The betrayed revolution: Trotsky’s look at the degeneration of the Bolshevik party and the Soviet workers state

Abstract

The present article focuses on the degeneration of the Soviet state and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from Trotsky’s analysis in The betrayed revolution, drawing on historiographical studies about the subject and related themes. Trotsky’s text is viewed here not only as a primary source, but also an important study that contributes to the characterization and analysis of the Soviet regime, the Stalinist bureaucracy and the betrayal of the revolution, which provides a Marxist and militant view of these processes, as will be evident throughout the textual development. This aims to provide a contribution to studies on the Russian Revolution and Soviet Union, to rescue Trotsky’s perspective – which extends to Trotskyism – and break with the notion that the construction of socialism in the USSR is a mere practical application of Marxist theory to consolidate the foundations of a new social regime, but a contextual, contradictory, historical and problematic form which the Soviet experience went through.