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Trotsky’s Analysis of StalinismThomas M. Twiss

From 1927 until 1940 Leon Trotsky consistently characterized Stalinism as a radical

departure from Leninism. However, during these years his analysis of Stalinism

underwent a substantial evolution. Initially, Trotsky defined Stalinism in terms of

a variety of undemocratic practices the leadership had substituted for Leninist norms, but

also in terms of a pattern of economic and international policies that deviated to the

right of Leninism. Trotsky associated both aspects of Stalinism with the phenomenon of

bureaucratism, understood as the growth of bourgeois influence within Soviet political

institutions. When this understanding was challenged by the radical shifts in Soviet

economic and Comintern policy of 1928�1933, Trotsky adjusted his analysis of Stalinism

to emphasize the autonomy of the Soviet bureaucracy. However, at the same time he

continued to insist upon the essential correctness of his earlier views. The result was

a growing distortion in Trotsky’s interpretation of reality, and an increasing incoherence

in his analysis of Stalinism. Ultimately, two major events led Trotsky to revise his

analysis of Stalinism fundamentally: the disastrous failure of Comintern policy in

Germany in 1933 and the wave of repression following the Kirov assassination in 1934.

Together, these events impelled Trotsky to redefine Stalinism in terms of a political system

characterized by the bureaucracy’s high degree of autonomy from social classes. This view

received its fullest expression in Trotsky’s classic work The Revolution Betrayed. In this

and other later works Trotsky provided a complex and nuanced account of the origins of

Stalinism and of its relationship to Bolshevism.

Keywords: Trotsky; Trotskii; Stalinism; bureaucracy; Soviet

An appropriate starting place for considering the relationship between Stalinism

and Leninism is a reexamination of the views of Leon Trotsky on the subject.1 Of

1 This article is based on a paper presented on 14 November 2009 at a panel discussion of the topic ‘Did

Leninism Lead to Stalinism?’ at the national conference of the American Association for the Advancement of

Slavic Studies, and on Thomas Marshall Twiss, ‘Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy’ (PhD

dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 2009), http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04222009-112811/.

Many other works have been devoted to Trotsky’s views on Stalinism and/or Soviet bureaucracy, including Perry

Anderson, ‘Trotsky’s Interpretation of Stalinism’ in Tariq Ali (ed) The Stalinist Legacy: Its Impact on 20th Century

World Politics (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984), pp. 118�128; Siegfried Bahne, ‘Trotsky on Stalin’s

ISSN 0301-7605 (print)/ISSN 1748-8605 (online) # 2010 Critique

DOI: 10.1080/03017605.2010.522119

Critique

Vol. 38, No. 4, December 2010, pp. 545�563

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course, Trotsky was one of the first to discuss the phenomenon of Stalinism; and he

addressed that subject more extensively and systematically than anyone else has ever

done. Furthermore, the influence of his thinking on that question has been

profound. This was noted in 1958 by the political philosopher John Plamenatz who

asserted, ‘As an indictment of Stalinism, Trotsky’s account of Soviet Russia is

formidable. So much so, indeed, that some version or other of it has been adopted

by nearly all of Stalin’s more plausible critics.’2 Similarly, in 1988 historian Henry

Reichman observed that ‘it is Leon Trotsky’s critique that continues to shape key

elements of what many scholars*including some otherwise hostile to Marxism*regard as Stalinism.’3 Even since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Trotsky’s most

important work on Stalinism, The Revolution Betrayed, continues to be cited

frequently in academic literature.4

From 1927 until his death in 1940, Trotsky consistently argued that Stalinism

represented a radical departure from Leninism. However, over the course of these

years his analysis of Stalinism and of the related phenomenon of Soviet

bureaucracy underwent a substantial evolution. This article will sketch the

development of Trotsky’s thinking on these questions, and will conclude with

some general remarks on his understanding of Stalinism and of its relationship to

Leninism.

Russia’, Survey, 41 (1962), pp. 27�42; Peter Beilharz, Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism (Totawa,

NJ: Barnes and Noble Books, 1987); Martin Krygier, ‘‘‘Bureaucracy’’ in Trotsky’s Analysis of Stalinism’, in Marian

Sawer (ed) Socialism and the New Class: Towards the Analysis of Structural Inequality within Socialist Societies,

APSA Monograph No. 19 (Sydney: Australasian Political Studies Association, 1978), pp. 46�67; Martin Krygier,

‘The revolution betrayed? From Trotsky to the new class’, in Eugene Kamenka and Martin Krygier (eds)

Bureaucracy: The Career of a Concept (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979), pp. 88�111; David Law, ‘Trotsky in

Opposition: 1923-1940’ (PhD dissertation, University of Keele, 1987); David W. Lovell, Trotsky’s Analysis of

Soviet Bureaucratization: A Critical Essay (London: Croom Helm, 1987); Michael M. Lustig, Trotsky and Djilas:

Critics of Communist Bureaucracy (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989); Robert H. McNeal, ‘Trotskyist

Interpretations of Stalinism’, in Robert C. Tucker (ed) Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation (New York:

W. W. Norton and Co., 1977), pp. 30�52; and Emanuele Saccarelli, Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of

Stalinism: The Political Theory and Practice of Opposition (New York: Routledge, 2008).2 John Plamenatz, German Communism and Russian Marxism (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1954),

p. 303.3 Henry Reichman, ‘Reconsidering ‘‘Stalinism’’ ’, Theory and Society, 17:1 (1988), p. 67.4 A search of the ISI Web of Science databases (Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts and Humanities Citation

Index, and Science Citation Index) on 20 June 2006, revealed 51 citations in scholarly literature for all English

language editions of The Revolution Betrayed during the years 1992�2006. By way of comparison, there were

52 citations for Trotsky’s The History of the Russian Revolution; 22 citations for all English language editions of

Roy Medvedev’s Let History Judge, and ten citations for all English language editions of Stephen Cohen’s

Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution. A search of the OCLC WorldCat database on 6 June 2006 turned up 1,151

library holdings of all English language editions of The Revolution Betrayed, indicating this is a popular title for

libraries according to the ‘brief test’ methodology devised by Howard White. See Howard White, Brief Tests of

Collection Strength: A Methodology for All Types of Libraries (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), pp. 123�129.

546 T. M. Twiss

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Stalinism and Bureaucratism, 1926�1927

It seems that Trotsky’s first written use of the term Stalinism was in an oppositional

declaration written on 28 June 1927.5 At that point the Joint Opposition, consisting

of the supporters of Trotsky, Gregory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, had been locked in

a party struggle for more than a year with backers of Stalin and of the moderate wing

of the party leadership. In his statement of 28 June, Trotsky responded to an

escalation of rhetoric against the opposition by Stalin who, challenging the loyalty of

the opposition, had spoken of an alleged ‘united front from [British foreign secretary]

Chamberlain to Trotsky.’ Here, Trotsky described this and the earlier accusations that

the opposition wanted to ‘rob the peasants’ and ‘to cause a war’, as ‘slogans of

Stalinism [stalinizm] in its fight with Bolshevism, in the person of the Opposition.’6

In other statements over the next few months he and the opposition clarified more

precisely what they meant by Stalinism, defining it in terms of two distinct types of

policies and doctrines that they saw as differing dramatically from the policies and

doctrines of Lenin.

In part, when Trotsky and the opposition spoke of Stalinism in 1927 they were

referring to various undemocratic practices the leadership had substituted for

Leninist norms, especially within the party regime. Thus on 4 August 1927, Trotsky,

with a dozen other opposition leaders, signed a statement to the Central Committee

and Central Control Commission which noted the radical difference between the

‘profound party spirit and methods’ of Leninism and those of ‘Stalinism’.7 In this

period Trotsky and the opposition identified a number of specific policies related to

the regime that they explicitly contrasted with the policies of Lenin. These included

the increasing selection of party officials by appointment rather than election; the

selection of economic workers on the basis of their support for the leadership

majority rather than for their skill or initiative; the increasing independence of the

Secretariat from the control of the Politburo; restrictions of the right of all party

5 The basis for this conclusion is a computer search for the term stalinizm in two collections of opposition

documents, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR. 1923�1927, and Arkhiv L. D. Trotskogo on the website of

Yury Felshtinsky, http://www.felshtinsky.com/index1.html. In the first of these collections, Felshtinsky included

‘practically all the documents of (Trotsky’s) archives from 1923�27 which relate to questions of internal policy

and the struggle for power in the Soviet leadership.’ In the second, he included additional documents from the

archives for the years 1927�1940*the volume for 1927 dealing primarily with the Chinese revolution. Robert

McNeal has suggested that ‘The Declaration of the 83 and Our Tasks’ dated 27 April 1927 was perhaps the first

occasion on which Trotsky spoke of Stalinism. McNeal explains that Trotsky wrote there ‘of the errors of the

‘‘Stalinist group’’ and of an approaching crisis ‘‘in its Stalinist sense’’ ’. Robert McNeal, ‘Trotckij and Stalinism’, in

Francesca Gori (ed) Pensiero e azione politica di Lev Trockij: atti del convegno internazionale per il quarantesimo

anniversario della morte, vol. 2 (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1982), p. 378. In fact, according to a note by Trotsky, this

statement was probably written by Zinoviev. The term stalinizm does not appear there; rather, the term used was

stalinskii*sometimes translated as the adjective Stalin and sometimes as Stalinist. See Iu Fel’shtinskii (ed)

Kommunisticheskaia oppositisiia v SSSR, 1923-1927, vol. 3 (Moscow: TERRA, 1990), p. 82. Furthermore, the term

stalinskii had been used by Trotsky at least as early as June 1926. See Fel’shtinskii, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 237.6 Fel’shtinskii, op. cit, vol. 3, p. 214.7 Fel’shtinskii, op. cit., vol. 4, p. 49; Leon Trotsky, The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1926�27), ed. Naomi

Allen and George Saunders (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1980), p. 266.

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members to appeal their differences to the party through the party press and at party

meetings; limitation upon the right of party members to familiarize themselves with

all conflicting viewpoints within the party; the use of distortion and slander against

political opponents instead of a comradely discussion of differences; the forcing of

party members to vote under threat of repression for the positions of the Central

Committee; and the actual repression of party dissidents by political reassignment,

exile and termination of employment.8

Also in this period Trotsky asserted that Stalinism was largely defined by a pattern

of economic and international policies and doctrines that deviated to the right of

Leninism. In a speech to the Central Committee on 23 October 1927 he observed that

the political line of the leadership had shifted in recent years ‘from left to right: from

the proletariat to the petty bourgeois, from the worker to the specialist, from the

rank-and-file party member to the functionary, from the farmhand and the poor

peasant to the kulak, from the Shanghai worker to Chiang Kai-shek, [etc.]’ In that,

he asserted, ‘lies the very essence [sut’] of Stalinism.’9

As far as economic policy was concerned, Trotsky and the opposition contrasted

both the industrial and agricultural policies of the current leadership with Lenin’s.

Thus, in its 1927 Platform the opposition observed that Lenin had supported the

‘proletarian course’ of developing industry in order to enable the cities to boost

agricultural productivity and encourage small farmers to adopt large-scale collective

farming. In agriculture Lenin had advocated that the Soviet state rely upon the poor

peasant, while reaching an agreement with the middle peasant and continuing its

struggle against the kulak.10 In contrast, the Stalin�Bukharin leadership had rejected

the acceleration of industrialization as a means of transforming agriculture, and had

placed its bets upon the ‘‘‘economically strong’’ peasant, i.e., in reality on the kulak.’11

Similarly, Trotsky and the opposition denounced the leadership majority for its

rightist deviations from Leninist international policy, especially in Britain and China.

In a statement written in July 1926 the opposition noted that, although Lenin had

supported temporary blocs with opportunist labor leaders, he had advocated

breaking with them whenever they betrayed the proletariat. In contrast, during this

period the Stalinists had insisted upon maintaining an alliance with the opportunist

leaders of the British Trades Union Congress, even after they had betrayed the British

general strike of 1926.12 Additionally, in May 1927 Trotsky observed that Bolshevism

always had required a clear ‘political and organizational demarcation [of the party of

the proletariat] from the bourgeoisie’, and a ‘relentless exposure of the bourgeoisie

from the very first steps of the revolution.’ Instead of this, during the upsurge in

China of 1926�1927, Stalin and his supporters had pursued a Menshevik course,

attempting to maintain a united front with the Chinese bourgeoisie by adapting the

8 Trotsky, Challenge (1926�27), p. 82, 166, 233, 236, 247, 248, 294, 352, 353, 358, 441.9 Fel’shtinskii, 4, p. 221; Trotsky, Challenge (1926�27), p. 442.10 Trotsky, Challenge (1926�27), p. 309, 310, 322.11 Ibid., pp. 104, 310, 322.12 Leon Trotsky, Leon Trotsky on Britain (New York: Monad Press, 1973), p. 256.

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policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to those of the Chinese capitalists,

and even subordinating the CCP organizationally to the bourgeois Guomindang

party.13

Regarding doctrine, the theory that for Trotsky most clearly typified Stalinism was

the theory of socialism in one country. In a speech to the Fifteenth Party Conference

in November 1926, Trotsky noted that Lenin had believed ‘the joint efforts of the

workers of several advanced countries are needed for the victory of socialism.’ Against

this, Stalin had affirmed the ‘possibility of completely constructing socialism by the

efforts of a single country.’14 For Trotsky, this theory again revealed the conservatism

of Stalinism in relation to both economic and international policy. As far as domestic

economic policy was concerned, it rationalized an isolationism that artificially

retarded Soviet economic development; regarding international policy, it exposed a

deep pessimism in the prospect of world revolution.15

As Trotsky viewed it during this period, both the undemocratic and the politically

conservative characteristics of Stalinism were simply expressions of the two different

sides of the bureaucratism that he saw as increasingly pervasive in Soviet institutions.

In part, Trotsky employed bureaucratism (biurokratizm), or occasionally bureaucracy

(biurokratiia), to refer to the growing alienation of the institutions of power from the

Soviet masses. Thus, for example, in the spring of 1926 Trotsky asserted that the

‘unlimited domination of the party apparatus’ constituted the ‘essence of bureaucracy

[sushchnost’ biurokratii].’16 At the same time, according to Trotsky and the

opposition, bureaucratism also involved the increasing subordination of Soviet

institutions to alien (non-proletarian) class interests. The 1927 Platform asserted,

‘The question of Soviet bureaucratism is not only a question of red tape and swollen

staffs. At bottom it is a question of the class role played by the bureaucracy, of its

social ties and sympathies, of its power and privileged position, its relation to the

NEPman and the unskilled worker . . . etc.’17

As Trotsky explained it, the simultaneous growth of these two aspects of

bureaucratism and Stalinism could be traced to major shifts that had occurred in

the relative strength of social classes within the Soviet Union, especially since the

onset of Lenin’s final illness. In June 1926 Trotsky argued:

‘The fundamental cause of bureaucratization must be sought in the relationsbetween classes. . . . The bureaucratization of the party . . . is an expression of thedisrupted social equilibrium, which has been and is being tipped to thedisadvantage of the proletariat. This disruption of the equilibrium is transmittedto the party and weighs upon the proletarian vanguard in the party.’18

13 Leon Trotsky, Leon Trotsky on China (New York: Monad Press, 1976), pp. 168�169. See also p. 161, 164,

223�225, 257.14 Trotsky, Challenge (1926�27), pp. 155, 157.15 Ibid., pp. 161�162, 183.16 Ibid., p. 65; Fel’shtinskii, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 233.17 Ibid., p. 341; Fel’shtinskii, op. cit., vol. 4, p. 139.18 Trotsky, Challenge (1926�27), p. 68.

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Trotsky argued that, by the early 1920s, the Soviet proletariat was exhausted by the

exertions of revolution and civil war and demoralized by the inevitable gap between its

expectations and the realities of revolutionary power. Consequently, the proletariat had

retreated into passivity. Meanwhile, the restoration of market relations under the New

Economic Policy, though essential for economic recovery, had promoted the growth in

size and economic influence of bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements, which had

become increasingly self-confident. This shifting in the relation of class forces had

exerted a rightward pressure upon the apparatuses of all the major political and social

institutions of Soviet society. Under this pressure, the party leadership had adopted

policies beneficial to these alien elements, and this in turn had contributed to the

further disruption of class equilibrium. At the same time, in order to implement its

rightist policies, the leadership had been compelled to resort to undemocratic practices

and repression, especially against the revolutionary, proletarian section of the party, the

opposition. Consequently, the party found itself trapped in an enormous vicious circle:

shifting class forces had engendered rightward lurches in policy and increasing

repression, all of which had further disrupted the class balance.19

As Trotsky perceived it in 1926�1927, the Stalinist current that had been brought

to power by this process was ‘centrist’ in nature, occupying a position midway

between the revolutionary proletarian position of Leninism and the complete

opportunism of the party right. Thus, the centrism of Stalinism demonstrated

both the extent and the limits of the leadership’s break with Leninism. The danger,

however, was that new defeats of the proletariat or the opposition might weaken the

resistance of the Soviet working class even more, resulting in a further shift of power

to the right within the party, and possibly even bringing about the restoration of

capitalism. Trotsky described the most likely path of such a restoration as

‘Thermidor’, after the 9th of Thermidor, Year 2 in the French revolutionary calendar

(27 July 1794), the date when Robespierre was overthrown. As he defined it in the

summer of 1927, Thermidor was ‘a special form of counterrevolution carried out on

the installment plan . . . and making use, in the first stage, of elements of the same

ruling party*by regrouping them and counterposing some to others.’20

The goal of the opposition, then, was to block capitalist restoration, and to

reinstitute the proletarian policies of Leninism. The opposition’s strategy for doing

this was explicitly reformist. As Trotsky reasoned in December 1927, since power had

‘not yet been torn from the hands of the proletariat’, it was still possible to rectify the

‘political course, remove the elements of dual power, and to reinforce the dictatorship

[of the proletariat] by measures of a reformist kind.’21 Furthermore, since any

attempt to establish a second party would have set the opposition on the road of

revolution, the opposition was obliged to conduct its struggle within the limits of the

19 See, for example, ibid., pp. 69�72, 76, 96, 103�104, 122, 166, 170, 206�208, 233, 241�242, 246, 254�255,

295, 299, 306, 355, 378, 390�391, 403, 407, 445, 452, 474.20 Ibid, p. 263. Alternatively, Trotsky noted, it was possible there could be a ‘decisive and sharp overturn

(with or without intervention).’ Ibid., p. 260.21 Ibid., p. 489. See also ibid., pp. 267, 476.

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Communist Party. Thus, at the fifthteenth Party Conference in November 1926

Trotsky explained, ‘Those who believe that our state is a proletarian state, but with

bureaucratic deformations . . . these must use party methods and party means to

combat that which they hold to be wrong, mistaken, or dangerous.’22

Stalinism and the Left Turn, 1928�1933

Trotsky’s analysis of Stalinism and Soviet bureaucratism in the late 1920s was elegant

and insightful, and it seemed quite plausible at the time when it was first articulated.

However, as Isaac Deutscher has noted, it ‘fitted the realities of later years less well.’23

In late 1927 Trotsky predicted that if the opposition were crushed and if no major

proletarian upsurge occurred, the most likely results would include the disintegration

of the centrist current, the conquest of power by the party right, the shifting of the

party’s economic and international policies further to the right, and the probable

restoration of capitalism.24 In fact, the opposition was beaten decisively at the end of

1927 and thousands of oppositionists, including Trotsky, were exiled to remote

regions of the Soviet Union. However, instead of moving to the right, the party

leadership initiated a policy shift that Trotsky and the opposition perceived as left in

nature. Beyond that, instead of dissolving, the Stalinist current emerged triumphant

in a power struggle with its moderate opponents. Then, without any evident increase

in proletarian or oppositional activity, in 1929�1933 the leadership appeared to veer

even more sharply to the left, adopting industrialization and collectivization targets

and Comintern policies that were so radical they fell entirely outside of the

framework assumed by Trotsky’s analysis. Finally, despite these shifts, the leadership

continued to deviate ever further from the Leninist norms of workers’ democracy as

Trotsky and the opposition understood them.

From exile, Trotsky denounced the policies of the Stalin leadership in the early 1930s

just as sharply as he had criticized those of the late 1920s. Now, however, he found

himself in the unaccustomed position of criticizing leadership’s policies from the right.

Thus, he ridiculed the ‘bureaucratic adventurism’ of the industrialization targets of the

first Five-Year Plan, the ‘naked bureaucratic violence’ of the dekulakization campaign,

and the economic irrationality of wholesale collectivization.25 Furthermore, he

condemned the ultra-leftism of the new Comintern line, especially in Germany, where

he repeatedly warned that the Communist rejection of a united front with the Social

22 Ibid., p. 163. See also ibid., pp. 267, 293, 401.23 Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, Trotsky: 1929�1940 (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), p. 93.24 For these predictions, see ‘At a New Stage’ in Trotsky, Challenge (1926�27), pp. 488�509.25 For admissions by Trotsky that the opposition was criticizing the latest policies of Stalinism from the

‘right’, see Trotsky, Writings (1930), 66, 96, 169�170. For Trotsky’s criticisms of the excessive industrialization

targets of the first Five-Year Plan, see, for example, Leon Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1929) (New York:

Pathfinder Press, 1975), p. 402; Leon Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1930) (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975),

pp. 115, 116, 124, 130, 147; Leon Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1930�31) (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973),

pp. 98, 100, 182�183, 230; Leon Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1932) (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973),

pp. 66, 261. For Trotsky’s criticisms of dekulakization and collectivization, see for example, Trotsky, Writings

(1929), p. 360; Trotsky, Writings (1930), pp. 109�110, 136, 173, 200�201, 203; Trotsky, Writings (1932), p. 270.

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Democrats was leading to a Nazi victory.26 At the same time, he also attacked what he

perceived to be the party leadership’s continuing deviations from the Leninist norms of

proletarian democracy, including its repression of oppositionists to its left and right,

and the growing concentration of power in the hands of Stalin and his closest

supporters.27

However, even while criticizing Soviet economic policy and Comintern policy from

the right, Trotsky continued to insist upon the essential correctness of his earlier analysis

of Stalinism and Soviet bureaucratism, and to attempt to utilize it to understand what

was happening. His efforts to do so resulted in a series of statements and predictions

that seem deeply misguided. In 1928 and 1929, Trotsky’s perception of a necessary link

between the leadership’s violations of proletarian democracy and its conservative

policies inclined him to doubt the seriousness and reliability of the turn.28 At the same

time, his theory led him to conclude that to the extent a turn had occurred, it had been

brought about by oppositional pressure,29 and also to predict repeatedly that, unless

oppositional or proletarian pressure increased, the leadership would soon shift back to

the right.30 In the following years Trotsky’s theory continued to distort his perception of

events. For example, it led him to reaffirm that proletarian or even oppositional

pressure was responsible for the leadership’s shift to the left;31 it inspired him to endorse

the leadership’s assertions that collectivization represented a spontaneous movement by

the peasantry;32 it induced him to accept at face value the validity of the charges in the

specialist show trials of 1928, 1930 and 1931, and to attribute the excesses of the

industrialization and collectivization campaigns to capitalist sabotage;33 and it impelled

26 For Trotsky’s criticisms of Comintern policy in Germany during this period, see Leon Trotsky, The Struggle

against Fascism in Germany (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971), pp. 1�139.27 Trotsky, Writings (1930), pp. 23, 79, 80, 145, 157�158, 206, 232, 253, 255�256, 257; Trotsky, Writings

(1930�31), pp. 61, 63, 118�123, 217; Trotsky, Writings (1932), pp. 15, 18, 38, 65, 68, 124; Leon Trotsky, Writings

of Leon Trotsky (1932�33) (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972), p. 107.28 See, for example, L. Trotsky, The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1928�29) (New York: Pathfinder Press,

1981), pp. 91�92, 114, 128, 138, 139, 149, 153, 303, 363; Leon Trotsky, The Third International after Lenin (New

York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), pp. 299�301; Trotsky, Writings (1929), pp. 135�136, 200, 202, 327, 359�360, 376�377; Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects (New York: Merit Publishers, 1969), p.

134.29 Trotsky, Challenge (1928�29), pp. 78, 98, 106, 258, 306; Trotsky, Third International, p. 273; Trotsky,

Writings (1929), pp. 200, 229, 251, 280, 281, 367; Leon Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky: Supplement (1929�33)

(New York: Pathfinder Press, 1979), p. 19.30 Trotsky, Challenge (1928�29), pp. 99�100, 159; Trotsky, Third International, pp. 291�292; Trotsky, Writings

(1929), pp. 136; 201; 398.31 See Trotsky, Challenge (1928�29), pp. 78, 98, 106, 147, 154, 161, 258, 262; Trotsky, Third International,

pp. 165�166, 258, 273; Trotsky, Writings (1929), pp. 229, 251, 280, 281, 367; Trotsky, Writings (1930), pp. 106,

136; Trotsky, Writings (1930�31), pp. 103, 215, 227; Trotsky, Writings (1932�33), p. 49.32 Ibid., pp. 108�109, 110�111. See also ibid., pp. 132, 179; Trotsky, Writings (1930�31), p. 84.33 See Trotsky, Challenge (1928�29), pp. 96, 115, 141, 149, 218, 330; Trotsky, Third International, p. 293;

Trotsky, Writings (1930�31), pp. 66�69, 112, 192�195, 198, 200�201, 206, 216, 219, 307.

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him to warn repeatedly that the leadership was about to veer back to the right and

institute a Thermidor.34

Nevertheless, there were times when Trotsky appeared to be at least partially aware

that the understanding of Stalinism and bureaucratism he had articulated in the late

1920s was inadequate for comprehending the realities of the early 1930s. Thus, during

this period Trotsky introduced into his analysis a number of implicit and explicit

adjustments, all of which tended to emphasize the autonomy of the bureaucracy in

relation to social classes. Increasingly, he identified the fundamental problem of

Stalinism not with the disease of bureaucratism (biurokratizm) infecting the

apparatuses of the political organizations of the Soviet Union, but with a social

formation*a combined party-state bureaucracy (biurokratiia)*that had usurped

power.35 In this period he frequently attributed the extremes of Soviet economic and

Comintern policy to such subjective factors as the panic, excitement or sheer

stupidity of the leadership or bureaucracy, rather than to class pressure.36 While

continuing to characterize Stalinist policy politically as ‘centrist’ or ‘bureaucratic

centrist’, Trotsky began to redefine the range of positions typical of centrism, so that

now he sometimes described it as vacillating between opportunism and ultra-leftism,

rather than between opportunism and Marxism.37 Finally, in the same period,

Trotsky tended to explain the worsening of the regime not by a shifting balance of

34 For Trotsky’s repeated warnings about a new turn to the right, see Trotsky, Challenge (1928�29), pp. 139,

173�175, 274, 314, 316, 318�320, 321�328, 334�335, 337, 338, 363; Trotsky, Writings (1929), pp. 49�50; Trotsky,

Writings (1930), pp. 114, 116, 123, 138-139, 174, 204; Trotsky, Writings (1930�31), pp. 51, 61, 221, 285; Trotsky,

Writings (1932), p. 276; Trotsky, Writings (1932�33), pp. 46, 49, 75, 80, 102�103; Leon Trotsky, Writings of Leon

Trotsky, Supplement (1929�33) (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1979), p. 25.35 See, for example, Trotsky, Challenge (1928�29), p. 295; Lev Trotskii, Pis’ma iz ssylki, ed. Iu. G. Fel’shtinskii

(Moscow: Izdatel’stvo gumanitarnoi lituratury, 1995), p. 225; Trotsky, Challenge (1928�29), pp. 313, 315;

L. Trotskii, ‘Krizis pravo-tsentristskogo bloka i perspektivy’, in Lev Trotskii, Arkhiv v 9 tomakh: tom 4 , ed. Iu.G.

Fel’shtinskii http://www.felshtinsky.com/books/trotsky/Arhiv%20Trotskogo_t4.doc; Trotsky, Challenge (1928�29), pp. 391, 392; L. Trotskii, ‘O filosofskikh tendentsiiakh biurokratizma’, in Trotskii, Arkhiv v 9 tomakh: tom

4; Trotsky, Writings (1929), p. 48, 77; L. Trotskii, Chto i kak proizoshlo? Shest’ statei dlia mirovoi burzhuaznoi

pechati (Paris: H. Vilain, 1929), p. 42; L. Trotskii, ‘Pis mo rabochim SSSR’, Biulleten’ Oppozitsii, July 1929, p. 4;

Trotsky, Writings (1930�31), p. 86, 115; Al’fa, ‘Uroki kapitaliatsii’, Biulleten’ oppozitsii, February� March 1930,

p. 6; Trotsky, Writings (1930�31), pp. 58, 62, 63, 215, 286; ‘Blok levykh i pravykh’, Biulleten’ oppozitsii,

November�December 1930, p. 25; ‘Chto dal she? (k kampanii protiv pravykh)’, Biulleten’ oppozitsii, November�December 1930, p. 23; L. Trotskii, ‘Problemy razvitiia SSSR’, Biulleten’ oppozitsii, April 1931, p. 7; ‘Novyi zigzag i

novye opasnosti’, Biulleten’ oppozitsii, August 1931, p. 6; Trotsky, Writings (1932), pp. 66, 275; L. Trotskii

‘Otkrytoe pis’mo Prezidiumu Tslk’ a Soivza SSR’, Biulleten’ oppozitsii, March 1932, p. 3, L. Trotskii, ‘Sovetskoe

Khoziaistro v opasnosti! (Pered vtoroi piatiletkoi), Biulleten’ oppozitsii, November 1932, p. 9.36 Trotsky, Writings (1930), pp. 106�107, 111, 136�137, 179; Trotsky, Writings (1930�31), pp. 91, 215;

Trotsky, Writings (1932�33), p. 97; Trotsky, Writings: Supplement (1929�33), pp. 24�25.37 Trotsky, Writings (1932), pp. 223; 228; 326; Trotsky, Struggle against Fascism, p. 215. For definitions of

centrism in this period that utilized the old formula, see Trotsky, Writings (1929), pp. 232�233; Trotsky, Writings

(1930), pp. 236; 237; Trotsky, Struggle against Fascism, p. 211.

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class forces, but in terms of the conscious effort by the bureaucracy, or by the Stalin

group within the bureaucracy, to advance its own interests.38

Thus, in the early 1930s Trotsky portrayed the bureaucracy at various times as

highly responsive to external class pressures and as relatively autonomous in relation

to all social classes. These two apparently contradictory evaluations created a

conceptual tension that ran throughout Trotsky’s writings during the years 1928�1933. They both appeared, for example, in Trotsky’s general characterizations of

Stalinism in late 1930 and early 1931. In November 1930 Trotsky explicitly explained

the incompleteness of Stalinism’s break with Leninism in terms of the position it

occupied between conflicting class forces. However, at the same time, he described

Stalinism as conducting an active struggle on both sides:

Stalinism grew out of the break with Leninism. But this break was never a completeone, nor is it now. Stalinism conducts, not an episodic, but a continuous,systematic, organic struggle on two fronts. This is the inherent character of a petty-bourgeois policy: at the right of Stalin, the unconscious and conscious capitalistrestorationists in varying degrees; at the left, the proletarian Opposition.39

More clearly, Trotsky’s two evaluations of Stalinism and bureaucracy were uneasily

combined in Trotsky’s April 1931 ‘Draft Theses of the International Left Opposition

on the Russian Question’:

The zigzags of Stalinism show that the bureaucracy is not a class, not anindependent historical factor, but an instrument, an executive organ of theclasses. . . . The bureaucracy, however, is not a passive organ which only refracts theinspirations of the class. Without having absolute independence . . . the rulingapparatus nevertheless enjoys a great relative independence.40

A New Understanding of Stalinism and Bureaucracy: 1933�1940

To a large degree, this conceptual tension was resolved in the following years.

Although the left turns of 1928�1933 had compelled Trotsky to introduce repeated ad

hoc modifications to his earlier theory, he had not abandoned it. That was about to

change. Over the course of the years 1933�1936 he revised virtually every aspect of his

theory, dramatically emphasizing the autonomy of the Soviet party-state bureaucracy

in relation to social classes. The event that sparked this revolution in Trotsky’s

thinking was not some new shift to the left by the Soviet leadership; rather, it was

Hitler’s consolidation of political power in Germany in early 1933.

Trotsky and his opposition had advocated reform of the All-Union Communist

Party, the Soviet state, and the Comintern since the late 1920s. However, in the spring

of 1933 Trotsky blamed the ultra-left policies of the German Communist Party

(KPD) and the Comintern for Hitler’s victory*in Trotsky’s estimation the greatest

38 See, for example, Trotsky, Writings (1930), pp. 80, 86, 206, 230-231, 259-260; Trotsky, Writings (1930�31),

p. 217; Trotsky, Writings (1932), p. 250; Trotsky, Writings (1932�33), p. 104; Trotsky, Struggle against Fascism, pp.

214, 221�222.39 Trotsky, Writings [1930�31], p. 66.40 Ibid., p. 215.

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disaster to befall the international working class movement since the voting of war

credits by European Social Democratic parties at the outset of World War I. Just as

the Bolsheviks had broken with the Second International at the outset of World War I,

Trotsky now broke with the KPD and then the Comintern.41 Yet it was contradictory

to break with the Comintern without breaking with its leading party; and once Trotsky

had abandoned his attempts to reform the AUCP(b), it was clearly inconsistent to

retain a reform perspective for the Soviet state. Consequently, by the beginning of

October 1933, Trotsky was calling for the creation of a new revolutionary international

and a new communist party in the Soviet Union, and for the use of force to compel

the bureaucracy ‘to yield power into the hands of the proletarian vanguard.’42

Thus began a chain reaction that quickly toppled other major aspects of Trotsky’s

previous orientation. For years, Trotsky had asserted that one important reason for

defining the Soviet Union as a workers’ state was the fact that it could still be

reformed. While continuing to argue that the Soviet Union remained a workers’ state,

he now quietly dropped this criterion*retaining only the arguments that the

property forms remained those established by the Bolshevik Revolution, and that no

counterrevolutionary civil war had yet triumphed.43 Trotsky’s call for the use of force

also suggested a new appreciation for the relative autonomy of the bureaucracy. This

immediately found expression in Trotsky’s provisional acceptance of the term

Bonapartist to describe bureaucratic rule.44 In this period Trotsky also abruptly

stopped speaking of Thermidor, probably in large part because he had concluded that

such an independent bureaucracy would not be pressured easily into restoring

capitalism.45 Finally, in December 1933 Trotsky’s enhanced perception of the

bureaucracy’s autonomy prompted him to sketch a new account of how the

bureaucracy had utilized its function as mediator of social antagonisms to attain such

a high degree of independence.46

Building upon these changes, Trotsky introduced a second round of theoretical

revisions in 1935, all of which further emphasized the autonomy of the bureaucracy

in relation to social classes, and the autonomy of the Stalin group in relation to the

bureaucracy. On 1 February, Trotsky fundamentally revised his previous under-

standings of both Thermidor and Bonapartism, applying both terms to the Soviet

Union. It is likely that the event most immediately responsible for Trotsky’s complete

41 See Trotsky, Writings (1932�33), pp. 137�139; Trotsky, Writings (1933�34), p. 22. For another explanation

of Trotsky’s break with the Comintern, see J. Arch Getty, ‘Trotsky in Exile: The Founding of the Fourth

International’, Soviet Studies, 33:1 (1986), pp. 24�35. For an exchange on this question, see Thomas Twiss,

‘Trotsky’s Break with the Comintern: A Comment on J. Arch Getty’, Soviet Studies, 39:1 (1987), pp. 131�137;

J. Arch Getty, ‘Reply to Thomas Twiss’, Soviet Studies, 39:2 (1987), pp. 318�319.42 Trotsky, Struggle against Fascism, p. 430; Trotsky, Writings (1933�34), pp. 20; 118.43 Trotsky, Writings (1933�34), pp. 102�104.44 Ibid., pp. 107�108.45 On Trotsky’s dropping of Thermidor in this period, see Law, ‘Trotsky in Opposition: 1923�1940’, pp. 289,

291; David S. Law, ‘Trockij and Thermidor’, in Francesca Gori (ed) Pensiero e azione politica di Lev Trockij, vol. 2,

p. 440; David Law, ‘Trotsky and the Comparative History of Revolutions: the ‘‘Second Chapter’’ ’, Sbornik, 13

(1987), Study Group on the Russian Revolution, p. 8.46 Trotsky, Writings (1933�34), p. 167.

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acceptance of the term Bonapartism was the wave of repression unleashed by the

leadership following the Kirov assassination in December 1934. For Trotsky, the

Bonapartist features of the party regime were more apparent than ever before: ‘The

domination of the bureaucracy over the country, as well as Stalin’s domination over

the bureaucracy have well-nigh attained their absolute consummation.’47 However,

since in France Thermidor preceded Bonpartism, in order ‘to remain within the

framework of the historical analogy’ it was necessary for him to revise his use of that

term as well. Now Trotsky insisted that the significance of Thermidor in both

revolutions was not a change in property forms, but the transfer of power to a more

‘moderate and conservative’ layer, composed of ‘better-to-do elements.’ In the Soviet

Union this had happened in 1924 with the shift of power to the bureaucracy.

Following Thermidor, Trotsky explained, in both counties. Bonapartism had involved

the consolidation of the revolution through the ‘liquidation of its principles and

political institutions’, and a struggle against both the counterrevolution and the

‘rabble.’48

Trotsky’s revision of position on Thermidor and Bonapartism quickly led to other

changes as well. By redefining the rise of the bureaucracy as a fundamental transfer of

power, the new position gave added significance to the term caste, which Trotsky used

to characterize the dominant social formation.49 His increased emphasis upon the

active role of the Bonapartist regime replaced the largely passive role suggested by his

previous analysis of bureaucratic centrism, a term Trotsky now explicitly dropped,

noting, ‘As the bureaucracy becomes more independent, as more and more power is

concentrated in the hands of a single person, the more does bureaucratic centrism

turn into Bonapartism.’50 Finally, Trotsky’s argument that Thermidor was, though

47 Leon Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1934�35) (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971), p. 169.48 Ibid., pp. 173�174, 181.49 It seems that Trotsky’s first references to a bureaucratic caste in the Soviet Union appeared in early 1929

when he was beginning to stress the autonomy of the party-state bureaucracy. Trotsky, Writings (1929), pp. 77;

118; L. Trotskii, ‘Bor’ba bol’shevikov-lenintsev coppozihsii) v SSSR, Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 1�2, July 1929, p. 4;

Leon Trotsky, La Revolution Defiguree, Rieder: Paris, 1929, p. 10.) Available translations of the 1927 Platform of

the Opposition incorrectly contains three passages with the term caste used in reference to the Soviet bureaucracy.

In fact, in all three passages the term used in the Platform was sloi (layer), not kast. See Iu. Fel’shtinskii, comp.,

Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia, vol. 4, p. 151. Trotsky used the term periodically over the following years.

However, following his revision of position on Thermidor and Bonapartism, he suddenly began using caste

more frequently and insistently, and in ways that more clearly suggested a class-like degree of autonomy. See, for

example, Trotsky, Writings (1934�35), p. 156, 170; L. Trotskii, ‘Vse stanovitsia postepenno na svoe mesto’,

Biulleten’ oppozitsii, February 1935, p. 12; L. Trotskii, ‘Robochee gosudarstvo, termidor i bonapartizm (istoriko-

teoreticheskaia spravka), Biulleten’ oppozitsii, April 1935, pp. 4�5.50 Trotsky, Writings (1934�35), p. 180. Trotsky used the term bureaucratic centrism just a few more times. See

Leon Trotsky, Leon Trotsky on France (New York: Monad Press, 1979), p. 121; Trotsky, Writings (1935-36),

p. 145. Perhaps on these occasions he used it out of habit, or because Bonapartism did not clearly indicate where

Stalinism stood on a left�right continuum, and he was only beginning to perceive Stalinism as fully opportunist.

However, on 3 October 1937, Trotsky admonished ‘some comrades’ for continuing to use the term bureaucratic

centrism*a characterization he judged to be ‘totally out of date’. He explained, ‘On the international arena,

Stalinism is no longer centrism, but the crudest form of opportunism and social patriotism. See Spain!’, Leon

Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1936�37), ed. Naomi Allen and George Breitman, New York: Pathfinder Press,

1978, p. 478.

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not a social counterrevolution, a counterrevolution of sorts, suggested to him the

possibility of a revolution that was not a social revolution. Thus, on 1 January 1936

Trotsky abandoned the ‘forcible reform’ position he had held since October 1933,

explicitly calling for a ‘political revolution’, which he subsequently described as

a ‘violent overthrow of the political rule of the degenerated bureaucracy while

maintaining the property relations established by the October Revolution.’51

Trotsky’s new understanding of Stalinism and the Soviet bureaucracy received its

fullest expression in his major work, The Revolution Betrayed, completed in 1936.

Although during the mid to late 1930s Trotsky continued to use the term Stalinism to

refer to Soviet policy orientations and doctrines that he saw as deviating from

Leninism, in The Revolution Betrayed he defined it more broadly as a political system

characterized by a high degree of autonomy of the bureaucracy from social classes.

‘Stalinism,’ Trotsky explained, ‘is a variety of the same system’ as Caesarism and

Bonapartism. Each of these systems had entered ‘the scene in those moments of

history when the sharp struggle of two camps raises the state power (that is, the

bureaucracy), so to speak, above the nation, and guarantees it, in appearance,

a complete independence of classes*in reality, only the freedom necessary for

a defense of the privileged.’ The distinguishing feature of Stalinism was that it was

based upon ‘a workers’ state torn by the antagonism between an organized and armed

Soviet aristocracy and the unarmed toiling masses.’52

Trotsky offered two explanations for how the extreme autonomy of the Stalinist

bureaucracy had emerged: one functional, and one historical. Since 1933 he had argued

that the bureaucracy had been called into existence to fulfill the necessary function of

mediating between social classes. Now he described the same function in distributive

terms. He argued that in the context of a backward society in transition from capitalism

to socialism, a state or bureaucracy was required to defend the inequality in the

distribution of scarce resources that was necessary for economic development.53 Of

course, he noted, ‘in establishing and defending the advantages of a minority,’ the

bureaucracy ‘draws off the cream for its own use. . . . Thus, out of a social necessity there

has developed an organ which has far outgrown its socially necessary function.’54

Trotsky’s second explanation, which was political and historical in nature, in many

ways resembled the account he had provided in 1926 and 1927. Again, he spoke of the

exhaustion of the working class after their exertions in the revolution and civil war,

their disappointment when these failed to translate into an improvement in their own

standard of living, and their demoralization in the face of a series of defeats of the

international revolution; again, he referred again to the ‘extraordinary flush of hope

and confidence in the petty bourgeois strata of town and country’ aroused by NEP.

51 Trotsky, Writings (1935�36), pp. 358�359.52 Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and where is it going? (Garden City, NY:

Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1937), p. 278; Lev Trotskii, Chto takoe SSSR i kuda on idet? (Paris: Edite’ par la IVe

Internationale Rouge, 1972), pp. 210�211.53 Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, pp. 52�60, 112�113.54 Ibid., p. 113.

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However, in contrast to his earlier analysis, Trotsky portrayed the bureaucracy, not

alien class elements, as the most immediate beneficiary of these processes. In this

period the bureaucracy ‘began now to feel itself a court of arbitration between classes’

and ‘its independence increased from month to month.’ Furthermore, rather than

viewing the Stalinist leadership as having been pushed passively to the right by the

NEPman and kulak, he now described the Stalinist bureaucracy as having actively

utilized these class elements, ‘relying more and more boldly upon the kulak and the

petty bourgeois ally in general,’ in its struggle with the opposition.55

An additional aspect of Trotsky’s historical account worth noting is his discussion

of the role that various practices initiated in Lenin’s time had played in contributing

to the development of Stalinism. One had been the extreme closeness, bordering at

times on fusion, of the party and state apparatuses. According to Trotsky, in the first

years of the revolution this had already done ‘indubitable harm to the freedom and

elasticity of the party regime.’56 Another had been the banning of oppositional

parties. Initially, Trotsky now asserted, the Bolsheviks had hoped to preserve ‘freedom

of political struggle within the framework of the Soviets.’ However, during the civil

war alternative parties were outlawed, one after another, in ‘an episodic act of self

defense,’ a measure Trotsky now admitted was ‘obviously in conflict with the spirit of

Soviet democracy.’57 Finally, in 1921, at the time of the Kronstadt revolt, the 10th

Party Congress responded to the growth of ‘underground oppositional currents’

within the party itself by another innovation*the banning of opposition factions

within the party. Trotsky described this practice too as ‘an exceptional measure to be

abandoned at the first serious improvement in the situation’, and observed that

initially the Central Committee applied the rule very cautiously. However, he noted

that this measure ‘proved to be perfectly suited to the taste of the bureaucracy.’58

The high degree of autonomy of the bureaucracy was also stressed in Trotsky’s

discussion of Stalinist policy in The Revolution Betrayed. His general estimation of

Soviet policy, which had shifted back to the right in a number of areas, was even more

critical than it had been in the past. Considering an even broader range of issues than he

had in previous years,59 in The Revolution Betrayed Trotsky again attempted to

demonstrate the divergence of Soviet policy from previous Bolshevik practice and/or

from an ideal socialist policy. In each case, Trotsky conceded that part of the deviation

had been necessitated by the backward and transitional character of Soviet society.

However, in each case he also attributed a major portion of the reaction to efforts by the

bureaucratic caste to maintain and enhance its own power and privileges.

55 Ibid., pp. 89�92.56 Ibid., pp. 95�96.57 Ibid., p. 96. Trotsky first touched upon this in an article in August 1934 in which he asserted that the

‘bureaucratization of our soviets’, was ‘a result of the political monopoly of a single party.’ (Leon Trotsky,

Writings of Leon Trotsky: Supplement (1934�40) [New York: Pathfinder Press, 1979], p. 524.)58 Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, p. 96.59 Aside from economic, international and regime policies, in The Revolution Betrayed Trotsky also discussed

Soviet polices related to women and the family, youth, culture, nationalities and the military.

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In his discussion of economic policy, Trotsky devoted special attention to the issue

of inequality. In light of the low level of social productivity and the transitional

character of the society, he again noted that at least some degree of inequality was

unavoidable. Even under Lenin the Bolsheviks had been forced to recognize this*especially with the introduction of NEP. Likewise, in 1935 the Stalinists had been

compelled by necessity to retreat from planned distribution to the market.

Additionally, the Stalinists had found it necessary to reintroduce piecework, which

they did in their Stakhanovist campaigns.60 Nevertheless, Trotsky concluded that the

extreme inequality that had developed within the USSR in recent years was

unnecessary from an economic standpoint, and was introduced only to feed the

privileges and reinforce the power of the bureaucracy. For example, the ‘flagrant

differences in wages, doubled by arbitrary privileges’ of Stakhanovism were not

designed to promote productivity. Rather, they were employed by the bureaucracy to

introduce ‘sharp antagonisms’ into the proletariat in accordance with the maxim

‘Divide and rule!’61

Similarly, in the international sphere Trotsky recognized the legitimacy of

compromises dictated by necessity, while condemning what he viewed as unprin-

cipled concessions by the Stalinist leadership. According to Trotsky, ‘no serious

revolutionary statesman would deny the right of the Soviet state to seek

supplementary supports for its inviolability in temporary agreements with this or

that imperialism.’62 In fact, he recalled that under Lenin the Soviet government had

concluded a whole series of treaties with bourgeois governments.63 However, he

observed that in Lenin’s time it would never have occurred to any member of the

Soviet government to characterize any imperialist powers as ‘friends of peace’, nor to

suggest that communist parties support with their votes any bourgeois govern-

ments.64 Yet that was exactly what the Soviet government, and even the Communist

International, had done in connection with the Soviet entry into the League of

Nations in 1934 and the Franco-Soviet pact of 1935. By painting up the episodic allies

of the USSR, Trotsky observed, the Comintern had become ‘a political agent of the

imperialists among the working classes.’65 However, in contrast to his analysis in the

late 1920s, Trotsky did not directly attribute these rightward shifts of Soviet

international policy to external class pressures, but rather to the evolving perspectives

of the bureaucracy, acting in its own interests:

Having betrayed the world revolution, but still feeling loyal to it, the Thermidoreanbureaucracy has directed its chief efforts to ‘neutralizing’ the bourgeoisie. For this itwas necessary to seem a moderate, respectable, authentic bulwark of order. But in

60 Ibid., pp. 115, 81.61 Ibid., pp. 125, 127�128.62 Ibid., p. 198.63 Ibid., pp. 187�188.64 Ibid., p. 188.65 Ibid., pp. 193�196, 198.

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order to seem something for a long time, you have to be it. The organic evolutionof the ruling stratum has taken care of that.66

Perhaps the greatest Stalinist departures from Bolshevik expectations and practice

for Trotsky were in the area of the Soviet party-state regime. Trotsky recalled that

Lenin had anticipated in 1917 state compulsion beginning to die away immediately

after the revolution. For Trotsky, the contrast between this vision and the actual state

headed by Stalin could not be more striking. Instead of dissolving in a system of mass

participation, the bureaucracy had ‘turned into an uncontrolled force dominating the

masses’ and had ‘acquired a totalitarian-bureaucratic character.’67 Party and soviet

organizations had been subjected to ‘continual purgations’ to prevent the expression

of mass discontent; the bureaucracy’s political enemies had been convicted in court

by means of forgeries and confessions exacted under the threat of firing squad;

oppositionists had been expelled from the party and then arrested by the ‘tens of

thousands’ and sent to exile, prisons and concentration camps, where hundreds had

been shot or had died of hunger strikes or suicide.68 (All of this was before the first

Moscow trials and the initiation of the ‘great terror.’ One year later Trotsky observed,

‘The present purge draws between Bolshevism and Stalinism not simply a bloody line

but a whole river of blood.’69) Meanwhile at the summit of the system, there had been

a growing concentration of power in the hands of Stalin, and his ‘increasingly

insistent deification.’70

Again, for Trotsky, a part of the continuing existence of state compulsion had, since

the civil war, been necessary to defend inequality in the distribution of scarce

resources. As Trotsky explained, ‘The justification for the existence of a Soviet state as

an apparatus of compulsion lies in the fact that the present transitional structure is

still full of social contradictions, which in the sphere of consumption . . . are extremely

tense, and threaten to break over into the sphere of production.’71 However, for the

most part, the growing use of force was designed to defend and advance the interests

of the bureaucracy as a caste: ‘To make sure of its power and income, it spares

nothing and nobody.’72 Even the enormous concentration of power in the hands of

Stalin was a ‘necessary element’ of this regime. Stalin had been appointed as ‘an

inviolable super-arbiter,’ to mediate the conflicts within the bureaucracy itself.73

Of course, The Revolution Betrayed was not Trotsky’s final word on the question of

Stalinism. Until his assassination in 1940 Trotsky continued to comment upon

developments in Soviet policy and within the USSR, to propose demands for the

66 Ibid., p. 192.67 Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, pp. 51�52, 108.68 Ibid., pp. 279�283.69 Leon Trotsky, Stalinism and Bolshevism (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), p. 17.70 Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, p. 277.71 Ibid., pp. 111�112.72 Ibid., p. 277.73 Ibid.

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coming political revolution, to revise previous political assessments, to defend aspects

of his theory against critics, and to introduce modifications into his theory.74

Nevertheless, despite these various applications, innovations and adjustments, in all

of his writings on the USSR after August 1936 Trotsky based his analysis, in

a fundamental sense, on the theory of Soviet bureaucracy codified in The Revolution

Betrayed.

Conclusion

An overall evaluation of Trotsky’s thinking on the question of Stalinism is well

beyond the scope of this article.75 However, a few general observations on Trotsky’s

analysis are in order.

First, although Trotsky consistently viewed Stalinism as a radical departure from

Leninism, during the period 1927�1940 his analysis of Stalinism changed repeatedly

in response to unfolding events. Therefore, at various times he offered significantly

different accounts of how Stalinism had arisen, different assessments of the

relationship between Stalinism and Leninism, and even different definitions of the

fundamental meaning of the term Stalinism. For example, as we have noted, in 1927

he identified the conservative policies of the leadership in the mid to late 1920s as

‘very essence [sut’] of Stalinism.’76 By 1930, following the left turn, he was noting that

the essence of Stalinism had changed from the previous period: ‘The concessions to

the private peasant economy, the contempt for the methods of planning, the defense

of minimum tempos, the estrangement from world revolution*this constituted the

essence [sut’] of Stalinism during the 1923�28 period.’77 Then, by April 1933 he was

beginning to redefine the essence of Stalinism in terms of the autonomy of the

apparatus: ‘The social agents of this system are a large bureaucratic stratum, armed

with enormous material and technical means, independent of the masses and

74 For sources that provide overviews of these developments, see Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast:

Trotsky: 1929�1940 (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 331�336, 410�413, 458�477; Law, op. cit.,

vol. 1, pp. 192�195; 209�216; McNeal, op.cit., pp. 36�39.75 For an attempt at such an evaluation by a writer sympathetic to Trotsky, see Anderson, op. cit. Since the

collapse of the Soviet Union, both Marxists and non-Marxists have commented upon the value of Trotsky’s

analysis for illuminating the dynamics of capitalist restoration there. See, for example, Chris Edwards, ‘Leon

Trotsky and Eastern Europe Today: An Overview and a Polemic’, in Marilyn Vogt-Downey (ed) The Ideological

Legacy of L.D. Trotsky: History and Contemporary Times (New York: International Committee for the Study of

Leon Trotsky’s Legacy, 1994), 156�165; Jim Miles, ‘Trotsky on the Collapse of the USSR’, in Vogt-Downey (ed)

op. cit., pp. 61�65; M. I. Voyeikov, ‘The Relevance of Trotsky’s Ideological Legacy’ in Vogt-Downey (ed), op. cit.

p. 6; Jim Miles, ‘How Trotsky Foretold the Collapse of the Soviet Union’, Bulletin in Defense of Marxism, 12:10

(1994�1995), pp. 29�31; Stephen White, Russia’s New Politics: The Management of a Postcommunist Society

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 291; Alan Woods, ‘The Revolution Betrayed*a Marxist

Masterpiece’, London: Trotsky.net, 6 June 2001, http://www.trotsky.net/revolution_betrayed.html; Alan C. Lynch,

How Russia Is Not Ruled: Reflections on Russian Political Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2005), p. 77.76 Fel’shtinskii, op. cit., vol. 4, p. 221; Trotsky, Challenge (1926�27), p. 442.77 Trotsky, Writings (1930�31), p. 91; ‘Uspekhi sotsializma i opasnoti avantiurizma,’ Biulleten’ oppozitsii,

November�December 1930, p. 2.

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conducting a furious struggle for self-preservation at the price of the proletarian

vanguard and its weakening before the class enemy. Such is the essence [sushchnost’]

of Stalinism in the world workers’ movement.’78 One of the strengths of Trotsky’s later

analysis was that it attempted to explain how and why this ‘essence’ changed over

time. The evolution of his thinking on these questions is a useful reminder of the

need to be clear about the time period and characteristics under discussion when one

speaks of Stalinism (and Leninism).

A second observation concerns the complexity of Trotsky’s analysis, especially in

later years. Trotsky is widely and correctly perceived as the quintessential advocate of

the position that Stalinism originated out of a radical break with Leninism.79

Trotsky’s statement that a ‘whole river of blood’ separated Bolshevism from Stalinism

is indicative. However, the sketch provided here clearly demonstrates that this was

not Trotsky’s complete analysis, and that his thinking on this question was actually far

more complex. Throughout the development of his views on Stalinism, Trotsky also

indicated areas of continuity and coincidence between Leninism or Bolshevism and

Stalinism, as well as other areas in which the two were not in conflict.

First, Trotsky recognized the obvious continuity in the name, symbols and some of

the personnel of the party. As he noted in the article ‘Stalinism and Bolshevism’ in

August 1937, ‘To be sure, in a formal sense Stalinism did issue from Bolshevism. Even

today the Moscow bureaucracy continues to call itself the Bolshevik party.’80

However, for Trotsky this continuity, in itself, was not particularly significant.

From 1926 through 1934 he even argued that a capitalist Thermidorian regime might

retain the name and symbolism of Bolshevism, as well as some of its leaders.

Second*and more significantly*throughout the years 1927�1940 Trotsky

recognized elements of continuity with Leninism in the Stalinist policies that

defended socialism in the USSR. In the years 1926�1934 this understanding was

contained in Trotsky‘s concept of bureaucratic centrism. Thus, in 1930 Trotsky

observed ‘Stalinism grew out of the break with Leninism. But this break was never

a complete one, nor is it now.’81 In later years, it was expressed in Trotsky’s

characterization of the USSR as a ‘degenerated workers’ state’ and in his view that out

of self interest the Stalinist bureaucracy continued, at least for the time being, to

defend social ownership of production.

Third, it should be noted that there were some Stalinist practices that, for Trotsky,

deviated from the ideal socialist policy, or even from previous Bolshevik practice, but

that in themselves did not constitute discontinuities. These were policies that Trotsky

recognized as dictated by necessity, such as the reintroduction of piece work in the

78 Trotsky, Writings (1932�33), p. 175; ‘Zaiavlenie delegator, prinadlezhashchikh k Internatsional’ noi Levoi

Oppozitsii (bol’sheviki-lenintsy), k kongressu bor’by protiv fashizma’, Biulleten’ oppozitsii, May 1993, p. 24.79 See, for example, Stephen Cohen, ‘Bolshevism and Stalinism’ in Robert C. Tucker, (ed) Stalinism: Essays in

Historical Interpretation, p. 5.80 Trotsky, Stalinism and Bolshevism, p. 17. For this reason, in the same work Trotsky acknowledged that

‘certainly Stalinism ‘‘grew out’’ of Bolshevism, not logically; however, but dialectically; not as a revolutionary

affirmation but as a Thermidorian negation.’ Ibid., p. 15.81 Trotsky, Writings (1930�31), p. 66.

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form of Stakhanovism, the Soviet entry into the League of Nations or the continued

use of state coercion. For Trotsky, even the opposition in power would have to resort

to such measures.

Finally, and most importantly, in his later writings Trotsky acknowledged that

some Bolshevik practices*which he characterized as unfortunate deviations from

true Bolshevism instituted in difficult times*had contributed directly to the rise of

the worst features of Stalinism. As he wrote in 1937, ‘It is absolutely indisputable that

the domination of a single party served as the juridical point of departure for the

Stalinist totalitarian system.’82 Another of these practices for Trotsky was the 1921 ban

on party factions.

Again, the purpose here is not to challenge the view that Trotsky fell solidly

within*and in fact, largely created*the discontinuity camp. Rather, the point is to

recognize that Trotsky’s position on this and related questions, especially in later

years, was complex and nuanced. In fact, this was a feature that has continued to

make his position so attractive.83

82 Trotsky, Stalinism and Bolshevism, p. 22.83 This point is related to Anderson’s regarding the ‘political balance’ of Trotsky’s interpretation of Stalinism.

See Anderson, op. cit., p. 124.

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