[lbo-talk] "full of shit"

[Chris Doss]

OK, I admit to saying that mainly to rile Pugliese. In my opinion, Trotsky 
(not that I am overwhelmingly knowledgeable) was a good writer, obviously an 
able military commander, and a rather mediocre political thinker. I think 
the Permanent Revolution is quite unimpressive; everything is "inevitable."

Frankly, and we are dealing with counterfactuals here, I do not think that 
the course of the history of the USSR would have been all that different if 
somebody else except Stalin had come into the leadership. Maybe the USSR 
would have not been a strong, hypercentralized empire, but instead a weak, 
crumbling Ottoman Empire-type regime, which by the way would hardly have 
been able to stand up to the Nazis.

I also do not believe Trotsky is going to be more than an interesting 
footnote in history. History focuses on winners. Stalin built a superpower; 
Trotsky raised rabbits. For similar reasons, I think history is going to 
judge Gorbachev in a very unflattering way. No, I am not "defending Stalin," 
as if defending or attacking a man 50 years dead would have a point.

I don't think most Russians even know what Trotsky looked like.

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