Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary

Trotsky,Road to Assassination

Review of: Trotsky, Downfall of a Revolutionary
by Dick Vander Woude
I cannot say why I picked it up at the bookstore, or why I slogged my way through its dense presentation. Had I read the dust jacket inside, I probably would have walked away. "Trotsky, Downfall of a Revolutionary," was written by Bertrand M. Paternaude, research fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford. Or in words that I better understood: what a neo-con wants us to know about the life of one of the world's great revolutionaries.
Still, it proved interesting, written in a series of flash backs from the time of Trotsky's exile in Mexico. Many of Trotsky's personal papers and letters from that period are located at Stanford and provided the author and reader with an intense view of his final years.
There is little, if any, of Trotsky's ideology and none of his profound and persuasive speeches. It's like reading a history of Jesus with out the Sermon on the Mount. Instead we learn of his intense distrust and hatred of Stalin, while steadfastly defending the Soviet revolution and the Stalin led years of opportunistic foreign policy during World War II.
Having read the book, its subtitle now seems propagandistic. A better one might have been, "On the Road to Assassination."
I am not a Trotsky scholar, by any means; merely, a person interested in the life a man who contributed to so much change in our world. Even Pateraude didn't fully exclude Trotsky's passionate belief in the rights of people and the need for democracy within the dictatorship for (yes "for" though I suspect Patenaude would prefer, "over") the proletariat.
There is a great deal of interesting, and new to me, data about his family, love for his distant sons and caring for the many friends and supporters in France and the United States, without whom he could not have survived as long as he did. These people were inspiring. Their commitment to the man is intensely reflective of their belief in social and economic justice.
While I have laid the book down for the last time, I am glad that I found and read it. Even though I strongly suspect the author intended to create a factual resource for future speechwriters looking for antidotes to undermine social and economic movements of the future. No, I'm not a Trotskyite, however, I am now more aware that I am even less of a neo-con.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Interesting book on an interesting man

This was an incredibly interesting book. The book was very exciting, even though I knew how it ended. "Trotsky" had a lot more than just his political life, but struggles in his personal life as well, making it even more interesting. The title hints that it only discusses the end of his life and his "downfall." But it was more than that, the book is told in some flashbacks, which helps if you go into reading the book without much knowledge of Trotsky.

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