Editing Leninism (section)

=== Trotskyism ===
{{main|Trotskyism|Anti-Stalinist Left|The Declaration of 46|New Course (Trotsky book)|The Stalin School of Falsification|Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R15068, Leo Dawidowitsch Trotzki.jpg|thumb|[[Leon Trotsky]] was exiled from Russia after losing to Stalin in the factional politics of the Bolsheviks]]

In 1922, Lenin allied with [[Leon Trotsky]] against the party's growing [[Nomenklatura|bureaucratisation]] and the influence of [[Joseph Stalin]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mccauley |first1=Martin |title=The Soviet Union 1917-1991 |date=4 February 2014 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-317-90179-2 |page=59 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7cbKAgAAQBAJ&dq=the+soviet+union+1917+1991+lenin+trotsky+bloc+1922&pg=PA59 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |author1-link=Isaac Deutscher |title=The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921-1929 |date=2003 |publisher=[[Verso Books]] |isbn=978-1-85984-446-5 |page=63 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mgubj5z1XUcC&dq=lenin+trotsky+bloc+1922+stalin&pg=PA63 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Kort |first1=Michael G. |title=The Soviet Colossus: History and Aftermath |date=18 May 2015 |publisher=[[M. E. Sharpe]] |isbn=978-0-7656-2845-9 |page=166 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BHaWGEZA5zMC |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Volkogonov |first1=Dmitriĭ Antonovich |title=Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary |date=1996 |publisher=HarperCollins |isbn=978-0-00-255272-1 |page=242 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FdqOQgAACAAJ |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Lenin |first1=V. I. |author1-link=Vladimir Lenin |title="To L. D. Trotsky", 13 December 1922 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/21.htm |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> Lenin himself never mentioned the concept of "Trotskyism" after Trotsky became a member of the Bolshevik party but the term was employed by Stalin and the troika to present Trotsky's views as factional and anathematical to Leninist thought.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Zakharovich |title=Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |date=2021 |publisher=[[Mehring Books]] |isbn=978-1-893638-97-6 |pages=281 |language=en}}</ref>

After Lenin's death (21 January 1924), Trotsky ideologically battled the influence of Stalin, who formed ruling blocs within the Russian Communist Party (with [[Grigory Zinoviev]] and [[Lev Kamenev]], then with [[Nikolai Bukharin]] and then by himself) and so determined soviet government policy from 1924 onwards. The ruling blocs continually denied Stalin's opponents the right to organise as an opposition faction within the party—thus, the reinstatement of [[democratic centralism]] and [[Freedom of speech|free speech]] within the Communist Party were key arguments of Trotsky's [[Left Opposition]] and the later [[Joint Opposition (Soviet Union)|Joint Opposition]].<ref name="Deutscher 1959"/><ref>{{cite web |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Trotsky |date=1927 |title=Platform of the Joint Opposition |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1927/opposition/index.htm |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |access-date=28 November 2011 |archive-date=3 December 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111203222432/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1927/opposition/index.htm |url-status=live}}</ref>

In instituting government policy, Stalin promoted the doctrine of [[socialism in one country]] (adopted 1925),<ref name=":0">{{cite web|url=https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft009nb0bb&chunk.id=d0e2411&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e2185&brand=ucpress |title=When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics |publisher=UC Press E-Books Collection |access-date=17 December 2019 |archive-date=14 February 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200214172318/https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft009nb0bb&chunk.id=d0e2411&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e2185&brand=ucpress |url-status=live}}</ref> wherein the Soviet Union would establish [[socialism]] upon Russia's economic foundations (and support socialist revolutions elsewhere).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1924-2/industrialization-debate/industrialization-debate-texts/socialism-in-one-country-versus-permanent-revolution/ |title=Socialism in One Country versus Permanent Revolution |website=Seventeen Moments in Soviet History |date=27 August 2015 |access-date=17 December 2019 |archive-date=1 February 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170201025252/http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1924-2/industrialization-debate/industrialization-debate-texts/socialism-in-one-country-versus-permanent-revolution/ |url-status=live}}</ref> In a 1936 interview with journalist [[Roy W. Howard]], Stalin articulated his rejection of [[world revolution]] and stated that “We never had such plans and intentions” and that “The export of revolution is nonsense”.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Vyshinsky |first1=Andrey Yanuaryevich |title=Speeches Delivered at the Fifth Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, September-October, 1950 |date=1950 |publisher=Information Bulletin of the Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics |page=76 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1VM1AQAAIAAJ&dq=Stalin+we+ever+had+such+plans+and+intentions&pg=PA76 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Volkogonov |first1=Dmitriĭ Antonovich |title=Autopsy for an Empire: The Seven Leaders who Built the Soviet Regime |date=1998 |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |isbn=978-0-684-83420-7 |page=125 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S5XlHA_75YwC&dq=Stalin+we+ever+had+such+plans+and+intentions&pg=PA125 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Kotkin |first1=Stephen |title=Stalin |volume=II, Waiting for Hitler, 1928-1941 |date=2017 |location=London |publisher=Allen Lane |isbn=978-0-7139-9945-7 |page=125 |url=https://archive.org/details/stalinvoliiwaiti0000kotk/page/287/mode/1up}}</ref>

Conversely, Trotsky held that socialism in one country would economically constrain the industrial development of the Soviet Union and thus required assistance from the new socialist countries in the developed world—which was essential for maintaining soviet democracy—in 1924, much undermined by the [[Russian Civil War]] of White Army counter-revolution. Trotsky's theory of [[permanent revolution]] proposed that socialist revolutions in underdeveloped countries would further dismantle [[Feudalism|feudal]] régimes and establish socialist democracies that would not pass through a capitalist stage of development and government. Hence, revolutionary workers should ally politically with peasant political organisations, not capitalist political parties. In contrast, Stalin and his allies proposed that alliances with capitalist political parties were essential to realising a revolution where communists were too few.<ref name=":0"/> Said Stalinist practice failed, especially in the [[Northern Expedition]] portion of the Chinese Revolution (1926–1928), which resulted in the [[Right-wing politics|right-wing]] [[Kuomintang]]'s massacre of the [[Chinese Communist Party]]. Despite the failure, Stalin's policy of mixed-ideology political alliances nonetheless became [[Communist International|Comintern]]'s policy.

Until exiled from Russia in 1929, Trotsky developed and led the Left Opposition (and the later Joint Opposition) with members of the [[Workers' Opposition]], the Decembrists and (later) the Zinovievists.<ref name="Deutscher 1959"/> Trotskyism predominated the politics of the Left Opposition, which demanded the restoration of [[soviet democracy]], the expansion of democratic centralism in the Communist Party, national industrialisation, international [[permanent revolution]] and socialist internationalism. According to historian [[Sheila Fitzpatrick]], the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of the Left Opposition on such matters as [[industrialisation]] and [[collectivisation]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Fitzpatrick |first1=Sheila |author1-link=Shiela Fitzpatrick |title=The Old Man |journal=London Review of Books |date=22 April 2010 |volume=32 |issue=8 |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n08/sheila-fitzpatrick/the-old-man |language=en |issn=0260-9592}}</ref>

The Trotskyist demands countered Stalin's political dominance of the Communist Party, which was officially characterised by the "[[Cult of personality|cult of Lenin]]", the rejection of permanent revolution, and advocated the doctrine of [[socialism in one country]]. The Stalinist economic policy vacillated between appeasing the capitalist interests of the [[kulak]] in the countryside and destroying them as a social class. Initially, the Stalinists also rejected the national industrialisation of Russia but then pursued it in full, sometimes brutally. In both cases, the Left Opposition denounced the regressive nature of Stalin's policy towards the wealthy kulak social class and the brutality of forced industrialisation. Trotsky described Stalinist vacillation as a symptom of the undemocratic nature of a ruling bureaucracy.<ref>{{cite book |last=Trotsky |first=L. D. |author-link=Leon Trotsky |date=1938 |title=[[The Revolution Betrayed]]}}</ref>

During the 1920s and the 1930s, Stalin fought and defeated the political influence of Trotsky and the Trotskyists in Russia using slander, [[antisemitism]], [[censorship]], expulsions, exile (internal and external), and imprisonment. The anti-Trotsky campaign culminated in the executions (official and unofficial) of the [[Moscow Trials]] (1936–1938), which were part of the [[Great Purge]] of [[Old Bolshevik]]s who had led the Revolution.<ref name="Deutscher 1959"/><ref>{{cite book |last=Rogovin |first=Vadim Z. |author-link=Vadim Rogovin |date=2009 |title=Stalin's Terror of 1937–1938: Political Genocide in the USSR |translator-first=Frederick S. |translator-last=Choate}}</ref>