The publication of Trotsky's autobiography My Life as reported in the Soviet Union, with the editors of Projector titled the publication: "On the service of bourgeoisie".
Leon Trotsky lays dying in the hospital in after the exiled Russian Bolshevik leader was savagely attacked and fatally wounded at his home in Mexico by a man named Frank Jackson who Trotsky had invited in for tea.
(The only Bolshevik leader to write his memoirs, Leon Trot...)
The only Bolshevik leader to write his memoirs, Leon Trotsky published this remarkable book in 1930, the first year of a perilous, decade-long exile that ended with his assassination in Mexico. Expelled from the Communist party and deported from the Soviet Union, the former People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs recalled his lifelong struggle in the world of revolutionary politics.
(During the first two months of 1917 Russia was still a Ro...)
During the first two months of 1917 Russia was still a Romanov monarchy. Eight months later the Bolsheviks stood at the helm. They were little known to anybody when the year began, and their leaders were still under indictment for state treason when they came to power. You will not find another such sharp turn in history especially if you remember that it involves a nation of 150 million people. It is clear that the events of 1917, whatever you think of them, deserve study.
(It explores the fate of the Russian Revolution after Leni...)
It explores the fate of the Russian Revolution after Lenin's death. Written in 1936 and published the following year, this brilliant and profound evaluation of Stalinism from the Marxist standpoint prophesied the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent related events.
(This book is probably the most imoprtant that Trotsky eve...)
This book is probably the most imoprtant that Trotsky ever wrote. It is an anlysis of why the Russian Revolution failed and a passionate counter-blast to Stalin and what Trotsky sees as the betrayal of revolutionary ideals. More importantly, perhaps, it is also a blue-print for the future - the permanent revolution - which is as relevant today as it was when it was first written.
(Writing in the heat of struggle against the rise of fasci...)
Writing in the heat of struggle against the rise of fascism in Germany, France, and Spain in the 1930s, communist leader Leon Trotsky examines the class origins and character of fascist movements. Building on foundations laid by the Communist International in Lenin's time, Trotsky advances a working-class strategy to combat and defeat this malignant danger.
(The propertied classes have always laid the charge of "te...)
The propertied classes have always laid the charge of "terrorism" on those leading the struggle against exploitation and oppression. But it has been the terror of the capitalist rulers against which an outraged majority eventually rises. Trotsky explains why the working class is the only social force capable of leading the toiling majority in overthrowing the capitalist exploiters and beginning the construction of a new society and why individual terrorism.
Leon Trotsky was a Soviet communist theorist and agitator, a leader in Russian October Revolution in 1917, and later commissar of foreign affairs and of war in the Soviet Union. In the struggle for power following Vladimir Lenin’s death, however, Joseph Stalin emerged as victor, while Trotsky was removed from all positions of power and later exiled.
Background
Leon Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein on 7 November 1879, in Yanovka village, Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Bereslavka, Ukraine). He was the fifth child of a Ukrainian Jewish family, of wealthy farmers. His parents were David Leontyevich Bronstein and his wife Anna Lvovna (née Zhivotovskaya). Trotsky's father was born in Poltava, and later moved to Yanovka as it had a large Jewish community. The language spoken at home was a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian (known as Surzhyk).
Education
At the age of 7 Leon was sent to a Jewish private religious school in the nearby town of Gromokla. Since he knew no Yiddish, his stay was brief and unhappy but nonetheless valuable, for he learned to read and write Russian.
His cousin, Moisey Filippovich Shpenster, played the role of tutor to Lyova (Lev's nickname) and when it came time for him to return to Odessa, Lyova returned with him. In Odessa, Lyova attended a preparatory class for an entire year. At St. Paul's Realschule he quickly overcame his early deficiencies and rose to the head of his class. Seven years in Odessa expanded the already existing differences between father and son. For some reason David Bronstein decided to have his son finish his last academic year in the nearby seaport of Nikolaev instead of in Odessa. After that, Leon briefly attended the University of Odessa.
Trotsky was involved in revolutionary activities in 1896, acquainted with the circle through Franz Shvigovsky. As news of strikes began to grow, Leon found himself becoming more and more inclined toward Marxism. After an extended period of interrogation, he was exiled to Siberia for 4 years by administrative verdict. While awaiting deportation, he first heard of V. I. Lenin and his book The Development of Capitalism in Russia.
During his stay in Verkholensk, Bronstein began forming his ideas on national coordination and on centralized party leadership. Urged on by his wife, he escaped after 4½ years of prison and exile. The name on Bronstein's false passport was Trotsky, a name that remained with him. He joined Lenin in London in October and began writing for Iskra. Trotsky shared his quarters with V. I. Zasulich and J. Martov and drew closer to these two than to Lenin. Only Georgi Plekhanov showed any dislike for Trotsky. The split among the Iskra editors was already taking shape, and Trotsky became the special focus of Plekhanov's scorn.
In July 1903 at Brussels the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party produced, instead of one party, two. Trotsky emerged as Lenin's most implacable opponent on the question of the organization of the party. Despite his early writings favoring a high degree of centralization, Trotsky sided with Martov and the Mensheviks in favoring a broader-based party. Plekhanov had sided with Lenin, but their relationship was a fragile one. When Plekhanov invited the Iskra board to return, Lenin broke with the editorial staff completely. Trotsky returned, but Plekhanov's dislike of him only grew. Thus began Trotsky's estrangement from the Menshevik wing of the party. No rapprochement, however, with Lenin was forthcoming. Suspended between both factions, Trotsky came under the influence of A. L. Helfand, whose pen name was Parvus.
Under the influence of A. L. Helfand Trotsky adopted a theory of "permanent revolution" that called for a telescoping of the bourgeois revolution into a socialist one that would carry far beyond Russia's borders. The first news of "Bloody Sunday," the outbreak of the 1905 Revolution, found Trotsky in Geneva. After a brief respite at Parvus's home, Trotsky went to Kiev in February. With the end of those hectic days at the beginning of the year, revolutionary turmoil abated, and Trotsky, under the assumed name of Peter Petrovich, moved in and out of the clandestine circles of St. Petersburg.
In the middle of October 1905 a general strike broke out in St. Petersburg, and Trotsky hurriedly returned to the capital from Finland. On the first day of his return he appeared at the Soviet, which had assembled at the Technological Institute. He was elected to the Executive Committee of the Soviet of St. Petersburg as the chief representative of the Menshevik wing and played the dominant role in the brief life of this new type of institution. For his part in the Revolution of 1905 Trotsky was exiled to Siberia in 1907 for life with the loss of all his civil rights. On the trip to Siberia, he decided to escape. His second exile lasted 10 years, until the February Revolution of 1917.
At the London Congress in April 1907, Trotsky maintained his position of aloofness and implored both sides to coalesce in the name of unity. For the next 7 years he lived with his second wife in Vienna, where he made the acquaintance of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Kautsky, Rudolph Hilferding, Eduard Bernstein, Otto Bauer, Max Adler, and Karl Renner. It did not take long for Trotsky to become aware of the differences between "his" Marxism and theirs. He became the editor of a Viennese paper called Pravda. In August 1912 he organized in Vienna a conference of all Social Democrats, hoping that this would lead to a reconciliation, but Lenin's refusal to attend was a severe disappointment. An August bloc consisting of Mensheviks, Bolshevik dissenters, the Jewish Bund, and Trotsky's followers was formed.
With the outbreak of World War I Trotsky left Vienna for Zurich in order to avoid internment. The question of the war and the Zimmerwald Conference seemed to draw Lenin and Trotsky closer together, and, conversely, Trotsky and the August bloc seemed to become less and less amicable. Parvus's stand on the war also conflicted with Trotsky's internationalism, and their friendship was ended on Trotsky's initiative. In September 1916 Trotsky was deported from France, where he had resided during the previous 2 years.
With his family, Trotsky attempted to return to Russia, but he was removed from his ship at Halifax by British authorities, who forced him to remain in Canada for an entire month. Not until May 4 did he finally arrive in Petrograd. Trotsky assumed the leadership of the Interborough Organization, a temporary body composed of many prominent personalities opposed to the "war, Prince Lvov, and the social patriots." At the Bolshevik party's Sixth Congress in July-August, Trotsky led the entire group into Lenin's fold even though at this time he was in prison as the result of the abortive July coup.
With the growth of Bolshevik strength in Soviet representation, the Petrograd Soviet elected Trotsky as its chairman on September 23. He had also been raised to Central Committee status during his prison term. Trotsky and Lenin prodded the Bolsheviks on to revolution over the objections of such men as Lev Kamenev, Trotsky's brother-in-law, and Grigori Zinoviev, and Trotsky alone forged the "machinery of insurrection."
In the Soviet government founded by Lenin after the coup, Trotsky was given the position of people's commissar for foreign affairs. He also led the Soviet delegation at the Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference. Profound disagreement had existed between Lenin and Trotsky on the question of Brest-Litovsk, but Lenin convinced Trotsky once again to approach the Germans for terms. But again Lenin persuaded Trotsky to side with the peace faction. Trotsky cast the deciding vote in favor of signing the highly unfavorable Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
Although Trotsky had resigned as commissar of foreign affairs he was immediately appointed to the post of commissar for war. In that capacity he rebuilt the Red Army and directed the campaigns on four fronts during the civil war. Despite wholesale opposition throughout the Bolshevik party, he persisted in the use of former czarist officers, buttressed by a system of political commissars and terror. From a force of fewer than 10, 000 reliable armed soldiers in October 1917, he had built an army numbering more than 5 million 2½ years later. He alone proved capable of imposing centralization upon a highly fragmented force.
Toward the end of the civil war in 1920, Trotsky proposed that the machinery for military mobilization be employed for the organization of civilian labor. Civilian labor was to be subjected to military discipline, and the army was to be reorganized on the basis of productive units. Lenin wholeheartedly supported Trotsky's suggestions. Trotsky's strong-arm methods in shaping the army and in forcing industrial production created a large number of bitter enemies who were soon to be heard from.
On August 20, 1940, Trotsky was mortally wounded in Mexico City by an ice ax wielded by Ramon Mercador, a Soviet assassin.
From Lenin's death in 1924 until Trotsky's exile in 1928, Trotsky fought a long, hard, and losing battle against Stalin, who cultivated the many enemies that Trotsky had made as a revolutionary. Despite the fact that Lenin in his last testament seemed to favor Trotsky over Stalin and even had proposed removing Stalin from power, Trotsky proved no match for Stalin.
Trotsky allied himself with the so-called left opposition of Kamenev and Zinoviev, but Stalin successfully opposed him by breaking up the alliance, aided by Nikolai Bukharin and the right wing of the party. After his defeat Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party, and in 1928 he was exiled to Alma-Ata in Central Asia. Throughout his sojourn he continued to attack Stalin, returning to his early critical themes of bureaucratic centralism and one-man dictatorship. He also founded the Fourth International, which was intended to be a revolutionary and internationalist alternative to the Stalinist Comintern.
Trotsky's ideas formed the basis of Trotskyism, a major school of Marxist thought that opposes the theories of Stalinism. He was written out of the history books under Stalin, and was one of the few Soviet political figures who was not rehabilitated by the government under Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s. It was not until the late 1980s that his books were released for publication in the Soviet Union, which dissolved a short time later.
Views
Trotsky's view differed in many respects from those of Stalin or Mao Zedong, most importantly in his rejection of the theory of Socialism in One Country and his declaring the need for an international "permanent revolution".
Quotations:
“The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.”
“Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.”
“Life is not an easy matter…. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.”
“Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity, one’s own and that of other people.”
Personality
Leon had great ability as an orator.
Quotes from others about the person
"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." - Historian Geoffrey Swain
Interests
Politicians
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels
Connections
In 1899, Trotsky married Aleksandra Sokolovskaya, a fellow Marxist. The wedding ceremony was performed by a Jewish chaplain. Leon and Aleksandra soon separated and divorced, but maintained a friendly relationship. They had two daughters.
In late 1902, Trotsky met Natalia Ivanovna Sedova, who soon became his companion. They married in 1903 and she was with him until his death. They had two children together, Lev Sedov and Sergei Sedov, both of whom would predecease their parents. Regarding his sons' surnames, Trotsky later explained that after the 1917 revolution, in order not to oblige his sons to change their name, he, for citizenship requirements, took on the name of his wife. Trotsky never used the name "Sedov" either privately or publicly. Natalia Sedova sometimes signed her name "Sedova-Trotskaya."