Iskra Research Publishing House Iskra Research Publishing House
Revolution Betrayed
This work was written in 1936, when Stalin's power seemed both
invincible and everlasting. The Western bourgeoisie, having correctly
evaluated the conservatism of Stalinist reaction, had temporarily
acquiesced with the existence of a non-capitalist state on one sixth
of the Earth's surface, having received in return for this cease-fire
Stalin's material guarantees for Soviet rejection of the Marxist
program of world revolution.
This work of Trotsky reveals the contradictory nature of the young state, the dynamic of its development, its dual, alternative future possibilities. The founder of the Soviet state reveals the gaping contradictions within its society, economy and regime: social property in the means of production, but extremes of inequality in the distribution of the resulting social product; a layer of privileged "communist" bureaucrats and gendarmes on the one hand, but squalor, deprivation of civil rights and terror as the lot of the laboring masses. Trotsky graphically describes the liberation of woman and the massive public heath and educational programs, but also the police state repression against independent creativity in literature, the arts and the sciences, and the stultifying falsification of historical and social sciences. He points out the undoubted technical and economic progress of the first Five Year Plans - electrification, eradication of illiteracy, organization of new industries, collectivization and mechanization of agriculture - but also the shoving aside of the toiling and culturally growing masses from the independent critical management over the national economy, the bureaucratic zigzags, the destructive and irrational consequences of dekulakization, mass terror and the GULAGs.
As opposed to all contemporary observers, Trotsky did not view the USSR as some sort of a monolith, did not trace its development as following a well trodden path of peaceful accumulation of technological and cultural achievements. The essential contradictions within this non-capitalist and non-socialist state had to explode. As Trotsky wrote in conclusion of the book:
"Will the bureaucrat devour the workers' state or will the working class deal with the bureaucrat? Thus stands the question upon whose decision hangs the fate of the Soviet Union."This 300 page book is well annotated, supplied with a Glossary and an Introduction.
This book is also available on-line.
Iskra Research's second publication is a 400-page collection
entitled The Permanent Revolution. This anthology includes
historical documents of the First Russian revolution written by
Trotsky, his comrades and his political opponents on the question of
the dynamics of the Russian Revolution. Besides Trotsky's actual book
The Permanent Revolution, written in 1929, the collection includes
pre-October 1917 debates among Parvus, Plekhanov, Kautsky, Martov,
other Marxists, and of course Trotsky himself, on the goals, moving
forces and prospects of the future Russian revolution. Editorial
notes assist the reader in understanding how these questions were
posed and resolved by these key figures of the October Revolution.
This 500 page book is well annotated, illustrated with
photographs, supplied with a Bibliographical Glossary, an Events
Chronicle detailing the events and highlights of the 1905 revolution
and an Introduction.
This collection of polemical articles and letters was
written in 1939-40, during the opening phase of the Second World War.
This work is dedicated to the defense of the most important
achievement of Marxism, its method of dialectical materialism.
Trotsky applies this method to his analysis of the further
degeneration of the Soviet state, marked by the infamous Pact between
Stalin and Hitler. As part of the analysis and struggle against the
impressionist method of his opponents, Trotsky explains that despite
the contradictory nature of the USSR and the crimes of Stalin, the
task of Marxists remains tied to the defense of all the social
conquests ofthe Russian working class in the coming battle with
imperialism.
This 300 page book is well annotated, illustrated with
photographs, supplied with a Bibliographical Glossary, an
Introduction detailing the history of Trotskyism and an Appendix
containing the most important documents of the contemporary opponents of Trotsky, Max Shachtman and James Burnham.
This is an anthology of the more important works of Adolf Joffe, an early Soviet diplomat and political leader. He was a Central Committee member in 1917-1918, the first Soviet dimplomat to Kaiser's Germany and one of the directing heads of Soviet foreign policy during the early years. His works are virtually unknown in the West and he has been a forgotten figure in the Soviet Union because he was a steadfast supporter of Leon Trotsky and the permanent revolution.
This book was published in Moscow by Adolf Joffe's daughter, Nadezhda. This collection brings together for the first time documents by and about this historical figure.
Vadim Zakharovich Rogovin, a principal researcher at the Institute of Sociology at the Russian Academy of Sciences, had begun in the early 1990's to research the facts about political opposition within the Soviet Union from the early 1920's until World War II. The result of his research was published in Moscow in a series of six books which for the first time show the Russian audience that beneath the press of Stalin's dictatorship there was political life within the Soviet Union. These books are distinguished by the breadth and coherence of their outlook.