WHO IS TROTSKY?

No to Trotskyism

No to Trotskyism!

Leon Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronstein, 1879-1940), joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in 1897, and aligned himself among the Mensheviks. He was an émigré from 1902, and returned to Russia after the February 1917 revolution. At the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP (Bolshevik), he was admitted to membership of the Bolshevik Party, and elected to its Central Committee.

Trotsky, however, did not accept Bolshevism and waged a covert and overt struggle against Lenin and against the Party’s policies. After the October Revolution, he was People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, member of the
C.C. Politbureau and of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. In 1918, he was opposed to the signing of the Brest Peace Treaty. During 1920-21, he led the opposition in the trade union discussion. From 1923 onward, he conducted a bitter factional struggle against the Party’s general line and against the Leninist program of socialist construction.

The CPSU denounced Trotskyism as a petty-bourgeois deviation within the Party and defeated it both ideologically and organizationally. In 1927 Trotsky was expelled from the Party, and in 1929 deported from the USSR for anti-Soviet activities. (Source: Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 44 [Name Index], p. 607)

WHO ARE TROTSKYITES?

Trotskyites, or Trotksyists (as some prefer to call themselves), are groups and individuals who advocate the anti-Leninist and other anti-communist and counter-revolutionary theoretical and political views of Trotskyism. These include individuals who are active members of openly Trotskyite parties and party-like formations, as well as individuals who actively support such views and activities.

Because of their organizational method of “entryism”, which is unprincipled and opportunist, and quite different from the Leninist and Maoist principles and democratic methods of working with the masses in their varied organizations, quite a number of individuals and groups have fallen into the Trotskyite sphere of influence but without necessarily being conscious and active Trotskyites themselves.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO STUDY AND CRITICIZE TROTSKYITE VIEWS?

The embedded presentation on this page in text-based video format is a summary of the main Trotskyite views as these were developed by Trotsky himself, and later by his most ardent followers, all the way to the present.

PRISM will continue to add more online-resource links to this page to help our readers understand and criticize Trotskyism, its ideological roots and basic flaws in theory and practice, as a way of raising the ideological and political consciousness of activists in the frontlines of the mass movements. #

Watch on Youtube: SPECIAL STUDY ON TROTSKYISM