In the early hours of August 24 seventy years ago Germany and Soviet Russia signed a "non-aggression pact", which divided the states of Northern and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet "spheres of influence", effectively slicing Poland into two halves. Ben Peck looks back at what happened and explains why such an incredible event could take place – and the price that was paid.
On August 21, 1940 the great revolutionary fighter, theoretician, and martyr, Leon Trotsky, died of the wounds inflicted in a brutal attack by a Stalinist agent. To mark the anniversary of the assassination of Trotsky we are publishing a transcript of a speech given by Esteban Volkov, Trotsky's grandson, to a school in Barcelona at the end of July 2003.
This Socialist Appeal pamphlet was written by Ted Grant and Alan Woods in March 1994 as an introduction to to Marxism in Our Time by Leon Trotsky. It is a powerful defence of the relevance of Marxist ideas at a time when the forces of socialism appeared to be on the back foot. The subsequent decades proved the validity of these lines: "The next period will see big battles between the classes that will put the struggles of the past in the shade."
