This celebratory column is in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and the world communist movement of the 20th century. We mainly examine its triumphs. We welcome your comments and criticisms, and encourage all readers to discuss this period of history with their friends, classmates, co-workers, family, and comrades.
This article aims to tell the truth about Trotsky and his movement—a truth denied by all anticommunists as well as by all followers of the Trotsky cult.
Leon Trotsky (b. 1879) became a Marxist revolutionary during his youth; became a leading Bolshevik; and, during the last period of his life, the most influential anticommunist in the world. Today hundreds of Trotskyist groups worldwide continue to promote Trotsky’s brand of anticommunism masquerading as “real” communists.
During the 1905 revolution in Russian Trotsky led the Soviet, or revolutionary council, in St. Petersburg. After a period of exile to Siberia, Trotsky fled abroad. He joined the Menshevik branch of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and strongly opposed Vladimir Lenin and Lenin’s Bolshevik branch.
In 1917 Trotsky returned to Russia. He joined a faction of Mensheviks who wanted the bourgeois, capitalist revolution that had deposed the Tsar, to continue to a socialist, working-class revolution. Trotsky recognized that only the Bolshevik Party, which he had long opposed, stood for such a revolution, so Trotsky negotiated a deal to join the Bolsheviks along with most of his faction and put Trotsky on the Bolshevik Central Committee.
During the Bolshevik Revolution and the following Civil War, Trotsky was one of the major Bolshevik leaders. He sabotaged the negotiations with the German Army, which led to the Germans occupying much more Russian territory. Trotsky led the military. He and Joseph Stalin clashed over how much to rely on officers from the Tsarist army who had rallied to the Bolsheviks—most of them temporarily. Trotsky favored the former Tsarist officers and Stalin wanted working class communists of the Red Army.
For a time after the war Trotsky remained an important Bolshevik leader. He and his supporters clashed with others in the Bolshevik leadership in the debates over policy during the Party Congresses and Conferences of the 1920s. An opposition formed against the policies advocated by Stalin and others. Trotsky, who was one of the leading oppositionists, promoted his own theory of “permanent revolution.” This concept basically meant that the USSR could only survive as a socialist state if it were helped by socialist regimes in industrialized countries. Otherwise, the revolution in Russia would “degenerate.” Trotsky had no solution for what to do if such revolutions did not take place.
Conspiracy
Even before Lenin died (January, 1924) Trotsky had formed a secret organization that conspired to take power in the USSR if—as Trotsky suspected —he failed to win the Party leadership once Lenin died. In order to work as secret Trotskyist agents inside the Party, Trotsky convinced some of his followers to cut all open ties with him and his supporters.
The Phony “Testament of Lenin”
In 1924, together with Lenin’s widow Nadezhda Krupskaia (who had temporarily joined the opposition) Trotsky forged the documents later called “Lenin’s Testament, “ which called for removing Stalin from his position as First Secretary of the Bolshevik Party. The “Testament” also praised Trotsky, though not too much—that would have been too obvious, since Lenin and Trotsky had been adversaries for a very long time and it had been Lenin who had insisted that Stalin become First Secretary.
In 1926 Trotsky published an article in which he insisted there was no such thing as “Lenin’s Testament.” But in the 1930s, when he was living in exile and leading a major conspiracy against the Stalin leadership, Trotsky “forgot” his denial and even claimed that Lenin had wanted to form a faction with him to get rid of Stalin. This forged “Testament” has been an important weapon of anticommunists and Trotskyists ever since. The evidence that it is a forgery was just discovered in 2003, after the original documents became available.
Trotsky and his public supporters were expelled for factionalism in 1927—they had held a number of counter-demonstrations at the 10th anniversary of the Revolution. Then Trotsky’s followers dishonestly claimed to “retract” their Trotskyist views and promised to follow the Party’s line in the future. They did this in order to continue their secret conspiracy within the Party and to recruit other Party members.
Trotsky’s Secret Conspiracy
Trotsky and his followers formed a secret “bloc” with other anti-Stalin conspiracies – the Rightists (Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky) and others – and plotted the following crimes:
* Terrorism: plans to kill Stalin and the Bolshevik leadership.
* Sabotage against Soviet industry, mining, transportation.
* Plans to sabotage the Red Army in the event of war with any capitalist states.
* Kickbacks from German companies for sweetheart contracts with the Soviet government.
Trotsky conspired with Nazi Germany and militarist Japan—the most powerful and organized anticommunist forces in the world—to support these regimes, if they in turn would put the opposition into power in the USSR, or support them if the opposition managed to get into power by itself. Trotsky also conspired against the Soviet Union with French capitalists and the British Secret Service and British government.
In return, Trotsky promised to undo collective ownership of land and industry and permit foreign private investment. He promised to get rid of the Communist International, headquartered in Moscow, which helped communist parties around the world fight against their own governments and was especially hated by capitalist rulers everywhere.
Trotsky’s Writings
In his writings from exile Trotsky consistently lied about the Soviet Union and about the Stalin leadership. Trotsky had to lie! He was running a serious conspiracy against the Soviet government, and trying to make Stalin and the Bolsheviks look as bad as possible. He gained publicity and support by writing for capitalist magazines and newspapers. These publications were eager to print anything that made the USSR and the worldwide communist movement look “bad.” They paid Trotsky handsomely.
Mainly, Trotsky was lying to his own followers. They chose to believe whatever he said or wrote when he claimed that he, Trotsky, was the “real communist”, the “real successor to Lenin,” and that the Stalin leadership were criminal betrayers of the Revolution. Trotsky’s followers still “believe” him, “have faith” in him, despite mountains of evidence of Trotsky’s lies and collaboration with the Nazis, Japanese, and British and French imperialists.J
(Part Two will continue and conclude our discussion of Trotsky)