Life of a Marxist revolutionary

Life of a Marxist revolutionary (Leon Trotsky)

Reprinted from Asian Marxist Review, edited by Nick Beams, Wije Dias and others 

EARLY LIFE 

TROTSKY was born Lev Davidovitch Bronstein, the son of a Jewish farmer, in the village of Yanovka in the southern Ukraine, in 1879. 

In 1896 Trotsky’s schooling took him to Nikolayev where he joined a group of radical students distributing anti-Tsarist tracts to peasants. 

By 1897, at the age of 18, Trotsky had become a Marxist and led the formation of a Social Democratic working man’s association together with the woman who was to become his wife, Alexandra Lvovna Sokolovskaya. 

The Southern Russian Workers Union distributed leaflets and a newspaper "Our Cause" until the group was broken by the police in January 1898. 

‘WHAT IS TO BE DONE’ 

AT HIS trial in 1900 Trotsky and the rest of the organisation’s leaders were sentenced to four years exile in Siberia. 

In 1902 he and Alexandra received a copy of Lenin’s "What is to be Done" and heard of the newspaper Iskra, which had as its aim the creation of an all-Russian centralised organisation of professional revolutionaries.

They decided that he should leave his family behind and escape to make contact with Lenin. For his trek across Russia he used the name of Trotsky, one of his former jailers. 

BOLSHEVISM AND MENSHEVISM 

TROTSKY met Lenin in London in 1902 and began working for Iskra. At the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party the party split over Lenin’s insistence that membership be restricted to those who "personally participate in one of its organisations." 

Trotsky sided with Lenin over the dissolution of the autonomous groups in the party but bitterly opposed his next move to remove the "softs" of the Mensheviks from the editorial board of Iskra. 

However Trotsky did not remain with the Mensheviks. In April 1904 he left the Menshevik-run Iskra and resigned from their party later in the year. 

THE 1905 REVOLUTION 

1905 opened with disastrous defeats for Tsarism in the war with Japan and mounting struggles by the working class at home. 

By October the first Soviet (Council) of Workers’ Delegates was formed in St Petersburg and Trotsky rapidly became its first chairman. 

After 50 days the Soviet was rounded up in mass arrests and Trotsky was imprisoned once more. In a tumultuous trial Trotsky was found not guilty of insurrection but deported for life to Siberia. 

On the way Trotsky again escaped and went into exile in Vienna with his second wife Natalya. He remained there through the years of reaction until 1914. 

FROM ZIMMERWALD TO PETROGRAD 

THE betrayal of the European Social Democratic parties in urging the working class in their respective countries to support their own capitalist classes in war meant the death of the Second International for the purposes of revolution. 

In September 1915, 38 delegates including Lenin and Trotsky met in the Swiss village of Zimmerwald and issued a Manifesto calling for workers to "enter the lists for your own cause...by means of irreconcilable working class struggle."

At the outbreak of the Russian revolution in February 1917 Trotsky was in the US where he had been deported by the Spanish government. He departed for Russia on March 27, arriving in the country on May 17, one month after Lenin. 

THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION 

TROTSKY immediately announced his complete support for the Bolshevik Party and worked to bring his Petrograd organisation into a fusion with them. On July 23 Trotsky was arrested by the Provisional Government following the defeat of the July uprising by the working class.

During his imprisonment he had been elected to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party and later in September he became the president of the Petrograd Soviet. 

Trotsky led the Military Revolutionary Committee which organised the insurrection and on October 25 he announced the overthrow of the Provisional Government. 

CIVIL WAR 

1918 opened with the young revolution facing the combined threat of counter-revolution and invasion organised by the imperialist allies. 

For two years, as the leader of the Red Army, Trotsky lived on the famous train which became his headquarters, travelling along the 21 fronts held by the armies under his command. From a Red Guard of 7000 a Red Army of five million was built, despite invasion and starvation. 

WITH LENIN AGAINST STALIN 

THE devastation of the Russian economy forced the introduction of the New Economic Policy which made major concessions to the old capitalist class and the wealthy peasants. 

Sections of the capitalist class wanted to go even further with the removal of the mononopoly on foreign trade. Stalin and the majority of the Central Committee supported them. 

Lenin, now ill, formed a bloc with Trotsky to reverse the decision and warned against the growing power of the bureaucracy in the party led by Stalin. 

Before his death in January 1924 Lenin broke off all personal relations with Stalin and, in his last Testament, demanded Stalin's removal from the post of General Secfetary. 

THE STRUGGLE AGAINST BUREAUCRACY 

IN October 1923 Trotsky led the formation of the Left Opposition against the ruling triumvirate of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. The bureaucracy replied by opening up the campaign against "Trotskyism." 

In 1924 Stalin announced his theory of "socialism in a single country" which became the bureaucracy’s justification for a compromise with imperialism. 

In May 1925 Trotsky was appointed to serve on the Supreme Economic Council where he fought for rapid industrialisation and economic planning, against the opposition of Stalin. 

In 1926 Trotsky alone voted against the decision by the Executive of the Communist International to admit the future butcher of the Chinese revolution, Chiang Kai-shek, as a member. 

On November 14, 1927, Trotsky was expelled from the party and in January 1928 exiled to central Asia. Trotsky refused to renounce political activity and in January 1929 he was served with an order of deportation from the Soviet Union. 

FROM EXILE TO THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL 

EXILED in Prinkipo, Turkey, Trotsky wrote the three volume "History of the Russian Revolution" and organised the international Left Opposition with the assistance of his son Leon Sedov. 

The betrayal of the German revolution by the German Communist Party in allowing Hitler to come to power convinced him that the Third International, following the Second, was dead for the purposes of revolution and that it was necessary to form a new international, the Fourth International. 

The Fourth International was established in September 1938 despite the unprecedented persecution of the Trotskyists by imperialism and Stalinism and despite the scepticism of those who started from the appearance of the weakness of Trotsky’s forces, and not from the historic crisis of world capitalism. 

STRUCK DOWN BY STALIN’S ASSASSIN 

AFTER the Stalinists organised his deportation from Turkey, France and Norway, Trotsky set sail for his last exile in Coyoacan, Mexico in De- cember 1936. 

The Moscow Trials were at their height with Trotsky the central figure accused of counter-revolution along with all the other leaders of the October revolution. 

He organised the independent Dewey Commission which described the Trials as a frame-up and cleared Trotsky’s name in December 1937. 

In February 1938 Trotsky’s son Leon Sedov was murdered in a Paris hospital in a conspiracy organised by Stalin’s agent Marc Zborowski. 

On August 20, 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in his study by the GPU agent Ramon Mercader, one of the many agents infiltrated into the Trotskyist movement.