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Known in the West up until now predominantly through the publication of a limited number of his economic writings, E.A. Preobrazhensky has gone down in history primarily as a theorist of the ‘transition period’ in socialist economics and as a prominent victim of Stalin's purges. A new series of his collected works, however, publishing for the first time large quantities of material from his diaries, letters and newspaper work, looks set to transform his reputation, and underline his stature as one of the most original and sympathetic figures produced by the Bolshevik Revolution.

Lenin's Imperialism. The Highest Stage of Capitalism formed part of the canon of mainstream Marxist writing for much of the 20th century, and also represented a critical reference point for Marxist attempts to interpret international relations for much of the same period. At one and the same time both a stinging condemnation of the betrayal of the European working class by their political leaders in 1914, and a synthesis, with some original elements, of existing contemporary Marxist theory on imperialism, Lenin's ‘popular outline’ subsequently (from around the time of the ‘New Left’ onwards) came under increasing fire for being incoherent, irrelevant and overrated. This article revisits both the contemporary genesis of the text, and the question of its longer term pertinence and relevance in the light of capitalism's current crisis.

Robert Service: Trotsky. A Biography. London, Macmillan, 2009 ISBN: 978-1-4050-5346-4 In this mammoth 600-page tome Robert Service has attempted to write what he no doubt hopes will be a definitive...