David Dallin 1959
Source: Saturday Review, 24 October 1959. Scanned and prepared for the Marxist Internet Archive by Paul Flewers.
The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921-1929, by Isaac Deutscher (Oxford, pp. 490, $9.50), the second volume of a trilogy, covers the Soviet architect’s fall from Stalinist grace and the first years of his exile. David J Dallin has written books on the USSR, including The Changing World of Soviet Russia.
One would look in vain for the name of Leon Trotsky among those of Stalin’s victims who were rehabilitated under Khrushchev in the last few years. Operation Rehabilitation seems to have been completed; yet most of the best-known leaders of the November revolution and of the first Soviet era remain condemned to anonymity, and Soviet publications, including textbooks and handbooks, pass over in silence the names of the chief architects of the first Soviet state. At the most, ‘Trotskyism’ is mentioned simply as a hostile trend.
This fact alone would make Isaac Deutscher’s trilogy on Trotsky, of which the first two volumes have appeared, an important contribution to Soviet history; this second volume covers Trotsky’s biography from 1921 to 1929. Soviet archives dealing with the pertinent developments remain closed, but Mr Deutscher was in a position to draw from the rich Trotsky archives in the libraries of Harvard University, as well as from interviews with a number of Trotsky’s friends and collaborators, including his widow, Natalia. The author’s previous studies on the Soviet Union have obviously served him as a scholarly foundation; but more important is the fact that the author himself had belonged to the Polish Communist Party until he was expelled, apparently as a Trotskyite, in 1932.
Having attained high stature in world affairs during the revolution of 1917, Trotsky stayed at the summit as one of the architects of the Soviet state for only five years; his star began to set in 1922 and the subsequent eighteen years of his life were full of disappointment, bitterness and political and personal tragedy. Antagonism towards Trotsky cemented the alliance of the ‘triumvirate’, among whom was Stalin. The ‘triumvirate’ removed Trotsky and his friends from the War Ministry, from the Politburo, and finally from the Central Committee. Trotsky tried to engineer a counter-alliance against Stalin, but was easily defeated. In January 1928, he was deported to Alma-Ata in Central Asia and finally, in 1929, he was exiled to Turkey, never to return to the Soviet Union. His fate was shared by scores of ‘oppositionists’, who were likewise removed by Stalin from political activity and exiled but who, with the exception of Trotsky, soon capitulated, ‘confessed’ and were reinstated in the Communist Party.
Mr Deutscher’s work is a serious, detailed and well-documented one. It cannot be viewed, however, as entirely objective. The author holds a protective hand over his protagonist, and treats him gently and indulgently. Many components of Stalin’s cruel economic offensive had earlier been part of Trotsky’s programme; Trotsky’s odious role in the first ‘Moscow Trial’ (1922), when the Socialist-Revolutionaries were in the dock, is mentioned by Deutscher only in passing; Trotsky’s pro-German attitude during the Rapallo era is softened. Of course, Deutscher does not blindly approve everything Trotsky said or did; in certain instances he is critical. But his general evaluation is more favourable than Trotsky deserves.
The author’s thesis that Trotsky has proved to be a ‘prophet’ is at least an exaggeration. It was Trotsky, we remember, who predicted the ‘inevitable’ war between England and America (Stalin took over this ‘scientific’ prophecy from him). It was Trotsky who predicted a revolution in Britain ‘at the most in five years.’ It was Trotsky who initiated the absurd abortive uprising in Germany in 1923, as Deutscher states. Even Trotsky’s accurate prediction of America’s ascendance in world affairs (though personally violently anti-American) was taken by him from the German Marxist Karl Kautsky.
It was infamy on Stalin’s part to exile his adversary to the uncivilised parts of Asiatic Russia. Compared, however, to Stalin’s subsequent acts of persecution of his hated antagonist and to Stalin’s terrorism in general, it is odd to note that an apartment of four rooms was made available to Trotsky’s family and that Trotsky’s favourite dog was sent to him from Moscow upon his request; he was even permitted to go hunting. His library, too, was shipped to him on his demand.
It is both ironic and tragic to recall Trotsky’s triumphant exclamation addressed to his defeated Socialist opponents at the Soviet Congress of November 1917, when his party seized power: ‘Go where you belong from now on – into the rubbish-can of history.’ He could not have foreseen that a decade later his own turn would come.