The second half of Trotsky's life

The second half of Trotsky's life was primarily concerned with two things: one was to write a book that pierced the history of stalin's Russian revolution when he went down the mountain to pick peaches, and argued that only himself was Lenin's only close friend and reliable comrade-in-arms. The second was to run the Fourth International, proving with practical actions that only his own revolutionary policy was reliable and that Stalin's monkey and crown would only lead the revolution to failure.

The first thing was more successful, mainly thanks to Stalin. The latter's historical invention work depends on the closed "Truman world", which is powerless against audiences outside the set. Although his agents were able to physically destroy Trotsky, they could not stop the information released by Trotsky from corrupting the set of "Truman's World". Historical inventions can only rely on isolation and disinfection, not on rebuttal. The rebuttal may prove that the enemy is slandering, but the process of self-justification of greatness inevitably brings out a lot of background information, which is extremely incompatible with the set of the "Truman World", and the corrosive effect is greater than the enemy's slander itself.

Trotsky's second work proved that he was not so much a mature politician as a vain writer. Politicians understand that his successes and failures are primarily the product of circumstances and opportunities, have little to do with his personal wisdom and stupidity, and invent a history that convinces peripheral supporters, but cannot deceive himself. The Fourth International could not gain a foothold in Stalin's iron barrel, could only subvert the bourgeoisie under the protection of the hypocritical freedom of the bourgeoisie, and its self-deceptive nature could not be concealed. In fact, even his own version of revolutionary history has foreshadowed his destiny. It's just that he is like the old pearl yellow social flower of the year, immersed in the intoxication of self-hypnosis, forgetting that the reader's perception is completely different from the author.

The basic goal of Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution is to highlight three main points: the wise planning of the Bolsheviks, the wise decisions of Lenin and Trotsky, and the despicable exploits of stalin, the little man. As a result, the historical materials themselves can speak, leaving the reader with the impression that the Russian Empire collapsed on its own under the pressure of war and fell into the hands of a series of peach picking experts. Trotsky picked Kerensky's peaches, and Stalin picked Trotsky's peaches. Every peach picker laughs at the stupidity of his predecessor and denounces the vileness of his successor. On this assembly line, the cold Machiavellian color is rising, the narcissistic intellectual color is declining, and stability will only come if the bottom line cannot be further lowered, otherwise the slightest bottom-reading space will tempt a new round of pretenders.

The Closure of the Dardanelles Cut Off Ninety Percent of the Russian Empire's Foreign Trade. Stolypin's economic miracle had natural weaknesses and must now pay the price.

To put it crudely, the revolution of 1905 proved that it was difficult for Russia to adjust peacefully without leading to the disintegration of empire and society. Stolypin understood his limits and tied the route of economic development to the path of economic globalization before World War I, without trying to avoid domestic injuries as much as possible. The Russian Empire was the fastest growing economy in Europe at the time, and even the British felt that the future hegemon was none other than Russia. Yet Russia's dependence on foreign trade surpasses not only the European powers, but also India and China. The great powers enjoy technological superiority, and the backward countries enjoy high tolerance. Russia is in an awkward middle position, more vulnerable and dependent than both.

Thirty years of peaceful development may have given it the opportunity to adjust itself to straighten it out, but the foreign policy of the Tsar and the great power fantasies of its subjects did not leave it such room. Russia's supply system quickly collapsed. Weapons brought by the Allies from the Arctic Ocean route were piled up on the coast of Arkhangelsk, and there was not enough transportation to reach the two capitals, let alone the front. Russia was the only European country that was not short of food, but the stupid price controls of the Military-Industrial Council and the flapping of the railway unions often sent citizens and soldiers into a bread panic. A German division, equivalent to a Russian army group, soon became a law of the Eastern Front, erasing the prestige of the "Russian roller" that Suvorov and Kutuzov had left for Central Europe.

In December 1916, the Petrograd Provincial Gendarmerie reported: "Anyone who approaches the army is bound to leave a complete and unmistakable impression, and the morale of the army is completely disintegrated." In December 1916, General Ruzsky said: "The Northern Front is the home of successful agitation. This man later played an important role in the council of generals who forced the Tsar to abdicate. Churchill and Kolchak's adventurous plan to reopen the Dardanelles failed, and the Russian Empire was already doomed.

The morale of the army depends on logistics supplies, which are in the hands of liberal entrepreneurs. Liberal entrepreneurs rely on "patriotic" trade unions to organize production, and the three form a pattern of mantis catching cicadas and yellow finches in the back. The trade unions of the military enterprises, which constitute less than one seventy-fifth of the population of the country, are enough to strangle the throat of the military-industrial councils, just as the military-industrial councils strangle the throats of the tsar and the government. Trotsky saw that the mainstream of the Social Democratic Labour Party did not have the courage to rebel against the hegemony of patriotic discourse, refused to make full use of the god-given opportunity, and his anger overflowed into words.

"The patriotic elements led by the energetic metalworker Gwozdev, who were originally in the minority, were supported by the liberal bourgeoisie and bureaucracy, thus forcing the representatives of industrial patriotism to the proletariat, and Gwozdev later served as Minister of Labour in the revolutionary coalition government." Trotsky said.

It must be added here that the differences between the Bolsheviks and the other factions of social democracy are not limited to theory and policy, and that the innate imprint of classes and nations is more difficult to bridge than differences of opinion. The Bolsheviks were mostly intellectuals and internationalists, while the defenders were mostly urban peasants and xenophobes. The leaders of the Bolsheviks were mostly Jews, Caucasians, Poles and other minorities, with Lenin (Jews), Trotsky (Jews), Stalin (Caucasians), and Dzerzhinsky (Poles) as excellent examples. The leaders of the defenders were almost all Big Russians and laborers on the production line, and there were very few "off-the-job cadres". If the able-speaking Bolsheviks were given a fair chance to compete, although they might not be able to beat the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who were also full of ronin intellectuals, it would not be a problem to eat the clumsy and clumsy defense workers. The problem was that they had no chance to compete fairly, and the Tsar's ban isolated them abroad, objectively creating a rare opportunity for front-line workers to get ahead.

In the end, it was the Germans who accomplished the task that the propagandists of the various factions were powerless to do. The army, educated in Germany's advanced weapons, became militant pacifists. That is to say, they would rather go to war against the well-bred residents of the rear and force these people who are unaware of the burden to share their pain, rather than continue to launch hopeless attacks and sacrifice themselves in vain. The French army in 1944 forced the government to unilaterally negotiate peace out of the same mentality.

The Russian bourgeoisie is extremely immature politically, in the form of their superstition of discourse. They called the spontaneous revolutionary vanguard deserters, as if they believed that the power of public opinion alone could restrain the out-of-control militants. The Bolsheviks, convinced from the outset of the hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy, did not hesitate at crucial moments to defiantly step on the clichés of excessive sentimentality, face up to and exploit the cold facts, and realistically call the deserters as spontaneous revolutionary vanguards.

Trotsky also admitted that until then the Bolsheviks had merely been tougher than the other parties. Of the three men who made up the Central Bureau, Shryapnikov, who had lived abroad for a long time and was close to Lenin, was more mature and active in his political opinions. But Schyapnikov's own memoirs do the best to prove that such a major event was beyond the competence of the Trio. Until the last moments, the leaders believed that the events were nothing more than revolutionary demonstrations. One of these demonstrations was not in any case an armed uprising. The leader of the Vyborg district, Yukalov, irrefutably proved that there was no sense of creativity among the leaders of the party's centres. ”

The first Soviets elected the Mensheviks Tsikheze and Sukhanov to preside over affairs, but the real power was in the hands of the soldiers from the outset. Military Minister Guchkov was unable to restrain his theoretical subordinates and wept like a child. Deserters or heroes, encouraged by the "Order No. 1" of the Workers' Soviet, no longer feared the officers. As a result, the flight increased.

At the end of March, the commander of the Fifth Army, General Dragomirov, wrote to General Luzsky saying: "The mood of the battle is low. Not only did the soldier have no desire to attack, but even the general resistance required for defense was reduced to the point of threatening the outcome of the war... The policy of the broad domination of all classes in the army ... Forcing all the soldiers to wait for one thing — to stop the war and go home. General Alekseyev informed that in the first week of April, about eight thousand soldiers were deserted on the western and northern fronts. He wrote to Guchkov: "I read the irresponsible reports with great shock that the army was in a good mood. What are their intentions? The Germans will not be deceived, but they will be fatally self-deceitful to us. Guchkov exclaimed: "The extremely dangerous truce has begun, and the record of direct disobedience has emerged." "Military orders must be discussed in military organizations and public meetings, and some troops are unwilling to listen to the rhetoric of launching an offensive.

The revolutionary army was afraid of the Germans, but not the Russians. As soon as the Executive Committee of the Soviets was established, it ordered the closure of royalist newspapers and the resumption of censorship of publications. The Commission plans to arm one tenth of the workers and replace the professional police with the people's police. The so-called people's police means that every civilian can take up arms to enforce the law on their own. The professional police are part of the bureaucracy, the object of the French Civil War that everyone is required to smash completely. This task was carried out by Kerensky, who at this time lenin was still regarded as a madman by most of his peers. "The press accused the police of using violence, expropriation of property and illegal detention. There is no doubt that the civilian police have resorted to violence, and that is what it has been established for. Its crime, however, is that its violence is directed against representatives of classes that are not accustomed to and unwilling to be the targets of violence. ”

At this time, the Bolsheviks had not yet seized power. Immediately after Lenin came to power, the people's courts or revolutionary trials replaced professional judges. The meaning of the people's court, like the people's police, is that anyone can lynch for the revolution without legal restraint. The October Revolution was not so much the creator of the dictatorship of the proletariat as it was the enlarger of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Long before the Bolshevik sailors under Lenin's command dispersed the Constituent Assembly, the civil and military officials and Soviet deputies were already under the threat of dictatorship. Stankiewicz experienced the ups and downs from February to October and felt that the real turning point was not in October but in July. During this period, the scandal of Lenin's acceptance of German funding came to light. However, Kerensky needed the support of the Bolsheviks against Milyukov and Kornilov, and the trial ended in vain.

Trotsky clearly felt that this experience proved himself to have passed the test of history. Every time he was in adversity, he couldn't help but replay the golden age pose, as if these gestures had a sorcery effect and could recall the success of the year. However, history has ruthlessly toyed with him. The second half of his life resembled the Pacific natives depicted by Richard Feynman, coveting candy from U.S. pilots and carving radio communications equipment out of wood in the hope that these magic weapons would recall the silver giant birds. The natives could not understand that the giant birds had come not for them, but for World War II. As long as World War II wasn't over, they could get candy without fake headphones. Once the clock has passed, they don't get candy even though they have fake headphones.

The common sentiment of man is to regard his own causes as his own wisdom. Trotsky was not immune until history finally engulfed him.