Trotsky: A Biography
Robert Service completes his masterful trilogy on the founding figures of the Soviet Union in an eagerly anticipated, authoritative biography of Leon Trotsky.
Trotsky is perhaps the most intriguing and, given his prominence, the most understudied of the Soviet revolutionaries. Using new archival sources including family letters, party and military correspondence, confidential speeches, and medical records, Service offers new insights into Trotsky. He discusses Trotskyâe(tm)s fractious relations with the leaders he was trying to bring into a unified party before ; his attempt to disguise his political closeness to Stalin; and his role in the early s as the progenitor of political and cultural Stalinism. Trotsky evinced a surprisingly glacial and schematic approach to making revolution. Service recounts Trotskyâe(tm)s role in the botched German revolution of ; his willingness to subject Europe to a Red Army invasion in the s; and his assumption that peasants could easily be pushed onto collective farms. Service also sheds light on Trotskyâe(tm)s character and personality: his difficulties with his Jewish background, the development of his oratorical
Trotsky: A Biography - Softcover
Review
Thick and intensely researched but a pleasure to read, it should remain the definitive work for some timeThis is a thoughtful, rewarding and essential contribution to 20th-century history. (starred review)
&#x;Publishers Weekly
Robert Service delivers an outstanding, fascinating biography of this dazzling titan. It is compelling as an adventure story--the ultimate rise and fall--but also revelatory as the scholarly revision of a historical reputationThe portrait of Trotsky's forgotten world of Jewish farmers and poverty-stricken Russian aristocrats is eccentric and intriguing. Trotsky himself hid much of his background that Service reveals for the first timeAt the end of Service's revision, what remains of the Prophet? The intellectual, orator, manager of the Bolshevik coup and architect of the Civil War victory remain, but alongside them must be laid the mendacity of his memoirs, the ugly egotism and unpleasant, overweening arrogance, the belief in and enthusiastic practice of killing on a colossal scale, the political ineptitude, the limit of ambition. Apart from their famous row about "socialism in one country"
Trotsky: A Biography
British historian Robert Service is not one of those, though. He has made a career of dispassionately analyzing Communists and Communism, including writing biographies of Lenin and Stalin. His reward for this is to be regularly attacked by Communists and their allies, and those attacks reached a fever pitch upon the publication of "Trotsky" in This because for a hundred years the fiction that Trotsky was the conscience of the Russian Revolution, the man who would have implemented “real Communism” leading to the workers’
In The Service of Historical Falsification
A Review of Robert Services Trotsky: A Biography
By David North
11 November
This article first appeared on the World Socialist Website.
Trotsky: A Biography
Robert Service
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts,
The Specter of Leon Trotsky
In James Burnham, the intellectual godfather of modern American neo-conservatism, reviewed The Prophet Armed, the first volume of Isaac Deutschers monumental biography of Leon [Lev Davidovich] Trotsky. Fifteen years had passed since Burnham had resigned from the Fourth International at the climax of a political struggle in which he had crossed polemical swords with Leon Trotsky. It had been a difficult experience for Burnham, who felt somewhat overmatched in this political and literary contest. I must stop awhile in wonder, Burnham had written in a document addressed to Trotsky, at the technical perfection of the verbal structure you have created, the dynamic sweep of your rhetoric, the burning expression of your unconquerable devotion to the socialist ideal, the sudden, witty, flashing metaphors that sparkle through your pages. (1)
In the aftermath
Biographies you may also like
New pope 2013 biography of alberta Biography Pope Francis was 76 years old when he was elected on March 13, , on the fifth ballot of the Conclave. At the time, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J., was .
Lalude biography of alberta This video is about Lalude, a yoruba veteran actor & movie producer cum skit maker. It is about his background, education, journey to movie industry, networt Missing: alberta.
Kailash eglinton biography of albert Albert Einstein was born in Germany in and attended elementary school in Munich. He struggled with the rigid school system and enjoyed classical music. As a teenager, he began Missing: kailash eglinton.
Pieter jan bruges biography of albert einstein Einstein received the Nobel Prize in Physics and immigrated to the United States to escape the Nazis, working at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He spent his later years .
Skott snider biography of albert Know about Skott Snider Bio, Affair, Age, Nationality, Height, Salary, Divorce, Net Worth, Wiki, Social Media, Gender, Horoscope. Who is Skott Snider? Skott Snider is one of the most successful American directors, photographers, and g: albert.
Ian robertson rugby biography of abraham For many years, Scotsman Ian Robertson has been a leading commentator on rugby union for the BBC. Ian is also a writer and former international rugby player and was educated at George Missing: abraham.