Trotsky and the Bolshevik Party¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter establishes that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was the decisive test of all revolutionary theories, programmes, and individuals, and that Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution alone passed that test with astonishing accuracy. The author insists that Marxism does not reduce history to blind economic forces; individuals can and do make a decisive difference, as the revolution proves. The core argument is that Trotsky’s theoretical superiority, demonstrated by his pre-1917 predictions, was matched by his practical conduct in 1917, when he and Lenin overcame all previous differences to forge a partnership that was indispensable to the Bolshevik victory.
The chapter draws heavily on the polemics within Russian Social Democracy before 1917. It contrasts Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution with two failed alternatives: the Menshevik theory of a ‘bourgeois-democratic stage’, which after February was used to justify support for the Provisional Government, and Lenin’s earlier formulation of the ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’, which Kamenev and Stalin used as an excuse to capitulate to Menshevism. The text argues that by 1917 these differences had vanished, and Lenin and Trotsky were in complete agreement.
A substantial portion of the chapter is devoted to the Mezhraiontsy (Inter-District Group), the organisation Trotsky led into the Bolshevik Party. The author refutes Stalinist falsifications—specifically the Istoriya KPSS claim that the group “vacillated between Menshevism and Bolshevism”—by demonstrating that Lenin actively courted the Mezhraiontsy, offering them seats on the editorial board of Pravda and the organising committee of the party congress. Lenin’s motive was to secure allies on the left to counterbalance the conservatism of the ‘Old Bolsheviks’, who resented Trotsky’s popularity and rapid advancement. The chapter provides extensive documentary evidence, including Lenin’s own writings and Trotsky’s testimony to the Dewey Commission, to show that Trotsky deliberately delayed his formal entry into the party, with Lenin’s full agreement, in order to bring the Mezhraiontsy in as a bloc. Key figures from this group are named—Lunacharsky, Joffe, Volodarsky, Uritsky, Ryazanov, Pokrovsky—and their later roles in the Soviet government are noted. The chapter concludes by citing Lenin’s remark that Bolshevism drew to itself “all the best elements” of socialist thought, arguing this referred unequivocally to Trotsky and the Mezhraiontsy, and noting that the party itself treated Mezhraiontsy membership as equivalent to Bolshevik membership for seniority, proving the identity of their political line.