| Description |
xxii, 600 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps ; 25 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Summary |
Trotsky is perhaps the most intriguing and, given his prominence, the most understudied of the Soviet revolutionaries. Using new archival sources, Robert Service offers new insights. He discusses Trotsky's fractious relations with the leaders he was trying to unify; his attempt to disguise his political closeness to Stalin; and his role in the early 1920s as the progenitor of political and cultural Stalinism. Trotsky evinced a surprisingly glacial and schematic approach to making revolution. Service recounts Trotsky's role in the botched German revolution of 1923; his willingness to subject Europe to a Red Army invasion in the 1920s; and his assumption that peasants could easily be pushed onto collective farms. Although Trotsky's followers clung to the stubborn view of him as a pure revolutionary and a powerful intellect unjustly hounded into exile by Stalin, the reality is very different.--From publisher description. |
| Contents |
1879-1913 -- The family Bronstein -- Upbringing -- Schooling -- The young revolutionary -- Love and prison -- Siberian exile -- Iskra -- Cutting loose -- The year 1905 -- Trial and punishment -- Again the emigrant -- Unifier -- Special correspondent -- 1914-1919 -- War on the war -- Designs for revolution -- Atlantic crossings -- Nearly a Bolshevik -- Threats and promises -- Seizure of power -- People's commissar -- Trotsky and the Jews -- Brest-Litovsk -- Kazan and after -- Almost the commander -- Red victory -- World revolution -- 1920-1928 -- Images and the life -- Peace and war -- Back from the brink -- Disputing about reform -- The politics of illness -- The left opposition -- On the cultural front -- Failing to succeed -- Entourage and faction -- Living with Trotsky -- What Trotsky wanted -- Last stand in Moscow -- Alma-Ata -- 1929-1940 -- Büyükada -- Looking for revolutions -- The writer -- Russian connections -- Europe south and north -- Setting up in Mexico -- The Fourth International -- Trotsky and his women -- " The Russian question" -- Confronting the philosophers -- The Second World War -- Assassination -- The keepers and the flame. |
| Subject |
Trotsky, Leon, 1879-1940.
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Revolutionaries -- Soviet Union -- Biography.
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Statesmen -- Soviet Union -- Biography.
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Exiles -- Russia -- Biography.
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Communism -- Soviet Union -- History.
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Russia -- Politics and government -- 1894-1917.
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Soviet Union -- Politics and government -- 1917-1936.
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| ISBN |
9780674036154 |
|
0674036158 |
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