Trotskys Challenge

In "Trotsky s Challenge: The Literary Discussion of 1924 and the Fight for the Bolshevik Revolution," Corney has translated, annotated, and introduced the major contributions to the infamous Soviet polemic of 1924 triggered by "The Lessons of October," his controversial analysis of the revolution."

In Trotsky’s Challenge: The ‘Literary Discussion’ of 1924 and the Fight for the Bolshevik Revolution, Frederick C. Corney examines the political polemic surrounding the publication of Trotsky’s The Lessons of October. Trotsky’s analysis ran counter to the efforts of Bolshevik leaders to fashion the narrative of October as a foundation event in which the Bolshevik Party, under the clear-sighted leadership of Lenin, played a major role in bringing about a radical socialist revolution in Russia. Corney has translated into English the major contributions to this polemic, annotated them, and written an extensive contextualising introduction, examining the polemic for its impact not only on the figure of Trotsky, but also on the changing political culture of the 1920s and 1930s.

The debates surrounding the publication of Trotsky's Lessons of October are here collected, translated, and explained for the first time.

'Books and pamphlets by Leon Trotsky': v. 1, p. [429]; v. 2, p. [532]; v. 3, p. [427].

Documents the fight of the communist opposition from 1923 to 1929 against the reactionary political and economic policies of the rising bureaucratic caste in the Soviet Union.

'Books and pamphlets by Leon Trotsky': v. 1, p. [429]; v. 2, p. [532]; v. 3, p. [427].

The major political questions of the 20th century, discussed by an outstanding communist leader. Includes a defense of the right to revolution, made in 1906 in the prisoner's dock of the tsarist courts; speeches as a leader of the revolutionary government following the Bolshevik-led revolution; and "I Stake My Life", Trotsky's 1937 defense of his 20-year Bolshevik course and challenge to the organizers of Joseph Stalin's frame-up trials.

Born Lev Davidovich Bronstein in southern Ukraine, Trotsky was both a world-class intellectual and a man capable of the most narrow-minded ideological dogmatism. He was an effective military strategist and an adept diplomat, who staked the fate of the Bolshevik revolution on the meager foundation of a Europe-wide Communist upheaval. He was a master politician who played his cards badly in the momentous struggle for power against Stalin in the 1920s. And he was an assimilated, indifferent Jew who was among the first to foresee that Hitler's triumph would mean disaster for his fellow European Jews, and that Stalin would attempt to forge an alliance with Hitler if Soviet overtures to the Western democracies failed. Here, Trotsky emerges as a brilliant and brilliantly flawed man. Rubenstein offers us a Trotsky who is mentally acute and impatient with others, one of the finest students of contemporary politics who refused to engage in the nitty-gritty of party organization in the 1920s, when Stalin was maneuvering, inexorably, toward Trotsky's own political oblivion. As Joshua Rubenstein writes in his preface, "Leon Trotsky haunts our historical memory. A preeminent revolutionary figure and a masterful writer, Trotsky led an upheaval that helped to define the contours of twentieth-century politics." In this lucid and judicious evocation of Trotsky's life, Joshua Rubenstein gives us an interpretation for the twenty-first century.

Fourteen volumes covering the period of Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in 1929 until his assassination at Stalin's orders in 1940.