Problems of Everyday Life: Creating the Foundations for a New Society in Revolutionary Russia

Articles from the early Soviet press on social and cultural issues in the struggle to forge new social relations. The advance of culture, Trotsky notes, requires an increasing level of scientific, technological, and industrial development to free humanity from a dependence upon nature that is degrading, a goal that can only be completed when social relationships are free from mystery and do not oppress people.

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) was part of the central leadership forged by Bolshevik party leader V.I. Lenin that organized the revolutionary conquest of power by workers and peasants in Russia in October 1917. Trotsky commanded the Red Army, was a founding leader of the Communist International, and of communists in the Soviet Union and worldwide who fought to continue Lenin’s proletarian internationalist course. He continued that struggle from exile after being deported in 1929. Trotsky was murdered in Mexico in 1940 by Stalin’s secret police.