ИПИ Библиотека

Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused as much controversy as the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky’s extraordinary life and extensive writings have left an indelible mark on revolutionary conscience. Yet there was a danger that his name would disappear from history. Originally published in 1954, Deutscher’s masterful three-volume biography was the first major publication to counter the powerful Stalinist propaganda machine that had sought to expunge Trotsky from the annals of the Soviet Union. In these pages Trotsky emerges in his real stature, as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian revolution.
The Prophet Armed is the first volume of the trilogy. It traces Trotsky’s early years, the formation of his distinctive theory of permanent revolution, his long feud and reconciliation with Lenin and Bolshevism, and his role in the October insurrection of 1917. The volume ends in 1921, when Trotsky, then at the climax of his power, unwittingly sowed the seeds of his own defeat.

Curiously enough, Trotsky’s closest ties were not with the radical wing of German socialism, led by Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknect, and Franz Mehring, the future founders of the Communist party, but with the men of the centre group, who maintained the appearences of Marxist orthodoxy, but were in fact leading the partyb to its surrrender to the imperialist ambitions of Hohenzollern empire. This was all the stranger since the German radicals were by no means the counterparts of the Bolsheviks.

Isaac Deutscher

Born in Chrzanów, Galicia, Austria-Hungary 1907, died in Rome 1967; journalist, Marxist historian; moved to Cracow in 1923, to Warsaw in 1925; joined the Komunistyczna Partia Polski (KPP) in 1926, member of the Polish section of the International Left Opposition from 1929; expelled from the party in 1932; became supporter of Trotsky and followed the `entrance-tactic' by joining the Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (PPS) 1935-1937; edited and contributed to many periodicals (most of them illegal and irregular); emigrated to Great Britain in 1939; regularly contributed political commentary on developments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to The Economist, The Observer, the Tribune and other periodicals; at the same time engaged in historical research; published biographies of Trotsky and Stalin and wrote on cold war issues.