Left Opposition

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The Left Opposition (Russian: Левая оппозиция, romanized: Levaya oppozitsiya) was a faction within the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) from 1923 to 1927 headed by Leon Trotsky, who formed it to mount a struggle against the perceived bureaucratic degeneration within the party leadership headed by Joseph Stalin. The Left Opposition advocated for a programme of rapid industrialization, voluntary collectivisation of agriculture, and the expansion of a worker's democracy in a wider framework with the New Economic Policy. Intellectuals who had previously lived in exile during the Tsarist era would constitute the core of the Left Opposition during the succession period. Members represented the most internationalist elements of the party and held offices at the highest responsibility with Christian Rakovsky, Adolph Joffe, and Nikolay Krestinsky holding ambassadorial posts in London, Paris, Tokyo, and Berlin. Originally, the battle lines were drawn between Trotsky and his supporters who signed...

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