Vadim Rogovin

The second reason is that with a few exceptions of émigrés, all Trotskyists were physically eliminated by Stalin so that there are virtually no memoirs, and nearly all documents of the Left Opposition were made inaccessible.

Unfortunately the memoirs of "true" Trotskyists (as opposed to the ones falsely accused of Trotskyism during Soviet repressions), are close to none, because all these real political opponents were physically eliminated.

Fortunately the policy of glasnost had led to the opening of numerous archives, which make it possible to better trace the evolution towards Stalinism.

Rogovin writes that the treatise did not consider the debunking of various misconceptions, in order not to unnecessarily disrupt the harmony of the exposition of the second alternative mentioned above: to demonstrate that Stalinism was not the only logical possibility of the evolution of the principles of Bolshevism.

With the above purpose in mind, the major focus of the treatise was necessarily Trotskyism and the Left Opposition movement within Bolshevism.

For example, historian Yuri Felshtinsky recognized the value of his work, while expressing an opinion that ..Все эти книги, однако, проникнуты безудержной апологетикой Троцкого и проистекающим отсюда догматизмом ("All of these books, however, are imbued with rampant apologetics of Trotsky and with the dogmatism stemming from the former.").