If you know anything about the GULAG, you know that people sent there as "counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activists" very often did not have anything to do with counter-revolutionary activist, or Trotsky, or anything. Very often it was just being unlucky, and even then, they strongly believed in the Soviet system, they just thought there was some clerical error, and tried to appeal to higher leader to have those errors fixed - without understanding the point of the Terror.

Most people eventually did understand, of course.

And... The point of the Terror was ..?

Stalin's regime maintained its citizens in a state of fear and uncertainty to stay in power.

> This guy was basically sent to prison for 'participating in “counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities.'

This is catchall phrase that means essentially nothing. He was publicly critical of Stalin and his father was a priest, which sounds more like real reason.

Actually, the wiki page on the writer says he tried to share Lenin's last testament, which was a threat to Stalin and suggested Trotsky push Stalin out of power.

You should read the whole article. He is essentially rightly predicting Hitler will bring about war despite his pacifist talk at that point in time.

> I don't know that much about the Soviet Union.

> I have been following some leftist stuff and saw this article recently by Trotsky.

so Trotsky has a better reputation than most leadership from the early USSR; he didn't last long in power.

It's worth studying the USSR as an example of how a revolution can simultaneously fail and succeed; how leftists fail, sort of, how ordinary people survive.

A lot of blinders were on people in the early years of the USSR - much of what was said positive was wrong; much of what was said negative later on wasn't really too right either. Again, blinders. What's incontrovertible is that the violence was endemic to the system for decades; Stalin's time was really bad. How that affected people... that's debated.

I've read some about the USSR and Russian history; there's libraries written on it by now. Recent scholarship seems to be better IMO; less emotionally charged and tainted by Cold War attitudes.

I thought these authors' work was well done - it captures a lot of the pre-1937 mode of the USSR in a relatively humorous way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilf_and_Petrov