This Lubitz' Leon Trotsky Bibliography (LLTB) is part of Lubitz' TrotskyanaNet (LTN)
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Contents of the Introduction


Preface

We are proud to present again a new enlarged, corrected and improved edition of our international Lubitz' Leon Trotsky Bibliography (LLTB). This recent edition is the 28th version (as at January 2024) of our main bibliographical reference work, published as an electronic resource only, superseding all previous versions including the three printed editions of our Trotsky Bibliography which had been published by K.G. Saur Verlag between 1982 and 1999 [1]; counting these latter, one can therefore speak of the 31st edition.
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 (see also below). To avoid any misunderstanding, it should be clearly emphasized that the LLTB is itemizing exclusively secondary literature about Trotsky, Trotskyism and Trotskyists, i.e. it is not a repertory of works by Trotsky.

The scope of the present edition (Winter 2023/24) amounts to just under 19 Megabytes (approximately 3,800 leaves DIN A4 if printed) of bibliographic information, more precisely: the work contains round about 18,000 main entries (title descriptions, or, title records) plus some 4,300 cross-references, adding up to some 22,300 running numbers (or, IDNs = identification numbers). The recorded items were written in some 25 languages (chiefly English, French, Russian, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch (Netherlandic, Flemish), Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Belorussian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovene, Ukrainian, Welsh) and published in some 55 countries between 1905 and January 2024 [2]. Many 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 (with the exception of items recorded in chapters 8 and 9).

Revised, amended and corrected editions/versions of our LLTB have been and will be published irregularly, at least on a semi-annual basis. From 2010, the LLTB has been registered as ISSN 2190-0183 ("ISSN"=International Standard Serial Number) by the IISN Register, Paris.

Please note that most of the following paragraphs of the preface and introduction were written some 15-20 years ago and that since then only a few paragraphs and notes have been slightly revised.

Already some dozen years ago, the extent, variety, and circulation of the literature published on our subject – of scholarly, critical, epigonous, polemical, ephemeral, or sometimes even obscure character – had 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, making the search and 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 is 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 as well as other components of our TrotskyanaNet website could stimulate and encourage such research activities.

The present bibliography is completely a labour of love, neither initiated nor sponsored or guided by any person, party, group or institution. We are indeed – as a reviewer fittingly stated some years ago – admirably devoted and passionate bibliographers sui generis. 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 indeed 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 first half 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, persecuted and eventually 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 after he was expelled from the Soviet Union and deprived of Soviet citizenship. 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 of 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 many 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 which later has been followed by a considerable amount of other biographies in various languages and of various quality and scope [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 social, political and economic contradictions as well as symptoms of crises became more and more evident since the end of the long post-war boom, were faced with the formation of the New Left and with an unprecedented wave of student and youth protest as well as with social unrest (e.g. France 1968, Italy 1969), and later by the formation of various new social movements.

In the wake of all those events and developments of the 1960s and early 1970s, 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, reformism, 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 rather small number of organized disciples. Numerous aspects of his thought were (and partially 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 etc. which have inspired to this day many authors to investigate in Trotsky, the "quintessential revolutionary" [6], to cope again and again with his life and action and last not least with his (and his family's) personal fate and tragedy and his eventual assassination.

The revival of Trotskyism in the West was not 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 then 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 more differentiated assessements.

In the Soviet Union a re-assessment of Trotsky only began some two or three years after M. Gorbachev had been elected party leader of the CPSU 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 could be 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]. Although after the end of the Gorbachev era and the dissolution of the USSR for some years there was a considerable decline of Russian publications on Trotsky and Trotskyism, scholarly interest not at all fade away completely [11]. In contrary, a new generation of (chiefly Russian) scholars has been stimulated and furthered by the opening up of many Soviet/Russian archives since the 1990s. Thus, one can find again a considerable number of relevant Russian language publications both published in printed form and as electronic resources.

Our bibliography reflects the fact that since the late 1960s there has been evidence of an ever-increasing (or, ongoing) 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, to universities all over the world. Our bibliography itemizes no less than some 780 such university 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 30 years, an increasing number of works dealing with sociological aspects of the Trotskyist movement has been submitted to universities, too, particularly in France; some of the graduates remained faithful to Trotsky research after gaining their degree and thus produced a considerable number of relevant books and essays over the years. As at Winter 2023/24, with regard to the countries of origin, our bibliography records works from more than 30 countries, chiefly from the United States (175), France (147), Russia/Soviet Union (86), Germany (60), Brazil (41), Britain (36), Belgium (25) and Italy (15).

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, have been 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 many other archives and repositories where relevant sources can be found [12], as for example

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 should to be opened to the public. In recent years, some publishing houses as well as web publishers have been starting to publish great sections of archive files on microfiche or microfilm or as digitizations, 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 TrotskyanaNet entitled Research Centres and Working Archives provides features about a number of such institutions incl. their publications, as for example about CERMTRI (Centre d'Études 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. Please note that some of the just mentioned facilities in the meanwhile have been cancelled.

In the United States, France, Germany [13], Italy, Argentina and Mexico, multi-volume editions of 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 average size volumes [14]. By the way: today most of Trotsky's writings are usable free of charge in the World Wide Web in many languages.

Bibliographies are indispensable prerequisites for serious historical research. In the early 1970s, 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, long before personal computers and the World Wide Web began to dominate the world of books and libraries [15]. Our bibliography lists round about 100 bibliographies and related reference works.

The scholarly relevance and topicality of Trotsky and Trotskyism are reflected also by the fact that there took place a whole series of (international) Trotsky conferences and symposia since 1979 (five international symposia alone were held in 1990, i.e. on the occasion of the fiftieth aniversary of Trotsky's death) to which hundreds of distinguished scholars, noted research fellows, and Trotskyist (ex-)activists contributed papers or were involved in panel discussions [16], for example:

Our bibliography records more than 770 items originally presented to conferences and symposia as well as reports about such events.

With regard to the scholarly relevance of Trotsky, it must also be mentioned that there are (or, have been for many years) some 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 TrotskyanaNet website.

That being said, we should like to express our deepest thanks and great respect to those persons who contributed in many ways to our project, for example by providing bibliographical or biographical information on demand, addresses, or photostats of rare items. Thanks, too, for all those stimulating feedbacks and appreciations which we have been receiving from users and reviewers [19].

Introduction and users' notes

General presentation. Selection procedures, scope and limits.
Some notes about electronic resources

The present bibliography is the result of several decades of intensive and continuous research, acquisition, collection management, and correspondence. Dozens and dozens of library catalogues, computerized bibliographic databases, hundreds of current and retrospective bibliographies as well as many other reference tools have been consulted in order to identify suitable documents. Furthermore, several thousand volumes of relevant journals, collective works, dissertations or similar publications (including their footnotes) have been searched systematically and intensively (or, constantly monitored) for relevant items. It should be noted that more than 90% of the recorded items were autoptically examined/inspected by the compilers; most of the items described in our bibliography form part of our considerable private book and documents collection.

Regarding the various types of material, chiefly the following publications were taken into account:

  • Articles, essays and other contributions published in journals incl. sections of books and relevant chapters dealing with Trotsky and Trotskyism;
  • Obituaries, memoirs, reminiscences, biographical miscellanies;
  • Books, pamphlets and other separately published items;
  • Scholarly and other book reviews and related items;
  • Dissertations, master theses and other university publications;
  • Collections, conference proceedings, Festschriften and related items;
  • Bibliographies, archive guides, inventories and finding aids;
  • Transcripts of congressional hearings and similar parliamentary publications;
  • (A few) manuscripts and other unpublished items;

Thus, independently published works as well as component parts are itemized; with regard to university works and to certain manuscripts, some unpublished works (incl. a few announced, but factually not, or, not yet published works) are listed, too. Regarding the various publication media, we are considering printed an mimeographed media as well as online publications (electronic resources) and (some) audio-visual media. Please note: it goes without saying that we do not at all intend to "catalogue the Internet"; thus, only some 1,300 online publications (which means 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. We have decided to neglect, as a rule, all those electronic resources which originally (or, parallelly) have been published in printed or mimeographed form; thus for example many journals are represented in our bibliography only by their print edition, not as "E-journals"; as a rule, we have gone without linking records of printed works with electronically published (digitized) versions of these works. Thus there is not even the slightest claim for comprehensiveness with regard to electronically published or digitized items. Furthermore, we strictly decided not to consider those obscure "books" which - as a rule - primarily consist of material electronically copied from Wikipedia and other free online sources, a practice performed for example by Books LLC or Webster's Digital Services. Also, we decided not to consider the innumerable outpourings of people notoriously abusing the World Wide Web for disseminating their ridiculous conspiracy theories and/or their obscure anti-Semitic or anti-Masonic platitudes; some borderline cases however may occur.

With regard to digitized visual media it should be emphasized that we don't consider the many strips and clips available via such resources like YouTube. 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 bulletins 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 absolutely aware that other compilers would have made other decisions [20].

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, obscure, nearly worthless 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 Winter 2023/24) concerning the languages and countries of the publications considered:

The following table shows the distribution of items according to languages:

 English:  38.7%  French:  15.3%
 German:  13.6%  Russian:  13.5%
 Spanish:    6.7%  Italian:    4.0%
 Portuguese:    2.4%  Other:    ca. 6.0%

The following table shows the distribution of items according to places (countries) of publication (based on an evaluation made in Winter 2023/24):

 USA:  18.1%  France:  15.1%
 Great Britain:  15.0%  Russia/ex-USSR:  13.8%
 Germany:  12.5%  Italy:    4.2%
 Spain:    2.5%  Brazil:    2.4%
 Argentina:    2.2%  Netherlands    1.9%
 Mexico:    1.3%  Other:    ca. 11.0%

The following table shows the distribution of items according to years of publication (based on an evaluation made in Winter 2023/24):

Pre-1920 :     0.1% 1920-1929:    5.7% 1930-1939:   8.1%
1940-1949:   1.5% 1950-1959:    2.0% 1960-1969:   6.0%
1970-1979:  14.2% 1980-1989:  13.1% 1990-1999:  18.6%
2000-2009:  12.2% 2010-2024:  10.2% [s.d. incl. all E-resources]:   8.3%

Arrangement of material. Main part and indices.
Searching the bibliography

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 9 main subject matter chapters splitting up into more than 100 sub-chapters according to contents as well as 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 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 classification system and then browsing through the respective chapter/sub-chapter; 2.) by selecting an index, tracing a certain index term and clicking the given item number(s) which is/are leading to the title record(s) in the main part of the bibliography.
Furthermore, the structure and arrangement of the bibliography should allow its users to carry out intelligent browsing, to see items in context, and to find out a lot of relevant bibliographic and research connections. It goes without saying that users may also (after having selected a main part chapter or index) simply use the "find" ("search") function of one's web-browser to access any specific author, subject, title, keyword, place, 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.

The following six indices are at users' disposal:

  • Author index, arranged alphabetically by names of authors, editors, compilers, and of corporate bodies (if mentioned in the body of an entry as editing or issuing agency in case of anonymous works). Please note that translators as well as persons mentioned in titles proper remain unconsidered with regard to the author index. Variants (e.g. in spelling) of personal or corporate names not selected for use in the headings are entered in the author index as ""-references. In many cases, years of birth and death as well as some other additional information about authors are added to the names in brackets. This index lists some 6,500 authors (as Summer 2023).
  • Title index, arranged in alphabetical order. Although most of the titles listed in the main part are considered for indexing (i.e. titles of anonymously published works as well as of works filed under authors' names), there are some noteworthy exceptions from this general rule: first, so-called uniform titles (or, supplied titles) as for example "[Review]" or "[Resolution]" are not mentioned in the title index; second, quite unspecific titles like for example "Introductory note" remain widely unconsidered for indexing; third, many of the titles proper mentioned in chapters 8 (the book review section) and 9 (material about Trotskyists) are neglected for title indexing, too. On the other hand: in cases where the topic of a book, pamphlet or article is reflected by its sub-title rather than its title proper, sub-titles are indexed, either additionally to the title proper or substituting it. Last not least it should be mentioned that titles beginning with a number (e.g. "1st anniversary", "10 years", "120 days", "30 questions", "5ième anniversaire", "4,000 listeners") are filed in the title index in binary order before titles beginning with "A". This index lists some 16,000 titles (as Summer 2023).
  • Source index, arranged alphabetically by authors/titles of those monographs, collections, journals and other sources from which component parts (articles, chapters, etc.) have been drawn. With regard to journals, only title, place of publication, and ISSN (if any), are given; in case of works with single or multi-authorship, the same rules apply as described below, with one exception: author's first and middle names are given as initials only. This index lists some 4,000 sources (as Summer 2023).
  • Series index, an alphabetically arranged list of series titles (titles of monographic book series), omitting their numbering. This index lists some 800 series.
  • Dissertation index, listing dissertations, theses and other university works, arranged by (a) countries, (b) locations (places and names of universities or similiar institutions) and (c) authors' names. It should be noted that trade editions of university works [21] are generally not included in this index. This index lists some 650 university works (as Summer 2023).
  • Conference index, listing alphabetically congresses, conferences, symposia and similar events from which items for the main part have been drawn. This index also contains cross-references considering variant names of conferences, places and dates; additionally, all those events are cross-referenced under the standardized keyword "Conference [+ date]". The entry numbers in this index refer to individual contributions to conferences as well as to collections (e.g. proceedings) published as results of such conferences; furthermore they refer to items about such conferences. This index lists some 130 conferences with references to some 700 entries in the main part.

Construction of entries. Bibliographic style

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 have been based since the 1960s. 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 or under title proper, but not under the name of a corporate body. In case of items authored by one to three persons, first author's name is used as 'heading', i.e. it preceeds the title phrase and is separated from this by ":".

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 (digitized) documents, the URL (=uniform resource locator) is replacing the imprint area, and the document's scope as a rule is given by KB or MB (Kilobyte or Megabyte), followed by the approximate number of pages in round brackets. The date of access (i.e. the date on which the document has been retrieved/viewed) 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 ("Accessed..."). It goes without saying that we can't guarantee the correctness and persistence of a given URL since an electronic document may move from one host or server to another or may even 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 square brackets and dots: "[...]".

   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., Thesis (M.A.), 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 – as a rule – are lacking distinct titles proper, are filed with the heading "[Anonymous]" if the authorship could not be clearly identified.

Notes on certain chapters

At the end of this introduction, we should like to give some brief informations concerning certain chapters (or, sub-chapters) of the present bibliography:

  • Sub-chapter 1.1: please note that so-called "hidden" bibliographies are not listed here;
  • Sub-chapter 1.2: entries of the various component parts of a collection listed here are – as a rule – filed individually in the relevant sub-chapters;
  • Sub-chapter 1.4: please note that articles in general encyclopaedias as well as their equivalents in the WWW are mostly neglected;
  • Sub-chapter 3.3.15: this sub-chapter covers items of Soviet and Western provenance dealing with the re-evaluation and the re-assessment of Trotsky and Trotskyism in the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev era;
  • Sub-chapter 5.4: please note that the items listed here are only partly cross-referenced to other chapters; as to Lenin as author it should be mentioned that only such items which were published independently, i.e. in book form, are considered;
  • Sub-chapter 5.5: only resolutions of the supreme authorities of the CPSU and of the supreme bodies of the Comintern are entered here. All entries are headed by the uniform title "[Resolution]" plus the date of adoption and the name of the body which adopted it. The sequence of entries is chronological according to the date of adoption;
  • Chapter 8: this is the book review section of the present bibliography (both reviews of some 100 selected primary works by Trotsky and some 300 secondary works about Trotsky/Trotskyism are considered). Since most reviews and review articles lack distinct titles and many of them are published anonymously, some deviations from the standard description occur, e.g. the usage of uniform titles. The titles of the works under review are mentioned at the top of each entry except in case of review articles (omnibus reviews) where the works under review are mentioned in the notes area at the end of the entry. With regard to the arrangement: in sub-chapter 8.1.02, the records are arranged alphabetically by the (original) titles of Trotsky's works under review; in sub-chapter 8.2.02, the records are arranged by the authors and titles of the secondary works under review;
  • Chapter 9: this chapter provides chiefly biographical information about a selection of some 180 deceased Trotskyists, including some who were committed to the Trotskyist movement only for a certain span of their lives. The selection is more or less arbitrary and it goes without saying that the compilers do not claim any completeness. Arrangement is by the names of the featured persons whose names are mentioned at the top of each entry in chapter 9 ("About...") [22]

Note on transliteration

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" or "Kh". 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.

Note on copyright

As a part of the Lubitz' TrotskyanaNet, the Leon Trotsky Bibliography is protected by © for Wolfgang and Petra Lubitz, Nov. 26, 2004 (see U.S. Copyright Office registration no. TX 6-234-766) — all rights reserved. Permission is granted to electronically copy and to print in hard copy portions of this website for the sole purpose of private use.
All material provided on TrotskyanaNet (of which LLTB is forming a part) is available for re-publication as long as such reprints include verbatim copy of the article/chapter/part in its entirety, respecting its integrity. Furthermore, reprints must cite the authors and "Lubitz' TrotskyanaNet" as the original source including a "live link" to the respective article/chapter/part. The date of access/viewing must be given too.

Note on technical instruments used

All entries and indices of the present bibliography derive from our computerized database LEON. The software used, 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 surely not have come into existence.


We like to conclude this introduction by citing the late Danish historian Gerd Callesen who several years ago wrote about our Trotsky bibliography: "This bibliography is quite an impressive effort. It is extensive, thorough, structurally sound, and contains excellent indexes. In short, it is a truly useful tool for everyone who, for scholarly or political reasons, takes an interest in Trotsky and Trotskyism. Of course, the definition of Trotskyism is somewhat blurred: too many people have used the concept subjectively, either with positive or negative conntotations, for it to signify anything unambiguous. The Lubitzes have done their utmost to remedy this state of affairs by disregarding sectarian restrains and by choosing a broad approach to the subject; they have even gone to the extreme of including some anti-Trotskyist effusions of no real scholarly or curent political value" [23]


Endnotes:

[1] The three printed editions of our Trotsky Bibliography were published by K.G. Saur Verlag (Munich, etc.); 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. – In 2005 we decided to discontinue the publication of printed editions and to substitute them by placing a regularly updated online version within the framework of our TrotskyanaNet website. – It should be mentioned that our Trotsky bibliographies (the printed as well as the online editions) strictly focus on the so-called secondary literature about Trotsky, which implies that for example the various editions of his autobiography (My life [Moia zhizn']) are not considered; however, a very few exceptions occur with regard to Trotsky as author, namely the listing of some items from Trotsky's pen about his elder son, Lev Sedov, and his partner, Natalia Sedova, as well as a short autobiographical sketch written in 1917/18 and published 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 Isaac Deutscher's Trotsky 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 chapter 2.1 of the LLTB]; they were translated into several languages. [By the way: in early 2015, Verso Books (London, New York) for the first time published a one-volume edition of Deutscher's monumental work in English language with title The prophet : the life of Leon Trotsky (1,638 pp.)]
The outstanding significance and impact of this trilogy has been emphasized in many essays and reviews [many of which 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].  –  We can fully agree with Paul Flewers' following assessment: "[...] Deutscher's trilogy is not hagiographic. It is sympathetic, but certainly not uncritical. Indeed, one of its strong points is that he describes how the Soviet regime became bureaucratised and how the Soviet Communist Party became transformed into a ruling élite, and how Trotsky both consciously opposed and inadvertently assisted those processes. Having read a large number of biographies of Trotsky, I remain firm in my opinion that, despite its age and shortcomings, Deutscher's trilogy is still the best account of Trotsky's eventful life and is the work which I would recommend to anyone wishing to learn about one of the last century's most controversial and, for Marxists, inspiring figures" [Flewers, Paul: [Review], in: Revolutionary History, 10.2012 (4), p. 385].
It took some 30 years before another heavyweight biography on Trotsky saw the light, namely Pierre Broué's French-language Trotsky (Paris, 1988), which unfortunately never has been translated into English as at 2016, 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; translations of this book have been published in France, Germany, and Spain). Robert Service's Trotsky immediately caused a lively and vitriolic "historians' dispute", particularly in the United States, Britain, and Germany: while some reviewers highly praised his work, a considerable number of well-known historians, social scientists, and publicists (the majority of them can not at all be considered as being advocates of Trotsky and Trotskyism) not only emphasized the alarming number of sloppy factual errors occuring in Service's book [the German language edition of 2012 has been cleansed from many of those errors] and his missing carefulness with sources and referencing, but also doubted Service's intellectual integrity, criticizing his work as a piece of hackwork or a diatribe, completely unreliable as a reference and even failing to meet the basic standards of historical scholarship (see for example Bertrand B. Patenaude's review in American Historical Review, 116.2011 (3), p. 902, and Hermann Weber's Robert Service has written a diatribe, not a scientific polemic!, electronically published - originally in German - within the framework of the "World Socialist Web Site" in November 2011). Service's Trotsky even has been described - quite correctly - as a sort of 'second assassination' of Leon Trotsky (by pen instead of ice axe, so to speak). However, far away from being the 'final' or 'definite' Trotsky biography, this publication undoubtedly has initialized a remarkable revival of an extensive and profound debate about Trotsky as man, politician, and theoretician. By the way, it should be mentioned that the (French) Wikipedia encyclopaedia has dedicated a long article to this publication, titled Trotski (Robert Service) (22 KB, accessed on July 31, 2012). Bibliographic data of well over 100 reviews, analyses and statements concerning Service's Trotsky, including meta-cricticism (reviews of reviews), are to be found in chapter 8.2.02 of the LLTB.
An almost complete bibliographic listings of major and smaller biographies of Trotsky (e.g. the works by Broué, Carmichael, Cherniavskii, Cliff, Deutscher, Felshtinsky, Mandel, Marie, Moltved, Payne, Pursiainen, Renton, Rubenstein, Segal, Serge, Service, Swain, Thatcher, Vasetskii, Volkogonov, Wistrich, Zagrebel'nyi) as well as of comprehensive works focusing on Trotsky's thought in general (e.g. the works by Knei-Paz, Chattopadhyay, Le Blanc) are presented in LLTB's chapters 2.1, 2.2, and 3.1, respectively.

[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 (Socialist Workers Party) and its youth arm 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 first decade of the 21st century the three main Trotskyist parties together were able to gain up to 10% of the popular vote in general parliamentary or presidential elections there; 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 strengths and weaknesses of the Trotskyist movements in various countries of the world has been accounted by R.J. Alexander in his International Trotskyism 1929-1985 (Durham, NC, 1991) [for detailed table of contents as well as for some chapters available online click here]. According to Alexander (and to other authors, too), 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] Find the bulk of these items listed in chapter 7.3 of our LLTB.

[8] Items dealing with anti-Trotskyist demonology of Stalinist, 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 chapter 3.3.15 and chapter 3.2 of our LLTB. Outside Russia, Volkogonov's two-volume Trotsky biography reflecting the Eltsinite viewpoint is perhaps the best-known, causing a lively controversy among historians and reviewers.

[10] These items are listed in 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 TrotskyanaNet we present features about some 30 Trotsky relevant archives and collections in (Western) 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, S. Rosés Cordovilla, and of course ourselves, see 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 TrotskyanaNet. 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 TrotskyanaNet. You can find some 750 bibliographic records for items emanating from conferences as well as reports about them by checking the conference index of the LLTB. It should be mentioned here that we could not take into account most of the contributions to so-called "virtual" or online symposia that have been held here and there since the beginning of the Covid19 pandemic.

[17] Features about a number of journals chiefly devoted to Trotsky(ism) research are presented in TrotskyanaNet's Journals chapter.

[18] In this chapter of TrotskyanaNet, 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 Coyoacán – a bibliography. For the Trotsky Museum's homepage click here.

[19] For example: "Wolfgang and Petra Lubitz have with great generosity placed their Leon Trotsky Bibliography: International Systematic Guide to Works about Trotsky and Trotskyism on their Trotskyana website. For a number of years this valuable reference work has only been available in printed form. The Lubitzs have foregone sales of the print version of their work, and the movement should be grateful to them for making available a masive collection of bibliographical information that will benefit scholars for many years to come" [Revolutionary History, 11.2013 (1), p. 167].

[20] For better understanding of this, it may be useful to compare our selection procedures for instance with those applied by Sergi Rosés Cordovilla, the author/compiler of the excellent Bibliografia de les obres de i sobre Trotsky editades a Espanya (Barcelona, 2012) where you can find several hundred records of Spanish and Catalan titles which we arbitrarily have not considered because they are beyond our more restrictive selection criteria (see also p. 19 of the just cited work).

[21] 'Trade editions' are academic works by graduates which are produced and disseminated by commercial publishing houses, mostly short after graduation.

[22] With regard to Trotskyists (and some ex-Trotskyists, respectively), it should be mentioned here that our Lubitz' Trotskyana.Net website is not only containing a considerable Name Authority Files section, but also provides Bio-bibliographical Sketches about some 50 more or less renowned (mostly deceased) Trotskyists. Each of these sketches consists of a short biography and a selective bibliography, listing writings by and about the respective person (plus occasionally notes about archives which hold his or her papers and other archival documents). Such bio-bibliographical sketches are provided for M. Abern, E.H. Ackerknecht, G. Breitman, P. Broué, A. Buchman, J.P. Cannon, B. Cochran, C. Cornell, C. Curtiss, I. Deutscher (pt. 1 and pt. 2), H. Epe, P. Frank, J. Frankel, A. Grylewicz, J. Hansen, G. Healy, T. Kerry, R. Klement, A. Krivine, F. Lovell, M. Löwy, L. Maitan, E. Mandel, S. Mangan, G. Moltved, J. Moneta, M. Pablo, E. Reed, S. Santen, O. Schüssler, M. Shachtman, P.N. Siegel, L. Sinclair, J. Van Heijenoort, J.G. Wright et al.

[23] Callesen, Gerd: [Review], in: International Labor and Working-Class History (New York, NY etc.) [ISSN 0147-5479 ], No. 60 (2001), pp. 232-233.


Wolfgang and Petra Lubitz, 2009
last (slightly) rev. January 2024