Leon Trotsky Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Leon (Lev) Trotsky (1879–1940) was a major Russian Marxist figure and key actor in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 that brought communism to Russia. Although sometimes described as Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin’s most capable lieutenant, Trotsky found himself politically isolated after Lenin’s death in 1924, was forced to flee Russia, and was eventually killed by agents of Lenin’s successor, Joseph Stalin, in Mexico in 1940.

Trotsky was born in southern Ukraine as Lev Davidovich Bronshtein. He was drawn to Marxism as a teenager, joined a socialist organization in 1896, and was arrested in 1898 for his activities. He was exiled to Siberia, but escaped in 1902 using a forged passport with the name Trotsky, the head jailer of the Odessa prison.

Trotsky fled to Europe, meeting Lenin and other Russian Marxists in London and collaborating with them on various activities. In 1903, when Lenin formed the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Democratic Social Labor Party, Trotsky joined with the rival Mensheviks. In 1905, Trotsky returned to Russia, organizing the first revolutionary council in St. Petersburg. He was arrested and exiled but again escaped, fleeing to Europe, where he worked as a journalist. In 1914, he condemned World War I (1914–1918) and led the internationalist wing of the Mensheviks.

Trotsky gained renown as a gifted Marxist thinker, orator, and political organizer. His major intellectual innovations were the ideas of uneven development and permanent revolution. By uneven development, he meant that capitalism in less developed countries evolved differently than in the developing West. In poorer states, the working class would emerge as a more powerful force than the local bourgeoisie, creating the possibility for these areas to skip stages in social and economic development. This idea influenced Lenin, who argued for an immediate communist revolution in Russia. Permanent revolution referred to the fact that a successful revolutionary movement in a poorer country, such as Russia, would require socialist revolutions in more developed states in order for the movement in the poorer state to succeed. Later, in the 1920s, this idea served as the ideological basis for the schism with Stalin, who advocated “socialism in one country.”

Trotsky returned to Russia in 1917, after the tsar was overthrown. He became head of the Petrograd (St. Petersburg) Soviet, a council that represented workers and competed with the Russian provisional government for power. He joined the Bolsheviks in July 1917. Lenin admired Trotsky for his political and intellectual abilities, and Trotsky supported the Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1917. Afterward, Trotsky served as commissar for foreign affairs and commander of the Red (Bolshevik) Army, which successful defeated its enemies in the Russian Civil War (1917–1923).

After his death, Stalin and Trotsky were the leading figures to succeed Lenin. Stalin, however, had promoted his allies within the Communist (Bolshevik) Party, and Trotsky’s ideas of permanent revolution were dismissed as impractical and unpatriotic. Trotsky’s Left Opposition faction tried to mobilize the Russian workers, but this failed, demonstrating that he was no longer a charismatic mass leader. His influence began to decline, and Stalin removed him as head of the Red Army. Trotsky was expelled from the party in 1927; exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929; and later accused of plotting, from abroad, actions against Stalin and the Soviet state. He became one of Stalin’s harshest critics, producing works such as Permanent Revolution (1930), The History of the Russian Revolution (3 vols, 1931–1933) and Revolution Betrayed (1937). He founded the Fourth Socialist International in 1938 and was assassinated in Mexico in 1940.

Trotskyite parties in the West defended his legacy and professed to offer an alternative to Soviet-style communism, but they never gained political power.

Bibliography:

Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Armed: Leon Trotsky 1879–1921. New York: Oxford University Press, 1954.
The Prophet Outcast: Leon Trotsky 1929–1940. New York: Oxford University Press, 1963.
The Prophet Unarmed: Leon Trotsky 1921–1929. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959.
Knei-Paz, Baruch. The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.
Trotsky, Leon. The History of the Russian Revolution, translated by Max Eastman. 3 vols. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1932.
The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? Translated by Max Eastman. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday/ Doran and Company, 1937.
Volkogonov, Dmitrii. Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary, translated by Harold Shukman. New York: Free Press, 1996.

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