While I think that some of Trotsky’s written works are good, and that he did good work during the russian civil war, his analysis regarding world revolution, rejection of socialism in one country, was dogmatic.
Also his stances on the peasant question, and belief that revolution could only survive if it broke out in western europe, was incredibly euro-centric and proven wrong by history. This eurocentric basis is the reason why trotskyist parties are only popular in western countries.
Also after Trotsky’s positions were defeated in the 15th party congress (he got 0.5% of the vote), he left the USSR and spent the next decade trying to gain support for his faction and writing about how it was a “degenerated workers state”, until he got iced. IMO we only know of him so well now because of this period, in his role as a lightning rod of USSR opposition, when in fact it was Trotsky who was extremely unpopular.
The only saving grace for Trotsky as far as I’m concerned is how he absolutely dabs on Makhno and the Ukrainian Anarchists.
Edit: One thing that always stands out to me about the Trotskyist coup attempt is that despite enormous efforts to obfuscate various key events that lead up to the purge (did Trotskyists assassinate Kirov or was it Stalin, Was Tukhachevsky actually a German narc etc) the fact that the Sedov letters, the incriminating correspondence between Trotsky and his son, were in fact discovered by a committed French Trotskyist makes the case clean to me. I only thank Pierre Broué that he had the strength of character to accept and report the reality in front of him and not simply bury the letters for sectarian reasons.
The correspondence in the Sedov letters confirmed that a plot was underway against Stalin, with Trotsky communicating with his son about the existence of a Trotsky-Zinovievist faction of conspirators inside the party, with Trotsky allegedly stating, "Before everything else we have to drive out the present leadership and get rid of Stalin nothing but their liquidation can bring victory”. Curiously, later scholars who accessed this archive of all of Trotsky’s papers found this document was missing and allegations of a document purge were thrown around. It doesn’t help that the archive in question is at Harvard, after academics there bought all of Trotsky’s correspondence some time after his death. Broué wrote about it all.
While I think that some of Trotsky’s written works are good, and that he did good work during the russian civil war, his analysis regarding world revolution, rejection of socialism in one country, was dogmatic.
Also his stances on the peasant question, and belief that revolution could only survive if it broke out in western europe, was incredibly euro-centric and proven wrong by history. This eurocentric basis is the reason why trotskyist parties are only popular in western countries.
Also after Trotsky’s positions were defeated in the 15th party congress (he got 0.5% of the vote), he left the USSR and spent the next decade trying to gain support for his faction and writing about how it was a “degenerated workers state”, until he got iced. IMO we only know of him so well now because of this period, in his role as a lightning rod of USSR opposition, when in fact it was Trotsky who was extremely unpopular.
The only saving grace for Trotsky as far as I’m concerned is how he absolutely dabs on Makhno and the Ukrainian Anarchists.
Edit: One thing that always stands out to me about the Trotskyist coup attempt is that despite enormous efforts to obfuscate various key events that lead up to the purge (did Trotskyists assassinate Kirov or was it Stalin, Was Tukhachevsky actually a German narc etc) the fact that the Sedov letters, the incriminating correspondence between Trotsky and his son, were in fact discovered by a committed French Trotskyist makes the case clean to me. I only thank Pierre Broué that he had the strength of character to accept and report the reality in front of him and not simply bury the letters for sectarian reasons.
What were these letters and what did they prove?
The correspondence in the Sedov letters confirmed that a plot was underway against Stalin, with Trotsky communicating with his son about the existence of a Trotsky-Zinovievist faction of conspirators inside the party, with Trotsky allegedly stating, "Before everything else we have to drive out the present leadership and get rid of Stalin nothing but their liquidation can bring victory”. Curiously, later scholars who accessed this archive of all of Trotsky’s papers found this document was missing and allegations of a document purge were thrown around. It doesn’t help that the archive in question is at Harvard, after academics there bought all of Trotsky’s correspondence some time after his death. Broué wrote about it all.
Thanks!
Also before he died he asked for his archive to be closed for forty years so Broue only discovered these in the 1980s
They were written in invisible ink too
Grover Furr has an outline here of the documents
https://espressostalinist.com/2017/01/27/grover-furr-trotskys-lies-what-they-are-and-what-they-mean/
You can also get from libgen.rs Arch Gettys Origins of the great purges and Pierre Broues party opposition to Stalin where they both found it