The Revolution Betrayed

What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?

Trotsky’s pioneering 1936 analysis of the Soviet Union grapples with the bureaucratic counter-revolution that had already taken place. He explains how it came about that the first successful workers’ revolution in history had succumbed so rapidly to degeneration and domination by its own party and state apparatus. Trotsky gives a prophetic prognosis — either anti-bureaucratic reform and the restoration of soviet democracy or eventual capitalist restoration.

Revolution Betrayed is one of the undoubted classics of Marxism. It is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand what is happening in the former Soviet bloc today and avoid impressionistic and despairing conclusions about the “inevitability” of socialist revolutions undergoing bureaucratic degeneration.