osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2010-11-27 01:57 pm
osprey_archer) wrote2010-11-27 01:57 pm
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Book Review: Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary
Read Bertrand Patenaude's Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary, which is about Trotsky's last years and murder in Mexico and wicked suspenseful, which is quite a trick given that I already knew it was going to end with the ice pick.
It's marvelously written and quite sad: here's Trotsky, after all, who has lost nearly everything, watching helpless as Stalin kills off most of his old friends and relatives. But Trotsky, bless him, remains an optimist to the end. He's got like two thousand followers, tops, and he's all "I will lead the Fourth International! The workers of the world will unite behind us and topple Stalin!" Never mind that he managed to induce a schism in this tiny, tiny movement.
He called the two sides of the schism the Majority and the Minority, pace Lenin and the Bolshevik/Menshevik split. Patenaude does not say this, but I bet Trotsky loved the parallel. He's distilled the party down to the true loyalists! Just like his idol!
Like Lenin, after all, Trotsky went out of his way to cause the split. He decided that the Soviet invasion of Finland was a continuation of international revolution and not imperialist at all, oh no. To hell with the evidence! Dialectical materialism says I'm right!
Why, Trotsky, why? It's so frustrating, because he could be brilliant and he clearly understood Stalin, but he was unable to make the leap between "Stalin is an evil bastard who has perverted the Soviet Union" to "Possibly I should stop supporting Soviet foreign policy." If he admitted the second, after all, he'd have to admit that his life's work was an irreparable ruin.
Which is why it's a tragedy. Not only has Trotsky's life's work failed - not only is he incapable of admitting it failed - but it failed because of his tragic flaw: Trotsky wasn't a leader.
He had bucketloads of charisma, but it functioned best in the eye of the hurricane. During the Revolution, he whipped crowds into fury - his speeches probably won the war. But it wasn't the enduring kind of charisma he would have needed to run a country; he couldn't compromise, he couldn't manage people over the long term.
Pretty much the only place Trotsky ever got close was in Stalin's mind (and perhaps his own) - which was the only place that mattered, because Stalin warped reality to suit his imaginings.
Thus, the end: goddamn Ramon Mercader murdering Trotsky with an ice pick. It's so unfair.
It's marvelously written and quite sad: here's Trotsky, after all, who has lost nearly everything, watching helpless as Stalin kills off most of his old friends and relatives. But Trotsky, bless him, remains an optimist to the end. He's got like two thousand followers, tops, and he's all "I will lead the Fourth International! The workers of the world will unite behind us and topple Stalin!" Never mind that he managed to induce a schism in this tiny, tiny movement.
He called the two sides of the schism the Majority and the Minority, pace Lenin and the Bolshevik/Menshevik split. Patenaude does not say this, but I bet Trotsky loved the parallel. He's distilled the party down to the true loyalists! Just like his idol!
Like Lenin, after all, Trotsky went out of his way to cause the split. He decided that the Soviet invasion of Finland was a continuation of international revolution and not imperialist at all, oh no. To hell with the evidence! Dialectical materialism says I'm right!
Why, Trotsky, why? It's so frustrating, because he could be brilliant and he clearly understood Stalin, but he was unable to make the leap between "Stalin is an evil bastard who has perverted the Soviet Union" to "Possibly I should stop supporting Soviet foreign policy." If he admitted the second, after all, he'd have to admit that his life's work was an irreparable ruin.
Which is why it's a tragedy. Not only has Trotsky's life's work failed - not only is he incapable of admitting it failed - but it failed because of his tragic flaw: Trotsky wasn't a leader.
He had bucketloads of charisma, but it functioned best in the eye of the hurricane. During the Revolution, he whipped crowds into fury - his speeches probably won the war. But it wasn't the enduring kind of charisma he would have needed to run a country; he couldn't compromise, he couldn't manage people over the long term.
Pretty much the only place Trotsky ever got close was in Stalin's mind (and perhaps his own) - which was the only place that mattered, because Stalin warped reality to suit his imaginings.
Thus, the end: goddamn Ramon Mercader murdering Trotsky with an ice pick. It's so unfair.