TROTSKY : The Eternal Revolutionary

by Dmitri Volkogonov

Release Date: 12 March, 1996

Edition: Hardcover

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Trostsky Comes Alive

Volkogonov has written a very sensitive portrait of Trotsky. For specialists, of course, it should be combined with a reading of Deutscher's three-volume biography, but for general readers Volkogonov should suffice. Volkogonov's "Trotsky" is not as scholarly as Deutscher's masterly work, but it's more balanced. The author, a disillusioned former Communist, recognizes Trotsky's genius and portrays him in sympathetic and tragic terms, yet frequently reminds us that his subject was working under fatally flawed premises. Since he doesn't take communism seriously on an intellectual level, he spares us most of the details about theoretical clashes among the Bolsheviks over Marxist interpretations. He also reminds us that even though Trotsky never ceased criticizing Stalin's tyranny, his own role in the development of the murderous role of the CPSU was not innocent. Some readers may justly criticize Volkogonov's haphazard organization of his materials, but I find it doesn't detract from his work, and I rather enjoyed his more personal observations.

The Siren's call

"The entire structure of Leninism is at present based on lies and falsification and carries within it the poisonous seeds of its own destruction."

Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, known as Trotsky, the one time Social Democrat, one time political opponent of Lenin, one time war correspondent, one time toast of radical society dilatants, one time People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, one time member of the Bolshevik Central Committee, and finally political fugitive and Stalinist purge victim wrote the above quote in 1913. Dmitri Volkogonov's book, Trotsky, provides a stimulating portrait of this fascinating personality and the various roles/political outlooks that he struggled through.

To start let's consider Volkoganov's view of the 2nd Party Congress held in London in the summer of 1903. Far from repeating the usual interpretation, he offers a new one, namely that instead of being simply a question of party organization which divided the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, it was "over a difference in the theory and practice of revolutionary methodology. The congress formalized the coexistence of two parallel tendencies: one radical, revolutionary and uncompromising, which would characterize the Bolsheviks; the other reformist, evolutionary and parliamentary, which was to become the hallmark of those henceforth known as Mensheviks" page 29. As the author mentions, it is also interesting to note that the original platform of the RSDLP advocated democracy, secret suffrage, inviolability of the person, freedom of thought, speech, press, movement, assembly, strikes and trade unions as well as other similar goals.

How did all these noble dreams of a great humanist state end up as a mass gulag? The answer in one word is Lenin. Lenin, the egotistical nihilist, rejected out of hand any "bourgeois theory", relying solely instead on his own interpretation of Marx and Engels. Any non-Bolshevik political opponent was subject to the worst sort of derogatory comments and personal attack. In March of 1917, Lenin arrived in revolutionary Petrograd unwilling to compromise with anyone and enjoying unlimited financial resources thanks to the German General Staff. Trotsky, who had since joined the Bolsheviks, supported Lenin's hard line unquestioningly. While the Provisional Government worried of an attack from the right, Lenin, ever the cynical opportunist, promised an end to the war and land to the peasants. Bolshevik agitators spread through the army to convince the troops to desert or simply ignore the orders of their officers. By October the stage was set, a radical party of limited support and scope was able to overthrow what remained of the Provisional Government with little effort or bloodshed, but by rejecting all compromise and by ruthlessly exercising complete power, Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks made the Russian Civil War a reality. After the October "Revolution" Trotsky became ever more important to Lenin, whose effectiveness as a speaker was limited. As Yaroslavsky described him at the time, Trotsky was "a man most profoundly dedicated to the revolution, a man who has grown up to be a tribune, with a tongue as finely honed and flexible as steel, a tongue that can cut his enemies down, and a pen which scatters a wealth of ideas like handfuls of artistic pearls." Page 82.

Perhaps the author's most important view is that the tragedy that became the Soviet Union required each of the Bolshevik triumvirate to play the part he was most suited for. Lenin was the ruthless opportunist, his unquestioning will to destroy and control by terror setting the tone and shape of the entire system. Stalin was the pathological paranoid master of conspiracy, the consolidator, basically a fascistic criminal, who had got his start in the Party as a bank robber. And Trotsky? He provided the siren's song for the masses, the pure light of his reason projected to attract a storm of adolescent and unquestioning human devotion and energy willing to follow whoever held the red flag. Is it any wonder that Trotsky didn't outlast the Civil War period by very long? After his expulsion, Trotsky provided the excuse for Stalin's tyranny, even supplying the ideological framework for the disasterous "Second October Revolution" of 1928-40. The Bolshevik system required all three and played itself out in a very mechanical, a very deterministic way, success meant retaining absolute power and in that one sense, the only goal with any meaning for Lenin, it was successful until 1991 when the machinary collapsed.

Why do unrepentant Leninists in the West continue with the charade that Bolshevism held any hope for mankind? Pride and egotism, along with a cynical and patronizing view of humanity blind them to the shambles all around them, block their noses from the smell of the grimacing, yet rancid Leninist corpse that they have strapped to their backs. That and the role they play as scarecrow/whipping boy for the reactionary and Reaganist right which automatically labels any opposition to the corporate-dominated national security state as "communism" gives them a false, yet ego-enhancing, sense of importance. In other words they'd love to stop acting like trick dogs, but they can't give up the attention they get.

This book and the author's biography on Lenin tell the whole sordid history. Time for the "left" to finally bury the Leninist corpse and decide on a counter-argument that exposes Reaganist "behind-closed-doors-government". What America especially needs is a new urge and will to protect our basic human rights and liberties, such as the original goals of our Founding Fathers or, for that matter, of the RSDLP. Nobody needs another utopian ideology, such as Leninism or some deluted, "people-friendly" version of Reaganism, but a pragmatic program that sees humanity, its natural physical environment and its artifical economic environment for what they are and responds accordingly.