Translated, Annotated, and Introduced by Frederick C. Corney, The College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA
In Trotsky’s Challenge: The ‘Literary Discussion’ of 1924 and the Fight for the Bolshevik Revolution, Frederick C. Corney examines the political polemic surrounding the publication of Trotsky’s The Lessons of October. Trotsky’s analysis ran counter to the efforts of Bolshevik leaders to fashion the narrative of October as a foundation event in which the Bolshevik Party, under the clear-sighted leadership of Lenin, played a major role in bringing about a radical socialist revolution in Russia. Corney has translated into English the major contributions to this polemic, annotated them, and written an extensive contextualising introduction, examining the polemic for its impact not only on the figure of Trotsky, but also on the changing political culture of the 1920s and 1930s.
Biographical note
Frederick C. Corney, Ph.D. (1997), is Associate Professor of History at The College of William & Mary. He has published a monograph, Telling October: Memory and the Making of the Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1927 (Cornell, 2004), articles, and book and movie reviews on Russia and historical memory.
Readership
All interested in the history of Marxism and Leninism, Russian Revolutionary history, early Soviet Russia, cultural history, and especially in the figure of Leon Trotsky and the early Bolshevik leaders.
Table of contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Anatomy of a Polemic
Document 1: ‘The Lessons of October’ (14 October 1924), L. Trotsky
Document 2: ‘Who Carried Out the October Revolution? (On the “History” of October in L. Trotsky’s book 1917’ (30 October 1924), I. Stepanov
Document 3: ‘How the History of October Must Not Be Written (on L. Trotsky’s book 1917)’ (2 November 1924), N. Bukharin
Document 4: ‘The Komsomol and October (on Comrade Trotsky’s “The Lessons of October”)’ (12 November 1924), Central, Moscow, and Leningrad Committees of Komsomol
Document 5: ‘On the Intolerable Distortion of Historical Facts (Concerning Comrade Trotsky’s article “The Uprising”)’ (15 November 1924), D. Lebed’
Document 6: ‘How Should the History of October be Approached? (Comrade Trotsky’s “The Lessons of October”)’ (19 November 1924), G. Sokol’nikov
Document 7: ‘On Comrade Trotsky’s ‘The Lessons of October’’ (25 November 1924), N. Babakhan
Document 8: ‘Trotskyism or Leninism? Report by Comrade L.B. Kamenev’ (26 November 1924), L. Kamenev
Document 9: ‘Trotskyism or Leninism’ (26 November 1924), I. Stalin
Document 10: ‘Our Differences’ (November 1924), L. Trotsky
Document 11: ‘Bolshevism or Trotskyism (Where the Trotskyist Line is Leading)’ (30 November 1924), G. Zinoviev
Document 12: ‘An Unsuccessful Depiction of the “German October” (Comrade Trotsky’s “The Lessons of October”)’ (30 November 1924), O. Kuusinen
Document 13: ‘On the Lessons of Trotskyism (L. Trotsky’s book About Lenin)’ (9 December 1924), V. Molotov
Document 14: The Chkheidze Controversy (9 December 1924)
Document 15: ‘The Question of the Lessons of October’ (16 December 1924), N. Krupskaia
Document 16: ‘The October Revolution and the Tactics of Russian Communists’ (17 December 1924), I. Stalin
Document 17: ‘“The Lessons of October” and the Bulgarian Communist Party’ (20 December 1924), V. Kolarov
Document 18: ‘Letter to Comrades’ (21 December 1924), Leopol’d Averbakh, et al.
Document 19: ‘The Autobiography of Trotskyism (instead of an afterword)’ (22 December 1924), G. Safarov
Document 20: ‘The Theory of Permanent Revolution’ (28 December 1924), N. Bukharin
Document 21: ‘To All the Members of the Central Committee Who Are Enemies of Trotskyism’ (1924), N. Bukharin
Document 22: ‘The New Discussion’ (28 December 1924), A. Rykov
Document 23: ‘Not Every Effort is Successful’ (1925), A. Andreev
Document 24: ‘Letter to the Plenum of the CC RKP(b)’ (15 January 1925), L. Trotsky
Document 25: ‘Plenum of the CC RKP(b) and TsKK regarding the Speech of Comrade Trotsky’ (17 January 1925)
Document 26: ‘Mistakes in “The Lessons of October” by Comrade Trotsky’ (January 1925), S.A. Piontkovskii
Document 27: ‘Lenin, Conspiratoriality, October’ (1925), E. Kviring
Document 28: ‘The Ideological Foundations of Trotskyism’ (1925), B. Kun
Document 29: ‘“The Lessons of October” and Trotskyism’ (1925), A. Bubnov
Document 30: ‘The Struggle for the Party’ (January 1925), S. Kanatchikov
Appendix A: Introduction to ‘The Lessons of the Revolution’ (28 December 1924), Paul Levi
Appendix B: ‘The Lessons of the October Experiment’ (1925), Karl Kautsky
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
