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Title: Trotsky: A Biography
ISBN: 0674036158
Author:
Robert Service
Publicate Date: 2009-11-23
Publish: 2009-11-23
List Price: $35.00
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $17.19
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1: A True Believer
In the west, Trotsky has enjoyed good press all out of proportion to his qualities as a person and as a political leader. Robert Service documents who he really was through this new scholarly work.
Service, particularly in the later chapters, shows Trotsky to be a self-involved, arrogant, intolerant, and tin eared man with a gift for prose. He demands loyalty and doesn't appreciate the costs others must pay for supporting him and his lost cause. He mourns the loss of his children, but it is hard to tell what the feelings really were. Natalya, who sacrifices herself for him is casually betrayed... a betrayal that could have consequences far beyond the dire ones for his family.
From what is presented, it's easy to conclude that Trotsky could never have won the power struggle with Stalin. His sense of timing was off. He didn't showcase Lenin's warning on Stalin until it had consequences for him. His actions upon his expulsion from Moscow and later expulsion Russia itself, show an incredible naivet?? for someone of his position. In the last chapter, Service gives words to the impression you get as you read this, which is that Trotsky doesn't really want leadership responsibility, he wanted to write more than to lead.
Service gives little to suggest a better outcome had Trotsky won against Stalin. While he some modern management ideas, such as using qualified, if not ideologically pure, military officers who had served the Tsar, he was still an authoritarian. In the aftermath of the Revolution, he stifled dissent. His response to the Kronstadt Revolt was not to sort out the issues, but to dispatch an army. In his later years he praised Russia's invasion of Poland for its re-appropriation of property with no thought for the lives or losses of the Poles. The post-revolution ruling elite was stacked with authoritarians so there is no reason to conclude that Trotsky would derail the culture of execution for intimidation purposes and pre-emptive censorship.
Hair splitting differences between groups and individuals is mentioned, and fortunately, for me, not belabored. The prose in the chapters on his early life and on the assassination stand out in a book with many well written chapters. My only disappointment is that Trotsky's father's new status after losing his farm in the revolution and his death are given little description and no analysis.
There is a lot to digest. This book is not for the casual reader, but highly recommended for those interested in Russian history.
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2: And this guy is at Oxford?
The photo of Trotsky on the book's jacket is one of the most arresting I've ever seen. The face -- young, intelligent, earnest and, unobscured by the beard, appealing -- explains much about this man's complex character. And the book is billed by The New Yorker as, "unlike much work about Trotsky...the work of a historian, not an ideologue," alluding presumably to Isaac Deutscher, Trotsky's Marxist biographer. So I was well-disposed towards this book.
There's obviously much an historian's work behind Robert Service's book, but alas, I can't see much of the historian's craft in it. I was a history major and attended Oxford, and my impression was that the historian's prime directive is rigor. I fail to see much of that here. Besides editorial sloppiness and uneven annotation, there's a lack of detachment. It belies an eagerness to announce, "See, see, I told you he was a bad guy!" which I find unseemly in an historian.
Specifically:
Service makes it clear early on that his mission is to serve as an antidote to what he regards as the hagiography surrounding Trotsky. What he comes up with is this rather mean-spirited effort to bring Trotsky down a notch or two, mainly by gratuitous and petty personal jabs, often following faint praise. While admitting to Trotsky's intellect, organizing acumen and faithfulness to his creed, Service apparently finds the revolutionary's narcissism a worthy counterweight.
Service relates Trotsky's scrupulous reading of a friend's book:
"[T]he exclamation marks in the margins testify to angry self-righteousness and intellectual self-regard."
I've done that before -- exclamation marks noting something interesting or that I agree with strongly. Was I being self-righteous or egotistical? Risibly, Service opens himself to the same charge later, when he quotes Trotsky relating how, after being on a prison barge for three weeks in Siberia, he "was put ashore with one of the women exiles, a close associate of mine from Nikolaev". Service then uses his own exclamation mark, as he observes: "The last sentence refers to his pregnant wife Alexandra. Just possibly Trotsky was trying to spare her feelings at the time of writing. Even so, what misleading primness!" A rather innocent remark is construed (with that Trotskyist exclamation mark) as marking a character flaw.
Service thanks a half-dozen people for reading his manuscript. Apparently their only task was to tell the author how brilliant he is (or maybe how brilliant they are), because they certainly did a lousy job of proofreading.
Service identifies one figure as Karlson, then the same person in following passages as Carlson.
Service's use of commas evidently depends on his mood. Sometimes he uses them to separate independent clause, but usually not. So we are treated to the likes of (speaking of a Trotsky cousin): "He had recently married Fanni who was the principal of the state school for Jewish girls in Odessa and it was her salary that kept the couple afloat...." This kind of run-on is everywhere.
In one paragraph, Service starts calling Bronstein, Trotsky; then in the next calls him Bronstein again. In fact, Service gives a sloppy, off-hand treatment of Lev Bronstein's becoming Leon Trotsky. When did Bronstein finally settle on calling himself Trotsky? Did colleagues and intimates call him Trotsky or did they call him Bronstein or Lev or some nickname?
Service gives no explanation about how Bronstein/Trotsky got busted the first couple of times. What exactly were the charges? (Sedition?) We aren't told -- only the rather vague connection with Lev's published polemics, but nothing specific about Trotsky as an agitator, even though Service says Trotsky believed that street agitation was necessary. You'd think there would be transcripts for Service to access.
Service is inconsistent in his digs. He says Trotsky "disliked boastfulness," then in the next sentence describes how Trotsky "went on loudly about himself". Service says Trotsky was not well regarded, yet in next passage says he was "marked for leadership". Really?
Service is sketchy about Trotsky's unifying beliefs; he doesn't provide at the outset a pr??cis of Trotsky's political philosophy. He talks about Trotsky's "permanent revolution" without explaining what he meant by it.
The footnotes are haphazard. Example amongst many: "His eloquence was recognized but the feeling was strong that..." (no footnote). Here Service belies his membership in the Wikipedia school of weasel words.
Service tells us of Trotsky's scorn for the Red Cross, as an imperialist tool, then opines that this exposes Trotsky's "lack of humanity". A proper historian would allow the reader to draw his own conclusion or at least limit this kind of stuff to a preface or end chapter.
By the way, I don't see any anti-Semitism here, as others claim to have found. Service's coverage of Trotsky's Jewish background seems mattter-of-fact and uncolored by prejudice.
In summary:
The charitable view of this book is that the enormous body of research Service claims to have done has biased him unfavorably against Trotsky and informs every detail of his narrative. I think it more likely that Service has approached Trotsky like Trevor-Roper approached Hitler: "Trotsky as monster -- a Russian Robespierre -- is a given, and I must remind readers from time to time that I've not fallen in love with my subject."
This may work for a polemic but not for a purportedly sober history. And this is very frustrating for a book that is, if you can filter out the editorial sloppiness, the gratuitous asides and the run-on sentences, quite readable and informative, which is why I give it three stars.
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3: Service admitted that this book was a "hatchet job"!
This book is simply a biased, poorly-researched attempt to discredit Trotsky. It was reported in "The Evening Standard" that at the public launching of the book, Service stated:
There's life in the old boy Trotsky yet--but if the ice pick didn't quite do its job killing him off, I hope I've managed it."
Enough said. Making fun of an assassination is sick and the quote clearly shows that Service had an agenda - this is not scholarship.
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4: Another Jewish Gangster With No Regard For Human Life
It is way past due that more respected writers and historians reveal the Bolsheviks for the greedy and bloodthirsty racketeers they in fact were: Meyer Lansky, Benny Siegel, Dutch Schultz (Murder Incorporated), Jack Zwelig, Longy Zwillman and Moe Dalitz, only with a much grander world view.
It also helped, of course, that wealthy New York bankers like Jacob Schiff shared their Marxist ideology; which would make "the Reds" more reliably and better funded than Longy or Moe.
Trotsky was born Lev Bronstein, the son of an extremely rich Jewish entrepreneur farmer. Trotsky himself hid much of his background that the author reveals here for the first time.
Service's "Trotsky" will be the definitive work for many years to come.
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5: Superb History of a Flawed Man
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2JK82HUSKK861 Robert Service is one of the greatest historians of our day, and this is a magnificent work of erudition and insight.
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