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The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky: 1921-1929 (Oxford Paperbacks)

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This is a fascinating book detailing the fall from grace of the Soviet Union's number 2 man in the revolution: Leon Trotsky. After Lenin's death, Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, the ruling triumverate, did all that they could to eliminate this popular figure from the political arena. Deutscher does a great job illuminating one of the the major ideological conflicts in the Soviet Union during the 1920's: socialism in one country advocated by Stalin and permanent revolution supported by Trotsky. Deutscher's arguments make a strong case for Trotsky's position, since without a communist revolution in a more industrially advanced country, Soviet socialism faced the danger of becoming heavily bureaucratic and deformed. The other major difference between Stalin and Totsky was about the course of inustrialization in the Soviet Union. Trotsky warned about the danger of the New Economic Policy (NEP) slowly restoring capitalism in Russia. In Stalin's battle for power with Trotsky, he originally supported the NEP and a slow course of industrialization. When he finally defeated Trotsky (which begins the final book of Deutscher's trilogy) he almost completely stole Trotsky's program of rapid industrialization for the USSR. The question that the reader is left with is: would idustrialization in the USSR have been more peaceful under Trotsky than Stalin? Would we be talking about millions of dead Soviet citizens today and would the communist movement around the world still be a factor if Trotsky, not Stalin, would have won the power struggle in the 1920's. It's obvious that Deutscher is a big supporter of Leon Trotsky. Its hard not to be: he almost single handedly organized the Red Army with no military background which repelled foreign intervention during the Russian Civil War. He was matched only by Lenin as the supreme Marxist intellectual of the time. A supreme orator, he was the consumate revolutionary and internationalist. This trilogy is by far the best Trotsky biography to date. Any one interested in the Russian revolution or the Communist movement must read these books.

Any reprint of this classic work is better than none. And of course Deutscher grasps the gist of the matter as Trotsky's "middle" period is concerned : the fact that he was unable to lauch a decided bid for power aganst Stalin when he had still a chance to do so, but then managed to recover enough influence - almost solely by means of his intellectual acumen - to wage a brilliant but doomed in advance defensive political campaign in the late 1920s. Be as it is, if marxism is going to recover from the long reactionary eclipse of the last 30 years, it will have to pay attention to musch of what Trotsky said and wrote in the period covered by this work.

Exactly because of that, I've to complain about the quality of this new Verso edition. Typos abound; the cover is good, but the paper used for the regular pages is of low quality - a highly absorbing, and I suppose perhaps of high acidity, variety of paper, something I discovered when my copy was exposed to humidity and became soaked like a sponge. Also, there lacks and introductory essay and a glossary. Frankly, I think Verso should value more having this work in its publishing list.

This is the second volume of a three-volume sympathetic biography of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky by Isaac Deutscher. This is Deutscher's most famous work.

In this second volume the author gets about telling the story that he really wants to tell. Rather than a balanced tale of the life of Trotsky, the author really want to concentrate on the conflict between him and Joseph Stalin. This volume is where that tale begins in earnest.

Nonetheless, Deutscher's style of writing grabs the reader's interest and holds her/him to the subject. This is a worthy addition to any library of any reader interested in Soviet history.

We all know Trotsky loses in the Lenin succesion struggle but it is still interesting following the chronology.

Deutscher tells it all in detail. I liked Prophet Armed better and kind of skimmed through this book but still enjoyed it.

I wanted to see just how the Trotsky elimination process happens. Did he get physically manhandled. Is he bounced off to a hard labor gulag. Is he dragged out of bed in the middle of the night by the security service? How does he react when he realizes it's all down hill from here.

Oh yes there is the contrast between "permanent revolution" and "socialism in one country". You will get all the details plus more.

See how the party bigwigs fear Trotsky in the succession process. See how they all underestimate the "grey mediocrity" (Stalin).

See how Trotsky's disobedience to Lenin's instruction to denounce Stalin at the critical party congress comes backs to haunt him.

See why Lenin "gets it" politically while Trotsky sometimes has his mind in the stratosphere.

Deutscher is easy to read. He explains the details clearly. Clearly a good book for the intellectual, the intellectual "wannabee" and just the average reader interested in the history of this revolution. You will be much better informed even if you have no prior knowledge of the Russian Revolution, etc.

This second volume of Isaac Deutscher's biography of Trotsky proposed that Trotsky, not Lenin, inspired the Bolshevik revolution. (By the third volume, Lenin vanished altogether, as Deutscher ludicrously called Trotsky `the leader of October' and the `intellectual initiator of industrialization and planned economy'.)

On the notion that Trotsky upheld Lenin's thought, we should note that Lenin wrote, "uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible in several or even in one capitalist country taken separately. The victorious proletariat of that country, having expropriated the capitalists and organised its own socialist production, would stand up against the rest of the world, the capitalist world ...."

Trotsky denied Lenin's conclusion, writing, "it would be hopeless to think ... that, for example, a revolutionary Russia could hold out in the face of a conservative Europe." He then accused Lenin of `that very national narrow-mindedness which constitutes the essence of social-patriotism'.

Lenin riposted in 1918, "I know that there are, of course, sages who think they are very clever and even call themselves Socialists, who assert that power should not have been seized until the revolution had broken out in all countries. They do not suspect that by speaking in this way they are deserting the revolution and going over to the side of the bourgeoisie. To wait until the toiling classes bring about a revolution on an international scale means that everybody should stand stock-still in expectation. That is nonsense."

Yet Trotsky repeated, "real progress of a socialist economy in Russia will become possible only after the victory of the proletariat in the major European countries."

But Trotsky won few to his defeatist dogma. Deutscher admitted that "in Leningrad there were at the beginning of 1926, not more than about 30 Trotskyists." In 1926, the Trotskyists claimed that there were 4,000 Trotskyists in the whole of the Soviet Union, as against the 750,000 Party members.

Deutscher wrote of the 1924 Lenin enrolment of workers into the Party, "Among the mass of new entrants, the politically immature, the backward, the dull-minded and the docile, the climbers, and the nest-featherers, formed a considerable proportion." He gave no evidence for this assertion: it seems to be sheer class prejudice.

Again, he wrote, "the great majority of the party was a jelly-like mass; it consisted of meek and obedient members, without a mind and a will of their own." He called factory workers `the great credulous mass'. Deutscher plainly echoes his idol's contempt for the working class, his intellectual snobbery, arrogance and dogmatism.

But the truth broke through, just once, when Deutscher wrote that Trotsky was `Full of the sense of his superiority' and that "his mind remained closed. He lived as if in another world, wrapped up in himself and his ideas."

This whole biography is special pleading, as objective as a Jesuit's biography of a Pope or Christopher Hitchens' book on Orwell.

This second of three volumes in Deutscher's biography is an astonishing and captivating achievement. Deutscher weaves together character study, drama, and historical narrative to give an authoritative account of Trotsky's mortal struggles to uphold democracy and internationalism in the Soviet Union against Stalin's bureaucratic and totalitarian machinations.

Deutscher's deft handling of the facts, personalities, ideas, and situations of the time is simply unparallelled, and makes for a tremendously enjoyable and informative read.

Essential material for anyone exploring the question of where socialism went wrong in the 20th century, and the dilemma of authority and freedom in mass movements.

Both who Trostsky was and the nature of the Russian Revolution are hotly contested subjects. I very much like both Marx and the idea of a workers revolution. It seems to me the Capitalist economic system or any of the economic systems that preceeded it were very unfair and exploitative, and the main stream of world history never knew anything else, at least in the most significant ways. It is as simple that.

Also, what happened in America starting in 1776 was all about a recognition that every one should and must have rights for certain freedoms. These freedoms were addressed institutionally in very insightful ways in legal documents such as the Bill of Rights. However, other very profound human rights were also thouougly buried by the Ameican Revolution. The American revoution had less than nothing to say about any economic human rights. It may have taken firm measures against Monarchy and Aristocracy, but it savagely denied other fundamental human rights. For sure, our forefathers framed the rights of slave holders in our highest legal document, our Constitution, making certain that great numbers of our population would have no rights beyond being slave owners' property. In fact, the Constitution gave more power to slave holding states (the three-fifths provision, that made sure the slave holders would have power greater than their numbers, and would be granted, by state apportionment, for Presidential and Congressional elections would have increased power, including institutional power for the slave states as oppressors, directly over the people they oppressed (Gary Wills wrote an excellent book on the subject, The Negro President is). Also the Revolution did less than nothing to challenge great invisible legal institutions that kept ordinary working classes of people, women, and the native Americans at the very bottom, in many ways just a little above the slaves. To illustrate this great invisable but deep rooted customary law, no womean voted in America until almost 90 years after the Constitution was adopted, but the Constitution had no actual restiction against women voting. Also, there was no federally recognized labor law where workers had even the right to elect their own union representatives until the year Franlin Roosevelt was elected President, and there was no national labor law providing that employers had to recognize these labor unions, their right to collective bargaining, or the right to stike. This was after FDR became President, and well sfter the Russian Revolution. No wonder that so many workers wanted a workers revolution, and no wonder Marx exhorted workers to 'Unite' and 'You have nothing to lose but your chains'

I am not saying that the American Revolution was worthless, as some do. It gave us some starting point to work from, and so many of the words of the Revolution either implied or spoke directly about great universal rights. It gave great number of Americans in the next 200 years good causes to fight for. Not everything was inspired by the American Revolution. Some of it was inspired by Marx and Engles, some of it by their followers, by Anarchists, and also by the Russian Revolutionaries.

Starting after the first third of the 19th Century, other Revolutionaries started writing about planning movements for deeper universal rights, and Marx was of great leaders and the Communist Manifesto and Das Capital among the great documents. If we are to think about Marxism being deeply flawed,as some peple write in these book reviews, the American Revolution was deeply flawed as well. It seems to me that the Communist Revolutionary thinkers were less flawed, or at least flawed in a different way. The Communist flaw was it was such a vast revolution and tyrants or people who were for seizing their own power were able to take it over. There is one other great event, in particular, the ones who were to be the Russian Revolutionaries opposed, World War I. People who believed in the International working class gaining their rights through International solidarity should oppose the wars of Capitalist Counties. They should not allow themselves to be payed against each other. Too many other socialists abandoned this completely.

I am sympathetic to the orignial October 1917 Revolution. It certainly was not perfect, and if you read this book, you will see the circumstances were catastrophic. There was a great war and then a great civil war, and economic conditions became catastrophic. Russia's Industry, for many years was no more than 20% of what it was before war (under the Czar) and none of the Capitalist countries would do anything for Communist Russia, except let the Russians starve. Trotsky, in 1923 or 1924 cleverly initiated the Rappallo Treaty with Germany, that helped Russia make economic gains and Germany to get around the Versailles Treaty and make some military gains. I would guess this is the origin of Stalin's big lie about Trotsky having alliance with the Nazis. It was in fact Trotsky and his following who fought for a popular front against the Nazis in the early 1930's, who alone among Communists fought for an alliance with reform scialist parties to keep keep the Nazis from coming to power.

Deutscher's three part biography of Trotsky tells the story of the Revolution and the Bolshevik leaders, Trotsky especially, very well. It tells the story of the working people's Revolution very well, and it gives an exceptional description of many of the leading actors. It also tells of Trotsky, who becomes the great Communist opponent of the the great tyranny that overtook the revolution. Trotsky is an outstanding leader in so many ways, a great intellectual,possesed of tremendous energy, and a man who respected the arts as a great human accomplishment, that has its own life, that revolutionaries should not command over or suppress. he was also the leader who doesn't have some of the manipulative leadership skills and who loses even though he is deeply respected by so many and therefore feared by others. However he loses without losing his character. At least in Deutscher's telling of the story, he is a heroic figure who understands what is happening, advises his followers not to surrender their their own convictions, never to falsely recant them to gain some sort of reinstatment. He is a prophet, against tryanny and totalitarianism. He is a prophet about former leaders who would later recant so much that they finally would be so reduced to confess to anything they are asked to, leading to their executions as traitors. He is all of this as well as a Communist Revolutionary to the end of his life. In this book and the earlier Deutscher book on Trotsky, we get good pictues of leaders like Lenin, Zinoviev and Bhukarin. These were certainly not perfect men, and the early Russian Revolution was not perfect. It was bloody, but there were also good intentions and strong leadership, but it was clear that Lenin, in many respects authoritarian, was never going to be a totalitarian. He was forever valuing different points of view and looking for leaders who could add to the dialog and could help work problems out. Trotsky, when he got together with Zinoviev and Kamenev, his former accusers, who had wanted to remove him from the Party when Stalin did not yet want to, to form the last major opposition, in 1926, based his oppostion on three major elements. He wanted to open up the country so that ordinary people could have the respect and right to independent input to policy. He wanted the broad Communist party and not the tens or hundreds of leaders at the top to be brought into the decision making process (he did not want the broad population just to be obedient, and certainly not to surrender their own convictions), and he wanted the Communist International to not serve Russia's national purposes but to work internationally,to help build and protect Communist parties around the world, and to have much of the decision making decentralized to serve actual international purposes, especially to keep foreign Communist parties from being sacrificed to treacherous non communist parties, such as what happened in China in 1927.

To give the reader an idea about the larger picure, and about Trotsky, there never can be real Socialism in one backwards country, especially one that is in horrible condition economically. It takes a great and powerful economy for everybody to have enough to have the sort of equality the socialism requires to exist. Otherwise you have all the inequalities that come with an impovershed country. Trotsky was for heavy industrial develpment and the public sector economy and against doing this with great violent purges. Stalin changed course and toward the oppositions ideas on the economy, but not how to do it, in a ruthless violent way. Bukharin got word out to the opposition that Stalin was tyrant who would murder them all, and Trotsky urged his followers to side with Bukharin first for what Bukharin at least for what Bukharin was appealing. By this time it was too late. It was established that Trosky, he would have not been the great murderous tyrant. It does not appear the others who were acting with him would have been either, but it was too late for all of them. What other than this seems to be true. if trotsky and his allies had succeeded, I suspect that the Capitalist rest of the world likely would have hated, feared and demonized him much more that it did the living Stalin because Trotsky was the real revolutionary. By supporting revolutinary activity in the industrialized capitalist countries, while he would have likely been the the precursor to Socialism with a human face, he would have certainly caused a much greater reaction from our part of the World.

I confess that so far have only read The first two of the books by Deutscher and Trotsky's own book, 'the Revolution betrayed', and I have much to read to know as much as I would like to.

One other thing, the binding on the newer paperback Deutscher books is terrible. I am fortunate someone is publishing it,but the pages fall out from the binding as you read them. The only partial protection is to protect pages you have read the by extending heavy outside flaps that can wrap around the sections you have read and can wrap aound the last part of the book, that also begins to fall apart before you read it. One other thing: I also have some doubt of the source of the two books I have read. Trotsky was a very prolific writer who also kept detailed jounals of his life and of party meetings, included executive sessions. There are a number of important events where we only have Trotsky's account. A large part if what happened during the 1905 St.Peterburg revolution (the Prophet Armed), for instance especially of the trial afterward may be from Trotsky alone. Much of the story is crossed sourced, and much is Trotsky's own personal account. Much of the story Duetscher presents is shared and known history. Deutscher is an excellent story teller, and there was no way I could have abandoned these two books in the middle.

This is clearly the least successful of the three Trotsky books by Deutscher. Only a theologian could enjoy the ins and outs of Marxist theory as Trotsky sought to understand why he had lost out to Stalin and whether he might regain his position. While Trotsky was indeed unarmed except for theory and theology, Stalin was armed with bureaucratic and state and party power. Stalin knew better than Trotsky how to win a fight but he also knew that Trotsky was a better Marxist and he appropriated Trotsky's program of peasant collectivization and the subjection of the working class to needed primitive socialist accumulation and rapid industrialization.