The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921

Very solid biography--more detailed than is perhaps necessary at times, but it's so well organized that you can skim over some of the more turgid debates, knowing that you'll be able to find that debate should you ever need to, which, I hope, you won't. It's ultra-intellectual, in the sense that Trotsky's wife appears in about two sentences, and otherwise we're just talking about the minute discussions that, in some sense, determined the disastrous course of the Russian transition from shit (Tsarism) to shit ('communism').

It's also remarkably balanced. I was expecting Trotsky to come off much better than he did, frankly. Deutscher gives us a man who came up with all sorts of horrible ideas before Lenin did, but had the good fortune to show more lose the debate when his ideas were particularly noxious, so Lenin could take the short term glory and long term hatred, while Trotsky got all that love as the anti-Stalin... despite being totally proto-Stalin, but with a much, much (much) better personality and brain and luck. Weird stuff. show less

Wow! This is some biography. The whole entity, over three volumes, exceeds 1500 pages - I'll get there!

Part one, takes us through the scant details of Trotsky's birth and early years, to the revolution, his transformation from semi-pacifist to the People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and his post war flirtation with control of the workers,

Isaac Deutscher is an ideal scribe for this work: his knowledge of soviet politics, at the time, must be unparalleled and he is scrupulously fair. He praises Trotsky's bravery and foresightedness, when he is in advance of the thinking of the soviet, but also chastises his willingness to accept the rejection of his views and his unstinting work and vocal support for solutions with which he show more does not agree.

The picture that arises from this book is of a great man with flaws... and haven't we all got those? Russia was not ready for socialism, it needed to go through a capitalist phase. I can well see why Trotsky and Lenin would not wish to hear that view and how easy it must have been to believe that communism was coming to the world. It is just a pity that the first iteration of this form of government should have been such a disastrous failure. show less

2048 The Prophet Armed Trotsky: 1879-1921, by Isaac Deutscher (read 19 Jan 1987) The author is a Pole who was expelled from the British Communist Party in 1932 and died in 1967. This biography is quite favorable to Trotsky and the Russian Revolution but of course is anti-Stalin. The story is really interesting. Trotsky, like Stalin, was born in 1879. The volume goes up to 1921. Trotsky was in New York when the February Revolution broke out in 1917, and he got to Russia a month later than Lenin. But when he got there he really went to work--even though he did not join the Bolsheviks till later that year. After the October Revolution he was Foreign Commissar and Commissar of War. I am really looking forward to Volume II.

Uma fonte excelente sobre Trótski e a União Soviética de sua época. Fiquei com vontade de ler os escritos de Trótski e de outros revolucionários, principalmente Rosa Luxemburg.

Uma biografia tão completa que já foi chamada de a mais completa biografia escrita em língua inglesa. Publicada pela Civilização Brasileira em plena ditadura militar, mas não teve o tratamento que merece. Até a edição mais recente sofre pela falta da revisão. Eu cansei de contar as vírgulas que separavam sujeito do verbo ou as frases com erros de concordância verbal.

Generally regarded as a classic account; more sympatheic to Trotsky than I would be

Review to come after reading the rest of the trilogy.