Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's copy of Leon Trotsky's analysis of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution,"The Revolution Betrayed", Chapter Five-"The Soviet Thermidor".
THIS MONTH MARKS THE 68TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MURDER OF LEON TROTSKY BY A STALINIST AGENT IN MEXICO IN 1940-ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF THE GREAT RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY
BOOK REVIEW
The Revolution Betrayed, Leon Trotsky, translated by Max Eastman, Doubleday, New York, 1937
The great Russian Bolshevik Leon Trotsky wore many hats in his revolutionary career. Organizer of revolutionary upheavals in 1905 and 1917 and military defender of the Soviet state in the early days. Withering political journalist and literary critic from the beginning of his career as a professional revolutionary. Soviet official in various capacities, depending on which way the political winds were blowing. Polemicist against Social Democratic revisionism and later the Stalinist degeneration of Leninism, the Bolshevik party and the Soviet state. Still later, in exile, he was the seemingly last independent defender of that Soviet state and the traditions of the Bolshevik party as Stalin turned the political landscape into a bloody battlefield in the late 1930’s. Of all of these hats probably Trotsky's last struggles; to create a new international revolutionary party (the Fourth International)and trying to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia while at the same time defending the Soviet state, were the most important political battles of his life. That, in essence, is the purpose of his book The Revolution Betrayed under review here.
The question of the fate of the Soviet state at various points in the 20th century may seem a rather academic question at this time, especially since the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s. At a practical level it is hard to fault that argument. But let me make a little point here. Until the Gorbachev-directed political thaw in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980’s the possibilities of discussing Trotsky’s book about what when wrong "back in the days" was either done clandestinely or not at all. I, however, remember being at a meeting during that period where a Russian émigré spoke about the then current situation in Russia. He mentioned, in passing, that he had recently read Trotsky’s Revolution Betrayed and found that the arguments made by him in the mid-1930’s about the nature of Soviet society, the state governmental apparatus and the Communist Party sounded like they could have been made in the mid-1980’s. This, my friends, is why we still read this little work.
Obviously some of Trotsky’s argument is historically obsolete, even assuming conditions of a future socialist revival. The specific problem of Russia as the first workers state having been created in a predominantly agrarian society, then isolated by world imperialism and not augmented by revolutions in the capitalist West that would have given Soviet officials the life line they needed to turn that society around will not be replicated in the 21st century. What is not obsolete in Trotsky's argument, and is germane today in the struggle to turn China around, are the questions of the purposes that a workers state are created for, the nature of economic policy and who will guide it, the role of pro-socialist political parties and how to allocate cultural resources so that the goal- and this is important- of a stateless society gets a fair chance at implementation. Thus Trotsky here, donning the enlightened Soviet official hat that he never really took off even in exile, provides textbook examples of what to do and not to do to push socialism forward even under conditions of isolation.
If I was asked today what part of this document still has relevance I would pick out that chapter that deals with the question of Soviet Thermidor. All great revolutions, and the Russian Revolution was a great revolution, have had ebbs and flows during the revolutionary period and then after the consolidation of power by the new regime have fallen back, not to the ways of the old regime but back nevertheless. One would have thought in 1921, let’s say, that once the question of the existence of the Soviet state was essentially settled then the push to socialism, even in isolation and given the vast economic dislocations of World War I and the Civil War, would be headed forward. That was not the case and Trotsky does a great service by putting the reasons for that, political as well as personal, in perspective particularly the responses of the Soviet working class to the revolutionary defeats in Europe and Asia in the 1920’s. That said, where does this book fit into your list of Trotsky readings. Not first, that place is taken by his three-volume History of the Russian Revolution- the high point. But sometime shortly after that you need to address the issues presented in this book to see what went wrong and why.
THIS MONTH MARKS THE 68TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MURDER OF LEON TROTSKY BY A STALINIST AGENT IN MEXICO IN 1940-ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF THE GREAT RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY
BOOK REVIEW
The Revolution Betrayed, Leon Trotsky, translated by Max Eastman, Doubleday, New York, 1937
The great Russian Bolshevik Leon Trotsky wore many hats in his revolutionary career. Organizer of revolutionary upheavals in 1905 and 1917 and military defender of the Soviet state in the early days. Withering political journalist and literary critic from the beginning of his career as a professional revolutionary. Soviet official in various capacities, depending on which way the political winds were blowing. Polemicist against Social Democratic revisionism and later the Stalinist degeneration of Leninism, the Bolshevik party and the Soviet state. Still later, in exile, he was the seemingly last independent defender of that Soviet state and the traditions of the Bolshevik party as Stalin turned the political landscape into a bloody battlefield in the late 1930’s. Of all of these hats probably Trotsky's last struggles; to create a new international revolutionary party (the Fourth International)and trying to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia while at the same time defending the Soviet state, were the most important political battles of his life. That, in essence, is the purpose of his book The Revolution Betrayed under review here.
The question of the fate of the Soviet state at various points in the 20th century may seem a rather academic question at this time, especially since the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s. At a practical level it is hard to fault that argument. But let me make a little point here. Until the Gorbachev-directed political thaw in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980’s the possibilities of discussing Trotsky’s book about what when wrong "back in the days" was either done clandestinely or not at all. I, however, remember being at a meeting during that period where a Russian émigré spoke about the then current situation in Russia. He mentioned, in passing, that he had recently read Trotsky’s Revolution Betrayed and found that the arguments made by him in the mid-1930’s about the nature of Soviet society, the state governmental apparatus and the Communist Party sounded like they could have been made in the mid-1980’s. This, my friends, is why we still read this little work.
Obviously some of Trotsky’s argument is historically obsolete, even assuming conditions of a future socialist revival. The specific problem of Russia as the first workers state having been created in a predominantly agrarian society, then isolated by world imperialism and not augmented by revolutions in the capitalist West that would have given Soviet officials the life line they needed to turn that society around will not be replicated in the 21st century. What is not obsolete in Trotsky's argument, and is germane today in the struggle to turn China around, are the questions of the purposes that a workers state are created for, the nature of economic policy and who will guide it, the role of pro-socialist political parties and how to allocate cultural resources so that the goal- and this is important- of a stateless society gets a fair chance at implementation. Thus Trotsky here, donning the enlightened Soviet official hat that he never really took off even in exile, provides textbook examples of what to do and not to do to push socialism forward even under conditions of isolation.
If I was asked today what part of this document still has relevance I would pick out that chapter that deals with the question of Soviet Thermidor. All great revolutions, and the Russian Revolution was a great revolution, have had ebbs and flows during the revolutionary period and then after the consolidation of power by the new regime have fallen back, not to the ways of the old regime but back nevertheless. One would have thought in 1921, let’s say, that once the question of the existence of the Soviet state was essentially settled then the push to socialism, even in isolation and given the vast economic dislocations of World War I and the Civil War, would be headed forward. That was not the case and Trotsky does a great service by putting the reasons for that, political as well as personal, in perspective particularly the responses of the Soviet working class to the revolutionary defeats in Europe and Asia in the 1920’s. That said, where does this book fit into your list of Trotsky readings. Not first, that place is taken by his three-volume History of the Russian Revolution- the high point. But sometime shortly after that you need to address the issues presented in this book to see what went wrong and why.
