Trotsky Expelled from the Communist Party

On November 12, 1927, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) expelled Leon Trotsky, a principal architect of the 1917 October Revolution, from its ranks. The decision was a decisive victory for Joseph Stalin in the power struggle that followed Vladimir Lenin's death and set Trotsky on the path to internal exile, deportation, and eventual assassination.

Historical Context

After Lenin's death in January 1924, a collective leadership of Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev, and Stalin governed the party, with Stalin using his post as General Secretary to build a network of loyal appointees. Trotsky, the organizer of the Red Army and a leading theorist, had clashed with Lenin before 1917 but joined the Bolsheviks that year and was widely regarded as second only to Lenin. The triumvirate turned against him in 1923, denouncing his writings as factionalism. By 1926 Trotsky had allied with Zinoviev and Kamenev in the Joint Opposition, which opposed Stalin's doctrine of "socialism in one country" and demanded faster industrialization and party democracy. The opposition was defeated at the Fifteenth Party Conference in October 1926, and its leaders were removed from the Politburo.

What Happened

In 1927 the Joint Opposition attempted a final public stand, organizing demonstrations and printing an illegal platform during the celebrations of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. The Central Committee and Central Control Commission responded by expelling Trotsky and Zinoviev from the party on November 12, 1927; Kamenev and dozens of other oppositionists followed. At the Fifteenth Party Congress in December, the remaining opposition leaders were expelled, and the Congress formally condemned the opposition as a deviation. Trotsky was first sent to Alma-Ata in Soviet Central Asia in January 1928, then deported from the Soviet Union to Turkey in February 1929, later living in France, Norway, and finally Mexico, where a Stalinist agent, Ramón Mercader, assassinated him in August 1940.

Significance & Legacy

The expulsion marked the effective end of open factional politics within the Bolshevik Party and the consolidation of Stalin's personal power. It also signaled the defeat of the idea of permanent revolution associated with Trotsky in favor of "socialism in one country," and it preceded the forced collectivization, rapid industrialization, and purges of the 1930s. Trotsky's exile turned him into a global critic of Stalinism; his writings and the Fourth International he founded in 1938 sustained a dissident Marxist tradition, while his murder became one of the most notorious political assassinations of the twentieth century.

Conclusion

The events of November 1927 were a turning point in Soviet history: a revolution led collectively by Lenin's circle ended with one man, Stalin, in command. Trotsky's expulsion demonstrated how party discipline and control of the apparatus could be used to eliminate rivals, and it foreshadowed the repression that would define the Soviet Union for decades.