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The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going

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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?

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.

In my humble opinion, Trotsky's "Revolution Betrayed" is the best analysis of not only the Russian revolution, but revolutions in general. I have studied revolutions in the modern world quite extensively, and re-reading this book at this particular time in history was a true eye-opener - again. To be simplistic, revolutions do not provide lasting success when nothing is to be gained. Those who rise against existing power expect to be rewarded, not with poverty, but with a certain degree of wealth and privilege. If there is nothing to be distributed, then what is the use in fighting? Stalin unfortunately stepped in at the right place, at the right time. Not good for the outcome of that revolution, not good for socialism, but good for Stalin's kind of power.

A few years ago I visited Komsomolsk, Stalin's "Youth" city. It was decaying, a pitiful sight to behold. Buildings on ultra-wide neglected avenues in need of repair, high weeds everywhere, crime uncontrolled. Power gone bad?

Stalin and his compulsive bureaucracy were feared all over Europe. Blessed with clear early childhood memories that include the conversation of adults, I vividly remember my grandmother's fear of Stalin discussed with friends and family members. They witnessed the rise of this awful bureaucracy next door, word of the killings and the horrible brutality didn't just dribble out, it flowed out. I want to say that the Stalinist bureaucracy is unique, but all bureaucracies are designed to increase continuously and feed of themselves, and exist everywhere in the world. And people flock to them for employment, protection, security, in great masses, because bureaucracies deliver security. And if people do not fly into bureaucratic arms directly, they deal with them on a daily basis. There is no getting away from that apparatus of suffocation, nowhere.

Bureaucracy does not have to be bad, and Trotsky dwells on the need for leadership from within the workers, the suppressed, creating a bureaucracy that is just and fair. Is that ever possible? I believe that capitalism and bureaucracy are a contradiction, and unless corruption reigns, they cannot coexist. What comes next?

Trotsky's book raises more questions than it answers, but I am sure it was written for that purpose as well as enlightening the scholar of his interpretation of a betrayed revolution. And where do we go from here?

With hindsight, it's really quite remarkable how Trotsky was able to understand so vividly the course the Soviet Union was taking and the disastrous consequences that would then ensue. Anyone interested in the history of Stalinist Russia should at least glance through this book. Trotsky offers not only a detailed analysis of the Soviet Union under Stalin, but an interesting critique as well. Finally, perhaps the most interesting factor in Trotsky's book is how he almost seems to forecast the end of the USSR...nearly 50 years in advance.

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.

While this book is not always available on Amazon, it is always available from BooksfromPathfinder, an Amazon Z store that you can get to by clicking on New and Used further up this page!

The great Russian Bolshevik Leon Trotsky wore many hats in his revolutionary career. Organizer of revolutionary upheavals in 1905 and 1917 and military defender of the Soviet state in the early days. Withering political journalist and literary critic from the beginning of his career as a professional revolutionary. Soviet official in various capacities, depending on which way the political winds were blowing. Polemicist against Social Democratic revisionism and later the Stalinist degeneration of Leninism, the Bolshevik party and the Soviet state. Still later, in exile, he was the seemingly last independent defender of that Soviet state and the traditions of the Bolshevik party as Stalin turned the political landscape into a bloody battlefield in the late 1930's. Of all of these hats probably Trotsky's last struggles; to create a new international revolutionary party (the Fourth International)and trying to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia while at the same time defending the Soviet state, were the most important political battles of his life. That, in essence, is the purpose of his book the Revolution Betrayed under review here.

The question of the fate of the Soviet state at various points in the 20th century may seem a rather academic question at this time, especially since the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990's. At a practical level it is hard to fault that argument. But let me make a little point here. Until the Gorbachev-directed political thaw in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980's the possibilities of discussing Trotsky's book about what when wrong "back in the days" was either done clandestinely or not at all. I, however, remember being at a meeting during that period where a Russian émigré spoke about the then current situation in Russia. He mentioned, in passing, that he had recently read Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed and found that the arguments made by him in the mid-1930's about the nature of Soviet society, the state governmental apparatus and the Communist Party sounded like they could have been made in the mid-1980's. This, my friends, is why we still read this little work.

Obviously some of Trotsky's argument is historically obsolete, even assuming conditions of a future socialist revival. The specific problem of Russia as the first workers state having been created in a predominantly agrarian society, then isolated by world imperialism and not augmented by revolutions in the capitalist West that would have given Soviet officials the life line they needed to turn that society around will not be replicated in the 21st century. What is not obsolete in Trotsky's argument, and is germane today in the struggle to turn China around, are the questions of the purposes that a workers state are created for, the nature of economic policy and who will guide it, the role of pro-socialist political parties and how to allocate cultural resources so that the goal- and this is important- of a stateless society gets a fair chance at implementation. Thus Trotsky here, donning the enlightened Soviet official hat that he never really took off even in exile, provides textbook examples of what to do and not to do to push socialism forward even under conditions of isolation.

If I was asked today what part of this document still has relevance I would pick out that chapter that deals with the question of Soviet Thermidor. All great revolutions, and the Russian Revolution was a great revolution, have contained ebbs and flows during the revolutionary period and then after the consolidation of power by the new regime have fallen back, not to the ways of the old regime but back nevertheless. One would have thought in 1921, let's say, that once the question of the existence of the Soviet state was essentially settled then the push toward socialism, even in isolation and given the vast economic dislocations of World War I and the Civil War, would be headed forward. That was not the case and Trotsky does a great service by putting the reasons for that, political as well as personal in perspective, particularly the responses of the Soviet working class to the revolutionary defeats in Europe and Asia in the 1920's. That said, where does this book fit into your list of Trotsky readings. Not first, that place is taken by his three-volume History of the Russian Revolution- the high point. But sometime shortly after that you need to address the issues presented in this book to see what went wrong and why.

If one wants to understand contemporary world politics then one ought to read this book.The Russian Revolution WAS and IS the most important event of the 20th century. Trotsky, the consumate Marxist, explains to us the whole story from the inside ---looking out. I might add that as a companion to Trotsky's works one should read the British historian E.H. Carr's History of the Russian Revolution. Carr was no Marxist but gives us as a view of the revolution from the outside--- looking in.

ET Seattle

A reader of 'The Revolution Betrayed' will find invaluable insight into the 'intellectual response' of a leading Soviet politician. Trotsky was a very important contributor to the theoretical idiom which frames the 'conceptual creation' of the USSR. He had a part to play in many critical phases of the October Revolution and Civil War, organizing and propagandizing, enforcing harsh discipline and imposing his theoretical brand of Marxism on the Soviet State. His distinguished position in Lenin's party is beyond debate. Reading this text gives the reader a deeper analytical impression into the changes and transformations that occurred in the highest echelons of the Soviet bureaucracy, as Stalin began to accrue power. Indispensable reading for anybody with an interest in Russia history.

This book is key to understanding how Leon Trotsky viewed the USSR.

When I first approached it I was a 12 year old teen trying to figure out how I was a "good" communist unlike the "bad" communists in the USSR. Of course, Trotsky didn't think that, and soon I stopped as well.

He opens up with amazing statistical proof of the USSR's economic strength. From there he explains the various changes in Soviet politics. He refutes the position now held by the ISO that the USSR was "State Capitalist", while arguing that a "bureaucratic caste" holds control of a "worker's state."

The book is great, again, if you read what is says, engage with it etc. If you are looking for a book to reinforce anti-Sovietism, don't waste your time with it. Trotsky was an enemy of the bureaucratic leaders of the USSR, but he was NOT an enemy of the USSR. He called for "unconditional defense" of this "Worker's State."

I purchased this book after it was at the top of a list of recommendations of books about Stalin's USSR. I found it to be quite a fascinating dissection of every aspect of Stalinist USSR culture, government, military, and economics. Mr. Trotsky begins by examining the USSR's vast technological and agricultural progress and growth... compared to the Tsarist years, but still behind Germany, Japan, the UK, and the USA. Mr. Trotsky states that the USSR has to consider itself economically in a sort of "transition" between capitalism and socialism. Due to the fact that Socialism is a stepping stone to communism, and socialism can only be achieved in an already industrialized country, communists should not look to the USSR as a model for communism. He also examines the roots, causes, and 'zigzags' in leadership and policy that led to the Ukrainian Holodomor. He also states that the USSR has not achieved a 'classless' society or 'dictatorship of the proletariat' as the bureaucrats essentially became the 'bourgeois' class of Soviet society, and Stalin ended the 'democracy' of the Lenin days. He examines the reorganization of the Red Army from a militia, to a more imperialistic structure. Mr. Trotsky also shows the slow breaking down of Soviet rights and emphasis on youth and women. In the end, he considers the war that was looming on the horizon. At the time, Stalin was cooperating with Hitler, and the Red Army was small and only had superior tank design to benefit it. Mr. Trotsky states that the USSR would suffer high casualties and much destruction because of all this... and he was right. He later states that because of mass public disillusionment, and of the failing USSR economy and bloated bureaucracy, that an 'internal' revolution would take place, and the USSR would cease to exist... as is what happened. There is a reason that Stalin had Trotsky taken out with an axe blow to his skull in Mexico City: it is because Stalin knew Trotsky was speaking the truth, and that his very existence and wake up calls to the world would eventually reveal the truth and deformity of, what Trotsky claims at the time, was seen as an efficient and progressive country.