Revolutionary's Road

Trotsky:  A Biography
By Robert Service
(Belknap Press, 2009, 648 pages)

Leon Trotsky is not only an extraordinary historical figure but a continuing political phenomenon.  His ideas continue to be read and advanced by political activists and students of intellectual history.  He is considered the political embodiment of Karl Marx -- as the only person, along with Lenin, who succeeded in implementing a revolution.

The story of his ascendency is in many ways inspirational.  Emerging from an unassuming, although by no means poor family, he managed to place himself at the confluence of historical currents to be swept to power in the 1917 Revolution.

Not only did Trotsky provide the intellectual impetus for revolution through his prolific writing and public speaking, he played an active role in the fighting that saw the overthrow of the provisional government.

Respected and at times revered by both the political and military classes, Trotsky was the natural leader of the Bolshevik Party and, by extension, the newly established Soviet Union.  It was only his modesty (or affectation of modesty) that saw Lenin take effectual control.

Robert Service's biography captures these events extremely well.  He conveys Trotsky's superb talent for statecraft, his divisive though intriguing character and his boundless determination.  But it is perfectly clear that Service does not share Trotsky's political beliefs, nor is he in the least bit impressed by what Trotsky ultimately managed to achieve.  By the end of the book, we have a story of a man whose intense political and moral hypocrisy, violent approach to the acquisition of power and, in Service's view, unforgivable personal failings, make him the perfect anti-hero.

For those who still cling not only to the ideals of Marxism but the belief that a Marxist government can be democratic, the distinction between Stalin and Trotsky is vital.

Socialists look to the wronged leaders of the revolution such as Trotsky and Bukharin as the keepers of the flame.  They are the upholders of the principles of revolution that Stalin betrayed, outgunned and outfoxed by a powerful dictatorship.

According to what is left of his contemporary supporters, there would have been no heavy-handed policies to force the collectivisation of farms, and no brutal interrogations and show trials.  There would have been a multi-party system, with greater political cooperation and consensus.  All notions of Russian nationhood and their damaging consequences would have been overridden by an allegiance to global nationhood.

For those inclined towards Trotsky's political views, Service's book provides nothing of particular comfort.  He finds no reason to overturn the established historical view of Trotskyism.  According to Service, there is nothing at all to indicate that life for the average worker, farmer or indeed capitalist sympathiser would have been any less brutal, restrictive and miserable had the Bolshevik Party acceded to Trotsky's aspirations.

He says that:

Trotsky recognised no other variant of socialism except Bolshevism.  He despised and detested the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks as enemies of human progress.  He did not object to the show-trial of the Socialist-Revolutionaries in 1922.  He did not call for Mensheviks to be released from the Solovki prison island.  He was untroubled by the brutal suppression of the Georgian national uprising in 1924.

Vladimir Lenin addressing the red Army with Trotsky on the steps

Trotsky's brutality and cold-hearted utilitarian conception of war is well-known.  As the People's Commissar for Military Affairs, he and Stalin organised the defence of Petrograd against the White Army during the Givil War.  Stalin rounded up a group of middle class citizens and used them to form a human barricade.  Trotsky made no objection.  He himself would order the execution of soldiers almost indiscriminately.  Service says, ''At times it seemed that Trotsky and Stalin were competing for the status of the most brutal commissar.'''

Trotsky was open about the need and desire for some form of dictatorship, despite never revealing an inclination to become dictator.  Lenin, as leader of the Revolution, was highly respected and later, after a failed assassination attempt, almost deified.  Yet after he was struck down with illness and a series of strokes, there was a feeling among Bolsheviks that the Soviet Union was on the inexorable path towards all-powerful dictatorship.

As Service relates, part of Stalin's political genius was to convince members of the Politburo and Central Committee that it was Trotsky who deigned to be this all-powerful leader.  As students of the French Revolution, they were paranoid that Trotsky would become the next Napoleon Bonaparte -- the one who, once given power, would disfigure the Revolution and turn it to his own purposes.

Service makes it clear that Trotsky's assassination by an agent of the Kremlin in Mexico was the result of a desire for power that Trotsky shared with Stalin.

Art and culture hold an important place in Marxist philosophy.  Western writers at the time, such as Orson Welles and Bertrand Russell, were highly impressed by the young revolutionary.  Once they visited the Soviet Union and saw for themselves the state of the masses, this admiration was quickly extinguished.  Trotsky's brusque manner was also off-putting.

Trotsky's aim was for the proletariat to gain the keys to the world of art and culture that were previously only available to the wealthy.  At the same time, he believed that art should always serve the revolution, and that any work of art that did not uphold the principles of revolution was of no value.  In Literature and Revolution, published in 1923, Trotsky wrote, ''The independence of art -- for the revolution!  The revolution -- for the complete liberation of art!''

Of course, as Service points out, Trotsky and other Marxist thinkers avoided explaining how the revolution would deal with art that espoused politically inconvenient ideas.

Trotsky's own musings on the cultural empowerment of the masses under communism were the most bizarre.

Man will become incomparably stronger, more intelligent, more subtle.  His body will be more harmonious, his movements more rhythmical, his voice more musical;  the forms of daily existence will acquire a dynamic theatricality.  The average human type will rise to the level of Aristotle, Goethe and Marx.  It is above this ridge that new summits will rise.

The newly liberated workers of the Soviet Union, far from gaining the time to read philosophy, struggled daily against disease and starvation.

Trotsky, having helped to establish the most centralised government in the world over such a vast geographical expanse, complained often of a ''sclerotic bureaucracy''.  When people called for greater decentralisation, he denounced them as ''kulaks'' and capitalist sympathisers.  He clung to the grain monopoly, despite widespread starvation and logistical choke holds that saw hundreds of tonnes of grain rot in trains and depots.  The fault, Trotsky maintained, was with the speculators and merchants who were hoarding resources.

Service's biography discusses many aspects of Trotsky's life, which depict him as a complex and highly flawed individual.  His life, despite everything else, is fascinating.  His love affairs, his complicated familial relationships, his life in exile, and his Judaism, which was the source of constant embarrassment for him, are all covered superbly.

Service has produced a magnificent work.  His criticisms of Trotsky are not surprising given that his research base was at the Hoover Institute.  Nevertheless, this is widely considered to be the most authoritative account of Trotsky's life.

A wall mural of Leon Trotsky