This record by Trotsky is of the events in Russia from the October Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd, to his Signing of the Brest-Litovsk deal with Germany on 3rd March 1918 that removed Russia from World War I. The treaty demanded heavy losses for Russia with regard to the annexation of land and financial indemnities to Germany. In this extended essay, Trotsky contends the reasons why he chose to sign what appears to be a disastrous agreement for Russia.Had the revolution developed more typically - - that is, under serene conditions, as it had in 1912 - - the working class would constantly have stood firm on a predominant situation, while the worker masses would progressively have been taken close behind by the low class and brought into the whirlpool of the unrest. In any case, the conflict delivered a by and large unique progression of occasions.In this book, Trotzky (until close to the end) involves the Russian Calendar in showing dates, which, as the reader will recall, is 13 days behind the Gregorian Calendar, presently introduced in Russia.
Lev Davidovich Bronstein, popularly known as Leon Trotsky, was a Russian-Ukrainian communist revolutionary, political scholar, and government official. In 1903, he favored Julius Martov's Mensheviks against Lenin's Bolsheviks during the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party's initial hierarchical split. Trotsky helped organize the failed Russian Revolution of 1905, after which he was again captured and banished to Siberia. After the 1917 February Revolution stopped the Tsarist government, Trotsky got back from New York through Canada to Russia and turned into a leader in the Bolshevik faction. Once in government, Trotsky at first held the post of Commissar for Foreign Affairs and turned out to be directly associated with the 1917-1918 Brest-Litovsk dealings with Germany as Russia pulled out of WWI. From March 1918 to January 1925, Trotsky headed the Red Army as People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and played a significant role in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922. After surviving multiple attempts on his life, Trotsky was killed in August 1940 in Mexico City by Ramón Mercader, a specialist of the Soviet NKVD. Worked out of Soviet history books under Stalin, Trotsky was one of a handful of opponents of Stalin to not be rehabilitated by either Nikita Khrushchev or Mikhail Gorbachev.
