Leon Trotsky Collection

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Leon Trotsky Collection http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf296n98nm No online items Register of the Trotsky collection, 1917-1995 Finding aid prepared by Hoover Institution Staff; machine-readable finding aid created by Hernán Cortés Hoover Institution Archives 434 Galvez Mall Stanford University Stanford, CA, 94305-6010 (650) 723-3563 [email protected] © 1998, 2016 Register of the Trotsky collection, 92032 1 1917-1995 Title: Leon Trotsky Collection Date (inclusive): 1917-1995 Collection Number: 92032 Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Archives Language of Material: Mainly in RussianEnglish Physical Description: 47 manuscript boxes, 4 envelopes, 2 phonorecords, 1 framed painting(20.2 linear feet) Abstract: Writings and correspondence of the Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, including drafts of articles and books, correspondence with John G. Wright and other leaders of the Socialist Workers Party of the United States, and typed copies of correspondence with V. I. Lenin; correspondence and reports of secretaries of Trotsky and leaders of the Socialist Workers Party, relating especially to efforts to safeguard Trotsky and to his assassination; records of the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky and of the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials; correspondence and writings of Nataliia Sedova Trotskaia and of Lev Sedov; and published and unpublished material relating to Trotsky. Assembled from records of the Socialist Workers Party and from papers of Wright and other party leaders. Also includes detailed summaries of correspondence in the Trotsky Papers at Harvard University. Boxes 1-45 also available on microfilm (50 reels). Phonotape cassette dub of sound recordings also available. Location note: Hoover Institution Archives. Access Collection open for research. The Hoover Institution Archives only allows access to copies of audiovisual items. To listen to sound recordings or to view videos or films during your visit, please contact the Archives at least two working days before your arrival. We will then advise you of the accessibility of the material you wish to see or hear. Please note that not all audiovisual material is immediately accessible. Publication Rights For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Archives. Acquisition Information The Hoover Institution Archives acquired the Leon Trotsky Collection from the Anchor Foundation in 1992. A register to the collection was prepared that year and remains the principal overall description of and finding aid to the collection. Material subsequently received from the Anchor Foundation was described in the Addendum in 2016. Accruals Materials may have been added to the collection since this finding aid was prepared. To determine if this has occurred, find the collection in Stanford University's online catalog at http://searchworks.stanford.edu/ . Materials have been added to the collection if the number of boxes listed in the online catalog is larger than the number of boxes listed in this finding aid. Alternate Forms Available Boxes 1-45 available on microfilm (50 reels). Phonotape cassette dub of sound recordings also available. Preferred Citation [Identification of item], Leon Trotsky collection, [Box no.], Hoover Institution Archives. Historical Note The Leon Trotsky Collection of material by and about the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) was assembled by the Socialist Workers Party and its affiliate, the Library of Social History. Originating as the Communist League of America in 1928, the Socialist Workers Party adopted its present name and form of existence in 1938. As the American section of the Fourth International movement led by Trotsky, it maintained close contact with him, especially during the period of his exile in Mexico, from January 1937 until his assassination in August 1940. The collection was housed in the Library of Social History in New York City until it was acquired by the Hoover Institution Archives in 1992. The major sources of material in the collection are central files of the Socialist Workers Party, and papers of individual leaders of the party, most notably John G. Wright, but also James P. Cannon, Farrell Dobbs, Albert Goldman, Joseph Hansen, and others. There are, in a few instances, photocopies of documents from the Harvard University Library, the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, and other archival repositories. The collection includes original manuscripts of writings by Trotsky--notably portions of Vie de Lenine: Jeunesse, Les Crimes de Staline, and Stalin--as well as typed copies and rare printed copies. Original manuscripts and many typed copies are from the papers of John G. Wright, the principal translator during Trotsky's lifetime of English language editions of his works. Register of the Trotsky collection, 92032 2 1917-1995 The collection also includes many original letters from Trotsky to leaders of the Socialist Workers Party, as well as carbons of their replies, and originals, carbons and typed copies of Trotsky's correspondence with others. Of particular note in the collection is one of three existing sets of typed copies of correspondence between Trotsky and V. I. Lenin, prepared from Soviet archival sources at Trotsky's direction. Originals and copies of letters and writings of Trotsky's wife Nataliia Sedova Trotskaia, and of his son Lev Sedov, are distinct parts of the collection. Correspondence between Socialist Workers Party leaders in New York and secretaries and guards of Trotsky in Mexico (many of them members of the party) form a significant part of the collection, as do Socialist Workers Party records relating to the Dewey Commission hearings of 1937 on the charges made against Trotsky in the Moscow Trials; the investigation of Trotsky's assassination; the disposition of his archives; and posthumous publication of his biography Stalin. The collection also contains selected published and unpublished materials about Trotsky collected by the Socialist Workers Party and the Library of Social History up until 1980; and survey sheets prepared by a Socialist Workers Party/Library of Social History team inventorying correspondence in the Exile Papers section of the Trotsky Papers in the Harvard University Library. Audiovisual materials include photographs of the Coyoacan household from the papers of Evelyn Reed and George Novack; and a sound recording of a speech by Trotsky. Scope and Contents note Writings and correspondence of the Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, including drafts of articles and books, correspondence with John G. Wright and other leaders of the Socialist Workers Party of the United States, and typed copies of correspondence with V. I. Lenin; correspondence and reports of secretaries of Trotsky and leaders of the Socialist Workers Party, relating especially to efforts to safeguard Trotsky and to his assassination; records of the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky and of the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials; correspondence and writings of Nataliia Sedova Trotskaia and of Lev Sedov; and published and unpublished material relating to Trotsky. Assembled from records of the Socialist Workers Party and from papers of Wright and other party leaders. Also includes detailed summaries of correspondence in the Trotsky Papers at Harvard University. Boxes 1-45 also available on microfilm (50 reels). Phonotape cassette dub of sound recordings also available. The Addendum includes United States government documents detailing surveillance of Leon Trotsky in exile (photocopies obtained from government archives); bibliographies of writings by Trotsky and of internal bulletins of the Fourth International movement during his lifetime; and a subject file of assorted correspondence, memoranda and printed matter relating to Trotsky and Trotskyism. Also included is a portrait painting of Natalia Sedova Trotsky. Subjects and Indexing Terms American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky. Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials. Fourth International. Lenin, Vladimir Il'ich, 1870-1924. Sedov, Lev, 1906-1938. Socialist Workers Party. Trotskaia, Nataliia Ivanovna, 1882-1962. Trotsky, Leon, 1879-1940. Wright, John G., 1902-1956. Audiotapes. Communism. Mexico. Moscow Trials, Moscow, Russia, 1936-1937. Phonorecords. Russia (Federation) Soviet Union--History--Revolution, 1917-1921. Soviet Union--Politics and government--1917-1936. Soviet Union. United States--Politics and government. Register of the Trotsky collection, 92032 3 1917-1995 V. I. LENIN FILE, 1917-1924 Box 1-9 V. I. LENIN FILE, 1917-1924 Scope and Contents note Typed copies of documents in Soviet archives, consisting largely, but not exclusively, of correspondence between Leon Trotsky and V. I. Lenin, and of each with third parties, during the Russian Civil War and subsequent period up to the death of Lenin. Three sets of copies were made under the direction of Trotsky between 1925 and 1927. The other two sets are in the Harvard University Library and the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam, respectively. Published versions of most of the documents appear in Jan M. Meier, ed., The Trotsky Papers, 1917-1922, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1964, 1971). Arranged by physical form. Correspondence Leon Trotsky to V. I. Lenin 1918 Box: 1, Folder 1 January 31 Folder 2 August 6 Folder 3 (ca.) August 7-9 Folder 4 August 9 Folder
Recommended publications
  • Albert Glotzer Papers
    http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf1t1n989d No online items Register of the Albert Glotzer papers Processed by Dale Reed. Hoover Institution Archives Stanford University Stanford, California 94305-6010 Phone: (650) 723-3563 Fax: (650) 725-3445 Email: [email protected] © 2010 Hoover Institution Archives. All rights reserved. Register of the Albert Glotzer 91006 1 papers Register of the Albert Glotzer papers Hoover Institution Archives Stanford University Stanford, California Processed by: Dale Reed Date Completed: 2010 Encoded by: Machine-readable finding aid derived from Microsoft Word and MARC record by Supriya Wronkiewicz. © 2010 Hoover Institution Archives. All rights reserved. Collection Summary Title: Albert Glotzer papers Dates: 1919-1994 Collection Number: 91006 Creator: Glotzer, Albert, 1908-1999 Collection Size: 67 manuscript boxes, 6 envelopes (27.7 linear feet) Repository: Hoover Institution Archives Stanford, California 94305-6010 Abstract: Correspondence, writings, minutes, internal bulletins and other internal party documents, legal documents, and printed matter, relating to Leon Trotsky, the development of American Trotskyism from 1928 until the split in the Socialist Workers Party in 1940, the development of the Workers Party and its successor, the Independent Socialist League, from that time until its merger with the Socialist Party in 1958, Trotskyism abroad, the Dewey Commission hearings of 1937, legal efforts of the Independent Socialist League to secure its removal from the Attorney General's list of subversive organizations, and the political development of the Socialist Party and its successor, Social Democrats, U.S.A., after 1958. Physical Location: Hoover Institution Archives Languages: English Access Collection is open for research. The Hoover Institution Archives only allows access to copies of audiovisual items.
    [Show full text]
  • Bio-Bibliographical Sketch of Charles Curtiss
    Lubitz' TrotskyanaNet Charles Curtiss Bio-Bibliographical Sketch Contents: • Basic biographical data • Biographical sketch • Selective bibliography • Notes on archives Basic biographical data Name: Charles Curtiss Other names (by-names, pseud. etc.): C. ; Carlos ; C. Charles ; Carlos Cortes ; Charlie Curtiss ; Sam(uel) Kurtz ; Date and place of birth: July 4, 1908, Chicago, Ill. (USA) Date and place of death: December 20, 1993, Los Angeles, Cal. (USA) Nationality: USA Occupations, careers, etc.: Printer (lino-typist), political and union organizer Time of activity in Trotskyist movement: 1928 - 1951 Biographical sketch This biographical sketch is chiefly based on those biographical sketches and obituaries which are listed in the last paragraph of the selected bibliography below. Born Sam(uel) Kurtz1 as a son of immigrants from Poland in Chicago, Ill. on July 4, 1908, Charles (or, Charlie) Curtiss earned his living by various jobs as miner, sailor, etc. before becoming a printer (lino- typist). In Los Angeles he married Lillian Ilstien (1911-1985) in 1935 from whom he got a son, David (born 1943), and a daughter, Carolyn (1950-1993). In 1928, Curtiss in Chicago joined the ranks of the Communist League of America (CLA), an organiza­ tion of left communists, chiefly expellees from the Communist Party of the U.S. because of 'Trotskyist deviationism'. Led by James P. Cannon, Martin Abern and Max Shachtman, the CLA soon became the American affiliate of the international Trotskyist movement which soon adopted the name Interna­ tional Left Opposition. As a skilled printer, Curtiss took responsibility for the production of CLA's weekly paper The Militant. In 1932, Curtiss was sent by the party leadership to Los Angeles, Cal., in order to help building a CLA branch there.
    [Show full text]
  • Leon Trotsky Three Concepts of the Russian Revolution 1
    Leon Trotsky Three Concepts of the Russian Revolution 1 The Revolution of 1905 came to be not only the “general rehearsal” of 1917 but also the laboratory in which all the fundamental groupings of Russian political life were worked out and all the tendencies and shadings inside Russian Marxism were projected. At the core of the arguments and divergences was, needless to say, the question concerning the historical nature of the Russian Revolution and its future course of development. That conflict of concepts and prognoses has no direct bearing on the biography of Stalin, who did not participate in it in his own right. The few propagandist articles he wrote on that subject are utterly devoid of theoretical interest. Scores of Bolsheviks who plied the pen popularised the same thoughts, and did it considerably better. Any critical exposition of Bolshevism’s revolutionary concepts naturally belongs in a biography of Lenin. But theories have their own fate. Although during the period of the First Revolution [1905] and subsequently, as late as 1923, at the time when the revolutionary doctrines were elaborated and applied, Stalin had no independent position whatever, a sudden change occurred in 1924, which opened an epoch of bureaucratic reaction and radical transvaluation of the past. The film of the revolution was unwound in reverse order. Old doctrines were subjected either to a new evaluation or a new interpretation. Thus, rather unexpectedly at first glance, attention was focused on the concept of “permanent revolution” as the prime source of all the fallacies of “Trotskyism”. For many years to come criticism of that concept formed the main content of all the theoretical – sit venio verbo – writings of Stalin and his collaborators.
    [Show full text]
  • Mathematical Induction - a Miscellany of Theory, History and Technique
    Mathematical Induction - a miscellany of theory, history and technique Theory and applications for advanced secondary students Part 4 Peter Haggstrom This work is subject to Copyright. It is a chapter in a larger work. You can however copy this chapter for educational purposes under the Statutory License of the Copyright Act 1968 - Part VB For more information [email protected] Copyright 2009 [email protected] The building blocks of Gödelʼs Theorem The foundations of Gödel’s Theorem (ie his undecidability theorem) are to be found in about 50 papers contained in a book by Jean van Heijenoort:, “From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879 - 1931”. Every serious logic student has read this book. Van Heijenoort is worth mentioning even if only for his colourful past which is described by Benjamin H Yandell in his book “The Honors Class: Hilbert’s Problems and Their Solvers”, A K Peters, 2002, page 66. I quote in full: “ I assumed van Heijenoort was merely a logician as I gratefully pored over his book and was astounded when I learned that as a young man, in the 1930s, he had followed Leon Trotsky from Turkey to France to Norway to Mexico, as his body guard and secretary. Anita Feferman’s ”From Trotsky to Gödel”: The Life of Jean van Heijenoort” tells van Heijenoort’s remarkable story. Trotsky and his camp were pursued by Stalinist agents; van Heijenoort always packed a gun. Van Heijenoort had an affair with an artist Frida Kahlo. He epitomized cool and was attractive to women, and this continued even after he became a logician, He had grown tired of the rigors of life with Trotsky and traveled to New York in 1939 on a somewhat vague mission.
    [Show full text]
  • Sam Gordon Bio-Bibliographical Sketch
    Lubitz' TrotskyanaNet Sam Gordon Bio-Bibliographical Sketch Contents: • Basic biographical data • Biographical sketch • Selective bibliography • Notes on archives Basic biographical data Name: Sam Gordon Other names (by-names, pseud., etc.): Burton ; Drake ; Harry ; Joe ; Joad ; J.S. ; Paul G. Stevens ; J. Stuart ; J.B. Stuart ; J.E.B. Stuart ; Ted ; Tom Date and place of birth: May 5, 1910, ??? (Austria-Hungary) Date and place of death: March 12, 1982, London (Britain) Nationality: USA Occupations, careers, etc.: Printer, journalist, translator, seaman, organizer Time of activity in Trotskyist movement: 1929 - 1982 (lifelong Trotskyist) Biographical sketch Sam Gordon was an outstanding Trotskyist who during the 1940s played an eminent rôle as a liaison man between the American SWP and the European Trotskyists as well as within the leading bodies of the Fourth In­ ternational. The following biographical sketch is chiefly based on the material listed in the last paragraph of the Selective bibliography section below. Sam Gordon1 was born on May 5, 1910 as a son of Yiddish speaking Jewish parents living in that part of Poland which then belonged to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. However, when Sam was still a baby, the family moved to Vienna, the Austrian capital, thus the boy grew up in a German speaking en­ vironment. In 1920, the family went to New York (USA) where Sam Gordon rapidly learnt English and got naturalized under the Americanized name of Gordon; as an adolescent he was fluent in three languages. In the early 1940s, Gordon got acquainted with Mildred Fellerman (b. 1923), a British teacher and Labour Party activist; when the two met again in Paris in 1947, they fell in love, and in 1948 they got married in the United States; in the 1950s they got a son.
    [Show full text]
  • THE FIRST PRAVDA and the RUSSIAN MARXIST TRADITION by JAMES D
    THE FIRST PRAVDA AND THE RUSSIAN MARXIST TRADITION By JAMES D. WHITE I THE appearance of the first Pravdal is an episode of the Bolshevik party's history which has never received any systematic treatment either by Western or Soviet scholars. It is an aspect of the I905 revolution which the party historians and memoirists have been for the most part very eager to forget, and since Western investigators have apparently been unaware of its existence they have allowed its consignment to oblivion to take place without comment. That this first Pravda to be connected with the Bolshevik party is not widely known is hardly surprising, because in this case the exclusion from the historical record took place long before the Bolshevik party came to power. For, following the 1905 revolution, Pravda's editor, A. A. Bogdanov, was subjected to the kind of campaign of silence which was a foretaste of those later applied to Trotsky and Stalin. Nevertheless, the journal Pravda and the group of intellectuals associated with it occupy an important place in the history of Bolshevism. Indeed, it is true to say that without reference to this periodical Russian intellectual history would be incomplete and the evolution of Russian Marxism imperfectly understood. Although Pravda would certainly merit a more extended study both as a source and as a historical event in itself, the present paper is limited to a description of the circumstances which attended the appearance of the journal, the group of people who surrounded it, and an attempt to place it in its ideological context.
    [Show full text]
  • "Mein Leben" – "Моя Жизнь" Trockijs Autobiographie Essay
    "Mein Leben" – "Моя Жизнь" Trockijs Autobiographie Essay "Mein Leben" – "Моя Жизнь" Ein Essay über Trockijs Autobiographie und den jungen Trockij (1879-1904) von Wolfgang und Petra Lubitz, 2018/19 ________________________________________________________________________ Dieser Essay erscheint als Teil von Lubitz' TrotskyanaNet Inhaltsverzeichnis (1) Einleitung, Vorbemerkungen.............................................................................3 Zum Thema........................................................................................................................3 Zum Inhalt.........................................................................................................................3 Formale Hinweise.................................................................................................................4 (2) "Mein Leben" – Bibliographisch-buchhistorisches und Kurioses........................5 Einleitung...........................................................................................................................5 Buchbeschreibung der deutschen Erstausgabe.........................................................................5 Die russische Erstausgabe.....................................................................................................8 Vorabdrucke........................................................................................................................8 Online-Ausgaben.................................................................................................................8
    [Show full text]
  • By Leon Trotsky
    September 1940 TRIRI. A M on thl y Organ of Revolutionary M arxisrn THE HERITAGE .•••........ By Max Shachtman HIS PLACE IN HISTORY • • • • •.. By J. R. Johnson SIXTEEN YEARS OF TERROR . • . By Albert Gates TROTSKY'S WRITINGS IN ENGLISH A Bibliography A LETTER TO THE AMERICAN TROTSKYISTS By Leon Trotsky Fifteen Cents Single Copy Subscription Per Year $1.50 r THE NEW INTERNATIONAL ..4 Mon,hly Organ 01 Ref)olutionary Mar",lam Volume VI September, 1940 No.8 (Whole No. 47) Published ~onthly by NEW INTERNATIONAL Publishing Company, 114 West 14th Street, New York, N. Y. Telephone CHelsea 2·9681. One bit of good news this month is the fact that we have Subscription rates: $1.50 per year; bundles, 10c for 5 copies obtained second class mailing privileges for THE NEW INTER­ and up. Canada and foreign: $1.75 per year; bundles, 12c for 5 NATIONAL. This will help our program in the coming months. and up. Entered as second·class matter July 10, 1940, at the poet office at New York, N.Y. under the act of March 3, 1879. We succeeded in issuing a 32 page number in memory of Leon Trotsky, and we are going to try to continue with the larger Editor: MAX SHACHTMAN magazine. Business Manager: ALBERT GATES • TABLE OF CONTENTS The October issue is already in preparation. As we told you LEON TROTSKY: THE HERITAGE in August a special election would be published. We had orig­ By Max Shachtman ----------------------------------------- 147 inally planned this for September, but the tragic death of Trot­ TROTSKY'S PLACE IN HISTORY sky made necessary that postponement.
    [Show full text]
  • Joseph Hansen Papers
    http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf78700585 No online items Register of the Joseph Hansen papers Finding aid prepared by Joseph Hansen Hoover Institution Archives 434 Galvez Mall Stanford University Stanford, CA, 94305-6003 (650) 723-3563 [email protected] © 1998, 2006, 2012 Register of the Joseph Hansen 92035 1 papers Title: Joseph Hansen papers Date (inclusive): 1887-1980 Collection Number: 92035 Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Archives Language of Material: English Physical Description: 109 manuscript boxes, 1 oversize box, 3 envelopes, 1 audio cassette(46.2 linear feet) Abstract: Speeches and writings, correspondence, notes, minutes, reports, internal bulletins, resolutions, theses, printed matter, sound recording, and photographs relating to Leon Trotsky, activities of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States, and activities of the Fourth International in Latin America, Western Europe and elsewhere. Physical Location: Hoover Institution Archives Creator: Hansen, Joseph, Access The collection is open for research; materials must be requested at least two business days in advance of intended use. Publication Rights For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Archives. Preferred Citation [Identification of item], Joseph Hansen papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Archives. Acquisition Information Acquired by the Hoover Institution Archives in 1992. Accruals Materials may have been added to the collection since this finding aid was prepared. To determine if this has occurred, find the collection in Stanford University's online catalog at http://searchworks.stanford.edu . Materials have been added to the collection if the number of boxes listed in the online catalog is larger than the number of boxes listed in this finding aid.
    [Show full text]
  • How Peircean Was the “'Fregean' Revolution” in Logic?
    HOW PEIRCEAN WAS THE “‘FREGEAN’ REVOLUTION” IN LOGIC? Irving H. Anellis Peirce Edition, Institute for American Thought Indiana University – Purdue University at Indianapolis Indianapolis, IN, USA [email protected] Abstract. The historiography of logic conceives of a Fregean revolution in which modern mathematical logic (also called symbolic logic) has replaced Aristotelian logic. The preeminent expositors of this conception are Jean van Heijenoort (1912–1986) and Don- ald Angus Gillies. The innovations and characteristics that comprise mathematical logic and distinguish it from Aristotelian logic, according to this conception, created ex nihlo by Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) in his Begriffsschrift of 1879, and with Bertrand Rus- sell (1872–1970) as its chief This position likewise understands the algebraic logic of Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871), George Boole (1815–1864), Charles Sanders Peirce (1838–1914), and Ernst Schröder (1841–1902) as belonging to the Aristotelian tradi- tion. The “Booleans” are understood, from this vantage point, to merely have rewritten Aristotelian syllogistic in algebraic guise. The most detailed listing and elaboration of Frege’s innovations, and the characteristics that distinguish mathematical logic from Aristotelian logic, were set forth by van Heijenoort. I consider each of the elements of van Heijenoort’s list and note the extent to which Peirce had also developed each of these aspects of logic. I also consider the extent to which Peirce and Frege were aware of, and may have influenced, one another’s logical writings. AMS (MOS) 2010 subject classifications: Primary: 03-03, 03A05, 03C05, 03C10, 03G27, 01A55; secondary: 03B05, 03B10, 03E30, 08A20; Key words and phrases: Peirce, abstract algebraic logic; propositional logic; first-order logic; quantifier elimina- tion, equational classes, relational systems §0.
    [Show full text]
  • No. 181, November 11, 1977
    WfJ/iIlE/iS ",IN(J(J,I/i, 25¢ No. 181 :-..==: )(,~:lJ 11 November 1977 ~-- - ~- -;' :;a. ~I"l,e~reAl. ' t~he·"arty,p. of I tile Russian Revolutioll • i 1 ,. f ~ • Sixtieth Anniversary of the ~ '!'--J t·1&~·- Bolshevik =' .~~~~I....... li.~'" E. ~ tt>c~~ t:~~~~ 1!!1.~ Oust tile Stalirlist Revolution ·~~.· ""I~,~. Bureaucracy! G ,j"§"!ill~'I\i.~.-'1... '-... October! the mood of the moment. The Russian against "Soviet social-imperialism"; program is as valid as it was 40 years The 1917 October Revolution was the ago. One ofits most powerfulpresenta­ question has been and remains the shaping event of our century. The centrists salute Lenin while ignoring his question of the revolution. The Russian life-long struggle for an international tions is the speech, reprinted below, by seizure of state power 60 years ago by James P. CannonJounder ofAmerican Bolsheviks on November 7, 1917, once the revolutionary Russian proletariat, proletarian vanguard as the roadto new and for all, took the question of the Octobers; and the now-reformist S WP Trotskyism, to the New York branch of led by its Bolshevik vanguard, was a the Socialist Workers Party on 15 workers' revolution out of the realm of monumental advance toward world sloughs offdefense of the USSR as an abstraction and gave it flesh and blood impediment to its social-democratic October 1939. Cannon's speech was socialism. Even today-decades after originally reprinted in the February reality. the usurpation ofpolitical power in the appetites. Only the international Spar­ It was said once of a book-I think it tacist tendency-the legitimate political 1940 New International; we are repu­ USSR by the Stalinist bureaucratic blishing it from his book, The Struggle was Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"­ caste whose counterrevolutionary be­ continuators of Lenin's Bolsheviks and "who touches this book, touches a of Trotsky's Fourth lnternational­ for a Proletarian Party, which originally trayals block the international exten­ appeared in 1943.
    [Show full text]
  • The Thirst for Power
    “Thirst for Power” A short chapter written for a book. January 3, 1937. by Leon Trotsky Basic Translation by A.L. Preston (1970). Corrected in accord with the Russian original published in the book Prestupleniia Stalina. Basic translation copyright © 1978 by Pathfinder Press, New York. Introduction and footnotes copyright © 2002 by Tim Davenport. 1 2 Introduction This pamphlet, “Thirst for Power,” was originally one of 26 small com- ponent chapters of one of Leon Trotsky’s most interesting books, Prestupleniia Stalina [The Crimes of Stalin]. This little-known work was written on board the ship which carried Trotsky and his wife from de facto house arrest in Norway to political asylum in Mexico late in December of 1936. Along with commentary about his troubled personal situation, Trotsky’s book addressed various aspects of the first of the “Great Purge Tr ials” held in Moscow that August and marked a first formal response to the charges against him emerging from that proceeding.1 Although grand plans were announced in Biulleten’ oppozitsii, the central journal of the Trotskyists, for Prestupleniia Stalina to appear “in a short time. .in all the European languages,” the rapid pace of events in the USSR and the strategic decision of Trotsky to organize a “counter- trial” seems to have rendered this project impractical. Only two versions of the book saw print in Trotsky’s lifetime: a French edition which appeared in Paris in 1937 and a Spanish edition released in Santiago, Chile in 1938. While an Italian edition was released in 1966, it was not until the 1970 first edition of Writings of Leon Trotsky that the material was finally trans- lated into English, the language of the largest national segment of the Trotskyist movement.
    [Show full text]