Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused such intensities of fierce admiration and reactionary fear as Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. His extraordinary life and extensive writings have left an indelible mark on the revolutionary consciousness. Yet there was once a danger that his life and influence would be relegated to the footnotes of history.
Published over the course of ten years, beginning in 1954, Deutscher’s magisterial three-volume biography turned back the tide of Stalin’s propaganda, and has since been praised by everyone from Tony Blair to Graham Greene. In this definitive work, now reissued in a single volume, Trotsky’s true stature emerges as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian Revolution.
O autorze
Isaac Deutscher was born near Krakow in 1907. First a poet and literary journalist, he joined the outlawed Polish Communist Party in 1926, where he was active until his expulsion in 1932. He moved to London in 1939 just before the outbreak of World War II to embark on a successful journalistic career. In 1946 he decided to become a freelance historian, writing many books, of which the most important is perhaps his Trotsky trilogy.