Stalin was the last book Leon Trotsky was writing when his murderer, Frank Jackson (AKA Ramón Mercader) took his life. On 11 November, the new, complete Mexican edition of the book was presented in front of a packed auditorium and an overspill room, at the Leon Trotsky House Museum. In an extraordinary meeting, the last, unfinished masterpiece by the legendary revolutionary and martyr of the working-class (available in English at WellRed Books) was received with great anticipation by the old militants, and with great enthusiasm by the assembled youth.

The book was presented by Esteban Volkov, Trotsky’s grandson and tireless defender of his ideas; and Alan Woods, leader of the International Marxist Tendency and editor of the popular website marxist.com.

Crowd in the main hall / Image: own work

In the museum there were almost 200 people: in a full auditorium and a crowded overspill room. The speakers talked about the importance of this book and explained the role played by Stalin as a personality in the process of the revolution’s bureaucratic degeneration.

The first to speak was Israel López, representative of the Fontamara publishing house, who was in charge of the Mexican edition of the book. The comrade spoke briefly, explaining what the book meant to the publisher, as well as thanking Alan Woods for allowing them to publish such an important work.

Guests in the overspill room / Image: own work

The second to speak was Esteban Volkov. With his unique way of presenting his ideas, always in defense of Marxism and the ideas of Trotsky, he shook the audience with his firm and authoritative voice [read the full transcription of Esteban Volkov’s speech below]. He explained the journey that this book went through, stressing the importance of reading and understanding it:

“Trotsky’s last work: the biography of Stalin, was reluctantly undertaken only for economic reasons. We understand this was not a task the old man welcomed, as his main interest was in finishing his biography of Lenin, for which the chapter on his subject’s youth was already complete.

“The publisher, Harper and Brothers, solely motivated by profit, entrusted the translator Charles Malamuth (who was certainly not very much to my grandfather's taste), after his assassination, to take over the editorial work. That's when Troy was burnt. Charles Malamuth produced an incomplete, mutilated version with inadequate additions of his own making. The vigorous protests of Natalia Sedova [Trotsky’s widow] and her lawyer Albert Goldman in trying to stop the publication of this mutilated and altered work were to no avail. The publisher was deaf to the complaints and proceeded with its publication.

“By chance, comrade Rob Sewell, of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), looking into the Trotsky archives of the Houghton Library in Harvard, found boxes and boxes of manuscripts that Charles Malamuth had not used. There followed admirable teamwork of approximately 10 years on very heterogeneous material. Some parts of these manuscripts were in Russian, which were transcribed and typed up so that finally the Marxist revolutionary Alan Woods (who is very knowledgeable of the ideas of the author) could give life to one of Trotsky’s most important works.

“The book was written in Trotsky’s period of greatest political maturity, and the more than 30 percent of restored material has added great value to Charles Malamuth's dog's dinner. These restorations are the cherry on the cake of the best study, analysis and understanding of the Stalinist bureaucratic counter revolution: the greatest criminal enterprise in history.”

The audience showed their appreciation with warm applause.

Finally Alan Woods took the floor. He said: "This is one of the masterpieces of Marxism, where we can find an analysis of the role of the individual in history, not only in political but also psychological terms." He commented that there was a work by Marx where this phenomenon is analyzed in a similar way, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon.

Alan Woods and Esteban Volkov / Image: own work

The most interesting aspect of Alan’s contribution concerned the question: why did Stalin beat Trotsky? It was not because of Stalin's talent or because he was more cunning, on the contrary, Stalin was a mediocre figure in the revolution. The answer lies in the objective conditions.

Alan Woods explained, quite sharply, that revolutions have stages, that in the period of ascent true heroes are needed to carry out the tasks at hand. Lenin and Trotsky were real geniuses, but they were not the only ones: a whole layer of leaders of the Bolshevik party played a fundamental role – they were real giants.

The same phenomenon can be seen during the French Revolution, in the period of ascent we saw great revolutionaries at the front: Robespierre, Marat, Danton and so forth. But after a period of ascent, a period of retreat followed. The masses, tired and to a certain extent demoralized, returned to the routine of daily life, the search for food, a home and a better life for their children. We should remember that the Russian workers and peasants had gone through four years of World War, a revolution, years of bloody civil war, economic pressures, sabotage and many other challenges. There were no material conditions in Russia for the building of socialism: it was an economically and culturally backward country.

But the Bolsheviks regarded the Russian revolution as a link in the world revolution. The defeat of the German Revolution isolated the Russian Revolution, and that accentuated the demoralization and apathy of the workers and peasants. This is the basis on which the power of the bureaucracy rose up.

The petty bourgeois and bureaucratic reaction felt strong and secure when they stopped feeling the pressure of the workers. At that time the great men were no longer needed, but mediocrities. The bureaucracy needed a leader from the ranks of Bolshevism. And they found it in the figure of Stalin. The heroes of the revolution were displaced by unscrupulous climbers.

Alan explained that Trotsky attempted to lean on the working class but the workers were exhausted. He said:

"There is a lie that has been repeated thousands of times, that Bolshevism and Stalinism are the same, that the germ of Stalinism was present in Bolshevism and the Leninist form of organization. To those who defend this idea, I ask them, if Stalinism and Bolshevism really were identical, why did Stalin, to consolidate his bureaucratic and totalitarian dictatorship, have to annihilate Lenin's party?"

Like any assassin, Stalin had to eliminate all witnesses, and he did: he eliminated the vanguard of the revolution, their family and friends. The whole of the old guard was killed to accentuate the power of the Stalinist bureaucracy. It was a unilateral civil war.

Alan stressed: "Bolshevism and Stalinism are not the same, they are antagonistic, they are opposites."

He also said that it is an absurd that Trotsky was fighting for power. Alan explained that Trotsky knew from the beginning that this battle was lost, because the objective, material conditions that existed at that time were unfavorable. Trotsky decided to fight for only one thing; to defend the Bolshevism and the October revolution, to preserve it for the new generations:

"Stalin thought that killing Leon Trotsky would end everything. He was wrong, because you can kill a man, but never an idea whose time has come."

After Alan Woods' intervention there was a round of contributions and questions, all of them very interesting, on the role of violence, the similarities of the Stalinist regime with fascism, Stalin's treatment of anarchist dissidence and so on.

Crowd enthralled by Volkov's address / Image: own work

Alan responded to each of them brilliantly, encouraging all to continue fighting for the ideas of Trotsky, which are the ideas of genuine Marxism. He invited those present to get organised in the International Marxist Tendency and continue the path of the Bolsheviks 100 years ago: the struggle for socialism.

All those present were satisfied with the presentation of this masterpiece of Marxism, in their applause and smiles you could see their commitment to the ideas explained in the meeting.

Full transcription of Esteban Volkov’s speech

“In the gallery of the great criminals of history – the Neros, Caligulas, Pol-Pots, Borgias, Fuhrers – there is a character that undoubtedly leads this sinister list of monsters: the Georgian Joseph Dzhugashvili, better known as Joseph Stalin. He was by far the greatest criminal of mankind, not only because of the tens of millions of lives he destroyed, but for having carried out the counterrevolution, the Thermidor of the Bolshevik revolution, to unimaginable levels of cruelty, falsification and betrayal.

“This betrayal gave oxygen to and lengthened the life of the increasingly destructive and senile capitalist regime, which is plunging the human race into a scenario of absolute barbarism, putting in danger even the survival on the planet that we are lucky to inhabit. For many it is difficult to understand that from here, from this dilapidated small house, with no more weapons than his pen and Marxist analysis, the revolutionary Leon Trotsky made the bloodthirsty tyrant of the Kremlin tremble with anger and fear. These sentiments reached paroxysm when, even against his own will, because of the economic hardship of the Coyoacán family, Trotsky was forced to undertake the task of writing Stalin's biography.

Launch at Trotsky House Museum / Image: own work

“There is no doubt that Leon Trotsky was the most complete revolutionary and – if the term is appropriate – the most fortunate, politically speaking, since nobody else has been able to intervene in absolutely all the stages of a revolutionary process. Let alone events with the significance of October 1917, the first triumphant socialist revolution (even if only for brief years). He helped to create the ideological bases, together with Vladimir Lenin, to carry the revolution to its victory, later creating and directing the Red Army to defend it: defeating 21 invading foreign enemy armies and White Tarist reaction.

“After the death of Lenin in 1924, Trotsky undertook the defense of this revolution against an emerging enemy, this time internal: a voracious and unscrupulous bureaucracy headed by Stalin, usurper of the power of the factory and agricultural working-class, which left the Soviets simply as decorative entities.

“Leon Trotsky, besides being a participant of the first order in all these historical events, was also an observer and a privileged witness. He vastly enriched the Marxist arsenal with minutely detailed transcriptions of these transcendent moments in history. A Marxist arsenal is today the most powerful weapon that the exploited and oppressed of the planet have for their defense and in the struggle to free themselves from the increasingly ruthless yoke of capitalist exploitation. To create a society where the wellbeing of the human being is primary: not the limitless greed of a wealthy minority.

“As for the scenario of Stalin's Bonapartist pseudo-communism. In the same tenor as his usurpation of the Bolshevik revolution, Stalin created a murderous and historical falsification machinery the likes of which we had never seen before, with the purpose of maintaining and perpetuating his regime of counterrevolutionary, bureaucratic totalitarianism.

“Today, we can see the vast contribution of Lenin's companion and organizer of the Red Army, Leon Trotsky, on every page of his intense revolutionary life. In addition, nobody before him studied and defined (in the Marxist framework) the new phenomenon of bureaucratic degeneration – under the aegis of Stalin – of a workers' state and planned economy, with state ownership of the means of production. His fight was intense and without quarter: he organized the "Dewey Commission" or "Against the Moscow Process", where he unmasked the bloody and gross farce that were the "Moscow Trials" through which Stalin assassinated Lenin's comrades-in-arms: Leon Trotsky himself being the last target on the list.

“He published many works on the subject, including: The Third International After Lenin, The Revolution Disfigured and the main one, The Revolution Betrayed, in which he shows point-by-point how removed was Stalin's regime from the Marxist foundations of the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917.

“With mathematical precision, more than half a century ahead, [Trotsky] predicts how the Soviet Union would be destroyed and capitalism restored if the bureaucracy remained in power and was not overthrown by the working-class through a political revolution, of which he became an ardent advocate.

“His last work: the biography of Stalin, was reluctantly undertaken only for economic reasons. We understand this was not a task the old man welcomed, as his main interest was in finishing his biography of Lenin, for which the chapter on his subject’s youth was already complete. Dzhugashvili (Stalin) was very concerned with Trotsky writing his biography. So much so that a Stalinist agent, Sheldon Hart, infiltrated the house, and continually asked Grandpa's secretary Fanny Yanovitch about the progress of the work.

Alan Woods signing copies of Stalin / Image: own work

“Attacks were quickly organised to prevent its completion. First, a failed attempt: the strafing of my grandparents’ bedroom in the early morning of 24 May, by Alfaro Siqueiros and his followers, which added almost three additional months of work to the biography. But shortly afterwards the GPU agent Ramón Mercader entered into action, and managed to carry out Stalin's orders on 20 August, thus partially achieving his purpose as the biography was left unfinished and un-printed.

“The publisher, Harper and Brothers, solely motivated by profit, entrusted the translator Charles Malamuth (who was certainly not very much to my grandfather's taste), after his assassination, to take over the editorial work. That's when Troy was burnt. Charles Malamuth produced an incomplete, mutilated version with inadequate additions of his own making. The vigorous protests of Natalia Sedova [Trotsky’s widow] and her lawyer Albert Goldman in trying to stop the publication of this mutilated and altered work were to no avail. The publisher was deaf to the complaints and proceeded with its publication.

“By chance, comrade Rob Sewell, of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), looking into the Trotsky archives of the Houghton Library in Harvard, found boxes and boxes of manuscripts that Charles Malamuth had not used. There followed admirable teamwork of approximately ten years of on very heterogeneous material. Some parts of these manuscripts were in Russian, which were transcribed and typed up so that finally the Marxist revolutionary Alan Woods, very knowledgeable of the ideas of the author, could give life to one of Trotsky’s most important works. The book was written in Trotsky’s period of greatest political maturity, and the more than 30 percent of restored material has added great value to Charles Malamuth's dog's dinner. These restorations are the cherry on the cake of the best study, analysis and understanding of the Stalinist bureaucratic counter revolution: the greatest criminal enterprise in history.”