Trotsky’s Challenge: The ‘Literary Discussion’ of 1924 and the Fight for the Bolshevik Revolution

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Translated, Annotated, and Introduced by Frederick C. Corney, The College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA In Trotsky’s Challenge: The ‘Literary Discussion’ of 1924 and the Fight for the Bolshevik Revolution, Frederick C. Corney examines the political polemic surrounding the publication of Trotsky’s The Lessons of October. Trotsky’s analysis ran counter to the efforts of Bolshevik leaders to fashion the narrative of October as a foundation event in which the Bolshevik Party, under the clear-sighted leadership of Lenin, played a major role in bringing about a radical socialist revolution in Russia. Corney has translated into English the major contributions to this polemic, annotated them, and written an extensive contextualising introduction, examining the polemic for its impact not only on the figure of Trotsky, but also on the changing political culture of the 1920s and 1930s. Biographical note Frederick C. Corney, Ph.D. (1997), is Associate Professor of History at The College of William & Mary. He has published a monograph, Telling October: Memory and the Making of the Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1927 (Cornell, 2004), articles, and book and movie reviews on Russia and historical memory. Readership All interested in the history of Marxism and Leninism, Russian Revolutionary history, early Soviet Russia, cultural history, and especially in the figure of Leon Trotsky and the early Bolshevik leaders.