The Balkan Wars: 1912-13

In 1912, on the eve of World War I, war broke out throughout the Balkans, shaking all of Europe. This event, together with the Yugoslav revolution of the 1940s, helped shape the history of a region that today is again embroiled in conflict.

Covering the 1912-13 war as correspondant for a Kiev socialist newspaper was noted Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, then living in Vienna.

Trotsky's eyewitness dispatches analyze the military developments and describe the effects of the war on working people, the diplomatic manouevering of the Great Powers of Europe, and the political aims of the ruling classes in Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey. Trotsky also provides sketches of the Iranian revolution of 1905-11, the Young Turk revolution of 1908, and the activities of working-class parties in the region.