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In Memory of Leon Trotsky (Quote of the Week) Seventy-five years ago, on 20 August 1940, Leon Trotsky was killed by a Stalinist agent in Mexico. Co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Trotsky was an intransigent fighter against the Stalinist bureaucracy’s betrayal of that revolution, founding the Fourth International in 1938. Today, we in the ICL fight to reforge the Fourth International, destroyed by liquidationist forces in 1951-53, as the indispensable prerequisite for the victory of world socialism. We print below excerpts from a statement by the National Committee of the then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party on Trotsky’s assassination. Leon Trotsky, organizer of the Russian Revolution and its true representative, has finally been done to death by Stalin, the betrayer of the Revolution and the mass murderer of the whole heroic generation that made it.... But the great fruit of Trotsky’s more than forty years of dauntless work and struggle remains imperishable. For Trotsky, who stands on a historical eminence by the side of Marx and Lenin, worked like them not for a day, but for eternity. The richest products of his genius are preserved in his writings. They constitute both a faultless analysis of the decay of capitalism and a clear program of struggle for the socialist future of humanity. Armed with these weapons the oppressed of all the world will arise out of the bloody welter of the present society and fight their way to freedom. They have been deprived of the physical presence of Trotsky. But no power on earth can destroy the mighty inheritance he has left behind—the gift of his incomparable genius to the cause of humanity.... Comrade Trotsky was not only the teacher of the vanguard of the proletariat. He was also its organizer. He was the architect of the Fourth International, the new international association of revolutionary workers. It is arising on firm foundations in all countries of the world. The Fourth International will be the greatest monument to the memory of Trotsky. It will be the instrument for the final realization of the aim to which he devoted his entire life—the liberation of all humanity from slavery, exploitation and war. —“Fight Now as Never Before, Comrades!” Socialist Appeal, 24 August 1940
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