Continuing our commemoration marking the 75th anniversary of the death of Leon Trotsky, we publish here an introduction by Alan Woods to Trotsky’s masterpiece: the Revolution Betrayed.

The events of the Russian Revolution1917 are the greatest in all of human history. For the first time in history, the exploited masses fought back and won. And yet within 10 years, the Soviet Union had degenerated into a bureaucratic and totalitarian regime, with Stalin at its head. How did this process occur? And what is Stalinism?

The decision of Lawrence & Wishart to demand that the Marxist Internet Archive (marxists.org) take down the collected works of Marx and Engels from their website has sparked justified outrage across the internet. Such works should not be a source of profit for publishers, but a freely available source of revolutionary education for workers and youth.