Why did trotsky say this about peasantry?

Question by Jasmine.: why did trotsky during communist regime in russia say this?
he argued that “”the peasantry are incapable of independent revolutionary action”
when did he say this? was it during the tsarist regime still? and why did he say that? what was he implying? was he trying to say that the peasants were hopeless and incompetent due to the pressure from above and ignorance due to lack of education and knowledge of anything other than “autocracy, orthodoxy, nationality” ?
Answers and Views:

Answer by Spellbound
Trotsky wrote this in his work of 1906 about the 1905 Revolution – Results and Prospects, so, yes, the Tsar was still in power.
He was reflecting Marxist orthodoxy which stated that a socialist revolution could only come about in a modern, urban and industrialised country. This was because Marx argued that history progresses in distinct stages, and a country with a rural based economy, where the majority of the population were peasants, was still in a backwards stage of history. The country, therefore, had to undergo a capitalist revolution – leading to industrialisation, before it could have a socialist revolution.
Coupled with this Marxist orthodoxy, was Trotsky’s (and most of the other leading Marxist thinkers) ideas about the peasants being naturally conservative – as you pointed out, the lack of education and deep rooted belief in autocracy, Orthodoxy and nationality.
There was a further motive for Trotsky to state this, that neither wing of the Russian Social and Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) – the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks – were the most popular, nor the most effective radical, anti-Tsarist group. The peasant based Socialist Revolutionary Party which had grown out of the radical and violent Narodniki movement was very popular, especially in the countryside, and had carried out a number of successful assassinations, manor house burnings, and other terrorist attacks. Trotsky was attempting to demonstrate that the RSDLP, and only the RSDLP, offered a viable method of removing the Tsar and establishing a fairer, socialist, society.

See:
http://www.marxists.org/index.htm
Trotsky, A Biography – Robert Service

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