Ronald Suny in the context of "Trotskyists"

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⭐ Core Definition: Ronald Suny

Ronald Grigor Suny (born September 25, 1940) is an American Armenian historian and political scientist. He is the William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Michigan and Emeritus Professor of history and political science at the University of Chicago. Suny served as director of the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies from 2009 to 2012; the Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History at the University of Michigan from 2005 to 2015; and the William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History from 2015 to 2022.

Suny was the first holder of the Alex Manoogian Chair in Modern Armenian History at the University of Michigan, after beginning his career as an assistant professor at Oberlin College. He served as chairman of the Society for Armenian Studies (SAS) in 1981 and 1984. He was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) in 2005 and given the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) Distinguished Contributions to Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Award in 2013. He has received the National Endowment for the Humanities Grant (1980–1981), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1983–1984), and a Research and Writing Grant, Program on Global Security and Sustainability, from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (1998–1999), and was twice a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford (2001–2002, 2005–2006). He was a 2013 Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.

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Ronald Suny in the context of Trotskyism

Trotskyism (Russian: Троцкизм, Trotskizm) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism and Leninism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist, and a BolshevikLeninist as well as a follower of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg. His relations with Lenin have been a source of intense historical debate. However, on balance, scholarly opinion among a range of prominent historians and political scientists such as E. H. Carr, Isaac Deutscher, Moshe Lewin, Ronald Suny, Richard B. Day and W. Bruce Lincoln was that Lenin's desired "heir" would have been a collective responsibility in which Trotsky was placed in "an important role and within which Stalin would be dramatically demoted (if not removed)".

Trotsky advocated for a decentralized form of economic planning, workers' control of production, elected representation of Soviet socialist parties, mass soviet democratization,the tactic of a united front against far-right parties,cultural autonomy for artistic movements, voluntary collectivisation, a transitional program, and socialist internationalism. He supported founding a vanguard party of the proletariat, and a dictatorship of the proletariat (as opposed to the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", which Marxists argue is a major component of capitalism) based on working-class self-emancipation and council democracy. Trotsky also adhered to scientific socialism and viewed this as a conscious expression of historical processes. Trotskyists are critical of Stalinism as they oppose Stalin's theory of socialism in one country in favour of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Trotskyists criticize the bureaucracy and anti-democratic current developed in the Soviet Union under Stalin.

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