History of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union (1917–27) the position of People's Commissar of War before the end of the year. In 1925, Trotsky was denounced for his essay "Lessons of October," which criticized Zinoviev and Kamenev for initially opposing Lenin's plans for an insurrection in 1917. Trotsky was also denounced for his theory of permanent revolution which contradicted Stalin's position that socialism could be built in one country, Russia, without a worldwide revolution. As the prospects for a revolution in Europe, particularly Germany, became increasingly dim through the 1920s, Trotsky's theoretical position began to look increasingly pessimistic as far as the success of Russian socialism was concerned.
Mikhail Matveyev (NKVD officer) Mikhail Matveyev (NKVD officer) Mikhail Rodionovich Matveyev (1892-1971) (Михаил Родионович Матвеев) was a senior NKVD executioner, sent to begin the mass shootings at Sandarmokh in Karelia in the late 1930s. After completing two years of education at a village school, the young Matveyev moved to St Petersburg where he held various occupations: he was a doorman at an apartment block, for instance, before becoming in 1913 an assistant to a metal-worker at the Vulcan works. Following the 1917 February Revolution he joined the Bolsheviks and soon was serving as a Cheka executioner. In 1923 he took a few years away