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| Title | One year of revolution |
| Alternative Title | One year of revolution: celebrating the first anniversary of the founding of the Russian Soviet Republic, November 7, 1918 |
| Creator (LCNAF) |
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| Publisher | Socialist Publication Society |
| Date | 1918 |
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| Subject.Geographic (TGN) |
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| Genre (AAT) |
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| Language | English; Russian; German |
| Type (DCMI) |
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| Original Item Extent | 32 pages; 28 cm |
| Original Item Location | DK265.S62 1918 |
| Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b8304499~S11 |
| Original Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
| Digital Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
| Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/scpamp |
| Repository | Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries |
| Repository URL | http://libraries.uh.edu/branches/special-collections |
| Use and Reproduction | Public Domain |
| File Name | index.cpd |
| Title | Image 10 |
| Format (IMT) |
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| File Name | uhlib_6770052_009.jpg |
| Transcript | months in which those staunch, faithful and true men and women of the Russian Revolution fought side by side with us in our own movement shed a bright glow upon this first anniversary of the Soviet Republic, for we feel that we are flesh of their flesh and spirit of their spirit. * When Trotzky landed here his name was known only to his own countrymen and to a handful of German Socialists. In the ten weeks of his stay he had become one of our most popular speakers and writers. Notwithstanding the difficulties that lie in the way of a man understanding and speaking only a few words of the English language, in not quite three months Trotzky played such an important part in the party movement of the City of New York that the future promised much for him and for the ideas and forces that he represented. Had Trotzky remained a year in the United States, our movement would have found in him a great and splendid leader. For Trotzky is born to lead men. His unusual talent as a speaker won the hearts and minds of his hearers everywhere. Without pose, strikingly free from the arts and arti- rices that most speakers use to enhance the effectiveness of their speeches, he was yet able to stir an audience of thousands with the same personal magnetism that made itself so unmistakably felt in the smallest gathering. And to his great credit be it said that Trotzky was always as ready to speak to twenty persons as he was to address a mass meeting" ot as many thousands—unlike so many of our miniature "leaders" who consider it beneath their dignity to speak to small audiences. Leon Trotzky belongs to that rare class of Socialist speakers who are at once theoreticians and propagandists. In his speeches, in other words, there was nothing of gray, dry and abstract theory. He used the events of the day to prove the reality of Socialist theory, he made them the basis of scientific research and explanation. Thus every one of his speeches became a discussion of scientific Socialism, a profession of faith in the theories of Marx, and at the same time, a plea for development away from the old, outworn tactics of pure and simple parlia mentarism to a live stirring up of the masses, to revolutionary mass action. Trotzky's political method is the historic method. Like a red line this historic materialistic conception of world development permeates his speeches and his writings. He applies it mercilessly and unsparingly to every new situation that arises, analyzing it in the light of its historic and its material background, dividing what seems to others an inseparable whole into its component parts. And then in one bold stroke, with the keenness and certainty of an inspired prophet he reveals coming events while they still are hidden behind the dark curtain of the future from the eyes of ordinary mortals. Like all Russians, he is an inspired pamphleteer. In less than no time, almost as if by magic, he produces one brochure after the other as event follows event. What would take another months to produce he accomplishes in a few days. And then thousand times more effectively. Every single phase of the Revolution is treated with a clearness of vision that amounts to genius; in them the great social revolution of the Russian proletariat has been chronicled. One of Trotzky's books, "From the October Revolution to Brest Litovsk," that will make its appearance shortly in the English language, is an excellent example of this method. The freshness of style, the sureness of its presentation remind one forcibly of Karl Marx's "Eighteenth Brumaire." In this brochure of about one hundred pages the author gives us an undying picture of the third phase of the Russian Revolution. Trotzky, the far-seeing statesman, the brilliant journalist, the enthusiastic agitator, is not a pioneer in thought and creation as Marx was. But far more than the founder of the modern socialist movement, he stands in the roaring current of events and is therefore destined to play an important role in their historical development. His analysis thus becomes, in a certain sense, more forceful than that of the socialist master. It is more spontaneous, more empirical, it is reality, life itself. It is a noteworthy fact that in every country Russians have taken a leading part in the national movements. This is not only because o ili 8 i |