Leon Trotsky Architect of Russian Revolution

 Leon Trotsky Architect of the Russian Revolution

Written by: Lal Khan]

Leon Trotsky, who led the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution along with Vladimir Lenin, was assassinated in exile in Mexico on August 21, 1940, 78 years ago today. Later documents revealed that Ramon Mercader, a hired assassin working for Soviet intelligence, killed Trotsky on Stalin's orders. See the irony of history that in recognition of his "services" to the murderer of the leader of the Bolshevik revolution, Stalin awarded the highest award of the Soviet Union "Order of Lenin".

               Photographs of Trotsky scavenged for police records while imprisoned as a youth

Leon Trotsky's original name was 'Leo Davie Dovich Branstein' and he was born in Kirovograd, Ukraine on 26 October 1879 (according to the old Russian calendar). Trotsky was the pen name Branstein adopted while incarcerated in the penitentiary of Tsarist Russia. In his teenage days, he became a revolutionary by joining a secret Marxist study circle and never looked back.

During the First Russian Revolution of 1905, he was elected head of the Petrograd Soviet. Soviet is a Russian word, in Urdu, it means "panchayat". The Petrograd Soviet was the first labor organization born during the revolution of 1905 in the stronghold of the Russian Revolution and the proletariat, which played a decisive role in the revolution of 1917. Initially, Trotsky was engaged in revolutionary work with Lenin, but in 1903 the two separated due to organizational and ideological divisions within the RSDLP. The main difference between the two was the character of the Russian Revolution. Trotsky was the creator and advocate of the theory of "continuous revolution". After about 14 years of discussion and deliberation, Lenin concluded in favor of Trotsky's views. In February 1917, the people ended the tsar's government through a revolutionary uprising, and Lenin and Trotsky, who returned to Russia after many years of exile, once again participated in the revolutionary struggle side by side. While returning from exile, Lenin wrote his famous "April Theses" in which he affirmed the socialist character of the Russian Revolution. This ideological alliance between the two great revolutionaries laid the foundation for the revolutionary inertia that lasted until Lenin's death in 1924.

According to the "Continuous Revolution" theory, only the workers' state can fulfill the duties of the "national democratic revolution" in historically backward countries that have been delayed in the promotion of the capitalist system, and the establishment of the workers' state is based on capitalist ownership relations. But it is not possible without multiplying. Thus, the revolution goes beyond the national democratic stage and enters the socialist stage. This view was reflected even before Trotsky in the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the 1850s and in their speeches to the Central Committee of the Communist League:

"It is our aim and duty to continue the revolution until all the propertied classes are thrown out of power until the proletariat seizes state power until the unity of the workers is reached. Instead of one country, the competition between the proletariat should end in all the developed countries of the world and the productive forces should be in the possession of the workers. The slogan of war should be "Continuous Revolution!"

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was the first successful example of this theory. In October 1917, the workers seized power only because the bourgeoisie that had come to power through the February revolution was not capable of fulfilling a single duty of the national-democratic revolution. This theory is even more true in countries like Pakistan, where the local ruling class has not been able to socially fulfill a single historical duty of capitalism in the last sixty-six years. The theory of continuous revolution is a beacon for the people of the third world who are socially and economically ruined by the decaying capitalist system.

The writings of Trotsky's rival and assassin Joseph Stalin testify to his leadership role in the Russian Revolution. On November 10, 1918, Stalin wrote in the party's official newspaper Pravda, "All the organizational matters of the revolutionary uprising were carried out under the instructions of Comrade Trotsky." It may be said that the rapidity with which the soldiers met the Soviets and the diligence with which the Revolutionary Military Committee organized the work is all due to Comrade Trotsky, for which the Party is indebted to him.

                                             Addressing the soldiers of the Red Army

As the leader of the Red Army in the civil war that began after the revolution, Trotsky became an iron wall against the counter-revolutionary forces. The war began after the armies of twenty-one countries invaded Russia to crush the Bolshevik Revolution, including major imperialist countries like the United States. The ravaged and demoralized army of the Tsar's Bachi Khachi's three hundred thousand soldiers was transformed by Trotsky into a formidable Red Army of one million and eighty million revolutionary soldiers. To defend the workers' revolution, Lenin called for support and solidarity from workers around the world, in response to which workers within the aggressor countries staged strikes and civil disobedience. The counter-revolutionary imperialist forces had to retreat.

Trotsky was also commissar of key departments such as foreign affairs and education and worked tirelessly day and night to consolidate the nascent workers' state. However, his most important struggle was against the bureaucratic decline of the revolution caused by Russia's backwardness and isolation. After the Bolshevik revolution, the workers in the countries of Europe including Germany staged revolutionary uprisings that were brutally crushed by state repression. As a result, the revolution was confined to socially, economically, and technologically backward countries like Russia. After the defeat of the Chinese Revolution of 1924-25, the decline of the Russian Revolution accelerated. The greatest obstacle in the way of the bureaucracy, which, due to scarcity and cultural backwardness, was privileged above the people and society, was Trotsky's "Left Opposition" with which comrades fought to preserve the true character and aims of the Bolshevik Revolution. had been. In 1927 Trotsky was deposed from the state post and expelled from the Communist Party and in 1929 he was exiled from Russia. Falling from the heights of fame, he became a man for whom this world was a "visa-free planet". However, even in this era, he stuck to his ideals and continued the manly struggle against Stalinism. His writings on Marxist ideas and perspectives in exile became a beacon for generations to come. In 1936, he wrote his masterpiece "Betrayal of the Revolution" in which he shed light from a scientific point of view on the reasons for the bureaucratic decline of the Russian Revolution and the gradual loss of workers' democratic control over the economy. Trotsky's predictions in this book came true five decades later in the form of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

              Talking to colleagues while in exile in Mexico. Trotsky was martyred during this exile

Most of Trotsky's family members were killed during his lifetime for fighting against Stalinism and holding aloft the banner of proletarian internationalism. Thousands of his fellow revolutionaries died of hunger, cold, and forced labor in the concentration camps of frozen Siberia. The stipend-hungry "communists" of the Soviet bureaucracy and the servile intellectuals of capitalism did everything possible to distort Trotsky's character and disprove his ideas, but history exonerated him of all charges and vindicated his ideas. Proved true. Leon Trotsky's entire life is marked by the development, evolution, and growth of Marxist theory and the struggle to put Marxist ideals into practice.

These words of Trotsky in the last days of his life testify to his belief in the future of humanity free from exploitation and his great courage without hesitation or regret in the struggle for this great cause:

"As long as I'm breathing I'm hopeful. As long as I breathe I will continue to fight for the future, a bright future, in which man, strong and beautiful, will control the course of history and turn it towards the infinite horizon of beauty, happiness, and joy. . . A moment later Natasha opened the window that opened onto the garden a little more to let some air flow into the room. I can see a bright green layer of grass under the wall with a transparent blue sky above it, sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Future generations will be able to enjoy it as much as possible by freeing it from suffering, cruelty, and oppression.