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Fourth International, Autumn 1959

 

Reminiscences, Tributes and Evaluations

 

From Fourth International, No. 7, Autumn 1959, pp. 21–29.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

Prefatory Note

On the 80th anniversary of Leon Trotsky’s birth, is seems both appropriate and useful, in addition to the three preceding articles written especially for Fourth International on this occasion, to republish here – especially for the interest of the youth, to whom much of the material may be otherwise unavailable – various reminiscences, tributes, and evaluations of the great revolutionary. These brief items, excerpted from newspapers, magazines, and books, are mostly by persons who knew Trotsky, either in the intense earlier days when he was, with Lenin, preparing and carrying through the October insurrection, creating and leading the Red army on fourteen fronts, helping found the Communist International to lead the world revolution, fighting for a correct policy to keep the civil-war-shattered Soviet Union from sinking into bureaucratic dictatorship, or in those no less intense later days when, aided by only a handful of loyal followers, he continued fighting in exile, first to save communism and the Communist International from Stalinist degeneration, and then, when that degeneration reached a depth too great to permit its being undone, to build the Fourth International to keep high the stainless banner of Bolshevik-Leninism. As will quickly be seen, the writers are not all Trotskyists: they include enemies as well as friends, adversaries as well as allies. But all are in agreement about the tremendous calibre of this outstanding revolutionary leader. It is thus hoped that, from these excerpts, Leon Trotsky, whose theoretical ideas are familiar to our readers, will also emerge more three-dimensionally as the unique historical figure he is.


The Organizer Of Victory
by Karl Radek

On Lenin and Trotsky
by Rosa Luxemburg

From Svyazhsk
by Larissa Reissner

A Reaffirmation
by Victor Serge

From Notes on the Bolshevik Revolution
by Jacques Sadoul

The Prophet Armed and Unarmed
by Isaac Deutscher

Lev Davidovitch
by Jan van Heijenoort

 
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