Leon Trotsky

August 22, 2011
As much a myth and a legend as a man, Leon Trotsky is an individual of deep contradictions. One of the leaders of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky was a theorist and architect of the Communist system. Though he helped create the authoritarian structure of the Soviet hierarchy, he pushed for greater openness within the system and suffered irreparable rifts, first with Lenin, then with Stalin. A dedicated intellectual and scholar and by all accounts smarter than Stalin, Trotsky was continuously outmaneuvered by his rival, who eventually had him exiled and assassinated. Rubenstein, a historian of the Soviet Union, seeks neither to lionize nor to demonize his subject, and the complicated portrait that emerges is of a man with a keen curiosity for human nature, but prone to the most stubborn closed-mindedness, a brilliant strategist and tactician who repeatedly erred and miscalculated. The author is particularly interested in Trotsky’s engagement with his Jewish identity, which manifested mostly in the political sphere. Fast-paced and engaging, Rubenstein’s brief biography provides a solid introduction to the period and a detailed examination of a man much studied but little understood.

September 15, 2011

Brilliant, charismatic, fatally idealistic and dogmatic—Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) was all this and more, according to this fine biography, the latest in the publisher's Jewish Lives series.

Rubenstein (Tangled Loyalties: The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg, 1996, etc.) locates a key period in Trotsky's intellectual development in his time spent as a child and adolescent in Odessa, where he lived with relations, acquired cultural awareness and social graces and, most importantly, gained insight into the hardships faced by the working classes. It was in Odessa that he first encountered a systematic, officially sanctioned anti-Semitism that barred him from admittance to select schools. Yet Trotsky's self-awareness of his Jewish identity was ambivalent throughout his life and always took a backseat to his identity as a communist. Developing into a public voice for change, he was launched on to the international stage after an escape from Siberian exile (where he left his first wife and daughters) to Vienna, where he met Lenin for the first time. During this period, Trotsky traveled extensively throughout Europe, honing ideas and stirring his listeners. Through these experiences, he formulated his notion of a "permanent revolution" necessary to sweep through all of Europe, one of the pillars of his political theory that is, in hindsight, understood to be both deeply flawed and destructive. Afeter 1905, with the exception of a few years, he shuttled between Vienna, London, Finland, Paris, a brief stint in New York and Mexico, where Stalin's long arm finally reached him. Trotsky proves to be a fascinating subject, a deeply flawed man whose charisma occasionally shines through the many excerpts of his speeches and texts. In the central chapter, "The Revolution of 1917," Rubenstein not only details the chronological events that led to the Bolshevik party's consolidation of power, he also presents these in the larger context of Russian and German war strategy. The author explores the battle of personalities between Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, as well as the gamesmanship of succession, with particular attention to Trotsky's puzzling failure of political acumen in not recognizing or responding to Stalin's threat to his role as Lenin's successor.

An accessible scholarly account of a man whose life spanned continents, whose charisma was legendary and whose ideas sparked a revolution and its backlash.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 15, 2011
Leon Trotsky remains a figure who Rubenstein argues haunts our historical memory. As the Marxist theoretician of permanent revolution and the architect of war communism during the Russian Civil War, Trotsky's deep intellect and undeniable eloquence made him the indispensable man of Lenin's 1917 revolution. But after coming up on the losing end in the struggle with Stalin to succeed Lenin, Trotsky spent the remainder of his life exiled from his beloved Bolshevik utopia. It was during his exile sojourns (ultimately ending with his assassination in Mexico) that the prophetic Trotsky exposed the dark side of Stalinism, warned of the dangers of Hitler, and predicted the horrors of WWII and the Holocaust. In this economically written though purely apologetic account, Rubenstein presents a sympathetic alternative to Robert Service's recent, scathing treatment (Trotsky, 2009) and effectively considers the impact of the Jewish Question and Trotsky's own renounced identity on the ideologue's life and thought. Drawing heavily on Trotsky's own writings, Rubenstein perceptively reminds us that although Trotsky may have forgotten his Jewish origins, his enemies and political rivals most assuredly did not.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)