[1] In 1905, after a European exile, Trotsky returned to Russia for the abortive 1905 Russian Revolution, where his oratory made him a leading figure in the Saint Petersburg Soviet, until the Tsarist police arrested him in December.

[2] After again escaping Tsarist Russia for continental Europe, for a decade Trotsky politically transitioned from supporting the Menshevik wing of the RSDLP to advocating for the unity of the warring factions in 1913 with the establishment of the Mezhraiontsy, the Inter-District Organization of United Social-Democrats.

[3] The virtual collapse of the old regime during the latter part of World War I motivated the Mezhraiontsy to make amends with their Bolshevik rivals, headed by Vladimir Lenin.

In early 1917, Trotsky returned from exile in New York City by way of Canada to join forces as a member of the Bolshevik party's governing Central Committee.

[3] Trotsky played an important role in the groundwork-laying for the seizure of power from the Russian Provisional Government headed by Alexander Kerensky, on November 7[O.S.

[4] Lenin's retirement from active political life in the aftermath of a series of strokes in 1923 followed by his death in January 1924 ushered in an interregnum during which several leading candidates jockeyed for supremacy.

Although separated from his dwindling band of committed followers in the USSR, Trotsky continued to function as an opposition political leader from exile throughout the rest of his life.

of correspondence and negotiation, the demand for an unobtainable French re-entry permit was dropped and Trotsky was allowed a limited six-month visa to enter Norway.

[11] Trotsky was preoccupied with the question of whether the emerging bureaucratic political and economic formation in the USSR constituted a new social model not encompassed previously by Marxist doctrine.

[11] The book is a wide-ranging critique of the USSR and its rulers, and advocates a new political revolution to overthrow the Stalinist dictatorship and bring about a socialist democracy.

It opens by praising the positive economic advances of the USSR since the death of Lenin, citing growth in electrical power, agricultural output, industry, etc.

Leading members of the ruling party (who were overwhelmingly from the more privileged stratum of Soviet society) responded to the stagnation by promoting capitalist reforms in the 1980s, rather than expanding more democratic forms of socialism.