Trotsky Speaks To Stalin's Show Trials From Exile in Mexico. 1930's

Richard Mellor

Leaon Trotsky the Russian Revolutionary, leader of the Red Army and important figure in the Russian Revolution speaks here on Stalinism and Stalin's purges and executions that occurred in the show trials in the mid 1930's. He was in exile in Mexico and eventually one of Stalin's assassins murdered him there in 1940.

From 1998 Order Here

Regardless of one's political views, he has to be admired for his principles and convictions never wavering in his commitment to socialism and the international working class. It is my personal view that the rise of Stalinism and the extermination of almost the entire leadership of the Bolshevik Party did irreparable harm to socialism internationally and socialist ideas among the working class. The power of the Russian Communist Party, it's credibility at the time considered the force that had led the first successful socialist revolution, and the global influence it had, played a huge role in the degeneration of the communist parties everywhere.

Like most workers growing up in the advanced capitalist countries, I was never drawn to Stalinism, which I believed, as we all did, was communism. It was for the right reasons, lack of democracy, all empowering bureaucratic state apparatus not to mention western propaganda. When someone introduced me to the trilogy about Trotsky's life by Isaac Deutscher it sparked my interest. I had already become interested in Russia and its history reading Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Gogol, and a school friend got me reading Solzhenitsyn's books, The First Circle, The Cancer Ward and One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovitch. Then I read Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution and his autobiography, My Life  followed by many more works of his, and this  sparked my interest in socialism or communism. I would never have read the Communist Manifest were it not that Trotsky stood in opposition to Stalinism and explained why it arose.

I do not call myself a Trotskyist, I think this sort of thing is a little cullish for many people, and Trotsky was not without weaknesses and flaws, we all have them to one degree or another. But I am grateful that he defended Marxism and the idea that humans beings can build a society free of exploitation and poverty, that we don't have to wait for heaven to be free. I was once told that Marxist ideas were simply a way of looking at and understanding the world and that in this way, we can collectively change it, consciously build an alternative to the madness of the market.  Marx was not afraid to change his views when objective reality demanded it.

When I visited his house in Mexico City, I was a bit disappointed that there were periodicals from various international groups that claim the mantle of Trotskyism yet are incapable of connecting with working class people in any serious way, are in fact isolated form the workers and the working class movement in the main. Myself and others found them or practically no importance, in fact, a hindrance in the struggle for workers rights  in the workplace. Like Marx who disassociated himself from the many groupings and factions that called themselves Marxist, I am sure Trotsky would do the same today and like Trotsky, Marx would have found himself in Siberia or in front of the firing squad in Stalinist Russia.

Trotsky bears his share of responsibility for any mistakes he might have made, and I am certainly not in the same place politically that I was 30 years ago. But he was on the right side of history until is death as far as working people are concerned.