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Originally published in 1922.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) ranks among the greatest and most controversial figures in the political history of the 20th century. During his lifetime he was the target of a vicious campaign of lies orchestrated by the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union, which culminated in his assassination in exile. Nearly 70 years after Trotsky's death, long-discredited Stalinist distortions and falsifications of his ideas and actions are finding their way into mainstream academic literature. In this penetrating analysis of two recent biographies of Trotsky by Professors Geoffrey Swain and Ian Thatcher, two well-known British historians, David North raises troubling questions about the state of contemporary historical scholarship. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent book!
David North begins his seminal review of two recent biographies of Leon Trotsky by Geoffrey Swain and Ian Thatcher by bringing to memory the cruel events of 1937.Nearly 70 years have passed since Stalin's "Year of Terror", in which over one million people perished as the result of a deliberate campaign of political genocide against the last surviving generation of Marxists and Socialists inside the Soviet Union.North reminds us that these killings stemmed from a larger epoch of political persecution against members of the Left Opposition, which was led by Trotsky.At a time when renewed interest in Marxism and the nature of the Soviet Union is coming into play, many students and youth are beginning to hear of the name Trotsky for the very first time.It is within this context that I remember what Santayana said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."North sets the record straight that neither of these two recent works by Thatcher or Swain represent critical (or for that matter) honest academic ventures into the life of one of the 20th century's most complicated and celebrated figures.These so-called biographies regurgitate some of the oldest distortions and falsehoods about the Russian revolutionary, and by many standards are typical of the lazy work that passes for today's university reading material.For instance, in Swain's book the last 12 years of Trotsky's life is only treated with 25 pages!He then goes on to tell us that Trotsky would "write on subjects on which he knew very little," and that he was a firm supporter of "socialism in one country."The method of Ian Thatcher is perhaps worse; every time he criticizes Trotsky's struggle in the party regime he employs the argumentation of Stalin or the Right Opposition, and at one point argues that Trotsky was something of a male chauvinist.Equally misleading and disturbing is Thatcher's constant reference of the Trotsky family as "The Bronsteins," which stinks of anti-Semitism.When one finishes North's review one can easily sense that these biographies represent academic hit pieces, designed to confuse and demoralize students on what might have been in the 20th century had Trotskyism triumphed.North's work represents an important contribution to reverse this process, and by that I mean simply telling the truth. ... Read more

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This story of a highly intelligent observer of the turbulent 20th century who was intimately involved as the secretary and bodyguard to Leon Trotsky is based on extensive interviews with the subject, Jean van Heijenoort, and his family, friends, and colleagues.

The author has captured the personal drama and the professional life of her protagonist–ranging from the political passion of a young intellectual to the scientific and historic work in the most abstract and yet philosophically important area of logic–in a very readable narrative. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Enthusiastically recommended for anyone interested in following van Heijenoort's challenging life
From Trotsky to Godel: The Life of Jean van Heijenoort is the true-life biography of a man in a prime position to observe twentieth-century turmoil. He served as a secretary and bodyguard to Leon Trotsky, and was intellectually and politically passionate; in his maturity, he contributed greatly to the realm of abstract philosophical logic. From Trotsky to Godel draws heavily upon interviews with van Heijenoort himself, as well as his friends, family, and colleagues. Enthusiastically recommended for anyone interested in following van Heijenoort's challenging life, and also for students of Trotsky seeking to round out their perspectives on the man and his writings. ... Read more

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This book is a legal document of great historical significance. In 1936-1938, during the period of the Great Purges, in which millions died, there were three ?show trials? in Moscow.1. The first trial was of 16 members of the so-called ?Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre?, held in August 1936, at which the chief defendants were Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, two of the most prominent former party leaders. All were sentenced to death and were promptly executed.2. The second trial in January 1937 involved 17 lesser figures including Karl Radek, Yuri Piatakov and Grigory Sokolnikov. Thirteen of the defendants were shot immediately. The rest received sentences in labor camps, where they were shot a few years later.3. The third trial, in March 1938, included 21 defendants alleged to belong to the so-called ?Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites?, led by Nikolai Bukharin, former head of the Communist International, former Prime Minister Alexei Rykov, Genrikh Yagoda, Christian Rakovsky and Nikolai Krestinsky. All of the leading defendants were executed.All of the defendants in these ?trials? were prominent personalities, including former members of the Politburo and old Bolsheviks whose credentials as revolutionaries could not be questioned. The charges against them were that they had received messages from Trotsky who was in such places as Copenhagen and Mexico City, directing them to overthrow the Government of the Soviet Union and restore Capitalism.Although the charges were inherently ridiculous, a committee of old leftists formed in Mexico City to examine them. They had as their star witness Trotsky himself plus one of his wives and one of his sons who had not been killed yet, plus all of Trotsky's papers. Through these documents, they were able to prove that the charges in the Moscow show trials were false.Trotsky himself was assassinated in Mexico City on August 21, 1940, two years after this Dewey Commission Report had been published. ... Read more

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How the October 1917 Russian Revolution, the first victorious socialist revolution, transformed the fight for women's emancipation. Trotsky explains the Bolshevik government's steps to wipe out illiteracy, establish equality in economic and political life, set up child-care centers and public kitchens, guarantee the right to abortion and divorce, and more.

Notes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

How were women & their families impacted by the Russian Revolution?
What a slim volume brimming with juicy information "Women and the Family" is! Trotsky takes a hard look at the very big economic and social picture and how it will impact on women's emancipation and the development of the family. For example, the fight for electrification, mechanization, the need to curb alcoholism, educate women and children, create communal childcare are all discussed with the focus on how women and their families will be impacted. Sexuality, abortion rights, monogamy, religious influences and more are topics Trotsky addresses. One of the selections is in easy-to-read Q & A format but all the selections are quite readable and to the point. Two articles are written by Trotsky in exile. You can see the crushing contrast ofgains women made in the early years of the Russian Revolution and how Stalinism eroded these gains. The introduction to the book contains useful overview of the role of women in the Russian Revolution, the gains of the first ten years, and the declineof those gains under Stalin. Although Amazon may list this book as out of stock from time to time, it's always available from booksfrompathfinder by clicking on "new and used" near the top of this page.

What women fight for
How can a book that begins, "The Russian Revolution was begun by women" not intrigue a serious reader interested in women's role in history?This sentence begins the introduction to Leon Trotsky's seminal work on women in a revolutionary society. In this collection of letters, articles, and greetings to political rallies, Trotsky takes up the question of woman's equality and emancipation.
In one article written in 1925 Trotsky explains,"from the enslavement of women grow prejudices and superstitions which shroud the children of the new generation..."and in 1937 with the consolidation of Stalinism in the Soviet Union, he writes, from exile, about the counter-revolution against women.The Stalinists have "forgotten that socialism was to remove the cause which impels woman to abortion and not force her into the "joys of motherhood" with the help of a foul police interference in what is to every woman the most intimate sphere of life."Reading this book today strikes me as both instructive and relevant to those who continue to struggle for full women's liberation.

Revolution frees women!
The depth of revolutionary transformation brought on by social upheavals can be judged by how much the status and role of women in that society are altered.This author, Leon Trotsky, was one of the central leaders of the Russian revolution of 1917.In this set of essays, Trotsky examines the effect of that revolution on the status of women and the structure and function of the nuclear family.Prior to 1917, women in Russia were the virtual slaves of their husbands.The Russian revolution began a process of freeing women from this bondage.This book explains the huge advances in the rights of women that were made in the early days of the Russian revolution.This process, unfortunately, was cut short and betrayed by the bureaucratic caste led by Joseph Stalin that usurped political power from the workers.Trotsky also examines in this book how the reactionary leadership under Stalin and his successors rolled back the gains made by women.This contrast between the revolutionary treatment of women and the family under the leadership of Lenin and the reactionary policies of the Stalinist regime has important lessons for revolutionists today.This book is a must-read for today’s rebels. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Excellent Commentary
Trotsky's analysis of the early stages of the Communist Revolution in China is a remarkable exegesis of Stalin's dictatorial and anti-revolutionary attempts to organize a political leadership for the sake of working against the peasantry. Trotsky is especially meticulous in his documentation of Stalin's internal declarations of aligning the U.S.S.R. with the Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuo-Min Tang. Trotsky writes: "The Communist Party of China has been a shackled party in the past period. It did not have so much as its own newspaper. Imagine what this means in general and especially in a revolution! [..] Can we tolerate anything like this? This means to disarm the the proletariat politically" (89). Trotsky constantly called for the arming of the proletariat and the forming of independent Soviets in China, while Stalin constantly fought against it. Perhaps if Trotsky had been in the position to implement his politics more directly the history of Communism in China would have been different.

PROBLEMS OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION, 1925-27
Recently I reviewed in this space Andre Malraux's Mate's Fate, a novelistic treatment of the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27 that emphasized the turmoil at the base of Chinese society in its late phase after the popular front alliance with General Chiang Kai-Shek's bourgeois nationalist Kuomintang broke down and Chaing began his extermination drive against the Chinese Communists. In Leon Trotsky's book, under review here, we get a real time, real life analysis of the political questions that led to that catastrophe and what revolutionaries could learn from it.

I have noted elsewhere that the Communist International (hereafter Comintern) evolved in the mid-1920's , under the impact of Stalinization, from a revolutionary organization that made political mistakes, sometimes grossly so, in pursuit of revolution to an organization that pursued anti-revolutionary aims as it turned primarily into an adjunct of Soviet foreign policy. Prima facie evidence for such a conclusion is the Soviet Communist Party /Commintern policy and its implementation toward the budding Chinese Revolution.

As much as policy toward the Chinese Revolution became a political football in the internal Russian Communist party fights between Stalin's bloc and Trotsky's bloc it is impossible to understand the strategy for the Chinese Revolution without an understanding of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. No Marxist, at least not openly and honestly, put forth any claim that in the West the national bourgeoisie could be a progressive force in any modern upheaval. Russia, in the early 20th century was, however, still a battleground over this question. This is where Trotsky formulated the advanced Marxist notion that in Russia the national bourgeoisie was too weak, too beholding to foreign capitalist interests and too dependent on the Czarist state and its hangers-on to fulfill the tasks associated with the classic bourgeois revolutions in the West. Thus, for Russia alone at that time Trotsky postulated that the working class had become the heirs of the revolutions in the West as well as its socialist tasks. The Revolution of 1905 gave a glimmer of understanding to that proposition and the Revolution of October 1917 cannot be understood except under that premise.

In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution the question of who would lead the revolutions of the countries even less developed that Russia, mainly colonial and semi-colonial regimes, formed one of the new political battlegrounds. And China was the first dramatic test that Trotsky's original Russia only premise applied to underdeveloped `third world' capitalist regimes, as well. However,unlike in Russia, this time Trotsky lost. The necessary independent organization of the working class and the political separation of the communist vanguard were not carried out and, to our regret, the Chinese Revolution was beheaded. As mentioned above this was a conscious Stalinist policy of kowtowing to Chiang by unequivocably ordering the Communist Party to make itself politically and miltarily subservient to the Kuomintang as well as providing Comintern military advisers to Chiang.

Today, even a cursory look at countries of belated and uneven development hammers home the fact that the various tasks associated with the Russian and Chinese Revolutions still need to be carried out. Thus, the political fights that wracked the international communist movement in the 1920's which under ordinary circumstances would only be of historical interest today take on a more life and death meaning for many of the peoples of the world. That makes this book well worth the read.

I would also add that there is a very interesting appendix at the end of this work detailing reports from the field filed by those Comintern agents that carried out Comintern policy in China and who, as a result, had become oppositionists. These reports give added ammunition to Trotsky's more theoretical arguments. They also give fresh and bones to the some of the points that Malraux was trying to bring out in Man's Fate. Read on.

Trotsky Shows How Stalin Betrayed Chinese Revolution
While probably not the best introduction for those unfamiliar with Trotsky's philosophy, this book hits the mark.In article after article, Trotsky shows how Stalin's policies were aimed against the interests of the international working class.Trotsky's arguments are many, but in essence, he argues that Stalin forced the Communist Party to subordinate itself politically to the bourgeois-nationalist Kuomintang party of Chiang-Kai-Shek.This obvious deviation from Marxism was justified by the Stalinists on the grounds that China was an oppressed country straining under the weight of western imperialism.Stalin -- and Mao -- argued that within backwards countries there exists something called the "national bourgeoisie."Stalin and Mao repeatedly forced the working class and the peasantry to accept the domination of the so-called "national bourgeoisie" in the name of fighting imperialist oppression.Trotsky shows that the "national bourgeoisie" in the backwards countries is just the agent of imperialism, nothing more.Thus, Trotsky advances the theoryof the permanent revolution, which says that true national independence and agrarian reforms can come only in a struggle against the so-called national bourgeoisie. ... Read more

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The central organizer of the Red Army discusses the challenge of organizing an army made up of peasants and workers, based on a shared interest in defending the young Soviet republic.

Also Available in: Spanish. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

"War is Military Extension of Politics"
"Military Writings," Leon Trotsky, NY, Merit Publishers, 1969 Lib CCC 72-92843, PC, 160 pgs. plus Append. I-II of 11 pgs. 8" x 5 1/2" (AKA Pathfinder Press, ISBN 0873480295).

An interesting political diatribe over important minutiae affecting military stratagems utilized by protetarian leaders to reconstitute a formerly defeated Imperialistic White Russian Army into a pragmatic Red Army militia.Born Russian Jew in 1879, Lev Davidovitch Bronstein (Brunshtein), later assumed name of Leon Trotsky, becoming a major Lenin supporter (latter died 1924) of 1917 Revolution & fighting against Soviet military bureaucratism (mouldy functionarsim) of Social Democrats (Stalin led Marxist dictatorship), formulating Bolsheviks' (splinter) party but later rejoined Lenin's Mensheviki.

A complex man of many talents, Trotsky was eventually appointed Russian Civil War Commissar (for war 1918-1925) & charged with creating the Red Army.He regarded war as an extension of politics, argued militarism was an art (not a science!), and emphasized importance of platoon leaders, demanding soldiers' hygiene (to rid lice), oiling of guns & greasing of boots. He was
exacting & vocal on military policies of need to use both attack (offensive) & retreat (defensive) maneuvers and necessity of formulating positionist versus maneuverist engagements.He based his tenets on the essentials of war on his detailed study of both recent & historical battle outcomes, refutating vulgar dogmas, nostalgic or otherwise.

Trotsky was a significant journalist, a pacifist & energetic vocal political agitator pushing for International Communism (permanent revolution) finally ousted by Stalin in 1929, & after several attempts was assassinated by axe in his home near Mexico City (Communist stronghold) by Stalin's agent Mornard (?AKA Jacques Dreschd).I'm confident this book is required reading for West Point Cadets.Diatribes are useful in so far they seek to rivet points, but for some, like myself, prolixity can assume features of black holes.Still, it is a good read.

A Gem for Workers
This book is a witty gem with great relevance for today. Trotsky points out that the military practice that defended the Russian Revolution against imperialist invasion was based on a political orientation-one that we can understand and fight for today, the workers and farmers alliance. He brilliantly defends this alliance against the ultralefts who unknowingly threatened it with their foolishness. He also debunks the so-called science of the reactionary stuffed shirts-like those military figures we see briefing the press today with their talk about smart bombs and surgically precise warfare. Read it, as a worker who wants to clarify your thinking about war.

war and politics, politics and war from a practical manual
This book is a selection of the best of Trotsky's many writings, speeches, and debates on the military strategy that won the Russian civil war and defeated not only the Russian counterrevolutionaries, but 21 different capitalist nations including the USA that sent troops to aid them.Some of these writings come from the public debates in the leaders of the Soviet Government with other political parties or within the leadership of the Communist Party.All of them illustrate the triumphant strategy of advancing politics, the politics of the liberation and empowerment of working people, oppressed nationalities, and peasants as the key to military victory.This should be read for the battles of the future.

The art of politics and war
This is a fascinating collection of articles and speeches by Leon Trotsky, one of the central leaders of the 1917 Russian revolution. Trotsky was assigned to organize and lead the new Red Army that defended revolutionary Russia (later the Soviet Union) from foreign capitalist intervention and counterrevolutionary civil war from 1918-1923.

Here, Trotsky takes up questions about political and military strategy and tactics posed in wide-ranging debates that went on in the Bolshevik Party and Red Army at that time. He provides though-provoking analysis of the shifting relations among the major world powers in the early 1900s, especially under the impact of WWI and the Russian Revolution, and the necessary decisions made at different points by the leaders of the Soviet workers and peasants.

Best of all, this is a detailed example of the Marxist method of orienting oneself in face of changing circumstances and figuring out what to do next, the art of politics as well as war. Trotsky stresses that this cannot be done by hasty generalizations or simplifications, or by finding and just applying a few general principles. It takes hard work, careful attention to facts and details, and accurate assessment of the relations between different social classes, starting on a world scale.

Workers today can learn a lot from this rich experience! ... Read more