Trotskyism

Leon Trotsky, at the last minute, joined in the Bolshevik coup that became Russia’s October Revolution in 1917. He believed that revolution would be achieved by a coalition of forces rather than through the leadership of the vanguard party.

Although the architect of the Red Army, Trotsky fell into disfavour with the Soviet leadership, and by 1923 he was running an International Left Opposition to Lenin. He was driven into exile in Mexico, where in 1938 he established the Fourth International, the organisation that propagated the ideology later known as Trotskyism. This included the ideas of “permanent revolution” and “the revolution betrayed” – a belief that under Stalin, the Soviet Union had become a degenerate bureaucracy, which would in turn be swept away on the tide of revolution.