Revolution Betrayed

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Revolution Betrayed

$23.99

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★★★★★ Trusted by hundreds of readers worldwide

Trotsky's Autopsy of Stalinism

The Revolution Betrayed, written in 1936 and published in 1937, is Leon Trotsky's systematic analysis of what went wrong with the Soviet Union. Writing from exile in Coyoacán, Mexico, three years before a Soviet agent killed him with an ice axe in the same house, Trotsky argued that the revolution had been captured by a parasitic bureaucratic caste under Stalin. The workers' state had degenerated. The revolution had been betrayed.

The Analysis

Trotsky examines the Soviet economy, the living standards of workers and bureaucrats, the suppression of democracy within the party, the rise of social inequality, and the regime's retreat from international revolution into "socialism in one country." He introduces the concept of the USSR as a "degenerated workers' state," a formulation that became the basis for every subsequent Trotskyist analysis of actually existing socialism. His chapters on the Soviet family, youth culture, and national policy remain sharp sociological observation, even for readers with no interest in Marxist theory.

Historical Significance

This book defined a political tradition. Every dissident Marxist tendency from the Fourth International to the New Left drew on Trotsky's analysis of bureaucratic degeneration. It is also, simply, one of the best pieces of political writing produced in the 1930s. Trotsky wrote with a clarity and force that few of his contemporaries could match.