The orator who built the Red Army, felled by an ice axe
25 October 1917, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. As Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary delegates walked out in protest against the Bolshevik insurrection, Trotsky declared from the chair: 'You are pitiful, isolated individuals. You are bankrupts. Your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on — into the dustbin of history!'
Chairman of the Petersburg Soviet at 26 in 1905, stage-director of the October rising in 1917, then War Commissar forging the Red Army from an armoured train. His theory of permanent revolution insisted the Russian Revolution could not be completed without the victory of the European working class, and he led the Left Opposition against Stalin's 'socialism in one country'. But in the quiet war of the party apparatus he was always late. Deported in 1929, he founded the Fourth International; in 1940 he was killed in his study in Mexico City by an ice axe in the hand of Stalin's assassin.
Career Timeline
- 1905Chairs the Petersburg Soviet at 26
- 1906Published Results and Prospects, an early formulation of permanent revolution
- 1907–14Exile journalism in Vienna and Paris; publishes Pravda
- 1914–17Anti-war立场; exile in Paris and New York, Nashe Slovo and Novy Mir
- 1917.5Returns to Russia, joins the Mezhraiontsy — the inter-district unity faction
- 1917.8VI Congress: Mezhraiontsy merge into the Bolshevik Party
- 1917.9–10Chairs the Soviet and the MRC; designs the rising
- 1918–25War Commissar: builds the Red Army, wins the civil war
- 1923–27The Left Opposition: defeat and expulsion
- 1929–40Deportation; the Fourth International (1938); killed in Mexico
- 1930Published the autobiography My Life
- 1930–1932Published the three-volume History of the Russian Revolution
- 1936Published The Revolution Betrayed
Related historical events
- 1905–1907The Revolution of 1905Chairman of the Petersburg SovietAt twenty-six he emerged as the leading figure of the St. Petersburg Soviet and led the general strike; after his arrest he defended the right of insurrection at his trial.
- 1917.02–07The February RevolutionOrator of soviet powerReturning in May, he led the Mezhraiontsy and argued for soviet power; he was arrested after the July Days.
- 1917.10–1918.01The October RevolutionSoviet chairman, insurrection directorAs chairman of the Petrograd Soviet he directed the practical work of the insurrection through the MRC, and became the first Commissar of Foreign Affairs.
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionRed Army founderAs People's Commissar for War he built the Red Army and directed the war effort from his armored train across the fronts.
- 1919–1921The Soviet-Polish WarWar Commissar, sceptical of the march on Warsaw
- 1922.12Formation of the USSRLenin's allyHe was the Politburo ally whom Lenin asked to defend the Georgian cause at the party congress.
- 1921–1928The New Economic Policy (NEP)Advocate of planningWithin the NEP framework he demanded state planning and industrial priority while criticizing party bureaucratization.
- 1923–1927The Succession Struggle and the Left OppositionLeader of the Left Opposition, author of the Oct 8 letter that prompted the Declaration of 46His Oct 8, 1923 letter to the CC criticizing party bureaucratization prompted the Declaration of 46. Wrote 'The New Course,' led the United Opposition, expelled 1927, deported 1929.
- 1934.01–07The Fascist Riot of 6 February 1934Critic of the lineIn Whither France? (1934) he read the February crisis as a revolutionary one and argued for workers' militias and organs of workers' power, holding that an alliance stretched to the Radicals could only tie the workers to bourgeois politics.
- 1934–1938The French Popular Front and the Strikes of 1936Critic of the popular-front lineOn 9 June 1936 he wrote that 'the French revolution has begun', and attacked the Popular Front as the machinery of class collaboration that caged and killed it.
- 1936–1939The Spanish Civil WarCritic of the Popular Front lineArgued that postponing the revolution would bring defeat, and criticized the POUM's entry into the Catalan government as well
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeTarget of overseas assassinationHe led the Left Opposition and Fourth International in exile until an assassin acting on Stalin's orders killed him in Mexico in 1940.
Permanent Revolution — the Revolution Does Not Stop at the Border
Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution was born from the experience of the 1905 Revolution and remained the theoretical axis defining his political identity through the 1930s. Its first formulation came in Results and Prospects (1906). Building on the backwardness and combined and uneven development of Russian capitalism, Trotsky argued that the Russian bourgeoisie, unlike its West European counterparts, was born too late and too weak to carry out even its own democratic revolution. The proletariat, though a minority, would have to lead the peasantry and seize power, and once in power could not confine itself to democratic tasks but would be compelled to take socialist measures encroaching on private property.
But the theory did not end there. For Trotsky, the 'permanence' of revolution was completed on the international plane. In a country like Russia, where the proletariat was a minority, building socialism was impossible without victorious proletarian revolutions in the advanced countries of Western Europe. The October Revolution was only the first act of world revolution; socialism would become possible only when the Western working class triumphed and came to Russia's aid: this was the fundamental divide between Trotsky and 'socialism in one country'.
In The Permanent Revolution (1930), published after his deportation, Trotsky restated the theory systematically and refuted Stalin's 'stage theory'. The defeat of the Chinese Revolution in 1927 (when the Comintern insisted on alliance with Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang only for communists to be massacred in Shanghai) was presented as a tragic vindication of permanent revolution. From this followed the proposition that in colonial and semi-colonial countries, bourgeois nationalist forces could not carry the revolution to completion; the proletariat had to hold hegemony over the democratic and national-liberation struggle.
Permanent revolution became the core doctrine of Trotskyism and the theoretical foundation of the Fourth International (1938). It was later applied to the analysis of third-world revolutions (Cuba, Algeria) and remains, within the communist movement, the most consistent internationalist alternative to 'socialism in one country'.
The Armoured Train — the Civil War's travelling headquarters
From 1918 to 1920, Trotsky's train was the ghost of the Russian Civil War. A single armoured train carried a printing press, telegraph, wireless station, map room, library, and a personal guard. This mobile headquarters covered over 105,000 kilometres in two and a half years: more than two and a half times around the Earth.
Trotsky lived on that train. By day he wrote newspaper editorials; by night he arrived at some collapsing front and held summary court-martials. Wherever the train pulled in, morale surged and retreating units regrouped. He drafted 75,000 former tsarist officers into the Red Army and invented the political commissar system to watch over them.
The train was also revolutionary theatre: a red star on brown steel, a military band that played 'The Internationale' at every stop. After victory in 1920 the armoured train was retired, but the image never left him. When Trotsky was expelled from the party in 1927, the myth of the armoured train made him a dangerous alternative.