 1, World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941. Cambridge University Press. p. 204. ISBN 978-1-108-21041-6.
- ^ Eagleton, Terry (7 March 2013). Marxism and Literary Criticism. Routledge. p. 20. ISBN 978-1-134-94783-6.
- ^ a b Knei-Paz, Baruch (1978). The social and political thought of Leon Trotsky. Oxford [Eng.]: Clarendon Press. pp. 289–301. ISBN 978-0-19-827233-5.
- ^ "The Trotsky". Toronto International Film Festival. Retrieved 30 December 2022.
- ^ Corney, Frederick (24 November 2015). Trotsky's Challenge: The 'Literary Discussion' of 1924 and the Fight for the Bolshevik Revolution. BRILL. p. 82. ISBN 978-90-04-30666-0.
- ^ Shaffer, Brian W. (15 April 2008). A Companion to the British and Irish Novel, 1945 – 2000. John Wiley & Sons. p. 247. ISBN 978-1-4051-5616-5.
- ^ Gardner, Colin (11 January 2019). Joseph Losey. Manchester University Press. p. 265. ISBN 978-1-5261-4156-9.
- ^ Flanagan, Kevin M. (25 October 2019). War Representation in British Cinema and Television: From Suez to Thatcher, and Beyond. Springer Nature. p. 51. ISBN 978-3-030-30203-0.
- ^ "Trotsky coming soon to Netflix: Russian revolutionary series to go on online streaming". TASS. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
- ^ "The Stranglers – No More Heroes". Genius. Retrieved 4 May 2023.
Works by Trotsky
[edit]- Trotsky, Leon (1971). 1905. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0394471778.
Bibliography
[edit]- Ackerman, Kenneth D. (2017). Trotsky in New York, 1917: A Radical on the Eve of Revolution. Counterpoint. ISBN 978-1-64009-003-3.
- Avrich, Paul (1970). Kronstadt, 1921. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-08721-0. OCLC 67322.
- Barnett, Vincent (2013b). A History of Russian Economic Thought. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-26191-8.
- Beilharz, Peter (1987). Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism. Barnes & Noble. ISBN 978-0-389-20698-9.
- Blackledge, Paul (2006). "Leon Trotsky's Contribution to the Marxist Theory of History". Studies in East European Thought. 58 (1): 1–31. doi:10.1007/s11212-005-3677-z. S2CID 85504744.
- Bullock, Alan (1991b). Hitler and Stalin: parallel lives. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-215494-9.
- Carr, Edward Hallett; Davies, Robert William (1971). Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926–1929. Macmillan. p. 199.
- Carr, Edward Hallett (1978). Socialism in One Country: 1924-1926. Vol. 1. Macmillan Press. ISBN 978-0-333-24216-2.
- Cliff, Tony (1989). Trotsky: Towards October 1879–1917. London: Bookmarks.
- Cliff, Tony (1990). Trotsky: The Sword of the Revolution 1917–1923. London: Bookmarks.
- Cliff, Tony (1991). Trotsky: Fighting the rising Stalinist bureaucracy 1923–1927. London: Bookmarks.
- Cliff, Tony (1993). Trotsky: The darker the night the brighter the star 1927–1940. London: Bookmarks.
- Conquest, Robert (1992). The Great Terror: A Reassessment. Oxford University Pgress. ISBN 0-19-507132-8.
- Cox, Michael (1992). "Trotsky and His Interpreters; or, Will the Real Leon Trotsky Please Stand up?". Russian Review. 51 (1): 84–102. doi:10.2307/131248. JSTOR 131248.
- D'Agostino, Anthony (2011). The Russian Revolution, 1917-1945. ABC-CLIO. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-313-38622-0.
- Daniels, Robert (1993). The New Encyclopædia Britannica: Micropædia. Encyclopædia Britannica. p. 946. ISBN 978-0-85229-571-7.
- Daniels, Robert V. (2008b). The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-13493-3.
- Daniels, Robert V (1991). Trotsky, Stalin & Socialism. Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-1223-X.
- Day, Richard B. (1990). "The Blackmail of the Single Alternative: Bukharin, Trotsky and Perestrojka". Studies in Soviet Thought. 40 (1/3): 159–188. doi:10.1007/BF00818977. ISSN 0039-3797. JSTOR 20100543.
- Deutscher, Isaac (2003a) [1954]. Trotsky: The Prophet Armed. Verso Books. ISBN 978-1-85984-441-0.
- Deutscher, Isaac (2003b) [1959]. Trotsky: The Prophet Unarmed. Verso Books. ISBN 978-1-85984-446-5.
- Deutscher, Isaac (2003c) [1963]. Trotsky: The Prophet Outcast. Verso Books. ISBN 978-1-85984-451-9.
- Deutscher, Isaac (2015a). The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky. Verso Books. ISBN 978-1-78168-560-0.
- Deutscher, Isaac (1966). Ironies of History: Essays on contemporary communism. ASIN B0000CN8J6. [ISBN missing]
- Douds, Lara (2019b). Inside Lenin's Government: Ideology, Power and Practice in the Early Soviet State. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1-350-12649-7.
- Dunn, Bill; Radice, Hugo (2006). Permanent Revolution – Results and Prospects 100 Years On. London: Pluto Press. ISBN 978-0-7453-2522-4.
- Feofanov, Yuri; Barry, Donald (1995). Arbitrary Justice: Courts and Politics in Post-Stalin Russia (PDF) (Report). Washington, D. C.: National Council for Soviet and East European Research and Lehigh University. Retrieved 19 July 2007.
- Figes, Orlando (26 January 2017). A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution – centenary edition with new introduction. Random House. pp. 796–797. ISBN 978-1-4481-1264-7.
- Fitzpatrick, Sheila (2008). The Russian Revolution. Oxford University Press US. ISBN 978-0-19-923767-8.
- Getty, J. Arch (2013b). Practicing Stalinism: Bolsheviks, Boyars, and the Persistence of Tradition. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-16929-4.
- Gilbert, Helen (2003). Leon Trotsky: His Life and Ideas. Red Letter Press. ISBN 0-932323-17-0.
- Hallas, Duncan (1979). Trotsky's Marxism. London: Pluto Press.
- Hansen, Joseph (1969). Leon Trotsky: the Man and His Work. Reminiscences and Appraisals. New York: Merit Publishers.
- Heijenoort, Jean van (2013). With Trotsky in Exile: From Prinkipo to Coyoacan. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-43668-8.
- Howe, Irving (1964). The Basic Writings of Trotsky. ASIN B0018ES7TI. [ISBN missing]
- Kosheleva, L (1995b). Stalin's Letters to Molotov: 1925–1936. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-06211-3.
- Kivelson, Valerie Ann; Neuberger, Joan (2008). Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11961-9.
- Knei-Paz, Baruch (1979). The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-827234-2.
- Patenaude, Bertrand (2010b). Stalin's Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky. Faber & Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-25834-5.
- Kort, Michael G. (18 May 2015). The Soviet Colossus: History and Aftermath. M.E. Sharpe. p. 166. ISBN 978-0-7656-2845-9.
- Laqueur, Walter (1990). Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations. Scribner's. ISBN 978-0-684-19203-1.
- Le Blanc, Paul (2015). Leon Trotsky. London: Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-1-78023-430-4.
- Lee, Stephen J. (20 June 2005). Stalin and the Soviet Union. Routledge. p. 8. ISBN 978-1-134-66574-7.
- Levine, Isaac Don (1960). The Mind of an Assassin. New York: New American Library/Signet Book.
- Lewin, Moshe (4 May 2005). Lenin's Last Struggle. University of Michigan Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-472-03052-1.
- Mandel, Ernest (1980). La pensée politique de Leon Trotsky (in French). La Découverte. ISBN 978-2707139788.
- Mandel, Ernest (1995). Trotsky as alternative. London: Verso. ISBN 978-1859840856.
- Mccauley, Martin (4 February 2014). The Soviet Union 1917-1991. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-90178-5.
- McDermott, Kevin (23 January 2006). Stalin: Revolutionary in an Era of War. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-230-20478-2.
- McNeal, Robert H. (2015). "Trotsky's Interpretation of Stalin". Canadian Slavonic Papers. 5: 87–97. doi:10.1080/00085006.1961.11417867.
- Medvedev, Roy (1976). Let History Judge. Nottingham: Spokesman Books. ISBN 978-0-85124-150-0.
- Molyneux, John (1981). Leon Trotsky's Theory of Revolution. Brighton: Harvester Press. ISBN 978-0-312-47994-7.
- North, David (2010). In Defense of Leon Trotsky. Mehring Books. ISBN 978-1-893638-05-1.
- Parrish, Michael (1996). The Lesser Terror: Soviet State Security, 1939–53. Praeger. ISBN 978-0-275-95113-9.
- Patenaude, Bertrand M. (2010). Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary. New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0-06-082069-5.
- Payne, Anthony; Phillips, Nicola (23 April 2013). Development. John Wiley & Sons. p. 1936. ISBN 978-0-7456-5735-6.
- Phillips, Steve (2000). Stalinist Russia. Heinemann. p. 23. ISBN 978-0-435-32720-0.
- Brouè, Pierre (1988). Fayard (ed.). Trotsky (in French). Paris.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Pipes, Richard (1996). The Unknown Lenin. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-06919-7.
- Pipes, Richard (1993). Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. A.A. Knopf. p. 469. ISBN 978-0-394-50242-7.
- Ree, Erik Van (1998). "Socialism in One Country: A Reassessment" (PDF). Studies in East European Thought. 50 (2): 77–117. doi:10.1023/A:1008651325136. JSTOR 20099669. S2CID 189785735.
- Rees, E.; Rosa, Cristina F. (1992b). The Soviet Communist Party in Disarray: The XXVIII Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Springer. ISBN 978-0-230-38920-5.
- Renton, David (2004). Trotsky. Haus. ISBN 978-1-904341-62-8.
- Rogovin, Vadim Z (1998). 1937 Stalin's Year of Terror. Oak Park, MI: Mehring Books Inc. ISBN 0-929087-77-1.
- Rogovin, Vadim Zakharovich (2021b). Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years. Mehring Books. ISBN 978-1-893638-97-6.
- Rubenstein, Joshua (2011a). Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary's Life. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-17841-8. OCLC 758390021.
- Rubenstein, Joshua (2013). Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary's Life. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-19832-4.
- Schapiro, Leonard (1970) [1960]. Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Methuen. ISBN 978-0-416-18380-1.
- Service, Robert (2005). Stalin: A Biography. Cambridge: Belknap Press. ISBN 0-674-01697-1.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link) - Service, Robert (2010). Trotsky: A Biography. Macmillan Publishers. ISBN 978-0-330-43969-5.
- Service, Robert (2009). Trotsky: a biography. London: Pan. ISBN 978-0330439695.
- Soto-Pérez-de-Celis, Enrique (1 August 2010). "The Death of Leon Trotsky". Neurosurgery. 67 (2): 417–423. doi:10.1227/01.NEU.0000371968.27560.6C. PMID 20644428.
- Serge, Victor (2016). Life and Death of Leon Trotsky. Haymarket Books. ISBN 978-1-60846-469-2.
- Swain, Geoffrey (2006). Trotsky. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-582-77190-1.
- Swain, Geoffrey (2014a). Trotsky and the Russian Revolution. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-73667-1.
- Swain, Geoffrey (22 May 2014b). Trotsky. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-86875-0.
- Thatcher, Ian D. (2003). Trotsky. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-23251-1.
- Tucker, Robert C. (Robert Charles) (1973). Stalin as revolutionary, 1879-1929: a study in history and personality. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. p. 336. ISBN 978-0-393-05487-3.
- Volkogonov, Dmitri (1996). Trotsky, the Eternal Revolutionary. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-729166-3.
- Warth, Robert D. (1978). Leon Trotsky. Twayne Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8057-7720-8.
- Wade, Rex A. (2004). Revolutionary Russia: New Approaches. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-30748-2.
- Wieczynski, Joseph L. (1976). The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History. Vol. 39. Academic International Press.
- Wistrich, Robert S. (1982). Trotsky: Fate of a Revolutionary. New York: Stein & Day. ISBN 0-8128-2774-0.
- Wolfe, Bertram D (2001). Three Who Made a Revolution: A Biographical History of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-8154-1177-2.
External links
[edit]
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Data from Wikidata
- Trotsky speaks about the Moscow Trials on YouTube
- Trotsky in Havana by Dimitri Prieto from Havana Times
- FBI records relating to Trotsky's murder
- The Contradiction of Trotsky by Claude Lefort
- Uncommon Knowledge. Interview with Christopher Hitchens and Robert Service about Leon Trotsky
- Newspaper clippings about Leon Trotsky in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
- "How We Made the October Revolution" by Leon Trotsky. The New York Times, 1919.
Works
[edit]- Leon Trotsky at the Marxists Internet Archive.
- Works by Leon Trotsky at Project Gutenberg
- Works by Leon Trotsky at Faded Page (Canada)
- Works by or about Leon Trotsky at the Internet Archive
- Works by Leon Trotsky at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
- Leon Trotsky
- 1879 births
- 1940 deaths
- People murdered in 1940
- 20th-century atheists
- 20th-century Russian historians
- 20th-century Russian writers
- Anti-Stalinist left
- Assassinated revolutionaries
- Assassinated Russian activists
- Assassinated Russian politicians
- Axe murder
- Chairpersons of the Executive Committee of Lensovet
- Comintern people
- Deaths from bleeding
- Denaturalized citizens of the Soviet Union
- Expelled members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
- Historians of communism
- Jewish anti-fascists
- Jewish atheists
- Jewish communists
- Jewish Russian politicians
- Jewish Soviet politicians
- Jews executed by the Soviet Union
- Left Opposition
- Marxist theorists
- Members of the Bureau of the 7th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Central Committee of the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Central Committee of the 11th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Central Committee of the 12th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Central Committee of the 13th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Central Committee of the 14th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Central Committee of the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
- Members of the Central Committee of the 6th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Central Committee of the 7th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Central Committee of the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Central Committee of the 9th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Orgburo of the 12th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Orgburo of the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Politburo of the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Politburo of the 11th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Politburo of the 12th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Politburo of the 13th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Politburo of the 14th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Politburo of the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Members of the Politburo of the 9th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- Mensheviks
- Mezhraiontsy
- Ministers of defence of the Soviet Union
- Ministers of foreign affairs of Russia
- Odesa Jews
- Old Bolsheviks
- Orthodox Marxists
- People excommunicated by synagogues
- People from Kirovohrad Oblast
- People from Yelisavetgradsky Uyezd
- People killed in NKVD operations
- People murdered in Mexico
- People of the Polish–Soviet War
- People of the Russian Civil War
- People of the Russian Revolution of 1905
- People of the Russian Revolution
- People sentenced to death in absentia by the Soviet Union
- People's commissars and ministers of the Soviet Union
- Perpetrators of the Red Terror (Russia)
- Politicians assassinated in the 1940s
- Prisoners of the Peter and Paul Fortress
- Refugees in Mexico
- Russian anti–World War I activists
- Russian Ashkenazi Jews
- Russian atheists
- Russian communist writers
- Russian communists
- Russian Constituent Assembly members
- Russian exiles
- Russian expatriates in Mexico
- Russian expatriates in Norway
- Russian Marxist writers
- Russian people murdered abroad
- Russian people of Jewish descent
- Russian revolutionaries
- Russian Social Democratic Labour Party members
- Soviet democracy activists
- Soviet emigrants to France
- Soviet emigrants to Mexico
- Soviet expellees
- Soviet Marxist writers
- Soviet people of Jewish descent
- Soviet Trotskyists
- Treaty of Brest-Litovsk negotiators
- Trotskyism
- War correspondents of the Balkan Wars