Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky

In 1896 after moving to the harbour town of Nikolayev, Trotsky was first a Narodnik, a member of a middle class movement that thought the peasants, newly released from feudalism, would be the force to rise up against the Tsardom.

In early 1897 he helped organize the South Russian Workers’ Union in Nikolayev and was arrested alongside over 200 members. He was imprisoned and while incarcerated, he read Lenin’s The Development of Capitalism in Russia, became a supporter of Marxism and a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. This party was later split between those who wanted to improve the lot of workers without changing the system and those who wanted to overthrow the monarchy, becoming a more organised revolutionary force to this end. Trotsky belonged to the latter and wrote for Iskra (The Spark) a London based newspaper that promoted this aim. He later moved to London and became an advisory to the board of Iskra, of which Lenin was a member.

They held the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in London and the Iskras, including Lenin and Trotsky, defeated the faction of the party that didn’t want an overthrow of the monarchy.

However, the party split again into one faction that wanted a smaller, more tightly run party of which Lenin was a supporter and another faction that wanted a larger, less tightly run party of which, initially, Trotsky was a supporter. The majority went with Lenin. The Russian for majority is bolshevik and this is what they called themselves. Trotsky was in the minority, the Mensheviks (you guessed it, Russian for minority). Trotsky’s support of the Mensheviks was short and in September 1904 he left over their insistence on an alliance with Russian liberals and their opposition to a reconciliation with Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

From 1904-1917, Trotsky called himself a “non-factional social democrat”. He spent much of his time in this period trying to reconcile the party, which resulted in many clashes with Lenin and other prominent party members. During these years Trotsky also began developing his theory of permanent revolution.

Trotsky’s idea of permanent revolution differed from Marx & Engels. Marx & Engels thought that the Bourgeois Revolution and capitalism would set up the means of production & democracy which could then be taken over by the workers. Trotsky didn’t believe that Russia would be able to go through a Bourgeois Revolution which would develop democratic processes, society and industry into a position ready for a proletariat revolution. Because of this he believed in going straight for a proletariat revolution but that it wouldn’t last unless other countries in Europe quickly followed suit. This is in opposition to the Stalinist faction of the Bolsheviks who believed there could be a one nation socialist state

As early as 1905, the Mensheviks had come up with the idea of the capital’s workers organising themselves into an elected non-party revolutionary organisation and formed the first Soviet of Workers (Soviet=Russian for Council). After Trotsky’s return to Russia following Bloody Sunday (22nd January, 1905), his subsequent exile to Finland and then return again, Trotsky became Vice Chairman and then Chairman of the Saint Petersburg Soviet. However, he and other leaders of the soviet were arrested, tried and sent to exile in 1906 for supporting an armed rebellion.

Trotsky escaped en route and made his way to London where he attended the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He then moved to Vienna and was active in the Austrian and German Social Democratic parties. In October 1908 he was asked to join the editorial team of Pravda, a bi-weekly, Russian-language, non factional, social democratic paper for Russian workers. In 1910 Lenin agreed to fund production on the condition there was a Bolshevik editor and from that time until it folded in 1912 it became a mouthpiece for the attempted (and failed) reconciliation processes between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks expelled the Mensheviks in January, 1912. Immediately after Pravda’s expiration, the Bolsheviks started their own paper also called Pravda aimed at the city’s workers, about which Trotsky fell out with Lenin, writing a damning letter which was later used against him to prove he was Lenin’s enemy.

Trotsky was exiled to the US in 1916, following his anti war activities, only going back after the 1917 February Revolution in Russia that overthrew Tsar Nicholas II. After the Bolsheviks gained a majority in the Petrograd Soviet, Trotsky was elected chairman on 8 October, 2017. He led the overthrow of the Provisional Government in the October Revolution.

Of Trotsky’s role in the October Revolution, Stalin wrote the following in Pravda on 10th November 1918:

All practical work in connection with the organisation 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 organised.

(This is quoted in Stalin’s The October Revolution (1934) but not in Stalin’s Works (1949).)

Trotsky became the Commissar for Foreign Affairs once the Bolsheviks had taken power. In 1918 the Bolsheviks changed their name to The Russian Communist Party. As Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Trotsky was in charge of negotiating terms of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty (ratified March 15th, 2018) which ended up with harsh terms for the Russians, losing much of their territory to Germany. Trotsky kept the talks lengthy and protracted, hoping for the revolution of German and Austrian workers and soldiers, which didn’t materialise. He resigned as Commissar after the treaty was signed and his resignation was accepted on 13th March, 2018. The terms of the Treaty were overturned however, when Germany lost the war.

Trotsky was then made People’s Commissar of Army and Navy Affairs and Chairman of the Supreme Military Council, only responsible to Communist Party Leadership. He was given this post due to his work with the Red Army. Trotsky’s policies of strict discipline, conscription and carefully supervised non-Communist military experts were unpopular though with certain Bolshevik factions who only wanted revolutionaries forming the Red Army, with elected officers.

Civil War ensued 1918–1920. Trotsky transformed the Red Army from a disorganised network of small, independent troops into a large, disciplined machine. He did this by forced conscription, barrier troops — formations of soldiers placed behind normal ranks to stop unauthorised retreat, compulsory obedience and officers chosen by the leadership not the rank and file. The Red Army went from 800,000 to 3 million, often fighting on many different fronts in this period. Trotsky was opposed in how he commanded throughout the Civil War, how he quashed uprisings and stood up for a peace treaty with Poland. Stalin at one point pressured Lenin to dismiss him from his post although Trotsky’s resignation was then rejected by the Politburo.

Trotsky was then appointed to overhaul the rail system destroyed by the Civil War. His stance on Trade Unions, which formed while he was doing so, was bizarre if this quote is anything to go by:

such a regime under which each worker feels himself to be a soldier of labour who cannot freely dispose of himself; if he is ordered transferred, he must execute that order; if he does not do so, he will be a deserter who should be punished. Who will execute this? The trade union. It will create a new regime. That is the militarisation of the working class.

This stance was disputed and quashed within the party.

Prior to Lenin’s death, Stalin formed an alliance to keep Trotsky — the assumed heir apparent — out of power. Trotsky wanted greater intra party democracy but this was defeated by Stalin’s alliance and Stalin’s influence in the secretariat. Trotsky was away recovering from ill health when he learnt of Lenin’s death. Stalin apparently gave him the wrong date for the funeral, meaning Trotsky thought that he couldn’t have made it back in time so stayed away. It is thought that this absence is a reason behind Stalin’s rise to power over Trotsky, although apparently in his autobiography, Trotsky doesn’t give this view much credence. Stalin’s alliance cut Trotsky out of the party decision making process, something made easier by Trotsky’s ill health. It ended with Trotsky resigning as People’s Commissar of Army and Fleet Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council on 6 January 1925. In 1926 Stalin’s alliance broke up and some sided with Trotsky forming the United Opposition within the party. In October 1927, Trotsky was expelled from the Central Committee. When the United Opposition tried to organise independent demonstrations commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1927, the demonstrators were dispersed by force and Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party itself on 12 November, 1927. His leading supporters were expelled in December 1927 by the XVth Party Congress. This congress also paved the way for mass expulsions of rank and file oppositionists and internal exile of opposition leaders in early 1928. At the same party congress, Opposition views were made incompatible with membership of the Communist Party. Trotsky was exiled as a result but many of the Opposition renounced their opposition and returned to the party, most of whom then went on to be executed in Stalin’s Great Purges of 1938–39.

Trotsky wrote prolifically in exile and on 27 February 1940, he wrote “Trotsky’s Testament”. This is an excerpt:

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
 Coyoacan.

Obviously we all know of his assassination by ice pick, especially if like me you had an elder brother blasting The Stranglers throughout the whole house at any given opportunity:

However, it is also known he was dying at the time (the attack was on 2oth August 1940 and he died the next day) and had considered suicide.

Trotsky was finally “rehabilitated” on 16 June 2001 by the decision of the General Prosecutor’s Office. Although his books had been allowed to be published in the USSR from 1987, they were first published there in 1989.