My Life

Since My Life was first published it has been regarded as a unique political, literary and human document. Written in the first year of Trotsky's exile in Turkey, it contains the earliest authoritative account of the rise of Stalinism and the expulsion of the Left Opposition, who heroically fought for the ideas and traditions of Lenin. Trotsky's exile is the culmination of a narrative which moves from his childhood, his education in the universities of Tsarist prisons, Siberia and then foreign exile - to his involvement in the European revolutionary movement and his central role in the tempestuous 1905 revolution and the Bolshevik victory in October 1917 and the civil war which followed. The work concludes with his deportation and exile. With an introduction by Alan Woods and a preface by Trotsky's grandson, Vsievolod Volkov.

Contents

49 chapters

• Preface
• Introduction
• Foreword
• 1. Yanovka
• 2. Our Neighbours and My First School
• 3. Odessa: My Family and My School
• 4. Books and Early Conflicts
• 5. Country and Town
• 6. The Break
• 7. My First Revolutionary Organisation
• 8. My First Prisons
• 9. My First Exile
• 10. My First Escape
• 11. An Émigré for the First Time
• 12. The Party Congress and the Split
• 13. The Return to Russia
• 14. The Year 1905
• 15. Trial, Exile, Escape
• 16. My Second Foreign Exile: German Socialism
• 17 Preparing for a New Revolution
• 18. The Beginning of the War
• 19. Paris and Zimmerwald
• 20. My Expulsion From France
• 21. Through Spain
• 22. New York
• 23. In a Concentration Camp
• 24. In Petrograd
• 25. Concerning Slanderers
• 26. From July to October
• 27. The Deciding Night
• 28. ‘Trotskyism’ in 1917
• 29. In Power
• 30. In Moscow
• 31. Negotiations at Brest-Litovsk
• 32. Peace
• 33. A Month at Sviyazhsk
• 34. The Train
• 35. The Defence of Petrograd
• 36. The Military Opposition
• 37. Disagreements Over War Strategy
• 38. Transition to the New Economic Policy & My Relations With Lenin
• 39. Lenin’s Illness
• 40. The Conspiracy of the Epigones
• 41. Lenin’s Death and the Shift of Power
• 42. The Last Period of Struggle Within the Party
• 43. The Exile
• 44. The Deportation
• 45. The Planet Without a Visa
• Testament of Leon Trotsky