This is the first in a seven-volume series by the Russian Marxist historian, Vadim Rogovin, on the history of the Soviet Union between 1922 and 1940. Rogovin traces the complex inner-party struggles of 1923?1927, analyzing contemporaneous official documents, speeches and articles, Soviet archival material, memoirs of participants in political life, and documents by members of the Left Opposition that were suppressed in the Soviet Union for many decades. This richly illustrated volume includes an appendix of biographies of many oppositionists who were erased from official Soviet history.