The Moscow Trials and the political genocide in the Soviet Union
On the 79th anniversary of the assassination of Leon Trotsky
By Bill Van Auken, 21 August 2019
Seventy-nine years after his assassination at the hands of a Stalinist agent, Trotsky remains a towering historical figure with immense contemporary political relevance.
Paul Hanebrink’s A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism
Part 2: Stalinism, communism and anti-Semitism
By Clara Weiss, 9 July 2019
Hanebrink’s false equation of Stalinism with communism leads to a significant and misleading omission in his discussion of the reemergence of anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe after World War II and internationally today.
Twenty years since the death of Marxist historian and sociologist Vadim Rogovin
By David North, 18 September 2018
On the twentieth anniversary of the death of Vadim Rogovin, we republish two tributes to the greatest Soviet and Russian Marxist sociologist and historian of the second half of the twentieth century.
Artists on the Tate Modern’s David King exhibition, Red Star over Russia: “In essence the exhibition was anti-Trotsky”
By our reporters, 3 May 2018
The Tate Modern in London held an exhibition, Red Star Over Russia: A Revolution in Visual Culture 1905-55, from November 8, 2017 to February 18, 2018. The show used items from the David King collection, but adopted a hostile stance toward the October Revolution.
Leaders of the Russian Revolution
Nikolai Muralov (1877-1937)
Part Two
By Clara Weiss, 22 November 2017
As part of the celebration of the centenary of the October Revolution in 1917, the World Socialist Web Site is publishing a series of profiles of leaders of the Russian Revolution.
Exile as an Intellectual Way of Life: The collaboration of Lion Feuchtwanger and Bertolt Brecht
By Sybille Fuchs, 29 December 2016
In his new book, journalist and non-fiction writer Andreas Rumler examines the intellectual relationship between two major German literary figures, Lion Feuchtwanger and Bertolt Brecht.
Toronto International Film Festival 2016: Part 2
The Chosen, on Trotsky, and other political subjects
By David Walsh, 29 September 2016
The appearance of an honest and accurate film about the plot to assassinate Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1940 is a welcome—and long overdue—event.
Eighty years since the first Moscow Trial
By Fred Williams, 1 September 2016
In carrying out these trials, Joseph Stalin was launching an assault on the legacy and the leaders of the first successful socialist revolution.
This week in history: July 25-31
25 July 2016
This Week in History provides brief synopses of important historical events whose anniversaries fall this week.
Stephen Parker’s Bertolt Brecht. A Literary Life—a welcome biography that raises big historical issues
By Sybille Fuchs, 18 April 2016
One of the most talented and influential playwrights of the 20th century, Brecht adapted to Stalinism, with pernicious consequences for his career and work.
Seventy-five years since the assassination of Leon Trotsky
By David North, 30 September 2015
The assassination of the greatest leader of the 1917 October Revolution marked the climax of the Stalinist regime’s eradication of the socialist workers and intellectuals who had secured the victory of the Bolshevik revolution.
Seventy-five years since the assassination of Leon Trotsky
By Joseph Kishore, 20 August 2015
Seventy-five years after his death, Trotsky emerges ever more clearly as a world historical figure who not only influenced the course of the 20th century, but whose writings and ideas remain an essential guide for orienting the working class today.
Interview with Tatiana Isaeva
By our reporter, 28 February 2014
Tatiana Isaeva is the granddaughter of the Marxist literary critic Aleksandr Konstantinovich Voronsky, a Bolshevik from 1904 and participant in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 who later became an important figure in the Left Opposition.
WSWS publishes interviews with children of the Left Opposition
By Fred Williams and Clara Weiss, 25 February 2014
The World Socialist Web Site is publishing interviews with three children of Soviet Left Oppositionists—Tatiana Smilga, Zorya Serebryakova and Yuri Primakov—and with Tatiana Isaeva, granddaughter of the outstanding Marxist literary critic, Alexander Voronsky.
Interview with Tatiana Smilga-Poluyan
By our reporter, 25 February 2014
Ivar Tenisovich Smilga, the father of Tatiana Smilga-Poluyan, was one of the leading members of the Bolshevik Party during the October Revolution and one of Lenin’s closest confidants.
Now available at Mehring online
Socialism, Historical Truth and the Crisis of Political Thought in the United States
7 November 2013
This pamphlet, by WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North, looks at the causes of the present debased state of intellectual life in the United States.
Santiago Carrillo, butcher of the Spanish Revolution
By Vicky Short, 4 October 2012
The ex-General Secretary of the Stalinist Communist Party of Spain, Santiago Carrillo, died on Tuesday September 18 at the age of 97.
This week in history: September 17-23
17 September 2012
This Week in History provides brief synopses of important historical events whose anniversaries fall this week
Historians in the Service of the “Big Lie”: An Examination of Professor Robert Service’s Biography of Trotsky
By David North, 15 December 2009
We are publishing here a lecture delivered by David North on December 13 at the Friends Meeting House in London. North is the chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US). The lecture develops North’s critique of Service’s falsifications, initially discussed in the review, “In the Service of Historical Falsification: A Review of Robert Service’s Trotsky: A Biography”.
Defending historical truth
Stalin’s Terror of 1937-1938: Political Genocide in the USSR, by Vadim Rogovin
By Andrea Peters, 9 September 2009
Vadim Rogovin’s Stalin’s Terror of 1937-1938: Political Genocide in the USSR is a seminal study of the purges that wiped out the entire generation of Bolshevik leaders and socialist workers and intellectuals who led the October 1917 Revolution.
New from Mehring Books
Stalin’s Terror of 1937-1938: Political Genocide in the USSR
Advance orders now being taken
1 June 2009
Mehring Books is now taking advance orders for the first English translation of Stalin’s Terror of 1937- 1938: Political Genocide in the USSR, by the late Russian Marxist historian Vadim Rogovin. The book is being published in both cloth and paperback and will be available by the end of the month.
Uncovering the truth about Trotsky and the Russian Revolution “continues to run my life”
A conversation with the remarkable David King
By David Walsh, 4 December 2008
David King--artist, designer, editor, photohistorian and archivist--is about to publish a new book, Red Star Over Russia, a visual history of the Soviet Union. WSWS arts editor David Walsh recently spoke to King in London.
Stalinism and Bolshevism - 1937
By Leon Trotsky, 20 October 2008
One of the clearest rebuttals to those who claim that Stalinism is the natural outcome of Marxism and Bolshevism. In responding to anarchists, Mensheviks and other critics who were using Stalin's Moscow Trials as a pretense to attack Bolshevism, Trotsky presents the theoretical heritage which only the Fourth International was able to defend: “an analysis of the imperialist epoch as an epoch of wars and revolutions; of bourgeois democracy in the era of decaying capitalism; of the correlation between the general strike and the insurrection; of the role of party, soviets and trade unions in the period of proletarian revolution; in its theory of the soviet state, of the economy of transition, of fascism and Bonapartism in the epoch of imperialist decline, and finally in its analysis of the degeneration of the Bolshevik party itself and of the soviet state.”
“He was a revolutionary in the absolute best sense of the word.”
70th anniversary meeting honors the life and work of Vadim Zakharovich Rogovin
By our correspondent, 14 May 2007
May 10 marked what would have been the 70th birthday of the Russian Marxist historian and sociologist Vadim Zakharovich Rogovin, who died in September 1998 after a years-long battle with cancer. A memorial service and book presentation honoring his life and work was held on Friday, May 11, at his former place of work, the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
"The End is the Beginning" completes series on socialist opposition to Stalinism in the USSR
Final volume of ground-breaking history presented at tribute to Vadim Rogovin
By our own correspondent, 9 July 2002
The seventh and final volume of “Was There an Alternative to Stalinism” by Marxist historian and sociologist Vadim Z. Rogovin was presented on May 15 at the Moscow Institute for the Development of the Press. The meeting was organised by Vadim’s widow, Galina Rogovina-Valuzhenich, and was timed to commemorate what would have been Vadim’s sixty-fifth birthday.
A founder of American Trotskyism
Albert Glotzer dead at 90
By Fred Mazelis, 2 March 1999
Albert Glotzer, a founder of the Trotskyist movement in the US who was the reporter at the historic hearings of the Dewey Commission in Mexico in 1937, died on February 18 at the age of 90. He was the last survivor among the major American participants in the struggles of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International in the 1930s.
1937: Stalin’s Year of Terror By Vadim Z. Rogovin
Chapter 1: Preparations for the First Show Trial
29 December 1998
Stalin fell far short of achieving his goals with the trials that followed Kirov’s murder. The immediate organizers of the murder were declared to be a group of thirteen young "Zinovievists," shot in December 1934 during the case of the so-called "Leningrad Center."
Leon Trotsky and the Fate of Marxism in the USSR
By Vadim Rogovin, 29 December 1998
This lecture was delivered by Professor Vadim Rogovin at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, on June 3, 1996
1937: Stalin’s Year of Terror By Vadim Z. Rogovin – Introduction
29 December 1998
Once upon a time, unintentionally, And probably hazarding a guess, Hegel called the historian a prophet Predicting in reverse. B. Pasternak
Stalin’s Great Terror: Origins and Consequences
By Vadim Rogovin, 29 December 1998
This lecture was delivered by Professor Vadim Rogovin at the University of Melbourne in Australia on May 28, 1996.
An introduction to a groundbreaking new book and its author
1937: Stalin’s Year of Terror
By Vadim Rogovin, 29 December 1998
Mehring Books is pleased to announce publication of 1937: Stalin's Year of Terror by Vadim Z. Rogovin (584 pages, ISBN 0-929087-77-1, $US 29.95 plus shipping - available online).
Sixty years since the Dewey Commission
By Shannon Jones, 19 May 1997
This essay was first published on the sixtieth anniversary of the convening of the Dewey Commission. The commission, whose official name was the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials, was established in 1937 by supporters of the exiled revolutionary to establish the truth about Joseph Stalin's purge trials. It was headed by the noted American philosopher and educator John Dewey.
Greetings to Vadim Rogovin in Moscow on the occasion of his 60th birthday
By David North, 12 May 1997
In May 1997, David North, delivered the following greetings on behalf of the International Committee of the Fourth International to Vadim Rogovin in Moscow on the occasion of his 60th birthday.
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