Trotsky’s mistakes:

1. The role of professionalism in the party. Trotsky did not appreciate the argument of the Bolsheviks about the importance of combating the influence of the petty-bourgeoisie and bourgeois ideology through demands for the adherence to a professional code of conduct. He finally admitted his mistake, but only after landing in prison in 1917 in Russia. He could not ignore the effectiveness of the Bolsheviks at responding to the needs of the working class in an actual emergency.
2. The founding of the Fourth International in the early 1920s. Well-known British leader Sylvia Pankhurst participated in the Second Congress of the Third International, edited an important newspaper, illegally wrote from prison, and featured in Lenin’s book Left Wing Communism as a prime example of the trend within the revolutionary movement. Trotsky never mentions her even after founding the Fourth International again nearly 17 years later. This silence surrounding an important public figure gets at the heart of the problem. After Trotsky changed sides on the Bolsheviks, the natural conclusion should have favored the foundation of a Fourth International in opposition to any revolution that would include Stalin within its leadership. Trotsky chose to argue that Stalin played no significant role as a means of placating Leninism and its mass following. Instead, he should have allied with Pankhurst to criticize Leninism from the Left, from the presence and actual importance of Stalin. Stalin had sought submission to Menshevism from the Bolsheviks. Trotsky had sought unity based on Bolshevik dominance. Only Lenin held up the importance of seperate policies and seperate organizations. Had Trotsky really appreciated Lenin’s position, he would have united with Pankhurst, saving, with the power of his widespread recognition, the original Fourth International from isolation and destruction.
3. Trotsky divorces wife, Aleksandra Sokolovskaya, marries Natalia Sedova. Lenin’s wife escaped Siberia with him and moved with him to London. Sokolovskaya, however, remained in Siberia until 1917. She later joined the Left Opposition and led the Youth Organization, Komsomol, in Petrograd and edited its newspaper. She was one of the last public Left Oppositionists in Russia. Trotsky had befriended Aleksandra’s brothers in his time of political awakening. No information is available about the class of her parents, but we do know her father sympathized with the Narodniks, indicating they associated mostly with poor peasants. Trotsky himself believed strongly in the Narodnik populist position, opposing the only Marxist in their group, Alexsandra. It was only after years of discussion that she won him over to the Marxist cause. His opposition to Lenin’s What is to Be Done led him to leave Alexsandra and go to London to argue in person. Natalia Sedova, on the other hand, appeared as a Bourgeois Occupier, renting a room to Trotsky and then marrying him. After his death, Natalia broke from the Fourth International and joined the state capitalists, essentially maintaining constant her argument that capitalists and their families should run the socialist movement, forcing out the workers by bureaucratic means. Democratic Power holds that Trotsky should have stayed with Alexsandra or escaped together in another year when their four month old could leave with them. He would have had more time to really study Lenin’s position, making the break from the Mensheviks far more effective.

Lenin’s mistakes:

1. Lenin promoted Stalin within the Bolshevik Party mainly because he towed the line of Lenin. He had connections to gangsters and the state, bringing questionable funding along with persecution by state agents. Stalin argued that the Bolsheviks should support the Constituent Assembly government, the bourgeois parliamentary system established as part of the Menshevik program of class compromise. Lenin’s own efforts within Russia after the February revolution moved the Bolsheviks to oppose the Constituent Assembly, with its rigged election and bourgeois liberal leadership. They then favored the more democratic Soviet system, but they did not eliminate the Stalinist wing of the party. This allowed many tsarists and careerists to join the Bolsheviks once it became clear they would control the government. These elements, protected by Stalinism, itself protected by Leninism, backed all of the anti-democratic measures which broke up Soviet Democracy and Factional Democracy. Had Lenin used these conflicts to break from Stalin, he may have lived much longer and stabilized democracy within the USSR, allowing for its spread throughout Europe.
2. Sylvia Pankhurst fought with Lenin over the nature of the Labor Party in Great Britain. She labeled the party imperialist and anti-Marxist, but she joined on Lenin’s insistence. When she joined, they demanded she shut down her newspaper. This convinced her to leave the Labor Party and the Third International. In 1921, she had already begun the foundation of the Fourth International. She went to prison where they denied her even the right to continue writing. She had to write on tissue paper with pencils she hid in her clothing. This excessive inhumanity may have convinced Lenin and Trotsky to turn against her, but she alone pointed the way forward. Ignoring her led to the death of both Lenin and Trotsky, as they could now no longer stand with the most advanced representatives of the world revolution and international working class. Blinded somehow and led by wealthy merchants or state agents, they fell into the traps of imperialism.
3. A third mistake of Lenin has to do with his open affair with Inessa Armand. Apart from its implying his sterility after the failure to father children with a second woman, it also served him to delegate to her the matter of cultural affairs. Lenin had written books about philosophy, science, economics, history, and of course politics, all to save the Bolsheviks from the various ideological threats from within the socialist movement. Trotsky had written about culture and literature, allowing him to make connections with important artists such as Andre Briton, Diego Rivera, and Frida Khalo who influenced and brought to light the Fourth International. Lenin did not have this to his credit, and this may have largely contributed to his dependence on Stalin within the organization. Lenin’s analysis of banks and corporations may have influenced the state and the gangs that Stalin associated with when committing bank robberies and kidnappings. Had Lenin taken more time to analyze culture, he could have reduced Stalin’s role and protected Soviet democracy, since with art and culture as an intermediary, artists could sell their work at a high price to bankers, statesmen, and corporate leaders and donate the proceeds to Lenin’s organization. This would eliminate the need for the worst persecutors, agents, and gangsters, who went directly for weapons and cash, that must have followed Stalin into the party.