Leon Trotsky

Platform
of the
Joint Opposition

trotsky1

(1927)


The on-line publication of this important document was originally accomplished in 1998 for the Trotsky Internet Archive (TIA). TIA was ordered to remove this version, which was originally published by Pathfinder Press, by attorneys representing Pathfinder Press. Pathfinder Press was once a Trotskyist publishing company but has for many years operated within the norms of a commercial publishing house that jealously guards its copyrights, even to the detriment of the distribution of the documents it seeks to control. This occurred in the fall of 2000. Fortunately, the TIA was able to obtain another translation of The Platform of the Joint Opposition made in 1973 from Index Books, a socialist publisher in Britain that was only too happy to allow the TIA to distribute this document – for free over the Internet. Index Books acquired the stock and copyrights of New Park Publications, which for decades had been Britains biggest publishers of Leon Trotsky until it folded in 1984-85.
– David Walters, Director, Trotsky Internet Archive

This version was transcribed in the winter of 2000-2001 by David Walters.


Contents

Available in epub and pdf formats

 

Foreword
From New Park Publications and the Transcriber

1. Introductory Remarks

2. The Situation of the Working Class and the Trade Unions

3. The Agrarian Question and Socialist Construction

4. State Industry and the Building of Socialism

5. The Soviets

6. The National Question

7. The Party

8. The League of Communist Youth

9. Our International Situation and the War Danger

10. The Red Army and the Red Fleet

11. Real and Pretended Disagreements

12. Against Opportunism – For the Unity of the Party

 

The photos on the cover of the New Park Publications version of The Platform of the Joint Opposition shows the leadership and initial signatories of the Platform. They represent, in it's majority, the “General Staff” of the Leninist leadership of the October Revolution. From top to bottom they are:
Leon Trotsky, A. Kamanev, A. Joffe, Pyatakov, K. Radek, C. Rakovsky, G. Zinoviev, A. Smilga, Preobrazhensky, Lashevich, Sosnovsky, Boguslavsky, Drobnis, Serebryakov, Alsky, Beloborodov, Muralov, Ishchenko and I.N. Smirnov. All were either imprisoned and/or shot on orders from the Stalinist leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.


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Last updated on: 24.1.2007