Leon Trotsky and the Defense of Historical Truth

More than seventy years after his death in 1940, Leon Trotsky, co-leader of the Russian Revolution and founder of the Fourth International, remains among the most contemporary political figures.

In the last 15 years of his life, Trotsky was forced into exile from the Soviet Union, hunted by Stalinist agents, denied a visa by all the major capitalist countries, and eventually assassinated at the hands of the GPU. To this day, Trotsky remains the object of unrelenting attacks, including the publication of a series of biographies aimed at falsifying his role and significance.

David North, chairman of the World Socialist Web Site editorial board and national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party, is a leading expert on Trotsky. North‘s book, In Defense of Leon Trotsky, exposes the lies employed by a number of historians, including Oxford University‘s Robert Service. The book has set off an international controversy, forcing a major publishing house in Germany to delay publication of the translation of Service‘s biography.

Given the depth of the capitalist crisis and the immense social struggles that it has produced, the history of the Russian Revolution and the life and work of Leon Trotsky assume enormous significance. The younger generation, in particular, has a right to unadulterated historical truth.