Editing Trotskyism (section)

=== "Legend of Trotskyism" ===
[[File:Leon Trotsky.JPG|thumb|"Bolshevik freedom" with nude of Trotsky in a Polish propaganda poster, Polish–Soviet War (1920)]]
In ''[[The Stalin School of Falsification]]'', Trotsky argues that what he calls the "legend of Trotskyism" was formulated by [[Grigory Zinoviev]] and [[Lev Kamenev]] in collaboration with Stalin in 1924 in response to the criticisms Trotsky raised of Politburo policy.{{sfn|Deutscher|1966|p=293}} [[Orlando Figes]] argues: "The urge to silence Trotsky, and all criticism of the Politburo, was in itself a crucial factor in Stalin's rise to power".<ref>{{cite book |last=Figes |first=Orlando |title=A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924 |pages=802 |publisher=[[Pimlico]] |date=1997}}</ref>

During 1922–1924, Lenin suffered a series of strokes and became increasingly incapacitated. In [[Lenin's Testament|a document]] dictated before his death in 1924 while describing Trotsky as "distinguished not only by his exceptional abilities—personally he is, to be sure, the most able man in the present Central Committee" and also maintaining that "his non-Bolshevik past should not be held against him", Lenin criticized him for "showing excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work" and also requested that Stalin be removed from his position of General Secretary, but his notes remained suppressed until 1956.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |title=Collected Works |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |date=1965 |location=Moscow |volume=36 |pages=593–598 |quote=Stalin is too rude and this defect [...] becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post [...] it is a detail which can assume decisive importance.}}</ref> Zinoviev and Kamenev broke with Stalin in 1925 and joined Trotsky in 1926 in what was known as the [[United Opposition (Soviet Union)|United Opposition]].{{sfn|Trotsky|1971|p=[http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/ssf/sf07.htm 89]|ref=Trotsky1971a}}

In 1926, Stalin allied with [[Nikolai Bukharin]], who led the campaign against "Trotskyism". In ''The Stalin School of Falsification'', Trotsky quotes Bukharin's 1918 pamphlet, ''From the Collapse of Czarism to the Fall of the Bourgeoisie'', which was re-printed in 1923 by the party publishing house, Proletari. Bukharin explains and embraces Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution in this pamphlet: "The Russian proletariat is confronted more sharply than ever before with the problem of the international revolution ... The grand total of relationships which have arisen in Europe leads to this inevitable conclusion. Thus, the permanent revolution in Russia is passing into the European proletarian revolution". Yet it is common knowledge, Trotsky argues, that three years later in 1926 "Bukharin was the chief and indeed the sole theoretician of the entire campaign against 'Trotskyism', summed up in the struggle against the theory of the permanent revolution."{{sfn|Trotsky|1971|p=[http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/ssf/sf06.htm 78]|ref=Trotsky1971a}}

Trotsky wrote that the [[Left Opposition]] grew in influence throughout the 1920s, attempting to reform the Communist Party, but in 1927 Stalin declared "civil war" against them:

{{Blockquote|text=During the first ten years of its struggle, the Left Opposition did not abandon the program of ideological conquest of the party for that of conquest of power against the party. Its slogan was: reform, not revolution. The bureaucracy, however, even in those times, was ready for any revolution in order to defend itself against a democratic reform.

{{pb}}In 1927, when the struggle reached an especially bitter stage, Stalin declared at a session of the Central Committee, addressing himself to the Opposition: "Those cadres can be removed only by civil war!" What was a threat in Stalin's words became, thanks to a series of defeats of the European proletariat, a historic fact. The road of reform was turned into a road of revolution.|sign=Leon Trotsky|source={{sfn|Trotsky|1991|p=279}}}}

Internationally, Trotsky's opposition and criticism of the ruling troika received support from several, Central Committee members of foreign communist parties. This included [[Christian Rakovsky]], [[Council of People's Commissars (Ukraine)|Chairman]] of the [[Ukrainian SSR|Ukraine Sovnarkom]], [[Boris Souvarine]] of the [[French Communist Party]] and the Central Committee of the [[Communist Party of Poland|Polish Communist Party]] which was led by prominent theoreticians such as [[Maksymilian Horwitz]], [[Maria Koszutska]] and [[Adolf Warski]].{{sfn|Rogovin|2021|pp=139, 249, 268–269}}

The defeat of the European working class led to further isolation in Russia and further suppression of the Opposition. Trotsky argued that the "so-called struggle against 'Trotskyism' grew out of the bureaucratic reaction against the October Revolution [of 1917]".{{sfn|Trotsky|1971|loc=Foreword to the Russian edition|p=xxxiii|ref=Trotsky1971a}} He responded to the one-sided civil war with his ''Letter to the Bureau of Party History'' (1927), contrasting what he claimed to be the falsification of history with the official history of just a few years before. He further accused Stalin of derailing the Chinese revolution and causing the massacre of the Chinese workers: {{blockquote|text=In the year 1918, Stalin, at the very outset of his campaign against me, found it necessary, as we have already learned, to write the following words:

{{pb}}<blockquote>"All the work of practical organization of the insurrection was carried out under the direct leadership of the Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, comrade Trotsky..." (Stalin, ''Pravda'', 6 November 1918)</blockquote>

{{pb}}With full responsibility for my words, I am now compelled to say that the cruel massacre of the Chinese proletariat and the Chinese Revolution at its three most important turning points, the strengthening of the position of the trade union agents of British imperialism after the [[1926 United Kingdom general strike|General Strike of 1926]], and, finally, the general weakening of the position of the Communist International and the Soviet Union, the party owes principally and above all to Stalin.|sign=Leon Trotsky|source={{sfn|Trotsky|1971|p=87|ref=Trotsky1971a}}}}

Trotsky was sent into internal exile, and his supporters were jailed. For instance, Victor Serge first "spent six weeks in a cell" after a visit at midnight, then 85 days in an inner [[State Political Directorate|GPU]] cell, most of it in solitary confinement. He details the jailings of the Left Opposition.<ref name="Serge 1973">{{cite book |last=Serge |first=Victor |author-link=Victor Serge |title=From Lenin to Stalin |pages=70 |publisher=Pathfinder |date=1973}}</ref> However, the Left Opposition worked secretly within the USSR.<ref name="Serge 1973"/> Trotsky was eventually exiled to Turkey and moved to France, Norway and finally Mexico.{{sfn|Deutscher|1966|p=381}}

After 1928, the various Communist Parties worldwide expelled Trotskyists from their ranks. Most Trotskyists defend the economic achievements of the planned economy in the USSR during the 1920s and 1930s, despite the "misleadership" of the Soviet bureaucracy and what they claim to be the loss of democracy.<ref>{{cite book |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=Revolution Betrayed |pages=5–32 |publisher=Pathfinder |date=1971}}</ref> Trotskyists claim that in 1928 inner party democracy and soviet democracy, which was at the foundation of Bolshevism,<ref>{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |chapter=How to organise competition |title=Collected Works |url=http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/dec/25.htm |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |date=1965 |location=Moscow |volume=26 |pages=409 |quote=One of the most important tasks today, if not the most important, is to develop this independent initiative of the workers, and of all working and exploited people generally.}}</ref> had been destroyed within the various Communist Parties. Anyone who disagreed with the party line was labelled a Trotskyist and even a [[Fascist (insult)|fascist]].

In 1937, Stalin again unleashed what Trotskyists say was a [[Great Purge|political terror]] against their Left Opposition and many of the remaining [[Old Bolshevik]]s (those who had played vital roles in the [[October Revolution]] in 1917) in the face of increased opposition, particularly in the army.<ref>{{cite book |last=Rogovin |first=Vadim |author-link=Vadim Rogovin |title=1937: Stalin's Year of Terror |publisher=[[Mehring Books]] |date=1998 |pages=374}}. Also see the chapter 'Trotskyists in the camps': "A new, young generation of Trotskyists had grown up in the Soviet Union...lots of them go to their deaths crying 'Long live Trotsky!' " Until this research became available after the fall of the Soviet Union, little was known about the strength of the Trotskyists within the Soviet Union.</ref>