Leon Trotsky
Leave a comment13/06/2017 by socialistfight
Excellent historical work. Here is some of my own:
Lenin Begins his Last Struggle
Having promised a reply I found that I would have to reassert the politics of Leninism and Trotskyism against Stalin and Stalinism and to do that I would have to begin with Lenin’s last struggle against Stalin. This involved three issues in particular on which Lenin fought with all the remaining strength he had in the period after his first stroke on 26 May 1922. As he fought for life itself his political struggle grew ever more intense as he understood things were going seriously wrong with the first workers’ state. The three issues were; 1. The defence of the principle of retaining the monopoly of foreign trade. 2. The fight against the bureaucratisation of the state to keep the revolution alive. The third issue was what is known as the Georgia controversy which spans the entire period of his illness and grew to its more bitter on 6-8 March 1923, on the eve of his third and totally debilitating stroke which took his speech. Here is the course of his illness and struggle:
Timeline of Lenin’s Last Struggle
1922 — May 26 Lenin suffers his first stroke.
1922 — November 20 Lenin’s last public speech.
1922 — December 15 Lenin suffers his second stroke.
1922 — December 22, Stalin’s telephone call to Krupskaya.
1922 — December 24 Lenin writes his Testament.
1922 — December 24: Politburo orders that Lenin be kept in isolation.
1922 — December 25, Lenin adds the rider about removing Stain.
1922 — December 30 Formal establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
1923 — March 2 Lenin writes his last document; Better Fewer, But Better, against the rising bureaucracy.
1923 — March 9 Lenin suffers his third stroke. No longer able to speak.
1924 — January 21 Lenin dies from fourth stroke
On the Suppressed Testament of Lenin
(December 1932)
The full text of Lenin’s testament was first published in English in the New York Times of October 18, 1926. Subsequently it was included by the publishers (Harcourt Brace and Co., 1928) as a supplement to The Real Situation in Russia by Leon Trotsky. In 1935 Pioneer Publishers printed the full text in the pamphlet The Suppressed Testament of Lenin, together with Leon Trotsky’s article On Lenin’s Testament, which had first appeared in the July and August, 1934, issues of New International. The pamphlet has long been out of print.
ForewordThe document later known as Lenin’s Testament was, as Trotsky says in his biography of Stalin, “Lenin’s last advice on how to organize the party leadership.” A year before his death Lenin, with his unerring political insight, saw in Stalin’s policies the beginnings of what Lenin himself… |
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Socialist Fight 