Solidarity 3/79, 1 September 2005

The assassination of Leon Trotsky

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Sixty five years ago, on 20 August 1940 Leon Trotsky was struck with a fatal blow from an ice-pick by an agent sent by the CPU, Stalin’s secret police in the USSR. Here, Trotsky’s partner for four decades Natalia Sedov Trotsky tells the story of Trotsky’s death. The article was first published in the Fourth International in May 1947.

The forgotten massacre of the Vietnamese Trotskyists

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On demonstrations in the 1960s, it was common to hear marchers chanting “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, we will fight and we will win”, in honour of the Vietnamese Stalinist who led the fight against US occupation. The best sections of the left replied with their own rhyme — Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh — how many Trots did you do in?” They were referring to the mass murder of the Vietnamese Trotskyists by Stalinist forces in 1945. Sixty years on, the massacre has largely been forgotten.

Trotsky's legacy

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It was in the fight against the Moscow Trials that so many many American radical intellectuals learned to understand the modern communist state and movement. Most of them became friendly to the Trotskyists; a few even joined their ranks. But even though none of them remained Trotskyists for long, they took this insight with them for the rest of their lives. So did others during this stormy period. Still others gained this insight during the Hitler-Stalin pact. And still others were to require it only after the sanguinary suppression of the Hungarian Revolution, years later.

"Solidarity strikes must be made legal"

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“Solidarity strikes must be made legal,” wrote Tony Woodley in the Guardian on 15 August. His comment came after workers at British Airways had staged a walkout in support of Gate Gourmet catering workers, summarily sacked by bosses who wanted to replace them with cheaper more flexible workers. Woodley was absolutely right.