Excerpt

Only a European and then a world federation of socialist republics can be the real arena for a harmonious socialist society.
—"In Defense of October," Leon Trotsky, 1932

Which of Leon Trotsky's Works were Burned?

All works published before May 1933

Who was Leon Trotsky?

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), born Lev Davidovich Bronstein, became a close associate of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. Although Trotsky was a bitter opponent of Josef Stalin, whom he considered a corruptor of Marxism, Trotsky's works—like Stalin's—ended up on the students' bonfires in Germany in 1933.

Trotsky was an advocate of a permanent, world revolutionary Communist movement. In Nazi eyes he personified the antisemitic notion of a Jewish-Bolshevik revolutionary threat. Driven out of the Soviet Union by Stalin, Trotsky attacked both Hitler and Stalin from exile in Mexico. In 1940, he was murdered by agents of the Soviet secret service on Stalin's orders.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC