Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line: Revolutionary History, From La Gauche (socialiste et révolutionnaire) 28 March 1970. Karl Marx influenced the Russian Revolution by publishing his book, "The Communist Manifesto" on February 21, 1848 calling for a revolution from the working class people of the world in order to tear down capitalism. Leon Trotsky. The brief introductory reading guide is here. For an offensive revolutionary war a genuine enthusiasm, extremely high confidence in the leadership and great skill in the soldier are necessary. It is possible to foresee also other consequences of the Soviet-Finnish War. But, the security offered by the Brest-Litovsk treaty was short-lived. The Comintern naturally did not understand what was involved; it simply made “democratic” noises, carrying out the instructions. He supported founding a vanguard party of the proletariat, proletarian internationalism and a dictatorship of the proletariat based on working class self-emancipation and mass democracy. Alcoholism spreads more and more widely. As usual, Trotsky did not content himself with informal verbal answers to the list of broad questions presented by Klyman. Born Andre Friedmann to Jewish parents in Budapest in 1913, he studied political science at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik in Berlin. From the time of Munich Trotsky understood that war was inevitable, and in August 1937 he fixed the date in two years’ time; Trotsky, in denouncing the bankruptcy of the Popular Fronts so dear to the Stalinists, had seen very well that while mobilising the masses against Hitler in the name of ‘democracy’, Stalin was carefully arranging a deal with the German dictator ... inasmuch as he feared war as a mortal danger to the Soviet bureaucracy; On 3 August 1939 Stalin’s double game led to the reversal of his foreign policy and gave the green light to the Nazi dictator; The fact that Stalin had decapitated the Soviet army, party and the Bolshevik state apparatus in the purges of 1936-38, for a long time prevented him from facing up to the threat from Hitler, of which Hitler was aware when pushing Stalin into the laughable adventure of the Finnish war, a fiasco which destroyed the prestige of the Red Army ... while conceding compensation to Stalin (such as the partition of Poland and the invasion of the Baltic states); Trotsky foresaw that at first the Germans would gain striking successes in the West (he always pointed out that Britain would maintain its independence) before turning East and attacking the USSR. ... Leon Trotsky, Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs, was dispatched to the front to start these negotiations on behalf of the new revolutionary government. Not without Ribbentrop’s influence, as was said, the Kremlin supposed that England and France would not make a move against the accomplished fact of the subjugation of Poland and that consequently Hitler might gain a free hand for further expansion toward the east. He died a day later due to the injuries sustained during the attack. [5] On this matter Trotsky’s strategy not only appreciated the role of the colonial peoples, but emphasised the importance of the Chinese Revolution “on which the proletariat will have to trace a strong line of orientation”. Already in 1934 Hitler said to Rauschning: “I can conclude an agreement with Soviet Russia whenever I wish.” He had categorical assurances on this account from the Kremlin itself. In 1927, Josef Stalin became the undisputed ruler of the Soviet Union as Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party. Unfortunately we were too weak ... At present the Kremlin is much stronger from a military point of view. But his conservative adversaries grew tired of being duped. 2. The strangling of the peoples of the USSR, particularly of the national minorities, by police methods, repelled the majority of the toiling masses of the neighboring countries from Moscow. In 1942, the World War II naval Battle of Guadalcanal began. stalin was his own man , so to speak, and wouldn't followed lenin out the door if the place was on fire. [4] Twelve years before Stalin announced his opposing thesis on inter-capitalist economic rivalry Trotsky had already destroyed it, as he had already deflated the petit-bourgeois windbags for whom support for imperialism against Stalinism would aid the former to defeat the bureaucratic caste: in fact this had and continues to have the opposite effect (in particular when that great friend of Khrushchev’s, Averell Harriman, signed the non-proliferation treaty on nuclear arms). THE WRITINGS OF LEON TROTSKY, 1939-40, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973 That is the meaning of Lenin’s warning that ‘without a series of successful revolutions’ a new imperialist war would inevitable follow.” [2] Simultaneously fighting the innocent choir boys of pacifism, the cynical partisans of isolationism and the masses deceived by the charlatan Stalinists, at that decisive moment Trotsky embodied the unhappy consciousness of the world proletariat. The defense of an isolated workers’ state depends much more on the support of the laboring masses all over the world than on two or three supplementary strategical points. On the surface it was pretty cordial and good during the Cold War. For example in 1919 when the Entente strangled the Hungarian revolution, we naturally had the right to help Hungary by military measures. Their opposition were the soviets, a socialist group with Leon Trotsky, a prominent communist, as one of its key figures. It will undoubtedly achieve certain successes in this way. Leon Trotsky The Second World War (January/March 1940) First Published: Fourth International [New York], Vol.3 No.8, August 1942, pp.252-254. [9] At the second Moscow Trial of January 1937 Karl Radek had explicitly identified Leon Trotsky as the leader of an important anti-Soviet conspiracy. He is a man of the apparatus. Under Stalin’s rule, the NKVD went to elaborate lengths to track down and kill his ideological nemesis, the communist “heretic,” Leon Trotsky. First Published: Fourth International [New York], Vol.3 No.8, August 1942, pp.252-254. Better responses gave a detailed and well-structured outline of the life of Trotsky. The annexation of western Ukraine and White Russia and the peaceful conquest of strategic positions in the Baltic states were designed to prove to the population the wisdom of the foreign policy of “the father of nations.” Finland upset these plans a bit. The Polish question became a turning point. Dated: 01.01.1900. He pressed for social reform, redistribution of land and negotiated settlement with Germany to get out of the war. Haunted by the position of Lenin during the First World War, Trotsky reckoned up the situation: “State power and domination of the economy can be torn from the hands of these rapacious imperialist cliques only by the revolutionary working class. The Stalin's Soviet Union responded to Trotsky's death by condemning him with a lengthy list of his supposed crimes, and official communist parties around the world toed the line. Italy was controlled by the Vatican. The interview was published in three sections in the Post-Dispatch issues of March 10, 17 and 24 of the same year. With Finland, he will conclude a compromise.” Facts showed that my prognosis was incorrect on this final point. Many deserted the army. “The fall of Stalin will not, however, save Hitler, who with the infallibility of a sleepwalker is being drawn towards the greatest catastrophe in history.” The Riddle of the USSR, 21 June 1939, in Writings of Leon Trotsky 1938-39, New York 1974, p.360. Lenin made Trotsky Commissar of War and gave him full control in how the newly formed Red Army went about its work. Naturally, the occupation of eastern Poland and the formation of military bases in the Baltic did not create absolute obstacles for the German offensive: the experience of the last war (1914-18) testifies sufficiently to this. At present this important pre-condition for revolutionary intervention exists, if at all, in a very small degree. 1 The Weltkrieg 1.1 1914 1.2 1915 1.3 1916 1.4 1917 1.5 1918 1.6 1919 2 Postwar developments 2.1 1919 2.2 1920 2.3 1921 2.4 1922 2.5 1923 2.6 1924 2.7 1925 2.8 1926 2.9 1927 2.10 1928 2.11 1929 2.12 1930 2.13 1931 2.14 1932 2.15 1933 2.16 1934 2.17 1935 Main article: Weltkrieg While visiting Sarajevo on the 28th of June, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie are assassinated by … One of Lenin's allies was Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), another Marxist thinker who participated in a number of revolutionary demonstrations and uprisings. They will indicate a firm line of march.” Op. Overview. Listen to a recorded reading of this page: Technology played an important role in helping to destroy the existing social order. 5. War and revolution are not his element. The leading figures in this struggle were Leon Trotsky (often considered a co-leader with Lenin in 1917-1918), Lev Kamenev and Gregory Zinoviev (old allies of Lenin's), Nicholas Bukharin (a popular young party leader), and Joseph Stalin (the head of the party's bureaucratic machinery). Leon Trotsky was a communist theorist and Soviet politician. Once the Moscow oligarchy finds itself compelled to play with the fire of war and revolution, it will try at least to warm its hands. Frequent assurances in the democratic press that Stalin deliberately sought to provoke a world war by his alliance with Hitler, are to be considered absurd. Meanwhile the Red Army officers are put under the control of political police in the form of careerist commissars. A more patient policy could never have compromised the Kremlin as much as have its shameful defeats in the course of 11 weeks. Having said A Stalin was compelled to say B. In the Russian Bulletin edited by me, I published in September 1938 an article in which I subjected to an analysis the causes of the weakening and direct decomposition of the Red Army. He was born under the rules of the Czar in Soviet Russia and studied in a Marxism school when he was young. If so, what could he earlier have done to avoid it? It was a war for the redivision of the world in the interests of different cliques of financial capital. And we had to march in them.”. Italy stepped cautiously aside. Above all Stalin was afraid of a great war. Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family were executed by the Bolsheviks on July 17, 1918. The major events of his life were explored with some depth and the range of years was comprehensive. Hitler assured his Anglo-Saxon cousin that the annexation of Poland was on the road to the east and only to the east. But even if the thoroughly conservative oligarchy of the Kremlin were striving for the revolution, it knows very well that war does not begin with revolution, but ends with it, and that the Moscow bureaucracy itself will be thrown into an abyss before the revolution comes in the capitalist countries. 2. His parents, David and … At the outbreak of World War II… What if it was Leon Trotsky, rather than Joseph Stalin, that succeeded Lenin in the early Soviet Union? Nothing of this was shown in the war Stalin undertook without technical and moral preparation. The Kremlin will do everything in order to attract to its side the Finnish industrial workers and the lower stratum of the farmers. 2. Quite probably the initiative even in this sphere belonged to the dynamic partner, that is Hitler, who proposed to the cautious and temporizing Stalin that he take guarantees by force of arms. Do you believe that a socialist state is justified in extending socialism to a neighbor state by force of arms? Overview. Today is the 72nd anniversary of V Day – the victory of the Allies in World War II. Trotsky, untrained as a military commander, excelled in his job. But the “greatest war photographer” hated war. It was necessary to justify it with immediate and brilliant successes. Personal independence, free investigation and free criticism are no less necessary for the army than for the economy. In Guérin’s words: “He cried out that in aiding the democracies against the Fascists, the workers in the Western countries could only assist and accelerate the victory of Fascism inside their own countries. “If we divide Poland together, they will not so much as move their little finger.” While signing the agreement Stalin, with his political limitations, could expect that there would not be any great war. In order to escape it, he became an irreplaceable aid to Hitler. Under these conditions Hitler had no choice: he played his last trump, an alliance with Moscow. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, he had a chauvinistic disregard for women and a strong racial hatred of Russia’s Jews. 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. stalin succeeded after lenin's death in 1926 (circa). Chaos reigns in the military supplies. (The Allies ended up winning a major victory over Japanese forces.) 1940 Leon Trotsky is attacked in Mexico. Such was the case in China, Germany and Spain. This was filled by a provisional government, filled with ministers and aristocracy which had been in power under Tsar Nicholas. On November 15, I wrote to the editor of one of the most widely read American weeklies: “During the next period, Stalin will remain Hitler’s satellite. 6. But even from the point of view of his own ends and methods, he didn’t have to attack Finland immediately. Finnish resistance, it is true, placed the prestige of the Kremlin at stake not only in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, but also in the Balkans and Japan. However, reality is different. – Editor, Fourth International, 1942. When Trotsky writes: “The USSR’s defeat in the world war would signify not merely the overthrow of the totalitarian bureaucracy but the liquidation of the new forms of property, the collapse of the first experiment in planned economy, and the transformation of the entire country into a colony; that is the handing over to imperialism of colossal natural resources which would give it a respite until the Third World War” [3], it is clear that Trotsky is behaving as both the last representative of Bolshevik power and the founder and theoretician of the Fourth International. In order to understand correctly the Kremlin’s foreign policy, it is always necessary to take into account two factors: on the one hand, the position of the USSR in capitalist encirclement and, on the other, the position of the ruling bureaucracy within the Soviet society. We publish his answers in two parts, the second of which will appear in our next issue. Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov was born in Simbirsk on the Volga River on 22 April 1870 into a well-educated family. They are a remarkable example of the bold and yet unpretentious way in which Trotsky analyzed the course of events while they were still transpiring. Presumably these are references to Stalin’s statement of 1 February 1952 (“Consequently, the struggle of the capitalist countries for markets and their desire to crush their competitors proved in practice to be stronger than the contradictions between the capitalist camp and the Socialist camp.” (Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, Works, Volume 16, London 1986, p.331)); and to the later trajectory of Max Shachtman. 6. But it is extremely cautious and sometimes even cowardly before its well-armed external enemies. If there were soviet democracy in the USSR; if the technological progress were accompanied by the increase of socialist equality; if the bureaucracy were withering away, giving place to the self-government of the masses, Moscow would represent such a tremendous power of attraction, particularly for its nearest neighbors, that the present world catastrophe would inevitably throw the masses of Poland (not only Ukrainians and White Russians but also Poles and Jews) as well as the masses of the Baltic border states on to the road of union with the USSR. If his plans had been successful, the Soviet people and resources would have been put at the disposal of the fascist forces. Leon Trotsky on the Second World War. QUESTION: What is your opinion of the Finnish campaign from the military standpoint: as to strategy, equipment, leadership, both military and political, the matter of keeping up communications and the general training of the Red troops? The Soviet bureaucracy fears a great war more than any ruling class in the world: it has little to win but everything to lose. Soon after taking command he issued the following order: “I give warning that if any unit retreats without orders, the first to be shot down will be the commissary of … However it would be incorrect to conclude that the five-year campaign of Moscow in favor of a “united front of the democracies” and “collective security” (1935-39) was a pure swindle as is represented now by the same Krivitsky who saw from the quarters of the GPU only one side of the Moscow policy, not perceiving it in its entirety. Trotsky was assassinated, many of the FI's European affiliates were destroyed by the Nazis and several of its Asian affiliates were destroyed by the Empire of Japan. But above all it defends itself inside the USSR. The planned “military stroll” into Finland converted itself into a merciless accounting of all aspects of the totalitarian régime. An Old Style Julian Calendar which was used at the time, however, lists Stalin’s birthdate as the 6 th of December. At first a narodnik (revolutionary populist), he was introduced to Marxism later that year, which he originally opposed. In World War II, the JEWS Declared War AGAINST Germany – NOT the other way around, ... Leon Trotsky (real name - Bronstein) the head of the Red Army was a Jew, as were close to 80% of ALL the Bolshevists who murdered the Czar and his family and took over Russia by force. That these effort were, ultimately, militarily defeated during the course of World War Two does not take away from the grandeur of the efforts. now, under those circumstances, why would he have allowed anything of lenin to influence anything, any place, anywhere in time? Trotskyists are critical of Stalinism as they oppose Joseph Stalin's theory of socialism in one country in favor of Trotsky… The survivors, in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, were largely cut off from each other and from the International Secretariat. Leon Davidovich Trotsky (November 7, 1879 – August 21, 1940), born Lev Davidovich Bronstein, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. On October 24, 1917, Lenin and his collaborators launched a successful, full-scale coup against the provisional government, which came to be known as the October Revolution. Leon Trotsky was born on 8th November 1879 in Ukraine, Russia of a Jewish family under the name of Bronstein, and died on 21st August 1940 in Mexico due to assassination. Hitler’s turn toward Moscow in the middle of the past year had a substantial basis. Stalin finally attained the handshake of which he had dreamt unceasingly for six years. All partisans of a crusade against the Soviets will find in the military failures of the Kremlin a serious argument. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik–Leninist. In his satirical verse on the Crimean campaign of 1855 the young officer, Leon Tolstoy, wrote: ”Easily written on paper, Guérin is mistaken when he states that Trotsky was torn between his old role as a Soviet leader and the fact that he led the Fourth International. Trotsky helped to expand on the idea of Permanent Revolution, which is a theory originally thought up by Karl Marx. stalin had trotsky murdered and exiled all those who likened to lenin. In any case, he bought himself the possibility of escaping for the next period the necessity of involvement in a war. His father was a shoe… While Lenin did the work required for the area that the Bolsheviks controlled, Trotsky set about eradicating those who wanted the destroy the Bolsheviks. Firstly I think it'd have been an impossibility as Trotsky was an asshole that everyone disliked and this precisely led to his downfall as Lenin began entrusting Stalin with more power because of disagreements with Trotsky. The bureaucracy is merciless against its disarmed adversaries inside the country. Already one can assert that if exaggeration of the offensive capacities of the Red Army characterized the former period, now begins a period of underestimation of its defensive strength. He had come to Mexico as a political refugee. Undoubtedly the impertinence of Japan will increase and that may create difficulties along the road toward a Soviet-Japanese agreement which actually constitutes one of the main tasks of the Kremlin. He excelled at school and went on to study law. ANSWER: It cannot be doubted that control over the military bases on the Baltic coast represents strategical advantages. Flag of Russia. Do you believe there was any likelihood of Nazi aggression? It was a war between imperialist powers for the redivision of the world. Though Lenin was a rousing speaker, Trotsky was an orator of genius. During the Moscow negotiations of the past year, the delegates of Great Britain and France played a rather pitiful role. Permanent link; Russian Revolution, Civil War and USSR 1917-1991. Hats off to Leon Trotsky. Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Moscow discovers now that no one expected a rapid victory and makes references to the frost and blizzards. Parades celebrated on Red Square are one thing, the war is quite another. Countries after the end of World War II (i.e., after August 1945), which became linked by adherence to the ideology and practice of communism, as developed by Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin and their successors in the Soviet Union.. Before the collapse of the USSR, some of the countries within it were also informally known as the Soviet bloc. As Commissar for War Trotsky introduced and built up the Red Army and led it to victory over the White Army during the civil war that followed the revolution. L. Trotsky, Imperialist War and the World Proletarian Revolution, Manifesto of the Emergency Conference of the Fourth International, May 1940, in Documents of the Fourth International: The Formative Years 1933-40, New York 1973, p.313. However, Germany, under the pressure of its own armaments, could not wait. ANSWER: As far as I can judge, the strategical plan abstractly considered was sufficiently correct; but it underestimated Finland’s power to resist and it ignored such details as the Finnish winter, conditions of transportation, supplies and sanitation. In such an artificial organism as the army where preciseness of rights and duties is inevitable, nobody in reality knows what is permissible and what is tabu. Free for commercial use, no attribution required. However, it has lost the confidence of the masses both inside the country and abroad. The specter of Bolshevism was necessary, above all, in order to prevent the British Conservatives from eyeing with suspicion the rearmament of Germany. Or was there any truth to Leon Trotsky’s remark that while history offers no guarantees, it is not without logic. It is possible to expect the reestablishment of a kind of NEP, that is, of the controlled market economy on the new, higher economic level. This aid would have been understood and justified by the laboring masses of the world. Did Stalin have to make it? He had been expelled from the Soviet Union by his archrival Josef Stalin.For nine years, Trotsky and his wife Natalia had lived in exile, searching in vain for political asylum in Turkey, France, … In Vladimir Lenin's government in the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky first played the role of Commissar for Foreign Affairs and then the leader of the Red Army. The bureaucracy defends the USSR. While Hitler spurned the extended hand, Stalin was compelled to prepare seriously the other alternative, that is, an alliance with the imperialist democracies. Trotsky and his son Leon Sedov had been convicted in absentia at the first Moscow Trial in August 1936. Independent of who started it, it was not a war “for national independence”. Collected and introduced by Daniel Guérin, this choice of articles by Leon Trotsky illustrates in a masterly way the power of analysis and lucidity of a man who, in spite of the fact that he was practically cut off from the world, observed the frightful reality of where the world was going for three long years. These articles frequently emphasise that it must not be left to Hitler to overthrow Stalin: that task must be done by the Soviet workers and peasants. The internal position of the bureaucracy is incomparab1y more vulnerable than the international position of the USSR. If Stalin and Voroshilov cannot read military maps, they can, one should expect, read the calendar; the Finnish climate could not have been a secret to them. Writing from exile, Trotsky believed that World War Two would be the causal factor for a true workers' revolution in the USSR. BORN: 1879, Yanovka, Ukraine DIED: 1940, Mexico City NATIONALITY: Russian GENRE: Nonfiction MAJOR WORKS: My Life (1930) The History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk (1932) The Revolution Betrayed (1937). The final document — the text from the imprisoned Left Oppositionists in the 1930s — is here. 1. Many of his supporters argued against his appearance. The invasion of the Red Army is seen by the populations not as an act of liberation but as an act of violence, and thereby facilitates the mobilization of world public opinion against the USSR by the imperialist powers.
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