Lenin and the Bolsheviks

Abstract

In ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ Karl Marx wrote that the ‘tradition of the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the minds of the living’.¹ Marx’s view is particularly pertinent to Trotsky’s political biography. His pre-1917 relations with Lenin and the Bolsheviks were to haunt him after he joined them in 1917. This was especially true during the disputes which surrounded the struggle to be Lenin’s successor. The protagonists’ overriding consideration was to claim a special closeness to Lenin. The nature of an individual’s history with Lenin became of supreme importance. Each had an interest to construct a picture of harmony between themselves and Lenin, and to accentuate disharmony between others and Lenin.