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Summary: Marxist analysis on Stalin's betrayal of Socialism
Review: Anyone who wants to understand the nature of the Soviet Union under Stalinist rule and how the policies of Stalin led to the destruction of the Communist party as a revolutionary force, this book is essential reading. In this book, the reader will find a Marxist analysis by Leon Trotsky on the problems of the USSR coming out of the revolution of 1917 and how Stalin won power by advancing the interests of the soviet bureaucracy against those of the working class. The political counterrevolution that Stalin started destroyed Lenin's party, is explained vividly in this must read for anyone who wishes to understand the evolution of the USSR from the victorious 1917 workers revolution up to the purge trials of the mid 1930's. Trotsky's description of the Soviet Union as a degenerated worker state is first advanced here. He puts forth the necessity of building a new revolutionary party to restore Leninist norms and remove the bureaucratic system of which Stalin was the chief bureaucrat. If you desire to understand the USSR and why it was destroyed, get this book.
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Summary: The origins of Stalinism
Review: Considering that the Soviet Union has fallen apart, that Leningrad has changed back to St. Petersburg, and that "communism" is discredited in the eyes of the pundits of the world, why would anyone want to read a book about the Soviet Union published in 1937? I'll tell you why. Because this book explains like no other book I've ever read what actually happened in the Soviet Union between the original Bolshevik Revolution and its total degeneration under the Stalinist bureaucracy; and WHY it happened. With plenty of concrete detail, it explains that Stalin and his henchmen took over the Russian Revolution NOT because revolutions are always bound to fail; and not because people are inherently corrupt; or that socialism is doomed. But because of a specific set of historical circumstances that faced the young Soviet workers' state and overwhelmed it. From this situation came Stalin and his fake version of Marxism, which Trotsky does a great job of blowing apart. For anyone who believes that there must be a better way than the dog-eat-dog system of capitalism that we live in, read this book!
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Summary: why workers state is stronger than the bureaucracy
Review: First published over 60 years ago, this definitely is a book for today. Leon Trotsky, a central leader of Russian revolution and commander of the Red Army offers an insightful analysis of what led to the rise of the Stalinist Bureaucracy in the former Soviet Union.War weariness, scarcity of the necessities of life, and the retreat of the world revolution created conditions for career seekers, faint hearts, dogmatists and bullies to thrive, and slowly but surely drive the Russian workers and peasants out of politics. The idea that the fall of the Stalinist regimes in the late 1980's and early 90's would usher in a new prolonged period of prosperity for capitalism has proven to be wishful thinking at best. As Trotsky painstakingly details in the book, the workers states is stronger than the Bureaucracy that sits and feeds upon it. The present US led invasion of Iraq is partly due to the failure to save it's declining empire through the Moscow route.
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Summary: To Understand China and the Former Soviet Union Today
Review: Not as a journalistic analysis, but as a fighting tool for workers, farmers, oppressed nationalities, intellectuals fighting against Stalin to continue the Russian revolution, the Revolution Betrayed has become a best seller in Eastern Europe and Russia, because it predicted the crimes, the disasters, the inevitable collapse, the betrayals of the revolution to the imperialists, and much more. It also predicts what we will inevitably see, the rise to power of real communists in these countries, the defeat of the remnants of the old nomenclatura and the new gangster wannabe capitalists, by working people who have seized the ideas of the real Russian revolution, and fought their way to power.
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Summary: Excellent description of Stalinism
Review: This book is a classic of the 20th century, for the excellent job it does of describing what the Soviet Union was, as well as predicting what it might become. Trotsky describes it as a state halfway between Socialism and Capitalism, which could be either transformed to the former through worker action or perverted into the latter by counter-revolutionaries. As we see from the USSR, it is indeed the latter that prevailed. There are a lot of great questions which Trotsky anwers authoritatively. Get this book!!
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Summary: New edition of Trotsky's classic critique of Stalinism
Review: This excellent new edition of Trotsky's classic analysis of Soviet society contains extensive historical and biographical notes and a new introduction. The REvolution Betrayed is essential reading for all those seeking to understand the rise degeneration and fall of the Soviet Union. Long before the advent of Glasnost and Perestroika Leon Trotsky warned that the Stalinist regime was preparing the ground for the return of capitalism in the Soviet Union.
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Summary: Essential reading for understanding the post-Lenin USSR
Review: This is Trotsky's masterpiece work taking apart Stalinism piece by piece is his analysis of how Stalin betrayed the socialist revolution in Russia. If you want to know why the USSR has not been 'revolutionary' in the past 70 years.... here are your answers...
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Summary: Essential reading for understanding the post-Lenin USSR
Review: This is Trotsky's masterpiece work taking apart Stalinism piece by piece is his analysis of how Stalin betrayed the socialist revolution in Russia. If you want to know why the USSR has not been 'revolutionary' in the past 70 years.... here are your answers...
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Summary: A classic of Marxism and a crucial prediction.
Review: Those who have read Lakatos' "The methodology of Scientifical Research Programmes" know that the conservative Lakatos considered to have proven the "unscientific" nature of Marxism by the fact that it had never made any "stunning, unexpected" prediction on the basis of its "core" hypothesis. Well, here you have Trotsky predicting - in 1936 - that the USSR, as a transitional society in the transition between capitalism and socialism had to come to terms with the following disjunctive: either the toppling of the ruling bureaucracy by means of a political revolution or capitalist restoration led by the bureaucracy. If that is not a stunning prediction, what else is?
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Summary: A classic of Marxism and a crucial prediction.
Review: Those who have read Lakatos' "The methodology of Scientifical Research Programmes" know that the conservative Lakatos considered to have proven the "unscientific" nature of Marxism by the fact that it had never made any "stunning, unexpected" prediction on the basis of its "core" hypothesis. Well, here you have Trotsky predicting - in 1936 - that the USSR, as a transitional society in the transition between capitalism and socialism had to come to terms with the following disjunctive: either the toppling of the ruling bureaucracy by means of a political revolution or capitalist restoration led by the bureaucracy. If that is not a stunning prediction, what else is?
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