The Bloc of Oppositions, also known as Trotsky's bloc and called by the Soviet press the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites, was a political alliance created by oppositionists in the USSR and Leon Trotsky by the end of 1932. Trotsky defined it as a conspiratorial bloc in order to fight Stalinist repression in the Soviet Union. Background The various open opposition groups that had tried to oppose Stalin in the Communist Party had failed, and their former members barely had any power. The former leader of the Left Opposition Leon Trotsky was deported from the Soviet Union, Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev were expelled from the party, and the Rights were sidelined. With growing opposition to Joseph Stalin and his collectivization policies, some Bolsheviks decided to form underground opposition groups against him and the party leadership. The bloc was a loose alliance between many of them. Formation and factions By the end of 1932, Leon Trotsky and his son Sedov were having contact with the underground opposition inside the USSR. Many non-trotskyist opposition groups were discontent with the regime and the party leadership at the time. This led to the formation of a "bloc" between them. It was not a fusion of ideologies, in fact, Trotsky feared that other fractions of the bloc would gain much power:The proposal for a bloc seems to me to be completely acceptable. I must make quite clear that we are dealing with a bloc and not a fusion. (...) My proposed declaration is evidently intended for our fraction of the Left Opposition in the strict sense of the term (and not for our new allies). The opinion of the allies, according to which we should wait for the rightwingers to involve themselves more deeply, does not have my agreement, as far as our fraction is concerned. One fights repression by means of anonymity and conspiracy, not by silence. Loss of time is impermissible: from the political point of view, that would amount to leaving the field to the right-wingers. (...) The bloc does not exclude mutual criticism. Any propaganda by the allies on behalf of the capitulators (Grünstein, etc.) will be inexorably, mercilessly resisted by us. The Trotskyist groups In Sedov and Trotsky's letters they are only referred to as 'our group'. Not much is known about its members at the time, other than the fact that Andrei Konstantinov and Ivan Smirnov were some