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"In the 1930s, Trotsky, with a handful of followers, attempted to block the path of Stalin's relentless hurricane of betrayal and murder. His epic defence of the soul of the Revolution against its bureaucratic executioners was a torchlight in the storm. In one of the very greatest modern biographies, Isaac Deutscher redeems the legacy of this astonishing revolutionary and humanist thinker." -- Mike Davis "This is the critical voice the velvet revolution faded out. The republication of Deutscher's classic trilogy is good news for a new generation who want to know what went wrong with communist-style socialism." -- Sheila Rowbotham ""He has told the story more accurately and with fuller detail than ever before. His book is compulsory reading for anyone interested in the history of Soviet Russia and of international communism."" -- A.J.P. Taylor ""Mr. Deutscher is an exceedingly vivid writer with a sense of style, and a warm understanding sympathy for his hero; this makes him a first rate biographer."" -- Times Literary Supplement ""The three volumes of Deutscher's life of Trotsky ... were for me the most exciting reading of the year. Surely this must be counted among the greatest biographies in the English language."" -- Graham Greene
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Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused as much passion and controversy as the Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky's extraordinary life and extensive writings have left and indelible mark on revolutionary conscience; and yet there was at one time a danger that his name would disappear altogether from history. Isaac Deutscher's magisterial three-volume biography was the first major publication to counter the powerful Stalinist propaganda machine, and in this definitive work Trotsky emerges as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian Revolution. This second volume of the trilogy, first published in 1959, is a self-contained account of the great struggle between Stalin and Trotsky that followed the end of the civil war in Russia in 1921 and the death of Lenin. From the narrative of Trotsky's uncompromising opposition to Stalin's policies emerge character studies of the important Soviet leaders; a brilliant portrait of Trotsky the man of ideas, the Marxist philosopher and the literary critic; and a new assessment of the causes of defeat which led to his expulsion from the part, his exile, and his 1929 banishment from Russia.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The late great Isaac Deutscher continues his epic Biography of the greatest Marxist Revolutionary of the age of revolutions.
This section chronicles the Decline and fall of Trotsky after his success in the Civil war, and in doing so charts the degeneration of the Soviet Socialist Revolution. For those willing to understand the tragedy of the Russian Revolution, here is definatly the place to start.
In this respect the volume stands alone quite well, but it is probably better to read it with the other two, (and Deutschers books on Stalin and Lenin) for a more rounded panoramic picture.
Also highly reccomended for anyone who has read Trotsky's auto-biography and wants to fill in the gaps.
This section chronicles the Decline and fall of Trotsky after his success in the Civil war, and in doing so charts the degeneration of the Soviet Socialist Revolution. For those willing to understand the tragedy of the Russian Revolution, here is definatly the place to start.
In this respect the volume stands alone quite well, but it is probably better to read it with the other two, (and Deutschers books on Stalin and Lenin) for a more rounded panoramic picture.
Also highly reccomended for anyone who has read Trotsky's auto-biography and wants to fill in the gaps.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Although written more than 50 years ago, 'The Prophet Unarmed' is still vibrant and fresh. Deutscher's prose is of the highest order, his turn of phrase can, at times, combine the poetic and the dialectic and this is high literature as well as high history.
It's also a fairly searing critique of Trotsky and all his missed opportunities to halt the rise of Stalin, the "gravedigger of the Revolution".
Deutscher subtly weaves the internal political, social and economic issues in Russia, the international situation, especially the Chinese Revolution, with the politics internal to the Communist Party in the USSR and how these conflicts worked upon each other and on the power struggles within the party.
My only criticism would be that Deutscher, like Trotsky, believed that if property remained state owned then it was not capitalist and that the bureaucracy did not constitute a social class. This leads Deutscher to give the impression that he believes that Stalin was always striving for dictatorship rather than, like other protagonists, responding to events. But this is minor.
This is one of the best books, never mind one of the best history books, ever written.
It's also a fairly searing critique of Trotsky and all his missed opportunities to halt the rise of Stalin, the "gravedigger of the Revolution".
Deutscher subtly weaves the internal political, social and economic issues in Russia, the international situation, especially the Chinese Revolution, with the politics internal to the Communist Party in the USSR and how these conflicts worked upon each other and on the power struggles within the party.
My only criticism would be that Deutscher, like Trotsky, believed that if property remained state owned then it was not capitalist and that the bureaucracy did not constitute a social class. This leads Deutscher to give the impression that he believes that Stalin was always striving for dictatorship rather than, like other protagonists, responding to events. But this is minor.
This is one of the best books, never mind one of the best history books, ever written.
0 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This second volume of Isaac Deutscher's biography of Trotsky proposed that Trotsky, not Lenin, inspired the Bolshevik revolution. (By the third volume, Lenin vanished altogether, as Deutscher ludicrously called Trotsky `the leader of October' and the `intellectual initiator of industrialization and planned economy'.)
On the notion that Trotsky upheld Lenin's thought, we should note that Lenin wrote, "uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible in several or even in one capitalist country taken separately. The victorious proletariat of that country, having expropriated the capitalists and organised its own socialist production, would stand up against the rest of the world, the capitalist world ...."
Trotsky denied Lenin's conclusion, writing, "it would be hopeless to think ... that, for example, a revolutionary Russia could hold out in the face of a conservative Europe." He then accused Lenin of `that very national narrow-mindedness which constitutes the essence of social-patriotism'.
Lenin riposted in 1918, "I know that there are, of course, sages who think they are very clever and even call themselves Socialists, who assert that power should not have been seized until the revolution had broken out in all countries. They do not suspect that by speaking in this way they are deserting the revolution and going over to the side of the bourgeoisie. To wait until the toiling classes bring about a revolution on an international scale means that everybody should stand stock-still in expectation. That is nonsense."
Yet Trotsky repeated, "real progress of a socialist economy in Russia will become possible only after the victory of the proletariat in the major European countries."
But Trotsky won few to his defeatist dogma. Deutscher admitted that "in Leningrad there were at the beginning of 1926, not more than about 30 Trotskyists." In 1926, the Trotskyists claimed that there were 4,000 Trotskyists in the whole of the Soviet Union, as against the 750,000 Party members.
Deutscher wrote of the 1924 Lenin enrolment of workers into the Party, "Among the mass of new entrants, the politically immature, the backward, the dull-minded and the docile, the climbers, and the nest-featherers, formed a considerable proportion." He gave no evidence for this assertion: it seems to be sheer class prejudice.
Again, he wrote, "the great majority of the party was a jelly-like mass; it consisted of meek and obedient members, without a mind and a will of their own." He called factory workers `the great credulous mass'. Deutscher plainly echoes his idol's contempt for the working class, his intellectual snobbery, arrogance and dogmatism.
But the truth broke through, just once, when Deutscher wrote that Trotsky was `Full of the sense of his superiority' and that "his mind remained closed. He lived as if in another world, wrapped up in himself and his ideas."
This whole biography is special pleading, as objective as a Jesuit's biography of a Pope or Christopher Hitchens' book on Orwell.
On the notion that Trotsky upheld Lenin's thought, we should note that Lenin wrote, "uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible in several or even in one capitalist country taken separately. The victorious proletariat of that country, having expropriated the capitalists and organised its own socialist production, would stand up against the rest of the world, the capitalist world ...."
Trotsky denied Lenin's conclusion, writing, "it would be hopeless to think ... that, for example, a revolutionary Russia could hold out in the face of a conservative Europe." He then accused Lenin of `that very national narrow-mindedness which constitutes the essence of social-patriotism'.
Lenin riposted in 1918, "I know that there are, of course, sages who think they are very clever and even call themselves Socialists, who assert that power should not have been seized until the revolution had broken out in all countries. They do not suspect that by speaking in this way they are deserting the revolution and going over to the side of the bourgeoisie. To wait until the toiling classes bring about a revolution on an international scale means that everybody should stand stock-still in expectation. That is nonsense."
Yet Trotsky repeated, "real progress of a socialist economy in Russia will become possible only after the victory of the proletariat in the major European countries."
But Trotsky won few to his defeatist dogma. Deutscher admitted that "in Leningrad there were at the beginning of 1926, not more than about 30 Trotskyists." In 1926, the Trotskyists claimed that there were 4,000 Trotskyists in the whole of the Soviet Union, as against the 750,000 Party members.
Deutscher wrote of the 1924 Lenin enrolment of workers into the Party, "Among the mass of new entrants, the politically immature, the backward, the dull-minded and the docile, the climbers, and the nest-featherers, formed a considerable proportion." He gave no evidence for this assertion: it seems to be sheer class prejudice.
Again, he wrote, "the great majority of the party was a jelly-like mass; it consisted of meek and obedient members, without a mind and a will of their own." He called factory workers `the great credulous mass'. Deutscher plainly echoes his idol's contempt for the working class, his intellectual snobbery, arrogance and dogmatism.
But the truth broke through, just once, when Deutscher wrote that Trotsky was `Full of the sense of his superiority' and that "his mind remained closed. He lived as if in another world, wrapped up in himself and his ideas."
This whole biography is special pleading, as objective as a Jesuit's biography of a Pope or Christopher Hitchens' book on Orwell.
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