We are proud to present the new (2010), substantially enlarged, corrected and improved edition of our international Leon Trotsky Bibliography (LLTB) [1]. This new edition is the third version (as at May 2010) of our bibliographical reference work which is published as an electronic resource only, superseding the three printed editions of the Trotsky Bibliography (published between 1982 and 1999). Although the present bibliography undoubtedly dazzles by its extent and density, it nevertheless would be presumptuous to claim perfection or completeness, not only because it is a truism that the chances of inadvertent exclusions are enormous, but rather because it has always been our very intention to combine comprehensive and selective qualities. To avoid any misunderstanding, it should be clearly emphasized here that the LLTB is itemizing exclusively secondary literature about Trotsky, Trotskyism and Trotskyists.
The present edition lists some 15,000 main entries (title descriptions) of items written in some 25 languages and published in some 50 countries between 1905 and early 2010 [2]. A considerable portion of the records contained in our bibliography are annotated and/or enriched by tables of contents or by bibliographic notes providing for example information regarding related works or translations. For most of the non-English titles proper, translation (Anglicization) is supplied.
It is intended that future revised and amended editions of the LLTB will be published on an approximately annual basis. Beginning with the 2010 edition, the LLTB is registered as ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) 2190-0183.
The extent, variety, and circulation of the literature published on our subject - of scholarly, critical, epigonous, polemical, ephemeral, or even obscure origin - has reached such dimensions that it seemed wise and necessary to put it together in a compact and user-friendly bibliography in order to facilitate a more helpful approach to Trotsky and Trotskyism and to make retrieval of relevant literature less time-consuming for prospective users (librarians, scholars and students in the fields of historical, political and social sciences, Judaism, Slavic Studies etc. and others taking an interest in Trotsky and Trotskyism). It is hoped that this work will be welcomed both as a useful reference tool and as a comprehensive survey of the research into the subject as it stands at this time. Despite the remarkable variety and breadth of scholarly activities in the field of Trotsky and Trotskyism research - as documented in extenso by our bibliography - plenty of scope remains for ongoing studies and investigations. The compilers would be very pleased if their present LLTB could stimulate and encourage further research activities.
The present bibliography is completely a labour of love, neither initiated nor sponsored or guided by any person, group or institution. We are indeed - as a reviewer fittingly stated some years ago - admirably devoted and passionate bibliographers. With never-ending perseverance and vigour, we accomplished the gathering of a quite unique collection of 'secondary' literature about Trotsky and the movement he initiated. A good deal of the collected material as well as many of the men and women who created it as authors, editors etc. absolutely deserve being saved from sinking into oblivion; we enjoy having a modest share in the preservation of the historical memory by preserving those Trotskyana by cataloguing, classifying and making them known in form of our bibliography.
We consider Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) one of the most noteworthy, original, fascinating, tragic, and controversial political figures of the 20th century. The sheer quantity of relevant publications listed in our bibliography reflects his importance and topicality. At one time a hero of both the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and the creator of the victorious Red Army, he was defeated by Stalin and the emerging party bureaucracy in the mid-1920s, exiled and later murdered on Stalin's behalf. The Trotskyist Left Opposition was the main target of the Stalinists' ideological, later bureaucratic and physical attacks and was eventually destroyed during the 1930s. The Stalinist falsifiers systematically set out to delete everything pertaining to Trotsky's memory from the revolutionary annals. Thus in the Stalinist Soviet Union (and of course in the communist parties all over the world), Trotsky became a non-person and Trotskyism a synonym for the most perfidious form of anti-Soviet counterrevolutionary theory and practice.
In the Western world where tiny groups of Trotskyists continued to exist since the late 1920s, Trotsky was considered persona non grata, and thus most countries refused to grant him asylum. In the 1930s Trotsky mainly dedicated himself to the task of creating and furthering a movement which could against all odds at least maintain the traditions of anti-Stalinist as well as anti-reformist revolutionary Marxism. Thus, in 1938, after a period of unprecedented defeats of the labour movement (e.g. China 1927, Germany 1933, Austria 1934, Spain 1936/39 etc.) and the rise of fascism in Europe and after several years of splits and regroupings, Trotsky and his adherents proclaimed the "Fourth International". Considered stillborn even by some of his followers and sympathisers, the Fourth International, or more generally termed, Trotskyism, for many decades survived as an idea and a programme as well as a political current at the periphery of the labour movement, although it not only suffered severely from repression and persecution (by Stalinists as well as by reactionary regimes and even by democratic governments) but also from internal demoralization, various splits and never ending factional fights [3].
In the period from the Second World War to the mid-1960s, including the years of the Cold War there were hardly any publications relating to the work and legacy of Leon Trotsky with the great exception of the unsurpassed Trotsky trilogy by Isaac Deutscher [4].
It was only in the second half of the 1960s that political and literary interest in Trotsky and his ideas was reawakened. The unity of the communist "bloc" broke up totally with the Sino-Soviet schism of 1960/63, the political polarisation of the world was in the process of disintegration and the Cold War was replaced by the politics of détente while in the Third World, national and social liberation movements of various kinds challenged the old colonial powers and the United States (e.g. Cuba, Algeria, Vietnam) Most of the Western countries, where the social, political and economic contradictions became more and more evident at the end of the long post-war boom, were faced with the formation of the New Left and an unprecedented wave of student and youth protest as well as with social unrest (e.g. France 1968, Italy 1969).
In the wake of these events and developments, Trotsky's ideas could no longer be hidden or considered a taboo, and as a consequence, many of his writings began to circulate as reprints and pirated volumes. Although Trotskyism was not able to develop as a real political mass movement of decisive weight, in a few countries it began to dominate the Left for a longer or shorter period or at least was able to develop into a serious political and ideological current on the Left, beyond Stalinism and social democracy [5]. Altogether the organizational influence and significance of Trotskyism remained weak whereas the influence of Trotsky's ideas and his political analyses have by far surpassed the small number of organized disciples. Numerous aspects of his thought were and are still to be found in many analyses of backwardness and revolution in the Third World as well as in many analyses of the socio-economic and political system of the then USSR. Besides, it was undoubtedly Trotsky's life full of dramatic and sensational moments, his sparkling personality, his widespread interests which have inspired to this day many authors to investigate in Trotsky, the "quintessential revolutionary" [6], to cope with his life and action and last not least with his assassination again and again.
The revival of Trotskyism in the West has not been looked upon with approval in the Eastern "bloc". Thus a veritable flood of books, pamphlets and articles dealing with Trotskyism as an extremely dangerous challenge to "(real) socialism" was published in the USSR and other Eastern European countries during the period from 1965 to 1985 [7]. Although some of the old Stalinist stock-answers were no longer maintained, the treatment of Trotsky as a non-person did not change in essence before 1985/87. The attitude of the Soviet writers who denounced the hazardous character of "old" and "new" Trotskyism has correctly been described as "demonology" [8]. While orthodox communist parties outside the Eastern "bloc" uncritically echoed the anti-Trotskyist demonology of the Soviet ideologists, some eurocommunist parties, the Yugoslav CP and the Chinese CP - after the defeat of the so-called "gang of four" - took pains to come to differentiated assessements.
In the Soviet Union a re-assessment of Trotsky only began some two or three years after Gorbachev had been elected party leader of the Communist Party in 1985. His new politics of "glasnost" also paved the way for Trotsky research in the USSR. When censorship was abolished, Soviet historians and social scientists began to publish articles (and later also books and pamphlets) about the life and work of Trotsky, about his rôle in Russian and Soviet history, about his legacy and meaning for today. Since 1988 and chiefly during the last two years of the Gorbachev era (1990/91) a veritable flood of such publications has been acknowledged [9]. For the first time ever, Soviet scholars participated in Trotsky conferences held in Western countries and could present and discuss their papers there. The new trends and differentiations in Soviet/Russian Trotsky research were critically reflected and analysed in a considerable number of journal articles by Western scholars [10].
After the end of the Gorbachev era and the dissolution of the USSR there was a considerable decline of Russian publications on Trotsky and Trotskyism, though scholarly interest did not fade away completely [11]. It should be mentioned that scholarly research in Trotsky has been stimulated and furthered by the opening up of many Soviet/Russian archives since 1991.
Our bibliography reflects the fact that since the late 1960s there has been evidence of an ever-increasing interest, though chiefly academic, in Trotsky and Trotskyism that sometimes meshes with lingering radical sympathy. Let us mention some facts and developments as illustration:
In the field of Trotsky(ism) research, several hundred dissertations and other university works have been submitted, chiefly since the 1970s. By now, our bibliography itemizes no less than 530 such works, the topics of which are manifold: studies about the history of the Trotskyist movement in certain countries, about the Fourth International, about certain aspects of Trotsky's life, about some of his close collaborators and adherents, about his political, social and economic ideas; during the last 20 years, an increasing number of works dealing with sociological aspects of the Trotskyist movement has been submitted to universities, particularly in France. Some of the graduates remained faithful to Trotsky research even after gaining their degree and thus produced a considerable number of relevant books and essays over the years.
Numerous scholarly monographs, other books and pamphlets, biographies etc., not to mention the vast quantity of relevant articles and essays in scholarly journals and collections, were published by scholars and other people concerned.
Today, Trotsky scholars can consult a wealth of relevant public archives. The main repository of Trotsky's unpublished papers and letters is undoubtedly the Trotsky Archive at Houghton Library, Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.), which has been fully accessible since 1980, but there are of course many other archives and repositories where relevant sources can be found, as for example the Hoover Institution Archives (Stanford, Cal.), the Lilly Library, Indiana University (Bloomington, Ind.), the Special Collections Library and Labadie Collection (Ann Arbor, Mich.); the Archives of Labor & Urban Affairs (Detroit, Mich.), the Swarthmore College Peace Collection (Swarthmore, Pa.), the State Historical Society of Wisconsin Archives Division (Madison, Wis.), the Tamiment Institute / Ben Josephson Library (New York, NY), the Rutgers University Libraries (New Brunswick, NJ), the Bakhmeteff Archive (Columbia Univ., New York, NY), the University of Texas (Austin, Tex.), the Emory University (Emory, Ga.), the Modern Records Centre (Coventry), the Brynmor Jones Library (Hull Univ.), the University of Glasgow Library Special Collections Department, the Senate House Library (London), the Manchester Polytechnic Library, the Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine (Nanterre), the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (Amsterdam), the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (Amsterdam); the Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, the Schweizerisches Sozialarchiv (Zurich), the Trotzkismus-Archiv in der Bibliothek der Friedrich -Ebert-Stiftung (Bonn), the Archiv APO und Soziale Bewegungen (Berlin), the Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv (Berlin), the Zentralarchiv des Bundesbeauftragten für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der Ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Berlin), the Arbeiderbevegelsens Arkiv og Bibliotek (Oslo), the Arbejderbevaegelsens Bibliotek og Arkiv (Copenhagen), the Comité de Documentación Histórica sobre el Trosquismo Español (Barcelona); the Fundación Pablo Iglesias (Madrid) [12]. Besides such public archives, researchers investigating in the history and organizational structure of Trotskyist groups and parties should consult the archives which are run by some Trotskyist organizations; while many of these groups and parties prefer to keep their documents strictly under lock and key, others at least have given partial or restricted access to serious researchers and still others have deposited their documents and papers at public libraries and archives, sometimes subject to special conditions on when and how some sections are opened to the public. With regard to Russian archives it should be mentioned that a British publishing house has started to publish in co-operation with scientific institutions great sections of archive files on microfiche or microfilm, so that such repositories can be used all over the world.
Since the 1970s, a considerable number of research institutes and working archives were founded by Trotskyist scholars and activists, some of those being affiliated to certain parties or groups, some considered as independent and not dictated by party policy. A section within Trotskyana.Net entitled Research Centres and Working Archives provides features about a number of such institutions incl. their publications, as for example about CERMTRI (Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur les Mouvements Trotskyste et Révolutionnaires Internationaux) (Paris), Institut Léon Trotsky (Grenoble), Socialist Platform (London), Torotsuki Kenkyusho [Trotsky institute of Japan] (Tokyo), Prometheus Research Library (New York), International Institute for Research and Education and Ernest Mandel Study Centre (Amsterdam). Mention must also be made of the Committee for the Study of Leon Trotsky's Legacy which was launched for the main purpose of promoting a deeper and broader study and understanding of the ideological legacy of Trotsky and of the relationship of his ideas to problems of social development, especially by the issuing or re-issuing of Trotsky's main works in Russian and by undertaking a series of five conferences on Leon Trotsky, held at Moscow and Sankt Peterburg respectively since 1994.
In the United States, France, Germany [13], Italy and Mexico, multi-volume collected works by Trotsky have been published, each of them of course representing a selection only, since a complete collection of all his writings, including letters and the like, would, conservatively estimated, fill some 80 to 100 volumes [14].
Bibliographies are indispensable prerequisites for serious historical research. The late Louis Sinclair (1909-1990) endeavoured to record chronologically the vast literary heritage of Trotsky (i.e. the primary literature) and to publish his Trotsky : a bibliography, an outstanding example of meticulousness and persistence [15].
The scholarly relevance and topicality of Trotsky and Trotskyism are reflected also by the fact that there took place a whole series of international conferences and symposia since 1979 (5 of which were held in 1990, on the occasion of the fiftieth aniversary of Trotsky's assassination) to which hundreds of distinguished scholars, noted research fellows, and Trotskyist (ex-)activists contributed papers or were involved in panel discussions [16]:
With regard to the scholarly relevance of Trotsky, it must also be mentioned that there are (or, have been for many years) several journals devoted chiefly or exclusively to research on Trotsky and Trotskyism [17], as for example Revolutionary History (1988 sq.), Cahiers Léon Trotsky (1979-2003), Journal of Trotsky Studies (1993-1996).
Last not least we would like to mention the Trotsky Museum (Museo Casa de León Trotsky) in México City, which is exhaustively dealt with in a special chapter [18] of our Trotskyana.Net website.
That being said, we should like to express our deepest thanks and great respect to all persons who contributed in many ways to our project, for example by providing bibliographical information on demand, addresses, or photostats of rare items. Obviously, it is impossible to list them all. Thanks, too, for all those stimulating feedbacks which we have been receiving from so many people.
The present bibliography is the result of some 35 years of intensive and continuous research, acquisition, collection, and correspondence. Dozens and dozens of catalogues (card, COM, online) and databases, hundreds of current and retrospective bibliographies as well as many other reference tools have been consulted; furthermore, several thousand volumes of relevant journals, collective works, dissertations or similar publications have been searched systematically for Trotsky relevant items. It should be noted that some 90% of the recorded items were examined by the compilers, most of them being from their personal collection.
Regarding the various types of material, chiefly the following publications were taken into account:
Thus, independently published works as well as component parts are itemized; with regard to university works and to certain manuscripts some unpublished works are listed, too. Regarding the various publication media, we are considering printed media as well as online publications (electronic resources) and audio-visual media. Please note: it goes without saying that we do not at all intend to "catalogue the Internet"; thus, only a very modest percentage of the nearly uncountable Trotsky relevant items presented in one or the other form in the World Wide Web) have been selected for inclusion into our bibliography - for many a reason. As a rule, we have decided to neglect all those electronic resources which originally (or, parallelly) have been published in printed or mimeographed form, thus many journals are represented in our bibliography only by their print edition, not as 'E-journals'. With other words: there is not even the slightest claim for comprehensiveness with regard to electronically published or digitized items. Archival materials and other unpublished items (with a few exceptions mentioned above) as a rule remain unconsidered; the same applies to items published in the daily or weekly press and to the bulk of chiefly polemical and/or self-reflecting items published in serials and other publications issued by the many rival Trotskyist groups and grouplets.
With regard to the question whether or not a certain item should be admitted, problems have arisen necessarily with those titles which either - despite all attempts - could not be located or which, although dealing with the subject of this bibliography, do so only in a broader context, e.g. works about the Russian revolution and its outcome (such as E.H. Carr's famous multi-volume A History of the Russian Revolution). In such cases, the compilers had to decide more or less arbitrarily, being aware that another compiler would have made another decision.
With regard to the quality and the political provenance of the material, the bibliography's coverage is comprehensive and as politically neutral as possible, including decidedly anti-Trotskyist as well as obviously partisan publications, Western as well as Soviet publications, scholarly as well as popular publications, critical and in-depth as well as ephemeral and obscure publications.
With regard to the contents, the bibliography's scope covers all aspects (biographical, theoretical, political etc.) of Leon Trotsky's life and work, including his rôle in history, his legacy, and his influence, as well as Trotskyism, first as an oppositional tendency within the ruling Bolshevik party and within the Comintern during the 1920s, then as an international anti-Stalinist, anti-reformist political and intellectual movement from the 1930s to the present day. Further, we provide a considerable amount of biographical items about a number of selected deceased Trotskyists (incl. some former Trotskyists and dissidents).
This general presentation should be concluded with some statistical facts and figures (based on an evaluation made in 2009) concerning the languages and countries of the publications considered: only those items were admitted which were available in one of the following European languages (in alphabetical order): Belorussian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch (Netherlandic, Flemish), English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Welsh.
The following table shows the distribution of items according to languages:
| English: | 41.1% | French: | 16.5% |
| German: | 14.0% | Russian: | 12.3% |
| Italian: | 5.0% | Spanish: | 4.8% |
| Portuguese: | 1.8% | Dutch: | 1.6% |
| Swedish: | 0.7% | Polish: | 0.6% |
| Danish: | 0.5% | Others: | 1.1% |
The following table shows the distribution of items according to places of publication:
| USA: | 19.7% | Great Britain: | 16.6% |
| France: | 16.5% | USSR/Russia: | 13.2% |
| Germany: | 12.7% | Italy: | 5.2% |
| Brazil: | 1.6% | Netherlands: | 1.5% |
| Spain: | 1.5% | Belgium: | 1.4% |
| Argentina: | 1.3% | Austria: | 1.2% |
| Mexico: | 1.2% | Sweden: | 1.2% |
| Switzerland: | 1.2% | Others: | 4.0% |
The following table shows the distribution of items according to years of publication:
| Pre-1920: 0.1% | 1920-1929: 6.5% | 1930-1939: 4.5% | 1940-1949: 2.0% | 1950-1959: 2.7% |
| 1960-1969: 7.5% | 1970-1979: 17.7% | 1980-1989: 16.9% | 1990-1999: 22.0% | 2000-2010: 20.1% |
The present bibliography is divided into a main part and an index section (six indices). The main part (or, core of the bibliography) is a classified catalogue, divided into 10 main subject matter chapters splitting up into more than 100 sub-chapters according to contents and to formal aspects. In these smallest sub-sections, entries are arranged alphabetically according to author and/or title. A survey (or, schedule) of classification can be found here.
All entries (main entries as well as coss-references; see next paragraph) are assigned Arabic identification numbers (IDNs), to which the index entries refer; these item numbers are to be found at the very top of each entry, followed - for better orientation - by chapter/sub-chapter designation.
For each item listed in our bibliography it was decided to provide full bibliographical description only once (main entry), namely under the dominant topic involved, i.e. under a particular chapter/sub-chapter heading in accordance with a judgement of where the item's chief focus is or where its chief relevance is to the field of our bibliography. Since many items could undoubtedly be placed under two, three or even more different sub-chapters, it was decided to make cross-references. Cross-referenced items are merged with the full entries and they are - for some technical reason - assigned running numbers (IDNs) like these; this explains the fact that the total number of IDNs is exceeding by far the total number of the 15,000 main entries.
Users' access to the bibliography is by two methods or by a combination of them: 1.) by selecting the subject of interest in the clasification system and then browsing through the respective chapter/sub-chapter; 2.) by selecting a certain index and then tracing the respective item number(s) in the main part. The structure and arrangement of the bibliography should allow its users to carry out intelligent browsing, to see things in context, and to find out a lot of interesting bibliographic and research connections. It goes without saying that users may also simply use the "find" ("search") function of one's web-browser to access any author, subject, title, keyword, source citation, number (e.g. ISSN or ISBN), yet even parts of words, page numbers and the like occurring in any item listed in our bibliography.
There are six indices at your disposal:
The structure of the entries and the usage of description signs (colons, dashes, etc.) are largely based upon the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD), the standard on which the cataloguing rules of most libraries are based. Therefore it should be sufficient to sketch the arrangement of entries only briefly and to add some peculiarities of bibliographic style if necessary:
There are two basic types of entries: those used for the description of independently published items and those used for the description of component parts:
Entries of independently published items follow this order::
1. Title phrase and statement of authorship area, i.e. main title, other titles, sub-titles, principal and subsidiary authors and contributors as recorded from the title page or its substitute. Omissions and additions made by the compilers are enclosed in square brackets. The following peculiarity should be noted: there are only main entries under an author's name (in case of works authored by one to three persons, first author's name is used as heading) or under title proper, but not under the name of a corporate body.
2. Edition area, i.e. edition statement and statement of authorship relating to the edition, recorded chiefly from information within the document. Please note that "first editions" are not mentioned.
3. Imprint area, i.e. place of publication, name of publisher or issuing agency, and year of publication.
4. Collation area, i.e. number of pages.
5. Notes area (see below)
Entries of component parts (i.e. dependently published items such as essays and contributions to journals and collections) follow this order:
1. Title phrase and statement of authorship area, recorded from the entire document (preceded by heading in case of entries filed under an author's name, see above).
2. Source area, i.e. after "in:" follows the title of the journal or author and title of the work which contains the respective item. Source statements referring to monographs generally comprise author and/or title, place and year of publication, pagination for the quoted component part; for journals, the preceding "in:" is followed by the journal title (plus sub-title and/or issuing agency, if necessary), place of publication, ISSN, volume, year of publication, issue and page number. Please note that in some cases page numbers are not given for various reasons.
3. Notes area (see below).
In case of electronic documents, the URL (uniform resource locator) is replacing the imprint area, and the document's scope is given by KB or MB (Kilobyte or Megabyte), followed by the approximate number of pages in round brackets. The date of access is given as a bibliographic note; the access date is of enormous relevance since many documents are 'volatile', i.e. they suddenly may disappear from the Internet or may substantially being altered (or even falsified or distorted); thus, any of our records reflects the state-of-the-art as it was on the mentioned day. It goes without saying that we can't guarantee the correctness (or, persistence) of a given URL since an electronic document may move from one host or server to another or may be discarded.
Now, some peculiarities should be mentioned:
For authors' names as headings standardized forms of spelling are used, i.e. regardless of the way in which an author's name appears in a document, all editions and translations of his works are entered under a uniform heading, transliterated if necessary, e.g. all writings by Bukharin are filed under the name heading "Bucharin, Nikolaj Ivanovič" whereas on the title pages of the respective works are "N. Bucharin", "Nikolai Bukharin", or "N. Boukharine". If the heading varies from the form on the title page, the latter is repeated in the author statement. Missing or abbreviated first names are, if possible, supplied in the heading. As mentioned above, all different forms and spellings are cross-referenced in the author index.
Writings of authors using a pseudonym are filed under this form only if it is better known than the real name or if the real name is (still) unknown (or, 'under lock and key' for certain reasons). As a rule, however, entry is made under the real name, and the present name is added in square brackets in the author statement. "Famous" pseudonyms (e.g. Stalin, Radek) are only explained in the author index. Writings initialled only (e.g. "By B.A.") are entered under the author's complete name if known, or under title proper and thus treated as anonymously published works. Acronyms and initialisms are entered or cross-referenced in the author index.
In case of single author publications, the author's name is repeated in the author statement only if the name heading differs from the form actually used in the document. In case of more than three authors, only the first mentioned author is considered, the others being indicated by "[et al.]". The same applies to editors and other subsidiary authors. Particles like "von", "par", "by" which introduce an author statement on the title page are generally neglected.
In the edition area of the entries, information of imprints, reprints or editions are quoted. The mentioning of first editions, illustrations, sizes, prices, bindings or paper qualities are neglected.
Apart from the titles proper, common bibliographic abbreviations are used (see our List of abbreviations). Omissions and additions by the compilers are identified by dots and square brackets "[...]".
In case of multi-volume publications, the total number of volumes is indicated in the imprint area of the entry; the volume listing, as a rule, is given in the notes area.
Dissertations and other university works are entered somewhat differently from other monographic publications: Heading, title phrase and author statement is followed by collation; starting on the next line, a dissertation statement follows consisting of location, name of institution, type of publication (using English terms unless there is no suitable English equivalent), and year of graduation, e.g. "Durham, NC, Duke Univ., diss., 1980".
Source statement: Special issues of a journal, even if published with a distinct title, are generally indicated by the (main) title of the journal. Exceptions, however, may occur occasionally. Journal issues referred to by months or seasons are always entered with the corresponding English terms.
Bibliographical notes: whenever it seems necessary or useful, bibliographical notes providing some supplementary information are added to the entries, en petit; such notes are - as a rule - preceded by standardized phrasing. e.g.:
"Table of contents" [=full or partial survey about a book's or article's contents or chapter structure]
"Orig.:" [=original title]
"Other ed./versions/transl.:" [=titles of earlier or later versions of a work, of translations into other languages etc.]
"On cover:" [=deviating title on cover or spine]
"Reprinted from:"
"Extracted from:"
"Angl.:" [=Anglicization of a non-English title proper]
"Notes:" [=number of foot-/endnotes, citation references]
In some chapters, uniform titles (or, supplied titles) in square brackets are used for certain types of documents. Uniform titles precede the title description and author statement; specific titles, if any, are entered after the uniform title. The following uniform titles are used:
"[Review]"
"[Review article]"
"[Resolution]"
"[Obituary]"
"[Biographical sketch]"
"[Autobiographical sketch]"
"[Foreword]"
"[Postface]"
Please note, that references to related titles as well as Anglicizations of titles proper are omitted if uniform titles were used as headings.
Last not least, book reviews, obituaries and similar types of documents, which &ndash as a rule &ndash are lacking distinct titles proper, are filed with the heading "[Anonymous]" if the authorship could not be clearly identified.
At the end of this introduction, we should like to give some brief informations concerning certain chapters of the present bibliography:
Items which are printed in non-Latin characters, mainly Cyrillic ones, have been transliterated (romanized) according to ISO recommendation R 9 (2. ed. 1968) with the single exception of the Russian character "X" which is transliterated as "Ch" instead of "H". It should be noted that the transliteration used here partly differs from transliterations widely used by libraries and documentation centres. See also our transliteration table [PDF].
All entries and indices of the present bibliography derive from a computer-aided database. Its software, ALLEGRO-C, was especially created for bibliographic and/or library concerns and was developed by a team of the Braunschweig Technical University headed by Mr. Eversberg. Without this eminently professional and multi-functional software the present bibliography would not have come into existence.
[1] The three printed editions were published by K. G. Saur Verlag (Munich, etc.) with title Trotsky Bibliography; the first edition (458 pp., 3,227 items) was published in 1982, the second edition (XXXI, 581 pp., 5,009 items) in 1988, and the third edition (2 vol., XXVII, 840 pp., 9,434 items) in 1999. More details about the printed versions is to be found here. - It should be mentioned here that our bibliography strictly focuses on the so-called secondary literature with regard to Trotsky, which implies that for example the various editions of Trotsky's autobiography (My life [Moia zhizn']) are not considered; however, a very few exceptions occur, namely the listing of some items from Trotsky's pen about his son, Lev Sedov, and his partner, Natalia Sedova, as well as a short autobiographical sketch which he wrote in 1922.
[2] For further details see the general presentation paragraph within this introduction
[3] "Indeed, the history of Trotskyism seems to have been a history of greater and greater dissension between fewer and fewer people, all claiming that their group - and their group alone - was the one and only true heir to the great man who founded the Fourth International back in 1938" (Cox, Michael: Trotsky and his interpreters, in: The Russian Review, 51.1992 (1), p. 88.)
[4] The three volumes of Deutscher's trilogy (The prophet armed, The prophet unarmed, and The prophet outcast) were originally published in Great Britain between 1954 and 1963 [for bibliographic details see sub-chapter 2.1 of the LLTB]; they were translated into several languages. The outstanding significance and impact of this trilogy has been emphasized in many essays and reviews [several 100 are recorded in chapters 8.2.02 and 9 of the LLTB]. - "Trotsky was fortunate, however, in one respect: the fact that Isaac Deutscher became his biographer. Whatever his limits as a theorist, Deutscher served Trotsky supremely well and probably did more than a whole generation of Trotsky's feuding followers to educate people about the life and times of the great revolutionary prophet" (Cox, Michael: Trotsky and his interpreters, in: The Russian Review, 51.1992 (1), p. 98). It took some 30 years before another heavyweight biography on Trotsky saw the light, namely Pierre Broué's French-language Trotsky (Paris, 1988) and just another 21 years before Robert Service presented his English-language Trotsky (London, 2009) as the third book in his biographical trilogy about the leaders of the early Soviet state.
[5] In a few countries (e.g. Ceylon/Sri Lanka, Greece, Bolivia) Trotskyist parties or resistance movements led by Trotskyists played an important rôle for a longer or shorter span of time during or after World War II; in the United States the Trotskyist SWP and its youth wing gained considerable influence on the anti-war movement during the Vietnam war; in the 1930s American Trotskyists even gained a foothold in certain areas of the labour movement; in France Trotskyists played an important rôle in the May-June 1968 events, and during the last twenty years the three main factions of French Trotskyism have been able to receive up to 10% of the popular vote in general parliamentary or presidential elections; in Britain some Trotskyist groups and factions exercised a not unimportant influence on the left wing of the Labour Party before being expelled, to mention only a few examples. The strength and weakness of the Trotskyist movement in various countries of the world has been accounted by R.J. Alexander in his International Trotskyism 1929-1985 (Durham, NC, 1991). According to him, Trotskyism has been the most persistent of the opposition movements within international communism.
[6] Knei-Paz, Baruch: The social and political thought of Leon Trotsky. Oxford, 1978, p. VIII. - The "rediscovery" of the "purist revolutionary", Leon Trotsky, even brought about a kind of "Trotsky cult" with corresponding literary and iconographical productions. Paul Preston, in this connection, titled a review article The Trotsky industry and wrote: "One hundred years after his birth, the architect of the October revolution occupies the highest pedestal in the Soviet pantheon of non-persons. In the capitalist world, to whose overthrow his life was devoted, he is the subject of a seemingly endless flow of books, not to mention films, television programmes and radio dramas. This is hardly surprising. It is not just that Trotsky's theoretical and practical genius is the very antithesis of Stalinist mediocrity. The continuing fascination of Trotsky for non-Marxists is in the personal tragedy of a man who flew so high and fell so hard" (Preston, Paul: The Trotsky industry, in: New Society, 51.1980 (902), p. 134).
[7] The bulk of these items are listed in sub-chapter 7.3 of our LLTB.
[8] Items dealing with anti-Trotskyist demonology of Staliist, post-Stalinist and Maoist provenance are listed in sub-chapter 7.4 of our LLTB.
[9] Most of these items are listed or cross-referenced in sub-chapter 3.3.15 and sub-chapter 3.2 of the LLTB. Outside Russia, Volkogonov's two-volume Trotsky biography reflecting the Eltsinite viewpoint is perhaps the best-known. It has caused a lively controversy among historians and reviewers.
[10] These items are listed in sub-chapter 3.3.15 of the LLTB. We should like to emphasize the contributions by R. Binner, P. Broué, H. Gödeke, A.V. Pancov, I.D. Thatcher, M. Vogt-Downey, M. Wehner, and R. Zwengel.
[11] "History has dealt Trotsky a perverse fate. The last of Stalinism's devils to be readmitted to secular discourse in Russia under perestroika, he was promptly blamed for inspiring his tormentors, and then he was submerged in the post-1991 anti-communist deluge that washed away practically all serious interest in the communist past" (Daniels, Robert V.: [Review], in: Europe-Asia Studies. 49.1997 (5), p. 927).
[12] Within the framework of our Trotskyana.Net we present features about some 30 Trotsky relevant archives and collections in Europe and America.
[13] For a thorough comparative review of the French, American and German editions of Trotsky's collected works see Binner, Rolf: Alte und neue Trockij-Editionen, in: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, N.F. 37.1989 (3), pp. 393-414.
[14] With regard to the unfinished Russian-language works edition we refer to our feature about Trotsky's Sochineniia within the framework of TrotskyanaNet.
[15] Sinclair, Louis: Trotsky : a bibliography. Vol. 1-2, Aldershot, 1989. An earlier version was published in 1972 by Stanford University Press. For this and other bibliographic items, such for example the bibliographies presented by J. Pluet-Despatin, C. Franzén, A.M.R. Penn, A. Bianchi, A. Marazzi, N.B. Paramonova and of course ourselves, see sub-chapter 1.1 of the LLTB
[16] With regard to conferences and symposia about Trotsky and Trotskyism, an exhaustive list and some features are provided in the chapter International Trotsky Conferences within the framework of Trotskyana.Net. Unfortunately, with regard to most of the listed conferences, the majority of the papers presented remained unpublished, but at least some significant publications emanated from some of those events, e.g. Pensiero e azione politica di Lev Trockij, Firenze, 1980; The Trotsky reappraisal, Edinburgh, 1992; Leo Trotzki - Kritiker und Verteidiger der Sowjetgesellschaft, Mainz, 1993; Idejnoe nasledie L.D. Trockogo: istorija i sovremennost', Moskva, 1996. It should be mentioned, too, that Trotsky and Trotskyism have been subjects treated within the framework of a lot of (other) conferences about a great variety of topics.. A general overview about such conferences and about their Trotsky relevant papers is to be found within the just-mentioned International Trotsky Conferences section of Trotskyana.Net. You can find some 600 bibliographic records for items emanating from conferences as well as reports about them by checking the conference index of the LLTB.
[17] Features about a number of journals chiefly devoted to Trotsky(ism) research are presented in Trotskyana.Net's Journals chapter.
[18] In this chapter of Trotskyana.Net, devoted to the Trotsky Museum [Museo Casa de León Trotsky], you can find a feature about it from the pen of Prof. Gabriel García Higueras (both in English and Spanish language), a photo gallery and slide show, (photographs taken by Prof. Gabriel García Higueras) and last not least our Trotsky in Coyocán - a bibliography. For the Trotsky Museum's homepage click here.
[19] Trade editions are academic works by graduates which are produced and disseminated by commercial publishing houses, mostly short after graduation.
[20] Only two of the Trotskyists featured in chapter 9 are still alive.
