Trotsky during the 1917 revolution. The role of Trotsky in the October Revolution and the formation of Soviet power
On November 7 (October 25), 1879, Lev Davidovich Trotsky (Leiba Davidovich Bronstein) was born - one of the key figures in the history of Russia of the 20th century ...
In the 1920s and 30s, Trotsky's name was known to everyone in the Soviet country. At first, he was praised to the skies as the main leader of the October Bolshevik uprising and the winner of the White armies. Then - anathematized as an enemy of the party and the Soviet people. After the release of the film “Lenin in October” in 1937, in the minds of the Soviet people, Trotsky was firmly entrenched in the nickname “political prostitute” (with the reduced “r” characteristic of Ilyich). In fact, Lenin liked to use this word, but only called Kautsky a “prostitute”. In relation to his closest "accomplice" Trotsky, the leader of the world proletariat twice allowed himself the affectionate "Iudushka" (meaning Shchedrin's Yudushka Golovlev). Yes, and this happened only in the pre-revolutionary period, when Trotsky actively collaborated with the "Mensheviks".
However, the name of perhaps the brightest and most charismatic of the leaders of the revolution became a household name already in 1918. Trotsky was respected and feared not only by the red commanders, but also by their opponents in the civil struggle.
So, in the original version of M. Bulgakov's play "Days of the Turbins", Captain Myshlaevsky mentions the name of Trotsky as the only frightening factor for all kinds of bandits and "independents" that neither the Germans nor the whites could cope with:
“At Petliura’s, you say how much? Two hundred thousand! These two hundred thousand heels have been smeared with lard and are blowing at the very word Trotsky! Did you see? Purely!"
After November 1927, "Trotsky", for censorship reasons, was replaced by the word "Bolshevik", but the meaning of the statement of the disappointed White Guard does not change from this. An adversary like Trotsky could not but command respect.
Childhood and youth
Leiba Davidovich Bronstein was the fifth child born in the family of a wealthy Jewish colonist, a large landowner David Leontyevich Bronstein. He spent his childhood and youth in the estate of his parents (Kherson region) and the city of Odessa, where he received a good classical education at the private school-gymnasium of St. Paul. Lev Davidovich himself describes these years with love and tenderness in his autobiographical book “My Life”. The book is an extraordinary literary work, sustained in the style of an adventurous-adventure bestseller, and is certainly worth reading and quoting.
According to Trotsky himself, social inequality hurt him from childhood. His parents achieved their well-being solely by their own labor, and therefore did not share the revolutionary views of their son, but they never refused him material support. In the years of his youth, his father “ransomed” Leiba from prison several times, hoping that he would come to his senses and “get down to business”, but these hopes were not destined to come true.
Subsequently, when the social revolution, started by the former Jewish boy Leiba Bronstein and his associates, won on the entire one-sixth of the land, old David came to his son in Moscow on foot. In his memoirs, Lev Davidovich wrote:
By that time, old Bronstein, like all landowners, was deprived of his property and seriously suffered from the Civil War in southern Russia. It didn’t fit in the head of the unfortunate parent that all this disgrace was created by his youngest son Leib under the name of some Trotsky ...
In addition to the fact that L.D. Trotsky gained fame as an outstanding politician and military leader, he was also a talented writer (it was not for nothing that one of his party nicknames was the nickname "Feather"). Trotsky masterfully mastered the Russian language, and long "times" in prisons and the need to make himself known to a wide reading audience prompted the revolutionary to methodically hone his literary gift.
Trotsky himself recalled more than once that during his time in the tsarist prisons, the main nuisance for him was mandatory walks. The prison authorities took care of the health of their "guests", and the political prisoner was indignant that he had to be distracted from literary work and waste time.
First link
Leiba Bronstein went to his first exile in 1900 and not alone. While still in prison, he married the revolutionary Alexandra Lvovna Sokolovskaya. In 1901 and 1902, the couple had two daughters, Zinaida and Nina. The naive tsarist government hoped that a measured life in Siberia and raising a family would turn the exiled settlers away from active revolutionary activity. It wasn't there! Bronstein very quickly enters into contact with the Social Democratic organizations in Siberia, writes leaflets and appeals for them. Supervision of family exiles, according to the revolutionary himself, was practically not carried out, so already in 1903 he decided to flee. Leaving his wife with two small children (the youngest Nina was not yet four months old), Lev Davidovich gets on a cart to the railway station, where he calmly gets into the car.
“In my hands was Homer in the Russian hexameters of Gnedich. In my pocket is a passport in the name of Trotsky, which I myself entered at random, not foreseeing that it would become my name for life. I was driving along the Siberian line to the west. The station gendarmes indifferently let me past them, ”the successful fugitive later recalled.
Trotsky quickly reached Samara. Under the pseudonym "Pero", he collaborated in the Leninist newspaper "Iskra", then illegally moved abroad. In London, Paris, Geneva, Trotsky met with Russian revolutionary émigrés, including Lenin. The Russian Social Democracy was actively nourished by the means of foreign capital and did not live in poverty. In 1904, Trotsky joined the future "Mensheviks", married N.I. Sedova, and already in February 1905 he again went to Russia - to lead the first Russian revolution.
Second link and escape
At one time, the Soviet "Leniniana" actively exaggerated the exploits of the leader of the world proletariat V.I. Lenin in the fight against the royal gendarmerie. It is worth recalling leaflets sewn into felt boots by Ilyich himself, milk letters and tricks with the lower and upper shelves during searches in his apartment ... All this looks like “innocent pranks” compared to what L.D. Trotsky.
Without a doubt, the future opponent of the white generals was a much brighter, resourceful and decisive personality than the émigré theorist V.I. Lenin. Trotsky more than once showed enviable composure, extraordinary energy and the ability to survive in the most extreme, sometimes incompatible with life situations. His second escape from exile, after the defeat of the 1905 revolution, is no doubt worthy of the pen of Jack London or Fenimore Cooper.
In 1907, Trotsky, with the deprivation of all civil rights, was exiled to an eternal settlement in Berezov - a small town remote from any civilization, where, as you know, the disgraced favorite of Peter I Aleksashka Menshikov whiled away his days. As soon as he arrived at the place, the exiled revolutionary decided not to waste time getting to know the local sights, but immediately ran away.
A week-long reindeer trip (700 km) in forty-degree frost, in completely wilderness, could cost the life of any unprepared person. In addition, Trotsky came across a guide from the local northern peoples, who knew the road well, but turned out to be a bitter drunkard.
Lev Davidovich had to carry out such an operation to “sober up” the guide more than once. If caught, the fugitive settler was legally threatened with hard labor; in case of loss of the road in the taiga - inevitable death. Imagine V.I. Lenin, pushing sledges along an icy road and “sobering up” a drunken native, with all his imagination, neither Bonch-Bruevich nor Zoya Voskresenskaya could have been able to ...
However, the revolutionary Trotsky managed to get to the Perm railway and board the train. After 11 days, he met near St. Petersburg with his wife Sedova, and soon moved to Finland.
Emigration and return to Russia
From 1907 to 1917 L.D. Trotsky was in exile. In 1916, for revolutionary activities, he was exiled from France to Spain, then to the United States. Upon learning of the February Revolution, Trotsky immediately went to Russia, but along the way, in the Canadian port of Halifax, he and his family were removed from the ship by the British authorities and sent to an internment camp for sailors of the German merchant fleet. He was accused of spying for Germany. Trotsky immediately protested and got the police to carry him off the ship in their arms. Subsequently, this will become a habit for the revolutionary.
Soon, at the written request of the Provisional Government, the family was released and continued on their way. On May 4, 1917 (a month later than the German “sealed” car with Lenin) Trotsky was “exported” to Petrograd.
Revolution of 1917 and Civil War
After the failure of the Bolshevik uprising in July, Trotsky was arrested and sent to prison as a German spy. Some of his "accomplices", including Lenin, managed to escape. However, already at the end of August 1917, the Provisional Government, having imprisoned participants in the Kornilov rebellion in the Bykhov prison, for some reason freed enemies and "spies" from the "Crosses". It also provides its yesterday's opponents with complete freedom of action.
During the "Bolshevization of the Soviets" in September - October 1917, the Bolsheviks received up to 90% of the seats in the Petrosoviet. The young, energetic Trotsky was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, elected to the Pre-Parliament, became a delegate to the Second Congress of Soviets and the Constituent Assembly.
On October 12, 1917, Trotsky formed the Military Revolutionary Committee (VRK), the main body for preparing an armed uprising. The pretext for the formation of the Military Revolutionary Committee was a possible German attack on Petrograd, or a repetition of the Kornilov speech. The Military Revolutionary Committee immediately began work to win over the units of the Petrograd garrison. Already on October 16, Trotsky, the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, orders 5,000 rifles to be issued to the Red Guards.
Lenin from Razliv demanded to start the uprising immediately. Trotsky proposes to postpone it until the convening of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies in order to confront the Congress with the fact that the "dual power" regime has been abolished. Thus, the Congress was supposed to be the highest and only body of power in the country. Trotsky manages to win over the majority of the Central Committee, despite Lenin's concern about the postponement of the uprising.
Between October 21-23, the Bolsheviks hold a series of rallies among the wavering soldiers. On October 22, the Military Revolutionary Committee announced that the orders of the headquarters of the Petrograd Military District were invalid without its approval. At this stage, Trotsky's oratory greatly helped the Bolsheviks win over the vacillating parts of the garrison. On October 23, Trotsky personally "agitated" the garrison of the Peter and Paul Fortress. The talented orator was again carried in his arms.
The plan for the October Revolution was worked out by Trotsky and carried out by him completely independently. October 25, 1917 L.D. Trotsky was 38 years old, but he did not even remember it. The leader of the uprising spent the whole day at the telephone in Smolny.
His recollections of this unusual birthday are much more human than anything that has been written about the October uprising in subsequent years:
Yes, it was not enough for Trotsky to take into his own hands the state power lying on the road. Before the executors and planners of the daring political act, the question immediately arose: what to do with this power? Their foreign owners, obviously, did not count on such a grandiose success. Torn apart from the inside by its own revolution, actually defeated by Germany, in 1918 it was not possible to chew such a “fat piece”. The invaders had to resolve the dangerous situation themselves: end the war, recreate the state apparatus, build an army, defend the results of the coup d'état. Over the following years, like a wound up spring, Trotsky continues to defend the gains of the Comintern in a single country.
On March 13, 1918, he resigned from the post of People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs (after the failure of his formula in Brest, which read "no peace, no war"). Already on March 14, he actually heads the Red Army as People's Commissar for Military Affairs (People's Commissar of the Sea, Pre-revolutionary Military Council) and retains this post throughout the Civil War.
According to many post-Soviet historians and publicists, as the "military leader" of Bolshevism, Trotsky showed organizational skills and undoubted oratorical talent. However, it was in the military sphere that he remained, as historian Dmitry Volkogonov emphasizes, "an amateur." During the Civil War, Trotsky did not show any special military talents, also making several strategic mistakes.
In our opinion, the claims of historians to Trotsky the military leader are completely unjustified.
It should not be forgotten that the newly-minted “commander-in-chief”, having not received a military education, as well as experience in military service, managed to “beat” much more educated and experienced opponents in the Civil War. The generals of the White armies who opposed him, for the most part, had behind them the experience of the First World War and service in the Russian General Staff. All of them, according to the biographical directory N. Rutycha, graduated from military schools and academies, where they, of course, were trained in planning and conducting strategic operations. Despite this, the illustrious generals from the infantry and cavalry lost their Russia, turning out to be powerless outcasts, taxi drivers and Parisian "clochards". Trotsky, who never served in the army, did not even have the rank of private. Nevertheless, he entered the Kremlin as a victor and remained in power until 1926-27.
Struggle for power in 1921-1927
In 1921, Lenin's deteriorating health and the virtual end of the Civil War brought the question of power to the fore. The secret conclusion of the doctors, sent to the members of the Politburo of the Central Committee, emphasized the extremely serious nature of the illness of the head of state. Immediately after Lenin's stroke (May 1922), a "troika" consisting of Kamenev, Zinoviev and Stalin is formed to jointly fight with Trotsky as one of the likely successors.
At the suggestion of Kamenev and Zinoviev, the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) was established, to which Stalin was appointed. Initially, this position was understood as a technical one and therefore did not interest Trotsky in any way. The Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars was considered the head of state. Meanwhile, Stalin manages to lead the "technical" state apparatus just at the time of a particularly sharp increase in his influence.
Trotsky, in his own opinion, considered himself Lenin's sole successor and did not view Stalin and company as serious competitors. Kamenev (Rosenfeld) was his relative: he was married to Trotsky's sister. Lev Davydovich never took him seriously, as well as Zinoviev, who had long been assigned the image of a party jester.
Since 1922, in parallel with the strengthening of Stalin's influence as the head of the "technical" apparatus, his influence as the secretary of Lenin, who is retiring, has increased. Trotsky himself, in his autobiographical work My Life, admits on this occasion:
Indeed, the "resting on his laurels" Trotsky was never interested in the details or parts of party power. He was used to getting everything and did not pay attention to the little things. Stalin often visited Lenin in Gorki during his illness. Trotsky, as it turned out, had no idea where this settlement was located.
Stalin, starting in 1922, methodically placed his supporters in all key positions in the party. He pays special attention to the secretaries of provincial and district party committees, as they form delegations to party congresses. During 1923, the "troika" replaces the commanders of the military districts with "their own". Trotsky, as if not noticing what is happening around him, does nothing. He defiantly comes to meetings of the Central Committee with a French novel (as if in a toilet), makes loud scandals, slams doors, and often goes hunting.
In the autumn of 1923, while hunting, Trotsky caught a bad cold and fell ill with pneumonia. He never showed up at Lenin's funeral. Subsequently, Trotsky blamed this on Stalin, who he claimed deliberately gave the wrong date for the funeral.
Once losing real power, the second person in the state can only appeal to his authority as a leader of the revolution and the Civil War, using his oratorical and journalistic abilities.
In October 1924, seeing that the "troika" Stalin-Kamenev-Zinoviev was close to collapse, Trotsky finally decided to go on the offensive. He publishes the scandalous article "Lessons of October", in which he recalls his role as the organizer of the October Revolution, and informs readers as "compromising evidence" that Zinoviev and Kamenev were generally against the performance, and Stalin played no role in it. The article provoked the so-called "literary discussion", in which the "troika", once again united, attacked Trotsky with a counter "compromising evidence", recalling to him the non-Bolshevik past and mutual abuse with Lenin before the revolution.
The "war of compromising evidence" started by Trotsky damaged his authority much more than all previous scandals. At the plenum of the Central Committee in January 1925, Zinoviev and Kamenev demanded that Trotsky be expelled from the party. Stalin, continuing to maneuver, suggests that Trotsky not only not be expelled, but even left in the Central Committee and the Politburo, taking away from him only the key posts of the People's Commissariat of Defense and the Pre-Revolutionary Military Council. Frunze becomes the new People's Commissar for the Navy, and Voroshilov becomes his deputy.
According to Trotsky himself, he even accepted his “overthrow” with relief, since this to some extent averted accusations of preparing a “Bonapartist” military coup. The plenum of the Central Committee appoints Trotsky to a number of secondary posts: chairman of the Main Committee on Concessions (Glavkontsesskom), chairman of a special meeting at the Supreme Economic Council on product quality, chairman of the Electrotechnical Committee.
After such a blow to Trotsky, the "troika" of Zinoviev-Kamenev-Stalin finally disintegrates. Supporters of Zinoviev and Kamenev form the so-called "new opposition". The main pretext for the split is the doctrine developed by Stalin of "building socialism in a single country." Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev continued to head for the "world revolution".
Summing up the intra-party discussions of the mid-20s, it is worth noting that at present, among Stalinist historians and jingoists who have embarked on a new “great-power” platform, there is an opinion that Stalin, who did not participate in any what conspiracies with the Western powers, at that moment he was most concerned about the welfare of the country. The former Caucasian criminal always felt like a stranger in the society of re-emigrant intellectuals, "mishandled Cossacks", and therefore preferred to eliminate Trotsky and the company not only politically, but also physically.
However, the guardian of national interests decided to leave Trotsky alive for some time. A living enemy is better than a dead one, just because the fight against the foreign "opposition" can justify any excesses and lynching in the party elite.
The united opposition Trotsky-Zinoviev-Kamenev lost their war in 1926-27 without even starting it. Stalin very quickly “squeezed” them out of the state of party legality, forcing them to actually go underground. As you know, anti-government protests and opposition rallies on November 7, 1927 only led to outrages and riots on the streets of Moscow and Leningrad.
At the joint October plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission, Trotsky demands that the "Testament of Lenin" be read out, and, in accordance with it, that Stalin be removed from the post of General Secretary. Stalin was forced to announce the text of the "Testament", but it did not, contrary to the expectations of the opposition, "a bombshell". After the XV Congress of the CPSU (b), Stalin asked the plenum of the Central Committee to accept his resignation from the post of General Secretary. It was just a well-rehearsed performance. Naturally, the Central Committee, controlled by Stalin himself, did not accept the “resignation”. On the contrary, the majority of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks voted for the expulsion of Zinoviev and Trotsky from the party. In fact, the opposition was crushed.
In January 1927, Trotsky and his family went into exile in Alma-Ata. Employees of the OGPU had to carry the oppositionist out of the apartment in their arms. Trotsky reiterated all sorts of protests and actively resisted their actions, trying to raise as much noise as possible. But that didn't help him.
Emigration and death
The forcible expulsion of Trotsky from the USSR was associated with even greater difficulties: none of the European powers that accepted white emigrants wanted to give shelter to such an odious figure. In 1929 Trotsky was exiled to Turkey. Then, after being deprived of Soviet citizenship, he moved to France, in 1935 to Norway, where there were practically no Russian emigrants. But Norway, fearing to worsen relations with the USSR, tried with all its might to get rid of the unwanted guest, confiscating all the works from Trotsky and placing him under house arrest. Trotsky was repeatedly threatened to extradite him to the Soviet government if he did not stop "stirring up the fire of the world revolution" and looking for new "ghosts of communism" in post-war Europe. Unable to withstand the harassment, Trotsky emigrated to distant Mexico in 1936, where he lived until his death. In Mexico, Trotsky completed work on the book The Revolution Betrayed, in which he called what was happening in the Soviet Union "Stalin's Thermidor." He accused Stalin of Bonapartism and the usurpation of power.
In 1938, Trotsky proclaimed the creation of the Fourth International, whose heirs still exist. In response to this, Trotsky's eldest son, Lev Sedov, died (or was deliberately eliminated by NKVD agents) in a hospital in Paris after an appendicitis operation. The fate of Trotsky's daughters from their first marriage was just as tragic: the younger Nina died of tuberculosis in 1928, and the eldest Zinaida followed her father into exile, but in 1933, being in a state of deep depression, she committed suicide.
Trotsky managed to take his personal archive into exile. This archive included copies of a number of documents signed by Trotsky during his time in power in the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, the Central Committee, the Comintern, a number of Lenin's notes addressed personally to Trotsky and not published anywhere else. Based on his archive, Trotsky in his memoirs easily quotes a number of documents he signed, including sometimes even secret ones. In the 1930s, OGPU agents repeatedly tried (sometimes successfully) to steal some of their fragments, and in March 1931 some of the documents burned down during a suspicious fire. In March 1940, Trotsky, in dire need of money and fearing that the archive would still fall into the hands of Stalin, sold most of his papers to Harvard University.
On August 20, 1940, the NKVD agent Ramon Mercader, who had previously penetrated Trotsky's entourage as a staunch follower of his, mortally wounded him in the head with an ice pick. Trotsky died of his wound the next day. The Soviet authorities publicly denied their involvement in the murder. The killer was sentenced by a Mexican court to twenty years in prison, but in 1961, Ramon Mercader, who arrived in the USSR, was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of Lenin.
Leon Trotsky can be called one of the most controversial figures in the history of the 20th century. He was the ideologist of the revolution, created the Red Army and the Comintern, dreamed of a world revolution, but became a victim of his own ideas.
"Demon of the Revolution"
Trotsky's role in the 1917 revolution was pivotal. You can even say that without his participation, it would have collapsed. According to the American historian Richard Pipes, Trotsky actually led the Bolsheviks in Petrograd during the absence of Vladimir Lenin, when he was hiding in Finland.
The importance of Trotsky for the revolution is difficult to overestimate. On October 12, 1917, as chairman of the Petrosoviet, he formed the Military Revolutionary Committee. Joseph Stalin, who in the future would become Trotsky's main enemy, wrote in 1918: "All work on the practical organization of the uprising took place under the direct supervision of the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, Comrade Trotsky." During the attack on Petrograd by the troops of General Pyotr Krasnov in October (November) 1917, Trotsky personally organized the defense of the city.
Trotsky was called the "demon of the revolution", but he was also one of its economists.
Trotsky came to Petrograd from New York. In the book of the American historian Anthony Sutton "Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution" about Trotsky, it is written that he was closely associated with the Wall Street bigwigs and went to Russia with the generous financial support of the then American President Woodrow Wilson. According to Sutton, Wilson personally issued Trotsky a passport and allocated $10,000 to the "demon of the revolution" (over $200,000 in today's money).
This information, however, is controversial. Lev Davidovich himself commented in the New Life newspaper on rumors about dollars from bankers:
“Regarding the story with 10 thousand marks or dollars, neither
government, nor I knew anything about it until the news about her
already here, in Russian circles and in the Russian press.” Trotsky further wrote:
“Two days before my departure from New York for Europe, my German associates arranged for me” a farewell meeting. At this rally, a meeting was held for the Russian revolution. The collection gave $310”.
However, another historian, again an American, Sam Landers, in the 90s found evidence in the archives that Trotsky did bring money to Russia. In the amount of $32,000 from the Swedish socialist Karl Moor.
Creation of the Red Army
Trotsky also has the merit of creating the Red Army. He headed for the construction of the army on traditional principles: unity of command, the restoration of the death penalty, mobilization, the restoration of insignia, uniform uniforms and even military parades, the first of which took place on May 1, 1918 in Moscow, on the Khodynka field.
An important step in the creation of the Red Army was the fight against the "military anarchism" of the first months of the existence of the new army. Trotsky restored executions for desertion. By the end of 1918, the power of the military committees was reduced to nothing. People's Commissar Trotsky, by his personal example, showed the red commanders how to restore discipline.
On August 10, 1918, he arrived in Sviyazhsk to take part in the battles for Kazan. When the 2nd Petrograd Regiment arbitrarily fled from the battlefield, Trotsky applied the ancient Roman ritual of decimation to deserters (execution of every tenth by lot).
On August 31, Trotsky personally shot 20 people from among the unauthorized retreating units of the 5th Army. With the filing of Trotsky, by a decree of July 29, the entire population of the country liable for military service aged 18 to 40 years was registered, military horse service was established. This made it possible to sharply increase the size of the armed forces. In September 1918, about half a million people were already in the ranks of the Red Army - more than two times more than 5 months ago. By 1920, the number of the Red Army was already more than 5.5 million people.
detachments
When it comes to barrage detachments, they usually remember Stalin and his famous order number 227 “Not a step back”, however, in creating barrage detachments, Leon Trotsky was ahead of his opponent. It was he who was the first ideologist of the punitive barrage detachments of the Red Army. In his memoirs Around October, he wrote that he himself justified to Lenin the need to create detachments:
“In order to overcome this disastrous instability, we need strong defensive detachments made up of communists and militants in general. Must be forced to fight. If you wait until the man is out of his senses, perhaps it will be too late.
Trotsky was generally sharp in his judgments: “As long as, proud of their technology, evil tailless monkeys called people build armies and fight, the command will put the soldiers between possible death ahead and inevitable death behind.”
Over-industrialization
Leon Trotsky was the author of the concept of super-industrialization. The industrialization of the young Soviet state could be carried out in two ways. The first way, which was supported by Nikolai Bukharin, involved the development of private entrepreneurship by attracting foreign loans.
Trotsky, on the other hand, insisted on his concept of super-industrialization, which consisted in growth with the help of domestic resources, using the means of agriculture and light industry to develop heavy industry.
The pace of industrialization was accelerated. Everything took 5 to 10 years. In this situation, the peasantry had to "pay" for the costs of rapid industrial growth. If the directives drawn up in 1927 for the first five-year plan were guided by the "Bukharin approach", then by the beginning of 1928 Stalin decided to revise them and gave the green light to forced industrialization. In order to catch up with the developed countries of the West, it was necessary to “run a distance of 50-100 years” in 10 years. The first (1928-1932) and second (1933-1937) five-year plans were subordinated to this task. That is, Stalin followed the path proposed by Trotsky.
red five pointed star
Leon Trotsky can be called one of the most influential "art directors" of Soviet Russia. It was thanks to him that the five-pointed star became the symbol of the USSR. With its official approval by order of the People's Commissar of the Republic of Leon Trotsky No. 321 dated May 7, 1918, the five-pointed star received the name "Mars star with a plow and a hammer." The order also stated that this sign "is the property of persons serving in the Red Army."
Seriously fond of esotericism, Trotsky knew that the five-pointed pentagram has a very powerful energy potential and is one of the most powerful symbols.
The swastika, the cult of which was very strong in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, could also become a symbol of Soviet Russia. She was depicted on the “kerenki”, swastikas were painted on the wall of the Ipatiev House by Empress Alexandra Fedorovna before being shot, however, by the sole decision of Trotsky, the Bolsheviks settled on a five-pointed star. The history of the 20th century has shown that the "star" is stronger than the "swastika". Later, the stars shone over the Kremlin, replacing the double-headed eagles.
In the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, L. Trotsky undoubtedly played an important role as the ideologist of spontaneous Victory, with its transfer to Europe, and then to the world space. This moment of Victory (at any cost!) was clearly presented to me after watching the TV movie "Trotsky". However, the glorification of one of the most cruel leaders of the October Revolution is completely inappropriate in the year of its centenary. Yes, it was Lev Davidovich who played a significant role in the October Revolution in Petrograd in 1717, heading the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. The revolution in Russia was inevitable, no matter who led the uprising itself: Stalin, Zinoviev or Kamenev. Most likely, Comrade Koba would have done this, since V.I. Lenin personally could not participate in the uprising (the provisional government ordered his arrest). But, the whole prehistory of his activities, after he returned in April from emigration to Russia, was aimed at preparing an uprising. No matter who and what nasty things were talking about the leader of the Bolshevik Party, but in the terrible period between the two revolutions - February and October, it was he, and no one else, who prepared the transition of the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the proletarian one.
Yes, Trotsky was able, six months earlier, to catch the smell of victory in the upcoming revolutionary events and appreciate the role of the Bolsheviks, having gone over from the camp of the Mensheviks to the Bolsheviks. The well-groomed esthete, who appeared before the viewers in a tuxedo, with a butterfly and a proud posture, not subject to anyone (the role of Trotsky was excellently played by Khabensky), who overthrew (?) Sigmund Freud himself, looks so convincing and bright that you begin to believe it is him - Lev Davidovich, and not some kind of leader of the Bolshevik Party, who actually prepared and carried out the revolution in Russia. In fact, this is far from the case, or rather not at all. The scriptwriters did everything to make the modest boy, a small-town Jew, the standard of the Russian revolution. Trotsky himself meant nothing before the October Revolution. But, in the absence of V.I. Lenin, he quickly won the trust of soldiers and revolutionary sailors with his spellbinding rhetoric about world revolution. Lev Davidovich was in the right place and at the right time when the question of the day of the revolutionary uprising in Petrograd was being debated among the leadership of the Bolshevik Central Committee. It is Lenin who owns the catchphrase that defines all the genius of this man: "Today - early, tomorrow - late, we perform at night!" Zinoviev and Kamenev, who did not agree with Lenin's opinion, immediately published their considerations in a Bolshevik newspaper, which, naturally, was read by the secret police of the provisional government. Lenin had no choice but to hide in safe houses, knowing that the order had been given for his arrest and destruction. In this situation, Lev Davidovich made a completely logical decision - to lead the uprising. Since the revolution is inevitable, Lenin is underground, Zinoviev and Kamenev are not fighters, and Comrade Koba-Stalin is not so popular among the soldiers who did not support him, tired of the war. The sailors and soldiers did not want to go to the front again, they were captivated by Trotsky's bewitching speeches and the idea - to take power into their own hands throughout the world.
The curly-haired revolutionary, in glasses and a leather cap, and the same leather trousers and jacket, with an ardent look and completely sweet speeches about the end of the war, about the land for the peasants, about the power of the soldiers' and workers' councils, was clearly to the liking of the soldier masses.
Everything else became a matter of technique and revolutionary impulse. The shot of the Aurora, the capture of banks, post office, telegraph and the Winter Palace, almost without blood and resistance But in fact, the development of the uprising and all subsequent revolutionary events were carefully calculated by the Bolsheviks, led by V.I. Lenin. By the way, Comrade Koba, unloved by the screenwriters, in working overalls, with a mustache and a smirk on his face, as the authors of the series showed him, was one of the developers of the revolution that had taken place. But his role in the revolution, like Lenin, is almost not shown in any way.! So, a successful participant in the revolutionary movement in Russia, who accidentally appeared on the historical stage of those fateful events, no more. The historical truth is quite different: Comrade Koba-Stalin is a professional revolutionary, with extensive experience in working among the proletarian masses. He was not able to break the persecution of the tsarist regime, arrests, prisons and exile, he turned from a revolutionary militant into a consistent Bolshevik revolutionary. Stalin had authority among the Bolshevik elite and among the workers in factories and factories. He was much closer to a simple worker than Trotsky, and had the most direct relation to the coup in Petrograd. Detachments of workers' squads, which were subordinate to Comrade Stalin, were, of course, controlled by the Bolsheviks. Therefore, it was not in vain that in all important places during the uprising, workers' detachments acted, establishing revolutionary order.
Although, it was Leon Trotsky who gave the soldiers and sailors permission to loot. This is his: "Rob - loot!" became a favorite slogan of a drunken sailor and opened Pandora's box in the very first days of the revolution in Petrograd. However, the detachments of workers led by Koba, as the most cohesive and responsible participants in the revolution, prevented mass robberies and looting.
The role of Stalin, and even more so V.I. Lenin, in the October Revolution of 1917, in this series is hushed up or presented as not significant, but the figure of Trotsky rises - this means moving away from historical truth, It was V.I. Lenin developed and theoretically substantiated the possibility of a revolution in one country, if there were appropriate prerequisites for this.
But, Trotsky, obsessed with the thirst to win always and everywhere, especially after the October Revolution in Petrograd, he, like a card player, continued to gamble, putting the "world revolution" on the line. All or nothing! This is the essence of Trotsky! While the card was in the suit, he entered the taste and became furious from the spilled blood of his rivals. "Do not spare any of the enemies of the revolution!" - Trotsky's main slogan during the years of the revolution and the Civil War in Russia.
Yes, of course, Trotsky created, or rather, was one of the creators of the Red Army, but the red terror, with the executions of soldiers who fled the battlefield, or for warning, is somehow mentioned in the film in passing. But to send abroad the intelligentsia, the elite of Russia, by the way, the role of Lev Davidovich in this matter has not been proven, but it is well shown. He would have gladly shot them with the help of Dzerzhinsky in the cellars of the Lubyanka, but Trotsky did not leave the idea of a world revolution and the Russian intelligentsia abroad could be useful to him as a catalyst. By the way, she came in handy. Many Russian emigrants and philosophers supported Trotsky when he found himself abroad and became an ardent fighter against the Soviet Vast. In particular, the famous philosopher Ivan Ilyin wrote letters to Adolf Hitler, urging him to do away with the commissars in Russia.
I already wrote above that in the film the role of V.I. Lenina is shown in some fits and starts and is not convincing. Like the one where Trotsky, after a successful military coup in Petrograd, imagined himself superior to Lenin and the party. An indicative scene, which did not exist in real life, about when, allegedly, V.I. Lenin says to Trotsky: - "You will never become the ruler of Russia, you are a Jew, and in Russia a Russian peasant will not obey a Jew!" Strictly speaking, the authors of the film were lying: V.I. Lenin's mother's Jewish blood flowed, and even after the Bolsheviks came to power, Soviet Russia was ruled by Georgians for almost thirty years, the same comrade Koba - Joseph Dzhugashvili.
And the last years of Trotsky's life abroad, in Mexico, are shown somehow not convincingly: forgotten and abandoned by everyone, he writes dirt on Stalin and waits for his death every day, every hour. He is afraid of everything, his loved ones and even his mistress Frida. And he died, not as a hero of the revolution, but killed by a communist artist with an ice ax climber, as a traitor. In his dying memoirs, Trotsky saw himself as the murderer of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, in the name of the world revolution, and rejoiced at this.
Unfortunately, a viewer who does not know history will completely misunderstand the role and significance of Trotsky in the Russian revolution. That's actually what I wanted to say!
Lev Davidovich Trotsky is a Russian revolutionary figure of the 20th century, the ideologist of Trotskyism, one of the currents of Marxism. Twice exiled under the monarchy, deprived of all civil rights in 1905. One of the organizers of the October Revolution of 1917, one of the creators of the Red Army. One of the founders and ideologists of the Comintern, a member of its Executive Committee.
Leon Trotsky (real name Leiba Bronstein) was born on November 7, 1879 into a family of wealthy tenant landowners. In 1889, his parents sent him to study in Odessa with his cousin, the owner of a printing house and a scientific publishing house, Moses Schnitzer. Trotsky was the first student in the school. He was fond of drawing, literature, composed poetry, translated Krylov's fables from Russian into Ukrainian, participated in the publication of a school handwritten magazine.
He began to conduct revolutionary propaganda at the age of 17, joining a revolutionary circle in Nikolaev. On January 28, 1898, he was arrested for the first time and spent two years in prison, it was then that he joined the ideas of Marxism. During the investigation, he studied the Gospels in English, German, French and Italian, read the works of Marx, got acquainted with the works of Lenin.
Leiba Bronstein at the age of nine, Odessa
A year before going to prison for the first time, Trotsky joined the South Russian Workers' Union. One of its leaders was Alexandra Sokolovskaya, who became Trotsky's wife in 1898. Together they went into exile in the Irkutsk province, where Trotsky contacted Iskra agents, and soon began to cooperate with them, receiving the nickname "Pero" for his penchant for writing.
It was in exile that it was discovered that Trotsky was suffering from epilepsy inherited from his mother. He often lost consciousness and constantly had to be under the supervision of doctors.
“I came to London as a big provincial, and in every sense. Not only abroad, but also in St. Petersburg, I had never been before. In Moscow, as in Kyiv, he lived only in a transit prison. In 1902, Trotsky decided to escape from exile. It was then, when receiving a fake passport, that he entered the name Trotsky there (the name of the senior warden of the Odessa prison, where the revolutionary was kept for two years).
Trotsky went to London, where Vladimir Lenin was then. The young Marxist quickly gained fame by making presentations at meetings of émigrés. He was extremely eloquent, ambitious and educated, everyone, without exception, considered him an amazing speaker. At the same time, for supporting Lenin, he was nicknamed "Lenin's club", while Trotsky himself was often critical of Lenin's organizational plans.
In 1904, serious disagreements began between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. By that time, Trotsky had established himself as a follower of the "permanent revolution", moved away from the Mensheviks and married a second time to Natalia Sedova (the marriage was not registered, but the couple lived together until Trotsky's death). In 1905, together they illegally returned to Russia, where Trotsky became one of the founders of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies. On December 3, he was arrested and, as part of a high-profile trial, was sentenced to eternal exile in Siberia with the deprivation of all civil rights, but fled on the way to Salekhard.
The split between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks was brewing, supported by Lenin, who in 1912 at the Prague conference of the RSDLP announced the separation of the Bolshevik faction into an independent party. Trotsky continued to advocate unification of the party, organizing the "August Bloc", which the Bolsheviks ignored. This cooled Trotsky's desire for a truce, he preferred to step aside.
In 1917, after the February Revolution, Trotsky and his family tried to get to Russia, but were removed from the ship and sent to a concentration camp for interned sailors. The reason for this was the lack of documents from the revolutionary. However, he was soon released at the written request of the Provisional Government as a well-deserved fighter against tsarism. Trotsky criticized the Provisional Government, so he soon became the informal leader of the "mezhraiontsy", for which he was accused of espionage. His influence on the masses was enormous, so he played a special role in the transition to the Bolshevik side of the soldiers of the rapidly decomposing Petrograd garrison, which was of great importance in the revolution. In July 1917, the Mezhraiontsy united with the Bolsheviks, and Trotsky was soon released from prison, where he was on charges of espionage.
While Lenin was in Finland, Trotsky actually became the leader of the Bolsheviks. In September 1917, he headed the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, and also became a delegate to the II Congress of Soviets and the Constituent Assembly. In October, the VRC (Military Revolutionary Committee) was formed, consisting mainly of Bolsheviks. It was the committee that was engaged in armed preparations for the revolution: already on October 16, the Red Guards received five thousand rifles; rallies were held among the hesitant, at which Trotsky's brilliant oratorical talent was again manifested. In fact, he was one of the main leaders of the October Revolution.
Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, Lev Kamenev
“The uprising of the masses needs no justification. What happened is an uprising, not a conspiracy. We tempered the revolutionary energy of the Petersburg workers and soldiers. We openly forged the will of the masses for an uprising, and not for a conspiracy.”
After the October Revolution, the Military Revolutionary Committee remained the only authority for a long time. Under him, a commission for combating counter-revolution, a commission for combating drunkenness and pogroms were formed, and food supplies were established. At the same time, Leni and Trotsky took a tough stance against political opponents. On December 17, 1917, in his address to the Cadets, Trotsky announces the beginning of the stage of mass terror against the enemies of the revolution in a harsher form: “You should know that no later than in a month the terror will take very strong forms, following the example of the great French revolutionaries. The guillotine will await our enemies, and not just prison. It was then, formulated by Trotsky, that the concept of "red terror" appeared.
Soon Trotsky was appointed People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the first composition of the Bolshevik government. On December 5, 1917, the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee was dissolved, Trotsky handed over his affairs to Zinoviev and completely immersed himself in the affairs of the Petrograd Soviet. The "counter-revolutionary sabotage" of the civil servants of the old Ministry of Foreign Affairs began, suppressed by the publication of the secret treaties of the tsarist government. The situation in the country was also complicated by diplomatic isolation, which was not easy for Trotsky to overcome.
To improve the situation, he announced that the government would take an intermediate position "neither peace nor war: we do not sign treaties, we stop the war, and we demobilize the army." Germany refused to tolerate such a position and announced an offensive. By this time, the army did not actually exist. Trotsky admitted the failure of his policy and resigned from the post of People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.
Leon Trotsky with his wife Natalia Sedova and son Lev Sedov
On March 14, 1918, Trotsky was appointed to the post of people's commissar for military affairs, on March 28 to the post of chairman of the Supreme Military Council, in April - military commissar for maritime affairs, and on September 6 - chairman of the revolutionary military council of the RSFSR. At the same time, the formation of a regular army begins. Trotsky became in fact its first commander in chief. In August 1918, Trotsky's regular trips to the front began. Several times Trotsky, risking his life, speaks even to deserters. But practice has shown that the army is not capable, Trotsky is forced to support its reorganization, gradually restoring unity of command, insignia, mobilization, a single uniform, military greetings and awards.
In 1922, Joseph Stalin was elected General Secretary of the Bolshevik Party, whose views did not coincide with those of Trotsky. Stalin was supported by Zinoviev and Kamenev, who believed that the rise of Trotsky threatened with anti-Semitic attacks on the Soviet regime, condemned him for factionalism.
Lenin dies in 1924. Stalin took advantage of Trotsky's absence from Moscow to nominate himself as "heir" and consolidate his position.
In 1926, Trotsky allied himself with Zinoviev and Kamenev, whom Stalin began to oppose. However, this did not help him and was soon followed by exclusion from the party, deportation to Alma-Ata, and then to Turkey.
Hitler's victory in February 1933 was regarded by Trotsky as the biggest defeat of the international workers' movement. He concluded that the Comintern was rendered incapacitated by Stalin's openly counter-revolutionary policies and called for the creation of the Fourth International.
In 1933, Trotsky was granted a secret asylum in France, which the Nazis soon discovered. Trotsky leaves for Norway, where he writes his most significant work, The Revolution Betrayed. In 1936, at a show trial in Moscow, Stalin called Trotsky an agent of Hitler. Trotsky is expelled from Norway. The only country that gave refuge to the revolutionary was Mexico: he settled in the house of the artist Diego Rivera, then in a fortified and carefully guarded villa on the outskirts of Mexico City - in the city of Coyocan.
After Stalin's speeches in Mexico, an International Joint Commission to Investigate the Moscow Trials was organized. The commission concluded that the accusations were slanderous and that Trotsky was not guilty.
The Soviet secret services kept Trotsky under close surveillance, having agents among his associates. In 1938, under mysterious circumstances in Paris, his closest colleague, the eldest son Lev Sedov, died after an operation in a hospital. His first wife and his youngest son Sergei Sedov were arrested and subsequently shot.
Leon Trotsky was killed with an ice pick in his home near Mexico City on August 24, 1940. The executor was an NKVD agent, the Spanish Republican Ramon Mercader (pictured), who infiltrated Trotsky's entourage under the name of Canadian journalist Frank Jackson.
Mercader received 20 years in prison for the murder. After his release in 1960, he emigrated to the USSR, where he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. According to some estimates, the assassination of Trotsky cost the NKVD about five million dollars.
The ice pick that killed Trotsky
From the testament of Leon Trotsky: “There is no need for me to refute the stupid and vile slander of Stalin and his agents here again: there is not a single stain on my revolutionary honor. Neither directly nor indirectly have I ever entered into any behind-the-scenes agreements or even negotiations with the enemies of the working class. Thousands of Stalin's opponents died victims of similar false accusations.
For forty-three years of my conscious life I remained a revolutionary, of which forty-two I fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to start over, I would, of course, try to avoid these or those mistakes, but the general direction of my life would remain unchanged. I see a bright green strip of grass under the wall, clear blue skies above the wall, and sunshine everywhere. Life is Beautiful. May future generations cleanse it of evil, oppression, violence, and enjoy it fully.
They call me a Trotskyist here, despite my protests and futile attempts at refutation. I come to the conclusion that the label of a Trotskyist is automatically molded on ANYONE WHO REFUSES TO INCLUDING BRAND TROTSKY AS A TRAITOR, WHO IS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND HIS SERVICES, GOALS AND FACTS (actually the facts, and not the slander erected on him) activities. You notice that in his PSS there is no such-and-such allegedly his statement, you remind that Lenin called Trotsky the “best Bolshevik” that’s all, you are a Trotskyist. But is this smart, and who is better off hiding the heads of anti-Trotskyists in the sand of ignorance?
We will talk about the confessions of the convicts, whether they were knocked out by the Trotskyist-Zinoviev Center, or sincere, but for now only about the topic indicated in the title.
Let's list the facts:
People who grew up in the USSR, as a rule, do not realize that Trotsky was not just a prominent revolutionary, but a figure practically equal to Lenin. Only two of them were officially called "leaders" in Soviet Russia: "the leader of the revolution, Comrade Lenin" and "the leader of the Red Army, Comrade Trotsky." Trotsky had a paper in his hands: "Everything done by Comrade Trotsky is unconditionally supported by me, and all his orders must be unquestioningly executed, as if they were personally mine. Presovnarkom Ulyanov (Lenin)".
During the revolution of 1905, when Lenin only briefly returned from exile and did nothing special, Trotsky was, neither more nor less than the chairman of the Leningrad Soviet. Shone at rallies, sat, ran. After the split of the RSDLP into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Trotsky declared himself independent and persuaded the warring parties to make peace. For this, Lenin called him "Judas", but the position "above the fray" helped Trotsky earn political points. Brilliant in several languages, he sent reports from the Balkan war of 1912 to the leading European newspapers, so that he was well known in the West. After the first unsuccessful attempt to seize power on July 3-4, when Lenin and Zinoviev hid in a hut on Lake Razliv, Trotsky went to prison, but after the "Kornilov rebellion" he emerged from it in triumph and headed the Petrograd Soviet for the second time.
Today, historians almost unanimously admit that the October coup was led mainly by Trotsky. Vladimir Mayakovsky described the situation in the "headquarters of the revolution" as follows:
"Comrade Stalin is calling you,
third to the right, he's there."
"Comrades, don't stop, why are you up?
In armored cars and at the Post Office
by order of Comrade Trotsky!"
"Eat!" - turned and disappeared soon.
And only on the tape at the naval
under the lamp flashed: "Aurora".
The poem "Good!" was written for the 10th anniversary of October, when Trotsky was already in deep disgrace, but Mayakovsky found it impossible not to mention him. From all subsequent editions, the line about Trotsky was deleted. Attentive readers wondered why there was no rhyme for the word "naval".
In the first Bolshevik government, Trotsky became People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. His main task was peace negotiations with Germany. Stalin's "Short Course" and all subsequent Soviet history textbooks left no stone unturned from Trotsky's "absurd" and "treacherous" idea: "No peace, no war, but disband the army." A number of modern researchers point out that Trotsky, of course, made a mistake in his calculations, but the thought itself was not so stupid. Lenin and the Bolshevik Central Committee did not consider him a traitor or an idiot, and did not try to correct him. Trotsky hoped that Berlin would take the opportunity to transfer all available forces to the Western Front and would not present territorial claims to Soviet Russia. In addition, he was waiting for a revolution in Germany from day to day, and in every possible way played for time, drawing the German delegation into philosophical discussions.
On March 3, the Soviet delegation signed the Brest Treaty, and the next day Trotsky was appointed chairman of the Supreme Military Council (since September 1918 - the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic). On March 13, he also became People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs,
Trotsky came up with the hammer and sickle emblem and the Order of the Red Banner of Battle, personally wrote the text of the oath, which, with some changes, is still taken by Russian military personnel, and created the military registration and enlistment office system that is still in effect today.
Perhaps Trotsky's main merit to the Soviet authorities was the massive recruitment of former tsarist officers, without whom the Reds would hardly have been able to win. The beginning was laid by Trotsky's directive article in Izvestia, published on July 23, 1918. “Ninety-nine hundredths of the officers declare that they cannot participate in the civil war,” he wrote. “This must be finished! The officers received their education at the expense of the people. Those who served Nikolai Romanov can and will serve when the worker orders them Class". Many in the party elite considered the idea dubious and dangerous, but Trotsky insisted on his own. Of the 200,000 officers of the former imperial army, 75,000 served with the Reds, and only 50,000 with the Whites. Of the 20 commanders of the red fronts, 17 were officers of the tsarist time, 82 of the 100 commanders, the chiefs of staff of the fronts, armies and divisions - all.
Among the "military experts" were such "stars" as the most famous Russian general of the First World War, Alexei Brusilov, or Boris Shaposhnikov, who under Nicholas II was a former colonel of the General Staff, and under Stalin twice headed the "brain of the army."
However, the officers served the Bolsheviks not only out of fear, but also out of conscience. Four former generals, having been captured by the Whites, did not renounce the new oath and were shot. The meaning of life for most officers was the great and indivisible Russia. They were disappointed in the Romanov monarchy, capitalist values were an empty phrase for them, and many saw in the Bolsheviks a force capable of gathering a collapsed empire and even leading it to new heights of power. Back in the summer of 1917, while in German captivity, Mikhail Tukhachevsky told his comrades: "The garb of dictatorship suits us best. If Lenin manages to make Russia a strong country, I will choose Marxism." The officers of the General Staff - the elite of the armed forces, a hereditary "military bone" - went to the Bolsheviks more willingly than the intellectuals drafted into the army during the war. Over 600 former General Staff officers signed up for the Red Army. About a hundred then ran over to the whites. The percentage of deserters among ordinary Red Army soldiers was higher.
In the early 1920s, Trotsky preached "super-industrialization" and "forced transfer of funds from the countryside to the city." Stalin, for opportunistic reasons, objected, earning from Trotsky a derogatory, in the opinion of the latter, nickname "peasant king", but, having expelled his main opponent, he exactly embodied his idea.
Some Russian historians emphasize Trotsky's Jewish origins. But Trotsky was neither a Jewish nationalist nor a Russophobe. He was an absolute cosmopolitan and atheist, did not speak Yiddish and never showed the slightest interest in the Jewish question or the idea of creating Israel, which began to be widely discussed during his lifetime. There is no evidence that Trotsky provided protection to anyone on a national basis. He wanted to radically change the world, and any traditional society was equally alien to him. Apparently, Trotsky did not care where to make a revolution - in Russia or in Hawaii. And everywhere he would act by the same methods.
More than once it was heard that Trotsky entered into an alliance with Hitler against the USSR and Stalin. Here is one of his last articles: "STALIN - HITLER'S INTENDANT"http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/trotsky/trotm472.htm and a paragraph striking with the power of prophecy:
“Tomorrow we will undoubtedly hear on the radio the voices of yesterday's communist leaders who, in the interests of their governments, will expose the betrayal of the Kremlin in all languages of the civilized world, including Russian. The collapse of the Comintern will deal an incurable blow to the authority of the ruling caste in the minds of the masses of the people of the Soviet Union itself. Thus, the policy of cynicism, which was supposed to strengthen the position of the Stalinist oligarchy, in fact will hasten the hour of its collapse. The war will sweep away much and many. By tricks, tricks, forgeries, betrayals, no one will be able to evade her formidable judgment.
And most importantly, Trotsky's attitude to the USSR, could the person who wrote these lines:
“However, our article would be fundamentally misunderstood if it prompted the conclusion that everything new that the October Revolution introduced into the life of mankind would be swept away in the Soviet Union. The author is deeply convinced otherwise. New forms of economy, freed from the intolerable shackles of bureaucracy, will not only withstand the fiery test, but will also serve as the basis of a new culture, which, we hope, will put an end to war forever. be an accomplice of Hitler and wish the defeat of the USSR?
