Writings of Leon Trotsky [1930]

The year 1930 witnessed the spread of the Great Depression to all parts of the capitalist world and a turn in the Soviet Union to the forced collectivization of agriculture and industrialization drive that imposed heavy sacrifices and suffering on the Soviet masses. These crucial events form the background to this volume, which collects the letters, articles, and pamphlets written by Leon Trotsky during the first ten months of 1930, the second year of his exile in Turkey.

Here Trotsky presents his criticisms and alternatives to the theory and practice of the Soviet bureaucracy at home and abroad - to its economic adventurism and political repression in the Soviet Union, and to the ultra-left, Moscow-dictated policy of the "third period," a sectarian schema decorated with radical rhetoric that prevented the Communist parties throughout the world from taking advantage of the capitalist crisis.

In addition Trotsky writes, among other topics, about the formation of the International Left Opposition at a conference in Paris in April 1930, the nature of internationalism, the machinations of an unscrupulous publisher in Dresden, how leaders were made and unmade in the Communist International, the slogan of a national assembly in China, the role of democratic demands in fascist Italy, a debate over centrism in French union circles, revolutionary tasks in india, and the U.S. magazine New Masses.

Around half of the selections are translated into English for the first time, primarily from the Left Opposition journal Biulleten Oppozitsii and material at the Harvard College Library.