New Course (Trotsky book)

Frequently reprinted in various European and Asian language over subsequent decades, the tract is considered a first explicit statement of the Left Opposition within the ruling All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) criticizing a trend towards bureaucracy and an attenuation of worker's control over the political process.

The book consisted of a collection of topical articles first published in the official Communist Party newspaper Pravda in December 1923 with additional material appended.

In the spring of 1921, with the Soviet Russia stricken by hyperinflation and factory shutdowns, its great cities depopulated and its economy on the verge of collapse, Soviet leader V. I. Lenin and the ruling Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (RKP) launched a program of internal trade liberalization and monetary reform known as the New Economic Policy.

This market-based retreat from the collectivist goals of the period of War Communism proved controversial among Communist Party members, with various interpretations of the deep meaning of the new program and schemes for a path forward to socialism in largely agrarian Russia gaining currency.

Moreover, by this date initial dreams of an immediate world revolution in the industrialized nations of Western Europe which would rescue the economy of economically backwards Russia had faded, indelibly colored by the failure of the 1923 Communist uprising in Germany in October of that year.

Although The New Course did not appear in English translation until 1943, it was published in a French translation by Boris Souvarine as early as 1924.
the original brochure by the " Krasnaya Nov " Publishing
The New Course was not published in English until this September 1943 edition by the Workers Party , featuring a translation by Max Shachtman .