Leon Trotsky was one of the central operators of the October Revolution in Russia. His position as Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet at the time of the Revolution gave him immense influence. He helped negotiate the treaty that ended hostilities between Russia and Germany. He became a member of the leadership of the Politburo of the Communist Party and held his own in debates with Lenin, Stalin, Zinoviev and Bukharin. He defended the new revolutionary government against the Whites in the Russian Civil War. Undeniably he was one of the dominant political personalities in the early Soviet Union.
This did not, however, make him immune to controversy and even denouncement. The first few years of Soviet rule were turbulent ones and the leadership of the Party was controlled by the flamboyant and bellicose speakers, of which Trotsky was the most famous. He had started out as a journalist but quickly became involved in politics at a young age. His involvement with the Petrograd Soviet cemented his place in revolutionary history. Trotsky belonged to the Mensheviks, a faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. Although the faction was vehemently opposed to the other faction's idea of a violent uprising, Trotsky was of a different mind. He eventually joined the Bolsheviks and became one of Lenin's greatest supporters.
Trotsky inspired true fanaticism and dedication to the Revolution, especially in the soldiers of the Petrograd Soviet, who occupied the government buildings of the city on November 6, 1917. The next day the Winter Palace itself, the seat of the Provisional Government, was captured by the Petrograd soldiers under the command of Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko. Ovseenko was released from the Peter and Paul Fortress the same day as Trotsky earlier in August, after a failed Bolshevik insurrection in July.[1] Ovseenko was completely loyal to the Bolsheviks. This effectively ended the new government created in the wake of the February Revolution earlier that year, when Tsar Nicholas II had abdicated his throne. All over Russia, the Bolsheviks attempted to seize power, with varying degrees of success.
Trotsky was nominally in charge of the new Soviet government and Lenin was rushed back from exile in Finland. At the Second All-Russian Congress of the Soviets, Trotsky introduced a measure to turn over function of the government to the Soviets, away from the Provisional Government. At this time not many of the members of the Soviet Congress knew about the seizure of power the night before by the Bolsheviks. About halfway through the vote, the word broke about the Bolshevik seizure of power. As the Mensheviks and other socialist minorities in the Soviet Congress screamed about the illegal nature of the Bolsheviks’ actions, Trotsky harangued them. As they got up to leave, Trotsky literally screamed that they were doomed to the “garbage-heap of history!”[2] The dissenters walked out of the chamber and essentially capitulated to the Bolshevik coup.
It is important to note that the Bolsheviks firmly believed that the fall of the Provisional Government in Russia was a prelude to a European proletariat revolution. In other countries like Germany and Italy the communist parties were large in number and highly influential. To many that participated in the Russian Revolution, it was taken for granted that the world revolution was right around the corner. Although it came as a surprise to many that the first country to be affected was Russia because of its backward development and lack of a large, influential capitalist class. Trotsky believed that Russia’s revolution gave the Soviets an opportunity to aid their European counterparts and that this should be the new Soviet Republic’s highest priority.
Trotsky also believed that until the world proletariat had gained power, the revolution must be permanent. Revolution in Russia must be ongoing until it had spread over the whole globe. This was also the policy of the Bolsheviks until Stalin’s rise to power. This goes a long way in explaining some of Trotsky’s behavior during the negotiations in Brest-Litovsk.
Once Lenin returned to Petrograd, Trotsky became his advocate, giving eloquent speeches everywhere he went. He quickly became People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs and secured the new Soviet state peace with Germany in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on February 10, 1918. Unfortunately, Brest-Litovsk was seen as a farce, with Trotsky wildly denouncing the Germans at every opportunity and pulling political stunts. At first, he tried to simply declare an end to hostilities without signing a treaty at all. This gamble failed, and the Germans resumed their march toward Petrograd. The Soviets ended up with a worse settlement than the original one because of Trotsky's gambles.[3]
Shortly after obtaining power, the Congress of the Soviets passed a Bolshevik-sponsored resolution banning freedom of the press. To the consternation of many in attendance, Trotsky seemed wholly unabashed about censoring the “bourgeois press.”[4] This did not seem to bother many of the Bolshevik leadership. Lenin had long contended that it would be necessary to shut down the bourgeois press when they took power. They simply could not allow the enemy to get away with printing propaganda and weakening the Soviet’s power. All printing presses and paper were now brought under the control of the State.
After helping Lenin and the rest of the Bolsheviks seize power, Trotsky went about securing what he saw as the gains of the revolution. He was tasked with building the new Workers' and Peasants' Red Army to help defend the Soviet Republic in the Civil War. He had no military experience, but was appointed War Commissar because, to quote Lenin, "There was no one else to do it."[5] He quickly realized he would have to introduce conscription, mostly from the peasants. Widespread resistance to the draft among the peasants led to horrific massacres by the Soviets.
His first test came even before he left for Brest-Litovsk, when about 700 Cossacks marched toward Petrograd. Trotsky, with the help of an old tsarist military officer pushed the invaders back. This led him to recruit many old tsarist military men as long as they were politically reliable. This would eventually cause tension between Trotsky and other Bolsheviks, most notably Stalin and his Tsaritsyn group[6], who wanted to be able to fire commanders at will if they saw fit. It was just one of the events that foreshadowed the coming fractures within the Party.
Leon Trotsky proved himself a worthy military leader. He had his own armored train that he used to visit the front, speaking to the troops personally. Though many in the Party thought his “princely journeys to the front,” a waste of time and resources, it became a sort of psychological weapon against the enemy. It was almost as good as a division in reserve. [7]
Order in the new Red Army was maintained through strict discipline and propaganda. Trotsky himself would speak to the troops regularly to inspire them. Not obeying orders was a death sentence. Any unauthorized retreat was a death sentence. Fear and fanaticism kept the new army functioning through the lack of food and supplies.[8]
Trotsky had not only helped to bring the Bolsheviks to power, he had secured that victory for the newly-formed Communist Party of the Soviet Union. His contributions to the military and political struggles gave him a lot of clout in the new Party. He led the Red Army to victory and helped to save Moscow and Petrograd,[9] where he put himself in mortal danger to lead the defenders. What had started as a poorly-organized volunteer militia called the Red Guard had become a real, professional army.
Behind in the scene, back in Moscow where the leadership was meeting regularly to discuss the progress of the War, Trotsky’s leadership was being undermined. Stalin, already seeing Trotsky as a potential rival, began to undermine his authority at the front. Like Tsaritsyn, there were many other places where Trotsky’s use of old tsarist officers did not help his case.
Largely through Trotsky's leadership, the Soviets were able to defend their positions and in many cases push the invaders back. The War lasted from 1918 to 1921 but there would be sporadic rebellions until 1923. The upheavals of war, natural disasters, social catastrophe, and revolution caused serious damage to the new Soviet Republic. The death count, including World War One deaths, stands at around twenty million people. Factories, bridges, raw materials, and mines were sabotaged or destroyed. Lenin's policy of War Communism had helped the Soviets during the Civil War but now a new approach was needed to jump-start the economy.
In 1920, the Soviet economy was falling apart and it was decided that without a moderate return to capitalism in some areas such as agriculture, the economy could not develop. Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921. This step would lift the total ban on private property and allow some small business to operate at a profit. This was vehemently opposed by the Left Opposition of the party, who viewed it as a return to Capitalism. Trotsky in particular was not enthusiastic about retreat. Lenin used Stalin and his flunkies to undermine the position of Trotsky within the Party.[10]
The NEP was promulgated on March 21, 1921 and soon the economy began growing at a modest pace. The aims of the NEP were to help the Soviets catch up with the west in terms of industrialization and militarization. Lenin's influence was strong enough to get it passed but not without ruffling feathers. Trotsky was won over by the effects of the NEP but was really in favor of the militarization of labor, in effect putting the workforce of the Soviet Union under direct control of the state. He believed that everyone should be compelled to work, by force if necessary. This would allow the proletariat to "secure the socialization of the means of production." [11]
The trade union debate further pushed Trotsky away from others in the Party. In reality, Lenin believed, just as Trotsky did, that there was no need for workers to have their own independent organizations in a workers’ state. It was simply too politically inconvenient for him to say so at the time. However, Trotsky went so far as to suggest the complete militarization of Soviet society. His successes in the Red Army had shown him the efficiency of a regimented military. “Trotsky argued that the ability of socialism to conscript forced labor was its main advantage over capitalism.”[12]
While Lenin had never been enamored with Trotsky, he did believe him to be a capable political leader. As his health declined, the issue of succession came to the forefront. The trade union debate and other arguments had largely split the Politburo into two groups. Lenin wanted to curb what he saw as the growing threat of Stalin and the Party bureaucracy[13] and urged Trotsky to challenge Stalin on issues like intra-party democracy.
There came now a great struggle within the Party that would sew the fate of Leon Trotsky and many others. Many thought Trotsky to be Lenin’s only obvious heir. Stalin believed otherwise, and began to sabotage Trotsky’s image in the Party. For quite some time, Stalin had been able, through the power of appointments, to stack his own supporters in most of the important positions.
By 1925 Lenin was dead and Stalin was firmly in control of the party apparatus. Issues like intra-party democracy further split the party into two distinct camps. Stalin was determined to be the last one left standing when the dust settled. Eventually Trotsky was relieved of almost all of his party duties. He was left virtually unemployed with nothing to do.
Popular opinion had swung against him, and many of his supporters were being denounced and expelled from the Party. Opposition was now seen as treason, and Stalin led the charge against the “counter-revolutionary agents” within the Party. In February 1929, Trotsky was formally expelled from the Soviet Union. His supporters often suffered similar or worse fates, many ending up in the gulag. Trotsky’s expulsion from the Party was the start of a vicious campaign against him in the party press. Show trials in which many of the Old Bolsheviks were made to denounce Trotsky did not make things easier for him.
Once free of the political constraints of writing in the Soviet Union, Trotsky began to write books and articles damning Stalin’s leadership. The Soviet Union, he argued, was headed in the wrong direction. Stalin’s purges of many of the original revolutionary heroes of the Soviet Union had left a huge vacuum of power which Stalin nimbly used to establish his own rule. To Trotsky it was no longer a dictatorship of the proletariat, but a dictatorship of Stalin. Some of the first material he published was about the Stalinist propaganda. Point by point, Trotsky exposed the false claims about the miracles of socialism supposedly occurring in the Soviet Union. [14]
The most famous, The Revolution Betrayed was published in 1936. In it, Trotsky lays out his main criticisms of Stalinist Russia. Three main points were that Stalin had become a “Soviet Thermidor,” essentially meaning he became a force for the counter-revolution in Soviet Russia.[15] Second, that the Soviet Union has become a degenerated workers state. That is, the bourgeoisie has been overthrown but then when the proletariat took power, it was later dispossessed by Stalinism. Third, that the policy of “Socialism in One Country,” was doomed to failure because of the nature of permanent revolution.[16] The last criticism was the one Stalin simply could not tolerate.
Given his own role in the Revolution and his immense power and prestige at the beginning of it, many of his criticisms seem somewhat self-aggrandizing. At many opportunities he had the chance to change many of the things he saw wrong with the system and he declined to do so. His view was colored by his past involvements with the organization he now criticized and many of his arguments cannot be taken at face value. While Trotsky’s reasons for publishing The Revolution Betrayed may have been somewhat vain, it did have an effect on International Socialism.
Regardless of Trotsky’s motives, many of his criticisms are correct. Stalin did largely set the Revolution back to before the proletariat took power. The execution of many of the Old Bolsheviks for espionage or treason who had participated in the October Revolution made it easier for Stalin to replace them. His power now secure, much of what Trotsky saw as the progress of the Revolution was halted.
The idea that the Soviet Union had become a degenerated workers state is one that brought many to Trotsky’s way of thinking. He believed that what existed in the Soviet Union was not socialism but rather a degenerated workers state. The workers had overthrown the bourgeoisie but had not yet gained true power for themselves.[17] This was essential to Trotsky’s ideas.
The Comintern, or Communist International, which was originally an organ to spread Revolution to Europe, came firmly under Stalin’s control. He used it as a tool to bring money and arms coming into Russia at the expense of aiding revolutionaries abroad. This was a heretical sin in Trotsky’s eyes, dedicated as he was to the idea of world revolution. Stalin thought that the great world revolution was not imminent and that focus must now shift to strengthening Soviet Russia, the stronghold of socialism.[18]
Subsequently, Trotsky also opposed the idea of “Socialism in One Country,” viewing it as giving more power to the bureaucracy and because he thought it disobeyed the laws of combined and uneven development. Stalin saw the bureaucracy as an efficient way to accumulate power and wanted to expand it. In Trotsky’s view, Stalin’s departure from strong internationalism was hurting the prospects for the world revolution. While seeking to build up the stronghold of socialism in Russia into a model workers' state, Stalin switched from a policy of actively trying to foment revolution in European countries to somewhat normal diplomatic relations.
Trotsky was labeled a “permanentist” for his view, but it was and remains one of his bedrock theories. He believed that it was impossible for socialism to be achieved in any one country while the rest of the surrounding countries remained in the hands of the capitalist classes. The only thing that would develop from this situation was isolation and decay, not growth. Russia had not experienced the necessary bourgeois revolution and accumulation of capital to make a transition to socialism without help from outside the country. [19]
This became an even larger issue when fascism came to power in 1933 in Germany. Trotsky had early on advocated a policy of a "United Front." That is, for Soviet Russia to ally itself with workers' movements outside of the Marxist organizations. This would broaden their impact on the political left by engaging with those outside of the traditional communist parties. A political alliance with other workers' movements would allow Soviet Russia to have a far greater influence in other countries. Trotsky believed that a United Left could defend themselves against the dangers of fascism.[20]
Trotsky’s view of the development of the Soviet Union after his exile was largely critical and analytical. He criticized the steps taken after (and some before) Lenin’s death and under Stalin’s leadership. He broke down Stalinist propaganda and exposed the truth from the lies. He believed that the mistakes made by the leadership in the Soviet Union would ultimately lead to a new political revolution.[21]
Leon Trotsky had immense power when the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917. He was the most ardent supporter and vigorous defender of the Russian Revolution. As the leader of the Petrograd Soviet and backed up with armed soldiers, he could have had anything he wanted in those first days of November. He could have steered the Revolution in any direction he saw fit. Instead, he gave that power away to Lenin and the Party and laid the foundations for the rise of Stalin and his cult of personality. Trotsky had helped make the Revolution into a dictatorship.
References
[1] Figes, Orland. A People’s Tragedy. Penguin Books: New York, New York 1996Pg. 455
[2] Reed, John. 10 Days That Shook The World. Boni & Liveright: New York , March 1919. Pg 94
[3] Ibid, Pg 95
[4] Gellately, Robert. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler. Vintage Books, Random House: New York, 2007. Pg 43
[5] Warth, Robert D. Leon Trotsky. G.K. Hall & Co, Twayne Publishers: Boston, 1977. Pg 96
[6] Ibid, Pg 100
[7] Ibid, Pg 101
[8] Ibid, Pg 102
[9] Ibid, Pg 105
[10] Gellately. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler. Pg 146
[11] Trotsky, Leon. Terrorism and Communism [Dictatorship vs Democracy]. Viewed Online, Chapter 8 “The Militarization of Labor.” Originally Published in 1920, re-edited 2006.
[12] Figes. A Peoples Tragedy. Pg 723
[13]Bensaïd, Daniel. “The Baggage of Exodus.” 100 Years of Permanent Revolution: Results and Prospects, 2006. Pg 62
[14] Howe, Irving. Leon Trotsky. The Viking Press: New York, 1978. Pg 121
[15] Bensaïd. “The Baggage of Exodus.” Pg 63
[16] Trotsky, Leon. The Revolution Betrayed. Viewed Online, Chapter 12 (Appendix). Originally Published in 1936.
[17] Trotsky. The Revolution Betrayed. Viewed Online, Chapter 3.
[18] Gellately. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler. Pg 149
[19] Trotsky. The Revolution Betrayed. Viewed Online, Chapter 12 (Appendix).
[20] Trotsky, Leon. The United Front for Defense: A Letter to a Social Democratic Worker. Viewed Online. Originally Published in April 1933. <>.
[21] Trotsky, Leon. The Revolution Betrayed. Viewed Online, Chapter 11, Sec 3.
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