Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and the Left Opposition in the USSR, 1918-1928

摘要

Yuri Felshtinsky, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and the Left Opposition in the USSR, 1918-1928. The year 1928 can be considered a major line of demarcation in Soviet history. Internally the country terminated the brief existence of NEP, and the forced collectivization of peasant agriculture was begun. In foreign policy the stormy expansionists decade of 1918-1927 ended with the unsuccessful revolution in China and was replaced by the relatively peaceful period of 1928-1937. In party politics the so-called "Left Opposition" was liquidated in 1928 as a legitimate political force; their physical destruction would come somewhat later. And with Trotsky's expulsion from the USSR in January 1929, the Left Opposition disappeared from the Soviet Union forever. In this article an attempt is made to analyze the sources of the Left Opposition in the Bolshevik Party and the reasons for its defeat, as well as the roles played by three Bolshevik leaders, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, in the ideological struggle within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the first years of Soviet power. The article is based largely on materials from Trotsky's Archives preserved by the Houghton Library at Harvard University, portions of which have been published by the author in recent years.