Today in Labor History June 4, 1919: Trotsky banned the 4th Ukrainian Congress of Free Soviets with his Order #1824. He also sent troops to destroy the Rosa Luxemburg Commune near Provkovski, and declared the Ukrainian anarchist insurgent Nestor Makhno an outlaw. The Free Territory within Ukraine, also known as Makhnovia (after Nestor Makhno) lasted from 1918 to 1921. It was a stateless, anarchist society, defended by Makhno’s Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army (AKA the Black Army). Roughly 7 million people lived in the area, refusing to pay rent to the landowners and seizing the estates and livestock of the church, state and private landowners, setting up local committees to manage them and sharing them among the various villages and communes of the Free State.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #ukraine #nestormakhno #Revolution #soviet #communist #trotsky #insurrection #BlackArmy #peasant #commune

This lecture marking the centenary of the 1926 general strike was delivered by Socialist Equality Party (UK) National Secretary Chris Marsden to ...

This lecture marking the centenary of the 1926 general strike was delivered by Socialist Equality Party (UK) National Secretary Chris Marsden to public meetings in Sheffield, Manchester, Inverness, London and Glasgow,#Generalstrike #1926 #Trotsky #Stalin #Schneer #Mustill #Lee #Cant #SWP #history #SocialistEqualityParty
Public Lecture: Trotsky, Stalin and the 1926 British General Strike

#Trotsky

Trotsky’s "My Life": An imperishable contribution to Marxism and world literature

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/06/02/zjeb-j02.html

Mehring Verlag will publish this summer a new German-language edition of Leon Trotsky’s autobiography My Life (Mein Leben). Written in 1929 the autobiography is a literary masterpiece and an essential document of revolutionary history. David North, Chairman of the Editorial Board of the WSWS and National Chairman of the SEP in the US, has written a preface for the new edition.

#Trotsky "In our epoch, the epoch of imperialism, i.e., of world economy and world politics under the hegemony of finance capital ... "

The Third International After Lenin (Section 1-1)
Leon Trotsky, 1928.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1928/3rd/ti01.htm

Today in Labor History May 24, 1940: Iosef Grigulevich, under orders from Stalin, attempted to assassinate Leon Trotsky in Coyoacan, Mexico, with the aid of the Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros. He failed miserably, only wounding Trotsky’s young grandson in the foot. Pablo Neruda helped him escape the Mexican authorities. Later that year, Spanish-born NKVD agent Ramón Mercader assassinated Trotsky with an ice axe. This, of course, led to the parody political slogan: A chicken in every pot and an ice pick in every Trot.

Grigulevich was a Soviet secret police (NKVD) agent who was active from 1937-1953. He was born in 1913 to Jewish parents in Vilnius, Lithuania, in the Pale—the region where Jews were restricted within the Russian Empire—(hence the saying: Beyond the Pale). In the 1930s, he had worked in Spain as a Soviet spy, reporting on the activities of suspected anti-fascists, like George Orwell and CNT labor organizer Andres Nin; the latter of whom he murdered in 1937. In the 1950s, he was directed to assassinate Tito, in Yugoslavia. However, he aborted that mission when Stalin died.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #iosefgrigulevich #soviet #communism #stalin #trotsky #anarchism #spain #civilwar #fascism #antifascism #stalinism

Clara Fraser ou la vie sur tous les fronts

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.contretemps.eu/clara-fraser-ou-la-vie-sur-tous-les-fronts/

Le « Programme de transition », Trotsky et l’Internationale communiste

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.contretemps.eu/le-programme-de-transition-trotsky-et-linternationale-communiste/