Interesting Cheezy, though I wish you'd broken it up into more paragraphs ("my eyes, the goggles do nothing!).
I tried, but there seemed no opportune place.
But I was thinking more of Trotsky's foreign policy;while I didn't know the details of his industrialisation plan, I was aware of the fact that Stalin opposed it, only to steal much of it later.
What is important to remember is that Stalin primarily opposed
people, not
ideas. He either stole other peoples' ideas (examples already given ) or did what he was told (as
Pravda editor in April 1917 when he did a total about-face after the April Theses).
From what I understand of Trotsky's views on foreign policy - and this may well be Stalinist propaganda in its own right, I don't know - he was more likely to pursue an openly aggressive policy from the outset, whereas as Stalin was more strategic and opportunistic; I don't see Trotsky making friends with Britain and France out of fear of Germany, for example, or vice versa. I see him pushing openly for communist revolutions, rather than the less obviously dangerous popular fronts that Stalin had international communists form. I also see him invading neighbouring countries to spread the revolution, even though this was an unsuccessful strategy that Stalin abandoned. Correct me if I'm wrong.
This is essentially correct. Since the repudiation of the Provisional Government in the April Theses, the Bolsheviks were essentially acting like Trots. They were disavowing the orthodox Marxist path of social and economic development, which was defended in Russia by the Mensheviks. The point of this was essentially that Lenin had realized the great opportunity that had been handed the working class, and pursued really the only policy left for anyone who actually believed in ending capitalist oppression. I think he was right in doing so.
What the Mensheviks expected to happen was that through
dvoevlastnie (dual power), the Soviet, which was the organ of the working class and soldiers, could press on the throat of the Duma (the Provisional Government, or bourgeois organ of power) and guide the capitalist phase of development. The Bolsheviks said "look, we've got the power, we've got the chance, their power is unconsolidated, let's just do it NOW for God's sake! Who wants to wait around?" Their ideas were initially not so popular, but after April more and more of the working class came to realize that the Provisional Government was not so different from the Tsar, and in some ways were worse. Where the Tsar had been positioning to try and sue for a separate peace, if only in a vague way, the bourgeoisie, who owned the factories manufacturing things for the war effort, had contracts for several years into the future which they intended to have fulfilled, and thus designed to keep the war going, when the people so desperately wanted out. They also showed no interest in solving the land problem, something the Tsar had been carefully sidestepping since 1905, and they cared little for the basic needs (food!) of the poor and peasantry, already having enough for themselves. The Kerensky Offensive was the first great proof of this "new boss, same as the old boss" reality.
But I'm wandering. The whole point of the October Revolution was to consolidate socialist power in Russia while the workers actually had the power to do so; it was realized from the outset that Russia would not get far without help from Europe, where Lenin and Trotsky maintained that the
real revolution was yet to come. But when those revolutions did come, they were small and easily snuffed out. The exception is the Hungarian SSR, which lasted for several years, but which the Russians were too distracted by their own Civil War to come to the aid of (they were territorially cut off by the Whites). So once Capital had been overthrown in Europe, which, if you'll remember, is where Marx said it
should be, and the working class began laboring for collective benefit, rather than national or individual, then the Russians would get help from their European brothers in coming up to speed with them. So until that happened, Russia would have to kind of prepare itself as much as it could, and even might have to bring the revolution to Europe itself.
All Bolsheviks understood how imperative European revolution was, because Sovnarkom could not survive long against such adversaries by itself. Trotsky, like all Bolsheviks in the 1920s, sought to carry the revolution to Europe and beyond, it was only a matter of time. But they also came to understand that the revolutions in Britain, Germany, Italy, and Hungary had been stomped out for the time being, and that, at least for the mean time, Russia would have to start doing things herself, and bolster against the next attempt by the West to destroy socialism before socialism destroyed it. Whence came the NEP, then the Five Year Plans.
I think that Trotsky might have been more aggressive internationally, and of course I would rather that it was so. But I don't know that he would have had the prudence of Stalin in not antagonizing the West extensively during the rise of Nazism. We don't know that a more aggressive USSR would not force Britain and France into cooperation with Nazi Germany, if only tacitly, against it first. While USSR stood against the Nazis, I don't think it could have against all of them. But then, we cannot be sure just where he would be aggressive. Some supported undermining the Imperialists by way of their colonies; maybe there would have been Soviet actions towards India and the Persian Gulf? Who knows. But what is certain is that Stalin did not pursue territory until it was duly advantageous to do so, and in a way and time that the West could be angry about but not so angry as to choose the Soviets as the worse of two evils. Trotsky may have carried the revolution too fast, and caused an undue burden on the USSR.
) and as a consequence put my claims in a context never intended. See my reply to Masada.
