Trotsky in Norway

Few men experienced greater extremes of fortune and power than Lev Trotsky. One of the greatest Marxist philosophers of the Bolshevik Revolution and an integral force in the creation of the Red Army, Trotsky was expelled from the Party by Joseph Stalin in 1927 and deported in 1929, first to France, then Turkey, and Norway soon after. By the time he was assassinated in Mexico City in 1940, Trotsky and his theories had been pushed to the margins of the ongoing revolution. It was while in exile in Norway in 1935 that Trotsky began The Revolution Betrayed, his last major book and an excoriating denunciation of Stalin that presented its author as the true heir to the Bolshevik Revolution. In Trotsky in Norway, Oddvar K. Hoidal offers a fascinating new account of Trotsky’s time in Oslo, including his establishment of the Fourth International in order to challenge Stalin’s dominance over world communism. An important chapter in the history of international socialism and communism, this well-researched portrait of Trotsky’s two years in Norway is essential to an understanding of this famed revolutionary.