Trotsky: A documentary,

by Francis Wyndham

A Documentary

Genres: Politics, History

Hardcover

First published November 30, 1973

Reviews

[T · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly moving, regardless of your assessment of the man. A book full of vision and hope

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 4 out of 5]

A massive picture book about Leon Trotsky's life, the likes of which you never see anymore. Very well designed with perceptive (even sympathetic) text, and concluding with an astonishing double-page spread of Trotsky's corpse entering an incinerator.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thorough and vividly illustrated life of the man who made, recorded and revised the most momentous event of the twentieth century, the Bolshevik Revolution. Who else but Lev Davidovich Bronstein would have dared to rename himself after the guard who imprisoned him in Siberia? Who first met Lenin in London, broke with him over the Bolshevik-Menshevik split, and then rejoined the Leninist team in time for October in Petrograd? Who put forth the most radical theory of revolution after Marx, Permanent Revolution, fulfilled in Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cuba? Who found himself in New York City in February 1917 and rushed back to Russia to participate in the fireworks, inspiring that classic headline in THE JEWISH DAILY FORWARD, "Bronx Man Leads Revolution in Russia"? Who forged the Red Army and led it to triumph against the Whites in the Civil War? Who foretold the failure of building socialism in one country, a lesson all Soviet leaders from Stalin to Gorbachev should have heeded, got cast out of the Communist Party and then exiled from the Soviet Union for this heresy, and started his life and political profession all over again while wandering in a "planet without a visa"? Who wrote in Mexico in 1940, with Stalin's assassins on his heels, "Life is beautiful. Let future generations cleanse it of all filth and oppression"?