Left Opposition

The Left Opposition was a faction within the Bolshevik Party from 1923 to 1927, headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January 1924. Originally, the battle lines were drawn between Trotsky and his supporters who signed The Declaration of 46 in October 1923, on the one hand, and a triumvirate (known by its Russian name troika) of Comintern chairman Grigory Zinoviev, Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin and Politburo chairman Lev Kamenev on the other hand. The troika was supported by the leading party theoretician and Pravda editor Nikolai Bukharin and by Sovnarkom Chairman (prime minister) Alexei Rykov, who would later be branded the Right Opposition by Stalin. Trotsky and his supporters were joined by the Group of Democratic Centralism.

The first confrontation between the Left Opposition and the troika occurred in October 1923 – January 1924, first secretly and then, from early December on, openly. The troika won decisively at the XIII Party Conference in January 1924 and its victory was reaffirmed at the XIIIth Party Congress in June 1924. The second confrontation took place in October–December 1924 during the so-called "Literary Discussion" and ended with the removal of Trotsky from his ministerial post on 6 January 1925.

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