The Revolution Betrayed - The Writing of The Revolution Betrayed

The Writing of The Revolution Betrayed

In the spring of 1935 a beleaguered Leon Trotsky formally sought political asylum in the Scandinavian republic of Norway with an appeal to the new Labour Party government in power there. The Norwegian response was slow, and only in early June was Trotsky at last notified that his request had been granted and that he was to proceed to the Norwegian embassy in Paris to obtain a visa. Norwegian politics intervened before Trotsky was able to obtain this document, however, and the visa approval was revoked by the time Trotsky arrived at the embassy on June 10. French police, suspecting a ruse by Trotsky to obtain residence in Paris, from which he had been banned, immediately ordered Trotsky out of the city. Trotsky's planned voyage to Norway was abruptly cancelled.

Norwegian authorities demanded that Trotsky obtain a permit for reentry into France before a visa for travel to Norway would be granted. Finally, after a burst of correspondence and negotiation, the demand for an unobtainable French re-entry permit was dropped and Trotsky was allowed a limited six month visa to enter Norway. As was the case with the terms required previously by the French government, the Norwegian government reserved for itself the right to determine Trotsky's place of residence and to exclude him from the capital city of Oslo. He arrived on June 18, 1935.

The Revolution Betrayed was completed and sent to the publisher on August 4, 1936, immediately prior to the sensational public announcement of the first of three great public Moscow Trials generated by the secret police terror known to history as the Ezhovshchina. When Trotsky became aware of the trial, which would ultimately end in the execution of Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, and other prominent Soviet political figures, a short postscript was tagged on to his introduction in which Trotsky claimed that his current book constituted "advance exposure" of the Stalin regime's effort at "deliberate mystification."