[lbo-talk] Stalin's image, was: Re: great moments in the history of liberalism

[wrobert at uci.edu]

He did write about it.  This occurred after the 1905 and Lenin continued
supporting the expropriations after all other parties argued against it. 
If I remember correctly he supported this position (anti-expropriation)
while continuing to have Stalin engage in expropriations....  If I
remember correctly, Trotsky criticized both of them.  You don't quite get
the pulpy heroics that Chris included in his description though.  (It
actually would probably make a great film....)  robert wood


> There were rumors, unfortunately untrue, that J Edgar
> Hoover liked to cross-dress.
>
> Trotsky had quit the Bolshies _and_ the Menshies after
> 03-04 and was an independent, was close to the
> Menshies in '05 (they established the Petersburg
> Soviet which he chaired)  and thereafter. He rejoined
> the Bolshies in '17, rather late in the revo.
>
> It is puzzling why Trotsky didn't use Stalin's
> gangster past against him. It's possible he thought it
> would besmirch the Bolshies, but it may be that he
> didn't know about it, or couldn't make it fit into his
> picture of Stalin as a dull but cunning bureaucrat
> mastermind.
>
> My late grandmother, born in 1900, remembered seeing
> Trotsky in the Bronx in 1916 just before his return to
> Russia. He was quite a celebrity, it seems.