Lessons of October

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.

[1] This trio included Grigory Zinoviev, a close associate of Lenin's for more than two decades who sat as the head of the Communist International; Zinoviev's co-thinker Lev Kamenev, acting chair of the formal Soviet state apparatus, the Council of People's Commissars and secretary of the Politburo; and Joseph Stalin, secretary of the Organization Bureau of the RKP(b), in charge of party affairs and the assignment of party workers to various tasks.

Standing aloof from these was the orator and journalist Leon Trotsky, who had returned from North American exile to join the Bolsheviks early in 1917 to be placed in positions of trust at Lenin's right hand.

As for Zinoviev and Kamenev, the pair stood aloof from the revolutionary uprising entirely, jointly distancing themselves from a forthcoming Bolshevik seizure of power in the pages of a Menshevik newspaper.

[2] Feeling isolated and discredited among the top leadership, Trotsky decided to resign his position as People's Commissar of War rather than to attempt to marshal his forces for a hopeless fight at the Central Committee plenum.

It goes without saying that in analyzing the October Revolution in connection with the German events, I never dreamed of creating a separate 'platform' or ever entertained the idea that my work would be interpreted in that sense.

Leon Trotsky as he appeared shortly before the publication of Lessons of October.
Chief of the Comintern Grigory Zinoviev (1883–1936) was regarded by many Communists of the day as the leading claimant to supreme leadership following the death of Lenin in 1924.
The essay "Lessons of October" first appeared as the foreword to the two part volume on 1917 that was part of Trotsky's Collected Works , published by the State Publishing House.