Product Description

Revolutionary practitioner, theorist, factional chief, sparkling writer, ‘ladies’ man’ (e.g., his affair with Frieda Kahlo), icon of the Revolution, anti-Jewish Jew, philosopher of everyday life, grand seigneur of his household, father and hunted victim, Trotsky lived a brilliant life in extraordinary times. Robert Service draws on hitherto unexamined archives and on his profound understanding of Russian history to draw a portrait of the man and his legacy, revealing that though his followers have represented Trotsky as a pure revolutionary soul and a powerful intellect unjustly hounded into exile by Stalin and his henchmen. The reality is very different, as this masterful and compelling biography reveals.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2085 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 624 pages

Review
'The best biography of Trotsky to date... it disregards all sentimental nonsense and gives us the facts.'
--George Walden, Standpoint

`an outstanding, fascinating biography of this dazzling titan. It is as compelling as an adventure story - the ultimate rise and fall - but also revelatory as the scholarly revision of a historical reputation.'
--The Sunday Telegraph

`Seldom has the pathology of the revolutionary type, and its murderous consequences, been more mercilessly exposed than in this exemplary biography.' --Sunday Times Culture

`Drawing on much previously unreleased material, this is a scholarly work, but one with a light touch.'
--Huddersfield Daily Examiner

'balanced and thoroughly researched life of Trotsky by Robert Service, a British scholar of Soviet communism. Service knows the period's personalities inside out: he has already trawled the archives to write well-received biographies of Stalin and Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet state...Service paints a perceptive portrait.' --Financial Times

'In this astonishingly comprehensive book- Robert Service has trawled almost every archive on the planet that has any reference to Trotsky...This is a superb work of scholarship, and above all leaves the reader in no doubt as to the evil of Trotsky, not just in politics but in his personal life...if you seek to know about this crucial figure in the history of Marxism-Leninism, this book will tell you everything.' --Daily Telegraph

'Masterful new life of Trotsky. Yet the book is much more than a dry critique of Trotsky's place in the Communist pantheon. It is a pacy, compelling account of one of the most magnetic and gifted leaders of the Russian revolution.' --Mail on Sunday

'Robert Service's Trotsky is, as the author points out, the first full biography to be written by a non-Trotskyist...Trotsky is the final part of a triptych, and you can sense the author's enjoyment as he completes his heroic task.'
--Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Robert Service is a Fellow of the British Academy and of St Antony’s College, Oxford. He has written several books, including the highly acclaimed Lenin: A Biography, Russia: Experiment with a People , Stalin: A Biography and Comrades: A History of World Communism , as well as many other books on Russia’s past and present. Married with four children, he lives in London.

Customer Reviews

MYTHS DEMOLISHED
This is an excellent well-researched biography which demolishes a few sentimental myths about Trotsky.One is that Trotsky would not have shed as much blood as Stalin.Trotsky comes across as an arrogant authoritarian who was quite prepared to commit slaughter on a grand scale.Another myth demolished is that Trotsky was tricked out of the leadership by the cunning Stalin.Trotsky it seems destroyed his own chances by his own ineptness.He hardly need any help from the infamous Joseph.Indeed,the author doubts if he ever seriously tried to seize the leadership.He preferred to declaim and theorize.

From Service's biography we can see why Trotsky failed.Trotsky,it is clear,was above all a talented,sometimes a brilliant, writer.He foolishly imagined that a superiority in this one field made him superior in all others,especially judgement.No wonder rank and file bolsheviks developed a dislike for him or that Stalin could portray himself as the epitome of moderation and good sense in comparison. Moreover He simply could not grasp that anyone might disagree with him in good faith.He was always a bad judge of people whether friend or foe.It was this intellectual contempt for others that destroyed him.

Splendid biography
This is an excellent book, well-written and thoroughly researched. It does not in any way ignore the charisma and intellectual brilliance of Trotsky. What it does do is to demolish the myth that Trotsky in some way represented the 'human face' of communism. The book succeeds in providing a rounded picture of its fascinating subject for a general audience, though it may not please some of Trotsky's more uncritical supporters.

Detailing the dark side of Trotsky
This is a detailed account of Trotsky's life using many of the new materials accessible from the Soviet archives. Service makes his position clear. He is an anti-Communist, and he puts Trotsky in the dock. The coldness and brutality of this revolutionary hero of the Left are brought home. But perhaps Service has gone too far in his political bias. There is little sense here of the revolutionary elan, the military genius, the oratorical power or charisma of Trotsky - factors that made him such a force in European history. In the end this makes not only for a dull read, but also for an unconvincing argument.