Leon Trotsky

The road to Bolshevism

First of a series of articles around the 100th anniversary around the death of Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin), on 21 January 1924 The October Revolution of 1917 seemed to many observers to be an attempt to stand Marxism on its head. Those who said that included George Valentinovich Plekhanov and Pavel Borisovich Axelrod, the founders of the Russian Marxist movement, and Karl Kautsky, the most authoritative Marxist of the Second International (1889-1914). To others, who supported it, it seemed to have succeeded in turning on its head the Marxism long dominant in some labour movements. Antonio Gramsci...

Whatever happened to Sylvia Ageloff?

Since her association with Leon Trotsky’s assassin, Ramón Mercader, Sylvia Ageloff has been demonised and vilified, pushed to the margins of history or simply ignored. What has been all too frequently lacking is any sense of respect, sympathy or understanding of her as a human being, a political activist and someone thrust into a situation not of her making. This short essay attempts to set the record straight. Introduction At the time of the 80th anniversary (August 2020) of the assassination of Leon Trotsky among all the many and varied tributes and accounts of his life, there was little if...

The Communist Women’s Movement – high point of first wave feminism

A century ago, an international communist women’s movement began to develop a perspective for women’s self-liberation that still resonates today. The record of those early struggles has been translated into English for the first time by Mike Taber and Daria Dyakonova, The Communist Women’s Movement, 1920-1922 (Brill 2023). The book provides a history of the greatest working class-based women’s movement to date, through the voices of the women involved and one that has great relevance for today’s socialist feminists. Communist Women’s Movement In 1917, the Russian working class took power led...

Stalin in London: not the true story

Stephen May’s Sell Us The Rope is a new novel about the London congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party of 1907. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Rosa Luxemburg play leading roles in the story. I know: it sounds great. But before you click on ‘Buy Now’ on Amazon, let me tell you a bit more. The book’s premise — that Stalin was a long-term, paid informer for the tsarist secret police (the Okhrana) — made the story especially interesting for me. The fact that it had a positive review in the New York Times — that was icing on the cake. Sadly, this is a very disappointing book. The...

Letter: Neither "October" was a coup

Eric Lee (Solidarity 681) is right, I think, to say that the Bolsheviks thought the 1917 workers' revolution had to spread to more advanced countries or be crushed

Leon Trotsky on Clara Zetkin

Clara Zetkin (1857-1933) was the leading figure of socialist feminism in the mass international socialist movement before 1914; an important figure in internationalist left during World War One and in the early Communist International — and then in old age, nominally still a leader of the by-then-Stalinist Communist International. Leon Trotsky assessed the evolution in 1929 . For a long time Clara Zetkin has been a purely decorative figure on the presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. This cruel characterisation might not have been necessary if Zetkin did not...

Revolutions, socialist and other

Mahalla textile strikers, in the Egyptian revolution of 2011 How can the working class becoming politically aware, organised, cohesive and self-confident enough to become society’s new ruling class, overthrowing the capitalists in favour of collective ownership with democratic self-rule? That is the decisive question about socialist revolution. But Socialist Worker ’s explanation of “revolution” ( by Isabel Ringrose, 4 December ) ducks it in favour of advocating more militancy in general, plus the presence, in the wings, of a fiercely-organised “revolutionary party”. Ringrose deserves credit...

The valuable, critical Marxism of Paul Le Blanc

Paul Le Blanc has been one of the most prolific revolutionary socialist authors in recent decades, publishing scores of books, articles and reviews, in large part devoted to the early twentieth century Marxist tradition. Le Blanc’s work has numerous virtues. He writes clean and readable prose, makes theoretical issues accessible, represents various points of view objectively, puts the historical material in context and explains its relevance to present-day activism. He is honest about his own mistakes and the evolution of his views. And Le Blanc takes an ecumenical approach, willing to engage...

"We are all afraid of him": when Trotsky sought asylum in Britain

Picture: 27 November 1932, Trotsky speaking in Copenhagen at the invitation of Social Democratic students. His last public speech in front of a live audience. The words of the title were uttered by Ramsay MacDonald, Labour Prime Minister at a cabinet meeting in 1929. Leon Trotsky’s application for political asylum in Britain (1929-30) Click here to download the pamphlet as a PDF In 1929, when Trotsky established himself on the Turkish island of Prinkipo after being expelled from the USSR by Stalin, he began to apply for foreign residence, preferably in Western Europe, assisted by his...

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