This small booklet is a valuable aid to understanding the character of the struggle opened up within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1923 to oppose the developing growth of bureaucracy and to tackle the urgent economic problems of building a socialist economy within the vast peasant based Soviet Union.
It contains excerpts from Trotsky’s first letter written October 8 1923 against the regime within the CPSU and the mistakes of the leadership.
It also contains the “Letter of the 46” a document written week later and independently but similarly criticising the leadership on issues of the democratic regime within the party and the lack of a systematic plan for developing and strengthening the state controlled sectors of the economy and signed by 46 leading members of the party.
Published also are a series of speeches over the next months by leading oppositionists passionately fighting on the basis of the history of the Bolshevik party for the defence of democratic struggle within the party and advocating for a clear economic policy to address the growing cleavage between the working class and the peasantry through the conscious build up of the state controlled sector of the economy.
80 pages