Left Opposition

The Left Opposition (Russian: Левая оппозиция, romanized: Levaya oppozitsiya) was a faction within the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) from 1923 to 1927 headed by Leon Trotsky, who formed it to mount a struggle against the perceived bureaucratic degeneration within the party leadership headed by Stalin after the death of the Bolshevik founder Lenin in 1924. The Left Opposition advocated for a programme of rapid industrialization, voluntary collectivisation of agriculture, and the expansion of a worker's democracy in a wider framework with the New Economic Policy. Intellectuals who had previously lived in exile during the Tsarist era would constitute the core of the Left Opposition during the succession period. Members represented the most internationalist elements of the party and held offices at the highest responsibility with Christian Rakovsky, Adolph Joffe, and Nikolay Krestinsky holding ambassadorial posts in London, Paris, Tokyo, and Berlin. Originally, the battle lines were drawn between Trotsky and his supporters who signed The Declaration of 46 in October 1923 on the one hand and a triumvirate (also known by its Russian name Troika) of Communist International (Comintern) chairman Grigory Zinoviev, Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin and Politburo chairman Lev Kamenev on the other hand. The Left Opposition argued that the New Economic Policy had weakened the Soviet Union by allowing the private sector to achieve an increasingly important position in the Soviet economy while in their opinion, the centrally planned, socialised sector of the economy languished (including the mostly state-run heavy industries which were seen as essential not only for continued industrialisation but also defence). The platform called for the state to adopt a programme for mass industrialisation and to encourage the mechanization and collectivisation of agriculture, thereby developing the means of production and helping the Soviet Union move towards parity with Western capitalist countries, which would...