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Anyone who wants to understand the nature of the Soviet Union under Stalinist rule and how the policies of Stalin led to the destruction of the Communist party as a revolutionary force, this book is essential reading. In this book, the reader will find a Marxist analysis by Leon Trotsky on the problems of the USSR coming out of the revolution of 1917 and how Stalin won power by advancing the interests of the soviet bureaucracy against those of the working class. The political counterrevolution that Stalin started destroyed Lenin's party, is explained vividly in this must read for anyone who wishes to understand the evolution of the USSR from the victorious 1917 workers revolution up to the purge trials of the mid 1930's. Trotsky's description of the Soviet Union as a degenerated worker state is first advanced here. He puts forth the necessity of building a new revolutionary party to restore Leninist norms and remove the bureaucratic system of which Stalin was the chief bureaucrat. If you desire to understand the USSR and why it was destroyed, get this book.

With hindsight, it's really quite remarkable how Trotsky was able to understand so vividly the course the Soviet Union was taking and the disastrous consequences that would then ensue. Anyone interested in the history of Stalinist Russia should at least glance through this book. Trotsky offers not only a detailed analysis of the Soviet Union under Stalin, but an interesting critique as well. Finally, perhaps the most interesting factor in Trotsky's book is how he almost seems to forecast the end of the USSR...nearly 50 years in advance.

First published over 60 years ago, this definitely is a book for today. Leon Trotsky, a central leader of Russian revolution and commander of the Red Army offers an insightful analysis of what led to the rise of the Stalinist Bureaucracy in the former Soviet Union.

War weariness, scarcity of the necessities of life, and the retreat of the world revolution created conditions for career seekers, faint hearts, dogmatists and bullies to thrive, and slowly but surely drive the Russian workers and peasants out of politics.

The idea that the fall of the Stalinist regimes in the late 1980's and early 90's would usher in a new prolonged period of prosperity for capitalism has proven to be wishful thinking at best. As Trotsky painstakingly details in the book, the workers states is stronger than the Bureaucracy that sits and feeds upon it.

The present US led invasion of Iraq is partly due to the failure to save it's declining empire through the Moscow route.