The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky

1451 Pages·2015·17.25 MB·English

by  Isaac Deutscher

This one-volume edition first published by Verso 2015
The Prophet Armed, The Prophet Unarmed, and The Prophet Outcast first published by Verso 2004
The Prophet Armed first published by Oxford University Press 1954
The Prophet Unarmed first published by Oxford University Press 1959
The Prophet Outcast first published by Oxford University Press 1963
© The Estates of Isaac Deutscher and Tamara
Deutscher 1954, 1959, 1963, 2004, 2015
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Verso
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www.versobooks.com
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-78168-560-0
eISBN-13: 978-1-78168-562-4 (US)
eISBN-13: 978-1-78168-721-5 (UK)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
v3.1
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
List of Illustrations
Volume I: The Prophet Armed 1879-1921
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I. HOME AND SCHOOL
II. IN SEARCH OF AN IDEAL
III. AT THE DOOR OF HISTORY
IV. AN INTELLECTUAL PARTNERSHIP
V. TROTSKY IN 1905
VI. ‘PERMANENT REVOLUTION’
VII. THE DOLDRUMS: 1907–1914
VIII. WAR AND THE INTERNATIONAL
IX. TROTSKY IN THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION
X. THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSAR
XI. THE DRAMA OF BREST LITOVSK
XII. ARMING THE REPUBLIC
XIII. REVOLUTION AND CONQUEST
NOTE ON TROTSKY’S MILITARY WRITINGS
XIV. DEFEAT IN VICTORY
Volume II: The Prophet Unarmed 1921–1929
PREFACE
I. THE POWER OF THE DREAM
II. THE ANATHEMA
III. ‘NOT BY POLITICS ALONE …’
IV. AN INTERVAL
V. THE DECISIVE CONTEST: 1926–7
VI. A YEAR AT ALMA ATA
Volume III: The Prophet Outcast 1929–1940
PREFACE
I. ON THE PRINCES’ ISLES
II. REASON AND UNREASON
III. THE REVOLUTIONARY AS HISTORIAN
IV. ‘ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE’
V. THE ‘HELL-BLACK NIGHT’
VI. POSTSCRIPT: VICTORY IN DEFEAT
Bibliography
Index
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Map of territories occupied by Anti-Bolshevik armies
Trotsky in exile
I. Trotsky addresses a Congress of the Communist International
II. a. Trotsky as Commissar of War
b. Inspecting troops
III. Trotsky leaving his ‘military train’
IV. Trotsky and Muralov
V. a. Lenin during his illness
b. Lenin in his family circle
VI. The Triumvirate
a. Stalin
b. Zinoviev
c. Kamenev
VII. a. Lenin’s funeral
b. Molotov and Bukharin
VIII. Trotsky in the Caucasus
IX. Leaders of the Trotskyist Opposition
X. a. Bukharin
b. Rykov
XI. a. Christian Rakovsky
b. Karl Radek
c. Adolfe Yoffe
d. Antonov-Ovseenko
XII. Trotsky and his family at Alma Ata
Trotsky in Mexico, 1940
XIII. Trotsky and his wife returning to Prinkipo
XIV. Zina, Trotsky’s daughter
XV. Trotsky and Natalya arriving in Mexico
XVI. Diego Rivera
XVII. Leon Sedov (Lyova)
XVIII. Trotsky at his desk
XIX. Two views of the ‘little fortress’ at Coyoacan
XX. Trotsky, Natalya, and Seva
XXI. Trotsky searching for rare cacti
XXII. Still arguing—a few days before his assassination
XXIII. a. Trotsky’s assassin
b. ‘Trotsky is dead’
XXIV. Trotsky’s testament

PREFACE
W I first contemplated the writing of a biographical trilogy on the leaders of
HEN
the Russian revolution I intended to include a study of Trotsky in Exile, not a
full-scale biography of Trotsky. Trotsky’s later years and the tragic close of his
life stirred my imagination more deeply than did the earlier and more worldly
part of his story. On second thoughts, however, I began to doubt whether
Trotsky in Exile could be made at all comprehensible if the earlier part of the
story was not told. Then, pondering historical materials and biographical
sources, some of them new to me, I came to realize more clearly than before
how deeply the drama of Trotsky’s last years was rooted in the earlier and even
the earliest stages of his career. I therefore decided to devote to Trotsky two
separate yet interconnected volumes: The Prophet Armed and The Prophet
Unarmed, the first giving what might be described as Trotsky’s ‘rise’, the second
his ‘fall’. I have refrained from using these conventional terms because I do not
think that a man’s rise to power is necessarily the climax of his life or that his
loss of office should be equated with his fall.
The titles to these volumes have been suggested to me by the passage from
Machiavelli printed on page xii. The present study illustrates the truth of what is
there said; but it also offers a somewhat ironical commentary on it.
Machiavelli’s observation that ‘all armed prophets have conquered and the
unarmed ones have been destroyed’ is certainly realistic. What may be doubted
is whether the distinction between the armed prophet and the unarmed one and
the difference between conquest and destruction is always as clear as it seemed
to the author of The Prince. In the following pages we first watch Trotsky
conquering without arms in the greatest revolution of our age. We then see him
armed, victorious, and bent under the weight of his armour—the chapter
portraying him at the very pinnacle of power bears the title ‘Defeat in Victory’.
And when next the Prophet Unarmed is contemplated, the question will arise
whether a strong element of victory was not concealed in his very defeat.
My account of Trotsky’s role in the Russian revolution will come as a surprise
to some. For nearly thirty years the powerful propaganda machines of Stalinism
worked furiously to expunge Trotsky’s name from the annals of the revolution,
or to leave it there only as the synonym for arch-traitor. To the present Soviet
generation, and not only to it, Trotsky’s life-story is already like an ancient
Egyptian sepulchre which is known to have contained the body of a great man
and the record, engraved in gold, of his deeds; but tomb-robbers and ghouls have