Brendan Clifford on the Russian Revolution.  Parts 1 to 3.  Parts 4 to 6.
“I had many discussions … trying to get my head around the idea that the [Russian] revolution was destined to failure by international circumstances, but that it also failed, because it was betrayed by those who assumed the leadership of it.  To my mind the idea that it was betrayed implied that it might have succeeded…

“Going through Trotsky’s later accounts of why he did not become leader in 1924, I found much of his pre-Revolution dislike of Leninism re-surfacing as criticism of Stalinism, but with the addition of distaste for the uncouth company of the workers who were increasingly encountered in Stalin’s circles.”