Suchergebnisse

A brief comment on Thomas Harrison's essay "The 2004 Elections & the Collapse of the Left." The thorough despicability of the Bush administration would justify leftists supporting even the most timorous Democratic candidate over a socialist, had there been one. K. Coddon

A review essay on a book by Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1990). Pipes reviews Dmitri Volkogonov's biography of Leon Trotsky, & argues that Joseph Stalin, not Trotsky, was the legitimate heir to Stalin's regime. It is argued that Pipes holds a radically prejudicial interpretation of the Bolshevik Revolution. Pipes is challenged to produce even one shred of evidence to prove the oft-repeated Stalinist slander that Trotsky & his son Sedov urged the assassination of Stalin. A major shortcoming of Pipes's work is his failure to consider that millions of ordinary Russian workers & soldiers, not just the few organizers of a political coup, backed the Bolshevik Revolution. Further, Pipes cannot explain why Stalin, being a true disciple of Lenin, needed to kill thousands of other Lenin disciples to gain political control. Pipes provides a good example of why a historian unable to understand Robespierre's commentary on the role that a revolution plays in a revolution should not try to write about revolutions. B. Wolfe