Leon Trotsky
Vadim Rogovin’s Bolsheviks against Stalinism 1928–1933: Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition
A magnificent account of Stalin’s opponents in the USSR
By Andrea Peters, 21 December 2019
Stalin’s rise was neither foreordained nor a natural outgrowth of the October Revolution. The Great Russian chauvinist and bureaucrat secured power in ferocious conflict with the proletariat, peasantry and cadre of the revolutionary socialist movement.
David North introduces Turkish-language edition of In Defense of Leon Trotsky at Istanbul Book Fair
By our reporter, 11 November 2019
Mehring Yayıncılık announced the publication of five major works by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) at its Istanbul Book Fair stall, including two authored by David North.
Alexander Reznik’s Trotsky and Comrades: A false account of the emergence and politics of the Left Opposition
By Clara Weiss, 29 October 2019
Reznik’s book, while containing some useful information, constitutes a willful distortion of the history of the Trotskyist Left Opposition, undermining its prolonged and principled struggle against the Stalinist degeneration of the 1917 October Revolution.
Preview the new publication from Mehring Books
Author’s introduction to Bolsheviks Against Stalinism 1928-1933: Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition
By Vadim Z. Rogovin, 30 August 2019
Today we present the Introduction, written by the late Marxist historian and sociologist, Vadim Z. Rogovin, to the new English translation of the second volume of his seven-volume work, Was There an Alternative to Stalinism?
On the 79th anniversary of the assassination of Leon Trotsky
By Bill Van Auken, 21 August 2019
Seventy-nine years after his assassination at the hands of a Stalinist agent, Trotsky remains a towering historical figure with immense contemporary political relevance.
A postscript on Trotsky conference in Cuba
By Bill Van Auken, 12 July 2019
In an interview with a Pabloite publication, the conference’s organizer spells out its explicitly anti-Trotskyist character.
Cuba conference tailors Trotsky to the politics of bourgeois nationalism
By Bill Van Auken, 13 June 2019
A collection of pseudo-lefts and Pabloite revisionists was invited to Havana to suppress the revolutionary content of Trotskyism.
Netflix’s Trotsky: A toxic combination of historical fabrication and blatant anti-Semitism
By David North and Clara Weiss, 8 March 2019
Netflix is currently presenting to its worldwide audience the virulently anti-Semitic television series, Trotsky, which was originally produced by the Russian state in 2017.
AfD deputy denounces a Holocaust commemoration in German parliament
By Christoph Vandreier, 7 February 2019
Seventy-four years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the crimes of the Nazi regime are being downplayed in the German Bundestag (parliament) without triggering any significant protest.
Eighty Years of the Fourth International: The Lessons of History and the Struggle for Socialism Today
By David North, 9 October 2018
On October 7, David North, International Editorial Board chairman of the World Socialist Web Site, delivered the following lecture to a well-attended public meeting in Colombo, organised by the Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka).
Twenty years since the death of Marxist historian and sociologist Vadim Rogovin
By David North, 18 September 2018
On the twentieth anniversary of the death of Vadim Rogovin, we republish two tributes to the greatest Soviet and Russian Marxist sociologist and historian of the second half of the twentieth century.
Seventy-eight years since the assassination of Leon Trotsky
By Eric London and David North, 21 August 2018
On August 21, 1940, Leon Trotsky, the founder of the Fourth International and the co-leader of the Russian Revolution, died from wounds inflicted the day before by an assassin, the Stalinist GPU agent Ramon Mercader.
An “Exemplary Comrade”: The Socialist Workers Party’s 40-year-long cover-up of Stalinist spy Sylvia Callen: Part four
By Eric London, 17 August 2018
This is the final part in a four-part series examining the cover-up by the Socialist Workers Party, beginning in 1947, of information exposing the role of Sylvia Callen, the personal secretary of long-time party leader James P. Cannon, as a Stalinist agent.
An “Exemplary Comrade”: The Socialist Workers Party’s 40-year-long cover-up of Stalinist spy Sylvia Callen: Part three
By Eric London, 16 August 2018
This is the third part in a four-part series examining the cover-up by the Socialist Workers Party beginning in 1947 of information exposing the role of Sylvia Callen, the personal secretary of long-time party leader James P. Cannon, as a Stalinist agent.
An “Exemplary Comrade”: The Socialist Workers Party’s 40-year-long cover-up of Stalinist spy Sylvia Callen: Part two
By Eric London, 15 August 2018
This is the second part in a four-part series examining the cover-up by the Socialist Workers Party, beginning in 1947, of information exposing the role of Sylvia Callen, the personal secretary of long-time party leader James P. Cannon, as a Stalinist agent.
An “Exemplary Comrade”: The Socialist Workers Party’s 40-year-long cover-up of Stalinist spy Sylvia Callen: Part one
By Eric London, 14 August 2018
This is the first part in a four-part series examining the cover-up by the Socialist Workers Party beginning in 1947 of information exposing the role of Sylvia Callen, the personal secretary of long-time party leader James P. Cannon, as a Stalinist agent.
Preface to the Russian edition of In Defense of Leon Trotsky
By Vladimir Volkov, 2 August 2018
Understanding the role Leon Trotsky played in the twentieth century is fundamental to the revival of the heritage of Marxism in the countries of the former Soviet Union, and to the fight to build the International Committee of the Fourth International.
Documents of the Russian Revolution
The Art of Insurrection
By Leon Trotsky, 1 November 2017
We are publishing here “The Art of Insurrection,” the sixth chapter in the third volume of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution in the translation by Max Eastman.
When Will the Wretched Slaughter End?
By Leon Trotsky, 25 September 2017
This pamphlet was printed as separate articles in the newspaper Rabochii (Worker), numbers 10-12 (September 1-2 and 14-15).
From the archives of the Russian Revolution
Letter to the Provisional Government
By Leon Trotsky, 31 July 2017
This is a new translation of an open letter Trotsky addressed to the Provisional Government on the arrest of Bolshevik leaders, which took place during the crackdown that followed the July Days.
From the archives of the Russian Revolution
Trying Days
By Leon Trotsky, 24 July 2017
This is a new translation of an article by Leon Trotsky, published in Vperiod (Forward), Number 6, on July 22 (9 O.S.), 1917. Trotsky wrote this article after the July Days and before his arrest by the Provisional Government.
From the archives of the Revolution
Declaration of the Bolshevik Faction at a session of the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets on the Question of the Offensive
By Leon Trotsky, 23 June 2017
This declaration, written by Trotsky but delivered by P. Pozern, warns the working class of the implications of the military offensive being prepared by the Provisional Government.
From the archives of the Revolution
Speech on a personal note at an evening session of the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets
By Leon Trotsky, 22 June 2017
This is a contemporary account of a speech delivered by Trotsky in which he addresses the slanders being spread by Miliukov and others that he and Lenin were agents of the German government.
From the archives of the Revolution
Speech at an Emergency Session of the Petrograd Soviet on the Question of Kronstadt
By Leon Trotsky, 10 June 2017
This speech was delivered by Trotsky at an emergency session of the Petrograd Soviet dealing with attacks by the Provisional Government against the increasingly restive sailors at the Kronstadt naval base.
From the archives of the Revolution
Speech at a Session of the Petrograd Soviet on reports by the socialist ministers
By Leon Trotsky, 27 May 2017
This is a new translation of a speech delivered by Trotsky before the Petrograd Soviet on May 26, 1917 (May 13 O.S.).
From the archives of the Revolution
Speech on Comrade Uritsky’s report on the attitude to the Provisional Government
By Leon Trotsky, 20 May 2017
This is a new translation of a speech delivered by Trotsky before the Citywide Conference of United Social-Democrats on May 20, 1917 (May 7 O.S.).
From the archives of the Russian Revolution
Speech at a session of the Petrograd Soviet
By Leon Trotsky, 19 May 2017
This is a new translation of an abridged version of Trotsky’s speech before the Petrograd Soviet on May 18, 1917, in which Trotsky opposed the new coalition government formed with the support of the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries.
Writings of Trotsky from 1917
War and the Revolution
By Leon Trotsky, 27 March 2017
In this article, translated for the first time into English, Trotsky writes on the significance of the moves by the US to enter World War I amidst the revolutionary convulsions in Russia.
Writings of Trotsky from 1917
Who Are the Traitors?
By Leon Trotsky, 25 March 2017
In this article, translated for the first time into English, Trotsky responds to claims that his denunciations of the war plans of the bourgeois provisional government make him a “Germanophile and traitor.”
Writings of Trotsky from 1917
Lessons of the Great Year: 9 January 1905–9 January 1917
By Leon Trotsky, 24 March 2017
The WSWS is publishing new translations of Trotsky’s writings from 1917. In many cases, these articles are now in English for the first time. In this article from January 1917, Trotsky writes about the lessons of the Revolution of 1905.
Writings of Trotsky from 1917
From Whom and How to Defend the Revolution
By Leon Trotsky, 21 March 2017
In this article, Trotsky writes, ‘“The gentry’s lands, but not Constantinople!’—the soldier-proletarian will say to the soldier-peasant, explaining to him who is served by the imperialist war and what its aims are.”
Writings of Trotsky from 1917
War or Peace? (Internal Forces of the Revolution)
By Leon Trotsky, 20 March 2017
In this article, Trotsky writes, “The international struggle against world-wide slaughter and imperialism is now our task more than ever before.”
Writings of Trotsky from 1917
Two Faces (Internal Forces of the Russian Revolution)
By Leon Trotsky, 18 March 2017
In this article, Trotsky writes, “The masses have rebelled with demands for bread and peace. The appearance in power of a few liberals has neither fed the starving nor healed anyone’s wounds.”
Writings of Trotsky from 1917
The Growing Conflict
By Leon Trotsky, 18 March 2017
In this article, Trotsky writes, “An open conflict between the forces of the revolution, headed by the urban proletariat, and the anti-revolutionary liberal bourgeoisie, temporarily in power, is absolutely inevitable.”
Trotsky in New York, 1917: A Radical on the Eve of Revolution, by Kenneth D. Ackerman
By Linda Tenenbaum, 8 October 2016
Trotsky in New York, 1917 focuses on a remarkable period in the life of one of the greatest political figures in modern history.
Eighty years since the first Moscow Trial
By Fred Williams, 1 September 2016
In carrying out these trials, Joseph Stalin was launching an assault on the legacy and the leaders of the first successful socialist revolution.
The ruling class and the spectre of Leon Trotsky
By Chris Marsden, 20 August 2016
Seventy-six years after his assassination at the hands of a Stalinist agent, Trotsky remains not only a towering historical personality, but also a figure of acute contemporary political relevance.
The return of the “grand narrative”
By Andre Damon, 1 June 2016
The resurgence of the class struggle is undermining the intellectual charlatanry that underpinned the ideological dominance of various forms of anti-Marxism over the past half-century.
A further comment on the death of David King, socialist and artist
By David Walsh, 19 May 2016
King was a brilliant graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, archivist, researcher, editor, historian and art collector.
David King 1943-2016: Revolutionary socialist, artist and defender of historical truth
By David North, 14 May 2016
David King, who devoted his extraordinary gifts as an artist to salvaging the historical truth of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and its aftermath from beneath the vast edifice of Stalinist crimes and lies, died suddenly in London on May 11.
SEP (Sri Lanka) holds public meeting on 75th anniversary of Leon Trotsky’s assassination
By our correspondents, 30 December 2015
Well aware that World War II would produce revolutionary upheavals, neither Stalinism nor imperialism could tolerate Trotsky’s continued existence.
Public meetings in Australia mark 75th anniversary of Leon Trotsky’s murder
By our correspondents, 23 December 2015
There was intense interest as speakers explained the significance of Trotsky’s life and work, and why and how he was assassinated by Stalin’s secret police, the GPU.
Workers and youth speak on Trotsky’s life and death
By our correspondents, 23 December 2015
WSWS correspondents interviewed some of those who attended the meetings last week in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne on “How and Why the GPU Murdered Trotsky” [link]. Members of the audience were asked about why they had come to the meetings and what they thought were the most significant aspects of the reports delivered on Trotsky’s life, his assassination and the Security and the Fourth International investigation, conducted by the International Committee of the Fourth International, into the circumstances surrounding Trotsky’s murder.
Meetings in Germany mark the 75th anniversary of the death of Leon Trotsky
By our correspondents, 23 November 2015
Over 200 people participated in meetings organised by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality in the cities of Berlin, Frankfurt and Bochum.
Sri Lankan SEP to hold public meetings on the 75th anniversary of Leon Trotsky’s assassination
21 November 2015
Trotsky’s theoretical and political conceptions are essential for the development of revolutionary leadership in the international working class.
SEP public meetings in Australia:
Why and How the GPU Murdered Leon Trotsky
18 November 2015
The meetings are part of the commemoration by the ICFI of the 75th anniversary of Trotsky’s assassination.
Security and the Fourth International, the Gelfand Case and the deposition of Mark Zborowski
An open letter from David North to Susan Weissman
10 November 2015
David North to speak at public meetings in UK and US: Why and How the GPU Murdered Leon Trotsky
21 October 2015
A public meeting in London on Sunday November 22 has been added to a series of US meetings that will review the significance of Trotsky’s murder at the hands of the Stalinist GPU and the origins and findings of the Security and the Fourth International investigation.
World Socialist Web Site online interview commemorates 75 years since the assassination of Leon Trotsky
5 October 2015
The second part of the interview series will take place Saturday, October 10, at 1:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time.
Seventy-five years since the assassination of Leon Trotsky
By David North, 30 September 2015
The assassination of the greatest leader of the 1917 October Revolution marked the climax of the Stalinist regime’s eradication of the socialist workers and intellectuals who had secured the victory of the Bolshevik revolution.
David North to speak at public meetings in US: Why and How the GPU Murdered Leon Trotsky
16 September 2015
At meetings marking 75 years since Trotsky’s assassination, North will speak on the significance of Trotsky’s murder at the hands of the Stalinist GPU and the origins and findings of the Security and the Fourth International investigation.
75 years since the assassination of Trotsky: 1940-2015
Leon Trotsky’s place in history
By David North, 21 August 2015
Published here is a section of a lecture delivered on the 60th anniversary of the assassination of Leon Trotsky. The full lecture is included in David North’s book, In Defense of Leon Trotsky.
Seventy-five years since the assassination of Leon Trotsky
By Joseph Kishore, 20 August 2015
Seventy-five years after his death, Trotsky emerges ever more clearly as a world historical figure who not only influenced the course of the 20th century, but whose writings and ideas remain an essential guide for orienting the working class today.
A review of Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928: Part four
By Fred Williams, 4 June 2015
Stephen Kotkin’s first volume of a projected three-volume biography of Stalin, published by Penguin Press, is a travesty of historical writing.
A review of Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928: Part three
By Fred Williams, 3 June 2015
Stephen Kotkin’s first volume of a projected three-volume biography of Stalin, published by Penguin Press, is a travesty of historical writing.
Socialism and historical truth
A lecture delivered at the Leipzig Book Fair
By David North, 17 March 2015
This lecture was delivered before an audience of 450 people on the occasion of the publication of the German-language edition of The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century.
Hundreds attend lecture introducing German edition of The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century
By our correspondents, 17 March 2015
WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North presented the German edition of his book to an audience of students, workers and visitors to the Leipzig Book Fair.
The twentieth century was lived in vain: Leonardo Padura’s The Man Who Loved Dogs
By Sandy English, 7 February 2015
Padura’s novel takes a pessimistic, cynical view of history as it describes the life of Ramon Mercader, the assassin of Trotsky.
Scholarship, not war propaganda!
The IYSSE’s campaign against war and historical falsification at Humboldt University
By Andre Damon and Jesse Olsen, 13 January 2015
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) at Humboldt University is running in the upcoming student elections against the drive to turn the university into a center of war propaganda.
Leading German historian Hermann Weber dies
By Wolfgang Weber, 10 January 2015
The World Socialist Web Site is reposting an interview it conducted with the noted German historian Hermann Weber in November of 2011.
IYSSE at Humboldt University begins seminars on the return of German militarism
By our reporters, 7 January 2015
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) is sponsoring a series of lectures at Berlin”s Humboldt University and is running in the student union election to oppose German militarism.
IYSSE protests censorship at Berlin’s Humboldt University
10 October 2014
The administration has conditioned its approval of a meeting room for the IYSSE on the censorship of any political criticism of members of the University.
Foreword to The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century
By David North, 1 August 2014
This essay by David North is the foreword to The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century, now available at Mehring Books.
Meetings at Leipzig Book Fair: The relevance of Trotsky’s Europe at War
By Peter Schwarz, 19 March 2014
Mehring Books held two meetings at the Leipzig Book Fair devoted to Leon Trotsky’s writings on the First World War and their relevance to current developments in Ukraine.
Mehring Books and SEP (Germany) hold two meetings at Leipzig Book Fair
13 March 2014
On March 15, Mehring Books will showcase Leon Trotsky’s work, Europe at War. Mehring Books and the German SEP are also sponsoring a second meeting on the relevance of Trotsky’s work to the danger of war and the crisis in Ukraine.
Interview with Tatiana Isaeva
By our reporter, 28 February 2014
Tatiana Isaeva is the granddaughter of the Marxist literary critic Aleksandr Konstantinovich Voronsky, a Bolshevik from 1904 and participant in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 who later became an important figure in the Left Opposition.
Interview with Zorya Serebryakova
By our reporter, 27 February 2014
Zorya Leonidovna Serebryakova’s father, Leonid Petrovich Serebryakov, was a leading Bolshevik and Left Oppositionist. One of the main defendants in the Second Moscow Trial, he was found guilty and shot on February 1, 1937.
Interview with Yuri Primakov
By our reporter, 26 February 2014
Vitaly Markovich Primakov was a hero of the October Revolution and the Civil War and later an important member of the Left Opposition.
WSWS publishes interviews with children of the Left Opposition
By Fred Williams and Clara Weiss, 25 February 2014
The World Socialist Web Site is publishing interviews with three children of Soviet Left Oppositionists—Tatiana Smilga, Zorya Serebryakova and Yuri Primakov—and with Tatiana Isaeva, granddaughter of the outstanding Marxist literary critic, Alexander Voronsky.
Interview with Tatiana Smilga-Poluyan
By our reporter, 25 February 2014
Ivar Tenisovich Smilga, the father of Tatiana Smilga-Poluyan, was one of the leading members of the Bolshevik Party during the October Revolution and one of Lenin’s closest confidants.
Berlin IYSSE protests Professor Jörg Baberowski’s suppression of democratic discussion at Humboldt University
22 February 2014
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality have sent an open letter calling upon the University Board of the Humboldt University to censure Professor Jörg Baberowski for his undemocratic behavior.
Appearance of Robert Service in Berlin ends in fiasco
By Peter Schwarz, 14 February 2014
Service’s public lecture was canceled and moved to a secret location from which all critics were barred.
The philosophical and political foundations of historical falsification
IYSSE meeting at the Humboldt University in Berlin
By our correspondents, 12 February 2014
Around one hundred participants discussed the invitation extended by Professor Jörg Baberowski to Robert Service, the author of a discredited biography of Leon Trotsky, at a meeting last Saturday at the Humboldt University in Berlin.
Nine questions for Robert Service
By the Partei für Soziale Gleichheit (Socialist Equality Party of Germany), 11 February 2014
On February 12, British author Robert Service will speak at Berlin’s Humboldt University about his internationally discredited biography of Leon Trotsky. The Partei für Soziale Gleichheit has formulated nine questions for Service.
February 8 meeting in Berlin
Baberowski’s invitation to Service: The philosophical and political foundations of historical falsification
4 February 2014
Wolfgang Weber of the Socialist Equality Party of Germany will elaborate the critique of Robert Service’s Trotsky biography and discuss the philosophical and political foundations of the post-Soviet school of historical falsification.
Socialist Equality Party of Germany publishes open letter to Professor Jörg Baberowski
24 January 2014
We publish here a letter sent by the Socialist Equality Party of Germany to Professor Jörg Baberowski, head of the Department of Eastern European History at the Humboldt University in Berlin.
For Grynszpan
By Leon Trotsky, republished from Socialist Appeal, 14 February 1939
13 November 2013
The WSWS is reposting an article Leon Trotsky wrote on the killing of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by the young Herschel Grynszpan, the act the Nazis used as a pretext to launch the Kristallnacht pogrom.
The pseudo-left Russian Socialist Movement and the dead end of the anti-Putin protests
By Andrea Peters, 29 October 2013
The disintegration of the Russian protests and its transformation into a platform to promote the right-wing candidacy of Alexei Navalny has exposed the rotten politics of the RSM.
eBook versions of second edition of In Defense of Leon Trotsky now available
29 October 2013
The new expanded edition is now available in epub and pdf formats.
In Defense of Leon Trotsky published in Greek
9 October 2012
The World Socialist Web Site is proud to publish for the first time in the Greek language, In Defense of Leon Trotsky by David North.
Lecture at Historians’ Convention: In Defense of Leon Trotsky
By David North, 4 October 2012
We publish here the text of a lecture given at the Historians’ Convention at the University of Mainz in Germany by David North, chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site.
Meeting in defense of Leon Trotsky at German Historians Conference
By our correspondents, 29 September 2012
David North, chairman of the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site, and Professor Mario Kessler, lecturer and researcher at the Center for Contemporary Historical Research in Potsdam, spoke at a well-attended meeting Thursday at the University of Mainz.
Germany: Suhrkamp Verlag publishes Robert Service’s diatribe against Leon Trotsky
By Wolfgang Weber, 2 August 2012
The circumstances surrounding Suhrkamp Verlag’s release of the German edition of Robert Service’s denunciatory biography of Leon Trotsky can only be assessed as a scandal that has tarnished the reputation of the publishing house.
In Defense of Leon Trotsky published in French
25 June 2012
The World Socialist Web Site is pleased to announce the publication of the French-language edition of In Defense of Leon Trotsky, written by David North, chairman of the WSWS’s International Editorial Board.
“Of course, Trotsky was an alternative to Stalin”
An interview with Professor Mario Kessler on the Trotsky biography by Robert Service—Part one
By Wolfgang Weber, 21 May 2012
This is the first part of a two-part interview with German historian Professor Mario Kessler on the 2009 biography of Leon Trotsky by Robert Service. Professor Kessler is a co-signatory of a letter sent by 14 European sociologists and political scientists to the Suhrkamp Verlag publishing house raising grave reservations about its plan to bring out a German edition of Service’s book.
David North speaks in defense of Leon Trotsky at Cornell University
By Tom Mackaman, 3 May 2012
Socialist Equality Party National Chairman David North spoke to an overflow crowd at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, in defense of Leon Trotsky against attacks by academic historians.
May 1 meeting at Cornell University
Leon Trotsky and the defense of historical truth
26 April 2012
David North, chairman of the World Socialist Web Site editorial board, will speak in Ithaca, New York on the enduring significance of the life and thought of Leon Trotsky, one of the greatest revolutionary figures of the 20th Century.
Leon Trotsky and the defense of historical truth
By David North, 20 March 2012
We are publishing here the lecture given by David North, chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, at the University of Leipzig on March 16. North is the author of In Defense of Leon Trotsky, a defense of historical truth and the legacy of Trotsky against the falsifications in the biography of Trotsky by Robert Service.
Leipzig meeting on Leon Trotsky and the defence of historical truth
300 hear David North critique Robert Service’s biography of Trotsky
By our correspondent, 19 March 2012
David North, chairman of the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site, spoke before a large and appreciative audience in Leipzig on his recently published book In Defense of Leon Trotsky and its critique of the biography of Trotsky by the British author Robert Service.
Public meeting in Leipzig: Leon Trotsky and the defense of historical truth
On the controversy concerning the biography of Trotsky by Robert Service
13 March 2012
David North, author of In Defense of Leon Trotsky, will speak at this year’s Leipzig Book Fair on March 16.
Robert Service wins support from the extreme right in Germany
By Wolfgang Weber, 7 February 2012
The extreme right-wing weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit has weighed in on the debate over a German edition of Robert Service's biography of Leon Trotsky, wholeheartedly defending Service against the criticisms of fourteen historians and political scientists.
David North speaks in Berlin: “In Defence of Leon Trotsky and Historical Truth”
By our reporter, 3 February 2012
David North placed his exposure of Robert Service’s slanderous biography of Trotsky in a broader historical and political context.
A blow against the Post-Soviet School of Historical Falsification
By Wolfgang Weber, 31 December 2011
The letter of 14 historians to the Suhrkamp publishing house in Germany calling on it to abandon publication of Robert Service’s biography of Leon Trotsky has opened the door for an honest and thorough examination of the role of Trotsky and the rise and fall of Soviet power.
Leon Trotsky on Mexican painter Diego Rivera (1938)
21 December 2011
In his June 1938 article, “Art and Politics in Our Epoch,” Leon Trotsky discussed the work of Mexican painter and muralist Diego Rivera, who was at that time in political sympathy with the Fourth International.
“Robert Service has written a diatribe, not a scientific polemic!”
A conversation with Professor Hermann Weber
28 November 2011
Professor Hermann Weber spoke to the World Socialist Web Site on the reasons for his opposition to the publication by Suhrkamp Verlag of a German translation of Robert Service’s biography of Leon Trotsky.
European historians oppose publication by Suhrkamp of Robert Service’s Trotsky biography
By Wolfgang Weber, 23 November 2011
Fourteen prominent historians, political scientists and publicists from Germany and Austria have sent a letter to the German publishing house Suhrkamp opposing the publication of Robert Service’s biography of Trotsky. The letter cites “a host of factual errors,” the “repugnant connotations” of the passages in which Service deals with Trotsky’s Jewish origins, and Service’s recourse to “formulas associated with Stalinist propaganda” for the purpose of discrediting Trotsky.
Letter from historians to German publisher Suhrkamp on Robert Service’s biography of Trotsky
23 November 2011
Below is the text of a letter sent in July by noted European historians to the German publishing house Suhrkamp opposing its planned publication of Robert Service’s biography of Leon Trotsky.
From the archives
The story of Mark Zborowski: Stalin’s spy in the Fourth International
By International Committee of the Fourth International, 17 November 2011
We are republishing a statement of the International Committee of the Fourth International originally published on June 15, 1990 in the Fourth International magazine on the death of Mark Zborowski. Zborowski, a GPU spy against the Trotskyist movement, was responsible for the murder of leading cadre of the Fourth International in the 1930s and for preparing, along with other Stalinist agents, the assassination of Leon Trotsky.
“A book that fails to meet the basic standards of historical scholarship”
The American Historical Review discredits Robert Service’s biography of Leon Trotsky
By the Political Committee Socialist Equality Party (US), 28 June 2011
The American Historical Review has published a critical examination of two books: the denunciatory biography Trotsky by British historian Robert Service and In Defense of Leon Trotsky by David North, the chairman of both the Socialist Equality Party in the United States and the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site.
One hundred years since the death of the great Russian novelist
Trotsky’s 1908 tribute to Leo Tolstoy
By Leon Trotsky, 2 December 2010
Leon Trotsky wrote this tribute to the great Russian novelist on the occasion of Tolstoy’s eightieth birthday.
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