[bureaucratisation by the forces led by Stalin. Although…]

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bureaucratisation by the forces led by Stalin.

Although expelled from the party and exiled from the Soviet Union, he organised the International Left Opposition, and then fought for a new, Fourth, International to carry forward the banner of world revolution which had been betrayed by the Third International 1917, he fought as a Bolshevik for the of the proletariat, and became Commissar He was assassinated in 1940 in Mexico by a Stalinist With the outbreak of the civil war, he built the After Lenin's death, Trotsky fought against Nicholas II seeks scientific advice on how to deal with the 1905 -avail ble in Bor •The events of 1905 formed a majestic prologue to the revolutionary drama of 1917.M In that first great revolution, the young proletariat of Russia pitted its strength against the ferocious might of the Tsarist autocracy:

The Tsar emerged victorious from those struggles.

But the triumph of reaction was short-lived, beset with doubts-and haunted by the revolutionary power of the working class.

Deteated in this battle, and thrown back into a new period of deeper repression, the Russian workers had, however, made valuable gains through the revolutionary upheavals of 1905.

The courage, determination and discipline to be found in the working class had been proven in this first major confrontation between the ruling class and its future gravediggers.

Tested Working class cadres and leaders had been tested in action; its allies and its enemies had been revealed in a sharper light.

Above all, the events of 1905 offered crucial lessons for revolutionary strategy-lessons which could be grasped and transformed into practice only by Marxists who formed the conscious vanguard of the working-class.

Trotsky was uniquely placed to perform this vital task. He played a key role in the revolution as the leading figure in the St. Petersburg Soviet.

Before the outbreak of the mass struggle, he had already begun to develop the traditions of the communist movement by analysing the specific conditions of the socialist revolution in Russia.

His intimate experience of the 1905 revolution itself deepened and enriched this understanding which was expressed in the theory of permanent revolution.

Legacy.

The book 1905 was produced to pass on the legacy of those two revolutions-the struggle of the Russian masses against their oppression by the Tsarist autocracy, and Trotsky's own revolutionary contribution to the science of historical materialism, that had been developed by Marx and Engels.

Together with the short work Results and Prospects, It forms an essentiat introduction to the essence of Trotsky's theoretical work and to its expression in revolutionary practice (Results and Prospects is generally published in one volume with Permanent Revolution).

1905 is constructed in two parts: the second deals with the aftermath of the revolution, while the first presents the background to the first Russian Revolution and records its development.

Trotsky opens by analysing the economic and political conditions of Russia under the yoke of Tsardom at the dawn of the 20th century.

Firmly and concisely, he shows the specific character of the Russian state, and the features which distinguished it from the older, more slowly developed capitalist states of Western Europe.

"A population of 150 million people, 5.4 million square kilometres of land in Europe, 17.5 million in Asia. Within this vast spa ce every epoch of human cult ure is to be found: from the primeval Leon Trotsky was born in the in 1879.

His whole life was devoted list revolution.

In 1905, Trotsky was the leading force in the St.

Petersburg Soviet.

Affairs after the October Revolution.

Army.

Troops fire on workers in St. Petersburg, January 22, 1905 barbarism of the northern forests, where people eat raw fish and worship blocks of wood, to the modern social relations of the capitalist city, where socialist workers consciously recognize themselves as participants in world politics and keep a watchful eye on events in the Balkans and on debates in the German on the most backward agriculture in Europe. The most colossal state apparatus in the world making use of every achievement of modern technological progress in order to retard the historical progress of its own country."

In these early chapters, Trotsky reveals the historical and social forces which. produced the contradictions of this picture, and brings to the surface all the hidden class relations and antagonisms.

The worsening plight of the peasantry and the crisis of agricultural production is analysed as the outcome of the conflicting interests of the nobility, the state and the industrial bourgeoisie-and Trotsky shows how this crisis in its turn intensifies those conflicts and demands for a constitution drives them inexorably forward to disaster.

Analysis ment."

For the first time, Trotsky provided a Marxist analysis of the role played by capitalism in its highest stage of imperialism as it expanded into regions previously undeveloped by the profit-system.

At every stage, this development is presented in its relations with the central state geoisie and the proletariat. apparatus built up by Tsardom.

The massive growth of the absolutist state itself, with its vast and suffocating weight of revolution, which repression, is also presented so as to reveal its true political significance:

"the administrative, military and financial might of absolutism, which enabled it to continue existing despite and against social development, not only did not exclude the possidictatorship under Stalin. for Foreign agent.

To mark the centenary is publishing a series of 16 Trotsky's major writings. bility of revolution-as the except by putting the liberals thought-but, on the tariat in power. contrary, made revolution the "And the proletariat, once only possible way of develop- having power in its hands, would not be able to remain Under these conditions, the confined within the bourgeois vast mass of Russian society was framework of the revolution. increasingly drawn into violent "On the contrary, precisely conflict with its despotic rulers. in order to guarantee its victory, But this superficial unity of the proletarian vanguard in the the opposition contained major very earliest stages of its rule conflicts between classes of would have to make extremely diametrically opposed interests deep inroads not only into -above all, between the bour- feudal but also into bourgeois property relations.

it was his understanding of "While doing so it would this conflict which lay behind enter into hostile conflict, not Trotsky's theory of permanent only with all those bourgeois groups which had supported it summarised in a preface to 1905 during the first stages of its •.This rather high-flown revolutionary struggle, but also expression defines the thought with the broad masses of the that the Russian revolution peasantry, with whose collaboralthough directly concerned ation it-the proletariat-had with bourgeois aims, could not come to power. stop short at those aims; the "The contradictions between revolution could not solve its a workers' government and an immediate, bourgeois tasks overwhelming majority of of his birth, Socialist Press articles to present many of peasants in a backward country could be resolved only on an international scale, in the arena of a world proletarian revolution.

"Having, by virtue of historical necessity, burst the narrow bourgeois democratic confines of the Russian revolution, the victorious proletariat would be compelled also to burst its national and state confines, that is to say, it would have to strive consciously for the Russian revolution to become the prologue to a world Armed with this revolutionary class analysis, Trotsky moves on to give a swift-moving and gripping account of the events of the revolution: Bloody Sunday and the storming of the Winter Palace; the mass strikes of October and November; the peasant riots and the mutinies in the Fleet; the Tsarist pogroms led by the 'Black Hundreds' Shift Throughout the narrative stresses the shift in relationship between the classes and the rapid fluctuations in the mood of the workers-and of their enemies.

Bestriding all these events, and central to the book, is the creation of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies, the major achievement of Russian workers in 1905.

Trotsky gives a full account of its formation and workings, and assesses its historical significance:

"The Soviet's strength was determined by the role of the proletariat in • capitalist society. The Soviet's task was not to transform itself into a parody of parliament, not to organise equal representation of the interests of different social groups, but to give unity to the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.

"The principal weapon in the Soviet's hands was the political strike-a method unique to the proletariat, which is the class of wage labour.

"The homogeneity of its class composition eliminated internal friction within the Soviet and rendered it capable of revolutionary initiative."

The St. Petersburg Soviet was crushed by the Tsarist reaction; its leaders were imprisoned and exiled (Trotsky reports on the trials, his own experiences in exile and his escape). The 1905 revolution failed to achieve its aims.

But the lessons of i this 'majestic prologue' were learned by Trotsky and other revolutionary Marxists.

theses They were central to the April Theses with which Lenin won the Bolsheviks to consistently revolutionary position in 1917, and so enabled them to lead the proletariat to victory in October.

Those lessons have lost nothing of their power and importance since then.

Time and again, the theory of permanent revolution has been 'negatively' proved in the failed, compromised and betrayed struggles of workers led by forces which are unable to grasp the principles of scientific Marxism, or are even hostile to its methods.

Today the same danger confronts the oppressed masses of Nicaragua and Iran in their revolutionary struggles against imperialism.

1905 offers an antidote to the endless betrayals of Stalinism and bourgeois nationalism; it shows a way forward for the working class to break from its old, counter-revolutionary leadership and move with its independent strength to the seizure of state power and the building of a socialist society.

Barricades in 1905

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