02/24/2026
In January 1929, Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Union by the bureaucratic regime led by Stalin. During the previous five years he had led the struggle of the Left Opposition, founded in October 1923, against the bureaucratic degeneration of the workers state created by the 1917 October Revolution. Notwithstanding the lies of the Stalinist regime, it is a historical fact that Trotsky’s role in the Bolshevik Party’s conquest of power and the survival of the Soviet regime in the struggle against imperialist intervention between 1918 and 1921 was comparable to that played by Lenin.
This assessment of Trotsky’s role is based on the following:
The perspective that culminated in the Bolshevik seizure of power was based on Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, which he had developed in the aftermath of the revolution of 1905. Trotsky foresaw that the bourgeois democratic revolution in Russia would assume the form of a socialist revolution, in which the working class would overthrow the capitalist class and take power in its own hands. Moreover, the workers revolution in Russia would be not only a national event; its fate would be inextricably linked to the development of the world socialist revolution.
David North delivered lectures online at the invitation of Social Democracy clubs at Bilkent University and Middle East Technical University, both located in Ankara, Turkey. The lectures were delivered on February 17 and 19.
