The Prophet Armed

Hardly any political figure in the 20th century aroused so much passionate and confused controversy as Leon Trotsky. There was a danger that his name might have disappeared from history. Isaac Deutscher's three volume life of Trotsky was originally published in 1954, and was the first book to counter the powerful Stalinist propaganda machine that had sort to expunge Trotsky's name from the annals of the revolution, or worse, to leave it there as a synonym for an arch-traitor. This first volume of the trilogy traces Trotsky's development: his early activities, the formation and crystallization of his distinctive and motivating idea, the permanent revolution, his long feud and final reconcilliation with Lenin and Bolshevism and his role in the October insurrection of 1917. The volume ends with 1921, when Trotsky, then at the hight of his power, unwittingly sowed the seeds of his defeat.