The Stalin School of Falsification [Paperback]

Leon Trotsky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1980

The October 1917 Revolution, Trotsky explains, was workers’ most powerful conquest in history. Here he exposes the “theoretical forgeries and historical frame-ups” cobbled together in the 1920s by a rising bureaucratic caste headed by Joseph Stalin to rationalize a political counterrevolution. The book helps arm new generations with an understanding of why the working class can secure and extend gains won in struggle only by conquering power from the capitalist class.

Photos and other graphics, notes, index. Appendix: “On the suppressed testament of Lenin,” by Leon Trotsky.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Pathfinder Pr (January 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0873482166
• ISBN-13: 978-0873482165
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,170,183 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Trotsky writes the truth., June 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Stalin School of Falsification (Paperback)

This is an excellent book for those who have heard the various lies put forth about Trotsky by Stalinists and their ilk. It corrects the history of the Russian Revolution, tossing out the fumbling falsifications brought by it's second leader, Joseph Stalin. Trotsky's commentary is quite informative and intelligent, and it gives insight into why the "comrades" of the Soviet Party against Trotsky behaved in the matter in which they did. Great book for those who want the truth; Stalinists won't like it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like reading an action play -- with real-life stakes, June 19, 2004

By 

Katherine L. (Montreal, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stalin School of Falsification (Paperback)

Written in the midst of the cut-and-thrust (literally) of the early years of the Russian revolution, this book has a kind of thrilling rawness. Trotsky describes how, during the civil war against rich peasants, tsarist forces and their foreign backers, army commanders in Stalin's circle would be encouraged to disobey orders, troup transfers would be messed up and the revolution imperilled. Starkly, urgently, you see the contest between a course that could win freedom, and a mediocre, narrow-minded, petty road to failure. Over and over Trotsky gives proof that he and Lenin acted as one: Lenin gave Trotsky a blank sheet of paper, for example, with his signature at the bottom -- so that Trotsky could give any order he wished and automatically give it Lenin's seal of approval. But in order to win supremacy for his clique, in order for his own personal priviledge to be secured, Stalin had to utterly obscure and totally rewrite the truth of the most powerful rebellion in human history. And so he set about the task of separating Lenin from Trotsky in the public mind, and identifying Lenin with Stalin as the real revolution. Includes verbatim renditions of key meetings at the very dawn of the revolution -- with speeches on how and whether to aim for power bouncing back and forth. Gives you a feel for Stalin's shabby role right from the outset, and makes for pretty exciting reading. And makes you wonder -- if you had been there, what would you have said?

5.0 out of 5 stars To Fight for our future, August 21, 2004

By 

Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Stalin School of Falsification (Paperback)

More than the lies.

What is important here is more than the unmaking of the lies that Stalin and the bureaucrats used to defeat Trotsky and smother the true defenders of the Russian revolution. What is at stake here is the issue of power. In this book Trotsky recounts the practical and the programmatic steps that led the Bolshevik party to seize power, defends the practical process that the revolution organized itself, defends the practical work that the Bolshevik party and the peasants and workers of Russia defeated the intervention by imperialism and the reactionary armies that sought to defeat the revolution. In this book, Trotsky recounts the truth about the struggle that he and Lenin began against Stalin and other bureaucrats. In this book Trotsky recounts the genuine Bolshevik response to the 1924 general strike in Great Britain and the disasterous slaughter of the Chinese Communists and Workers by Chaing Kai Shek in 1927.

The falsifications were not just about which picture Trotsky appeared with Lenin in, but about the bureaucracy's retreat from Bolshevism in regard to revolutions around the world and in regard to its campaign against the freedom of discussion and debate in the party and working class indepedent mass action that Lenin's power had been based on.

The social crisis that is deepening across our planet is going to revive these questions, not as history but as practical life and death questions of survival for billions of workers, peasants, and youth. We will need these books, not only to know our history, but to know the way tTo fight for our future.