Lev Trotskii as the Mirror of the Russian Revolution

Abstract

Iurii Georgievich Fel'shtinskii and Georgii Iosifovich Cherniavskii, Lev Trotskii. 4 vols. Moscow: Tsentropoligraf, 2012-13. 1: Revoliutsioner, 1879-1917 gg., 448 pp. 2: Bol'shevik, 1917-1924gg., 512 pp. 3: Oppozitsioner, 1923-1929 gg., 464 pp. 4: Vrag No. 1, 1929-1940 gg., 541 pp. (Lev Trotskii: Revolutionary, 1879-1917; Bolshevik, 1917-24; Oppositionist, 1923-29; Enemy no. 1, 1929-40). ISBN-13 978-5227037831, 978-522703829, 978-5227040640, 978-5227041548. Oddvar K. Hoidal, Trotsky in Norway: Exile, 1935-1937- 414 pp. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2013. ISBN-13 978-0875804743. $39.95. Bertrand M. Patenaude, Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary. 384 pp. New York: Harper Collins, 2009. ISBN-13 978-006082068. $27.99. Joshua Rubenstein, Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary's Life. 225 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. ISBN-13 978-0300198324. $16.00. Robert Service, Trotsky: A Biography. 656 pp. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. ISBN-13 978-0674036154. $35.00. Research for this article was conducted with the financial support of the Russian Foundation for the Humanities, Project no. 15-33-12016, Revolution of 1917 in the Historical Memory of Russian Culture. I would like to thank the Department Development Partnership Program of the European University at St. Petersburg for supporting my research and educational projects, Boris Kolonitskii for the idea for my title, and, for valuable advice, Alissa Klots, Liudmila Novikova, Igal Halfin, and Elizaveta Zhdankova. According to Soviet school textbooks, the Russian writer Lev Tolstoi, in the light hand of Vladimir Lenin, was known as the of the Russian Revolution. This metaphor was not entirely accurate, as Lenin was equally convinced that Tolstoi did not correctly reflect the revolution. In the same sense one may consider Lev Davidovich Trotskii (1879-1940) as an inaccurate mirror of the revolution, both an opponent of Lenin and his close associate. Attempts to write a biography of Trotskii that reflect the full complexity of his personality and political career have been undertaken since the 1920s. (1) The beginning of Trotskyana occurred during the lifetime of the international Marxist revolutionary, when in 1925 the brilliant writer Max Eastman, who had sympathized for some time with the Bolsheviks, published the first serious biography of Trotskii's youth. (2) In his memoirs, Eastman left vivid characterizations of Trotskii. (3) Together with the memoirs of Trotskii's wife and other people close to him, Eastman's portraits became one of the main sources of Trotskyana. (4) The others are the multivolume publication of Trotskii's documents from 1917 to 1922 preserved in the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam and the 14-volume collection of his essays, published by Trotskyists. (5) Among research on Trotskii, the most influential work for many years was Isaac Deutscher's trilogy about Trotskii the prophet. A supporter in the 1930s of the Fourth International, the Trotskyist alternative to communist and socialist internationalism, Deutscher later moved away from the Trotskyist movement. However, his trilogy demonstrated an interest in Trotskyism among societal and scholarly circles. (6) Deutscher's book had a great resonance--to a large extent because the author was able to get access to documents in the closed section of Trotskii's archive in Houghton Library (Harvard College Library), known as the Exile Papers. (7) Among other biographers of Trotskii, it is worth mentioning the former Communist Bertram D. Wolfe, the French historian-Trotskyist Pierre Broue, and works representing the trend of psychological history. (8) For a long time, the interpretation of Trotskii put forward by Deutscher remained the most influential, especially given the rise of revisionist historians and proponents of the linguistic turn and new cultural history showing hardly any interest in Trotskii. …