Reassessing Trotskys Writings

A R Desai IT was on August 20 fifty years ago that an agent of Stalin, Ramon Mercader, assassinated Trotsky by a blow from an ice-pick. Trotsky died the next day and was buried in Mexico City. Since then the situation has changed considerably in Soviet Union especially recently. Gorbachev's policy of glasnost has generated currents of democra- tisation, wherein Stalin and Stalin's crimes are being attacked on a massive scale and the situation created by Stalinist policies both during his life-time and afterwards are being scrutinised. These forces are transcending national boundaries and are creating conditions which will have a far-reaching impact on the future course of world revolutionary development. Trends and tendencies generated in the Soviet Union are challenging, from different vintage points, the bureaucratic, authoritarian over-centralised Russification in the name of the integration of the fatherland subordinating and inhibiting the Liberationist currents in the various units which formed the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. The new forces are rapidly discarding one-party totalitarian political structures and have raised many fundamental issues concerning Stalin phenomenon.