Review
'The best biography of Trotsky to date... it disregards all sentimental nonsense and gives us the facts.'
--George Walden, Standpoint
`an outstanding, fascinating biography of this dazzling titan. It is as compelling as an adventure story - the ultimate rise and fall - but also revelatory as the scholarly revision of a historical reputation.'
--The Sunday Telegraph
`Seldom has the pathology of the revolutionary type, and its murderous consequences, been more mercilessly exposed than in this exemplary biography.' --Sunday Times Culture
`Drawing on much previously unreleased material, this is a scholarly work, but one with a light touch.'
--Huddersfield Daily Examiner
'balanced and thoroughly researched life of Trotsky by Robert Service, a British scholar of Soviet communism. Service knows the period's personalities inside out: he has already trawled the archives to write well-received biographies of Stalin and Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet state...Service paints a perceptive portrait.' --Financial Times
'In this astonishingly comprehensive book- Robert Service has trawled almost every archive on the planet that has any reference to Trotsky...This is a superb work of scholarship, and above all leaves the reader in no doubt as to the evil of Trotsky, not just in politics but in his personal life...if you seek to know about this crucial figure in the history of Marxism-Leninism, this book will tell you everything.' --Daily Telegraph
'Masterful new life of Trotsky. Yet the book is much more than a dry critique of Trotsky's place in the Communist pantheon. It is a pacy, compelling account of one of the most magnetic and gifted leaders of the Russian revolution.' --Mail on Sunday
'Robert Service's Trotsky is, as the author points out, the first full biography to be written by a non-Trotskyist...Trotsky is the final part of a triptych, and you can sense the author's enjoyment as he completes his heroic task.'
--Times Literary Supplement
'a fascinating biography of the revolutionary who was driven out and finally murdered by Starlin.'
--New Statesman
'Outstanding' --The Tablet
'Magisterial... One of the strengths of Robert Service's superb biography is the way it effortlessly incorporates new material that sheds light on the private life of a public figure who was careful to shape his image in his autobiographical writings.'
--The Jewish Chronicle
'Robert Service has uncovered a mass of new information, some of which makes for a pretty unattractive view of the man. Trotsky A Biography is sparkling on his political and personal travails, and indeed his crimes and follies.' --The Independent
'gripping new biography.'
--Catholic Herald
'This magisterial biography may be taken as a tarring of Trotsky with the brush of Bolshevism or proof that the spectre of communism is still at large.'
--Times Higher Education Supplement
`a fascinating study which is bound to become the definitive biography.' --East Riding News
--George Walden, Standpoint
`an outstanding, fascinating biography of this dazzling titan. It is as compelling as an adventure story - the ultimate rise and fall - but also revelatory as the scholarly revision of a historical reputation.'
--The Sunday Telegraph
`Seldom has the pathology of the revolutionary type, and its murderous consequences, been more mercilessly exposed than in this exemplary biography.' --Sunday Times Culture
`Drawing on much previously unreleased material, this is a scholarly work, but one with a light touch.'
--Huddersfield Daily Examiner
'balanced and thoroughly researched life of Trotsky by Robert Service, a British scholar of Soviet communism. Service knows the period's personalities inside out: he has already trawled the archives to write well-received biographies of Stalin and Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet state...Service paints a perceptive portrait.' --Financial Times
'In this astonishingly comprehensive book- Robert Service has trawled almost every archive on the planet that has any reference to Trotsky...This is a superb work of scholarship, and above all leaves the reader in no doubt as to the evil of Trotsky, not just in politics but in his personal life...if you seek to know about this crucial figure in the history of Marxism-Leninism, this book will tell you everything.' --Daily Telegraph
'Masterful new life of Trotsky. Yet the book is much more than a dry critique of Trotsky's place in the Communist pantheon. It is a pacy, compelling account of one of the most magnetic and gifted leaders of the Russian revolution.' --Mail on Sunday
'Robert Service's Trotsky is, as the author points out, the first full biography to be written by a non-Trotskyist...Trotsky is the final part of a triptych, and you can sense the author's enjoyment as he completes his heroic task.'
--Times Literary Supplement
'a fascinating biography of the revolutionary who was driven out and finally murdered by Starlin.'
--New Statesman
'Outstanding' --The Tablet
'Magisterial... One of the strengths of Robert Service's superb biography is the way it effortlessly incorporates new material that sheds light on the private life of a public figure who was careful to shape his image in his autobiographical writings.'
--The Jewish Chronicle
'Robert Service has uncovered a mass of new information, some of which makes for a pretty unattractive view of the man. Trotsky A Biography is sparkling on his political and personal travails, and indeed his crimes and follies.' --The Independent
'gripping new biography.'
--Catholic Herald
'This magisterial biography may be taken as a tarring of Trotsky with the brush of Bolshevism or proof that the spectre of communism is still at large.'
--Times Higher Education Supplement
`a fascinating study which is bound to become the definitive biography.' --East Riding News
Product Description
A brilliant reexamination of Leon Trotsky by the bestelling and critically acclaimed author of Lenin: A Biography, Stalin: A Biography and Comrades
Book Description
Revolutionary practitioner, theorist, factional chief, sparkling writer, ‘ladies’ man’ (e.g., his affair with Frieda Kahlo), icon of the Revolution, anti-Jewish Jew, philosopher of everyday life, grand seigneur of his household, father and hunted victim, Trotsky lived a brilliant life in extraordinary times. Robert Service draws on hitherto unexamined archives and on his profound understanding of Russian history to draw a portrait of the man and his legacy, revealing that though his followers have represented Trotsky as a pure revolutionary soul and a powerful intellect unjustly hounded into exile by Stalin and his henchmen. The reality is very different, as this masterful and compelling biography reveals.
From the Publisher
Shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize
About the Author
Robert Service is a Fellow of the British Academy and of St Antony’s College, Oxford. He has written several books, including the highly acclaimed Lenin: A Biography, Russia: Experiment with a People , Stalin: A Biography and Comrades: A History of World Communism , as well as many other books on Russia’s past and present. Married with four children, he lives in London.
