Thinkers and political figures
Portrait: Photograph, 1918, via Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab) · CC0
Leon Trotsky
- Country
- Russia and the Soviet Union
- Era
- 1879–1940
- Tradition
- Trotskyism
Organiser of the October insurrection and founder of the Red Army, who lost the succession struggle to Stalin and spent his exile arguing that the Soviet Union had become a bureaucratic deformation of the revolution.
01
Documented positions
Documented positions come from the sources listed. Similarity is this project’s inference from those positions, and is a much weaker claim.
- Argued for permanent revolution: that socialism in a backward country could only survive if revolution spread internationally
- Opposed Stalin’s doctrine of socialism in one country as a nationalist retreat
- Built and commanded the Red Army during the civil war, including the use of summary discipline
- Supported the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921 and defended it afterwards
- Argued from exile that the USSR had become a degenerated workers’ state ruled by a privileged bureaucracy
- Called for political revolution against the Soviet bureaucracy while defending public ownership
- Founded the Fourth International in 1938 in opposition to both Stalinism and social democracy
02
Where it sits on each dimension
Wealth and inequality
4
RedistributionMarket outcomes
Evidence: Well documented
The state in the economy
5
Active stateLimited state
Evidence: Well documented
Personal liberty
16
Collective orderIndividual freedom
Evidence: Documented
Tradition and change
80
ContinuityReform
Evidence: Documented
Nation and the world
10
InternationalistNationalist
Evidence: Well documented
Religion and the state
3
Secular stateReligion in public life
Evidence: Well documented
Power and its limits
16
Concentrated authorityChecks and pluralism
Evidence: Documented
Dimensions left unscored, for want of evidence: Environment and growth, Crime and punishment
Sources
- Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution · 1932
- Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed · 1936
- Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky · Verso · 2015
Last verified: