Trotsky's Contribution to the Success of the Bolshevik's Up to 1922
Leon Trotsky was a Russian Marxist, who organized the revolution that
brought the Bolsheviks (later Communists) to power in Russia in
October 1917. An outstanding administrator and an eloquent theorist,
Trotsky held a number of important posts in the government of Soviet
Russia and then that of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
until he was ousted for his opposition to Communist Party leader
Joseph Stalin in 1925.
In early 1917 Trotsky was forced to seek asylum in New York City after
being deported first from France and then from Spain. He returned to
Russia shortly after the outbreak of the February (or March, in the
New Style calendar) phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917. In This
Revolution, He Was the One who persuaded Lenin to hold off the attack
until he was sure that the Bolshevik’s had a much more secure hold on
the country. This led to the abdication of Nick the Tsar and the
establishment of a Provisional Government led by Aleksandra Kerensky
and other socialists, as well as by liberal politicians. In Petrograd
(as Saint Petersburg was called between 1914 and 1924), Trotsky
assumed the leadership of the Interdistrict Committee of the
RSDLP—which included both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks—and joined the
newly re-established Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies.
In July 1917 Trotsky abandoned his independent cause and joined the
Bolshevik Party as a full time member. He became a member of the
Bolsheviks’ Central Committee and emerged, along with Lenin, as the
most influential opponent of Russia’s new Provisional Government. In
contrast to the Mensheviks, who favoured cooperation with the
liberals, the Bolsheviks sought to bring down the government and
replace it with a so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat”—in other
words, a government ruled by the Bolsheviks on behalf of Russia’s
industrial workers and peasants. Trotsky was imprisoned for his
opposition to the Provisional Government in August but was released on
bail in early September and elected chairman of the Executive