The Prophet Armed. Trotsky: 1879-1921; The Prophet Unarmed. Trotsky: 1921-1929; The Prophet Outcast. Trotsky: 1929-1940. Three Volumes.

Trotsky #1-3

by Isaac Deutscher

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, now reissued in a single volume, Trotsky emerges in his real stature, as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian Revolution.

Genres: Biography, History, Russia, Nonfiction, Politics, Russian History, Philosophy

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Isaac Deutscher was a Polish-born Jewish Marxist writer, journalist and political activist who moved to the United Kingdom at the outbreak of World War II. He is best known as a biographer of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin and as a commentator on Soviet affairs. His three-volume biography of Trotsky, in particular, was highly influential among the British New Left.

Reviews

[Steffi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, this must be nothing less than THE definitive political biography. Isaac Deutscher, Polish Jewish Marxist (emigrated to the US), wrote this three-volume biography of LT between 1954 and 1969, so obviously a product of its time.
I am not even going to attempt to summarize the 1,600 pages aka the life of LT but will just share a few personal takeaways:

1. wtf, LT must be the greatest revolutionary leader in history. Not that I know too many in such detail, but seriously.
2. this dude really was a 'prophet'. the way he fully understood the historical significance of his time and personal involvement is beyond impressive.
3. I loved to follow his 'coming of ideas' from rejecting Marxism as a late teen, to 'hating on' Lenin and being a Menshevik of sorts pre-revolution to, well, joining Lenin and the party in mid-1917. Indeed, political beliefs arent static, or shouldnt be, they need to develop and be refined through life long analysis and experience. Maybe that's the meaning of life. Kidding, there's none.
4. While Lenin and fellow émigré gang were busy arguing it out in Europe, LT pretty much took over the first Soviet in the failed revolution of 1905. Like, with no prior experience at age 26 or so. Depressing thought: What was I doing at 26? facebooking?
5. While there are so many more important historical details, it bugs me that LT and Rosa Luxemburg never really hit it off/ hooked up. Just imagine!
6. Confirms my suspicion: it is indeed and totally impossible to really befriend people with different political views, especially reformist social democrats :-)
7. Woman, high time to leave the third world and the comfy expat bubble to join the action. Asap.
8. There's this one scene on the evening after the Bolsheviks took over Petrograd on 24 October 1917 where Lenin and Trotsky lie on the floor at the Smolny, dead tired from not sleeping for days and, well, leading an insurrection, and are kind of realizing what the fuck just happened. Could someone please paint that for me?
9. Revolution and war: then and now, the imperialist powers will not accept a successful revolution, e.g., Brest Litovsk.
10. As an anti-militarist with very little interest in military literature, I always dreaded Trotsky's military writings. The 100-page or so civil war chapter in the book was an excellent enough summary of how Trotksy designed and built the Red Army from scratch. Again, I am in awe. Also: what grand idea am I going to implement when I am 40?
11. It's funny how Stalin shows up here and there throughout the book, always as the creepy dumbwit. If only they knew howe cunning and crafty he really was and, you know, death squat and such.
12. The tricky bit: 1921, after seven years of wars and international boycott have reduced Russia's GDP to a third of what it was 1913 with industry and infrastructure destroyed, massive drought and famine - where to start building the grand socialist society. Economic policy trial and error on a massive scale.
13. I have a thing, aka intellectual and somewhat aesthetic interest, for one-party states so the 1921-1924 years were an interesting read re: how a revolutionary democratic mass party slowly degenerates into a bureaucratic dictatorship in which state and party are no longer separate. It's not like Lenin and Trotsky didn't realize but there were many structural forces at play, none of which really favoured freedom and socialism. Duh.
14. Lenin dies early in the second book at around page 700, it was a little hard to read the remaining 900 pages.
15. And then: the almost five-year inner-party Kremlin intrigue which reads more like a Tsarist royal succession court intrigue. Stalin, obviously, won in part, I guess, because he was the only one solely driven by power whereas Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bukharin and co were driven and divided by ideas. Ugh, Ugh.
16. Nerd problem: understandably, I suppose, the entire book, as well as its protagonists, like to describe the historic processes pre and post October through endless, and rather detailed, parallels with the French Revolution of which I have, much to my chagrin, a superficial knowledge only. Every book generates another ten to-reads! This never ends!
17. Great thing about the book is that it provides fairly consise summaries of all of Trotsky's major works, including the work's genesis and reception.
18. Loved the third part in wandering exile 1929-1940. I mean: 'loved'. First, there's 1930s Stalin's 'social revolution' aka social engineering on an unprecedented scale, as a development practitioner, I am generally pretty 'fascinated' by the scale and madness of Stalin's industrialization and collectivization. Makes Ethiopia look very unambitious, like, not even trying. Then the Comintern's major fuck-up re: Hitler and fascism.
19. Love how LT is often being described as 'prickly'. I only ever heard this word when J. used it to describe me.
20. The last book, exile years (Turkey -> France -> Norway -> Mexico) are also the most private accounts, e.g., tricky relationship with his son Lyova and then losing 4/4 children: illness and death of daughter Nina, suicide of his eldest daughter Zina in Berlin, murder of Lyova in Paris, disappearance/execution of his son Sergei in Russia.
21. Now muchos excited about my trip to Mexico City this summer to see the Trotsky Museum (with my Pyongyang travel buddies aka the Mexican triumvirate and the American chopsticks girl - for ideological consistency). Also: Getting onto my Russian visa right now. Petrograd, I am coming, 100 years too late but still! Reading and travels form the greatest circle in life. Ever.
22. <3
23. Recommended summer read, obviously.

[Mark Dickman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book that began my education as a Marxist. Deutscher's masterpiece and the definitive biography of Trotsky.

[Swarthout · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Loneliness of a Long Distance Leftist

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review could never presume to capture the depth and the wealth of Isaac Deutscher’s massive work, let alone the complexity of Trotsky himself. My own response to the work may even misrepresent it. I can say that I never expected, when I opened it, to encounter such a remarkable character as Trotsky nor to find so much interesting and diverse material on so many topics.

Many highlights stand out in this classic biography. Firstly, Trotsky’s extraordinary career as a revolutionary in Tsarist Russia, as leader of the Red Army in the Civil War, confronting a range of foreign military interventions, putting in place a foreign policy for the new regime. Secondly, the sinister procedures by which Stalin engineered the transition from democratic to bureaucratic rule. More than a few of these techniques can be seen in modern politics – see below. Thirdly, while we have to admire Trosky’s willingness to enter into the role of opposition to the soviet government which he had done so much to establish, what is really striking is the stunning damage done by Stalin to international socialism, from which the Left has yet to recover. The massacre of Chinese communists in 1927, the betrayal of the Spanish Republic, and most extraordinary of all, the astonishing capitulation to Hitler and the Nazis in 1930s Germany, which the Social Democrats might well have resisted with communist support, are just highlights in Stalin’s track record of bone headed stupidity, treachery and betrayal.

By 1930 no German, French, or other communist could voice dissent from the party line; they had to accept as gospel all official pronouncements coming from Moscow. Thus every Communist party became in its own country something like a bizarre enclave, sharply separated from the rest of the nation not so much by its revolutionary purpose as by a code of behaviour which had little to do with that purpose.” [p1306]

Trotsky pointed out that to tell the Soviet masses that the hunger and the privations, not to speak of the oppression, which they endured amounted to socialism was to kill their faith in socialism and to turn them into its enemies. In this he saw Stalin’s ‘greatest crime’, for it was committed against the deepest hopes of the working classes and threatened to compromise the future of the revolution and of the communist movement. P1382

Finally, Trotsky’s fascinating investigations of the possibilities for socialism in the future. He was aware of suggestions that there might be an inner logic that led from revolution to Stalinism and he was too open minded to entirely discount the possibility. This did not lead him to reject revolutionary socialism. He resolved that, if this were the case, even so, the duty of a Marxist was to remain on the side of the poor and the weak in permanent opposition to the powers of oppression.

Very few men in history have been in such triumphant harmony with their time as Trotsky was in 1917 and after; and so it was not because of any inherent estrangement from the realities of his generation that he then came into conflict with his time. The precursor’s character and temperament led him into it. He had, in 1905, been the forerunner of 1917 and of the Soviets; he had been second to none as the leader of the Soviets in 1917; he had been the prompter of planned economy and industrialization since the early 1920’s; and he was to remain the great, though not unerring harbinger of some future reawakening of the revolutionary peoples ... He fought ‘against history’ in the name of history itself; and against its accomplished facts, which all too often were facts of oppression, he held out the better, the liberating accomplishments of which one day it would be capable. [P1248]

I have taken the following synopsis from the closing pages of Volume Three, only changing the direct quotes by making additional paragraph breaks, so saving myself the intimidating task of summarising nearly 2000 pages of prose.

“So copious and splendid was Trotsky’s career that any part or fraction of it might have sufficed to fill the life of an outstanding historic personality.

Had he died at the age of thirty or thirty-five, some time before 1917, he would have taken his place in one line with such Russian thinkers and revolutionaries as Belinsky, Herzen, and Bakunin, as their Marxist descendant and equal.

If his life had come to a close in 1921 or later, about the time Lenin died, he would have been remembered as the leader of October, as founder of the Red Army and its captain in the Civil War, and as the mentor of the Communist International who spoke to the workers of the world with Marx’s power and brilliance and in accents that had not been heard since the Communist Manifesto . (It took decades of Stalinist falsification and slander to blur and erase this image of him from the memory of two generations.)

The ideas which he expounded and the work which he performed as leader of the Opposition between 1923 and 1929 form the sum and substance of the most momentous and dramatic chapter in the annals of Bolshevism and communism. He came forward as protagonist in the greatest ideological controversy of the century, as intellectual initiator of industrialization and planned economy, and finally as the mouthpiece of all those within the Bolshevik party who resisted the advent of Stalinism. Even if he had not survived beyond the year 1927, he would have left behind a legacy of ideas which could not be destroyed or condemned to lasting oblivion, the legacy for the sake of which many of his followers faced the firing squad with his name on their lips, a legacy to which time is adding relevance and weight and towards which a new Soviet generation is gropingly finding its way.

On top of all this come his ideas, writings, struggles, and wanderings of the period narrated in this volume. We have reviewed critically his fiascos, fallacies, and miscalculations: his fiasco with the Fourth International, his mistakes about the prospects of revolution in the West, his fumblings about reform and revolution in the U.S.S.R., and the contradictions of the ‘new Trotskyism’ of his last years. We have also surveyed those of his campaigns which are now fully and incontrovertibly vindicated: his magnificently far-sighted, although vain, efforts to arouse the German workers, the international Left, and the Soviet Union to the mortal danger of Hitler’s ascendancy; his sustained criticisms of Stalin’s hideous abuses of power, not least in the conduct of economic affairs, especially in collectivization; and his final titanic struggle against the Great Purges.” [pp1895-1897]

We have been told that a favourite book of Tony Blair's was The Prophet by Isaac Deutscher. Indeed, that is partly the reason I decided to read it. I have selected some quotes that might account for this unexpected interest in the story of Stalin and Trotsky:

"It was in the course of this year, the year 1923, that Stalin, making full use of this system of patronage, imperceptibly became the party’s master. The officials whom he nominated as regional or local secretaries knew that their positions and confirmation in office did not depend on the members of the organization on the spot but on the General Secretariat. [p797]

"At the branch meetings the opposition’s adherents often overwhelmed the party machine by their numbers and articulateness. But when the branch meetings with all their sound and fury were over, it was the secretaries who spoke on behalf of the branches, who handled the resolutions adopted, and who decided whether to suppress them or not, and, if not, how much currency to give them. Once a secretary had been confronted with the unmanageable temper of one meeting he prepared carefully for the next meeting, packed it with his men, and ruled out or silenced the opposition. [p821]

"The debate was to be concluded by the holding of the thirteenth party conference. The preparations for the conference were also in the hands of the secretaries. The election of delegates was indirect and proceeded through several stages. At every stage the secretaries checked how many of the sympathizers of the opposition were elected; and they saw to it that they were eliminated at the next stage. It was never disclosed how many votes were cast for the opposition in the primary cells of Moscow. The Forty Six claimed, without meeting with denial, that at the regional conference, which was the tier above the primary cells, they had obtained not less than 36 per cent. of the vote; yet at the gubernia conference, the next tier, that percentage dwindled to 18. The opposition concluded that, if its representation had been whittled down in the same proportion all the way from the primary to the final elections, then the opposition had behind it the great majority of the Moscow organization. This was almost certainly true, but the secretaries were on top of the majority." [p821]

These techniques are readily reflected in the way Britain’s Labour Party has conducted affairs recently, and probably also in the US Democratic Party’s selection of Clinton as candidate for the 2016 presidential elections. People on the left of the spectrum in England’s Labour Party, are accused of being Trotskyists. The label seems curiously anachronistic and suspect, but it makes more sense when we appreciate that the people using that label are not democrats, but latter day Stalinists. This should not be thought to mean they are communists. The lesson I take from Trotsky, and commend to others, is that democracy can be manipulated and utterly distorted by techniques which Stalin adopted but probably did not invent and which others (despite radically different political values) have continued to exploit. This point is actually taken up within the text: that Stalin’s totalitarian regime was not specifically communist or socialist, but entailed a reversion to social structures characteristic of the Tsarist past and identifiable in capitalist societies of Europe and the United States.

Stalinism was the product not of revolution or Bolshevism but of what had survived of the old society—this accounted for Stalin’s pitiless struggle against the old Bolsheviks, a struggle through which the primordial barbarity of Russia was taking revenge on the progressive forces and aspirations that had come to the top in 1917. Moreover, Stalinism was the epitome of all the ‘untruths, brutality, and baseness’ that made up the mechanics of any class rule and of the state at large... the defenders of bourgeois democracy, were therefore hardly entitled to feel morally superior: Stalinism was holding up to them their own mirror, even if it was partly a distorting mirror.[p1795]

Bruno Rizzi, ...in a little noticed but influential book, La Bureaucratisation du Monde , published in Paris... was the original author of the idea of the ‘managerial revolution’, which … many others were to expound later in far cruder versions. … Just as feudalism was followed not by Equality, Liberty, Fraternity, but by capitalism, so capitalism was being followed not by socialism but by bureaucratic collectivism. The Bolsheviks were ‘objectively’ just as incapable of achieving their ideal as the Jacobins had been of realizing theirs. Socialism was still utopia! The workers inspired by it were once again cheated of the fruits of their revolution. In so far, Rizzi went on, as bureaucratic collectivism organized society and its economy more efficiently and productively than capitalism had done, or could do it, its triumph marked historic progress. It was therefore bound to supersede capitalism. [p1821] ...bureaucratic collectivism was the last form of man’s domination by man, so close to classless society that bureaucracy, the last exploiting class, refused to acknowledge itself as a possessing class… The argument whether the U.S.S.R. was a workers’ state or not was often only a quibble—Rizzi had at least the merit of having ‘raised it to the height of historical generalization’. He identified bureaucratic collectivism as the new order of society, essentially the same behind the different façades of Stalinism, Nazism, Fascism, and the New Deal. [p1822]

These points would be even more clear – in my personal opinion - if the term “bureaucratic collectivism” was substituted with corporations, corporatism and the corporate state. What is critical is that totalitarianism can (and does) arise in many environments, not only in communism or socialism, and it entails the use of managerial techniques to manipulate democracy. Those who fondly imagine that Britain or America (USA) are secure against totalitarianism while they avoid leadership from the Left are sadly - and intentionally - misguided. The demand for effective democracy should unite Right and Left.

[Ethan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trotsky stands alone in history as the most extraordinary revolutionary figure. Armed with the materialist dialectic, he foresaw the coming of the Russian Revolution in 1905 and 1917. In both, he rose to the challenge that history laid at his feet. Decades of Stalinist forgeries and retellings of history could not erase his role in the revolution, its leader and chief inspirer. To bourgeois and Stalinist alike, he stood as the embodiment of October and leader of the Red Army. He saw the heights of the working class in struggle and had an unshakable faith in their ability to found society anew. Even in the 'hell-black night', facing the second world war, the victory of Hitler and Mussolini, the betrayal of the Soviet state he remained resolute. Trying to shake the working masses back to life he founded the fourth international and considered it the most important work of his life.
On 21st August 1940, Trotsky lay on a narrow hospital bed and doctors examined his wound. His eyes, almost closed, turned towards Hansen: 'Joe, you... have... notebook?' He remembered that Hansen did not speak Russian and he made a great effort to dictate a message in English. His voice was barely audible, his words blurred. This is what Hansen claims to have taken down:
'I am close to death from the blow of a political assassin... please say to our friends... I am sure... of victory... go forward.'

[Caterina]

Update 27/01/2021:
End of Vol. 1 "The Prophet Armed 1879-1921"
Very readable and thoroughly researched. Very interesting parts about Trotsky's ideological formation and transformation, but the reader has to cope with several very tedious committees, sub-committees and assemblies!
I will put this aside for a while to read some bourgeois fiction...

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Deutscher's biography of Trotsky as a teenager in the 1970's, it wasn't this edition, it might have a two volume one, what I can still remember is how good it was, how intelligent, penetrating and simply readably brilliant. Is it the Trotsky biography one should read nowadays? Well it might not be the first one to turn to but I am sure it is still relevant. Deutscher was not blinded like historians like E.H. Carr to the flaws of either his hero or the Soviet Union. We do know a lot more than we did, but we always knew a lot of the bad stuff, it was just ignored or rationalised away. I am sure if I say that Deutscher didn't do this there are plenty of people who can come back with chapter and verse to contradict me. I haven't read this book in half a century but it had a profound effect on me - I still remember scenes and episodes. Trotsky was flawed, he was not necessarily good, he countenanced and accepted horrors, but he remains human in all his errors, he was not a monster.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

As much a mammoth of a biography on Trotsky as it is one about Marxism throughout his life, the early Soviet Union from a Trotskyist perspective, and so much more. Deutscher writes brilliantly, and is able to make the mundanities of family drama seem as epic and world important as revolution itself.

Best to approach this edition ad the three books it actually is. While all, obviously, interconnected - they cover distinct periods of Trotsky’s life and are much better viewed through that framework rather than a single story of a life, as in a lot of other biographies.

Ultimately, Deutscher masterfully combines theory, personality, and history in a way which makes this book incredibly engaging.

[Andrew Noselli · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very important work, for in this book the author reveals that Leon Trotsky, the leader of the Red Army and inspiration for the Fourth International, who has come down to us in American history lessons as the epitome of Soviet Communism and even incipient fascism, was actually an advocate for Soviet Democracy. Isaac Detscher believes that because in our universe entropy affects both organic and inorganic systems, all groups -- even revolutionary organizations -- are subject to the debilitating effects of time's decay. In post-revolutionary Russia, this was resolved by Stalin's conservative move to consolidate Soviet power into a monolithic body with imperialistic tendencies by oppressing weaker groups in the subject territories that comprised the U.S.S.R. In stark contrast, before his expulsion Trotsky wanted to begin offensive socialist power-moves, including a plan of action that would unite the working classes and immediately put an end to international aggression. As opposed to Stalin, for whom socialism in one country was the dominant idea, Trotsky had a truly world-oriented picture of society. What would Trotsky have accomplished had it been he, and not Joseph Stalin, who came to power? One can only speculate, as Deutscher does in these pages...

I was amused to learn that Trotsky was born with the last name Bronstein, that he took his last name from the I.D. tag of one of his jailers when he was one of many young intellectuals imprisoned by czar Nicholas II and, most of all, that for a brief time he resided in America, where he lived on 164th St. in the Bronx. For the first time in his life he lived with a working telephone in an apartment where, as the author contends, he wondered if the still developing country of America might outdistance Europe in terms of its range of free political thought within the next fifty years. It would be much better, Deutscher speculates, if a proletarian revolution took place in the States first, with its panorama of productive relations against a backdrop of technological ascendancy, so that it could serve as a model for world revolution...

Leon Trotsky, whose original last name, Bronstein, is one place-holder removed from Botstein, would be puzzled today to see how, in the contemporary world, cinemas serve up a visual proletarian literature in place of a revolution in terms of social classes. If we were to imagine Trotsky living in today's world, we might envision him writing, "Wither the Revolution promised by the creation of the world of American free enterprise?" We might picture him wondering if the production of a United States of Europe, having its will dictated to it by America, has been a failure at the box-office? Or, if a capitalist Russia and Europe are to be installed, will both Europe and Russia be forever condemned to remain at the level of primitive capital accumulation when compared to American capitalism? From my reading of Isaac Deutscher's book, it seems that Leon Trotsky was a true European in Russian disguise, and might have thought such an outcome unwelcome for a number of reasons, most of all for the reason that it prevents the possibility of a permanent revolution from ever coming true. Picking Trotsky's thoughts up from where they were so ignominiously halted, Isaac Deutscher visualizes a world where the theories of a truly Marxist world-revolution have become reality.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trotsky! The man, the myth… the maverick! You have to do a lot in life to justify a biography weighing in at nearly 1600 pages, and Leon Trotsky certainly did. A lot of people have had a lot of opinions about the man. Praise came from the bodies ranging from the crowds of Petrograd to liberals who thought him the great lost hope of the Russian revolution; condemnation as the devil incarnate from Stalin’s throne and these days, the altright spreads the meme that Trotsky invented the concept of racism to undermine the west. In short, he was kind of a big deal.

Isaac Deutscher went a long way to cementing the picture we have of Trotsky with the “Prophet” series. It consists of three volumes: “The Prophet Armed,” covering the period from Trotsky’s birth as Lev Davidovich Bronstein through the Revolution to his victory in the Russian Civil War; “The Prophet Unarmed,” concerning the period during which Trotsky struggled and failed to define the direction the nascent Soviet Union would take; and “The Prophet Outcast,” dealing with his exile and eventual death. He started in the earlier fifties, when Stalin was still alive and the world by and large saw Trotsky either as one or another kind of ogre — the ogre of revolution, too dangerous to allow sanctuary in most democratic countries, or the ogre of counterrevolution, the cause of all the Soviet Union’s ills — or as plain irrelevant.

Deutscher’s Trotsky is human- a grand human, massive in his abilities and in his failings, a classic tragic hero. Maybe this is just me in the current climate talking, but what impressed me the most about Trotsky was just his sheer energy. The man could get a lot done! This is true from early times, as the young Trotsky managed a harsh student career with all sorts of extracurricular learning and political activism in the fledgling Russian socialist scene of the end of the nineteenth century. It continued right through his first periods of exile, both internal and external- even shipped to Siberia, he’s still organizing, agitating, learning math and science, getting married, having kids, escaping and fleeing across the tundra, doing literary reviews- hell, sometimes getting these reviews out is all I can do!

Trotsky danced an intricate dance with Vladimir Lenin in the period before the Russian Revolution. He was a Menshevik — a believer that Russia had to go through a bourgeois revolution before a vanguard party could propel it to socialism — in all but name, while Lenin of course ran the Bolshevik side of things. Deutscher depicts Trotsky as ever hewing to classical Marxism, which at the time of the Second International seemed more Menshevik. But Trotsky and Lenin converged once the Revolution broke out in Russia- I don’t recall if Deutscher put it exactly this way, but one thing that could move Trotsky away from his attachment to the classical formulae was the action of the people. Detached from them, as he would eventually be… but in Petrograd in 1917 he was in his element, leading the workers, speechifying, outwitting the Cadets and Mensheviks and whoever else. Here, it’s well worth reading Trotsky’s “History of the Russian Revolution,” because Trotsky was a capable historian on top of everything else.

Once the Bolsheviks established control with the October Revolution, it was time for the Civil War. Deutscher deals with this in a relatively short spread of pages, but it’s arguably Trotsky’s most impressive achievement. Entirely self-taught in military arts, he built up the Red Army from a collection of worker militia, trained and disciplined them, and fought a multi-front war against opponents with foreign (including American) backing and actual military experience, and beat them all. In the way of ideological civil wars, this one was bloody and brutal, with hostage takings and executions (for instance, that of the Czar and his family) on both sides. This has been called the “heroic” period of the Soviet secret police (the Cheka, in this incarnation), but I’m not sure I believe that to be a real thing. Maybe I’m just a soft touch, but even if necessary, I don’t see a lot of heroism in it. I’m not a heroism-seeker in any event, I guess.

With victory in the Civil War came that “oh shit” moment when the Bolsheviks had to govern their ravaged country and build socialism, and that’s where things started to come apart for Trotsky. While he was winning battles, his rivals in the Politburo were winning the war of position inside the bureaucracy. Trotsky had the keen ability to figure out what needed doing — concessions to the peasants, loosening of market restrictions, bootstrapping of industrial labor — just before the political winds shifted to make them possible. Stalin, with whom Trotsky shared a mutual distaste from the beginning that only curdled in time, again and again seized on Trotsky’s ideas after condemning them, and Trotsky, a few months or a year earlier. There’s a certain horror-movie element to the middle book, where you’re screaming at Trotsky to do something — mobilize the army, kill Stalin, just get out — but of course, he doesn’t do it. His confidence in himself and in the revolutionary process, his loyalty to the party of Lenin, and his underestimation of Stalin led him to stay in a situation where he and his allies were gradually maneuvered out of positions of power and influence and the public was rallied against them.

I never was good at following lines of doctrine. I mark Christian sects largely by their social following and aesthetic feel, and I get lost in the minutiae between leftoid groups- one of the reasons I’m in DSA (and not in any ideological caucuses therein), no need to follow a specific line. What I can make out is that Trotsky, Stalin, and Bukharin were the left, center, and right of the Bolshevik party for a while, and Trotsky’s left was weak and divided, dealing as he was with the likes of Zinoviev in his coalition. Before reading this book, many of these names were just names to me, but Deutscher deftly brings out their characters- Bukharin’s brilliance tempered by a certain arrogance, Zinoviev’s pusillanimity and overconfidence, looming behind it all Stalin, personality-less and ominous. Trotsky couldn’t ally with Bukharin’s right, which he saw threatening to reinstate capitalism, so he was isolated and forced out. As far as I can tell, that’s a decent capsule of what happened, but there was a lot of back and forth that Deutscher makes interesting, if not easy to encapsulate.

Finally, Trotsky is at loose ends, first in Turkey, then France, Norway, and finally Mexico. This part is just sad. He strives mightily to get some kind of opposition to Stalin off the ground, but within Russia Stalin is amping up the Great Terror and outside Trotsky was faced with fecklessness, division, indifference, and the issues caused by his own sometimes impossible standards. It proved an impossible balancing act, to criticize Stalin (as his cult of personality blossomed internationally) without condemning the Soviet experiment and the Bolshevik party. Even once he allowed, in the last few months of his life, that the Soviet Union wasn’t in any meaningful sense a “worker’s state” that needed to be defended to the last, he ran into bad timing- it soon did become imperative to defend the Soviet Union from fascism, even as Stalin undermined antifascism by treating with Hitler. Trotsky’s efforts to create a Fourth International were riddled by Stalinist spies and infighting, and continues to be a near-impossible organizing hobby horse to this day. His kids either committed suicide or were killed by Stalin’s agents. Finally, he himself was assassinated.

The end? Not quite. The fact that Stalin felt the need to have assassinated a man he had so thoroughly marginalized speaks to the power that Trotsky had as a symbol and as an organizer against all odds. With the help of the Deutscher biography, Trotsky had a revival after his death, and Trotskyite groups sprang up the world over. We’re little closer to international revolution or a Fourth International, but many of them do valuable organizing work all across the world- speaking as someone who has organized with (and occasionally been frustrated by) Trotskyite groups. More than anything Trotsky represented ideas and a vision of a way in which the people could take power. Both have experienced… it feels picayune to call them “setbacks,” massive body blows is more like it… but both continue to inspire. *****

[Kokelector · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es difícil establecer un juicio ecuménico en torno a lo que ocurrió en octubre de 1917 en la Rusia Zarista. Por un lado, el triunfo por primera vez en la historia de la clase obrera que se toma el poder por medio de los soviets y quienes ayudaron a dirigir esa toma del poder: los bolcheviques.
¿Por qué comenzar así? Porque Isaac Deutscher realiza una biografía extraordinaria de uno de los principales dirigentes de la Rev. Rusa: León Trotsky, pero que no se queda sólo en ello, sino que va realizando un juicio político en torno al papel que juega en distintos momentos, tanto de su vida personal (como la primera vez que discute con una marxista) y de su quehacer político (nunca consideró la posibilidad de que Stalin se tomará el poder hasta que fue muy tarde).
Comencé a leer, otra vez, porque necesitaba subir el ánimo después de la derrota de 4S y la distancia del tiempo (la primera vez lo leí a las 21 años), me hizo dar cuenta que para que existiese el triunfo del gobierno de los soviets tuvieron que existir muchas condiciones que hoy en día parte de la izquierda no estaría dispuesta a realizar. En hora buena dirán algunas y algunos, pero esos ingredientes son necesarios para la derrota, en este caso del zarismo, y en la actualidad para un neoliberalismo capitalista despiadado.
Es indudable que la figura de Trotsky aún saca muchas ronchas, dado su sesgo y su inteligencia revolucionaria que le permitió discutir y escribir desde estrategia militar hasta arte, pasando por economía y plantamientos en torno a la formación de partidos políticos. Pero de una superioridad moral que no le permitió, hasta ser expulsado del proceso revolucionario, entender que las revoluciones, valga la redundancia, las hacen hombres y mujeres con sentimientos y no máquinas en post de un sólo objetivo, y que no siempre primará la buena enseñanza, sino que será el trabajo político el que irá marcando la pauta y el paso.

Acá nos encontramos con una biografía que analiza hasta el triunfo de los soviets, en donde en lo más alto del poder comienzan a existir las primeras fisuras de una revolución imaginada de cierta forma, pero que la realidad llevaba por un camino diferente.
Me ayudo en sí a subir el ánimo, pero me dejo con muchas más interrogantes a cómo enfrentar una vida militante y/o dedicada a querer transformar nuestra realidad.

[Brijraj Bhatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

The tragic tale of a revolutionary giant. All the three parts in the book gives us the most clear caricature of Trotsky and also his political ideals. While you are reading you just can't stop feeling for the man. What trials and tribulations he had gone through both in his political and in his personal life because of his stand against Stalin. It is heartbreaking sometimes. From the leader of the Russian revolution to the most hated, misunderstood, feared and exiled politician and theoretician on whose face the goverments of the whole world closed their gates. And with no resources in hand , facing the most formidable and powerful bureaucratic organisation of Stalinism who stopped at nothing to eradicate the opposition and especially the one political philosophy that sent a shiver down their spines ,"Trotskyism".

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gifted prophet of a false god.

The life and times of Russian writer, revolutionary leader and Marxist fanatic Leon Trotsky are the subject of this 3 volume, 1,600+ page biography ‘The Prophet’ authored by former Polish Communist, Isaac Deutscher. This epic biography chronicles the life one of the most fascinating and tragically misguided leaders of the 20th century.
For the uninitiated, Trotsky was second only to Vladimir Lenin in the infamous October 1917 Russian Revolution, He was also an intrepid freelance author, propagandist and journalist of sorts in addition to his revolutionary work (Think half Che Guevara, half H. L. Mencken).
Deutscher’s classic bio suffers early on from the author’s unabashed admiration for his subject, whom he constantly strains to apologize for and whose motives he tirelessly attempts to explicate. To be sure, this bias is understandable. To describe Trotsky as articulate would be a mammoth understatement; his eloquent writing is blinding in its incisive, illustrative brilliance. It’s easy to imagine Trotsky’s rousing speeches energizing tired, cold & hungry Red army soldiers during the Russian civil war.
From his early days on his father’s farm in modern day Ukraine to his ceaseless pamphleteering on behalf of workers, to his relentless rise in the RSDLP to the highest political body of the Soviet Union and concluding with his shocking assassination in the summer of 1940 in Mexico, Trotsky lived a remarkable life. His indomitable will as an irretrievable communist notwithstanding, Trotsky was a formidable intellectual and inspiring political leader. Trotsky was an essential figure in both the 1905 Russian Revolution and alongside Lenin, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The subsequent bloody civil war (1917-1922) found him as ruthless leader of the Red Army.
The outstanding first volume, The Prophet Armed (1879-1921) details Trotsky’s upbringing, radical Marxism, imprisonment and exile by the Tsarist monarchy as well as his rise to the top Bolshevik leadership during and after a pyrrhic victory in the civil war.
The second volume, The Prophet Unarmed (1921-1929) is a detailed history of the Bolshevik party before and after the death of Lenin and it’s regression into eventual murderous dictatorship under Josef Stalin. It should be said that Deutscher takes great time and effort to explain the many internal Bolshevik factional disputes and economic debates and their respective outcomes in this volume. Trotsky’s activities often take a backseat to these developments which invariably result in Stalin increasingly in control of the Bolshevik party and government apparatus in contrast to Trotsky’s aloof, mostly hands-off efforts to check the growing menace. Unsurprisingly, Trotsky loses the internal struggle to succeed Lenin as leader of the Soviet state and is subsequently exiled from Russia altogether by Stalin.
The third and final volume, The Prophet Outcast (1929-1940) serves as a tragic final chapter detailing Trotsky’s last years as an international exile and pariah, being driven out of one nation after another and finally ending up in Mexico where he meets his untimely end at the hands of an NKVD assassin.
These books were authored and published in the 1950’s and 60’s and reading this bio after Communism has been so utterly wiped out and discredited as a form of socioeconomic organization is interesting; Deutscher was still grappling with the future prospects with little foreknowledge that Marxism was doomed.
Of course, the 1917 revolution itself was more opportunism than ‘working class’ upheaval as Lenin and his Bolshevik cadres seized power against the backdrop of World War I with Russia being badly mauled by Germany and a weak, wobbly provisional government in charge of a sprawling peasant nation, the stage was set for an organized and armed force with a large propaganda circulation to push it over (and initially only the city of Petrograd at that).
While ultimately misguided in his own life’s mission, Trotsky had an often uncanny ability to foresee the future. (I.e., substitutism, the destruction of Stalin’s personality cult, etc.) He had the pulse of the situation in 1930’s Germany during Hitler’s rise to power predicting fascist conquest with near-complete accuracy.
A striking aspect of Trotsky’s final exile from the Soviet Union was his steadfast refusal to admit that socialism in Russia had been a dismal failure. Such was the fanaticism of Trotsky that even with friends and comrades executed or imprisoned in labor camps, ( himself banished to the remote Turkish island of Prinkipo) his own citizenship revoked, etc. he still held fast to the belief that the Soviet state should not fall, that the revolution not be allowed to fail, no matter how horrible it became. This near-religious faith in the “worker’s state” even led him to defend Stalin’s 1939 invasion of Finland as being in the best interests of the USSR. There is also the problematic and ironic revelation that much of Stalin’s grim dictatorial methods were the direct result of his co-opting the initial suggestions of Trotsky( i.e. militarization of labor, central planning, state ownership of industry).
In the end, Trotsky’s family was almost entirely decimated by the Soviet NKVD, his opposition movement and the Fourth International reduced to a tiny, ineffectual Marxist sect and his home in Mexico converted to a prison meant to protect him from the deadly international reach of his great enemy Stalin. He held his head high amidst continual setbacks with pen in hand and his devoted wife at his side, steadfast in his devotion to the false god of Communism.

[Anne Cupero · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not believe how much I loved this book. I could not always follow the specifics of Marxism and other isms (dialectical materialism for example) but, the writing was always clear and precise. When speaking about Trotsky's relationships, I was much intrigued. As with Ho Chi Minh, I think Western countries lost a massive opportunity to engage with a superb intellect, and one who would have loved discussing with world leaders why his view was important for his country. We wouldn't grant a visa to this man, and later ended up with all that Red Scare nonsense and the McCarthy scenario. This man was brilliant, and the US could have really saved ourselves money, time, and so much else if we would have embraced him. I felt bad though that at the end, the author (granted, he had gone on for over 1500 pages) did not give us an epilogue. What the end for Natalya was, or Seva. I did a little research of my own - and fascinatingly, it seems that Seva's granddaughter is the director of a division of the NIH (might be Seva's daughter). How amazing is that?

[Paul Ataua · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s the first part in Isaac Deutscher’s mammoth trilogy on Trotsky covering the period 1879 -1921. Again my fascination with change, and especially major transformations, got the better of me and brought me here. I was left a little disappointed. It is a master work that provides immense detail of Trotsky’s life and politics as they developed, but not really getting down to the focus of the change itself. Changes in Trotsky were well handled but that wasn’t really what I was looking for. I learned a lot and am thankful I undertook the reading of it, but I doubt I will be going onto the second and third volumes.

[Jay Rothermel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this superb biography in ebook format in 2015.

The book collects all three volumes of Deutscher's monumental trilogy. It is an exemplary study or a Marxist by a Marcist, using the hard-won tools of Marxism to do it.

No other book about Trotsky or his period comes close to Deutscher in terms of fair-play, enthusiasm, or erudition.

[William Whalen · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are interested in Soviet/Russian history or Marxism, this mammoth biography of Trotsky is a must read. Even with my love of lengthy reads, I have to admit to being intimidated by the 1500+ page count. Trust me, it is worth it.

[John Warner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read originally as the three volume political biography of Trotsky but after I lost my books in a house fire - I have replaced it with this single volume edition.

[Christine H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece of a biography. I’ve never read anything quite like it.

[Ryan]

(3.5 stars)

[JoJo]

完成1册

[Joseph Rasmussen · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard to provide a review that will give justice to the extensive research that has been undertaken to produce the three books contained. However, the author offers a genuine and respectfully close view of Trotsky's life and character. It gives an opportunity to understand the family relations and personal ties of the man beyond his political significance, and The Prophet truly is a remarkable read.

The revolutionary instinct of Trotsky is an inspiration and worthy reading for anyone considering to do so.

[Baard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent biography of the greatest revolutionary in our time.

[Duncan E.]

An extraordinary tour de force by a literary giant. Today's "Let's trash the defunct Soviet Union" historians, even on their tiptoes, can't touch the ankles of Isaac Deutscher.