The Revolution Betrayed

"The Betrayed Revolution" is one of Trotsky’s best-known works; the author himself even called this book "the main thing in my life." Written during forced seclusion in Norway, the book is dedicated to an analysis of the Soviet political regime and a forecast of its further development. Without shying away from formulations, Trotsky settles accounts with his main opponent, I. V. Stalin, in a fierce and categorical manner, and argues that "the leaden backside of bureaucracy outweighed the head of the revolution," turning the country into a "deformed workers’ state."

During the author’s lifetime, the book was translated into several foreign languages and reissued many times, but in the USSR "The Betrayed Revolution" was banned and first appeared in Russian only in 1991, a few months before the country collapsed.