Problems of Everyday Life

Articles on social and cultural issues in the struggle to create the foundations for a new society, written for the Soviet press in the years immediately following the October 1917 revolution. Topics covered range from art, religion, science and cinema to the education of youth and the emancipation of women.

Leon Trotsky was a central leader of the October 1917 revolution in Russia. During the Soviet republic's first ten years he served as foreign minister, head of the Red Army during the civil war of 1918-20, convenor of economic planning bodies, and a leader of the Communist International. Following Lenin's death in 1924 Trotsky was the principal leader of the fight to defend Lenin's revolutionary course. Expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico by Stalin's secret police in 1940.