Writings of Leon Trotsky (1937-38)

New York: Pathfinder Press, Inc., 1976. Second Edition . Trade Paperback. Good. 5 1/4" X 8 1/4. Edge, Dennis - Cover Design. 512 Pages Indexed. Tight square book with no marks or stamps. Very light wear to front cover and no other defects noted. Interior text pages are bright and white. This is the 1976 Second Edition and published here for the first time in English. Leon Trotsky is known as a central leader of the Russian Revolution, founder of the Red Army, Marxist theoretician, brilliant orator, literary and social critic, and chief opponent of the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union. But he himself thought that the most important part of his life's work was the role he played in the building of the Fourth International, the revolutionary successor to the Stalinized Third International. In September 1938, when the founding conference of the new international was held in France, Trotsky was in exile in Mexico and could not attend. By then, however, he had made his main contributions to the conference in the form of articles and letters for the preconference discussion, and in stenographically recorded talks with comrades who visited him. The 129 selections in this book also include assessments of the third Moscow trial, involving Bukharin, Rykov, and other Old Bolsheviks; the death of Trotsky's son at the hands of Soviet secret police agents in a Paris hospital; the kidnapping and murder in Paris of the young German refugee Rudolf Klement, who was in charge of technical preparations for the Fourth International conference; the Communist Manifesto on its ninetieth anniversary; the Mexican government's expropriation of imperialist oil holdings; the class character of the Soviet Union; the fallacies of ultraleftism; tactics in the struggle against war and fascism; freedom of the press; a look back at the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921; democratic centralism; intellectuals and the revolutionary party.