The Essential Trotsky (Routledge Revivals)
Jun 2014 · Routledge
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About this eBook
When Lenin died and the Russian Revolution began to devour its leaders, Trotsky survived longer than most as an exile in Mexico, until his assassination in 1940. The Essential Trotsky, first published in 1963, demonstrates the significance of this innovative and radical thinker’s contribution to the Bolshevik success, the magnetism of his personality, and also a certain tragic heroism discernible throughout his life.
The History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk was written immediately after the events it describes, when Trotsky was attending the negotiations that extracted Russia from the First World War; The Lessons of October, an answer to his opponents in 1924, matches Lenin in power of analysis; and Stalin Falsifies History, written in 1927, presents the beginning of the distorting process by which Stalin secured his position, and defeated a range of attitudes, many more benign than his own, towards the future of the Revolution. This is a fascinating reissue that will be of value to students with an interest in early-twentieth century Russia, the Russian Revolution and the writings of Trotsky more generally.
About the author
Leon Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronshteyn on November 7, 1879 in Yanovka, Ukraine. As a teenager, he became involved in underground activities and was soon arrested, jailed and exiled to Siberia where he joined the Social Democratic Party. He escaped from exile in Siberia by using the name of a jailer called Trotsky on a false passport. During World War I, he lived in Switzerland, France, England, and New York City, where he edited the newspaper Novy Mir (New World). In 1917, after the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II, he went back to Russia and joined Vladimir Lenin in the first, abortive, July Revolution of the Bolsheviks. A key organizer of the successful October Revolution, he was People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the Lenin regime. He was then made war commissar and in this capacity, built up the Red Army which prevailed against the White Russian forces in the civil war. Antagonism developed between him and Joseph Stalin during the Civil War of 1918-1920. When Lenin fell ill and died, Stalin became the new leader and Trotsky was thrown out of the party in 1927. Trotsky fled across Siberia to Norway, France, and finally settled in Mexico in 1936. He began working on the biography of Stalin. He was able to complete 7 of the 12 chapters before an assassin, acting on Stalin's orders, stabbed Trotsky with an ice pick. He died on August 21, 1940. The construction of the remaining five chapters was accomplished by the translator Charles Malamuth, from notes, worksheets, and fragments.
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