Lessons of October

This article is part of a series about Leon Trotsky
Personal Childhood and family Train House Museum Russian political activities First exile Russian Revolution of 1905 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Russian Civil War Trade-union debate Kronstadt rebellion Scissors Crisis Deposition Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites" American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky Dewey Commission Assassination perpetrator Political ideology Leninism Democratic centralism Trotskyism orthodox Anti-Stalinist left Soviet democracy Worker's control Affiliations Left Opposition United Opposition Fourth International Bibliography Our Political Tasks Our Revolution 1905 The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects Terrorism and Communism Trotsky's Military Writings Literature and Revolution New Course Lessons of October Towards Socialism or Capitalism? Leon Trotsky on China My Life The Permanent Revolution History of the Russian Revolution The Revolution Betrayed The Stalin School of Falsification Their Morals and Ours: The class foundations of moral practice The Transitional Program Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence Writings of Leon Trotsky The Spanish Revolution, 1931-1939 The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany In Defence of Marxism
v t e

Lessons of October (Russian: Уроки Октября) is a polemical essay of about 60 printed pages in length by Leon Trotsky, first published in Moscow in October 1924 as the preface to the third volume of his Collected Works. The essay was harshly critical of the purported revolutionary failings of Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, two key members of the collective leadership which briefly ruled Soviet Russia in the months after the death of V. I. Lenin. Publication of the essay was used as a pretext for the Soviet leadership to isolate and attack Trotsky, whom the leadership mutually perceived as a threat to accede to supreme power.

In subsequent years Trotsky's essay was reprinted several times under its own covers by the international Trotskyist movement.