Stalin’s gangsters

A final book by Leon Trotsky. A month after his assasination the book was published for the first time by Adolfo Zamora, friend and lawyer of Leon Trotsky, in September 1940. His informative prologue is also published in this edition. The Gangsters of Stalin is a compilation of writings that make up Leon Trotsky’s last fight against Stalinism and the political campaign that the Stalin mounted as part of the preparation to assassinate him. At the beginning of 1940, the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) increased its slander and defamation campaign with the persistent help of Lombardo Toledano, general secretary of the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM). The PCM, as Esteban Volkov affirms in his book, “upon receiving Leon Trotsky’s asylum in Mexico, acquires a leading role on the Stalinist horizon.

Stalin’s decision to assassinate Trotsky was based on the revolutionary dangers involved in the world conflict that began in September 1939 and the urgent need to end the life of someone who constitude a replacement direction in the USSR. This was evidenced in the “Contraprocesos de Moscu,” which showed the illegitimacy and criminality of Stalinism, its counterrevolutionary character, and Trotsky as an alternative direction.

The Gangsters of Stalin allows us to view the scenario that the PCM mounted with the help of Lombardo Toledano, and so many other “personalities.” This included an attempt on his life by the Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros accompanied by a group of men. It also reveals the siege suffered by Trotsky in his last months of life and his unwavering and tireless battle for truth and revolution. A massive funeral procession accompanied the body of Trotsky which, in addition to expressing the pride of harboring him in Mexico, was a way to actively confront Stalin’s slander campaign that continued after his assassination. The funeral also highlighted, through the voices of two hundred to three hundred thousand Mexican workers, that his revolutionary legacy would continue untainted.