Book Description
Leon Trotsky has always aroused strong passions-historians love and hate him in equal measure. This new biography provides a full account of his political life, based upon a wealth of primary sources, including previously unpublished material.

Ian D. Thatcher paints a new picture of Trotsky's standing in Russian and world history. Key myths about Trotsky's heroic work as a revolutionary, especially in Russia's first revolution of 1905 and the Russian Civil War, are thrown into question. Although Trotsky had a limited understanding of crucial contemporary events such as Hitler's rise to power, he was an important thinker and politician, not least as a trenchant critic of Stalin's version of communism.

This study provides a clear and accessible introduction to Trotsky's life and thought for anyone interested in twentieth-century Russian and World History. ... Read more

Book Description
Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused as much controversy as the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky's extraordinary life and extensive writings have left an indelible mark on revolutionary conscience, yet there was a danger that his name would disappear from history. Originally published in 1954, Deutscher's magisterial three-volume biography was the first major publication to counter the powerful Stalinist propaganda machine. In this definitive biography Trotsky emerges in his real stature, as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian Revolution. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

a sweeping and penetrating masterpiece
This first of 3 volumes in Deutscher's biography is an astonishing and captivating achievement. Deutscher weaves together character study, drama, and historical narrative to give an authoritative account of Trotsky's life and the Russian Revolution from Trotsky's birth up through the quickening bureaucratization of Soviet Russia in 1921.

Deutscher's deft handling of the facts, personalities, ideas, and situations of the time is simply unparallelled, and makes for a tremendously enjoyable and informative read.

Essential material for anyone exploring the question of where socialism went wrong in the 20th century.

DEFEATED, BUT UNBOWED
THIS YEAR MARKS THE 66TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF LEON TROTSKY-ONE OF HISTORY'S GREAT REVOLUTIONARIES. IT IS THEREFORE FITTING TO REVIEW THE THREE VOLUME WORK OF HIS DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHER, THE PROPHET ARMED, THE PROPHET UNARMED, THE OUTCAST.

Isaac Deutscher's three-volume biography of the great Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky although written over one half century ago remains the standard biography of the man. Although this writer disagrees , as I believe that Trotsky himself would have, about the appropriateness ofthetitle of prophet and its underlying premise that a tragic hero had fallen defeated in a worthy cause, the vast sum of work produced and researched makes up for those basically literary differences. Deutscher, himself, became in the end an adversary of Trotsky's politics around his differing interpretation ofthe historic role ofStalinism and the fate of the Fourth International but he makes those differences clear and in general theydoes not mar the work. I do not believe even with the eventual full opening of all the old Soviet-era files any future biographer will dramatically increase our knowledge about Trotsky and his revolutionary struggles. Moreover, as I have mentioned elsewhere in other reviews while he has not been historically fully vindicated he is in no need of any certificate of revolutionary good conduct.

At the beginning of the 21st century when the validity of socialist political programs as tools for change is in apparent decline or disregarded as utopian it may be hard to imagine the spirit that drove Trotsky to dedicate his whole life to the fight for a socialist society. However, at the beginning of the 20th century he represented only the one of the most consistent and audacious of a revolutionary generation of mainly Eastern Europeans and Russians who set out to change the history of the 20th century. It was as if the best and brightest of that generation were afraid, for better or worse, not to take part in the political struggles that would shape the modern world. As Trotsky noted elsewhere this element was missing, with the exceptions of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and precious few others, in the Western labor movement. Deutscher using Trotsky's own experiences tells the story of the creation of this revolutionary cadre with care and generally proper proportions. Here are some highlights militant leftists should think about.

On the face of it Trotsky's personal profile does not stand out as that of a born revolutionary. Born of a hard working, eventually prosperous Jewish farming family in the Ukraine (of all places) there is something anomalous about his eventual political occupation. Always a vociferous reader, good writer and top student under other circumstances he would have found easy success, as others did, in the bourgeois academy, if not in Russia then in Western Europe. But there is the rub; it was the intolerable and personally repellant political and cultural conditions of Czarist Russia in the late 19th century that eventually drove Trotsky to the revolutionary movement- first as a `ragtag' populist and then to his life long dedication to orthodox Marxism. As noted above, a glance at the biographies of Eastern European revolutionary leaders such as Lenin, Martov, Christian Rakovsky, Bukharin and others shows that Trotsky was hardly alone in his anger at the status quo. And the determination to something about it.

For those who argue, as many did in the New Left in the 1960's, that the most oppressed are the most revolutionary the lives of the Russian and Eastern European revolutionaries provide a cautionary note. The most oppressed, those most in need of the benefits of socialist revolution, are mainly wrapped up in the sheer struggle for survival and do not enter the political arena until late, if at all. Even a quick glance at the biographies of the secondary leadership of various revolutionary movements, actual revolutionary workers who formed the links to the working class , generally show skilled or semi-skilled workers striving to better themselves rather than the most downtrodden lumpenproletarian elements. The sailors of Kronstadt and the Putilov workers in Saint Petersburg come to mind. The point is that `the wild boys and girls' of the street do not lead revolutions; they simply do not have the staying power. On this point, militants can also take Trotsky's biography as a case study of what it takes to stay the course in the difficult struggle to create a new social order. While the Russian revolutionary movement, like the later New Left mentioned above,had more than its share of dropouts, especially after the failure of the 1905 revolution, it is notably how many stayed with the movement under much more difficult circumstances than we ever faced. For better or worst, and I think for the better, that is how revolutions are made.

Once Trotsky made the transition to Marxism he became embroiled in the struggles to create a unity Russian Social Democratic Party, a party of the whole class, or at least a party representing the historic interests of that class. This led him to participate in the famous Bolshevik/Menshevik struggle in 1903 which defined what the party would be, its program, its methods of work and who would qualify for membership. The shorthand for this fight can be stated as the battle between the `hards' (Bolsheviks, who stood for a party of professional revolutionaries) and the `softs' (Mensheviks, who stood for a looser conception of party membership) although those terms do not do full justice to these fights. Strangely, given his later attitudes, Trotsky stood with the `softs', the Mensheviks, in the initial fight in 1903. Although Trotskyalmost immediately afterward broke from that faction I do not believe that his position in the 1903fight contradicted the impulseshe exhibited throughout his career- personally `libertarian', for lack of a better word , and politically hard in the clutch.

Even a cursory glance at most of Trotsky's career indicates that it was not spent in organizational in-fighting, or at least not successfully. Trotsky stands out as the consummate free-lancer. More than one biographer has noted this condition, including his definitive biographer Isaac Deutscher. Let me make a couple of points to take the edge of this characterization though. In that 1903 fight mentioned above Trotsky did fight against Economism (the tendency to only fight over trade union issuesand not fight overtly political struggles against the Czarist regime) and he did fight against Bundism (the tendency for one group, in this case the Jewish workers, to set the political agenda for that particular group).Moreover, he most certainly favored a centralized organization. These were the key issues at that time. Furthermore, the controversial organizational question did not preclude the very strong notion that a `big tent' unitary party was necessary. The `big tent' German Social Democratic model held very strong sway among the Russian revolutionaries for a long time, including Lenin's Bolsheviks. The long and short of it was that Trotsky was not an organization man, per se. He knew how to organize revolutions, armies, Internationals, economies and so on when he needed to but on a day to day basis no. Thus, to compare or contrast him to Lenin and his very different successes is unfair. Both have an honorable place in the revolutionary movement; it is just a different place.

That said, Trotsky really comes into his own as a revolutionary leader in the Revolution of 1905 not only as a publicist but as the central leader of the Soviets (workers councils) which made their first appearance at that time. In a sense it is because he was a freelancer that he was able to lead the Petrograd Soviet during its short existence and etch upon the working class of Russia (and in a more limited way, internationally) the need for its own organizations to seize state power. All revolutionaries honor this experience, as we do the Paris Commune, as the harbingers of October, 1917.As Lenin and Trotsky both confirm, it was truly a `dress rehearsal' for that event.It is in 1905 that Trotsky first wins his stars by directing the struggle against the Czar at close quarters, in the streets and working class meeting halls. And later in his eloquent and `hard' defense of the experiment after it was crushed by the Czarism reaction. I believe that it was here in the heat of the struggle in 1905 where the contradiction between Trotsky's `soft' position in 1903 and his future `hard' Bolshevik position of 1917 and thereafter is resolved. Here was a professional revolutionary who one could depend on when the deal went down.

No discussion of this period of Trotsky's life is complete without mentioning his very real contribution to Marxist theory- that is, the theory of Permanent Revolution. Although the theory is over one hundred years old it still retains its validity today in those countries that still have not had their bourgeois revolutions. This rather simple straightforward theory about the direction of the Russian revolution (and which Trotsky later in the 1920's, after the debacle of the Chinese Revolution, made applicable to what today are called "third world" countries) has been covered with so many falsehoods, epithets, and misconceptions that it deserves further explanation. Why? Militants today must address the ramifications of the question what kind of revolution is necessary as a matter of international revolutionary strategy. Trotsky, taking the specific historical development and the peculiarities of Russian economic development as part of the international capitalist order as astarting point argued that there was no `Chinese wall' between the bourgeois revolution Russian was in desperate need of and the tasks of the socialist revolution. In short,in the 20th century ( and by extension, now) the traditional leadership role of the bourgeois in the bourgeois revolutionin a economically backward country,due to its subservience tothe international capitalist powers and fear of its ownworking classand plebian masses, falls to the proletariat. The Russian Revolution of 1905 sharply demonstrated the outline of that tendency especially on the perfidious role of the Russian bourgeoisie. The unfolding of revolutionary events in 1917 graphically confirmed this. The history of revolutionary struggles since then, and not only in `third world' countries, gives added, if negative, confirmation of that analysis.

World War I was a watershed for modern history in many ways. For the purposes of this review two points are important. First, the failure of the bulk of the European social democracy- representing the masses of their respective working classes- to not only not oppose their own ruling classes' plunges into war, which would be a minimal practical expectation, but to go over and directly support their own respective ruling classes in that war. This position was most famously demonstrated when the entire parliamentary fraction of the German Social Democratic party voted for the war credits for the Kaiser on August 4, 1914. This initially left the anti-war elements of international social democracy, including Lenin and Trotsky, almost totally isolated. As the carnage of that war mounted in endless and senseless slaughter on both sides it became clear that a new political alignment in the labor movement was necessary. The old, basically useless Second International, which in its time held some promise of bringing in the new socialist order, needed to give way to a new revolutionary International. That eventually occurred in 1919 with the foundation of the Communist International (also known as the Third International). Horror of horrors, particularly for reformists of all stripes, this meant that the international labor movement, one way or another, had to split into its reformist and revolutionary components. It is during the war that Trotsky and Lenin, not without some lingering differences, drew closer and begins the process of several years, only ended by Lenin's death, of close political collaboration.

Secondly, World War I marks the definite (at least for Europe) end of the progressive role of international capitalist development. The outlines of imperialist aggression previously noted had definitely taken center stage. This theory of imperialism was most closely associated with Lenin in his master work Imperialism-The Highest Stage of Capitalism but one should note that Trotsky in all his later work up until his death fully subscribed to the theory. Although Lenin's work is in need of some updating to account for various technological changes and the extensions of globalization since that time holds up for political purposes.This analysis meant that a fundamental shift in the relationship of the working class to the ruling class was necessary. A reformist perspective for social change, although not specific reforms, was no longer tenable.Politically, as a general proposition, socialist revolution was on the immediate agenda. This is when Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution meets the Leninist conception of revolutionary organization. It proved to be a successful formula in Russia in October, 1917. Unfortunately, those lessons were not learned (or at least learned in time) by those who followed and the events of October, 1917 stand today as the only `pure' working class revolution in history.

An argument can, and has, been made that the October Revolution could only have occurred under the specific condition of decimated, devastated war-weary Russia of 1917.This argument is generally made by those who were not well-wishers of revolution in Russia (or anywhere else, for that matter).It is rather a truism, indulged in by Marxists as well as by others, that war is the mother of revolution. That said, the October revolution was made then and there but only because of the convergence of enough revolutionary forces led by the Bolsheviks and additionally the forces closest to the Bolsheviks (including Trotsky's Inter-District Organization) who had prepared for these events by the entire pre-history of the revolution. This is the subjective factor in history. No, not substitutionalism, that was the program of the Social Revolutionary terrorists and the like, but if you like, revolutionary opportunism. I would be much more impressed by an argument that stated that the revolution would not have occurred without the presence of Lenin and Trotsky. That would be a subjective argument, par excellent. But, they were there.

Again Trotsky in 1917, like in 1905, is in his element speaking seemingly everywhere, writing, organizing (when it counts, by the way). If not the brains of the revolution (that role is honorably conceded to Lenin) certainly the face of the Revolution. Here is a revolutionary moment in every great revolution when the fate of the revolution turned on a dime (the subjective factor). The dime turned. (See review dated April 18, 2006 for a review of Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution).

One of the great lessons that militants can learn from all previous modern revolutions is that once the revolutionary forces seize power from the old regime an inevitable counterrevolutionary onslaught by elements of the old order (aided by some banished moderate but previously revolutionary elements, as a rule). The Russian revolution proved no exception. If anything the old regime, aided and abetted by numerous foreign powers and armies, was even more bloodthirsty. It fell to Trotsky to organize the defense of the revolution. Now, you might ask- What is a nice Jewish boy like Trotsky doing playing with guns? Fair enough.Well, Jewish or Gentile if you play the revolution game you better the hell be prepared to defend the revolution (and yourself). Here, again Trotsky organized, essentially from scratch, a Red Army from a defeated, demoralized former peasant army under the Czar. The ensuing civil war was to leave the country devastated but the Red Army defeated the Whites. Why? In the final analysis it was not only the heroism of the working class defending its own but the peasant wanting to hold on to the newly acquired land he just got and was in jeopardy of losing if the Whites won. But these masses needed to be organized. Trotsky was the man for the task.

Both Lenin's and Trotsky's calculation for the success of socialist revolution in Russia (and ultimately its fate) was its, more or less, immediate extension to the capitalist heartland of Europe, particularly Germany. While in 1917 that was probably not the controlling single factor for going forward in Russia it did have to come into play at some point. The founding of the Communist International makes no sense otherwise. Unfortunately, for many historical, national and leadership-related reasons no Bolshevik-styled socialist revolutions followed then, or ever. If the premise for socialism is for plenty, and ultimately as a result of plenty to take the struggle for existence off the agenda andput other more creative pursues on the agenda, then Russia in the early 1920's was not the land of plenty. Neither Lenin, Trotsky nor Stalin, for that matter, could wish that fact away. The ideological underpinnings of that fight centered on the Stalinist concept of `socialism in one country', that is Russia going it alone versus the Trostskyist position of the absolutely necessary extension of the international revolution. In short, this is the fight that historically happens in great revolutions- the fight against Thermidor (from the overthrow of Robespierre in 1794 by more moderate Jacobins). What counts, in the final analysis, are their respective responses to the crisis of the isolation of the revolution. The word isolation is the key. Do you turn the revolution inward or push forward? We all know the result, and it wasn't pretty, then or now. That is the substance of the fight that Trotsky, if initially belatedly and hesitantly, led from about 1923 on under various conditions until the end of his life by assassination of a Stalinist agent in 1940.

Although there were earlier signs that the Russia revolution was going off course the long illness and death of Lenin in 1924, at the time the only truly authoritative leader the Bolshevik party, set off a power struggle in the leadership of the party. This fight had Trotsky and the `pretty boy' intellectuals of the party on one side and Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev (the so-called triumvirate).backed by the `gray boys' of the emerging bureaucracy on the other. This struggle occurred against the backdrop of the failed revolution in Germany in 1923 and which thereafter heralded the continued isolation, imperialist blockade and economic backwardness of the Soviet Union for the foreseeable future.

While the disputes in the Russian party eventually had international ramifications in the Communist International, they were at this time fought out almost solely with the Russian Party.Trotsky was slow, very slow to take up the battle for power that had become obvious to many elements in the party. He made many mistakes and granted too many concessions to the triumvirate. But he did fight.Although later (in 1935) Trotsky recognized that the 1923 fight represented a fight against the Russian Thermidorand thus a decisive turning point for the revolution that was not clear to him (or anyone else on either side) then. Whatever the appropriate analogy might have been Leon Trotsky was in fact fighting a last ditch effort to retard the further degeneration of the revolution. After that defeat, the way the Soviet Union was ruled, who ruled it and for what purposes all changed. And not for the better.

In a sense if the fight in 1923-24 is the decisive fight to save the Russian revolution (and ultimately a perspective of international revolution) then the 1926-27 fight which was a bloc between Trotsky's forces and the just defeated forces of Zinoviev and Kamenev, Stalin's previous allies was the last rearguard action to save that perspective.That it failed does not deny the importance of the fight. Yes, it was a political bloc with some serious differences especially over China and the Anglo-Russian Committee. But two things are important here One- did a perspective of a new party, which some elements were clamoring for, make sense at the time of the clear waning of the revolutionary ebbing the country. No. Besides the place to look was at the most politically conscious elements, granted against heavy odds, in the party where whatever was left of the class-conscious elements of the working class were. As I have noted elsewhere in discussing the 1923 fight- that "Lenin levy" of raw recruits, careerists and just plain thugs which enhanced the growing power of the Stalinist bureaucracy was the key element in any defeat. Still the fight was necessary. Hey, that is why we talk about it now. That was a fight to the finish. After that the left opposition or elements of it were forever more outside the party- either in exile, prison or dead. As we know Trotsky went from expulsion from the party in 1927 to internal exile in Alma Ata in 1928 to external exile to Turkey in 1929. From there he underwent further exiles in France, Norway, and Mexico when he was finally felled by a Stalinist assassin. But no matter when he went he continued to struggle for his perspective. Not bad for a Jewish farmer's son from the Ukraine.

The last period of Trotsky's life spent in harrowing exiles and under constant threat from Stalinist and White Guard threats- in short, on the planet without a visa -was dedicated to the continued fight for the Leninist heritage. It was an unequal fight, to be sure but he waged it and was able to cohere a core of revolutionaries to form a new international, the Fourth International. That that effort was essentially militarily defeat by fascist or Stalinist forces during World War II does not take away from the grandeur of the attempt. He himself stated that he felt this was the most important work of his life- and who would challenge that assertion.

But one could understand the frustrations, first the failure of his correct analysis of the German debacle then in France and Spain. Hell a lesser man would have given up. In fact, more than one biographer has argued that he should have retired from the political arena to, I assume , a comfortable country cottage to write I do not know what. But, please reader, have you been paying attention?Does this seem even remotely like the Trotsky career I have attempted to highlight here? Hell, no.

Many of the events such as the disputes within the Russian revolutionary movement, the attempts by the Western Powers to overthrow the Bolsheviks in the Civil War after their seizure of power and the struggle of the various tendencies inside the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International discussed in the book may not be familiar to today's audience. Nevertheless one can still learn something from the strength of Trotsky's commitment to his cause and the fight to preserve his personal and political integrity against overwhelming odds.As the organizer of the October Revolution, creator of the Red Army in the Civil War, orator, writer and fighter Trotsky he was one of the most feared men of the early 20thcentury to friend and foe alike.Nevertheless, I do not believe that he took his personal fall from power as a world historic tragedy. Moreover, he does not gloss over his political mistakes.Nor does Trotsky generally do personal injustice to his various political opponents although I would not want to have been subject to his rapier wit and pen.Politicians, revolutionary or otherwise, in our times should take note.

REVISED JULY 25, 2006

In view of a forthcoming edition.
Firstly, it's necessary to keep in mind that Deustscher was not trying to write a biography of Trotsky- if by that is meant an account of his life for its own sake- nor was he trying to write a history of the Russian Revolution and its leaders as a self-contained account. Deutscher's goals where twofold: to vindicate Trotsky's early opposition against Lenin's conception of the revolutionary party as well as his later opposition to Stalin's policies _in the long run_ and at the same time to acknowledge the necessity of Leninism and Stalinism _in the short run_. However objectionable such a view is today, Deutscher's political dialogue with Trotsky's ghost is superbly argued and documented, and anyone, no matter one's political views, will finish reading this work feeling one knows more about the subject than beforehand. In all the languages this work was translated (and I remember the ruckus produced in Brazil by the 1960s Portuguese trans.) it played havoc with accepted Left commonplaces.

There are many faults in this new Verso edition: first, its paperback binding is atrocious (after a first read, I have already a couple of loose pages); secondly, there lacks an introduction that sets the work in perspective 50 years after its publication, as well as a glossary of unusual terms for today's conservative age (such as comissar, soviet, etc.) and, perhaps, some short biographies of the smaller characters,with dates of birth and decease, positions held, whereabouts, etc.However, the work can still be enjoyably read on its own, even if you miss some (admittedly small) points.

Reading the pre-Soviet era in the post-Soviet age
It is indeed odd to read the early life of Leon Trotsky up to 1920 now, fifteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union he saved from civil war 88 years ago.The reissue of this classic work, written right after WWII to vindicate the man who had done the most to give birth to the Soviet experiment and had been written out of its history by Stalin and his henchmen, is welcome.We are allowed to remember what we would rather forget, that despite our difficulties with Boshevism it did seek to right the wrong of Tsarism, one of the most backward, brutal, and desensitizing systems of oppression known to European man up to that time.Trotsky was unquestionably a genius, a hero, and of course also a man of weaknesses and ego who set the Soviet Union on a path which he could easily justify but which could also be used for more narrow and nefarious purposes by his old enemy, Joseph Stalin.Stalin in fact, while opposing Trotsky at almost every turn before and after Lenin's death, managed in the end to adopt Trotsky's economic policies with a ruthlessness which Trotsky would have approved had he not been forced to disapprove of it as a proscribed enemy of Stalinism.

Trotsky demonstrates that a certain logic of history, in this case Russian history, a history half-European and half-Asiatic, forced the liberation of Russia to become its subjugation to a tyrrany more verbally benevolent but no less horrible than Tsarism.Trotsky was undoubtedly a more enlightened and humane man than the half-barbarian Stalin, but it is not clear that had he beaten Stalin he would have been able to do better than Stalin in two tasks:setting Russia on a path of industrialization and modernization and defeating Hitler.For Stalin, lest we forget because of his crimes, Stalin did these two important things and did them very well indeed.

To relive the heroic days of the Russian Revolution is to be reminded that once Russian Socialism (including Bolshevism) deserved the respect of the onlooking world.The Cold War has distorted much about this history and hidden much from our eyes.We have allowed ourselves to adopt the counter-revolutionary ideology of the reactionary classes when it comes to the birth of Soviet Russia.Isaac Deutscher deserves praise for not only restoring our view of Trotsky but for having restored our view of the Russian revolutionary tradition.

Enjoyable whitewash
For nearly all its existence since Lenin's death in 1924 Trotsky (aka Lev Davidovich Bronstein) was Satan in the Bolshevik's manichean view of the world.Most of the purges of the 1930s were allegedly meant to cleanse Soviet society and its key institutions (the Communist Party, the unions, the Red Army, the intelligentsia) of the Trotskyte taint that, like some sort of Original Sin, pervaded the proletarian dictatorship.Stalin tried to erase Trotsky from the history of the Revolution.He even erased Trotsky's physical attributes, not just by killing him in 1940, half a world away, but by obliterating his likeness wherever it might have been found.

This book, published fifty years ago, tried to counter the Stalinist plot against Trotsky by vindicating his key role in the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, in the Civil War and in the establishment of the Red Army and the Soviet state.The author partially succeeds.Here we see Trotsky in all his glory, as perhaps he would have liked to be remembered, as a child prodigy who from humble rural beginnings quickly found his way in the world, as a professional revolutionary, as a brilliant polemist and orator, who even as a young man was seen as worthy counterpart to Lenin, and far above the rest of the Party, as a good hearted man who tried to promote harmony within the Party and failed at it, as a cultured, civilized "westernizer", much more appealing than the brutal Stalin, who came straight from the "log cabin" of czarist barbarism.He also came up with many good ideas, such as Lenin's New Economic Policy.Deutscher also gives us some of the darker sides to Trotsky's scintillating personna.He was proud and haughty, but brittle.He was abusive to others, often unnecessarily.He often let abstractions and daydreams take the place of reality.And he came up with many bad ideas, such as War Communism and the Militarization of Labor.

But, given Deutscher's profile (he was a Trotskyte) the book is often a competent whitewash.The author shares Trotsky's (and the Bolshevik's) worldview to a great extent, and sees the October Revolution as a worthy action.Mostly, he takes Trotskyte and Bolshevik motives as justification for their actions.He portrays opponents (such as the White Guards and nationalist Ukrainians and Poles) as illegitimate.Nowhere does the awfulness of Soviet rule, and the brutality of the Bolshevik leaders come through, except perhaps in their remarkably abusive writings.To find such bitchiness nowadays one would have to refer to the academic world, where the nastiness is commensurate to the irrelevance of that which is being discussed.

Also, the book is often not very readable as history.The author will often refer to future or past events in a single page, without indication of the precise dates, which makes this a hard book to read for someone not familiar with the October Revolution.

Having said this, a good reason to read this book is that it is beautifully written, and that the author really does get very close to his subject, which is mostly a negative in that he lacks perspective, but does bring the advantage of great liveliness which makes this a very good read.This reminds me of Preston's life of General Franco.Preston hated his subject and was unable utterly to develop any empathy with him, so the book was fairly arid and not insightful.Deutscher has the opposite defect: he gets too close, as perhaps does Nicholas Farrell to Mussolini.The ideal would be like Kershaw's Hitler or Short's Mao: far enough to look the monster in the eye, but not close enough to kiss him.

At this book's end, Trotsky is at the apex of his power, from which he would begin to slip during Lenin's final year.But this is better left to volume II, which I also hope to review.

So read the book, but don't take Deutscher at his word. Complement this with Volkogonov's Trotsky.And with Trotsky's own voluminous writings, which are often very amusing (particularly his biography of Stalin). ... Read more

Product Description
Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) ranks among the greatest and most controversial figures in the political history of the 20th century. During his lifetime he was the target of a vicious campaign of lies orchestrated by the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union, which culminated in his assassination in exile. Nearly 70 years after Trotsky's death, long-discredited Stalinist distortions and falsifications of his ideas and actions are finding their way into mainstream academic literature. In this penetrating analysis of two recent biographies of Trotsky by Professors Geoffrey Swain and Ian Thatcher, two well-known British historians, David North raises troubling questions about the state of contemporary historical scholarship. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent book!
David North begins his seminal review of two recent biographies of Leon Trotsky by Geoffrey Swain and Ian Thatcher by bringing to memory the cruel events of 1937.Nearly 70 years have passed since Stalin's "Year of Terror", in which over one million people perished as the result of a deliberate campaign of political genocide against the last surviving generation of Marxists and Socialists inside the Soviet Union.North reminds us that these killings stemmed from a larger epoch of political persecution against members of the Left Opposition, which was led by Trotsky.At a time when renewed interest in Marxism and the nature of the Soviet Union is coming into play, many students and youth are beginning to hear of the name Trotsky for the very first time.It is within this context that I remember what Santayana said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."North sets the record straight that neither of these two recent works by Thatcher or Swain represent critical (or for that matter) honest academic ventures into the life of one of the 20th century's most complicated and celebrated figures.These so-called biographies regurgitate some of the oldest distortions and falsehoods about the Russian revolutionary, and by many standards are typical of the lazy work that passes for today's university reading material.For instance, in Swain's book the last 12 years of Trotsky's life is only treated with 25 pages!He then goes on to tell us that Trotsky would "write on subjects on which he knew very little," and that he was a firm supporter of "socialism in one country."The method of Ian Thatcher is perhaps worse; every time he criticizes Trotsky's struggle in the party regime he employs the argumentation of Stalin or the Right Opposition, and at one point argues that Trotsky was something of a male chauvinist.Equally misleading and disturbing is Thatcher's constant reference of the Trotsky family as "The Bronsteins," which stinks of anti-Semitism.When one finishes North's review one can easily sense that these biographies represent academic hit pieces, designed to confuse and demoralize students on what might have been in the 20th century had Trotskyism triumphed.North's work represents an important contribution to reverse this process, and by that I mean simply telling the truth. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

History, action, politicsfor the future
Trotsky's massive struggle to point a way forward for the German revolution, and to tell the lessons of the fight with Hitler to the world was one of the greatest struggle in his life.He considered the struggle in Germany so important, that he announced that the Comintern was moribund and unreformable because no great protest issued from the Communist parties after the German Communist Party at Moscow's dictation allowed Hitler to come to power without a fight.

Everywhere, Trotsky points out that the key question was uniting the working class against Hitler, and that Hitler was not an abstract problem, a function of his own movement, but a pawn in the hands of Germany's industrialists, a weapon of capitalism against the threat of a workers revolution in Germany.

He was completely opposed to the sectarian policy of the German Communist party that denounced the German Social Democratic party, a party favored by the majority of German workers, as "social fascists" and worse enemies than Hitler. Trotsky also denounced the way the Communist party bent to the Nazi's by taking nationalist positions and not going to war with it on antiSemetic and other positions.

What we have hear is a fighting history of the years 1931 through 1934 in Germany with Trotsky's constant critique of the German stalinists, and his proposals for the struggle against Hitler.His analysis of the situation is really necessary for anyone who wants to understand this great moment in history. The lessons of this struggle must be absorbed if we are to stop the inevitable repetition of Hitler that capitalism always threatens.

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Book Description
Participating in the revolutionary workers movement "with open eyes and an intense will--only this can give the highest moral satisfaction to a thinking being," Trotsky writes. He explains how morality is rooted in the interests of contending social classes. With a reply by the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey and a Marxist response to Dewey by George Novack. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

THEIR MORALS AND OURS, INDEED!
One of the most tragic results of the Stalinization of a significant part of the international workers movement in the 20th century was the steep decline in the norms of revolutionary morality. In fact a persuasive argument can be made that the Stalinist lies, distortions and destruction of revolutionary cadre, as well as untold innocents, dragged the workers movement to a moral level below even the abysmal bourgeois hypocrisy of modern day liberalism and social democracy. But, although one would be hard pressed to refute that idea that is an argument for another day. Here, Leon Trotsky, as he had in the political struggles to defend the ideas of the socialist revolution raised his lonely voice to defend revolutionary morality against the onslaught of Stalinist falsifiers, liberal cynics, social democratic hypocrites and some of his faint-hearted intellectual former `supporters' who were beginning their rapid retreat from revolutionary politics in the run-up to World War II.

Trotsky's argument is fairly simple and straightforward. Not only do the ruling classes own the means of production and control the educational, cultural and state apparatuses but impose their concept of morality on their society. Thus it follows, in order to break the stranglehold of the ruling classes, it is necessary for revolutionaries to develop their own moral sense- outside and in counter position- to the ruling classes. That truth may not be the most profound idea that Trotsky ever uttered but in light of the rise of fascism, the Stalinist Moscow purge trials and the Stalinist destruction of the Spanish Revolution which formed the backdrop for his analysis it needed saying-and needs repeating today. No militant can hope to change society for the better if he or she does not make a clean break from bourgeois norms of morality, period.

Politics and morality obviously are not counterpoised but flow from the nature of the task. If the politics are not revolutionary then it is hard to see how the moral compass that leads to a revolutionary life would be. Again, Stalinism in its political guise as a form of international class collaborationism blurred the lines between what to a revolutionary is the norm and an `amoral' or `anti-moral' world-weary bureaucratic response. And that tension has not stopped with the defeat of Stalinism. Because leftists did not defeat Stalinism but rather it collapsed from its own internal moral decay and ineptitude that line has never been straightened out.Nowhere is this seen more clearly than today when revolutionaries use the bourgeois institutions against others in the labor movement, including other revolutionaries, to further their aims. Yes, of course we use these alien institutions when we fight the oppressors-that is part of our arsenal. No, we do not ask (really, beg) the class enemy to adjudicate disputes within the labor movement. Learn to fight the political struggle the proper way. To get the necessary foundation for that read this little book.

more popagandistic than academic
Trotsky shared Dewey's utilitarianism. They only disagreed
about the existence of laws governing social evolution . I.e.
Dewey supported piecemeal reforms while Trotsky thought he knew the laws of history. With greater knowledge of historical cookery came his willingness to break more eggs for the omlettes of posterity.

Which Side Are You On?
Which Side Are You On?

Claims to the moral high ground by ruling classes fill the pages of history through today. Their crimes against humanity are morally justified to the masses. This book delves into the class underpinnings of all moral function.

Their Morals and Ours is a valuable help to thinking through what is morality, its roots and changes. Leon Trotsky, a great Marxist and John Dewey, a great liberal pragmatist debate these questions on the eve of World War II.

Stalinism, wars, the ten commandments, strikes, taking of hostages, marriage relations, means and ends, and common sense are some of the subjects discussed. The morality of capitalism vs. the morality of the working-class struggle for liberation from capitalism are counterposed.

Whose Morality?
Written on the eve of World War II, this piece defends revolutionary Marxist and revolutionary morality against progressive-minded detractors, i.e. disillusioned former Marxists who claim the horrific crimes of Stalin were the logical outcome of Lenin's and the Bolsheviks' policies.

In refuting these detractors, Trotsky explains that "morality more than any other form of ideology has a class character."Thus, it was "moral" according to U.S. rulers to use atomic bombs against Japanese cities when Japan had already sought to surrender in World War II and it's OK to threaten countries today with them. But it's "immoral" for North Korea or other countries to seek to develop atomic bombs to defend themselves.

The imperialist "war on terrorism" is a current example.According to ruling class 'morality' it's perfectly moral for the Israeli rulers to murder Palestinian leaders and people as it occupies Palestine.It's OK for the U.S. and U.K rulers to murder Iraqis.But it's Not OK for the Palestinians or people of Iraq to defend themselves and seek to end occupation of their lands.

The Great Humanity has said enough
With morality being preached at us by a president whose pockets are stuffed with Enron dollars, who seeks to bomb and murder around the world, this short book explains a real morality, the morality that flows from the struggle of the great humanity as Che once called it, of the great humanity to say that we have had enough exploitation, enough oppression, enough poverty, enough disease, enough sexism, enough racism, enough throttling of the rights of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, enough.Morality flows from the struggle of oppressed humanity to free itself from the big business rich who pay the priests, the professors, and the cops.We need this book to stand up against them.


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Customer Reviews (4)

Organizing and Defending a Revolution
Organizing and Defending a Revolution

Leon Trotsky was a participant in the most significant class battles of the 20th century. This book collects some of Trotsky's key speeches and writings from the Russian Revolution, and his effort to defend it even when persecuted by the Stalin gang that usurped power and murdered the revolution's leaders. It is a great introduction to the Russian revolution and to Trotsky's other works. Read about how the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies (Trotsky was the President) organized the insurrection; the revolutionary government's efforts to lead working people forward; how Stalin undermined the Soviet Union by seeking a pact with Hitler.

Speeches of a working class leader in action
I found a lot to be learned from this collection of talks, reports and declarations by this leader of the Russian Revolution, given in wildly different settings to different audiences, over decades of revolutionary working class struggle.

Above all, you see Trotsky appealing to, educating, and inspiring workers and peasants with an understanding of the challenges they faced and a confidence in their ability to take on unprecedented historical tasks.

His speech in a Czarist court defending the workers councils (Soviets) of the 1905 Russian revolution is of the same spirit as Nelson Mandela or Fidel Castro when they in turn were on trial by their oppressors.Read the messages and transcripts of speeches given during the whirlwind of the October Revolution in Russia-- a working class leader in day-by-day action.

And especially worth studying, Trotsky's talks to gatherings of workers, soldiers, and party members analyzing the changing relations between the major world powers and between the toiling and exploiting classes of those nations, and the different policies pursued by the new Soviet government as these circumstances changed-- you'll learn a lot about how society works and what it takes to really change it.

Passion, Reason, Power to find our way out
Trotsky was a great orator, a great writer, but above all he was impassioned by his faith in the power of working people to change the world, a vision he never lost.This is where the power of these great speeches comes from.Read them and learn how to harness that power for today's fights. The speeches here don't appeal to cheap emotion, nor do they appeal to fancy phraseology, they appeal to reason, they appeal to history, they appeal to the power of working people to change the world. Read these speeches not for history, but for how their ideas can be used to fight our way out of the disaster modern capitalism has left the world in, and to find a way out for the peoples in the former Stalinized countries.

Attests to Trotsky's genius.
If you're reading this review, you probably already own, or have read some of Trotsky's writings. Which means I don't have to expound to you his genius as a theorist and literary critic. What I will do is explain howthis book further displays Trotsky's remarkable abilities.

Most educatedpeople have a rudimentary knowledge of Trotsky's life, and are well awareof the fact he was one of the greatest orators of the twentieth century.But what 'Leon Trotsky Speaks' does, is succintly show the reader"why" Trotsky was a great orator. 'Trotsky speaks' is ananthology of Trotsky's speeches from the first Russian Revolution of 1905,to his years of exile in the 1930's. When I opened the book, I wasabsolutely dumbfounded by the incredible length of his speeches, everyspeech of his would take hours to recite, which is remarkable, the longestI can give a speech before having my voice go hoarse is about half-an hour.Not only were his speeches long, they are interesting, just reading thespeeches, I realize why audiences were captivated by his words. Although Iwrite from a biased position, being a Trotskist, I highly recommend thisbook, not only will it improve your understanding of Trotsky's genius, itwill also give an aspiring speechwriter a flawless orator to emulate. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

How were women & their families impacted by the Russian Revolution?
What a slim volume brimming with juicy information "Women and the Family" is! Trotsky takes a hard look at the very big economic and social picture and how it will impact on women's emancipation and the development of the family. For example, the fight for electrification, mechanization, the need to curb alcoholism, educate women and children, create communal childcare are all discussed with the focus on how women and their families will be impacted. Sexuality, abortion rights, monogamy, religious influences and more are topics Trotsky addresses. One of the selections is in easy-to-read Q & A format but all the selections are quite readable and to the point. Two articles are written by Trotsky in exile. You can see the crushing contrast ofgains women made in the early years of the Russian Revolution and how Stalinism eroded these gains. The introduction to the book contains useful overview of the role of women in the Russian Revolution, the gains of the first ten years, and the declineof those gains under Stalin. Although Amazon may list this book as out of stock from time to time, it's always available from booksfrompathfinder by clicking on "new and used" near the top of this page.

What women fight for
How can a book that begins, "The Russian Revolution was begun by women" not intrigue a serious reader interested in women's role in history?This sentence begins the introduction to Leon Trotsky's seminal work on women in a revolutionary society. In this collection of letters, articles, and greetings to political rallies, Trotsky takes up the question of woman's equality and emancipation.
In one article written in 1925 Trotsky explains,"from the enslavement of women grow prejudices and superstitions which shroud the children of the new generation..."and in 1937 with the consolidation of Stalinism in the Soviet Union, he writes, from exile, about the counter-revolution against women.The Stalinists have "forgotten that socialism was to remove the cause which impels woman to abortion and not force her into the "joys of motherhood" with the help of a foul police interference in what is to every woman the most intimate sphere of life."Reading this book today strikes me as both instructive and relevant to those who continue to struggle for full women's liberation.

Revolution frees women!
The depth of revolutionary transformation brought on by social upheavals can be judged by how much the status and role of women in that society are altered.This author, Leon Trotsky, was one of the central leaders of the Russian revolution of 1917.In this set of essays, Trotsky examines the effect of that revolution on the status of women and the structure and function of the nuclear family.Prior to 1917, women in Russia were the virtual slaves of their husbands.The Russian revolution began a process of freeing women from this bondage.This book explains the huge advances in the rights of women that were made in the early days of the Russian revolution.This process, unfortunately, was cut short and betrayed by the bureaucratic caste led by Joseph Stalin that usurped political power from the workers.Trotsky also examines in this book how the reactionary leadership under Stalin and his successors rolled back the gains made by women.This contrast between the revolutionary treatment of women and the family under the leadership of Lenin and the reactionary policies of the Stalinist regime has important lessons for revolutionists today.This book is a must-read for today’s rebels. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Real Program of Soviet Workers
The first target of Stalin's murder machine was the thousands of communist workers who supported the left opposition of Leon Trotsky. In the Soviet Union the human continuity of real Marxism was broken by Stalin, but the political program remains today. An important part of this program is collected in this book, which analyzes the early tendencies of the bureaucratic machine that was beginning to supplant revolutionary Marxism. Trotsky brilliantly analyzes the first fruits of Stalin's narrow world outlook in the years following the defeat of the German Revolution of 1923. On the domestic front, he points to the need to build an alliance of the working class and peasantry. Within the party, he calls for democratic discussion to replace lies and slander. Now, with the collapse of Stalinism coinciding with a disastrous crisis of capitalism, is a good time to check out these articles by Trotsky.

Continuing Lenin's Final Fight
This book consists of talks and articles by the leader of the fight to keep the Soviet Union on a revolutionary course from 1923 through 1925. Lenin's perspective of extending revolution world-wide clashed withthe views of the nationalist, bureaucratic caste growing within the USSR, led by Stalin.Lenin sought Trotsky's collaboration to oppose Stalin's political and organizational transgressions and remove him from the position of Communist Party General Secretary.

But a stroke felled Lenin in the spring of 1923 and he remained incapacitated until his death early in 1924.It was left to Trotsky to lead the fight for Marxism - Leninism against its negation: Stalinism.

The beginning of an ongoing struggle
This volume marks the beginning of the struggle Trotsky launched at Lenin's insistence to oppose Stalin, Bukharin and others who adapted to middle class bureaucratic layers in Russia and began to turn the young Soviet Union away from the revolutionary communist road Lenin had led it on, onto the bureaucratic degeneration that became known as Stalinism. Covered here are how to fight bureaucracy--is it an administrative or social economic problem--the real history of the Russian revolution, and so much more.This is required reading for fighters in the former USSR, in China, Vietnam and other countries trying to fight their way out of the debris of the Stalinist regimes. This is a great asset for Cuban fighters to understand that Fidel and Che's fight against bureaucratism was not the first. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A very useful book, particulary for anyone from Asia
If you want to understand the world of today you have to work at understanding how it got to be the way it is.This is one of those books that is critical to doing that, I don't say that lightly.This book is what is known as a primary source.It is the record of one, actually several, of the crucial political battles of the last century, told by some of the leading participants in their own words.It is not a history written decades later by someone to explain what went wrong, but a record of a battle as it progressed.

Reading this book you get a better understanding of the following:How it was that the domestic and foreign policy of the new Soviet Union began to deteriorate from a revolutionary one to one that put the narrow needs of day to day diplomacy and deal making first.How the Chinese Communist Party was formed and how it developed.What type of revolution was it's leadership trying to make?Why were the U.S., England, Japan and France so hostile to it?How and why did the Stalinists and Maoists gain leadership and themselves come into being?And much else.

This book is made up of an impressive number of documants, speeches and reports principally by Trotsky, one of the central leaders of the Russian revolution who would not sell out and died fighting Stalin and the destruction of the revolution.The introduction adds much to the book in bringing things up to date.I think this book is useful for historians, anyone wanting to know more about China and the revolution there, and any revolutionaries of today who want to learn from one of the best.It can be particularly useful to political minded workers and young people from Asia

Sadly, needed to day
What impresses me about this book is Trotsky's impassioned duty and determination to build a world revolution of the oppressed and to clear the way for the working people of China from the waste, confusion, and defeats that Stalinism of the Stalin and Mao varieties have imposed on them.

Thirty years ago many people would have thought reading a book about the liberation of a country from semicolonialism would no longer be necessary as we enter the 21st Century. However, it seems that lead by the USA, the imperialist powers of Western Europe and Japan are in a growing drive to deepen their control over countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Sadly, the lessons in this book drawn from the struggle of peasants and workers in China in the first 40 years of this century, are becoming more and more applicable around the world.

Lessons from great revolutionary experiences
The Chinese Revolution was one of the great developments of the 20th century, and the challenges and lessons it provides remain of great importance today. Imperialism and imperialist war, colonialism, revolutionary Marxism vs. Stalinism and Maoism, concepts of armed struggle, mass struggle, ofconstructing a revolutionary party, the character of a workers and peasants government, of a workers-peasant alliance-- all were tested in the turbulent, living experience of social crisis, repression, war and massive worker and peasant uprisings.

This lengthy collection brings together the writings of Leon Trotsky on China from 1925 to his death in 1940. Trotsky was, along with V. I. Lenin, a central leader of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and the early years of the Communist International. After the death of Lenin in 1924, Trotsky led the fight against the degeneration of that revolution and the rise of a conservative, privileged bureaucracy headed by Josef Stalin. Revolutionary policies in China at the time were at the heart of the differences between revolutionaries and Stalinists.Trotsky gives detailed and extensive analysis very useful today, both for the issues covered and as an example of how to use the Marxist method to orient revolutionary fighters in the living world.

The collection includes a substantial introduction by long-time Chinese revolutionary Peng Shu-tse, covering the history of China during these years, which I found useful for putting Trotsky's writings in context.

Also recommended: The Chinese Communist Party in Power, by Peng Shu-tse; The History of the Russian Revolution, by Leon Trotsky; and Capitalism's World Disorder, by Jack Barnes.

Not a History lesson, Needed Now!
rotsky's Discussion of China is one of the most masterful discussions of the dynamics of revolution in a country underdeveloped and exploited by imperialism that has ever been made. It centers on the Chinese revolutionary events of the mid and late 1920s, though it continues into the 1930s when the Stalin Bukharin leadership in the Communist International forced the Chinese revolutionists to subordinate their struggle to a block with bourgeois militarist Chiang Kai-shek It is not surprising that when it was made, the founding central leaders of the Chinese communist movement were won to Trotsky's Left Opportunism. In letters and articles and political documents for the Russian Communist Party and the Comintern, Trotsky explains how the only road forward for Chinese workers and peasants was asserting their own power and independence and how only the struggle against capitalism could solve the problems facing China.

As such, it provides an adequate background to the middle class and Stalinist nature of the Chinese Communist party that headed the revolution in 1949.As such

It can be read now, as a new generation of fighting workers, peasants, and youth in China looks for real communist alternatives to both capitalism and the pseudo-Communism of China's Stalinist Communist party.


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Customer Reviews (1)

DEFEATED, BUT UNBOWED
If you are interested in the history of the International Left in the first half of the 20th century or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. I have reviewed elsewhere Trotsky's writings published under the title The Left Opposition, 1923-1929 (in three volumes) dealing with Trotsky's internal political struggles for power inside the Russian Communist Party (and by extension, the political struggles insidethe Communist International) in order to save the Russian Revolution.This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of his writings from his various points of external exile from 1929 up until his death in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Communist Party and later Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, during the 1970's and 1980's. (Cannon's writings in support of Trotsky's work are reviewed elsewhere in this space). Look in the archives in this space for other related reviews on and by this important world communist leader.


After the political defeat of the various Trotsky-led Left Oppositions 1923 to 1929 by Stalin and his state and party bureaucracy he nevertheless found it far too dangerous to keep Trotsky in Moscow. He therefore had Trotsky placed in internal exile at Ata Alma in the Soviet Far East in 1928. Even that turned out to be too much for Stalin's tastes and in 1929 he arranged for the external exile of Trotsky to Turkey. Although Stalin probably rued the day that he did it this exile was the first of a number of places which Trotsky found himself in external exile. Other places included, France, Norway and, finally, Mexico where he was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in 1940. As these volumes, and many others from this period attest to, Trotsky continued to write on behalf of a revolutionary perspective. Damn, did he write. Some, including a few of his biographers, have argued that he should have given up the struggle, retired to who knows where, and acted the role of proper bourgeois writer or professor. Please! These volumes scream out against such a fate, despite the long odds against him and his efforts on behalf of international socialist revolution. Remember this is a revolutionary who had been through more exiles and prisons than one can count easily, held various positions of power and authority in the Soviet state and given the vicissitudes of his life could reasonably expect to return to power with a new revolutionary upsurge. Personally, I think Trotsky liked and was driven harder by the long odds.

The political prospects for socialist revolution in the period under discussion are, to say the least, rather bleak, or ultimately turned out that way. The post-World War I revolutionary upsurge has dissipated leaving Soviet Russia isolated. Various other promising revolutionary situations, most notably the aborted German revolution of 1923 that would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution, had come to nought. In the period under discussion there is a real sense of defensiveness about the prospects for revolutionary change. The specter of fascism loomed heavily and we know at what cost to the international working class. The capitulation to fascism by the German Communist and Social Democratic Parties in 1933, the defeat of theheroic Austrian working class in 1934, the defeat in Spain in 1939, and the outlines of the impending Second World War colored all political prospects, not the least Trotsky's.

Organizationally, Trotsky developed two tactical orientations. The first was a continuation of the policy of the Left Opposition during the 1920's. The International Left Opposition as it cohered in 1930 still acted as an external and unjustly expelled faction of the official Communist parties and of the Communist International and oriented itself to winning militants from those organizations. After the debacle in Germany in 1933 a call for new national parties and a new, fourth, international became the organizational focus. Many of the volumes here contain letters, circulars, and manifestos around these orientations. The daunting struggle to create an international cadre and to gain some sort of mass base animate many of the writings collected in this series. Many of these pieces show Trotsky's unbending determination to make a breakthrough. That these effort were, ultimately, militarily defeated during the course of World War Two does not take away from the grandeur of the efforts. Hats off to Leon Trotsky.

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Book Description
The First World War was one of the most important events of the 20th-century. It was also a crucial period in Leon Trotsky's political biography. This work is the first comprehensive examination of Trotsky's writings of 1914-1917 and the context in which they were produced. Its findings challenge Trotsky's autobiography and the standard account by Isaac Deutscher. Trotsky's war-time journalism is shown to be of continuing relevance to contemporary issues ranging from European unity to ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Workers can think more clearly - scientific fact
Very apropos today's politics - Iraq war, North Korea's nuclear program, death penalty in Cuba ... what stand to take? Trotsky at his polemical, take-no-prisoners best. This collection of letters and articles of debate between socialists on what to do during World War II is a challenging read. Makes you really think through why it is only a certain social class, the working class, that can develop a guide to action in times of war and revolution. Trotsky totally intertwines his perspective on the building of a working-class party in the US - criticizing the Socialist Appeal for being a paper for workers, rather than a workers' paper -- with an explanation of how to understand each war as it unfolds concretely. An applied lesson in using Marxism as a tool to figure out what to do next.

Sharpen Your Thinking With This Book
I think this is Trotsky's most important book. It is especially useful for us now in understanding today's world. Trotsky shows why the working class position is to defend the working class gains of the Russian Revolution-despite the reactionary character of the Stalinist bureaucracy. In explaining this, Trotsky points to the indispensable role of dialectical materialism in looking at contradictory developments. He shows us how to think as a Marxist and not be confused by the events that capitalism seeks to use to manipulate public opinion. Reading this book will sharpen your ability to understand the way imperialism poses as a peace keeper, while increasing its use of war and violence, how this has an effect on public opinion, and why the working class vanguard must learn to resist it.

Like it was written Today
Not just the nature of the Soviet Union, but the place of freedom and the power of working people in history, not just those battles, but how to think about the world and politics, and what role workers and intellectuals will play, all of it wrapped up in a real struggle to maintain revolutionary ideas, all of it and more in this book.This book explains how criminal Stalinism is not the future for workers who fight for socialism, and that criminal imperialism is the real problem we face.An important book about how to think so that you can fight. We all the fighting against wars, discrimination, and economic disaster, we need to fight like this now!

Excellent book
Trotsky's "In Defense of Marxism" is one of the most important pieces of Marxist literature in written in the twentieth century.It is a denouncement of the petty-bourgeous deviations that had sprung up in theSocialist Workers Party on the 1930's, and a study on Marxist thought. Trotsky explains dialectics and how it is applied to analysing the classbase of a state, all while upholding a correct Marxist description ofsociety.A worthwhile read.

A Good Read
A good read...for one to see the warped thinking and lack of economicsense that led to so much destruction in the 20th century. ... Read more

Book Description
From Part 1: "A Letter to James P. Cannon
September 12, 1939.
Dear Jim:
I am writing now a study on the social character of the USSR in connection with the war question. The writing, with its translation, will take at least one week more. The fundamental ideas are as follows: logical experiments in a new historic conception which occurs to be in an absolute contradiction with our program, strategy and tactics? Such an adventuristic jump would be doubly criminal now in view of the world war when the perspective of the socialist revolution becomes an imminent reality and when the case of the USSR will appear to everybody as a transitorial episode in the process of world socialist revolution. I write these lines in haste, which explains their insufficiency, but in a week I hope to send you my more complete thesis. Comradely greetings, V. T. O. [Leon Trotsky] The USSR in War The German-Soviet Pact and the Character of the USSR Is it possible after the conclusion of the German-Soviet pact to consider the USSR a workers' state? The future of the Soviet state has again and again aroused discussion in our midst. Small wonder; we have before us the first experiment in the workers' state in history. Never before and nowhere else has this phenomenon been available for analysis. In the question of the social character of the USSR, mistakes commonly flow, as we have previously stated, from replacing the historical fact with the programmatic norm. Concrete fact departs from the norm. This does not signify, however, that it has overthrown the norm; on the contrary, it has reaffirmed it, from the negative side. The degeneration of the first workers' state, ascertained and explained by us, has only the more graphically shown what the workers' state should be, what it could and would be under certain historical conditions. The contradiction between the concrete fact and the norm constrains us not to reject the norm but, on the contrary, to fight for it by means of the revolutionary road. The program of the approaching revolution in the USSR is determined on the one hand by our appraisal of the USSR as an objective historical fact, and on the other hand, by a norm of the workers' state. We do not say: "Everything is lost, we must begin all over again." We clearly indicate those elements of the workers' state which at the given stage can be salvaged, preserved, and further developed. Those who seek nowadays to prove that the Soviet-German pact changes our appraisal of the Soviet state take their stand, in essence, on the position of the Comintern -- to put it more correctly, on yesterday's position of the Comintern."

Customer Reviews (4)

Lessons for Fighting Fascism
This volume chronicles invaluable lessons of the world working-class movement during two critical years.The year 1933 saw the worst defeat for the working class ever in Germany. Hitler came to power because the Communist Party, obeying Stalin's orders, and the Socialist Party refused to band together, although they led the majority of working people.

Trotsky, whose collaborators were grouped in the International Left Opposition, declared an end to any effort to reform the world-wide Communist Parties.Instead, he called for a new world party to fight for socialist revolution in the capitalist countries and political revolution within the Soviet Union.

Lessons in the fight against capitalism, fascism, depression
The years 1933-34 saw the victory of fascism in Germany without a shot fired, and armed workers' resistance to fascism and semi-fascist governments in Austria and Spain. The Stalinized Communist International was communist no more; it showed itself to be a counterrevolutionary instrument of the Stalin bureaucracy's doubling-dealing with world imperialism at the workers' expense, moving our best fighting elements around and sacrificing them like chess pieces. In this book, the co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the Russian Revolution Leon Trotsky, analyzes these events with one end in mind: to figure out WHAT TO DO about them, how to build revolutionary parties to lead the workers and farmers to power; to defeat fascism and "democratic" imperialism by socialist revolution and workers' power, and thereby prevent the holocaust that was World War II. If this sounds like stuff fighters for fundamental social change need today as the Yankee Empire and its European rivals-"allies" march us working people into a new Great Depression, and towards fascism and World War II, then do yourself a favor and buy this book and study it as a guide to action today.

lessons from the last Depression for the new one
The years 1933-34 saw the victory of fascism in Germany without a shot fired, and armed resistance to fascism and semi-fascist governemnts in Austria and Spain. The Stalinized Communist International was communist no more; it showed itself to be a counterrevolutionary instrument of the Stalin bureaucracy's doubling-dealing with world imperialism at the workers' expense, moving our best fighting elements around and sacrificing them like chess pieces. In this book, the co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the Russian Revolution Leon Trotsky, analyzes these events with one end in mind: to figure out WHAT TO DO about them, how to build revolutionary parties to lead the workers and farmers to power; to defeat fascism and "democratic" imperialism bysocialistrevolution and workers' power, and thereby prevent the holocaust that was World War II. If this sounds like stuff fighters need today as the Yankee Empire and its European rivals-"allies" march us working people into a new Great Depression, and towards fascism and World War III, then do yourself a favor and buy this book and study it as a guide to action today.

addicting books
The Trotsky Writings books are addictin