Trotsky: A Biography - Softcover

Service, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330439693 ISBN 13: 9780330439695

Publisher: Pan Books Ltd, 2010

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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.

Review:

''In this astonishingly comprehensive book--Robert Service has trawled almost every archive on the planet that has any reference to Trotsky--we get a clear picture of Trotsky's political development, his part in the 1917 revolution, his differences with Lenin, his break with Stalin and, finally, the years of exile and agitation in which he attracted a ragbag of bizarre followers and made the mistake of professing that there was a form of communism different to Stalin's...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.'' ----Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph

''Thick and intensely researched but a pleasure to read, it should remain the definitive work for some time...This is a thoughtful, rewarding and essential contribution to 20th-century history.'' --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 reputation...The 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 time...At 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" versus international revolution, there was little politically between Stalin and Trotsky. It was personality that divided them and both personalities were highly unattractive. If Trotsky had become dictator, Service is clear that while Russia would have avoided Stalin's personal sadism, the same millions would still have been killed.'' ----Simon Sebag Montefiore, Sunday Telegraph

About this edition

• Publisher: Pan Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0330439693
• ISBN 13: 9780330439695
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 600