HISTORY: A biography of Trotsky that is betrayed by its author's polemic approach
Trotsky: A Biography, By Robert Service, Macmillan, 501pp, £25
AS THE centenary of the Russian Revolution approaches, the historiography of that tumultuous period continues to generate heated political and academic debate. The latest book by Soviet historian Robert Service will undoubtedly add more fuel to what is an already blazing fire. Trotsky: A Biographyis Service's third major work on the leaders of Soviet communism – namely Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky – and his eighth book on the history of the Russian revolution and world communism.
Opinion on Service is as divided as that on his chosen subject matter. His work has been lauded by fellow revisionist historians of the Soviet era such as Simon Sebag Montefiore with adjectives such as "outstanding", "fascinating", "compelling", "revelatory" and "scholarly". However left-leaning reviewers such as Guardianassociate editor and columnist Seumas Milne have described Service as someone "firmly in the neoconservative mould", whose writing is more "polemic than historical", resulting in a "cartoonish portrayal" of communism.
Service’s close working connection with the pro-US Republican Party Hoover Institution clearly indicates his own political alignment. The institution aims to promote “individual, economic, and political freedom, private enterprise . . . and limit government intrusion into the lives of individuals”. Condoleezza Rice and Margaret Thatcher are just two of the Institution’s better known Fellows.
Trotsky: A Biographyis the first full-length account of the leading communist's life written by a non-Russian and a non-Trotskyite. Service sets out to challenge what he sees as the dominant reading of Trotsky and his legacy on Russian history and world communism.
Advocates and opponents alike, argues Service, have bought into a view of Trotsky heavily influenced by the biographical accounts of Isaac Deutscher and Pierre Broué, both of whom “worshipped at Trotsky’s shrine”. Indeed Service makes the case that Trotsky’s own account of the Russian revolution “gained a lasting influence far outside the perimeter of the political far left” with the result that his “highly disputable judgments have all too often been treated as the last word”.
So Service sets out to counter Trotsky’s own “self-serving and misleading” analysis of the failure of Soviet communism following the rise to power of his nemesis, Josef Stalin. He seeks to present Trotsky as a figure who, despite his many qualities, “trampled on the civil rights of millions” and had the same “lust for dictatorship and terror” as Stalin.
The 500-page biography is divided into four chronological sections, dealing with Trotsky’s youth, early political life, the Russian Revolution and his life in exile.
Service has an intimate knowledge of the vast archival material now available from Russia and the US. He also pays close attention to the multiple drafts of Trotsky’s own writings, searching for insightful exclusions and deletions from earlier versions of his most famous texts.
Part One traces Trotsky’s family history from the late 19th century through to 1913. The Bronstein’s – Trotsky’s family name – were liberal Jews, self-made farmers, and keen for the young Leiba Bronstein to advance in Russian society through a good education. Unfortunately for his parents, Trotsky took to radical philosophy and politics from a young age. His membership of the left wing Nikolaev circle in Odessa earned him the first of several periods of life in prison followed by Siberian exile.
Parts Two and Three chart Trotsky’s rise to prominence in Russian social democratic politics in the years leading up to the 1917 revolution, and his role in the post-revolutionary Communist administration. Service portrays Trotsky as an independent voice and mind in the heady and factious world of radical working- class politics. This independence of thought and action was responsible both for Trotsky’s dramatic rise to prominence and for his dramatic fall from grace following the death of Lenin and the ascendency of Stalin.
Part Four follows Trotsky in exile through Turkey, France, Norway and Mexico, to his iconic death at the hands of Soviet secret agent Ramón Mercarder in the Avenida Viena residence on the outskirts of Mexico City. Service interweaves the narratives of the birth and collapse of the international Trotskiest movement alongside Trotsky’s friendships, infidelities and energetic but ultimately failed attempts to depose Stalin.
Through every stage of this biography, Service strives to highlight the brilliance and flawed nature of Trotsky’s character. In the closing pages the author describes the Russian revolutionary as “an exceptional human being and a complex one . . . a brilliant organiser and orator . . . an outstanding stylist in print . . . the holder of outstanding talent . . . [yet] . . . frequently schematic and rigid in his thinking and extremely violent in his practice”.
If Trotsky: A Biographyis judged against the author's own stated intentions – to debunk the myth of Trotsky and challenge his reading of the Russian Revolution – then it is a success. However in his drive to revise Trotsky, Service loses sight of one of the most important functions of biography, to bring the reader close to the human being and human experience that constitutes the subject's life.
Service the biographer is betrayed by Service the ideological opponent of communism, with the consequence that an opportunity to produce a more profound understanding of the life of this important historical figure is lost.
Eoin Ó Broin is Chairperson of Dublin Sinn Féin, a member of the party's Ard Comhairle and author ofSinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism (Pluto 2009)
