With his latest film, the Death of Stalin, British director and comic writer Armando Iannucci continues with his recurring motif of the cynicism and self-interest of the professional political class. This time, however, the incompetent politicians being lambasted are not those of the Western establishment, but of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

We publish here extracts from Alan Woods’ introduction to the new Wellred Books’ edition of Ted Grant’s Russia: from Revolution to Counter-revolution, republished this year to celebrate the centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution. In this intro, Alan discusses the enormous gains of the revolution – and how they were destroyed by Stalinist degeneration.

In this video from the recent REVOLUTION! Marxist festival, hosted by Socialist Appeal in London on 21-23 October, Esteban Volkov (Trotsky’s grandson), Alan Woods (editor of In Defence of Marxism), and Rob Sewell (editor of Socialist Appeal) introduce the new Wellred edition of Leon Trotsky’s Marxist masterpiece – his biography of Joseph Stalin.