The Permanent Revolutionary
Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich
Bronstein in 1879 of Jewish parents, Russian revolutionary, leader of the 1905
Petrograd Soviet, skilled polemicist, Marxist theoretician, womanizer, coleader
of the October Revolution with Lenin, founder of the Red Army, outmaneuvered by
Stalin, exiled and assassinated in Mexico by an OGPU agent in 1940. He had
quite a life and Joshua Rubenstein tells his story in a brief and succinct
biography of only 215 pages.
Rubenstein’s Trotsky comes across as a
brilliant egomaniac. Whether he was right or wrong he was never in doubt as he
steered a course in opposition to Lenin and as a key ally. He was a great
number two to Lenin, but it seems that in the struggle to succeed Lenin, he
wanted power on a plate. He didn’t know how to fight for it as he was outfoxed
by the wily Stalin. He should not have been surprised because he wrote well
before the revolution that that Lenin’s party in power would inevitably lead to
a one man dictatorship.
In exile he became Stalin’s leading
opponent where presciently noted that there was very little difference between
Hitlerism and Stalinism. However he remained loyal to the revolution to the
end. This was his failure because Stalin was not an aberration, but rather the
logical successor to Lenin. If Trotsky had won the power struggle he would have
been little different from Stalin. His brutality during the Russian Civil War
demonstrated that.
Because this book is part of the Yale
Jewish Lives series I have to note that Trotsky was not really different from
today’s Left with respect to Zionism. Trotsky was a universalist, while Zionism
is particularistic. He cared more for the working class than his own people.
Rubenstein touches all of the bases and
highly recommend this very readable book on the life of Trotsky. He doesn’t get
into the weeds and for this he should be commended.
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