The Revolution Betrayed

By Leon Trotsky

Translated by Max Eastman

First published in 1937

Current publisher, Pathfinder Press

I first read Leon Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed about fifty years ago. At that time, I didn’t know much about politics, but was impressed by Trotsky’s argument. I’ve learned a few things in the past fifty years and the world has changed. Now I have a lot more appreciation for what Trotsky had to say. 

Trotsky and the Bolshevik Revolution

Leon Trotsky was born Leon Bronstein to a Jewish middle class farming family in the Ukraine. In 1905 he became President of the Soviet (worker’s council) during the revolution that erupted in that year. The Czarist government exiled Trotsky to Siberia, but he managed to escape to various European nations and ended up in New York City before the February 1917 Revolution. 

He then managed to return to Russia and joined the Bolsheviks under the leadership of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. After the October Revolution the Bolshevik Party headed the Soviet government and organized the defense of an invasion by fourteen nations. Lenin asked Trotsky to head up the Red Army. Then, for two-and-one-half years, Trotsky organized the defense of the new government. This book is, for me, the best explanation of how and why a bureaucracy headed by Joseph Stalin managed to betray the essence of what the Russian Revolution was about.

Trotsky analyzed how and why the Bolsheviks came to power in his three-volume history of the Russian Revolution. The Czar ordered the armed forces to go to war against Germany but failed to supply the army with sufficient supplies of food, clothing, ammunition, or boots. Millions of Russian soldiers died in that war. In a nation that supplied food for an entire region, there was famine. 

In the February 1917 Revolution, the provisional government refused to end the war, or to provide food for the people. In fact, that government issued arrest warrants for Lenin and Trotsky because they favored an end to the war. The Bolsheviks responded to this situation by demanding “All power to the Soviets” and “Peace, Bread, and Land.” The Russian people became so disgusted by the provisional government that there was very little resistance to the October Revolution.  

The priorities of the Bolsheviks were completely different from the priorities of capitalist governments. In the United States, the government has made it clear, from its inception, that its priority is to support the interests of the most affluent people in the nation. The priority of the Bolsheviks was to support the interests of each and every worker and farmer in what became the Soviet Union. 

The new book 1619 documents the fact that institutionalized racist discrimination has been tolerated in this part of the world since before the revolution of the thirteen colonies. In Czarist Russia there was also institutionalized discrimination against many nationalities including Ukraine. The Bolsheviks had a policy of giving self-determination to all the oppressed nationalities in the former czarist Russia. The new nation became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. 

The new revolutionary government also favored the liberation of women. Their goal was to have communal kitchens and day care centers to ease the domestic work of women. The Soviet Union became the first nation in the world to give women the right to vote. Another goal was to teach everyone to read. The Bolsheviks created an atmosphere where all soldiers in the armed forces learned how to read. 

Trotsky wrote about Karl Marx’s vision for a future socialist world. Clearly looking into the future is difficult because there are countless variables that are impossible to anticipate. Saying that, Marx argued that he believed that the first socialist revolutions would erupt in the developed nations like Germany, Britain, or the United States. 

If revolutions erupted in those nations, socialist governments would immediately institute improved standards of living for workers and farmers. The capitalist norm of supporting the drive to maximize profits would be over. The new priority would be to organize the productive forces to benefit everyone. 

Today, in the United States this could mean giving everyone the absolute lifetime right to education, health care, housing, and food. This would be possible because providing for corporate profits, interest to banks, insurance, advertising, rents, and corporate law would no longer be necessary. While providing for human rights are fundamental to socialists, those same rights are unthinkable to capitalist politicians. 

Stalin’s betrayal of the Russian Revolution

The basic problem for the revolutionary government of the Soviet Union was that czarist Russia was not an advanced capitalist nation, but a relatively underdeveloped nation that was ruled by a feudal monarch. While there were highly developed factories, in many ways czarist Russia was not even capitalist. 

Because of the devastation of the First World War, the people experienced famine and the resources didn’t exist to make improvements in the overall standard of living. Emergency measures needed to be implemented just so people would have food.

The other problem was that the Bolsheviks expected for a revolution to erupt in Germany. That nation had also been devastated by the war and there were massive uprisings. However, the German authorities murdered the leaders of the working class and that revolution never materialized. So, the new revolutionary government of the Soviet Union needed to find a way to survive under some of the worst conditions. 

The former middle classes of Russia wanted an immediate relief from those conditions and could care less about the majority of the population. Trotsky gave the following explanation of why Joseph Stalin became the leader of the new bureaucracy. 

“He brought all the necessary guarantees: the prestige of an old Bolshevik, a strong character, narrow vision, and close bonds with the political machine as the sole source of his influence.”

“It was the friendly welcome of the new ruling group, trying to free itself from the old principles and from the control of the masses, and having need of a reliable arbiter in its inner affairs.” 

Here Trotsky makes it clear that the differences between him and Stalin weren’t primarily about ideas. The Bolsheviks wanted a government that would support the interests of everyone in the Soviet Union. The new bureaucracy, headed by Stalin, wanted a new elite that would have material advantages over most of the population. 

The Bolsheviks always understood that they were a part of an international struggle to liberate humanity from the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism. After the revolution the Bolsheviks needed to end the war and signed a peace agreement with Germany. That agreement gave Germany large sections of what used to be czarist Russia. 

Trotsky reported that the German government effectively lost control of those areas in less than a year because of the revolutionary uprisings within Germany. There were several other uprisings in Europe that stayed the hands of the imperialists in their attempt to overthrow the Soviet government. In Seattle, Washington the longshore workers refused to load ships headed to the counter-revolutionary forces attempting to overthrow the Soviet government.

This was just one example of how revolutions have always been supported by international events. The Chinese Revolution was supported by U.S. soldiers who refused be used to turn back that revolution after World War II. The Cuban Revolution was aided by the fact that the U.S. armed forces were tied up in Vietnam. The Vietnamese Revolution was aided by the international anti-war movement. While these are clear examples of how revolutions are related to international struggles, Stalin argued for a strategy of “Socialism in One Country.”

That strategy would prove be disastrous for workers all over the world. After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, he murdered thousands of communists. After that horror, Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with the Nazis. This enabled the German fascists to advance their war against France and Britain free of any opposition from the Soviet Union. 

Then Stalin ordered the armed forces of the Soviet Union to invade Finland in a winter when temperatures reached 40 degrees below zero. The Soviet defeat in Finland emboldened Hitler to invade the Soviet Union. Initially Stalin was surprised by that invasion because he had the stupid idea that Hitler would honor the so-called non-aggression pact. About 27 million people from the Soviet Union died, in part, because of this horrendous mistake of Stalin.

The Chinese Communist Party was first organized in opposition to the Kuomintang that supported the capitalist interests in China. Stalin used his financial support to demand that the CCP follow the orders of the Kuomintang.  Chiang Kai-shek then ordered his forces to murder thousands of members of the CCP in 1927. When asked if he supported the international revolution, Stalin’s answer was “nonsense.”  

Trotsky was aware of real advances the Soviet Union made after the revolution. He gave evidence of the unparalleled growth of the Soviet industrial economy. While China’s recent industrial growth was largely financed by capitalist interests, the industrial growth of the Soviet Union took place in isolation from capitalist finance.

However, that growth was compromised by the mis-leadership of Stalin. Instead of motivating workers based on solidarity, a new piecework system became the norm. Salaries ranged widely where some productive workers received about twenty times more in salary than the norm. Communist Party supervisors also received huge salaries relative to the norm. 

Under those conditions labor productivity lagged the productivity in capitalist nations. The quality of commodities was poor compared to the quality of commodities in the capitalist nations.

With respect to agriculture, Stalin’s policies were even more disastrous. The kulak was a middle-class peasant who hired laborers. After the revolution, the kulaks worked to consolidate their position and compromise any effort to improve agriculture. A rational way to deal with this problem was to introduce machinery and gradually demonstrate to the kulaks that socialist agriculture would be more productive.

Stalin’s policy dictated that the land of most kulaks would be confiscated and turned into collective farms. Those collective farms would be run by a bureaucracy whose primary interest was to maintain itself. 

The kulaks were appalled at the fact that they were losing everything they had. They murdered their cattle and Russia experienced years of famine. Just as with the workers in factories, farm laborers had little or no incentive to become more productive.

There are supporters of capitalism who argue that the government of Stalin was essentially the same as the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler. Trotsky put this point of view in perspective.

Hitler and Stalin were similar in that both regimes were intolerant to any and all opposition. Thousands of supporters of Trotsky were exiled to Siberia where they were coerced to confess to alleged crimes, and then oftentimes murdered. The intolerance of Hitler is well known.

However, Hitler and Stalin differ in their base of support. Hitler could not have become Chancellor of Germany without massive support from capitalist interests. Hitler remained loyal to those interests. 

The government of the Soviet Union came to power because of a working-class revolution. Stalin betrayed that revolution, but never had the support of capitalist financial interests. However, Stalin’s policies ultimately benefitted capitalism inside and outside of the Soviet Union.

Trotsky argued that capitalism could be reintroduced into the Soviet Union if the policies of Stalin were not reversed. Today Vladimir Putin heads a capitalist government in a nation that used to be called the Soviet Union. Just as Stalin went to war to grab land in Finland, Putin is at war to grab the land in Ukraine. 

While the Soviet Union was ruled by Stalin, the economy was, for the most part, self-sustaining. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the idea of creating a genuine workers democracy was never a consideration to those who had power. So, they appealed to capitalist financial interests.

The interests of capitalists and workers continue to be antagonistic

Those financiers understood that the former soviet economy couldn’t compete effectively in the capitalist market. The Russian car called the Lada wasn’t going to compete with BNWs or Chevys. As a result, Russian industry was decimated and there was a significant deterioration in the standard of living.

Today, most people are unaware of what the Bolsheviks were attempting to do in the Russian Revolution. Living in the United States it is difficult to even imagine what a worker’s government would look like. 

Employers argue that workers are members of their “team.” Advertisers argue that “the customer is always right.” In this environment it isn’t easy to see that capitalists have interests that are antagonistic to workers on literally every issue. When capitalists get more in profits, this means that workers effectively get less. When workers so-called benefits are compromised capitalists profit. Today, we see prices skyrocketing. This means that capitalists profit, while workers see our real wages being effectively cut. 

In Trotsky’s preface to his History of the Russian Revolution he argued: “For decades the oppositional criticism is nothing more than a safety valve for mass dissatisfaction, a condition of the stability of the social structure.”

“The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime.”                    

Those words explained why revolutions erupted in Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cuba. When we look at the capitalist economy of the world today, it appears that we are entering a period where masses will no longer be able to “endure the old regime.”

When we look at the reality in the world today, we see that masses of young people are beginning to see that the capitalist system isn’t offering them much of a future. I’ve taken part in protests about Black Lives Matter, in support of abortion rights, protesting the destruction of the environment, an in solidarity with the people of Palestine, and Puerto Rico. Young people are also beginning to appreciate the socialist government of Cuba. These struggles, as well as the reality we face is creating an atmosphere where we will no longer be able to “endure the old regime.”