Books by Leon Trotsky
AN Appeal to the Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of Europe (Penguin Great Ideas)
by Leon Trotsky
Whether calling for an end to the capitalist system, addressing the crowds after the Russian Revolution, or attacking Stalin during his years of exile, Trotsky's speeches give an extraordinary insight into a man whose words and actions determined the fates of millions. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.
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Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky (Revolutions)
by Leon Trotsky
Written in the white heat of revolutionary Russia’s Civil War, Trotsky’s Terrorism and Communism is one of the most potent defenses of revolutionary dictatorship. In his provocative commentary to this new edition the philosopher Slavoj iek argues that Trotsky’s attack on the illusions of liberal democracy has a vital relevance today.
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Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky (Revolutions)
by Leon Trotsky
Trotsky and Slavoj iek defend revolutionary violence
Written in the white heat of revolutionary Russia’s Civil War, Trotsky’s Terrorism and Communism is one of the most potent defenses of revolutionary dictatorship. In his provocative commentary to this new edition the philosopher Slavoj iek argues that Trotsky’s attack on the illusions of liberal democracy has a vital relevance today.
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Against Lenin: The Pre-Bolshevik Writings
by Leon Trotsky
Product Description Trotsky’s earliest interventions into the Russian socialist movement brought together for the first time in English Written in the last years before the explosion of the 1905 revolution, the texts collected together and introduced by Tariq Ali here are among Trotsky’s most vigorous polemics. Exiled from Russia for his revolutionary activities, these essays portray some of the young socialist’s reflections on the early Russian left. His divergences with Lenin, the problems with liberalism, the state of the workers’ movement and the organizational debates tearing through Russian social-democracy are just some of the themes dealt with in this volume, which includes some translated for the first time in English. About the Author Leon Trotsky was a Marxist writer, theorist and leader. He organised the insurrection of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 and then was the commander of the Red Army in the subsequent civil war. After Lenin’s death, Trotsky led the Left Opposition against Stalin’s bureaucratic counterrevolution and was exiled in a series of countries before being assassinated in Mexico in 1940.
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Stalin
by Leon Trotsky
On 20th August 1940 Trotsky's life was brutally ended when a Stalinist agent brought an ice pick crashing down on his head. Among the works left unfinished was the second part of his biography of Stalin.
Trotsky's Stalin is unique in Marxist literature in that it attempts to explain some of the most decisive events of the 20th century, not just in terms of epoch-making economic and social transformations, but in the individual psychology of one of the protagonists in a great historical drama. It is a fascinating study of the way in which the peculiar character of an individual, his personal traits and psychology, interacts with great events.
How did it come about that Stalin, who began his political life as a revolutionary and a Bolshevik, ended as a tyrant and a monster? Drawing on a mass of carefully assembled material from his personal archives and many other sources, Trotsky provides the answer to this question.
In the present edition we have brought together all the material that was available from the Trotsky archives in English and supplemented it with additional material translated from Russian. It is the most complete version of the book that has ever been published.
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History of the Russian Revolution
by Leon Trotsky
The classic account of the social, economic, and political dynamics of the first socialist revolution as told by one of its central leaders. Trotsky describes how, under Lenin s leadership, the Bolshevik Party led the working class, peasantry, and oppressed nationalities to overturn the monarchist regime of the landlords and capitalists and bring to power a government of the workers and peasants one that set an example for toilers the world over. Nowhere are those world-shattering events explained with more clarity and insight than in this powerful account. Unabridged edition, 3 vols. in one.
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History of the Russian Revolution
by Leon Trotsky
During the first two months of 1917 Russia was still a Romanov monarchy. Eight months later the Bolsheviks stood at the helm. They were little known to anybody when the year began, and their leaders were still under indictment for state treason when they came to power. You will not find another such sharp turn in history especially if you remember that it involves a nation of 150 million people. It is clear that the events of 1917, whatever you think of them, deserve study.”
--Leon Trotsky, from History of the Russian Revolution
Regarded by many as among the most powerful works of history ever written, this book offers an unparalleled account of one of the most pivotal and hotly debated events in world history. This book reveals, from the perspective of one of its central actors, the Russian Revolution’s profoundly democratic, emancipatory character.
Originally published in three parts, Trotsky’s masterpiece is collected here in a single volume. It serves as the most vital and inspiring record of the Russian Revolution to date.
[T]he greatest history of an event that I know.”
C. L. R. James
"Justly celebrated as a towering, vivid, historically vital work.”
China Miéville, October
In Trotsky all passions were aroused, but his thought remained calm and his vision clear.... His involvement in the struggle, far from blurring his sight, sharpens it.... The History is his crowning work, both in scale and power and as the fullest expression of his ideas on revolution. As an account of a revolution, given by one of its chief actors, it stands unique in world literature.”
Isaac Deutscher
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1905
by Leon Trotsky
In January of 1905, thousands of Russian workers, led by a priest on the payroll of the Tsar himself, marched to the gates of the Winter Palace with the intention of humbly petitioning their ruler for an eight hour work day. They were met by an intransigent detachment of royal guards who opened fire, killing hundreds of demonstrators. This massacre was the spark that set off an uprising that would shake the Russian Empire to its very foundation before the year’s end.
At the very center of this movement stood the newly created Soviet of Workers Deputies. Formed to coordinate the wave of mass strikes that stretched from St. Petersburg to Warsaw, this council became the de-facto voice of Russia’s revolutionary workers, who chose Leon Trotsky as their elected leader.
1905 is Leon Trotsky’s account of these events. With his characteristic combination of elegant, beautifully written narrative and incisive, insightful analysis, Trotsky’s bookdespite long being out of printhas remained the central point of reference for those looking to understand the rising of workers, peasants, and soldiers that would later become known as the Great Dress Rehearsal.’ Originally written in 1908 for revolutionaries in and outside of Russia to better understand the dynamics and forces at play in order to better apply them to their own circumstances, this new edition reclaims these lessons for today’s radicals
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Lessons of October
by Leon Trotsky
In this sharply polemical account, Leon Trotsky draws up a balance sheet of the world's first successful workers' revolution. Written primarily for members of the newly created Communist International, Trotsky focuses on the specific role played by the Bolshevik Party in leading Russian workers to victory.
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Problems of Everyday Life: Creating the Foundations for a New Society in Revolutionary Russia
by Leon Trotsky
Articles from the early Soviet press on social and cultural issues in the struggle to forge new socialist women and men.
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The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects
by Leon Trotsky
Nonfiction. Political Science. Social Theory & History. Translated from the Russian by John G. Wright, Brian Pearce, et al. Introduction by Luma Nichol. The theory of permanent revolution is one of the defining principles of Trotskyism. Yet Trotsky's essential works on the question have long been unavailable in book form to U.S. readers. Now Red Letter Press has issued an attractive and corrected new edition that will be appreciated by both newcomers to socialist ideas and old hands. In the two major works presented in this book, "Results and Prospects" and "The Permanent Revolution," Trotsky showed that developing countries must achieve workers' rule in order to defeat tyranny and foreign domination. He explained that if socialism is to succeed it must expand beyond national borders and transform every aspect of political, economic and human relations.
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The Revolution Betrayed
by Leon Trotsky
One of Marxism's most important texts, The Revolution Betrayed explores the fate of the Russian Revolution after Lenin's death. Written in 1936 and published the following year, this brilliant and profound evaluation of Stalinism from the Marxist standpoint prophesied the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent related events.
The effects of the October Revolution led to the establishment of a nationalized planned economy, demonstrating the practicality of socialism for the first time. By the 1930s, however, the Soviet workers' democracy had crumbled into a state of bureaucratic decay that ultimately gave rise to an infamous totalitarian regime. Trotsky employs facts, figures, and statistics to show how Stalinist policies rejected the enormous productive potential of the nationalized planned economy in favor of a wasteful and corrupt bureaucratic system.
Six decades after the publication of this classic, the shattering of Stalinist regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe has confused and demoralized countless political activists. The Revolution Betrayed offers readers of every political persuasion an insider's view of what went wrong.
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Trotsky on Lenin
by Leon Trotsky
Combining Young Lenin and On Lenin in one volume, this is a fascinating political biography by Lenin’s fellow revolutionary, Leon Trotsky. Trotsky on Lenin brings together two long-out-of-print works in a single volume for the first time, providing an intimate and illuminating portrait of the Bolshevik leader by another of the twentieth century’s greatest revolutionaries.
Written shortly after its subject’s death, On Lenin covers the period of revolutionary struggle leading up to 1917 as well as the early years of Bolshevik power. We see a man totally committed to the revolutionary cause, whose legacy was later corrupted under the Soviet Union’s Stalinist degeneration. Young Lenin, meanwhile, describes his early years and conversion to Marxism, dispelling many of the myths later created by Soviet hagiography in the process. The essential guide for anyone wanting to understand Lenin as a thinker, active revolutionary, and personality.
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