The Prophet Armed: Trotsky: 1879-1921 (Oxford Paperbacks)

552 Pages·1980·20.39 MB·English

by  Isaac Deutscher

The Prophet Armed
TROTSKY : 1879-1921
The
Prophet Armed
TROTSKY: 1879-1921
ISAAC DEUTSCHER
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OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Copyright 1954 by Oxford University Press
First published 1954 by Oxford University Press
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback 1970
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PREFACE
WHEN I first contemplated the writing of a biographical trilogy
on the leaders of 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 compre-
hensible 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 5rise', 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
...M L:. f Jl
Willi 1115 laa.
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 6all 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 con-
quest 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 4Defeat 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
VI PREFACE
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, en-
graved in gold, of his deeds; but tomb-robbers and ghouls have
plundered and left it so empty and desolate that no trace is
found of the record it once contained. The work of the tomb-
robbers has, in this present instance, been so persistent that it
has strongly affected the views even of independent Western
historians and scholars.
Despite all this, the record of Trotsky's life is still intact, pre-
served in his own voluminous but now mostly forgotten writings
and in his Archives; in numerous memoirs of friendly and of
hostile contemporaries; in files of Russian periodicals published
before, during, and after the revolution; in minutes of the
Central Committee; and in verbatim reports of the Congresses
of the party and of the Soviets. Nearly all these documentary
sources are available in public libraries in the West, although a
few of them can be found only in private libraries. I have drawn
on all these sources. Together with my wife, who shared equally
with me in research and has in many other respects contributed
greatly to this work, I made a special study of the rich collection
of Russian pre-revolutionary periodicals in the Hoover Library
at Stanford, California, where I found sources scarcely used be-
fore by historians of Russian revolutionary movements. Together
with my wife I also studied the Trotsky Archives at the Houghton
Library, Harvard University, by far the most important col-
lection of original documents on Soviet history existing outside
the U.S.S.R. (A brief description of the Archives is given in the
bibliography at the end of this volume.)
I have therefore no ground for complaining here, as I com-
plained in the Preface to my Stalin, about paucity of biographical
material. This is due largely to the contrast between my chief
characters. Trotsky was as communicative about his life and
activities as Stalin was secretive. He allowed complete strangers
to delve freely into almost every aspect of his life; he himself
wrote an autobiography; and, what is more important, a strong,
P R E F A CE
unconscious autobiographical streak runs through his scores of
published volumes, through his innumerable articles and essays
not reprinted in book form, and through some of his unpub-
lished writings. Wherever he went he left footprints so firm that
nobody could later efface or blur them, not even he himself,
when on rare occasions he was tempted to do so.
A biographer is not usually expected to apologize for narrat-
ing the life of a political leader who has himself written an auto-
biography. I feel that this case may be an exception to the rule,
for after a close and critical examination I still find Trotsky's
My Life as scrupulously truthful as any work of this kind can be.
Nevertheless, it remains an apologia produced in the middle of
the losing battle its author fought against Stalin. In its pages the
living Trotsky wrestled with his tomb-robbers. To wholesale
Stalinist denigration he responded with a peculiar act of self-
defence which savoured of self-glorification־ He did not and
could not satisfactorily explain the change in the climate of the
revolution which made his defeat both possible and inevitable;
and his account of the intrigues by which a narrow-minded,
'usurpatory', and malignant bureaucracy ousted him from
power is obviously inadequate. The question which is of absorb-
ing interest to the biographer is: to what extent did Trotsky
himself contribute to his own defeat? To what extent was he
himself compelled by critical circumstances and by his own
character to pave the way for Stalin? The answer to these
questions reveals the truly classical tragedy of Trotsky's life,
or rather a reproduction of classical tragedy in secular terms
of modern politics; and Trotsky would have been more than
human if he had been able to reveal it. The biographer, on the
other hand, sees Trotsky at the climax of his achievement as
being as guilty and as innocent and as ripe for expiation as
a protagonist in Greek drama. This approach, presupposing
sympathy and understanding, is, I trust, as free from denun-
ciation as from apologetics.
In My Life Trotsky sought to vindicate himself in terms
imposed upon him by Stalin and by the whole ideological situa-
tion of Bolshevism in the 1920s, that is, in terms of the Lenin
cult. Stalin had denounced him as Lenin's inveterate enemy,
and Trotsky was consequently anxious to prove his complete
devotion to, and his agreement with, Lenin. His devotion to
viii PREFACE
Lenin after 1917 was undoubtedly genuine; and the points
of agreement between them were numerous and important.
Nevertheless, Trotsky blurred the sharp outlines and the impor-
tance of his controversies with Lenin between 1903 and 1917, and
also of later differences. But another and much stranger con-
sequence of the fact that Trotsky made his apologia in terms of
the Lenin cult was that in some crucial points he belittled his
own role in comparison with Lenin's, a feat extremely rare
in autobiographical literature. This applies especially to the
account of the part he played in the October uprising and in
the creation of the Red Army, where he detracted from his own
merits in order not to appear as Lenin's detractor. Free from
loyalties to any cult, I have attempted to restore the historical
balance.
Finally, I have paid special attention to Trotsky the man of
letters, the pamphleteer, the military writer, and the journalist.
Most of Trotsky's literary work is now wrapt in oblivion and
inaccessible to a wider public. Yet this is the writer of whom
Bernard Shaw, who could judge Trotsky's literary qualities only
from poor translations, said that he 4surpassed Junius and
Burke'4 ־Like LessingV Shaw wrote of Trotsky, 4when he cuts
off his opponent's head, he holds it up to show that there are
no brains in it; but he spares his victim's private character. . . .
He leaves [his victim] without a rag of political credit; but he
leaves him with his honour intact.'1 I can only regret that con-
siderations of space and composition have not allowed me to
show this side of Trotsky's personality in greater detail; but I
hope to return to it in The Prophet Unarmed.
I. D.
1 The Nation, London, 7 Jan. 1922.
CONTENTS
PREFACE V
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS X
I. HOME AND SCHOOL I
II. IN SEARCH OF AN IDEAL 22
III. AT THE DOOR OF HISTORY 57
IV. AN INTELLECTUAL PARTNERSHIP 98
V. TROTSKY IN I 905 11 7
V I6 ־ PERMANENT R E V O L U T I O N 1 45 ׳
VIL THE DOLDRUMS: I 9 0 7 - I 9 14 175
VIII. WAR AND THE INTERNATIONAL 211
IX־ TROTSKY IN THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION 249
X. THE PEOPLE'S COMMISSAR 32^
XI. THE DRAMA OF BREST LITOVSK 346
XII. ARMING THE REPUBLIC 405
XIII. REVOLUTION AND CONQUEST 448
NOTE ON TROTSKY'S MILITARY WRITINGS 477
XIV. DEFEAT IN VICTORY 486
BIBLIOGRAPHY 523
INDEX 529
MAP
(following page x)
Territories Occupied by Anti-Bolshevik
Armies in 1919 and 1920
A C K N O W L E D G E M E N TS
I AM greatly indebted for criticism and friendly encouragement to
Professor E. H. Garr and Mrs. Barbara Ward-Jackson, who read
parts of my manuscript; and to Mr. Donald Tyerman, who read the
whole. Mr. Bernard Singer helped me with his intimate knowledge
of Russian life. To Mr. D. M. Davin and members of the Editorial
Staff of the Oxford University Press I am grateful for many sugges-
tions for improvements in style. Mr. Hugo Dewar and Mr. Jon
Kimche kindly assisted me with materials and books, some of which
are now bibliographical rarities. My thanks are given to Professor
Wm. A. Jackson and his assistants at the Houghton Library, Harvard
University, who helped my wife and me to find our way through
the dossiers of the Trotsky Archives. I am similarly obliged to the
Staffs of the Hoover Library, the London Library, the British
Museum, and the National Central Library.
The generosity of the Oxford University Press and the Humanities
Department of the Rockefeller Foundation enabled my wife and me
to spend many months in the United States and to carry out that
part of our research programme which depended entirely on our
access to the above-mentioned American libraries.
My debt to other authors is acknowledged in footnotes. The
quotation from Machiavelli's The Prince on page xii is taken by
permission of J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., from the translation by
W. K. Marriott in the Everyman's Library.
I. D.